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A server that wasn't meant to exist

https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/05/13/the_server_that_wasnt_meant_to_exist/
121•jaypatelani•3h ago

Comments

01HNNWZ0MV43FF•2h ago
Creepy
jagged-chisel•2h ago
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•2h ago
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•2h ago
My mind immediately went to organized crime. Money laundering for people who he rather didn't know his name.
lisper•2h ago
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•1h ago
No, that's not a clue :-) I've just replied, clarifying this part, to the previous comment
bombcar•18m ago
Got it, it was disorganized crime, not organized. ;)
draga79•1h ago
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•1h ago
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.
asmodeuslucifer•2h ago
good read.
johnklos•1h ago
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•6m ago
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.
duxup•1h ago
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•51m ago
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•13m ago
Even Google evnetually caught a few people who just cold sent in invoices and found that Google would pay.
renewiltord•1h ago
Fantastic war story. There's always like these dozen hangers-on who've made their fortune parasitizing successful people.
forinti•1h ago
Reading through it I had a feeling it was in Italy. I was bit sad to confirm it.
draga79•1h ago
Italy, but no organized crime involved
draga79•1h ago
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.
Boogie_Man•12m ago
Dear Abby,

My dear husband of 40 years has recently passed away, and while I'm still grieving the loss, his former gay lover has been syphoning money from our company and threatening to expose my husband's bisexuality (NOT socially accepted in Italy) if I expose the theft! I've hired an IT kid to prevent further theft, but it turns out he has some sort of connection to the thief as well! I'm totally at a loss as to what to do.

-Benedetta Bothways

freehorse•1h ago
Probably there was a lot the family did not know about the deceased father.
dgfitz•1h ago
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?
vaadu•44m ago
DOGE is going through this. They are upending a lot of rice bowls. https://doge.gov/savings
brazzy•27m ago
DOGE is doing no such thing. They are destroying things they don't understand, with a political agenda that has nothing to do with saving money, and doing immeasurable harm to the USA in the process. The link contains nothing but bullshit and lies. It's also guaranteed that many of them are using this opportunity of unfettered, in transparent access to illegally enrich themselves.
BubbleRings•36m ago
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•27m ago
> 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 :-)

immibis•2m ago
> 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 an honest person would win some game, dishonest people are willing to be honest if that's truly what gives them the greatest chance of winning, so they still win.

Ask HN: What's your Windows game development environment?

1•kruuuder•2m ago•0 comments

When Open Source Isn't: How OpenRewrite Lost Its Way

https://medium.com/@jonathan.leitschuh/when-open-source-isnt-how-openrewrite-lost-its-way-642053be287d
1•Jlleitschuh•2m ago•1 comments

Show HN: PicNow – realtime AI image generator (20x faster than OpenAI)

https://www.picnow.ai/
2•brightvegetable•3m ago•0 comments

UTC is Enough for Everyone, Right? (2018)

https://zachholman.com/talk/utc-is-enough-for-everyone-right
1•Tomte•4m ago•0 comments

Signal-free implementation of trains in a simulation game

1•iliketrains•7m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Go Ahead, Give Yourself a Mullet

https://www.mullets.me/
1•grapevine12•8m ago•0 comments

The Joy and Freedom of Working Until Death

https://ritholtz.com/2014/02/the-joy-and-freedom-of-working-until-death/
2•pearlsontheroad•10m ago•0 comments

Building a usage-based billing system

https://www.trychroma.com/engineering/billing
1•jeffchuber•11m ago•0 comments

Elon Musk Needs More Options

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2025-05-14/elon-musk-needs-more-options
2•ioblomov•12m ago•2 comments

NASA Observes First Visible-Light Auroras at Mars

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-observes-first-visible-light-auroras-at-mars/
2•pseudolus•13m ago•1 comments

EToro shares jump in Nasdaq debut

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/newly-issued-etoro-shares-jump-in-nasdaq-debut-its-a-bullish-sign-for-ipos-a579db3c
1•baristaGeek•13m ago•0 comments

The Present and Future of Vibe Coding for Non Developers

https://iamcharliegraham.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-vibe-coding-for-non-developers
1•grahac•15m ago•0 comments

UTF-8 test file (2000)

https://www.w3.org/2001/06/utf-8-wrong/UTF-8-test.html
1•Tomte•16m ago•0 comments

Various Things in MetaPost (2019)

https://habr.com/en/articles/454376/
5•Tomte•16m ago•0 comments

AI headphones translate multiple speakers at once, cloning voices in 3D sound

https://www.washington.edu/news/2025/05/09/ai-headphones-translate-multiple-speakers-at-once-cloning-their-voices-in-3d-sound/
1•rbanffy•17m ago•0 comments

AI and All Humanity Books, Standards and Other Things That Worth It

https://spacefrontiers.org/c
1•pasha_sf•17m ago•1 comments

Is Esphome.io Down?

1•fracarma•18m ago•0 comments

Hacking Cursor Prompts with MCP (most complete Cursor prompt library)

https://github.com/maxockner/prompt-stash
3•maxockner•18m ago•0 comments

Filk Music

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filk_music
3•akkartik•18m ago•0 comments

New computer language helps spot hidden pollutants – UCR News – UC Riverside

https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2025/05/12/new-computer-language-helps-spot-hidden-pollutants
2•rbanffy•19m ago•1 comments

Nvidia sending 18,000 of its top AI chips to Saudi Arabia

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/13/nvidia-blackwell-ai-chips-saudi-arabia.html
2•rbanffy•19m ago•1 comments

They expect us to keep changing

https://benv.ca/blog/posts/they-expect-us-to-keep-changing
5•coloneltcb•20m ago•1 comments

New study finds link between green spaces and police violence

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-04-link-green-spaces-police-violence.html
2•PaulHoule•21m ago•0 comments

The Pigeon Whistle: A Defining Sound of Old Beijing (2019)

http://www.chinatoday.com.cn/ctenglish/2018/cs/201911/t20191129_800186426.html
4•NaOH•22m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Jupyt – We made Jupyter notebooks agentic

https://www.ipynb.ai
3•risos8200•22m ago•0 comments

Bing Search API to be retired on August 11th

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/updates
1•leonidasv•22m ago•0 comments

Findecor – AI-Powered Home Decor Assistant

https://www.findecor.io/
1•shhamidov_216•25m ago•1 comments

Half Life 2: Lost Coast HDR overview (2005)

https://bit-tech.net/previews/gaming/pc/hl2_hdr_overview/1/
2•mxfh•26m ago•0 comments

AI can spontaneously develop human-like communication, study finds

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/may/14/ai-can-spontaneously-develop-human-like-communication-study-finds
2•pseudolus•27m ago•1 comments

You think ransomware is bad now? Wait until it infects CPUs

https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/11/cpu_ransomware_rapid7/
5•chrisjj•28m ago•1 comments