[HN Gopher] Twitch source code and customer data has reportedly ...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Twitch source code and customer data has reportedly been leaked
        
       Author : cvak
       Score  : 974 points
       Date   : 2021-10-06 08:34 UTC (14 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.videogameschronicle.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.videogameschronicle.com)
        
       | stevefan1999 wrote:
       | Here's a link to the data: bWFnbmV0Oj94dD11cm46YnRpaDpONUJMWjZYRU
       | NORUhIQVJISk9WUUFTNFc3VFdSWENTSSZkbj10d2l0Y2gtbGVha3MtcGFydC1vbmU
       | mdHI9dWRwJTNBJTJGJTJGb3Blbi5zdGVhbHRoLnNpJTNBODAlMkZhbm5vdW5jZQ==
        
         | sillysaurusx wrote:
         | Here's a base64 decoded version:
         | magnet:?xt=urn:btih:N5BLZ6XECNEHHARHJOVQAS4W7TWRXCSI&dn=twitch-
         | leaks-part-one&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.stealth.si%3A80%2Fannounce
        
           | k1rcher wrote:
           | Got it in my seedbox as of 15-20min ago:
           | 
           | Downloaded: 7.84GB Uploaded: 64.64GB
           | 
           | sheesh, one popular magnet!
        
             | ganoushoreilly wrote:
             | That sounds like it's just the database. The full leak is
             | 125.89gb
        
             | schleck8 wrote:
             | the power of foss
        
           | stevefan1999 wrote:
           | jesus, do you want to taste the banhammer?
        
         | sergiotapia wrote:
         | Thanks!
        
         | wizzairflyer wrote:
         | I'm very curious to have a peek but isn't downloading stolen
         | material a crime? And wouldn't this be compounded by the fact
         | that with torrent systems you are also helping redistributing
         | it further?
        
           | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
           | Possibly, but more importantly it is also just plain immoral.
           | It's disturbing how readily this community wishes to access,
           | analyze, copy, and redistribute this stolen information. This
           | same community that bemoans corporate exploitation of data
           | now getting its rocks off creeping on stolen data.
        
             | _hilro wrote:
             | > It's disturbing how readily this community wishes to
             | access, analyze, copy, and redistribute this stolen
             | information
             | 
             | I know right. Panama papers too. /s
        
           | acoard wrote:
           | At most, it would be copyright infringement if Twitch (or
           | Amazon) claimed copyright ownership of the code, which I
           | assume they do.
           | 
           | There's no such "trade secrets" laws or anything like that
           | you're violating. Perhaps the hacker has broken laws of
           | unlawful access (i.e. hacking), but you certainly aren't just
           | by downloading it. It's as bad as downloading a song or
           | streaming a movie on a sketchy website. In practice, I've
           | never heard of anyone getting sued for downloading code in a
           | large leak.
           | 
           | When the Windows source code got leaked, so many people
           | looked at it, including FAANG engineers. As long as you don't
           | bring any of that stuff to work you're fine. That includes
           | the knowledge[0]
           | 
           | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design
        
           | AlexCoventry wrote:
           | I'm curious about which law downloading this would break.
        
           | rvnx wrote:
           | The fact that you are uploader (e.g. distributing the
           | content) while downloading a torrent seems to me to be the
           | biggest risk.
        
             | xeromal wrote:
             | If you have a seedbox, you're probably safe.
        
       | iamevn wrote:
       | Here's another link https://sizeof.cat/post/twitch-leaks/
       | 
       | Looks real to me based on the archive I managed to download so
       | far
        
         | d3nj4l wrote:
         | Amouranth making almost as much as shroud is insane and the
         | fact that it's that high even after twitch's recent moves is
         | telling.
        
           | lemoncookiechip wrote:
           | The revenue only contains a few data points (below), things
           | like TTS donations, 3rd party revenues like OnlyFans,
           | Patreon, Amazon Gifts and sponsorship deals are not included.
           | Amouranth makes insane amounts from her OF alone (an estimate
           | of 1 million $ per month based on an interview with
           | investmenttalk). Odds are that she makes far more than him,
           | same with a lot of other female streamers who know how to
           | monetize themselves. Obviously the same (Patreon,
           | sponsorships...) applies to male streamers but to a lesser
           | extent.
           | 
           | 'ad_share_gross', 'sub_share_gross', 'bits_share_gross',
           | 'bits_developer_share_gross', 'bits_extension_share_gross',
           | 'prime_sub_share_gross', 'bit_share_ad_gross',
           | 'fuel_rev_gross', 'bb_rev_gross'
        
             | d3nj4l wrote:
             | Oh yeah of course, twitch is probably a minority of her
             | earnings. But what I think is more interesting is that
             | Twitch's moves to make it easy for advertisers to opt out
             | of streamers like her doesn't seem to have hurt her
             | earnings all that much if she's still that high. Ofc it
             | could be that ad revenue went down but sub revenue was way
             | higher, which, again, is telling. Also could be that ad
             | buyers didn't blink and continued paying for the hot tubs
             | category. I think it points to a more plausible future for
             | softcore streaming - there might be a market for stuff
             | that's less explicit than camgirls, especially if that
             | makes it easier for kids to access it. (I don't condone
             | this, just think it's interesting.)
        
               | slightwinder wrote:
               | Prices for ads is very poor on twitch. The claim was that
               | amouranth made "just" some ten thousand income with ads,
               | which considering how many viewers she has is not that
               | high. The majority of direct income on twitch comes from
               | donations and subs. The bigger income comes indirectly
               | from placements and cooperations outside of twitch, which
               | of course are not part of the leak.
               | 
               | Twitch is not YouTube. For some reason they had for a
               | long time big problems to get their ad-business running,
               | especially outside the USA. It seems because of this the
               | payment is low for streamers.
        
         | frou_dh wrote:
         | What's the legality of downloading something like this? If
         | someone is on the torrent they're effectively distributing it
         | as well as downloading.
        
           | joot82 wrote:
           | it depends which legislation you reside in, I believe most
           | allow you downloading stuff like that as long as you don't
           | reshare (uploading and sharing is the part where Amazon could
           | go legally after you)
        
           | hnick wrote:
           | I think it would at least be the same as sharing other
           | copyrighted content, whether or not the "hacking" part comes
           | into it.
        
           | GravitasFailure wrote:
           | In the US, you're fine. The laws that exist barring
           | possession of information largely revolve around copyright,
           | CSAM, or classified information (only relevant if you have a
           | clearance), and none of those really apply here.
        
             | hnick wrote:
             | Source code is copyrighted surely? You can't share ebooks
             | just because the "source" is open and visible, copyright
             | applies to all creative works.
        
               | waynesonfire wrote:
               | There is fair use exceptions? I'm no expert here but
               | Google says,
               | 
               | Since copyright law favors encouraging scholarship,
               | research, education, and commentary, a judge is more
               | likely to make a determination of fair use if the
               | defendant's use is noncommercial, educational,
               | scientific, or historical.
        
               | hnick wrote:
               | Probably fine for a journalist to argue, but I'd guess a
               | tech guy saying it's "research" won't have much luck.
        
           | DigitalSea wrote:
           | If you're going to download it, I would probably use a VPN or
           | something before you do. Technically, this would be copyright
           | infringement. I don't know if Amazon would go after people
           | downloading this, but you just don't know.
        
             | [deleted]
        
         | OliC wrote:
         | You might want to delete that link. They've replaced it with
         | something a little NSFW.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | elaus wrote:
           | They block links that have HN as referer and redirect them to
           | a NSFW image. But if you copy that URL and paste it in the
           | browser it will work.
        
             | abdullahkhalids wrote:
             | Hmmm. I thought I had something in Firefox (setting or
             | addon) that didn't send referrers for external sites when
             | you click-opened a link in a new tab. But it doesn't seem
             | like it anymore.
        
               | AegirLeet wrote:
               | There are a number of settings for this:
               | https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Referrer
        
               | abdullahkhalids wrote:
               | Thanks. Do you know if some of these break major websites
               | if I move away from the default settings?
        
               | AegirLeet wrote:
               | I've had a small number of sites break when not sending
               | any referer. Can't remember any concrete examples off the
               | top of my head though.
        
           | tenryuu wrote:
           | I was wondering why I didn't see anything, but I keep
           | forgetting I drop all my referrer headers
        
           | saagarjha wrote:
           | Ah yes, the jwz policy
        
             | d3nj4l wrote:
             | It's the exact same image, too. Feels like a ripoff, at
             | least make your own dirty image!
        
         | yawaworht1978 wrote:
         | Don't open this link if you are in the middle of having a meal.
         | 
         | Paste it to a separate tab, then it works.
        
           | Dma54rhs wrote:
           | jwz doesn't like HN, you just need different referrer address
        
         | aaron695 wrote:
         | Cheers, I guess we'll find out about Dr Disrespect's full story
         | now. Hopefully nothing to private for him.
        
       | _u wrote:
       | One of the leaked directories is called event-
       | engineering/covfefe. Haven't had the time to torrent the file. I
       | wonder what's inside.
        
         | madeofpalk wrote:
         | # Covfefe RTMP relay utility
         | 
         | This is also a project to enable me to learn go so is probably
         | over-engineered
        
       | jsiepkes wrote:
       | > An unreleased Steam competitor, codenamed Vapor, from Amazon
       | Game Studios
       | 
       | The choosing of the name Vapor is probably no accident when the
       | main competitor is Steam.
       | 
       | Just like when IBM launched the "Eclipse foundation" which was
       | arguably based on one of Sun's most prized possessions; Java.
        
         | Asraelite wrote:
         | Kind of a funny choice when "vaporware" is a thing.
        
           | ginko wrote:
           | Kinda works as a tongue-in-cheek internal code name.
        
           | bogwog wrote:
           | Extra funny with the context of Amazon Game Studios.
        
         | dijit wrote:
         | I worked for Nokia for a brief moment in time and the Nokia E71
         | (or another in that line) was internally codenamed "BeeBee"
         | (like: blackberry) which was comical to me given that the phone
         | looked a lot like a contemporary era blackberry.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_E71
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackBerry_Curve
        
           | d3nj4l wrote:
           | The E71 was a god tier device. Owned one for a good bit as a
           | teen and it was the perfect phone for that time IMO. You
           | could even WhatsApp on it until relatively recently.
        
             | stevecat wrote:
             | Yep! E71, E72, and E6 were some of my most loved phones. My
             | love of that form factor meant that my first foray into
             | Android was the HTC ChaCha - that was a mistake.
        
               | kawsper wrote:
               | I had a Qtek 8300 running Windows Mobile 5.0, it really
               | felt like a computing device before smart phones
               | appeared.
               | 
               | It was slow and buggy, but it felt like a handheld
               | computer.
               | 
               | Qtek rebranded to HTC and I bought a HTC Touch running
               | Windows Mobile 6.0, I am not sure when or what I switched
               | to afterwards, maybe an Android.
        
           | dfox wrote:
           | IIRC the whole common HW platform of late model E-series
           | Symbian phones from Nokia was code named BB. Both E61 and E91
           | call themselves (IIRC) "BB v5.0" in USB descriptors.
        
         | bogwog wrote:
         | That sounds like an internal product name. At launch they'll
         | probably pick something significantly less clever and more
         | generic.
         | 
         | It would be pretty awesome if they stuck with "Vapor" though.
         | It'd be some WWE-style drama, and great for marketing.
        
           | scrollaway wrote:
           | We could call games released on there Vaporware :)
        
             | xdrosenheim wrote:
             | And sales would come in Vaporwaves.
        
         | checkyoursudo wrote:
         | Oh ho ho! Vapor is what I call my shell function that launches
         | Steam. Guess I am on to something.
        
         | chrisjc wrote:
         | Eclipse... Sun... how did I go all these years without noticing
         | this!
        
           | Arathorn wrote:
           | IBM weren't the only people to play that game. The codename
           | for the SGI Indigo was also Eclipse, for similar reasons,
           | iirc.
        
             | monkeybutton wrote:
             | And where do explorers like to go? On safaris.
        
         | adolph wrote:
         | Another lovely naming story:
         | 
         |  _When new sounds for System 7 were created, the sounds were
         | reviewed by Apple 's Legal Department who objected that the new
         | sound alert "chime" had a name that was "too musical", under
         | the recent settlement [with Beatles' record label Apple
         | Records]. Jim Reekes, the creator of the new sound alerts for
         | System 7, had grown frustrated with the legal scrutiny and
         | first quipped it should be named "Let It Beep", a pun on "Let
         | It Be". When someone remarked that that would not pass the
         | Legal Department's approval, he remarked, "so sue me". After a
         | brief reflection, he resubmitted the sound's name as sosumi (a
         | homophone of "so sue me"). Careful to submit it in written form
         | rather than spoken form to avoid pronunciation, he told the
         | Legal Department that the name was Japanese and had nothing to
         | do with music._
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sosumi
        
         | junon wrote:
         | It won't work, I don't understand why they're bothering. You
         | can't compete with steam, unless you're trying to hit a niche
         | market.
        
           | bluedino wrote:
           | Amazon would have no problem releasing a 'Fire' console and
           | they have their own distribution and store...
        
             | junon wrote:
             | And then they would have to convince publishers to target
             | yet _another_ console. That's a hard ask.
        
           | meibo wrote:
           | Amazon has even more money to throw at studios than Epic, so
           | they can just force themselves into it.
        
             | ryathal wrote:
             | It's more than just throwing money at it. EA tried and
             | failed to separate from Steam. Epic might succeed, but it's
             | not going to be because of money, but because Fortnite let
             | them capture young gamers before they got into Steam.
             | Wherever a user gets a critical mass of a library built up
             | first is going to be the winner.
        
               | eric-hu wrote:
               | Do you remember a time when people were predicting this
               | deep pocketed company Microsoft would bomb with their
               | Xbox? It's not a sure thing that Amazon could dislodge
               | Steam, but there's precedent.
        
               | tyrfing wrote:
               | > Wherever a user gets a critical mass of a library built
               | up first is going to be the winner.
               | 
               | This is where they've been throwing money at the problem:
               | giving away a ridiculous amount of games for free.
               | 
               | https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/12/22380895/epic-games-
               | store...
        
               | WorldMaker wrote:
               | Useful to note that Prime Gaming has been doing the exact
               | same strategy (for longer), backfilling users' catalogs
               | by throwing a lot of money in games giveaways. Once the
               | games have been added to your Amazon/Twitch today you can
               | download an EXE installer from a hard to find Amazon page
               | or use a really bland "Twitch Launcher" app that clearly
               | is the first stage towards "Vapor" or whatever the final
               | brand would be. For a lot of Amazon Prime users that pay
               | attention to the Prime Gaming page month to month and
               | click the bright shiny green "Claim" buttons whenever
               | they show up, Amazon can just go "look at all the games
               | you already 'own'" when they start actually marketing it
               | as its own store.
        
               | Arrath wrote:
               | It is quite nice, I think I paid for 1 game of the 14 in
               | my epic library.
        
               | trey-jones wrote:
               | I wonder how much I paid over the last 15 years for the
               | 198 games in my Steam library. Not that much, I suspect
               | between all the Humble Bundles and steam sales of yore.
               | Nevertheless I was _pissed_ when I had to get Origin in
               | order to even play Mass Effect 3, and I never even
               | considered the epic store, so I think the theory of
               | library investment is sound. Steam has a good head start
               | on a lot of us.
        
               | Arrath wrote:
               | It absolutely does. The singular reason I signed up for
               | Epic was Borderlands 3, everything else is in my Steam
               | library.
        
             | junon wrote:
             | The problem isn't the product. I was going to compete with
             | Steam at one point and we had objectively better systems
             | and a better client.
             | 
             | The problem was the critical mass issue - no users, no
             | publishers, neither want to join without the other.
             | 
             | Amazon will definitely get publishers but will users join?
             | That's not a given.
        
               | pc86 wrote:
               | You just answered your own question.
               | 
               | > no users, no publishers, neither want to join without
               | the other
               | 
               | > Amazon will definitely get publishers but will users
               | join?
               | 
               | Well, the publishers will be there. If users have a
               | reason to go there over Steam, they will. Amazon will
               | lock in a few exclusives, people will start to come over.
               | Who knows, maybe there will be some way to verifiably
               | move your Steam library over to an Amazon account?
               | 
               | I don't think the bar to compete with Steam is as high as
               | you're suggesting, but even if it is, if anybody was
               | going to start listing companies that could conceivably
               | do it, Amazon would probably be on the list.
        
               | ratww wrote:
               | _> Who knows, maybe there will be some way to verifiably
               | move your Steam library over to an Amazon account?_
               | 
               | The library is the #1 reason people stay in Steam. Lots
               | of people just buy games in other places and just add it
               | there.
               | 
               | Amazon could, for example, offer different royalties
               | (say, 10% instead of 30%) for publishers willing to have
               | their old games "moveable" to Amazon's hypothetical new
               | platform and I bet a lot of studios would take the deal.
               | This is not unheard of: it's how Apple does iTunes Match.
        
               | junon wrote:
               | > Who knows, maybe there will be some way to verifiably
               | move your Steam library over to an Amazon account?
               | 
               | Given that steam has pretty strict terms with publishers
               | over this, I highly, _highly_ doubt they would do this
               | unless they wanted to dump a huge ocean of money into
               | free license comps for developers to make money from and
               | for users to get free games.
               | 
               | Competing with Steam isn't only just a money/size thing,
               | though of course that helps.
        
               | lbhdc wrote:
               | I would imagine they would attempt to secure exclusive
               | rights to a popular title and only distribute it from
               | their new platform. I believe that is what epic did when
               | they launched their store.
        
               | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
               | Yeah, and a lot of people _loathe_ them for it. I 'm one
               | of them.
        
               | trey-jones wrote:
               | And my axe.
        
               | junon wrote:
               | Yes and it backfired spectacularly.
        
               | baud147258 wrote:
               | Epic did that, plus giving away loads of free games, like
               | a new free game every two weeks.
        
               | gizdan wrote:
               | Amazon already has customers. If their other products are
               | to go by, they'll just give you an account if you have an
               | Amazon account. Probably combined with free games if you
               | have a prime account and you can imagine that it won't
               | take much to compete, at least not for a company like
               | Amazon.
        
               | isk517 wrote:
               | That was my thought. They already give away free games
               | over Prime, if they leverage that they have already given
               | a large number of people stake in their new market place.
               | Plus they own Twitch, I don't believe there is a
               | publisher who isn't interested in the idea of people
               | being able to impulse buy whatever there favorite
               | streamer is playing without even leaving the stream. The
               | strategy is pretty easy actually, give streamers a cut of
               | each sale and encourage them to put up notifications when
               | it happens like they do subs and cheers.
        
               | junon wrote:
               | The free games on prime accounts is probably exactly what
               | will happen, and will probably be what _needs_ to happen
               | for it to be any amount of successful.
               | 
               | Look at Epic which offers free games but sees pretty slow
               | growth outside of their flagships. Further, look at
               | Amazon's lumberyard engine, which gathers dust for the
               | most part.
               | 
               | I'm not convinced that their 'weight' will automatically
               | guarantee wide adoption.
        
               | rawbot wrote:
               | By better systems, I hope you are also including, to name
               | a few: Remote Play, Remote Play Together, Game Streaming,
               | Screenshot capture, Controller API that also works in
               | Desktop, a project to help Linux compatibility with zero
               | effort from the game devs.
               | 
               | I think people just consider Steam as a store, but it has
               | become much more than that.
        
               | junon wrote:
               | Never got as far as Remote Play or Game Streaming but
               | would have been trivial for us to do so given the backend
               | infrastructure we had already written.
               | 
               | Game overlays and capture were working fine, and the
               | controller API was designed to support any number of
               | controllers (Steam's support is great but their
               | interfaces are subpar, in our opinion). We were also able
               | to pull from a well known database of controller
               | configurations and device IDs, which really made this a
               | non-issue.
               | 
               | Linux compatibility was fine as far as the client went
               | (all of our code was cross-platform and not webkit frames
               | or the like). The client even ran on Android and iOS.
               | 
               | If you're referring to Steam's Proton, we really didn't
               | want to touch that area for a while. But we had much
               | better systems for searching for new titles, including
               | those that worked well on the system and also matched all
               | of the criteria (tags and whatnot).
               | 
               | Our social system was also designed to support "cross-
               | talk" between different marketplaces (Steam, GoG Universe
               | and Epic) but we never got as far as building out any
               | client functionality - just the initial blackbox proof of
               | concepts.
               | 
               | The store aspect was indeed just a smaller part of it,
               | though it was complicated in its own right.
               | 
               | The project was a great idea and we were executing well
               | on it. Lots of cool new tech was developed for it. But
               | nobody we talked to wanted it - including publishers,
               | users, investors, or even friends. It didn't matter how
               | compatible we made it, the fact that we didn't push you
               | to re-buy games, etc.
               | 
               | We wanted to make an non-shitty experience for gaming and
               | the market simply said "no".
        
             | o_m wrote:
             | So does Microsoft, but Xbox has been in decline since after
             | Xbox 360
        
               | cableshaft wrote:
               | I think Microsoft is just less concerned about hardware
               | now, so it looks like they're doing worse when they're
               | not really.
               | 
               | Like I haven't touched my Xbox One in years, but I'm
               | still giving them $10/month for Xbox Game Pass for my PC.
               | 
               | "In its latest financial results, Microsoft announced
               | that the gaming division revenue was up 50% year-on-year,
               | boasting huge $3.53 billion earnings over the past 12
               | months. The vast majority of that income stems from Xbox
               | hardware (largely the launch of the Xbox Series X/S),
               | which is up 232%."
               | 
               | https://www.vg247.com/xbox-revenue-hardware-game-pass-
               | boost-...
               | 
               | Okay, I guess hardware is still big for them. Huh.
        
         | paxys wrote:
         | Eclipse makes sense, but vapor is just..another word for steam?
        
         | incahoots wrote:
         | >vapor
         | 
         | >vaporware
         | 
         | I see no issue here
        
         | darklycan51 wrote:
         | Anyone who played new world private alpha new this, the first
         | alpha (closed) had an amazon games Epic Games like client, they
         | choose to remove it for new world public beta and release but I
         | knew they had been working on it because of it
        
       | Semaphor wrote:
       | This is somewhat hilarious. Just 5 days ago I was complaining
       | about Twitch's new "Only verified users" setting which requires
       | me to give them my phone number. One of the reasons I said I'll
       | not do that was "hacks, leaks". And now this. Sure, I'll give you
       | my phone number to add TOTP (Why even?) after I've just been
       | shown how secure that data is.
        
         | fooey wrote:
         | Twitch has a huge problem with waves of hate bots spamming and
         | overwhelming smaller streamers, and it's been getting worse.
         | 
         | They really need that verification option just to avoid getting
         | run off the platform.
        
         | jrootabega wrote:
         | For every conscientious person like you, there are 100 kids,
         | who don't even have fully formed brains, desperate to
         | participate in this system.
        
         | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
         | I don't really get this. My phone number is apparently already
         | known by every scammer and spammer on earth, which is why I
         | never answer calls from people I don't know, so what am I
         | losing?
         | 
         | Meanwhile, Twitch has had a significant bot spamming problem.
        
           | slightwinder wrote:
           | > I don't really get this. My phone number is apparently
           | already known by every scammer and spammer on earth, which is
           | why I never answer calls from people I don't know, so what am
           | I losing?
           | 
           | The only scammers who know my number are my phone-provider
           | and my mom. Other scammers either never call me, or just
           | don't know the number. Protecting your number is possible.
           | 
           | > Meanwhile, Twitch has had a significant bot spamming
           | problem.
           | 
           | Which can be solved without this. The bot-problem is more
           | about people not using the existing tools well and twitch
           | sucking in their handling. Adding another features they won't
           | use will not make anything better. Especially as the phone-
           | number only rises the bar for bots.
        
             | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
             | The twitch tools for dealing with spam suck ass. You
             | basically get a blacklist of words and follower/subscriber
             | only chat modes.
        
           | weberer wrote:
           | Which came first? You giving your phone number away online,
           | or the scam calls?
        
             | zamadatix wrote:
             | Scam calls just end up ringing every working number these
             | days and if you pick up even once you're already on the
             | list of "real people". Targeted scamming of even just
             | 100,000 potential victims is just wasted effort when with
             | the same setup you could do untarget scamming of
             | 100,000,000 potential victims.
        
           | Semaphor wrote:
           | I'm also subscribed to a few channels. I'm pretty sure that
           | is a far stronger signal that I'm not a bot than getting my
           | phone number. And unlike most people, I only had 2 or 3 spam
           | calls, and maybe 10 spam SMS on the number I've had for
           | almost 20 years.
        
             | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
             | Ok so you don't want them to have your phone number but
             | you're ok with them having your payment details?
        
               | Semaphor wrote:
               | Pretty much my PayPal account, only.
               | 
               | And even otherwise, any fuckups there, my bank is liable.
               | My phone number? Outside of changing my 20-year-old
               | number, there'd be nithing I could do.
               | 
               | > And even otherwise, any fuckups there, my bank is
               | liable. My phone number? Outside of changing my 20-year-
               | old number, there'd be nothing I could do.
        
           | iuri1 wrote:
           | Probably not everyone has disposable phone numbers or even
           | know how to manage them, or even choose not to do it out of a
           | personal decision
        
           | Nextgrid wrote:
           | > so what am I losing?
           | 
           | The fact that they can use this number to correlate against
           | contact lists collected from other people.
           | 
           | Now I don't think Twitch itself is doing this, but they may
           | provide this information to marketing platforms such as
           | Facebook which will use this data for ad targeting (and they
           | definitely have a lot of people's contacts and can infer
           | social graphs very well as a result).
        
         | mariusor wrote:
         | From what I can see their 2FA is not inhouse. They're using
         | twilio's Authy (first time I've heard of it, honestly) so maybe
         | the phone numbers are not in the leak.
        
           | reilly3000 wrote:
           | I'm assuming they may have had access to private API keys so
           | unfortunately Authy may not be immune. That is unless Authy
           | hides those details from their customers.
        
             | trey-jones wrote:
             | Authy does hide those details from their customers.
        
         | canada_dry wrote:
         | This is a readily solvable problem i.e. the only phone number I
         | use/give online is a VOIP# that just redirects to voicemail
         | immediately (and blocks the call if it's on my SPAMMER list of
         | persistent annoyances).
         | 
         | For friends/family they have my cell# and it only lets calls
         | through if they're in my contacts.
        
           | dhimes wrote:
           | How much does your VOIP cost?
        
             | canada_dry wrote:
             | I use voip.ms and is pay-as-you-go so it's nominal e.g.
             | $1-2/mnth. It allows setting up all sorts of call handling
             | rules (time-of-day, CID lists, call trees).
        
           | jrootabega wrote:
           | Even though it should not be, this approach is a luxury that
           | can only be afforded by those who do not need to take live
           | calls from previously-unknown numbers. Job hunters, medical
           | patients, etc.
        
           | Semaphor wrote:
           | It's readily solvable not to require a phone number to add a
           | TOTP app.
        
             | sirclueless wrote:
             | The point isn't to authenticate control of an account, it's
             | to tie the account to some kind of expensive-to-replicate
             | real-world cost, ideally one that most potential customers
             | are already paying for.
             | 
             | Phone numbers are nice because the marginal cost to a
             | customer is low (they probably already have one) while the
             | marginal cost to a bad actor is high (it's expensive to
             | acquire many of them or to change one once it's been
             | identified as malicious).
        
               | Semaphor wrote:
               | My current phone contract: 3.99EUR/month
               | 
               | My current twitch subscriptions: 11.97EUR/month
               | 
               | I can't really see how they need my phone number to make
               | it too expensive to be a bot.
               | 
               | And if that is the thing, then that'd makes them even
               | more shady, claiming it's for account security when it's
               | for their bit protection.
        
       | rvr_ wrote:
       | This kind of leak looks like an insider's job. What measures
       | should and org take to avoid this? How does big tech deal with
       | secrecy?
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | johprats wrote:
       | It seems that you should start changing your credentials just in
       | case. A lot of credentials will be sold at a high price.
        
       | Copenjin wrote:
       | Dang, shouldn't we remove the links/magnets?
        
       | cvak wrote:
       | seems like it's already posted here, sorry:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28770135
        
         | google234123 wrote:
         | That site is NSFW. This is a better post. Here is the 4chan
         | thread if people are interested
         | https://boards.4channel.org/g/thread/83691438
        
           | hyproxia wrote:
           | The posts should have linked to the 4chan thread directly
           | imo.
        
             | nojito wrote:
             | Those threads disappear
        
               | shultays wrote:
               | There are archieves
        
       | _hilro wrote:
       | Top earner is a role playing group. How interesting.
       | 
       | > A band of professional voice actors improvises, role-plays and
       | rolls their way through a `Dungeon and Dragons' campaign.
        
         | the_duke wrote:
         | Critical Role is a relatively big deal.
         | 
         | They did a Kickstarter to turn the first season of the live DnD
         | campaign into an animated show, which finished at over 10
         | million.
         | 
         | The rights have been bought by Amazon and it will release on
         | Prime.
        
           | worrycue wrote:
           | > Critical Role did a Kickstarter to turn the first season of
           | the live DnD campaign into an animated show, which finished
           | at over 10 million.
           | 
           | Sounds like how Record of Lodoss War got started - RPG
           | session gets recorded and it went from there.
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Record_of_Lodoss_War
        
         | JonathanFly wrote:
         | >Top earner is a role playing group. How interesting.
         | 
         | A group of professional voice actors who put on a real show
         | every week, with extremely high production quality. A real
         | standout on the list and well deserving of the #1 spot.
         | 
         | A personal favorite moment:
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnl5r3hp1_k
         | 
         | I've always loved the spells in D&D that talk to plants. "You
         | imbue plants within 30 feet of you with limited sentience and
         | animation, giving them the ability to communicate with you and
         | follow your simple commands."
         | 
         | Every casting of the spell is a Flowers For Algernon tragedy,
         | as the plants around you realize they will only be sentient for
         | 10 minutes and then fade back into nothingness.
        
       | yupitr wrote:
       | Can anyone share magnet?
        
         | zalequin wrote:
         | magnet:?xt=urn:btih:N5BLZ6XECNEHHARHJOVQAS4W7TWRXCSI&dn=twitch-
         | leaks-part-one&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.stealth.si%3A80%2Fannounce
        
       | irae wrote:
       | Most comments listing which streamers earn more, commenting on
       | this being only part of their revenue, etc.
       | 
       | Would be way more interest to me to know the distribution of
       | people giving away their money. I personally spend about $20 a
       | month on Twitch, I wonder in each part of the bell curve I am,
       | and if it is a bell curve at all.
        
       | stunt wrote:
       | https://www.twitchearnings.com/
        
         | NaturalPhallacy wrote:
         | I can't help but love the fact that PaymoneyWubby (a fat ginger
         | nerd who makes interesting content, at least on youtube) makes
         | more than pokimaine and Amouranth whose primary feature seems
         | to be young, attractive, and female. Perhaps there's a tiny bit
         | of justice in the world.
        
           | mkishi wrote:
           | Donations probably dwarf subscription earnings, I'm not sure
           | it's that black and white.
        
           | rasz wrote:
           | Splitting earnings by gender reveals females arent doing that
           | hot on twitch.
        
           | zeouter wrote:
           | ... that does sound quite misogynistic. Like the sole
           | comparisons you raise (and insult) are women.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | thinkingemote wrote:
       | From another site a user commented that it might have proprietary
       | modifications to ffmpeg which is LGPL/GPL (I think?). Would a
       | leak be considered to be distribution, could others legally take
       | these modifications and merge them into the upstream project?
       | 
       | I imagine other free software might have modifications too.
        
         | MrStonedOne wrote:
         | The GPL can't actually force them to license their downstream
         | changes, just revoke their ability to use the upstream project
         | if they don't, and sue for infringement for damages.
        
         | sydthrowaway wrote:
         | Can you use GPL code internally (ie run your backend) if you
         | never publish it?
        
           | bo1024 wrote:
           | I believe so, and this is why the AGPL was created:
           | 
           | > The GNU General Public License permits making a modified
           | version and letting the public access it on a server without
           | ever releasing its source code to the public.
           | 
           | > The GNU Affero General Public License is designed
           | specifically to ensure that, in such cases, the modified
           | source code becomes available to the community.
           | 
           | https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html
        
             | sydthrowaway wrote:
             | So in theory, FAANG could make billions of a random
             | person's GPL'd code and they'd never know.
        
               | kobalsky wrote:
               | amazon and google both created managed version of popular
               | open source software like grafana and airflow and they
               | are priced at a premium.
        
               | mrintegrity wrote:
               | grafana is agplv3 but grafana the company has a deal with
               | amazon to grant them a special licence
        
               | david_allison wrote:
               | This is a common occurrence.
               | 
               | Modifications don't need to be shared back to the
               | community if the software is used internally or behind a
               | webserver.
        
               | thatfunkymunki wrote:
               | Spoiler alert: vast majority of FAANG systems run on
               | Linux, making billions for them.
        
               | mkr-hn wrote:
               | Don't they also provide a lot of developer time through
               | patches?
        
               | notsureaboutpg wrote:
               | They sure do, but having worked at such a place, the
               | companies are using way more free labor in open source
               | software than they are giving back.
               | 
               | In a way, everyone is doing that as well. I certainly use
               | more free software than I contribute free software / dev
               | time to free software
        
         | shiado wrote:
         | The IP issues with the leak are interesting. There's got to be
         | some Stack Overflow copy/pastes, perhaps some variable name
         | changed license violating code, and I wonder if patent trolls
         | or even rightful patent owners can now sue based on how backend
         | code works in a way where they had no way to sue if they didn't
         | know how it worked from interacting with a frontend.
        
           | akersten wrote:
           | > patent trolls or even rightful patent owners
           | 
           | What's the difference?
           | 
           | But seriously, if it takes _trolling_ through the code to
           | determine that Twitch 's math violated their special way of
           | doing math that no one else should get to use, it's just more
           | evidence that software patents aren't helping protect or
           | encourage innovation (else the violation would have been
           | apparent from using the service). It would instead clearly be
           | a "hah, gotcha, turns out we patented the linked-list-inside-
           | a-hashmap construction you've got going on here, pay up! Only
           | we can put the Legos together in that way!"
        
           | notsureaboutpg wrote:
           | No, you won't be able to sue if you claim that, based on the
           | leaked source code, your IP was infringed because leaked
           | (e.g. stolen) source code won't be admissible in court as
           | evidence
        
         | lights0123 wrote:
         | No. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#StolenCopy
        
           | bla15e wrote:
           | But the source was not stolen, merely copied
        
             | zamadatix wrote:
             | Hence the anchor being "#StolenCopy".
        
             | NineStarPoint wrote:
             | An important distinction indeed. Intellectual Property
             | theft will get you in much bigger trouble with the Feds
             | than just stealing something does.
        
           | mijoharas wrote:
           | Interesting! I'd never thought about those kind of cases. (I
           | also like how nice and clear that FAQ is).
        
       | sydthrowaway wrote:
       | Couldn't help but contrast this to another item on the front
       | page.. the irony of video game streamers making many times more
       | than the lifetime earnings of Nobel Prize winners :)
        
         | j4qfrost wrote:
         | Totally fine. My issue is with the streamers who promote
         | socialism to their fans and say that wealth should be
         | distributed, meanwhile pocketing a huge paycheck. I guess
         | there's a market for stupidity. It's both funny and sad.
        
         | adolph wrote:
         | value != earnings
         | 
         | science != commerce
         | 
         | something truly novel is hard to evaluate in money
        
         | irae wrote:
         | Sports and Entertainment has always been a way to leap frog
         | hard work.
         | 
         | I am not saying at all it is not deserved. I am quite ok with
         | them earning millions. But it does make a lot of us pull this
         | comparison, both in achievements for humanity and in effort
         | spent in their endeavors.
         | 
         | I personally never played or wish to play the fame lottery, I
         | prefer the hard work path.
        
           | snejad123 wrote:
           | I think Kobe Bryant working on his free-throws from 4 AM to 8
           | PM every day for decades is much harder work than some dude
           | making dogecoin over a weekend or minting an AI-generated
           | NFT.
           | 
           | Wealth is not linear, it's not promised as the result of
           | "hard work". Hard work helps, but it isn't the determining
           | factor of whether or not you'll get a payout.
           | 
           | You must work hard in a domain that has public visibility and
           | actually produces something of value to people. And yes,
           | Basketball (and watching it) is extremely valuable to a lot
           | of people.
        
           | SamPatt wrote:
           | I am guessing the most popular streamers have gotten where
           | they are by hard work.
           | 
           | Yes some is luck, attractiveness, etc. But that's true in all
           | careers.
           | 
           | Just because they're playing games doesn't mean they aren't
           | working. Athletes get insane amounts of money to play games.
           | They exert themselves more physically, but I expect being a
           | top steamer day in and out isn't a cake walk either.
        
           | mdoms wrote:
           | Ah yes, professional sports people, always finding a way to
           | not do hard work.
        
             | sf_sugar_daddy wrote:
             | If you knew anyone who plays a sport at the professional
             | level you would not be saying this
        
             | darkcha0s wrote:
             | There are plenty of professions where the people work just
             | as hard as professional sports people. The wealth
             | accumulated has nothing to do with working hard or not
             | working hard, but rather with the public visibility of the
             | outcome of the work (and ability to make money with that).
        
               | savanaly wrote:
               | What does any of that have to do with the claim that
               | professional sports people routinely don't do hard work?
        
         | JohnWhigham wrote:
         | So do many actors. Streamers are just entertainers.
        
         | heroku wrote:
         | what is the irony?
        
       | Sirikon wrote:
       | The magnet:
       | 
       | magnet:?xt=urn:btih:N5BLZ6XECNEHHARHJOVQAS4W7TWRXCSI
        
       | yawaworht1978 wrote:
       | Was the viewers data also leaked? You know, the twitch users who
       | simply watch the streams?
        
       | jollybean wrote:
       | HN is vastly concerned about privacy and screaming about FB
       | transgression on these issues etc., but the top post here is
       | about disseminating private information of 10's of thousands of
       | people.
        
         | tailspin2019 wrote:
         | You're not wrong.
        
         | zalequin wrote:
         | Hn is no different from 4chan. Prove me wrong.
        
           | 1121redblackgo wrote:
           | Never used to be like this. At all.
        
             | zalequin wrote:
             | English much. But not to many.
        
         | 1121redblackgo wrote:
         | I agree. This would not have been accepted in years past.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | Barrin92 wrote:
         | at least that table above doesn't reveal much you couldn't have
         | estimated from their official twitch page to begin with and I
         | don't really consider earnings that private (neither do most of
         | the top streamers by the way who tend to display their sub
         | count on their streams).
         | 
         | People on HN probably would very much oppose leaking private
         | DMs but transparency on celebrity earnings is not exactly that
         | big of a deal. I'd actually like earnings transparency in
         | general, like it already exists in Sweden.
         | 
         | Given that children's rights on the internet seem to be a hot
         | topic, this might give some of them an idea who they're giving
         | their hard earned money to.
        
           | jollybean wrote:
           | 'Earnings' is absolutely private information.
           | 
           | So is source code.
        
         | cableshaft wrote:
         | You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. It's out there
         | now, might as well examine what you can learn from it and
         | discuss it.
         | 
         | FB is a business making conscious and deliberate decisions and
         | can be called out on it in part because things like this can
         | happen. I mean they just made such a massive goof that they
         | completely took down their own site, other massive sites they
         | owned, and locked their own employees out of their buildings
         | just two days ago for almost a full day. They can certainly
         | screw up and be victim to a leak like this as well.
        
           | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
           | This is the same logic that a lot of people used during The
           | Fappening. If we think it is immoral to steal this data then
           | we should not condone people copying it and analyzing it as
           | that's just benefiting from someone else doing the dirty work
           | for us.
        
             | tailspin2019 wrote:
             | Hey you're not really living up to your username there with
             | that morally sound logic.
        
           | tailspin2019 wrote:
           | > might as well examine what you can learn from it and
           | discuss it.
           | 
           | Thats the sort of high minded thing that WE might do here,
           | but I worry about how this data is going to be weaponised
           | against a whole bunch of people just trying to make a living
           | from things they're passionate about.
           | 
           | I'm not a streamer (yet?) but I kind of see Twitch as this
           | haven for a bunch of people who, until the advent of
           | streaming, didn't really have an outlet, or an easy way to
           | find like minded people, let alone (in some cases) make a
           | living. I used to write off Twitch as a crazy fad that didn't
           | make any sense to me. Then I spent a bit of time on there and
           | realised what an awesome bunch of people (mainly) inhabit
           | that place.
           | 
           | I feel very sorry for anyone caught up in this who goes onto
           | experience some of the inevitable downsides. I can just see
           | morons in the chat on various streams constantly bringing up
           | how much the streamer earns (or doesn't earn) etc.
        
             | cableshaft wrote:
             | Oh no, I definitely feel bad for the people who had their
             | data leaked and worry what some malicious people will do
             | about it, but posting about it on HN isn't going to change
             | that.
             | 
             | I've done a tiny bit of streaming myself at some point, and
             | keep meaning to do a bit more. I'll never have any
             | significant following, but it's a cool website. It sucks
             | that's it's gotten out there, but it's too late, it's out.
             | 
             | Might as well satisfy my morbid curiosity of how much some
             | streamers are making on that site, which is about all I'm
             | doing with this data.
        
           | jollybean wrote:
           | Information is subject to Supply and Demand like everything
           | else.
           | 
           | We don't publish the names of victim of certain crimes, and
           | they are not widely known even if they are leaked, thus
           | significantly limiting the damage. Information about how to
           | make 'violent things' with easily acquired materials, certain
           | recruiting videos for 'very bad groups' aka ISIS etc. - all
           | of this is out there on some level but because it's actively
           | not propagated, the likelihood of it having an impact is
           | reduced.
           | 
           | We shouldn't be publishing individual's income, or the
           | private source code of normal, legit private groups.
        
       | aosaigh wrote:
       | How many other sites of this size have had breaches of this
       | magnitude (financial, source code, database etc.)? This seems
       | enormous.
        
         | a_f wrote:
         | The EA one comes to mind, which was recent. They had access to
         | the source of a number of games, including unreleased ones as
         | well as the Frostbite engine if I recall correctly.
         | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57431987
        
       | jason_zig wrote:
       | I'm curious what reaction people have to the info so I made a
       | poll:
       | https://share.zigpoll.com/2kParn8gL6RvpveWu/2qZxbgjD3pu2ATqz...
       | 
       | Personally I'm thinking this is decent PR for twitch since the
       | market is still small and the payouts can be relatively high even
       | in the middle tier.
        
       | em3rgent0rdr wrote:
       | Amazon could embrace the sourcecode leak and make Twitch
       | opensource.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | rvz wrote:
       | > Twitch is aware of the breach, the source said, and it's
       | believed that the data was obtained as recently as Monday.
       | 
       | Does that mean that Twitch has very poor security systems that
       | the entire infrastructure and data of Twitch was breached and it
       | all fell into the hands of this so-called hacker?
       | 
       | Compared to the Epik breach weeks ago, this one is a lot worse.
       | 
       | I don't know what the point around this breach is for but surely
       | the so-called hackers that have done this have now made matters
       | worse for all Twitch streamers now. That was Part 1.
       | 
       | Waiting for what is in Part 2.
        
         | herbst wrote:
         | > Waiting for what is in Part 2.
         | 
         | Twitch likely stores a lot of payment information too, i don't
         | see why they would be better secured than anything else in this
         | dump. Could get interesting
        
           | Nextgrid wrote:
           | Payment information would be tokenized and can only be used
           | with their own merchant account. I'd be very surprised if
           | they stored raw card data.
        
         | Deukhoofd wrote:
         | From what I understand there was a way to access their internal
         | enterprise github instance, which gave them access to all the
         | source code, and a bunch of internal documents and database
         | dumps.
        
           | bawolff wrote:
           | Git is one thing, but random db dumps is pretty surprising to
           | me.
        
           | arthur_sav wrote:
           | So pretty much everything...
        
       | bredren wrote:
       | Any comment on the claimed basis for the leak?
       | 
       | Had any particular game, caster or community member made waves
       | above and beyond recently?
        
       | lemoncookiechip wrote:
       | Link to the leak: https://boards.4channel.org/g/thread/83691438
       | 
       | Top 10k Streamers by Revenue: https://pastebin.com/LjmaPNam
       | 
       | Contains the following data points:
       | 
       | 'ad_share_gross', 'sub_share_gross', 'bits_share_gross',
       | 'bits_developer_share_gross', 'bits_extension_share_gross',
       | 'prime_sub_share_gross', 'bit_share_ad_gross', 'fuel_rev_gross',
       | 'bb_rev_gross'
       | 
       | (TTS donations, 3rd party revenue like OnlyFans, Patreon, Amazon
       | Gifts and sponsorship deals... are not included)
       | 
       | Total gross payout in the leak (2019/8 to 2021/10) was 4.2
       | billion dollars across 344k users. (based on data points above
       | alone but could be wrong since it's annons on 4chan.)
       | 
       | PS: Make sure to change your Twitch (and possibly Prime)
       | password. Twitch is already prompting users to do so based on
       | Reddit posts.
        
         | astrange wrote:
         | > PS: Make sure to change your Twitch (and possibly Prime)
         | password. Twitch is already prompting users to do so based on
         | Reddit posts.
         | 
         | This is not worth worrying about. If Twitch is making you reset
         | your password, that means you don't need to hurry because
         | they've already locked your account. If your password hash
         | leaked, the important thing isn't Twitch, it's every other
         | place you used the same password.
        
           | vsareto wrote:
           | Just spend 2 minutes and change your password instead of
           | spending 2 minutes thinking about whether you should.
        
             | jeremyjh wrote:
             | Then you would not be solving the problem because you need
             | to change everywhere else you used that same password.
        
               | andrewzah wrote:
               | Use a password manager.
        
               | adolph wrote:
               | Just don't worry about it and go through the password
               | reset anytime you log in.
        
               | andrewzah wrote:
               | That doesn't make any sense. Password management isn't
               | really that complicated:
               | 
               | Use a password manager, and reset your password if the
               | service has been compromised.
        
               | atatatat wrote:
               | What do you do when the PW manager is compromised?
        
               | andrewzah wrote:
               | Cry? Realistically speaking, this isn't going to happen
               | without physical access to your computer or malware,
               | though. So don't leave your computer unattended and don't
               | download sketchy things.
               | 
               | Expecting people to simply memorize a unique, strong
               | password for every single website that they use is
               | unrealistic. Of course, no solution is perfect, but that
               | doesn't mean we shouldn't improve the current situation
               | of people reusing passwords with maybe slight
               | modifications per website.
        
               | corobo wrote:
               | If that is the problem you have a different problem.
               | Don't reuse passwords.
        
               | techrat wrote:
               | Reusing passwords is one of the single dumbest things you
               | can do online these days. Do not recycle passwords. Ever.
               | 
               | Why? Any breach that involves usernames/passwords are
               | account name and password combos that get tried on EVERY
               | POSSIBLE SITE after.
               | 
               | It only takes one pair of username with a reused password
               | for this to work.
        
             | astrange wrote:
             | There are downsides to asking people to change their
             | password for everything! (even though this is a big
             | "everything")
             | 
             | I remember some services send you a message telling you to
             | change your password anytime a new device logs in or even
             | fails to login to your account. That causes most people to
             | pick weaker passwords, since they're not all using manager
             | apps.
        
           | andy_ppp wrote:
           | Shouldn't the hash be salted and useless elsewhere?
        
             | tinus_hn wrote:
             | In theory, it should. In practice? Who knows.
        
               | par wrote:
               | In practice it'll be plaintext stored on someones hard
               | drive.
        
             | netflixandkill wrote:
             | Outside of the same authentication domain with bad auth
             | token practices (windows) the hash almost always is useless
             | elsewhere. Salting increases the complexity and thus size
             | of hash tables or hash comparison (rainbow tables), but if
             | your manage to break or brute force the entries, salted or
             | not, the secret often is reused by many users.
        
             | csark11 wrote:
             | It can still be cracked
        
               | andy_ppp wrote:
               | This is the SHA 256 of a phrase... go for it!
               | 
               | 7BB7DB877943832837046863EF45C252D3A08C92A273F7B665210A6E1
               | 2701095
        
               | vsareto wrote:
               | If this is a phrase to unlock a bitcoin account with 1000
               | bitcoins in it, then you can easily convince people to
               | try and brute force it.
               | 
               | Do you have Amouranth's or xQcOW's salted hash from this
               | leak? Might be worth trying to brute force it.
               | 
               | You try on those kinds of accounts because they might
               | have re-used it or the password might be patterned or not
               | completely random, which gives you a _chance_ that the
               | credential might give you access elsewhere.
        
               | prophesi wrote:
               | A phrase almost certainly has a lot more entropy than the
               | layman's reused password from other leaks.
        
               | DrJaws wrote:
               | good luck hacking my password horse correct battery
               | staple
        
             | zalequin wrote:
             | Provided that its hashed with salt / diff methods, sure -
             | but how can you be sure?
        
               | lordlic wrote:
               | That's not what salting does, and different hashing
               | methods are irrelevant. The danger of having your hash
               | leaked is that it can be cracked and the plaintext
               | password recovered. The hash itself is entirely useless
               | for logging into other services.
        
               | zalequin wrote:
               | t. infoseclet
        
         | aero-glide2 wrote:
         | Archive link :
         | https://archive.is/rGpxh#selection-1335.9-1335.34
        
         | ZetaZero wrote:
         | 81 streamers with 1m+ in revenues.
        
         | anonymouse008 wrote:
         | Are there any consequences for downloading these files? I'd
         | like to learn best practices from a successful company -- but
         | not at existential risk.
        
           | Ueland wrote:
           | Depends on the law in your country.
        
           | madeofpalk wrote:
           | Just because it at a "successful" company doesnt mean its a
           | best practice.
        
           | ta988 wrote:
           | Depends on your local legislations, but be careful that by
           | default on torrents you are also sharing those files to
           | others so you are also distributing stolen material, so it
           | may have an impact on your potential "crime".
        
         | MrStonedOne wrote:
         | I saw the payout pastebin, but i'm _very_ curious what the
         | amazon vs stream cut is for sub revenue in particular. This is
         | the key thing steamers negotiate with twitch over, and is
         | covered by the nda.
         | 
         | rumor was recently negotiations have been very cut and dry for
         | newer big/up and coming streamers basically being told to take
         | some algorithmically assigned cut or give up partner status.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | Gravyness wrote:
         | Post was just deleted and the archiver removed the links:
         | https://warosu.org/g/thread/83691438, anyone have mirrors?
        
           | aero-glide2 wrote:
           | Mirror : https://archive.is/rGpxh#selection-1335.9-1335.34
        
           | CapricornNoble wrote:
           | What is HN's policy on sharing magnet links?
           | 
           | magnet:?xt=urn:btih:N5BLZ6XECNEHHARHJOVQAS4W7TWRXCSI&dn=twitc
           | h-leaks-part-
           | one&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Fopen.stealth.si%3A80%2Fannounce
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | boringg wrote:
         | Am I the only one a bit disappointed by the gross earnings for
         | the top 5 earners given how much the media has ben hyping the
         | money made by e-gamers. For some reason I would have thought
         | they would make more money over 2 years. Top earner was
         | grossing $ 9.6M ($4.8M/yr), 10th was $2.9M($1.4M/yr), at 81 you
         | drop below $1M (500k/yr) on twitch pre-tax revenue. After 81
         | you drop below the %1M over two years threshold.
         | 
         | Actually the more I think about it - that does seem like a lot
         | if you add in their other rev from youtube channels and other
         | compensation. I understand why all the pro players started
         | working on their twitch stream content more than winning
         | competitions. More stable business and viewer base.
        
           | moneywoes wrote:
           | No donations included I believe
        
           | tiborsaas wrote:
           | Are you kidding? 4.8M / year is stellar revenue. Much much
           | more than most people make in a lifetime.
           | 
           | It's even more interesting that for 50k gross, you have to
           | beat this guy "DEMOLITION_D" at the #4432 place.
        
             | falcolas wrote:
             | Number 1 is Critical Roll. Their website lists 24 employees
             | (many of whom are professional actors), and I'm sure
             | there's more behind the scenes. Salaries add up quickly.
        
               | theshrike79 wrote:
               | I'm pretty sure that Critical Role isn't the main income
               | for most people.
               | 
               | Also: 4.8M/24 people is still 200k per head. Even if you
               | assume that various costs take 50% of the revenue,
               | they're all still making 6 figures for a thing that's
               | pretty much a side hustle for most of them.
        
               | nightski wrote:
               | Critical role is making a _ton_ more than just Twitch
               | revenue.
               | 
               | Also it started out being a side gig but most of them
               | have switched to it as their primary gig. They are
               | starting campaign 3 this fall.
        
               | walshemj wrote:
               | 4.8M gross - there is there is all the over head involved
               | in running the business after overheads it will be less.
        
               | rasz wrote:
               | You think an assistant is being paid same as busy TV
               | actors? :)
               | 
               | The most amazing Critical Role fact might be its creation
               | was indirectly financed by Youtube/Google :o. Felicia Day
               | knew all of those guys and about their private DnD game,
               | she invited them to film few episodes for her YT channel
               | "Geek & Sundry". Channel started with $1Mil advance from
               | YouTube Original Channel Initiative, one of the rare if
               | brief successes.
        
               | falcolas wrote:
               | Let's say payroll is half their total costs. Payroll
               | taxes plus income taxes works out to somewhere around
               | 40-60% of the remaining amount. Health insurance is
               | probably in the 10% range per year, leaving them with a
               | $50k salary. Costs are not, of course, quite that high.
               | 
               | As a point of comparison, a talented voice actor can
               | gross around $125k per year, working from home as a
               | freelancer. I don't feel that the Critical Roll actors
               | are being overcompensated at all.
        
               | jandrese wrote:
               | That works out to $200k/year for each employee, which
               | after you account for benefits is a solid middle class
               | income, assuming they don't live in downtown San
               | Francisco or something.
               | 
               | It's basically a regular job at that point.
        
               | rasz wrote:
               | They all live in LA actually :)
        
               | bluefirebrand wrote:
               | I hate to break it to you, but 200k/yr is in the top 4%
               | of earners in America. That's not "middle class" by any
               | stretch of the imagination.
        
               | rvnx wrote:
               | It is, according to HN alternate reality
        
               | walshemj wrote:
               | Actually 200k gross is "middle class" what do you think a
               | lawyer or doctor makes in CA.
        
               | jandrese wrote:
               | After taxes, insurance, retirement, etc... you're taking
               | home maybe $100k of that. That's "modest home in a nicer
               | suburb" level money.
        
               | Kranar wrote:
               | It's among the top 4% of income, that's an objective
               | metric. Being in the top 4% of people in one of the
               | wealthiest countries in the world is objectively not
               | middle class.
        
               | colinmhayes wrote:
               | In the bay and LA sure. Everywhere else in the country
               | you're living large. Even NYC 200k is doing pretty well.
        
               | jandrese wrote:
               | I don't think you've been keeping up with home prices and
               | insurance costs around the country. $100k take home isn't
               | all that anymore. You're not food stamp poor, but it's
               | easy to be house poor at that income level, especially if
               | you're shooting for a better school district. Health
               | insurance costs eat up so much of that it is not funny,
               | even if you are healthy. If you or someone in your family
               | comes down with an expensive medical condition you'll be
               | in real trouble.
        
               | colinmhayes wrote:
               | True, these people are all self employed, so insurance
               | costs would be pretty large. If you're making 200k I'd
               | still say you've probably got at least 100 left over
               | after taxes and insurance. That affords you a 600k house
               | using the 30% of income rule if you can get the down
               | payment together.
        
             | boringg wrote:
             | That is literally the top earner in the community made up
             | by a team of people.
             | 
             | The media/VC etc community has been hyping e-gaming as the
             | new sports domain. That said the top salary for a sports
             | player is $168M / year for one player (Lionel Messi) and
             | number 99 is $35M/year (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi
             | ki/List_of_largest_sports_contrac...)
             | 
             | It really shows how much of a step change there is between
             | the sports & e-sports and I would be curious how much of
             | this Twitch is keeping to themselves instead of paying out.
             | 
             | Not to mention how much uptime e-gamers have to put in.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | somethingor wrote:
               | Note that streaming is a completely different revenue
               | source than esports earnings. Top esports earners might
               | not even stream at all.
        
               | boringg wrote:
               | Good point - I should differentiate more clearly.
        
           | Trisell wrote:
           | Also good to note that most streamers have a side donation
           | system that more then likely isn't included in these numbers.
           | Donations seem to be generally run through a non twitch third
           | party site. And is probably a substantial increase if not a
           | doubling of their income.
        
             | treesknees wrote:
             | Many of these folks are paid to stay exclusively on Twitch
             | and to not hop around to other platforms, and I don't
             | believe that's reflected here either.
        
           | mattwest wrote:
           | Brand deals usually match or exceed their income from Twitch
           | as well.
        
           | InitialLastName wrote:
           | If you squint a bit, that's not that far off of niche pro
           | athlete money (especially given that the bottom end doesn't
           | have the same discrete threshold that pro sports do). Per [0]
           | the best-paid NHL players are making ~$10M/year, and I would
           | expect the NHL to be more efficiently monetized than internet
           | streamers (we know that making money as "talent" on the
           | internet is a tough proposition).
           | 
           | [0] https://www.spotrac.com/nhl/rankings/
        
           | jonwachob91 wrote:
           | A lot of those streamers are pretty open about how twitch
           | revenue is a small portion of their earnings.
           | 
           | Ninja was famously paid $1MM for an 8 hour ad of playing Apex
           | at launch.
           | 
           | I've had private conversation with large streaming friends
           | that have all said independently that the amount they get
           | paid from a short Raid Shadow Legends ad is huge. One said
           | it's enough to buy a nice car, and if they hit their target
           | downloads (w/ link) the number jumps up to enough to buy
           | multiple nice cars.
           | 
           | There is a lot of big money for streamers, not just big
           | streamers.
        
             | reportingsjr wrote:
             | I saw a thread on twitter as part of this leak that showed
             | chat of a streamer turning down around $1.6 million a month
             | to advertise a gambling website, because another one was
             | paying more.
             | 
             | I'm not surprised by any of this. If you ever did any
             | digging in to how much advertising pays, ran numbers on
             | twitch subs, etc, these numbers match that quite closely.
        
           | falcolas wrote:
           | Before commenting on how much revenue this seems to be for
           | the streamer, remember that most streamers hire and maintain
           | staff. Preach Gaming, for example, has 6 full time staff.
           | Angry Joe is somewhere around 8. Critical Roll's website
           | lists 24 employees, plus more who are likely not credited.
           | 
           | Paying all that talent adds up.
        
         | ryanmarsh wrote:
         | In the vernacular, I ain't clickin that shit
        
           | boringg wrote:
           | You aren't clicking a pastebin CSV file?
        
         | jonwachob91 wrote:
         | pastebin link is dead now.
        
         | dannyw wrote:
         | The leak contains much more than this FYI, there's a hundred
         | gigabytes of code and resources from dozens of repositories.
         | 
         | Looks like someone dumped everything on their github
         | enterprise.
         | 
         | I wonder if this'll lead to software engineers in big companies
         | having more restricted access to code?
        
           | hnick wrote:
           | Dozens? The 4chan post said "almost 6,000 internal Git
           | repositories". We don't use git at work (TFS, yay), and we
           | definitely aren't on their scale, but that seems high to me.
           | Do they have a repo for every class? Is this normal?
        
             | Shalomboy wrote:
             | TFS converting to Git/Azure DevOps here. Be the change you
             | want to see in the world! There's a chance that some of the
             | people in your org that don't use TFS could use the
             | organizational tools built into
             | GitHub/GitLab/BitBucket/DevOps. If you get enough teams on
             | board with that platform that also happens to use Git, then
             | you can make that push to IT!
        
             | cedilla wrote:
             | If they use the common github approach of one fork per
             | contributor, 6,000 repos accumulate quickly.
        
               | PUSH_AX wrote:
               | I've never worked in this way (when I've been part of the
               | org), is it that common? What are the benefits of making
               | everyone fork repos vs branching off the original repo?
        
               | vultour wrote:
               | You don't have 500000 garbage leftover branches on the
               | main repo.
        
               | robjan wrote:
               | I don't think that's a common workflow within companies.
               | In every org I have worked at, forking is explicitly
               | disabled
        
               | MAGZine wrote:
               | I worked at a large gaming company and that was
               | definitely the collaboration model.
               | 
               | Before per-branch controls, the only way to disable write
               | access (while maintaining read access, pull-request
               | privs, etc) to a repository's blessed branches was forks.
        
               | _joel wrote:
               | It's common in general open source projects where you
               | might want to send a patch for something that you don't
               | have commit priveleges too, but I've never seen that used
               | in enterprises as they have central auth / groups with
               | the users required to work on the code.
        
             | BeefWellington wrote:
             | Note it doesn't say unique git repositories. It could just
             | mean each employee's fork is included in that count, which
             | would inflate the number like that.
        
             | okl wrote:
             | Could include dependencies and forks of other public repos.
        
           | polote wrote:
           | > I wonder if this'll lead to software engineers in big
           | companies having more restricted access to code?
           | 
           | I don't think that Twitch has closed source code because they
           | want to keep code private. It's probably more a matter of
           | don't want to show commit message in case there are some bad
           | words inside it. And don't want to show the world in case
           | their source code look bad.
           | 
           | Twitch without its code source can't work yeah, but imagine
           | if all the commits of Twitch were public I doubt it would
           | change anything for them.
           | 
           | That would be nice if their was a mental change about source
           | code and that it is fine to show it even if it looks shit.
        
             | treesknees wrote:
             | You don't think the largest streaming platform on the
             | planet wants to keep their intellectual property a secret?
             | This isn't about being embarrassed over some comments, it's
             | about completely revealing the algorithms that move streams
             | to the promoted views, limitations of their filtering
             | systems, the time it takes for someone to count as a
             | 'viewer'... there are many pieces that are no longer secret
             | and can now be manipulated by people trying to promote
             | content or game the recommendation system or bypass
             | filtering.
             | 
             | There is also the issue of security. I'm sure people will
             | be combing through the source code to find anything they
             | can exploit, even if it's a simple XSS attack. It could
             | either be sold/used for malicious actions or submitted to
             | the bug bounty program for the reward money.
        
             | spelunker wrote:
             | Of course they want to keep their source code private, like
             | most software companies do. They consider it their "secret
             | sauce", their prized IP.
        
             | rgallagher27 wrote:
             | Doubt they care too much about bad words in commit
             | messages, what they should worry about is if they've ever
             | checked in passwords/secrets/private keys and not re-
             | written the git history
        
               | AnotherGoodName wrote:
               | More things to keep an eye out for;
               | 
               | Snippets of open source code.
               | 
               | Commit messages that imply anti-competitive behaviour
               | ("Committing a change to the API to lockout competitor
               | XYZ").
               | 
               | Commit messages that imply code theft ("Using a method
               | that we used at my previous company").
               | 
               | etc.
               | 
               | Sometimes things that look sketchy might be innocent but
               | will still cause nightmares for twitch since they'll now
               | have to play defensively as people call into question
               | anything that ever went into the repo.
        
           | secondaryacct wrote:
           | It s already the case and actually a big fight we re having
           | (company of 70k employees spread everywhere) because we cant
           | reverse engineer our upstream and downstream systems and it
           | leads to huge bottlenecks trying to understand them when
           | issues arise, as we need other teams etc.
        
             | stunt wrote:
             | Many of those companies still have a few (not always
             | skilled) IT people with access to everything! And they
             | sometimes make it easy for themselves by putting themselves
             | in 2FA exception groups etc.
        
           | walshemj wrote:
           | Will depend on company back when I worked for British
           | Telecom, some team leaders with wide access to code & data on
           | some projects had to go through Developed Vetting (TS
           | clearance).
           | 
           | Back in the mid 90's there was a issue in Scotland when a
           | well known journalist got a job in a call center and looked
           | up the private telephone numbers for the Queen.
        
         | swarnie wrote:
         | Wagies donating to millionaires is probably the funniest thing
         | i can imagine.
        
           | ttctciyf wrote:
           | Personally, I do it once a month, to avoid donating to a
           | billionaire. YMMV.
        
           | pradn wrote:
           | It somewhere between "paying to not see ads" (mechanical) to
           | "being a fan and wanting to contribute to them" (parasocial).
           | I don't think most people care if they're a fan of a
           | millionaire - see sports and entertainment celebrities.
           | Looking at things reflexively through a wealth-inequality
           | perspective is done only by a minority of people.
        
           | msie wrote:
           | I was watching a streamer the other day and she was doing
           | some stunt because another streamer promised her an iphone 13
           | pro. But now I realize she could buy hundreds of them! Argh.
           | Here i am waiting two months so i could afford to put a down
           | payment on one.
        
           | Lamad123 wrote:
           | Billonnaires couldn't exist without such donations!
        
           | tisthetruth wrote:
           | Wealth concentration on the twitch model is worse than paying
           | a company. A company does trickle down some of the profits to
           | it's employees. Vs one person on twitch.
           | 
           | Then you have the wisdom pov. This money is going to somebody
           | who is most likely less wise, mainly due to age and lack of
           | education and experiences. The quality of the content that is
           | being rewarded and wether its a good influence for society or
           | for the minds of the young consumers is also highly
           | questionable.
           | 
           | Just pop open the YouTube home page and then think about what
           | someones mind will be made up of if they consume that
           | linkbait garbage for a considerable amount of time. Then add
           | the echo chamber effect of the internet.
           | 
           | It's not a pretty sight. Yet here we are.
           | 
           | As a simple heuristic. Look at the view count of the noble
           | minds video vs SSSniperWolf.
        
           | youerbt wrote:
           | I don't get what's so funny about it.
           | 
           | In streaming case, for whatever reason you want to make a
           | donation to somebody, not doing it because they are richer
           | than you seems very strange to me.
        
           | TwoNineA wrote:
           | I "donated" 75$ to see my favorite band two years ago.
        
             | swarnie wrote:
             | You "purchased" a "service".
             | 
             | Without the payment the service wouldn't be accessible
        
               | zouhair wrote:
               | What service?
        
               | TwoNineA wrote:
               | It was a public concert, freely accessible to anyone.
        
               | swarnie wrote:
               | You must know that's a very atypical business model....
        
               | atatatat wrote:
               | Will it be?
        
               | kremlin wrote:
               | why did you put "donated" in quotes?
        
               | bvm wrote:
               | without the subs the streamers wouldn't stream
        
           | matheusmoreira wrote:
           | Yeah, it's so absurd it's hilarious. Seeing people make
           | millions of USD for playing games and mentioning others in a
           | live stream made me seriously rethink the value of my own
           | work.
        
             | dilyevsky wrote:
             | Now look at them yo-yos, that's the way you do it!
        
               | kinghajj wrote:
               | You play Among Us on the Twitch.TV!
        
               | matheusmoreira wrote:
               | Money for nothing and chicks for free.
        
             | warent wrote:
             | this is a tired old complaint and anybody could say the
             | same about pretty much any job that pays more than their
             | own.
             | 
             | Telling blue collar workers you work in tech usually gets a
             | nearly identical reaction to what you just gave. etc etc.
        
               | matheusmoreira wrote:
               | Yeah, and what's wrong with that reaction? I'm supposed
               | to just accept this stuff?
               | 
               | The blue collar workers are right too. They should be
               | getting paid _a lot_ more. Certainly not less than
               | streamers. It 's not fair and I refuse to accept it.
               | 
               | Come to think of it, advertisers seem to be a major cause
               | of these distortions. They distort the value of
               | activities that happen to have an audience. Yet another
               | reason to block ads: help restore balance to society by
               | ensuring people are properly rewarded for the actual
               | value of their work instead of how many eyeballs they can
               | summon.
        
               | nlitened wrote:
               | Why wouldn't you start a business, and pay blue collar
               | workers what they deserve?
        
               | matheusmoreira wrote:
               | Because that's not the field of work I chose for myself.
               | I do see construction workers on a daily basis though. I
               | also know the owner of a construction company, he's part
               | of my extended family. The wealth disparity between the
               | workers and my family member is obscene. There's no way
               | I'll ever believe they couldn't be paid better wages.
        
           | slightwinder wrote:
           | To be fair, the number of millionaires is overall pretty low
           | in numbers. Just some few dozen worldwide. Most top-streamers
           | "only" earn as much as upper middle-class or less. Compared
           | to other sketchy businesses, this seems relative ok. Be aware
           | that those numbers are before taxes and are not including
           | expenses, which can be quite high in the top league.
        
           | FartyMcFarter wrote:
           | I have donated to some chess streamers who make fun +
           | educational content I enjoy. I'm fine if that makes them
           | millionaires or richer than me.
        
           | zouhair wrote:
           | Isn't this what we do when we go see a movie or a sports
           | event?
        
           | meheleventyone wrote:
           | Isn't that the basis of the economy with the increasing
           | wealth gap and so on? It's not really materially different to
           | paying Disney millionaires to go watch the latest Marvel
           | movie.
        
             | swarnie wrote:
             | Maybe if viewed in a cynical way yes.
             | 
             | At least when i donate to blue origin i get something
             | tangible delivered to my door.
             | 
             | Where is the value exchange in being one of 10k people
             | building a faux-relationship with a hot tub streamer?
        
               | ohgodplsno wrote:
               | > At least when i donate to blue origin i get something
               | tangible delivered to my door.
               | 
               | Undelivered promises and lawsuits against NASA to slow
               | down space exploration for all of us ?
        
               | input_sh wrote:
               | Same as with paying to see a Disney movie: entertainment.
               | It's just a bit more interactive, since streamers are a
               | bit more likely to interact with you after you give them
               | money.
        
               | MMS21 wrote:
               | >since streamers are a bit more likely to interact with
               | you after you give them money
               | 
               | ohwee! the streamer _might_ read out your username along
               | with a scripted line after a 5 dollar
               | subscription!1Eleven
        
               | input_sh wrote:
               | Is there a point you're failing at making? In my mind
               | it's no different than, say, voting for contestants on
               | talent shows, or paying a camgirl, or pay-per-view WWE
               | events. Same thing targeting a different demographic.
        
               | Geee wrote:
               | It's a service. Service is a product that is consumed
               | when it's produced.
        
               | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
               | I think the word you are looking for is entertainment.
               | You may not appreciate the value of said entertainment,
               | but then I don't really see a merit of donkey shows,
               | Kanye or just about any other entertainment figure. That
               | is the value.
               | 
               | And by its very nature, it is ephemeral.
        
               | InvOfSmallC wrote:
               | I mean, in all honesty it's entertainment. To me Marvel
               | is better but someone prefer hot tubs.
        
               | meheleventyone wrote:
               | I mean it's not cynical (at least not anymore than your
               | initial comment), it's what we're doing and why I used
               | another entertainment option as a point of comparison.
               | 
               | Of all the things on Twitch the value of Hot Tub streams
               | seem very upfront and I think it's pretty telling that
               | there are vanishingly few successful streamers doing it
               | and that for all the hot air people spew about its a very
               | niche part of the site.
        
               | kdmytro wrote:
               | Money transfer does not necessarily mean mutually
               | beneficial transfer of value. Another example of this is
               | theft.
        
             | bluecatswim wrote:
             | >It's not really materially different to paying Disney
             | millionaires to go watch the latest Marvel movie.
             | 
             | I feel like it's substantially different, you are paying
             | Disney the money to watch the movie, you don't really care
             | about the actors or other people who worked on it.
             | 
             | On the other hand, twitch users pay for the sake of paying
             | money, it's closer to something like strip clubs.
        
               | tsimionescu wrote:
               | I feel it's a much healthier model, you're paying the
               | creator directly to create the piece you want to see, and
               | to show it, for free, to others.
        
               | runnerup wrote:
               | I mean....sure, I guess, if you're only talking about the
               | top 10 or maybe top 200 streamers.
               | 
               | My favorite twitch streamer, 'x5_pig' (996th highest
               | earner on twitch) only grossed $186,000 over 24 months,
               | and lives in a fairly HCOL area in Australia. I'm happy
               | to give him $5 or so to help make sure that he continues
               | to stream an EOL game, Starcraft2.
               | 
               | Sure, he has other revenue streams as well but I can only
               | imagine the risk he takes by sticking with a game that's
               | been EOL'd. When Blizzard shuts down the servers I
               | imagine he'll have no career left at all and will likely
               | have to start over in a totally different career. I'd be
               | surprised if he could start streaming some other strategy
               | game and maintain enough earnings.
               | 
               | I pay him $5/month to help swing his risk-reward balance
               | in favor of continuing to produce the content that I most
               | enjoy vegetating to after my 12 hour day of
               | coding/troubleshooting/collaborating.
               | 
               | Sure, he has other revenue streams (YouTube, announcing
               | for major tournaments, etc). But I imagine for him it may
               | be important to earn enough over the 10 year life of
               | Starcraft2 to mostly-retire in case he ends up without a
               | "real" career.
               | 
               | In fact, sometimes I wonder whether income tax brackets
               | could potentially include consideration for short-lived
               | high earning careers. Seems it might be slightly broken
               | to tax someone who has a stable $1MM/year income for 30+
               | years (e.g. car dealership owner) the same % as someone
               | who makes $1MM this year, but next year might be earning
               | $40,000 working at that car dealership (athletes,
               | streamers, windfalls, etc). Seems like it might make
               | sense to allow people to "defer" earnings to future
               | years, as long as income tax is eventually paid in full.
               | This could allow people who unexpectedly earn $1MM for
               | just one year to spread out those earnings over 10 years
               | and pay a more appropriate % as taxes. Not sure what else
               | this could break though, or how much of a problem it
               | really solves vs. other things legislators could be
               | spending time on.
        
               | plywoodtrees wrote:
               | Some countries have this for selected occupations that
               | are commonly bursty. It could be good if it was generally
               | available:
               | 
               | https://www.ato.gov.au/business/primary-producers/in-
               | detail/...
        
               | everdrive wrote:
               | >you don't really care about the actors or other people
               | who worked on it.
               | 
               | Plenty of people do, of course. Celebrity worship is
               | quite common.
        
               | sbarre wrote:
               | That's a pretty harsh moral/value judgment on how someone
               | chooses to spend their entertainment money.
               | 
               | What about comedy clubs? If I buy a ticket to see Dave
               | Chappelle, who is clearly wealthy, am I sucker too?
               | 
               | What about paying cover at my local bar because a local
               | band is playing that night?
               | 
               | What about buying tickets to a baseball game, to see a
               | bunch of millionaires play a game for a few hours?
               | 
               | You are making it seem like users get nothing for their
               | money, when there is plenty of established precedent for
               | giving money in exchange for attending a performance.
               | 
               | Sure the performance has changed, but the actual
               | difference here is that these Twitch millionaires (and
               | the rest who are far from millionaires) are literally
               | charging "pay what you can" instead of setting a minimum
               | ticket price for their show. Plenty of people (the
               | majority in fact) get the show for free.
        
               | theshrike79 wrote:
               | > What about comedy clubs? If I buy a ticket to see Dave
               | Chappelle, who is clearly wealthy, am I sucker too?
               | 
               | If you would pay money for Dave to shout "Hey sbarre,
               | thanks for the donation" from the stage, then you'd be
               | doing what Twitch fans are doing.
        
               | bluecatswim wrote:
               | Sorry, I didn't mean that in a derogatory way. I just
               | meant twitch users pay for the sake of giving money to
               | their favorite streamers rather than paying for a
               | product. Strip clubs are the first example that came to
               | my mind, bands or comics also stand. My point was that
               | OP's argument about comparing twitch to movies doesn't
               | make sense because paying for a movie is no different
               | than paying for groceries.
        
               | CydeWeys wrote:
               | Like with strip clubs, when you give money to a Twitch
               | streamer, you're getting something in return. Twitch
               | subscribers get lots of exclusive access to stuff.
        
               | codetrotter wrote:
               | > because paying for a movie is no different than paying
               | for groceries
               | 
               | Groceries are necessary for survival, and limited in
               | quantity.
               | 
               | Movies and streams are similar to each other because they
               | are both video content. And as long as the creator of the
               | stream or the company behind a movie get paid enough to
               | make the content they could've received no more money and
               | still gotten by fine.
               | 
               | Streams are a little bit different from movies though
               | because much of the audience is actively engaging in
               | conversation with the creator or making requests to them
               | etc. In that sense a stream has an aspect of limited
               | supply to it that a movie does not. At some point the
               | audience of a stream will be too big for the creator to
               | be able to meaningfully interact with all of them, and at
               | a point after that maybe even too big to be able to
               | meaningfully interact with _any_ of them.
               | 
               | And so if you have a lot of people that want to interact
               | with you it makes sense to prefer interacting with the
               | ones paying you money, and to encourage them to do so.
               | And beyond that, it also makes sense to offer "exclusive"
               | content to people that pay. So OnlyFans makes sense too.
               | 
               | What really has me upset though is thinking of the people
               | that are on the audience, among whom some people have
               | little money but also get so little attention IRL that
               | they are paying someone who already has a lot just to
               | interact with them and maybe even being deluded into
               | thinking that they have some form of "real" relationship
               | with them. That is very sad and something I don't think
               | has been studied enough and is not being talked about
               | enough.
        
               | valeness wrote:
               | I sub to twitch streamers I watch because dollar per hour
               | it's the cheapest form of entertainment besides
               | torrenting for me.
               | 
               | There was a stint during the GTA V RP craze I had it on
               | in the background and watched it for approximately 6-8
               | hours every day. I subbed to one streamer for like 5
               | bucks.
               | 
               | This averages out to like 2 cents/day for 240 hours of
               | entertainment. Cheaper than netflix, cheaper than cable,
               | cheaper than hulu... You catch my drift. I don't know how
               | this is different than me paying $80 to spend a night out
               | at the movies with my wife, other than it being insanely
               | cheaper?
        
               | lancesells wrote:
               | Groceries are so far outside of paying for any form of
               | entertainment. What does it matter if you pay for a movie
               | or tip a streamer? It's all content meant to be consumed
               | and replaced with more content.
               | 
               | There are three things you need to survive: food,
               | shelter, and love/community.
               | 
               | Entertainment can sometimes provide the last one
               | (love/community) but for the most part it's fulfilling a
               | need for distraction and/or curiosity.
        
               | sbarre wrote:
               | > I just meant twitch users pay for the sake of giving
               | money to their favorite streamers rather than paying for
               | a product.
               | 
               | I still think this is a narrow view.
               | 
               | So you don't consider a performance to be a product?
               | 
               | How is going to the movies different from going to a
               | baseball game or a concert or a comedy club?
               | 
               | If those are like movies, and movies are like groceries,
               | are we not back to the same point that people are
               | exchanging money for some kind of benefit, whether it's a
               | tangible thing they take home or an experience they
               | enjoy?
        
               | NineStarPoint wrote:
               | I think strip clubs are a fair comparison. All of the
               | things you listed, you pay money for access to the
               | experience. The money changes hands before you get in the
               | door. For both strip clubs and twitch, getting in the
               | door is free. In both cases what you pay money for is the
               | attention of the streamer/stripper in the moment you are
               | giving the money (or just because you feel like giving
               | money to them for the performance you are seeing.)
               | 
               | A less emotionally evocative example might be giving
               | money to a street musician who accepts requests for
               | donations. Either way, the street musician is there
               | performing and you can enjoy the music whether you pay or
               | not. But the money gets you a bonus, and you're free to
               | give money regardless of desire to request a song.
        
               | sbarre wrote:
               | I'm not sure I agree that "paying money to get attention"
               | is the majority of the monetary interactions on Twitch.
               | 
               | Or at least, maybe that's a welcome side effect but not
               | the main motivation for a lot of people.
               | 
               | I am guessing here, I have no data to back this up, but I
               | feel like a lot of people sub out of gratitude and as a
               | show of support, and less to draw attention or get some
               | kind of shout-out..
               | 
               | I do watch a decent amount of streams on Twitch across a
               | few categories, but I've never subscribed or donated to
               | any of them, so it's possible I'm wrong here.
               | 
               | Also I did make the distinction between paid performances
               | and "pay what you can".. That was indeed my point, that
               | Twitch differentiates itself by being an essentially "pay
               | what you can" service where the majority don't pay
               | anything, but lots of people still manage to make money
               | giving their work away for free.
        
               | Jxl180 wrote:
               | If the Dave Chappelle show were free but you chose to
               | donate your money to Dave Chappelle anyway, yes, you're a
               | sucker.
        
               | sbarre wrote:
               | Sure, I guess you could see it that way.
               | 
               | Some people, on the other hand, like to reward others if
               | they enjoy the product/service/performance they provide.
               | 
               | That's the nature of "pay what you can". If money is
               | tight, then don't pay, and don't feel bad about it. But
               | if you have disposable income, and you value the
               | experience, then give what you can as a form of
               | gratitude.
               | 
               | It doesn't need to be said that if everyone took the
               | "it's free so I don't have to pay anything" route, then
               | there would be no show to see.
        
               | valeness wrote:
               | Twitch streams aren't free though. If nobody paid then
               | they wouldn't exist. It's just a voluntaryist model.
               | Those that pay, do, those that can't or don't want to,
               | don't. So I'm not a sucker for choosing to fund a form of
               | entertainment I find valuable.
               | 
               | I treat museums the same way. When I was young and poor
               | my parents didn't pay to get in since it was optional.
               | But now that I'm older and I make good money, I donate
               | extremely well when I go to museums. I know that it's
               | voluntary and I choose to participate in funding it
               | because I enjoy the experience.
        
               | blitzar wrote:
               | They pay to have the person paid a couple of mil to say
               | their name on stream 'thanks bluecat for the sub'
        
               | rapind wrote:
               | I would assume big streamers are running a business too.
               | At the very least they are paying an accountant and
               | probably lawyer (for incorporation, taxes). I'm sure some
               | are also paying designers, editors, marketers,
               | advertisers, agents, managers, etc.
               | 
               | On youtube you have streamers merging under the same
               | umbrella to create branded channels.
               | 
               | IMO the differences compared to Disney is the scale of
               | the production and the interactive medium (which is
               | constrained by scale). Once you reach a certain scale I
               | don't think you can expect much direct interaction due to
               | the volume of chat. So really it's just scale.
        
             | the_duke wrote:
             | The difference is that Twitch viewers are already consuming
             | the content for free.
             | 
             | Subscribing or donations are completely optional. (
             | subscriptions get rid of the adds, but I doubt that's a
             | main driver)
        
               | meheleventyone wrote:
               | I dunno if you know this but you don't have to pay for
               | the Marvel movies either.
        
               | eurasiantiger wrote:
               | B..b..but that's... that's _piracy!_
        
               | wizzwizz4 wrote:
               | Or just watch it on television. (You can even tape it
               | when it's on television... sshhhhhhh.)
        
               | SketchySeaBeast wrote:
               | Are you using VHS for said taping? I suddenly wonder if
               | this is one of those anachronistic phrases, or if people
               | no longer use it and you're revealing your age.
        
               | eurasiantiger wrote:
               | Imagine the people with adhesive tape in hand.
        
               | wizzwizz4 wrote:
               | At least it's less anachronistic than "record".
        
               | nso wrote:
               | Someone has to.
        
               | ohmahjong wrote:
               | You don't have to get bootleg twitch streams to watch
               | them for free
        
               | meheleventyone wrote:
               | Yes the monetization models are slightly different. You
               | can still watch both for free though.
        
           | freeflight wrote:
           | I don't think it's funny, I think it's sad because most of it
           | comes from the emotional exploitation of parasocial
           | relationships.
           | 
           | Something we used to scoff at in places like Asia, now even
           | casual relationships are utterly commoditized and we taught a
           | whole generation of young humans how that's the most normal
           | thing in the world.
        
             | mftb wrote:
             | Agreed. I recently started exploring Twitch and in the
             | first hour of just sitting there watching it, I was
             | surprised how aggressively, exploitative it was. The fact
             | that it's young people there exploiting makes it even more
             | gross.
        
             | msie wrote:
             | Thank you! The hypocrisy is huge.
        
         | erk__ wrote:
         | The revenue in that pastebin have been double counted. The
         | corrected data is here: https://pastebin.com/LjmaPNam
        
           | pixxel wrote:
           | Whoa. Is gross per year or since account creation?! Either
           | way these numbers are insane.
        
             | erk__ wrote:
             | These are numbers since August 2019 as far as I am aware
        
               | _u wrote:
               | June 2019 is also included. July 2019 is missing.
        
               | pixxel wrote:
               | Crazy numbers.
        
             | uyt wrote:
             | Insanely high or insanely low? I actually felt kind of
             | weird that I make more as a software engineer than some of
             | these legit celebrities (not the very top ones of course,
             | but still more than many of the ones I follow or have heard
             | of)
        
               | Shacklz wrote:
               | I hope I didn't misread the numbers but to my
               | understanding it's just what they get from twitch
               | directly (ads/subscriptions share), most streamers
               | probably make significant amounts in donations on top of
               | that, and probably have secondary revenue streams via
               | YouTube (stream highlights etc.)
        
               | jschenk wrote:
               | Not to mention sponsors, sponsored streams, etc.
        
               | BlargMcLarg wrote:
               | Keep in mind this is just what they make which Twitch
               | knows about. Plenty of sponsorships, tournaments and
               | other income streams exist for a majority of these
               | people.
               | 
               | On top of that, besides their eceleb status, most of
               | these people aren't _that_ professional. Plenty of them
               | are a combination of variety or casual, often to a degree
               | the person isn 't even _that_ good in games in general.
               | 
               | Their production quality also isn't anywhere near amazing
               | (note it can be both organic and high quality), and other
               | parties (e.g. Hololive) have shown how easily the space
               | can be disrupted. For those curious, notice how many top
               | streamers still lack actual high quality audio (mostly
               | from their own lack of voice training rather than
               | equipment), proper schedules and sticking to those
               | schedules, high quality video when applicable (e.g. bad
               | light), allow themselves to get devolved in politics,
               | allow their streams to go majorly off-track in general,
               | etc. It's not like these guys don't have the means to
               | drastically improve it.
               | 
               | And the obvious: we don't have anywhere as much of a
               | shortage of people willing to play games in an extremely
               | dedicated manner as doing software development.
        
               | meheleventyone wrote:
               | The other thing for comparison to traditional jobs is the
               | hours worked. Most streamers I follow work insane hours.
               | Then the other bits and pieces they have to pay for
               | themselves. For example taxes employers would otherwise
               | cover and things like health insurance in the US.
               | 
               | On production quality, I think it's a mistake to think it
               | matters too much. Live streaming is a different thing to
               | television. In very much the same way Roblox is different
               | to AAA games.
               | 
               | There's also a level outside of the more chaotic
               | personalities who make a lot of money in spite of
               | themselves where there is a lot of professionalism going
               | in to making things seem pretty casual because these
               | people know their audience.
        
               | BlargMcLarg wrote:
               | The hours worked is all over the place really. Some of
               | the top streamers don't work anywhere close to 40 hours
               | or past it. Others grind 10 hours a day for almost every
               | day of the year (often burning out a few years later). A
               | lot of the top streamers do a combination of taking
               | sporadic breaks, streaming only 3-4 hours a session, etc.
               | 
               | The other problem with looking at hours worked is it's
               | hard to quantify sporadic interactions on multimedia and
               | the likes. Arguably the biggest drain, most of these
               | people are always "online" and have a hard time
               | unplugging themselves. This is further exasperated by the
               | momentum loss most streamers perceive when not streaming
               | for a long while.
               | 
               | >On production quality, I think it's a mistake to think
               | it matters too much
               | 
               | But we don't really know that yet. It's extremely hard to
               | quantify all these variables and what truly matters. What
               | we do know is many people in these circles have fallen to
               | the side since they were unable to keep up with the
               | modicum of effort newcomers put in despite their lack of
               | resources and despite the first-mover advantage these
               | old-timers had. At the same time, we see other parties
               | break through with new concepts while putting in a ton of
               | effort to market and PR themselves, and it worked, as
               | seen with the Hololive example. The top earner is
               | (apparently) also much more professional than the
               | majority of the top 10/100/N.
               | 
               | >Live streaming is a different thing to television
               | 
               | If anything, this is the biggest problem. If beginners
               | are expected/advised to put in much more effort and
               | resources to (increase their odds of) breaking through
               | compared to before, why is it acceptable for someone
               | earning a Silicon Valley-equivalent salary while living
               | in a much lower CoL area to stream in a dank basement or
               | attic with poor audio quality? This isn't a criticism as
               | much as a question. Maybe it doesn't matter. But it's
               | also the question which makes people wonder "should they
               | be earning as much as they do?"
        
             | falcolas wrote:
             | Eh, not always. Critical Roll, #1 on the chart with $4.8M,
             | has 24 credited employees, and who knows how much else
             | backing them up.
             | 
             | It's an entertainment corporation that just happens to run
             | on Twitch.
        
               | theshrike79 wrote:
               | This is just one revenue stream, Twitch subs.
               | 
               | No Twitch donations, Patreon, merch sales etc.
        
               | JohnWhigham wrote:
               | It doesn't include bounty payouts and advertising
               | payouts?
        
             | meheleventyone wrote:
             | Not really!
             | 
             | If you arbitrarily take $50k as a living wage then it's
             | basically the top 2000 streamers who can make a living on
             | Twitch. Random googling tells me there were approximately 8
             | million active streamers in September. Again arbitrarily
             | assuming that 7 million of those are 'casual' and doing it
             | for fun that means the percentage of streamers making a
             | living wage is 0.002%.
             | 
             | Back of the napkin math but kinda depressing.
             | 
             | Edit: Someone on Twitter told me that Affiliate status is
             | pegged around the top 3% of streamers. So taking that as my
             | new baseline for "trying to make it" since you can actually
             | get paid out, it raises the percentage to a whopping
             | 0.008%!
        
               | kristofferR wrote:
               | Worthy read:
               | 
               | https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/16/17569520/twitch-
               | streamers...
        
               | meheleventyone wrote:
               | Right I take that sort of thing into account by snipping
               | off the vast majority of people active streaming.
               | Basically guessing that only the top million people
               | streaming are actually aiming to make a living wage.
        
               | Miner49er wrote:
               | The thing with Twitch streaming is that you can do it
               | from almost anywhere. So, $50k is maybe a bit high for a
               | living wage.
               | 
               | Plus, Twitch is probably just one source of income for
               | many content creators. For many it's not their primary
               | source, but just a side source. YouTube, Patreon,
               | OnlyFans, outside sponsors, or even esports may be where
               | they make most of their money.
        
               | meheleventyone wrote:
               | > The thing with Twitch streaming is that you can do it
               | from almost anywhere. So, $50k is maybe a bit high for a
               | living wage.
               | 
               | The thing is the power law curve is so strong that if we
               | take the top ten thousand which sets a living wage at
               | approximately $11.5k which is definitely not a living
               | wage in a lot of places people stream from then that only
               | improves things to the top 0.04% (of those trying to make
               | it).
               | 
               | > Plus, Twitch is probably just one source of income for
               | many content creators. For many it's not their primary
               | source, but just a side source. YouTube, Patreon,
               | OnlyFans, outside sponsors, or even esports may be where
               | they make most of their money.
               | 
               | If you read the original comment the gross amount
               | supposedly includes 3rd party revenue.
        
               | Miner49er wrote:
               | There's no way it includes all 3rd party revenue. Many
               | big YouTubers have a Twitch, and occasionally stream on
               | it, and they maybe make very little on their Twitch but
               | would be near the top of this list from YouTube revenue.
               | Dream, for example.
        
               | Loughla wrote:
               | This is a, maybe, long way to get to this, but keep with
               | me. I have always been fascinated by understanding what
               | is edible, useful, or "traditionally medicinal" in the
               | natural world around me.
               | 
               | I have spent decades of my life learning about how to
               | use, propagate, and cultivate most plants, animals,
               | fungi, and minerals (not the propagate part here) in an
               | area +/- 100 miles from where I live. I've taught a
               | couple of State University extension classes, and
               | regularly sell at a farmers market the things I
               | gather/grow, just for shits and giggles.
               | 
               | People have asked me for years why I don't do this for a
               | living. Why don't I do that instead of working a job that
               | I am neutral to, but that pays the bills.
               | 
               | Because all of that sounds exhausting. Needing to
               | maintain a presence on so many platforms, interact with
               | so many people, and constantly be thinking about my next
               | _thing_ for all of the various platforms is just
               | exhausting.
               | 
               | I don't know how people can do it without burning out.
        
               | ta988 wrote:
               | Don't they have helpers like gamers do?
        
               | Loughla wrote:
               | So then there's even more pressure to perform, at a
               | higher level even, to pay for the lives of myself at
               | least one other human entirely. I still don't get it.
        
           | lemoncookiechip wrote:
           | Fixed, thank you.
        
           | throwawaylolx wrote:
           | Is that all revenue, including subscribers, donations, ads,
           | etc.? The numbers are not that large considering it's data
           | for almost 2 years and a half.
           | 
           | edit: I saw it mentioned in that /g/ thread that these
           | numbers are without the donations.
        
           | trinovantes wrote:
           | It seems the payouts follow the power law. Around 100
           | millionaires, around 2k people at $100k, and the 10kth person
           | at $25k
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | y4mi wrote:
           | your pastebin was deleted. too bad
        
       | boringg wrote:
       | This is going to BLOW up the twitch gaming community with all the
       | infighting now that everyone knows how much everyone else makes.
       | Wow.
        
         | Buttons840 wrote:
         | Number of subs is often known, and the relative size of
         | channels is known. Unless someone's going to be surprised that
         | someone with double the viewers makes double the money, I doubt
         | there will be any surprises.
        
           | 0x500x79 wrote:
           | There are a few outliers in this data. Some streamers with
           | smaller viewer bases are making more because of exclusivity
           | deals, so I imagine there will be a little bit of drama.
        
             | lrae wrote:
             | Examples? And what makes you think that one-off payments
             | for exclusivity are in that data? Because they're not.
        
               | laken wrote:
               | Different contracts between Twitch partners have
               | different levels of ad density, as well as differing
               | amounts of cuts of subs/bits taken by Twitch. It's pretty
               | negligible though, and could have been kinda estimated
               | previously. For example, Hasanabi is claimed to have one
               | of the lowest ad density requirements on twitch (1 60
               | second ad per 1 hour of broadcast, plus 3 minute ad at
               | end of broadcast) which does line up with him making less
               | than multiple streamers with less subs than him (and with
               | probable higher ad densities required by contract).
        
               | lrae wrote:
               | Yeah, this has nothing per se to do with exclusivity
               | though. (As in, XX months exclusivity to Twitch. For
               | those who don't know, every common partnered streamer
               | already is exclusively bound to Twitch for livestreaming
               | content. If he wants to stream somewhere else, he loses
               | his partnership. (And yes, there are exceptions, old
               | contracts, ...))
               | 
               | And "premium contracts" to keep talent were offered
               | pretty much since day 1, just looked quite different back
               | then. (Mainly just differentiated in sub share. For the
               | last 2-3 years they also include better ad payouts (and a
               | minimum of ad time), boni for minimum amount of hours
               | streamed, etc.))
               | 
               | And... every streamer who only cares a bit about his
               | business already knows, at least for the most part, what
               | kind of contract other streamers are on.
               | 
               | So don't think there will be any (real) drama - but I
               | also didn't see or hear of any extreme unexpected
               | outliers.
        
           | saurik wrote:
           | I was under the impression that Twitch streamers were able to
           | be directly tipped by viewers (as opposed to being paid by
           | the view or something by some centralized payment
           | distribution point) and so while there would of course be a
           | correlation on viewers to income, the variance is going to be
           | high... some people are going to be much better at monetizing
           | their user base than others, and I would at least expect the
           | streamer's charm, business model, and audience targeting to
           | swamp a mere 2x difference in viewers.
        
           | boringg wrote:
           | I think a lot of the general public / viewer base is not
           | aware of how much money streamers are really making. And I
           | would guess other streamers have a sense but not total
           | amounts. We will see...
        
         | xboxnolifes wrote:
         | Highly doubtful. Anyone who was already making money from
         | twitch knows how the payment system works and can guess how
         | much someone else makes based on views/subs. Anyone not on the
         | inside already had access to website that gave close enough
         | estimates.
        
       | canada_dry wrote:
       | > Vapor - an unreleased competitor to Steam
       | 
       | Until Steam has a couple major screw ups, potential competitors
       | better have tons of capital to keep throwing at their platform-
       | in-waiting! _Amazon does have the $$$, but they also have hungry
       | shareholders that won 't wait like they used to_. Gamers by-in-
       | large quite like the platform Gabe has built.
        
         | vkk8 wrote:
         | I guess they could tie it to Amazon Prime (like they did with
         | Prime video) and just let Prime cutomers download any game on
         | the platform without paying extra.
        
           | WorldMaker wrote:
           | Prime Gaming has been giving "free games" to people for
           | years. They already have a huge "back catalog" for some users
           | in the weird bare bones "Twitch Launcher". Expanding that
           | into a full store wouldn't be the hardest play for them; if
           | anything the surprise is that they've been so slow to do
           | that.
        
       | beckman466 wrote:
       | Palantir next?
        
       | gverrilla wrote:
       | I don't understand it: these companies have enormous funding, an
       | army of employees, and they can't provide the service reliably
       | (both regarding consistency and safety). What all these coders do
       | all day? I'm asking as an uninformed party of course. But it
       | looks to me like these are companies that build bridges, and
       | their bridges are collapsing all the time.
        
         | lopis wrote:
         | What do you mean? You think all coders are security engineers?
         | All code has dependencies, often dozens of them. You might just
         | need a single vulnerability in a trusted third party library to
         | allow this to happen. These are humans creating these products.
         | I would say that SPECIALLY because of the size of these
         | products, vulnerabilities are inevitable.
        
           | ryandrake wrote:
           | > What do you mean? You think all coders are security
           | engineers?
           | 
           | Now, imagine using that argument when a bridge falls down.
           | "What do you mean? You think all the bridge builders were
           | safety engineers? Bridge components rely on different
           | dependencies, often dozens at the same time. You just need
           | one point of failure and boom, it collapses. These are humans
           | creating these bridges. I would say that SPECIALLY because of
           | the size of these bridges, collapses are inevitable."
        
             | andrewzah wrote:
             | Comparing bridges to a streaming service is nonsensical,
             | frankly.
             | 
             | People die when bridges collapse. People get mildly
             | inconvenienced if twitch is slow or down.
             | 
             | Accordingly bridge construction takes security & safety
             | much more seriously throughout the project. And it's orders
             | of magnitude more expensive to build and check bridges for
             | safety issues, etc.
        
         | eddieroger wrote:
         | Uninformed point of view - I'd be curious the split of that
         | army of employees, since the money isn't in keeping the lights
         | on, it's in sales and feature development. Stability is rarely
         | the forethought unless it's there from day one. It probably
         | takes a lot of money and human hours to keep the streamers
         | engaged, and far less to watch Grafana dashboards.
        
         | mFixman wrote:
         | A company cannot out-engineer bad management nor out-manage bad
         | leadership.
         | 
         | A lot of people who worked in giant tech companies can tell you
         | stories of talent being wasted on tight deadlines for
         | unnecessary projects.
        
         | dekerta wrote:
         | Your analogy would be more accurate if the bridges were
         | constantly being blown up by terrorists. Designing perfectly
         | secure online systems is very hard (if not impossible).
         | Software is very complex, and people are trying to break in
         | constantly. It only takes one person to get lucky or find a
         | vulnerability
        
         | fellellor wrote:
         | Because so much of programming is written at a high level, most
         | coders don't know what the hell they are doing. Maybe the level
         | of abstraction achieved makes it impossible to know.
         | 
         | Edit: One of the reasons is that because there are a very few
         | people (probably) who do the low level stuff, there aren't
         | enough eyes on the code and a lot of vulnerabilities left in
         | production.
         | 
         | Software companies are maybe incentivised to hire a lot of
         | programmers who can start delivering on day 1. This wouldn't be
         | possible without the convenience afforded by high level
         | languages.
        
       | terramex wrote:
       | _> Some Twitter users have started making their way through the
       | 125GB of information that has leaked, with one claiming that the
       | torrent also includes encrypted passwords, and recommending that
       | users change their passwords to be safe._
       | 
       | Twitch just asked me to change password for the first time, so it
       | sounds credible.
        
         | thinkingemote wrote:
         | Its possible, if theres a full database dump that direct
         | messages could also be leaked, which could be incredibly
         | damaging. I'd guess that these would be in another storage
         | medium however.
         | 
         | One wonders. Why are encrypted passwords stored in an external
         | code repository?
        
           | Le_Dook wrote:
           | I'll be curious as well once this makes it's way to
           | haveibeenpwned. Requested for it to be deleted and forgotten
           | few years back, wont be the first time an account of mine has
           | been "deleted" to then miraculously be hacked or caught up in
           | a leak
        
         | swarnie wrote:
         | Kind of worrying considering my twitch is linked to my Amazon
         | account, and all my banking credentials are linked to Amazon.
        
           | Workaccount2 wrote:
           | If it's any comfort, for some reason twitch uses Xsolla as
           | it's payment processor. That is, you cannot pay for premium
           | twitch with your amazon account.
        
           | jrootabega wrote:
           | Agreed. Hopefully you will be correcting that.
        
           | rawling wrote:
           | That's only a very narrow link though, isn't it? Just lets
           | you claim Prime benefits, doesn't give access to Amazon
           | purchasing or payment details or anything?
        
       | lethalbas wrote:
       | does any1 have the link to the leaked password hashes? askin for
       | a friend
        
         | 1121redblackgo wrote:
         | Are you seriously asking for pw hashes.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | rawling wrote:
         | According to the /g/ link at the top of the thread, they're not
         | in this "part 1" torrent.
        
       | ToddWBurgess wrote:
       | You really have to feel bad for the IT staff at Twitch who I
       | expect are going to have a bad day today.
        
       | hkai wrote:
       | Is this the first major porn site to be hacked?
        
         | y4mi wrote:
         | Twitch is not porn. It's maybe a gateway to onlyfans, but you
         | cannot have sexual content on twitch.
         | 
         | Even YouTube allows more nudity then twitch.
         | 
         | So yes, there are girls wearing bikinis and underwear on
         | camera, but that's as far as it goes.
        
           | bogwog wrote:
           | It's called "softcore porn".
           | 
           | > Even YouTube allows more nudity then twitch.
           | 
           | Nudity alone is not pornographic.
        
           | hnick wrote:
           | I saw them doing microphone licking lately. Apparently that's
           | popular.
        
           | vadfa wrote:
           | That depends on your definition of sexual. If you have
           | someone in underwear with the sole purpose of arousing people
           | of the opposite sex, that is pretty sexual to me.
        
             | slightwinder wrote:
             | Porn and sexual are not the same. There is a line, and so
             | far Twitch stays on the safe side of it.
        
               | bettysdiagnose wrote:
               | The claim the commenter you replied to was referring to
               | was:
               | 
               | > you cannot have sexual content on twitch
               | 
               | Which is obviously completely, completely false.
        
               | pixxel wrote:
               | They are not the same. Defined age-restricted pornography
               | is arguably better than highly sexualised content aimed
               | at children and their pocket money.
        
           | onedr0p wrote:
           | It's sarcasm my dude. Twitch is notorious for giving female
           | streamers a pass when it comes to nudity or inappropriate
           | behavior, all the while banning male members for accidentally
           | clicking on a NSFW link and it being shown on steam for
           | seconds.
        
             | Semaphor wrote:
             | A channel I mod got a 1-day suspension because you could
             | see the crack of a drunk guy mooning them (despite
             | instantly stopping the stream and deleting the VOD before
             | starting again). A few weeks before, two girls flashed
             | them. That obviously did not warrant a ban.
        
           | vscodered wrote:
           | >there are girls wearing bikinis and underwear on camera
           | 
           | Is it really hot in their rooms or are they sex workers?
        
           | nickysielicki wrote:
           | The microphone ear licking channels are definitely more
           | sexual than many "NSFW" subreddits.
           | 
           | What actually defines porn? It's hard to say, but you know it
           | when you see it. Spend 5 minutes watching any of the ear
           | lickers on the front page of twitch and make your mind up for
           | yourself. I find it hard to come to the conclusion that it's
           | not porn.
        
       | fc373745 wrote:
       | >the leak was intended to "foster more disruption and competition
       | in the online video streaming space" because "their community is
       | a disgusting toxic cesspool".
       | 
       | the irony in that it was leaked to 4chan
        
         | zalequin wrote:
         | The irony is that this post itself is ironically toxic. Kekw.
        
         | h_anna_h wrote:
         | Not really, I would go as far as to argue that it is less toxic
         | than reddit, twitter, and even HN.
        
           | wizzwizz4 wrote:
           | Parts of it, yes. But the famous parts are _horrible_ ; I
           | don't remember the last time HN ran an international
           | cyberbullying campaign.
        
             | QuinnyPig wrote:
             | I thought it was called "YC Demo Day."
        
               | wizzwizz4 wrote:
               | There's a difference between vicious mockery of a company
               | and its founders on a single website, and having randos
               | holding knives knocking on people's windows.
        
               | h_anna_h wrote:
               | > and having randos holding knives knocking on people's
               | windows
               | 
               | Are you referring to some specific event?
        
               | wizzwizz4 wrote:
               | An amalgamation of multiple events. (I was lying when I
               | implied I remembered the last time 4chan did this kind of
               | thing; it happens so often.)
               | 
               | The one I was thinking of, I misremembered: it was
               | actually an (alleged) stabbing. https://www.theregister.c
               | om/2021/07/07/tenacity_maintainer_q...
        
           | alphabetting wrote:
           | maybe on streamers with less than 50 viewers. every twitch
           | stream i've seen the chat is easily 100x more toxic than any
           | HN thread. ridiculous comparison
        
             | h_anna_h wrote:
             | Huh? I am not talking about twitch. If anything this just
             | shows that you disagree with
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28771025 which is the
             | post that I am replying to.
        
           | wokwokwok wrote:
           | Mmm... well, if you're received what you consider to be toxic
           | interactions on twitter, reddit and even here, but not on
           | 4chan, have you considered that the common factor is perhaps
           | not that all of these platforms are toxic...
           | 
           | ...but that your views are considered problematic by quite a
           | lot of people?
           | 
           | Perhaps that could be some cause for self reflection before
           | you universally declare the entire platform here hostile and
           | toxic.
        
             | h_anna_h wrote:
             | People on 4chan will call you slurs and insults but it is
             | never personal, part of it is due to the anonymous nature.
             | People here will be personally vicious and hostile.
             | 
             | > ...but that your views are considered problematic by
             | quite a lot of people?
             | 
             | You do not know what my views are. It's as if you are
             | trying to prove me right honestly. (btw, I am not posting
             | on reddit nor on twitter, nor 4chan for that matter)
             | 
             | Plus the same could be said for the toxic interactions that
             | you had on there.
             | 
             | > Perhaps that could be some cause for self reflection
             | before you universally declare the entire platform here
             | hostile and toxic.
             | 
             | Again, same thing for you. "Perhaps that could be some
             | cause for self reflection before you universally declare
             | the entire platform there hostile and toxic."
        
             | matheusmoreira wrote:
             | > your views are considered problematic by quite a lot of
             | people
             | 
             | What I consider problematic is the fact these people will
             | organize massive efforts on Twitter to ruin other people's
             | lives because they posted wrongthink. They make the 4chan
             | raids I've seen look amateurish.
        
               | qersist3nce wrote:
               | Indeed. There is some downright grotesque "malice" in
               | Twitter cancel-culture efforts. It's really strange they
               | are not self-aware and call 4chan (~last bastion of free
               | speech) _toxic_.
               | 
               | Yeah, 4chan is toxic and savage, but at least they are
               | honest and _humane_ in a candid kind of way.
               | 
               | The cyber-bullying's of 4chan is trash though...
        
               | matheusmoreira wrote:
               | Yeah. 4chan is supposed to represent people's unfiltered
               | thoughts, what people really think when freed from social
               | consequences. This produces a wider spectrum than what
               | most people are used to seeing, both good and bad.
               | 
               | While 4chan posters occasionally get organized and manage
               | to operate outside their borders, these incredibly
               | malicious activities just aren't something I associate
               | with them. They're the specialty of groups like kiwi
               | farms who are responsible for the suicide of at least one
               | video game console emulator developer. I was shocked when
               | people told me about byuu's suicide here on HN.
        
           | throwrqX wrote:
           | This is patently ridiculous. The biggest boards on 4chan,
           | particularly /pol/ have widespread support for the genocide
           | of Jews, black people, Muslims and women. Well maybe not all
           | women, a more common view is instead that they should be
           | enslaved to men. This kind of correction should give an idea
           | of what kind of ideas are popular there.
        
             | h_anna_h wrote:
             | 4chan is not only /pol/. The culture between boards is
             | vastly different. Although I do not disagree, /pol/
             | specifically _is_ toxic.
             | 
             | And it's not as if reddit does not have its own share of
             | similar forums.
        
               | throwrqX wrote:
               | Of course 4chan is not just /pol/ but it is the biggest
               | board, and together with /b/ contribute to plenty of
               | hateful content as I mentioned. The culture between
               | boards is different but /pol/ refugees in particular have
               | been spreading to other boards for several years now and
               | it's very annoying because even if a small group of them
               | decide to visit a board regularly then they can ruin the
               | culture because of relative sizes between the boards.
               | Reddit and Twitter have their own problems, particularly
               | with echo chambers but the biggest subreddit on reddit
               | isn't spewing anywhere near the same kind of shit as the
               | biggest board on 4chan does.
        
         | nodejs_rulez_1 wrote:
         | It would be good to have a streaming service where simps could
         | be called out as such.
        
           | Loughla wrote:
           | Real question - why does it matter to you? If that's how
           | people want to spend their time and money, and it makes them
           | feel good, even if they look foolish, what does it matter to
           | you?
           | 
           | I'm really bad at woodworking, but I do it a lot, and I've
           | spent a crap load of money on it. Does that matter at all to
           | anyone else in the world?
        
             | andrewzah wrote:
             | Our societies do regulate how people can spend their time
             | and money in certain regards. I don't think that's
             | necessarily wrong. Smoking is banned, some countries have
             | labeling for unhealthy products, and so on. Things can end
             | up affecting other people in the long run, so I don't think
             | it's unreasonable to contemplate addressing stuff like
             | this.
             | 
             | I think the main issues overall are encouraging parasocial
             | relationships, and also the problem of selling sex to kids.
             | I'm no prude but I think it raises some ethical questions
             | when you have gaming content and sexual content in the same
             | spot. If I had kids, that would matter to me.
        
             | nodejs_rulez_1 wrote:
             | Woodworking will leave you with skills, experience and a
             | wider physical social circle at best or re-sellable tools
             | and a story to tell at worst.
             | 
             | Simping is more like an alcohol consumption - damaging and
             | the first step is acknowledging a problem exists, often
             | through an intervention.
        
         | throwawayswede wrote:
         | I have a theory that the more people use words like "toxic" or
         | "cesspool" the more likely they are the ones causing and
         | creating it.
        
           | d3nj4l wrote:
           | It's almost certainly tongue in cheek.
        
           | squarefoot wrote:
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
        
           | incahoots wrote:
           | They're using it "ironically" which at this point is coming
           | off as genuine
        
       | incahoots wrote:
       | Based. Lot of streamers gonna feel some blowback on this. Not
       | that it should matter but supposedly there's a bunch that lie to
       | their chat about the income they generate.
        
       | 1121redblackgo wrote:
       | Are we sure that we are comfortable sharing the actual leak on
       | this website? If we are, fine, but that is a choice we are
       | making.
        
         | fexelein wrote:
         | Why not?
        
           | 1121redblackgo wrote:
           | It's illegally obtained information, sensitive information,
           | about thousands of individuals and their personal businesses.
           | I don't think its appropriate, and I would hate to be on that
           | list right now.
        
             | corobo wrote:
             | Isn't this the exact argument search engines have been
             | fighting for years in relation to piracy? The data hasn't
             | been provided, a link to the data has been provided
        
               | 1121redblackgo wrote:
               | Sure. Morally what do you think is the right thing to do?
        
               | willmorrison wrote:
               | That's up to the person posting it and there shouldn't be
               | a rule deciding either way for them.
        
               | theknocker wrote:
               | Cover up the leak and pretend it never happened,
               | obviously. Let's make it hard for twitch users to even
               | find out what was leaked about them. That will help.
        
               | corobo wrote:
               | Morally I wont be using any of the data. The data however
               | is out whether you roadblock access to it or not.
               | 
               | The chances of you stopping someone who's nefarious
               | enough to use the data but so non-technical that they
               | can't find a magnet link is so low it wasn't worth me
               | typing this sentence about it
        
       | sillysaurusx wrote:
       | Hi ya'll, I have a question.
       | 
       | My wife and I can't wrap our brains around the fact that _payment
       | info_ was leaked alongside _source code_.
       | 
       | Any theories how this happened?
       | 
       | Former pentester btw. I saw a lot of interesting things during my
       | time, but I can't recall seeing a payment database next to a
       | source code repo.
       | 
       | Did their s3 bucket get popped or something?
       | 
       | Even if their github enterprise got popped, that doesn't explain
       | that streamer payouts down to the dollar were leaked. "Oh yeah, I
       | commit all my stripe data into github. It's for compliance /s"
       | 
       | EDIT: If you want to see how much everyone's making:
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/q2gooi/twit...
        
         | beckler wrote:
         | My guess is it was an disgruntled employee who took a copy of
         | all this data.
        
           | mkr-hn wrote:
           | Theorypothesis: the pre-Amazon acquisition company had very
           | informal access controls, and Amazon is known for limiting
           | how much change it imposes on acquisitions, so didn't know
           | about this or didn't change to a more corporatey way of
           | controlling access.
        
             | dgemm wrote:
             | IIRC twitch was always very resistant to Amazon processes
             | like COEs, so I wouldn't be surprised if they pushed back
             | on stricter access controls too.
        
         | ryanlol wrote:
         | > but I can't recall seeing a payment database next to a source
         | code repo.
         | 
         | I suspect you just haven't looked at what the BI team has been
         | up to. This seems like exactly the kind of stuff BI folks
         | always leave on git.
        
         | ssklash wrote:
         | Also a pentester. My guess is they just had really broad access
         | to Twitch's systems, not that card data and source code were
         | together. Given the amount and range of data, wide-ranging
         | access to their infrastructure is the only thing that makes
         | sense to me here.
        
           | garyfirestorm wrote:
           | Are you guys (other commenter) are professional pentesters?
           | How do you become one? Do you freelance or work full time
           | 8-5?
        
             | ganoushoreilly wrote:
             | There are a ton of companies hiring pentesters. Most
             | testers fall into the profession after having worked in
             | other network or IT related professions. A few are free
             | lance, most work for a company or in my case start their
             | own and expand out services. It's not really any different
             | than any other tech job at the end of the day, it just
             | seems glamorous. Don't become a pentester if you're not
             | ready to write extensive reports.. it's probably 75% of the
             | job.
             | 
             | With that, there are tons of specific disciplines you can
             | focus on for pentesting. I'd figure out what excites you
             | and then go for it. Web app is diff than physical
             | exploitation of security systems etc. but some of them
             | cross over.
             | 
             | Another option. Work for the government, join a red team or
             | apply. They'll train you and you'll leave with a new
             | perspective and possibly knowledge you can't get elsewhere.
        
               | anonymouse008 wrote:
               | [potentially off topic]
               | 
               | > if you're not ready to write extensive reports.. it's
               | probably 75% of the job
               | 
               | Do you happen to have a system for building these out? As
               | a techie, I imagine you've tried something like text-
               | expander or similar... but I see a lot of people
               | unsatisfied that they end up building their own tools.
        
               | ganoushoreilly wrote:
               | Yes, We have a few tools that fill in based on scan data,
               | with typical points of data, but a lot of what we're
               | doing requires it's presented in a few different
               | perspectives. Generally we provide a couple reports, the
               | Highly Technical (with notes, logs of actions, etc. This
               | can be hundreds of pages, but it's meant to be a
               | reference for the engineering teams fixing what we found.
               | We also sometimes provide full screen captures of the
               | "ops". Second we provide a paired down version of that
               | report with issues and recommendations, usually for the
               | person that's hired us. It includes what we recommend for
               | them to be successful. Finally we provide an Executive
               | report that is designed to be presented by the second
               | report recipient. Usually we've addressed the high level
               | issues, helped with internal requests if possible (IE
               | IT/Security wanted a budget for new firewall, we help
               | boost that with our report as part of future planning
               | etc.) and ultimately this report is designed to give
               | whomever hired us the ability to be the rockstar (we're
               | just the tool).
               | 
               | So all in, there are different tools needed for each
               | report. Fortunately the way we capture the data and notes
               | through out the "op" makes it much easier for the team to
               | put together each part.
               | 
               | There's ways we could automate more, we've even messed
               | with AI writing some of the suggestions and actions based
               | on input. So far though, we still need the humans in the
               | loop.
               | 
               | Honestly the first few reports are hardest, after that
               | you find a process and it becomes much easier.
        
             | mzfr wrote:
             | Depends actually, if you just want to do pentesting then
             | probably do some certifications like OSCP, CompTIA, etc.
             | Once you get those its quite easy to land a interview for
             | pentesting.
             | 
             | Initially job may not pay good but you can build your
             | network and then probably start doing contract works. Most
             | of the pentesters I know make more from freelance/contract
             | work then their jobs. Because mostly those
             | contract/freelance work pays on hourly bases. The initial
             | hour rates usually are somewhere between 40-50 USD but they
             | can go to 120-150 with just after few jobs.
             | 
             | P.S - I might have made it sound a very simple or easy
             | profession but its not :)
        
               | ganoushoreilly wrote:
               | I would add that the more experience and time you have on
               | the job those contract rates go up exponentially. I would
               | also recommend if you're free lancing that you still do
               | it under an LLC and purchase a liability policy. Too many
               | risks.
               | 
               | For example. In 2012 average consulting hourly rate I
               | charged $350. Stayed booked. 2016 $550. Stayed booked. In
               | 2018 I had a couple really large clients that paid
               | $1500+hr
               | 
               | There's gold in the hills, the trick is to figure out how
               | to sell the pans, water, plots of land, and
               | transportation to them. If you can work in complementary
               | services or referrals for all the above, you just made
               | yourself even more valuable.
        
         | ganoushoreilly wrote:
         | Curiously the torrent is labeled part 1 so my guess is there
         | was a wide breach and this was just some of the data they
         | wanted to put together.
         | 
         | There are devops tools, soc tools, and a ton of random things
         | here, I guess we'll have to sit and wait to see if more
         | follows.
        
         | slightwinder wrote:
         | There are several ways why this could have happened.
         | 
         | 1) The payment-data were just artifacts left on some file-
         | server or from a process, which was accessible from dev-space.
         | 
         | 2) No real systems were accessed and everything, it's all from
         | a bad backup-server or poorly managed worker-pool.
         | 
         | 3) Multiple Persons got hacked.
         | 
         | 4) Exit-Scam of one or more Workers who just had broad enough
         | access for some reason.
         | 
         | 5) Twitch's security is just that bad.
         | 
         | Some notable thing is, the payment-data are quite limited,
         | there are no real private data it seems, and the git-history
         | seems also be missing. It's not sure whether this is on purpose
         | and whether more data will follow. But this overall hints so
         | far that this at least was not a full deep hack.
        
         | oauea wrote:
         | some of the leaked code has embedded credentials in it
        
           | bobmaxup wrote:
           | Yeah, it looks like there are a lot of hard-coded
           | credentials, and one of those is to a twitch_reports
           | database, which might be where these financial reports came
           | from.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | MarkSweep wrote:
         | Maybe they backed-up both to the same place and their backups
         | got hacked?
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | iuri1 wrote:
         | Either database dumps are in commit history (very common) or
         | credentials like a password for a database is (even more
         | common).
         | 
         | A third reason would be finding a security flaw in the source
         | code and exploiting it.
        
         | Seanambers wrote:
         | Amouranth made $92,949 licking a microphone - LOL. What a
         | world.
        
           | semi-extrinsic wrote:
           | https://xkcd.com/305/
        
             | tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
             | Rule 35, quoted either as "if there is no porn of it, it
             | will be made" or "if there is no porn of it, you are
             | required to make it".
        
           | colinmhayes wrote:
           | In a month. Plus donations. Plus youtube. Plus only fans.
           | Plus I'm sure she sells merch.
        
         | raxxorrax wrote:
         | I guess if you have access to a build server that you might spy
         | out some access credentials to other venues. Not impossible at
         | least or perhaps some sort of service account was compromised
         | that had access to both. Doesn't mean there was an immediate
         | proximity of these system, although that might also be
         | possible.
        
         | notsureaboutpg wrote:
         | The source code details how to access the payment data,
         | probably, for dashboards, etc.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | Seattle3503 wrote:
       | This seems like it getting downmodded. It has over 850 points
       | right now and isn't on the front page.
        
       | pid-1 wrote:
       | Managed git services suck at providing security that scales
       | beyond a few devs. Most orgs that use GitHub are exposed to the
       | risk of having their source code leaked by current or past
       | employees.
       | 
       | I'm hoping this leak will have serious financial consequences and
       | bring awareness to that.
        
         | madeofpalk wrote:
         | How do you stop that? To write the code you need to have access
         | to it.
         | 
         | Really it just comes down to trust, and not having anything
         | actually sensitive in the code, no?
        
       | tiepoul wrote:
       | I'm curious about the contents of the zip files. I do feel that
       | something is interesting about its contents.
        
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