HN Books @HNBooksMonth

⬐ tptacek

This retarded book, which has injured acquaintances of mine, is the reason I have the career I have now. If it weren't for the Anarchist Cookbook, I'd be a Windows admin today.

It's every bit as bad as the author says it is. But taking it out of print won't fix anything; the copy I had when I was 13 wasn't legit, and was accompanied by 8478439 pages of Usenet posts.

⬐ 9ec4c12949a4f3

Ideas on paper don't hurt people. The people who act on them do. Take some f*cking accountability for your actions; the author did not force anyone to resort to violence.

⬐ tptacek

Yes, it's true, me and my high school freshman friends really should have had a better grounding in pyrotechnics and demolitions before taking on the projects in the Anarchists Cookbook. Maybe we should have gone to mining school first. I'm sorry.

I'm not sure why this was left as a comment on my comment, though, since it doesn't have anything to do with it. We weren't "resorting to violence", unless "violence against garbage cans" is a political statement to you.

You also appear not to have noticed me crediting my career to the book you think I want to burn.

⬐ SkyMarshal

>I'm not sure why this was left as a comment on my comment, though,

Some people are just looking for any excuse to preach, even if it's a stretch that requires willful misinterpretation.

⬐ 9ec4c12949a4f3

Why? To draw a parallel: Video games teach kids how to shoot up schools.

⬐ SkyMarshal

I'm not up on the videogame scene, but is there really one out there that simulates breaking into a highschool or college and shooting up students and teachers, before finally winning the game by offing yourself?

⬐ 9ec4c12949a4f3

No, and that's my point.

⬐ tptacek

No they don't. Think harder. You may have turned 12 knowing how to make a pipe bomb. Me and my friends weren't.

⬐ jrockway

It's really about common sense and responsibility. If I were going to make some thermite or something, I'd do a bit of research to see what safety precautions to take. I'd keep a good distance between myself and the thermite, and I'd make sure that everyone else was also a good distance away. I'd make sure nothing of value was near the thermite, and I'd make sure I could ignite it without being too close.

When something is dangerous, you have to approach it with caution. Specific knowledge (like "grounding in pyrotechnics and demolitions") lets you know how many liberties you can get away with, but in general, you just have to be cautious. Sometimes cautious is "don't do it at all", but only rarely.

A small bomb in a dirt field with nobody around doesn't really do anything dangerous. A mega-bomb in your basement does. You don't have to know much about pyrotechnics to know this, you just have to have some common sense.

Watch Mythbusters, they do it right every time. Start with small scale, if it seems to work, try a bigger version. That applies to everything.

⬐ bmm6o

> It's really about common sense and responsibility

I'm not taking a position on whether the book should or should not be made available, but it's worth keeping in mind that the sorts of people who are most interested in trying the stuff in the book are the least mindful of the consequences of their actions. On balance, the fewer teenagers with access to thermite, the better - for themselves and us.

⬐ DennisP

> the fewer teenagers with access to thermite, the better

Don't know about that, there have been a lot of famous scientists who got their start by fiddling around with dangerous chemicals in their basements when they were teenagers.

⬐ tptacek

Yeah this is all good but I'm not sure how it's relevant to 13 year olds.

Also: small bomb, dirt field, nobody around, "doesn't really do anything dangerous", thanks, I'll take 4 of your fingers for that assumption. Don't thank me, thank static electricity! =)

⬐ jrockway

People need to take responsibility for their actions. If you blow off your fingers mixing up some chemicals you read about, that's your own fault. If you're not sure whether or not the activity you're about to perform is going to result in the loss of your fingers, don't do it.

I probably knew at least that much in high school.

⬐ kgo

And many of these 13 year olds were doing this before that thing called the world-wide-web was around. It made it rather difficult to do any real research, even if they wanted to.

⬐ todayiamme

>>> I'd be a Windows admin today.<<<

You didn't lose any body parts with your pipe bomb right? I hope I misread your comments.

⬐ tptacek

Nope! The Anarchist Cookbook did not ruin my dreams of becoming a Windows admin, either.

Seriously, though, if you asked me how I got started with my career, "The Anarchist's Cookbook" would be one of the first thoughts in my head.

The topic is interesting to me because my thoughts on the book are so complicated.

⬐ todayiamme

I'm curious now. Why?

I haven't read the book, but what appealed and stuck with that rebellious teenager?

⬐ tptacek

Without getting specific, let's just say that there's a path from "blowing stuff up" to "software security researcher" that involved me knowing how to code C before I was 15. My history of childhood mayhem is tamer than most stories you can read elsewhere and is pretty boring. I became an ISP admin while still a teenager and all this stuff got a lot less funny, fast.

⬐ hsmyers

Not having seen the book until after I got back from Vietnam I thought it ironic in the extreme that the best way to acquire expertise on the subject matter was in fact to volunteer for the draft, survive the year, come home and get busy. With training before during and after my year in country even a then 'stoner' like myself learned more than enough to easily loose all of the body parts I had available!! Didn't though, went back to being an art major...

⬐ edkennedy

Vice Magazine tried a few of the recipes in the book in this video... like the napalm, flaming tennis balls and a rocket assisted skateboard: http://www.vbs.tv/en-ca/watch/from-the-pages-of-vice/anarchi...

⬐ godorito

Thanks for the link. I was never thought to use bottle rockets when I was younger.

⬐ mattmaroon

I nearly burned my patio down building the smoke bomb in high school. I learned in the process though that you could skip the entire cooking process. (It does smell awful, but that's just the sugar caramelizing.

Made for a great prank on the last day of school though.

⬐ chopsueyar

Does anyone else here find it ironic the book is really a compilation of then available US government published information at the local library, and then copyrighted and sold by the publisher with the author losing all rights?

And Amazon allowing the Author of the book (who has no copyrights to said material) to 'advertise' his desire to stop publication and sale of a book Amazon sells?

⬐ horacegrant

Eh, who cares? So he had a big evangelical moment and saw Jesus, great, wonderful. This book continues to contain information that can be useful to people, and this is the same "book-burning" way of thinking that is so prevalent in conservative religious communities. While the document is injected with immature content throughout in terms of the motivations for the activities upon which it instructs, it contains practical knowledge that can be used for good or evil.

This knowledge cannot and should not be erased because an individual, even the original author, has concluded that violence is under no circumstance an acceptable way to prosecute change.

⬐ tptacek

What do conservative religious values have to do with not publishing books that teach 13 year olds how to blow their hands off?

⬐ None

None

⬐ DanielBMarkham

You are talking about fideism, not religion. Lots of religious folks (I am not religious) value knowledge as much as non-religious people do. Faith has nothing to do with it (see Kierkegaard)

Making such sweeping generalizations -- painting the entire concept of religion with the actions of a relatively few fundamentalists -- isn't very charitable. And it invites pointless debate, as other commenters have pointed out.

⬐ None

None

⬐ None

None

⬐ None

None

⬐ snth

First of all, I think your comment would have been more effective and to-the-point if you had left off your first paragraph.

Second, I'm surprised to see a regular contributor to Hacker news saying something like this: > there are religious contributors to the site who may not enjoy being caricatured.

That seems like a poor reason to avoid saying something that you believe is true and contributes to the discussion (especially in a public forum like this).

Third, the statement "violence...is not an effective way to achieve ends," is just a platitude. It most definitely has been effective, and is sometimes an effective way to achieve ends. Rome seemed to take care of it's Carthage problem pretty well. You can certainly argue whether or not this is a moral way to achieve ends, but that is not what you said.

⬐ 9ec4c12949a4f3

Spanish inquisition and something about making rats burrowing into pregnant jews or something. Not that religious values are bad and the bible should be removed from print or anything...

⬐ gloob

Perhaps I'm just being dense today, but in what way is "Religion is bad, m'kay?" not a non-sequitur to the question that was actually asked?

⬐ 9ec4c12949a4f3

I'm attacking the concept that books can be good or bad, while illustrating that religions aren't going to change that, only the people who act.

⬐ tptacek

Spoken like someone who's never read Herbert Schildt.

⬐ heresyforme

Nothing happens in a vacuum:

"But the most infamous event was when the captured men of Otranto were given the choice to convert to Islam or die; 800 of them held to their Christian faith and were beheaded en masse at a place now known as the Hill of the Martyrs. The Turkish fleet then went on to attack the cities of Vieste, Lecce, Taranto, and Brindisi, and destroyed the great library at the Monastero di San Nicholas di Casole, before returning to Ottoman territory in November."

"...it will surely surprise those who believe that millions of people died in the Spanish Inquisition to learn that throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, less than three people per year were sentenced to death by the Inquisition throughout the Spanish Empire, which ranged from Spain to Sicily and Peru. Secular historians given access to the Vatican’s archives in 1998 discovered that of the 44,674 individuals tried between 1540 and 1700, only 804 were recorded as being relictus culiae saeculari. The 763-page report indicates that only 1 percent of the 125,000 trials recorded over the entire inquisition ultimately resulted in execution by the secular authority, which means that throughout its infamous 345-year history, the dread Spanish Inquisition was less than one-fourteenth as deadly on an annual basis as children’s bicycles."

The Irrational Atheist, Vox Day

⬐ chopsueyar

This assumes the Vatican's paperwork, for a span of 160 years, at over 200 years old, does not consider any individuals sentenced to long prison sentences or galleys, whom have died during imprisonment or service, deaths.

Also, any prisoner that died pretrial is not counted, nor anyone wearing a sanbenito that was beaten to death in public.

Nor any jew, muslim, or dislikable person killed pretrial because of religous hatred.

You don't happen to have a link to the 763 page report, do you?

⬐ chopsueyar

This material, however, is far from being complete - for example, the tribunal of Cuenca is entirely omitted, because no relaciones de causas from this tribunal has been found, and significant gaps concern some other tribunals (e.g. Valladolid). Many more cases not reported to Suprema are known from the other sources (e.g. no relaciones de causas from Cuenca has been found, but its original records has been preserved), but were not included in Contreras-Hennigsen's statistics for the methodological reasons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_inquisition#Death_tolls

⬐ kgo

Actually, the book has a lot of completely incorrect information. For example, it has a recipe for bananadyne. That's what I find offensive about it. I wouldn't trust any of the other recipes to not just blow up in your face even if executed correctly, since the author didn't test them to begin with.

⬐ hugh3

it contains practical knowledge that can be used for good or evil

How can said practical knowledge be used for good? In the real world, I mean, not hypothetical-land? Where do you suggest I should plant my homemade bomb in order to make the world a better place, really?

You don't have to have a "big evangelical moment" to see that this book's main contribution to the world has been a bunch of teenagers blowing up either mailboxes or their own hands.

⬐ horacegrant

Sometimes things need to be destroyed.

⬐ uxp

If you happen to scroll down further, you might end up reading a review[1] of a person who's college ROTC instructor used this same book as training material.

For most everyone working a 9-5 in the city with a middle-class family in the suburbs, no this book won't have any practical day to day application. But the review I'm referencing is quoted as saying, "Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it,". Having the book and being knowledgable about it's contents can be argued to be akin to keeping 30 days of food in storage for emergencies.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/review/R5M42EN2525C3/ref=cm_cr_dp_perm...

⬐ tptacek

Yeah, sorry, wrong. The best-known lesson of this book was "you can walk into a series of hardware stores and drug stores and acquire the materials needed to make a cool explosion inside of a trash can, no questions asked, even if you're in Tulsa and you're 13". Unfortunately, that wasn't all you needed to know about the topic to blow up garbage cans safely.

You may have the impression that, like "Steal This Book", this was an interesting compendium of ideas no normal person would ever put into use. The problem was, it actually included a lot of ideas that stupid kids like me certainly would put to use.

⬐ uxp

I agree, and you're also wrong.

I did have the impression that under the right circumstances, in the right climate, the book was a very useful reference. I never said that the book was safe. You may have have the impression, or experience to argue for, the dangers of this book because of certain events that may have occurred, or possibly could have occurred, after you read it at about the same age I read it.

If I may, let me abstract both of our arguments:

I say that the book is a good tool, under certain preconditions, that may help one in time of emergency. I'm talking about the book as a reference, as a tool, and a guide. And by its nature, anyone with some common sense knows that it is not a complete, concise work. There are thousands of pages omitted regarding safety. But it can point one in the right direction when it is the only thing available.

You say that the book is dangerous because 13 year old kids from Tulsa can buy materials off the shelf of retail stores and build bombs, with the possibility of killing or severely injuring themselves. You are arguing that the product of the actions derived from use of the book in an irresponsible manner are unsafe, and thus no one should have access to the material described within the book. If this is not what you are arguing about, please clarify.

The book isn't inherently dangerous. It also is not inherently safe, having it on my shelf does not make my home or family more prepared for survival than yours, if you didn't have this book on your shelf. Nor does it make my house more dangerous to be in. This book is a tool, just like a machette or toaster oven. Just because a 13 year old puts shredded newspaper in a toaster and burns his family's house down doesn't make toasters dangerous. Corollary, a 13 year old reading this book doesn't become a violent madman, until that person acts on the ideas and methods of building bombs to take to school. It is the action, like building a bomb, that is the danger, even for people trained and experienced in the field.

With every liberty man has been given a burden also comes with. We shouldn't prevent this book from being published because the fear of it being used irresponsibly is too great. We should be teaching respect and safety to the ideas presented within. No one answer will win this argument.

⬐ tptacek

You think I'm arguing that the book should be burned. I'm not; I'm saying that it was irresponsible to write and publish a book with haphazard and amateurish demolitions instructions, and calamitously irresponsible to make that book available to teenagers. I also said, earlier, that the book launched my career, which I'm quite happy with. My feelings about the book are complicated.

It should go without saying that there are many tools that, unlike toaster ovens, are not generally provided to children without supervision --- regardless of whether they can cough up the cash to buy them.