[HN Gopher] A server that wasn't meant to exist
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A server that wasn't meant to exist
Author : jaypatelani
Score : 217 points
Date : 2025-05-14 15:50 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (it-notes.dragas.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (it-notes.dragas.net)
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Creepy
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| I think I missed something. They later offered the guy the world
| to solve problems. He declined and then complains they wouldn't
| provide the tools he needed.
|
| Part of "name your price" should include whatever tools - up to
| and including ownership of processes.
| kentm wrote:
| Yeah I think something was missed. My wild speculation is that
| the person thats "causing issues" has a privileged position
| with the owners. The owners are unwilling to completely cut
| this person out of the business, and that is what he means when
| he says that the owners won't provide the tools he needed.
| hengheng wrote:
| My mind immediately went to organized crime. Money laundering
| for people who he rather didn't know his name.
| lisper wrote:
| This looks like a clue:
|
| "I even worked on translating Archivista's interface into
| Italian, since it wasn't yet localized, just to make it
| easier for users."
| draga79 wrote:
| No, that's not a clue :-) I've just replied, clarifying
| this part, to the previous comment
| bombcar wrote:
| Got it, it was disorganized crime, not organized. ;)
| draga79 wrote:
| Yes, exactly :-D
| draga79 wrote:
| I'm the author of the post. I hinted, in a cryptic sentence
| near the end, that I necessarily had to leave out the worst
| parts of the story. No, no organized crime. But yes, there
| were people who appropriated resources that weren't theirs
| and used every tool at their disposal to avoid scrutiny. To
| keep it vague, let's just say some of the people involved
| had means that could seriously harm the businesses and
| their owners. And since these were primary businesses, that
| would have been a serious problem. The owners, knowing
| this, tried to find solutions but couldn't really "afford"
| to remove the people involved. To be specific, in the end
| the owners themselves were aware of what was happening, but
| hoped to resolve it with a few more checks. Eventually, I
| realized that as long as there was enough money for
| everyone, they were okay with the ongoing theft.
| Aloha wrote:
| Its better to know who is stealing from you (and how
| much) than not - sometimes the evil you know is better
| than the evil you dont.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| if you weren't getting paid for this - why get involved
| in the first place?
| draga79 wrote:
| I've been paid for doing my job: creating the
| infrastructure, configuring stuff, etc.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Alright, I was thinking this was just the case of helping
| a friend
| woah wrote:
| Sounds like very straightforward tax evasion. The
| business brings in lots of cash, doesn't pay taxes,
| obscures the books enough so that there's no smoking gun.
| Some of the people participating in the scheme are
| skimming, but maybe less than the taxes would be, or
| maybe the owners are also implicated and would face
| criminal penalties themselves, so it's better for
| everyone just to keep it going and keep the books messy.
| Don't need mafiosos from TV for that.
| poyu wrote:
| I thought that just means they're buying him out?
| asmodeuslucifer wrote:
| good read.
| johnklos wrote:
| I've seen situations like these before. This is why off-site
| backups are so very important. I've also been in the same
| position of providing data from a backup that someone was
| intentionally trying to destroy to escape responsibility.
|
| This story even hints at a common theme that happens even when
| people aren't trying to destroy data - that some people will tear
| down whatever they inherit, then blame their predecessors for the
| problems that result.
| apples_oranges wrote:
| But if you don't blame them it can also backfire. I inherited a
| bad codebase once and tried my best to improve it. But there
| was only so much time. When I left the guy after me blamed me
| for the still bad parts immediately.
| ipaddr wrote:
| He would blamed your new code if you rewrote. People who
| blame are juniors. You are not really a senior if you blame.
| duxup wrote:
| It's always interesting to me how easily corruption occurs. I
| always assume that accounting double checks things and so on, but
| I've seen so many business where someone just creates an account
| and money goes out and ... nobody notices for years.
|
| I've even created automated invoices for some companies and
| realized that some data was missing for months. And yet they got
| paid significant amounts. I realized that the invoices could have
| been for just about anything and they would have gotten paid ...
| forinti wrote:
| When Robert McNamara took over Ford, accounting was so messed
| up, they would weigh their invoices and if the amount wasn't
| too far off from the expected dollars/pound ratio, they would
| pay it.
| duxup wrote:
| Even Google evnetually caught a few people who just cold sent
| in invoices and found that Google would pay.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| One guy was caught doing that to the tune of $100 million
| to Facebook and Google. If he had stopped at $1 million or
| something he probably would have got away with it. I
| suspect others have.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2019/03/25/706715377/man-pleads-
| guilty-t...
| ngangaga wrote:
| I had no idea that piece of shit was associated with Ford at
| all.
| forinti wrote:
| He talks about it in The Fog of War (which is not going to
| make you change your ideia about him).
| psunavy03 wrote:
| That's how he got to DOD in the first place, by being the
| stereotypical "businessman who will clean up government."
| DOGE was not the first time politicans have talked about
| this kind of thing; it comes along every 20-30 years.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz_Kids_(Department_of_Defe
| n...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Fantastic war story. There's always like these dozen hangers-on
| who've made their fortune parasitizing successful people.
| forinti wrote:
| Reading through it I had a feeling it was in Italy. I was bit sad
| to confirm it.
| draga79 wrote:
| Italy, but no organized crime involved
| jeremyjh wrote:
| But tax evasion, right?
| draga79 wrote:
| Author's note: Many readers, understandably struck by the
| severity of the events, have speculated about the involvement of
| organized crime. I want to clarify that, while the situation was
| extremely problematic and dishonest, that wasn't the case. The
| "worst parts" I alluded to referred to other internal dynamics,
| abuses of trust, and improprieties that I prefer not to detail
| further for privacy reasons and to avoid weighing down the
| narrative.
| freehorse wrote:
| Probably there was a lot the family did not know about the
| deceased father.
| dgfitz wrote:
| Can you elaborate at all as to why you didn't make the phone call
| you eluded to that made the other person change their tone? I
| assume out of respect for the deceased/leaving skeletons in the
| closet?
| draga79 wrote:
| Sure, I can say this. The person I would have called, someone
| very close to me, would have been extremely disappointed to
| learn what was happening. They were very proud of having
| helped, during difficult times, the very person who was now
| threatening me. And since this person close to me was facing
| serious health issues (though still had authority), I chose to
| avoid causing them further pain that, ultimately, would have
| been pointless at that moment.
| BubbleRings wrote:
| Great read! Yeah, these days if I get asked for technical advice,
| I'm always glad to put good effort into suggestions. But as soon
| as you tell me "well I want to follow some of your advice, but I
| want to do this other stuff the wrong way", I usually say "Good
| luck with all that!" and away I go.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| > Because sometimes, dishonest people do win.
|
| Let me fix this for you... Because always, dishonest people do
| win.
|
| Good read and it would make a good short film :-)
| mulmen wrote:
| This is needlessly negative. It's clear that dishonest people
| do not _always_ win. Disproving such a claim requires finding
| only one case of a successful prosecution for fraud.
| notpushkin wrote:
| Disproving "winners are always dishonest" would be a bit
| trickier! (Mainly because nailing a definition of "dishonest"
| is just too hard)
| immibis wrote:
| > Because sometimes, dishonest people do win.
|
| Dishonest people _almost always_ win.
|
| Not any individual one - a particular dishonest person might only
| win 20% of the time - but in aggregate - the winner is almost
| always _a_ dishonest person.
|
| Even when a game rewards honesty, dishonest people are willing to
| be honest if that's truly what gives them the greatest chance of
| winning, so they still win.
| mulmen wrote:
| Is this some kind of inverse no true scotsman?
|
| If you win by being honest that's not dishonest.
| aoki wrote:
| I believe they are saying that there are multiple rounds,
| each with different games - some with honest optimal
| strategies and some with dishonest optimal strategies. A
| dishonest _person_ can always choose the optimal strategy for
| each game, but the honest _person_ can only choose the best
| honest strategy. So in aggregate the dishonest person comes
| out ahead.
| mulmen wrote:
| Ok but people are both honest and dishonest so how do you
| decide what type a person is?
| immibis wrote:
| If a person chooses to be dishonest when that benefits
| them, they're a dishonest person.
| clysm wrote:
| Why the hell is there a line break after every sentence?
| robohoe wrote:
| Hello my high school research paper teacher
| amatecha wrote:
| Yeah, that's really a strange choice for formatting and makes
| it very hard to read. Not the typical practice to insert a <br>
| after every sentence... (that said, the post itself is a great
| read!)
| frizlab wrote:
| I think it's called ventilated prose. More commonly found in
| code comments.
| draga79 wrote:
| The goal of truncating the sentences in that way was
| precisely to increase the suspense a bit, but I believe I
| miserably failed, making it just less readable.
| bzmrgonz wrote:
| How you gonna leave out the good parts like circa<year> so we can
| gauge the tech available then? Also, what about the tools you
| used to sync/backup to owner's house? My personal query, why did
| you move to freebsd? was it a different application/use? This is
| an awesome story, our modern approach would be to install
| nextcloud/owncloud with collaboration and rsync/syncthing to an
| offsite NAS (owner's house). As for your decision, I would have
| agreed to a directorship and hired a local MSP to do things the
| way I wanted. This would have allowed you to have your cake and
| eat it too. A lot of times, in these situations, all you need is
| trusted eyes and ears from outside the corrupted fold. This
| principle is used in the military and diplomatic core, there is a
| staffing structure, and then there is an XO, who is hired and
| controlled from HQ. This XO answers to HQ, not the local
| structure.
| draga79 wrote:
| We're talking around 2009 -- I don't recall the exact period,
| but that's the era. For backups, I used rsync-based syncs and
| kept history by using hard links and rsync on top of those. I
| also had a Perl script that automated the whole thing, but I've
| long since forgotten its name.
|
| As for the rest -- I hear you, and I totally agree. But at the
| time, I was young and more focused on building things with
| healthy clients who genuinely wanted to create something good,
| rather than trying to salvage a situation that, honestly, was
| nearly beyond saving.
|
| I switched the ALIX to FreeBSD for other tasks, and FreeBSD
| (with its native read only support) was perfect for the new
| workload.
| devrandoom wrote:
| This reads to me like a mostly AI generated story. Not saying it
| is, just my personal gut feeling.
| jimbokun wrote:
| What are the giveaways?
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(page generated 2025-05-14 23:00 UTC)