[HN Gopher] Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors
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Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors
Author : thunderbong
Score : 86 points
Date : 2023-04-10 14:26 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| cstejerean wrote:
| Despite the title I was expecting a book about independent
| technical contractors with "hit man" used as an euphemism, but no
| it's an actual manual for contract killers. It's interesting that
| the book started out as fiction, but was then changed to a non-
| fiction format to fit the audience of the publisher, which
| ultimately led to the book's demise.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap.
|
| Not shocked to see it was published by Paladin Press, also
| (in)famous for publishing _The Anarchist Cookbook_
| Atlas22 wrote:
| I was expecting the same. It does seem like a good euphemism
| for a contractor that kills it (not literal killer).
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It is. At a former employer, they brought in a contractor for
| a very targeted task and informally refered to it as hiring a
| "hit man."
| sbaiddn wrote:
| I thought it was for home contractors and figured I should read
| it to better deal with them.
| michaelt wrote:
| I was expecting a book about the music industry with a cynical
| take on formulaic music - maybe a biography of someone like
| Bill Drummond.
| jstarfish wrote:
| _Hit Parade_ would be a better title for such a book.
|
| (KLF had a few hits and wasn't a solo act.)
| JohnFen wrote:
| Try "Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music
| Business" by Fredric Dannen
| PufPufPuf wrote:
| There's a site for freelancers called Gun.io, which uses a
| similar dysphemism.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Textiles of course has an obligatory copy:
| http://web.textfiles.com/destruction/hitman.txt
| joenot443 wrote:
| > It is not recommended that you take any contract that pays
| less than $30,000, and that is working mighty cheap. To work
| for any amount less would be amateurish. There are guys all
| over town who will kill a man for $50 to $5000. And the people
| who hire these thugs usually get exactly what they pay for.
|
| Replace "kill a man" with "launch a product" and "thugs" with
| "devs" and you get some surprisingly familiar advice.
| SilasX wrote:
| And note, that's $30k in c. 1983, which is ~$90k today
| according to www.usinflationcalculator.com.
| glomgril wrote:
| For those interested, there is a podcast about this book and some
| cases it's been relevant in:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hit-man/id1449636432
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Not a very good manual, apparently. The guys who used it were
| caught speedily.
| clort wrote:
| The guys _we know about_
| moshun wrote:
| I'd imagine the authorities have read it more times than any
| prospective criminal entrepreneur.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| This book, kinda like "Steal This Book" was more of a meme that
| it really was an actual guide.
|
| Any actual truth, which might have been sparse to begin with,
| would have been rapidly picked and shared with cops; the M-O
| would have been clear. And that's assuming it was a real guide --
| it was actually written by a housewife who later killed her
| husband and went to jail for it.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| > it was actually written by a housewife who later killed her
| husband and went to jail for it.
|
| You're getting this mixed up with the book "How To Murder Your
| Husband", whose author was convicted of killing her husband
| joshxyz wrote:
| come on, i thought this is an insightful guide about consulting,
| with a catchy thread title
|
| mildly disappointed
| amanj41 wrote:
| Evidently, the reader who was caught did not read the section
| about fulfilling contracts discreetly.
| gweinberg wrote:
| Indeed, I believe the publishers actually used this argument in
| their defense: that although the killer had a copy of the book,
| he didn't really use it. He got caught because he did several
| things the book explicitly said not to do.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| > author was really a divorced mother-of-two who simply
| fabricated much of the material
|
| O_O
| ljlolel wrote:
| jamesgill 44 minutes ago | unvote | next [-]
|
| An interesting 'detail': Nancy Crampton-Brophy (the author) was
| recently convicted of killing her husband in Portland, Oregon.
| Seven years before her conviction, she also wrote a book titled
| 'How to Murder Your Husband'. reply
| philipkglass wrote:
| These sorts of "forbidden knowledge" books (also including the
| Anarchist Cookbook, Poor Man's James Bond, etc.) exist in a
| sweet spot for bullshitters. The readers who can't understand
| the professional literature on e.g. making explosives and turn
| to your book are not competent to evaluate what they're
| reading. The few who attempt to follow the instructions and
| find them lacking are also unlikely to post verified reviews
| about how the explosive boobytrap did not kill the target as
| advertised. An author can mix together correct but partial
| information, speculation, and imagination as desired. It won't
| hurt sales if the instructions for homebrewed potassium cyanide
| don't work.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| This reminds me of a story that happen long ago. I was
| working at a farm, I was with one of my mates and we were
| tasked with some general farm duties. One day we discovered a
| shed full of bags of Potassium Nitrate... I then recalled
| reading this recipe for a smoke bomb on the Anarchist
| Cookbook. Perfect! we though... all we need is sugar now...
|
| We almost burned the whole place to the ground... for sure we
| did learn a valuable lesson that afternoon hahaha We did
| finish the job btw, and got the cost of replacing the lino
| deducted from our paychecks...
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| That sounds awfully familiar :-)
|
| Just substitute me for you and your mates and the kitchen
| for the farm and, well, let's just say my aunt was not
| happy! At least the flames didn't quite reach the ceiling,
| so we still had a house to live in.
| jstarfish wrote:
| > The few who attempt to follow the instructions and find
| them lacking are also unlikely to post verified reviews about
| why the explosive boobytrap did not kill the target as
| advertised.
|
| These days, who knows. We had Silk Road for a while.
|
| Long ago, SWIM attempted some of the napalm recipes. It did
| create a flammable, gelatinous muck, but also ate holes in
| and leaked out of the storage containers the guide
| recommended.
|
| At the time, there was no public forum in which to complain
| about this oversight, just a lot of "oh shit" heard echoing
| across the backyard when a test batch was ignited.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| > SWIM
|
| It's so funny to me how four simple letters can tell you so
| much about the kinds of communities someone has spent time
| around. IYKYK I suppose.
| blincoln wrote:
| It seems to have influenced Hollywood writers. The 1995
| Stallone/Banderas Assassins film has a lot of details straight
| out of this book, for example.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| And now this book is AI training material as all the others.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| My my initial reactions to your comment:
|
| 1) Are you sure it is?
|
| 2) And, if so, so what?
| karaterobot wrote:
| Oh wow, Paladin Press books from the used bookstore were such a
| big part of my adolescence. Maybe I shouldn't admit that, but how
| else is an 11 year old going to learn important things like the
| secrets of the ninja, or how to be a smuggler, or how to live off
| the land in a pre-internet era? Schools were sorely lacking in
| the important stuff.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Similarly, somehow a friend of mine had a Loompanics shopping
| catalogue. Lots of fun and eye-opening titles!
|
| Loompanics was later bought by Paladin.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loompanics
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| Get back to me when Agent 47 writes his book.
| jstarfish wrote:
| Probably not the best model to follow.
|
| * Be androgynous, bald, and the same build as everyone else on
| the planet. Other people's clothing is the only access control
| governing access to secure areas.
|
| * Nobody will ever think to look in closets or deep freezers.
|
| * A white man in a turban or a giant crow costume will attract
| no attention anywhere.
|
| * Nobody will ask questions when you show up to someone else's
| shift wearing their bloodstained, hole-riddled uniform.
|
| * If you drop an obvious explosive device in a crowded area, a
| helpful security guard will always come along shortly to
| retrieve and deliver it to the nearest lost-and-found.
| jamesgill wrote:
| An interesting 'detail': Nancy Crampton-Brophy (the author) was
| recently convicted of killing her husband in Portland, Oregon.
| Seven years before her conviction, she also wrote an essay titled
| 'How to Murder Your Husband'.
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| Do you have a source on this? (On the claim that she was the
| author)
| Atlas22 wrote:
| So he was competiting in the Olympics of ignoring red flags.
| While she was competiting in the Olympics of least intelligent
| murderers. Even OJ managed to figure it out: verdict, then
| books.
| oehtXRwMkIs wrote:
| That was an online essay, not a book
| briffle wrote:
| One of the two great Portland Hitman murders that did not pan
| out in the last 15 years:
| https://www.wweek.com/news/2016/08/17/a-hit-man-came-to-kill...
| dmurray wrote:
| The full text of the book:
|
| https://archive.org/stream/Hitman_A_Technical_Manual_for_Ind...
| thaumaturgy wrote:
| Other formats, including a scanned copy (which some publishers
| are currently attempting to force the Archive to discontinue):
| https://archive.org/details/Hitman_A_Technical_Manual_for_In...
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Incase anyone's curious - no, there isn't much here that would
| be applicable to business consulting, startups, technical
| contracting etc. Many other much better places to read about
| that: Patio11's essays (http://kalzumeus.com), The Art of War
| are two that immediately come to mind.
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(page generated 2023-04-10 23:01 UTC)