<story><title>Steve Wozniak used to tip from printed sheets of $2 bills</title><url>https://web.archive.org/web/20111122202554/http://archive.woz.org/letters/general/78.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dist1ll</author><text>Isn&amp;#x27;t it pretty irresponsible to commit a felony while you have a daughter and wife to take care of?&lt;p&gt;I find his nonchalant delivery quite jarring. I don&amp;#x27;t understand what&amp;#x27;s going through his head here.</text></item><item><author>yreg</author><text>&amp;gt; [The Secret Service agent] asked my for some picture ID. I have some fake photo ID&amp;#x27;s that a friend made for me years before, when we could make realistic photo ID&amp;#x27;s from our computers. Almost nobody else could do this because printers weren&amp;#x27;t good enough. But I had an expensive early generation dye sublimation printer and made some fake ID&amp;#x27;s for fun. I had one favorite fake ID that I&amp;#x27;d used for almost every airplane flight, domestic and international, that I&amp;#x27;d taken for many years. It says &amp;quot;Laser Safety Officer&amp;quot; and has a photo of me with an eyepatch. It also says &amp;quot;Department of Defiance&amp;quot; in an arc, in a font that looks like &amp;quot;Department of Defense&amp;quot; to the casual glance.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; As I opened my wallet, I considered whether I should risk using this fake ID on the Secret Service. It probably amounted to a real crime. I had my driver&amp;#x27;s license as well. But you only live once and only a few of us even get a chance like this once in our lives. So I handed him the fake ID. He noted and returned it. The Secret Service took an ID that said &amp;quot;Laser Safety Officer&amp;quot; with a photo of myself wearing an eyepatch.&lt;p&gt;Woz plays life like an RPG.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dereg</author><text>I can’t help but shake my head at most of these comments. There was a time when we celebrated anecdotes like this here on Hacker News. I’ve seen this story circulated many times but this is the first time I’ve seen this sort of reaction. These aren’t rose colored glasses, anyone can look up threads of old in which we cheered such defiance toward authority.&lt;p&gt;People are frothing to frame this story with 2023 glasses and, to me, this reaction makes it all the more clear how today’s culture is so corrosive. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s not about privilege of rich white men. Maybe it’s about the rigid conformism that the tech industry has imbued in its people in this past decade. The screams of people glued to Anki preparing for leetcode interviews, not understanding why someone would dare challenge the status quo. Regardless, it’s a sign of the times.</text></comment>
<story><title>Steve Wozniak used to tip from printed sheets of $2 bills</title><url>https://web.archive.org/web/20111122202554/http://archive.woz.org/letters/general/78.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dist1ll</author><text>Isn&amp;#x27;t it pretty irresponsible to commit a felony while you have a daughter and wife to take care of?&lt;p&gt;I find his nonchalant delivery quite jarring. I don&amp;#x27;t understand what&amp;#x27;s going through his head here.</text></item><item><author>yreg</author><text>&amp;gt; [The Secret Service agent] asked my for some picture ID. I have some fake photo ID&amp;#x27;s that a friend made for me years before, when we could make realistic photo ID&amp;#x27;s from our computers. Almost nobody else could do this because printers weren&amp;#x27;t good enough. But I had an expensive early generation dye sublimation printer and made some fake ID&amp;#x27;s for fun. I had one favorite fake ID that I&amp;#x27;d used for almost every airplane flight, domestic and international, that I&amp;#x27;d taken for many years. It says &amp;quot;Laser Safety Officer&amp;quot; and has a photo of me with an eyepatch. It also says &amp;quot;Department of Defiance&amp;quot; in an arc, in a font that looks like &amp;quot;Department of Defense&amp;quot; to the casual glance.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; As I opened my wallet, I considered whether I should risk using this fake ID on the Secret Service. It probably amounted to a real crime. I had my driver&amp;#x27;s license as well. But you only live once and only a few of us even get a chance like this once in our lives. So I handed him the fake ID. He noted and returned it. The Secret Service took an ID that said &amp;quot;Laser Safety Officer&amp;quot; with a photo of myself wearing an eyepatch.&lt;p&gt;Woz plays life like an RPG.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jrochkind1</author><text>Yeah, my reaction was -- after he read you your miranda rights, why were you even talking to him without a lawyer?&lt;p&gt;But after thinking about it more -- and I&amp;#x27;m in my mid-40s -- I think what it also reminds us of is that law enforcement actually used to be a lot more reasonable -- to be clear, this may probably only apply to white people who appear as if they are not poor. But I think maybe the police (whether local or national security) have actually maybe gotten a lot more intense in the past 30 years. Possibly actually more intense for everyone.&lt;p&gt;The risks of &amp;quot;messing with&amp;quot; security personel, at least for middle-class-appearing white guys, was very definitely a lot less back then.</text></comment>