Please don't accuse other users of astroturfing or shilling unless you have evidence. It degrades discussion, badly. In this case it even crosses into personal attack, which we ban people for, so please don't.
Not him. I made a throwaway because of the nature of the discussion and to eliminate the very small chance he or someone else could infer who I might be. No point giving them my main account's history to help them guess.
I'm not a fan of his at all. I do think he and his talents are interesting, and he's arguably one of the most notorious black hats of the past 5 years. I spoke nicely of him to counterbalance the listing of objectively very unethical crimes he committed against people and organizations. I did not mean "this guy stole credit cards" in an adulating way - I meant the opposite.
Please don't respond to someone else breaking the HN guidelines by breaking them yourself? We all need to take care of this place or it will get way less interesting and eventually not be worth preserving.
I'm supposed to believe that someone registered an account just to brag about ryanlol, their biggest fan?