There appear to be rape accusations against Jacob Applebaum. But so far only 2 Tor developers have stated this. No outside verification. Hopefully more facts surface as time goes on. This is very disconcerting.
I can't believe this is still the top comment. If Jacob Applebaum is a rapist, then that is horrible and of course he should step down. But this comment links to 3 tweets that are all duplicates of each other.
Is there any reason to think that Jacob Applebaum is actually a rapist? I would really like to see some proof of that, before jumping to any conclusions.
If the truth isn't known, Tor could be shooting itself in the foot if they 'decided' that it's one way or another. Makes sense that they would say that.
I' sorry to see him leave. I had the opportunity to attend his talks in Munich and Hamburg and he is a great explainer and so well spoken. I'm curious what he is up to next.
This tweet in particular is just jaw-droppingly stupid: "Tor had the chance to nip this in the bud back when Jake was just a plagiarist. They ignored it, and he graduated to sexual assault."
Not to mention that it turns out he actually wasn't a plagiarist and there was a misunderstanding on both sides. Also throughout the ordeal Jacob seemed to handle it reasonably.
Edit: I didn't think my parent comment was inflammatory, but it's been flagged...so just to provide context for this follow-up, here are two sources to consider:
That email thread is worth a read. There were some serious misunderstandings and petty drama in there and it's hard to take any unsubstantiated accusations seriously after reading that.
slightly OT but clicking at all those twitter threads, and not being a twitter user myself, I'm having an extremely hard time understanding how the conversation(s) flow. What a terrible interface !
I'm reluctant to pre-judge someone in a situation like this (having zero facts, only allegations from people, some of whom I trust by default), but stepping down when allegations like this happen, even if you dispute their veracity, is often the best thing to do for the organization (and yourself).
This has to be tough for everyone involved. Tor is unpopular with a lot of people, and there are both internal-to-scene and journalist-vs-securitypeople historical dramas here, plus people often do bad things.
I'm confident the Tor Project will survive this; I hope justice for the people involved is served as well.
He was strongly associated with Tor from a PR/outreach perspective. Less critical than a year ago, and not particularly operational. Hence my confidence that Tor will survive.
Which is why Tor should probably operate like PaX, without real life identities associated. Some open source contributions are not very different from activism in that they can get you into trouble in certain jurisdisctions, and in essence it's not much different from banned writers.
I hope The Tor Project and Appelbaum will make statements. Their reticence and the suddenness of the resignation raises concerns that there are problems at that very important project.
Or this is FBI related, and they're barred from giving details. I'm not saying his sudden resignation is a canary, but I'm also not sure that it isn't.
After what Snowden has shown us about the lengths the government is willing to go (on our payroll, that is), how can you really trust any technology? To me, the chilling effect is far stronger than we generally suspect.
That's what I initially thought, but time will tell. If the media starts hyping this like the Assange case, then yes, the alphabet mafia may have had a hand... After going through some crap with an outright psychopath working for a non-profit (the signs were there (classic ones), but it took a bit of time to put together a comprehensive picture), I have some insight into how organizations (or groups of humans, fundamentally) tend to deal with this stuff. Tor's terseness does not surprise me - 'he said, she said's never go well and it violates some unspoken social rules.
Giving people the benefit of the doubt, allowing for differences in temperament and personality, amateur psychoanalyzing trying to understand a person, compassion... these are all things normal healthy people do, in the interests of co-operation - which psychopaths consciously take advantage of. And overlooking things because person X is effective at their job... it is the same sort of pragmatism that underlies the legal system - e.g. you may be entirely in the right and the other person in the wrong, but the legal system only cares about money and really, which one has more - and more lawyers. At some point, the rational person decides this is stupid and a waste of time and not worth it to their personal life, especially when society, as complex as it is now, isn't going to care that much about a bad actor unless they are very very notable.
E.g. Bill Cosby still has his supporters and Jimmy Saville got away with all sorts of stuff for years while others consciously looked away - because the cost of standing up and fighting the Establishment wouldn't have been worth it. It's groupthink, plain and simple, and a lot of people can't jump that hurdle.
Eventually, you realise how fundamentally corrupt humanity can be, and become more conservative (re: that quote). But ... if you have integrity, you have to realise why "conservatives" value hypocrisy so much because it is the foundation of power, and then you begin to see the real Truth about the world.
I don't even know what there would be to discuss with this story. It seems like the only possible outcome of it is a lot of personalized Internet drama. If there's an important story here, someone will eventually write it, and maybe that will have a place on HN. But this one-line page isn't that, and I flagged this story, and hope others do too.
I respectfully disagree. He had enough involvement with the project (speaking about it publicly) that his departure on its own is sufficiently newsworthy.
(FWIW, I know a bunch of the Tor devs, Tor founders, and various anti-Jake people across areas. I've also known Jake for about 20y. I just think "person publicly associated with the org leaves" is newsworthy, since Tor itself is newsworthy.)
Hmmm. Would you feel the same way if there wasn't so much ambiguity around his departure? There's often HN stories when notable people depart notable organizations/projects.
I definitely understand where you're coming from. This comment section certainly isn't even remotely productive and I can understand and mostly agree with your choice to flag it. But purely out of interest, I do wonder where you feel the line is. I do find it interesting to know when various people change their affiliations. It's one of the things I actually often find out about on HN, since I otherwise wouldn't end up keeping up with any of it.
I feel like most of the people commenting here probably don't know any other Tor project members by name, including the founder's, and don't really know what Appelbaum did or the project either. So the fact that we're off to these ridiculous races on this thread based on this one-line post is especially galling.
Speculation can on rare occasions be interesting, when it's done by informed speculators. But that's not what we have here, is it?
The other comments had me rolling my eyes. But far as Tor and Appelbaum, remember that Appelbaum was the public face of Tor and defender of Wikileaks for many people. Also did lots of work on these issues. Was the fieldguy in many countries deploying the tech. Justifies a specific interest in Appelbaum over others where some, including me, were wondering if aomeone missed a writeup somewhere about why he left and what's his next plans.
All this other stuff seems tabloid. Not what we need on HN.
I just think that the submission's merit is independent of the page full of awful comments it generated. The submission itself seems about as HN worthy as other "X leaves Y" submissions. IMO, the comments are a problem in the HN community, not a problem in the submission.
Pragmatically though, flagging the story and getting whatever this comment section off the front page probably makes sense.
People are posting related info they've found. Seems entirely valid to me (especially given that the media botches a lot of stories, like the last two revelations of "the real Satoshi").
FWIW, there is now a twitter account and website set up now dedicated entirely to completely assassinating his character. Whether there are claims made that are true or not, I'm not linking to either because I think the court of public opinion is the most fucked approach to getting justice (I personally know of one person sitting in prison now for 14 years for murder because his character was systematically assassinated in public leading up to the trial. He ended up pleading guilty to another crime that occurred while he was in solitary confinement awaiting trial in order to avoid life in prison).
For those curious, you can probably find both if you look hard enough, but there isn't anything substantiated or factual presented by either. If anything, they make the accusers look incredibly desperate and vindictive. Furthermore, the site references the "plagiarism" incident as one of the offenses which feels absurd after reading the thread with all the drama surrounding that "offense":
On a more serious note, sorry to see him leave. He seemed really deeply engaged in Tor Project, I saw him on CCC (Chaos Communication Congress, a huge hacker conference in Hamburg) a couple of times. See his talks here:
There is generally no formal requirement to have earlier degrees; they're helpful for admission, of course, but if you can convince admissions and an advisor to take you on, you're in.
As far as I know, there is a formal requirement to have, e.g., a BSc to get a PhD or a masters.
Put it this way: can you provide even a single example that proves this to be false?
I know of just one instance actually (guy who is now a professor from Hong Kong, whose incredible experience with farming was counted).
On the other hand, I do know some smart folks without college degrees whose professors fought to get them in and to get them designated in certain higher level positions but they lost that battle.
Well, Jake's listed as Tanja's PhD student, so there's one example right there. If you google for a bit longer you'll find others who hold PhDs who don't have undergraduate degrees. It's definitely rare to be admitted this way and then not all these students end up successfully defending after admission, but the formal requirement for an undergraduate degree does not exist at some institutions, or can be waived with some uncommonly used paperwork at others.
Most people are surprised to find just how many things universities have a form to do. There's very few rules at a university you can't get waived with the right signatures on the right paperwork.
My own time in academia required a lot of paperwork...
While I'm sure you intended this to be a compliment, you should know that ioerror has strong opinions (which I agree with) about the word "activist". From a recent talk[1][2] he gave about journalism and the media:
"Activism" is used as a pejorative term in order to suggest
that participation in a democratic society is somehow
outside of the normal behavior.
Fuck that. That is wrong.
[2] I strongly recommend everyone watch [1] - it's shorter than most of his talks (only 20m), and it has surprising revaluations about e.g. The Guardian. Jacob doesn't pull his punches, and he burns a few notable bridges.
I completely agree. However, the reality of things is that some people are more engaged than others when it comes to defending freedoms, advocacy, etc...
Edit : I have found this Tweet [0] I shared with ioerror himself about this same subject exactly a year ago.
My apologies, I didn't see your other reply before I deleted and reposted the comment. I thought I'd replied to the post and not the comment, so I deleted and reposted, did not realise you had detached it.
I'm sorry for posting low quality comments and won't do it again.
It actually just crossed my mind that it might have been an innocent mistake and I came back to the thread with the thought of editing my comment. Sorry for assuming the worst of you! (It's a bias I try not to fall into, but still do.)
I will second the statement that Jacob is an able and skilled developer.
I have worked with him on projects long ago, however, so he can certainly have chosen where to focus his time and attention. Just because you don't see him code, don't assume he can't (replying to Grandparent of course)