A Romanian campus computer lab pentested the world and helped protect it (2018)
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Re: A Romanian campus computer lab pentested the world and helped protect it (2018)
#2[deleted]
Re: A Romanian campus computer lab pentested the world and helped protect it (2018)
#3Inspiring! As a middle schooler, I was given free non-destructive reign in my tech class to do whatever I wanted. From that, I learned so much- I set up a Beowulf cluster out of old desktops, scavenged RAM from a pile of unused desktops to get the workstation I found up to speed, and did so much more. [I also mined BTC at school, but I lost the wallet :( ] As one of those people that will do ridiculous things out of intellectual curiosity, it was a huge boon to me. Similar to Lari, I broke my share of stuff, and learned a lot in the process of fixing it.
It is from those days, six years ago, that my passion for technology truly blossomed, and I've been so much better for it.
Re: A Romanian campus computer lab pentested the world and helped protect it (2018)
#4Inspiring! As a middle schooler, I was given free non-destructive reign in my tech class to do whatever I wanted. From that, I learned so much- I set up a Beowulf cluster out of old desktops, scavenged RAM from a pile of unused desktops to get the workstation I found up to speed, and did so much more. [I also mined BTC at school , but I lost the wallet :( ] As one of those people that will do ridiculous things out of…
I definitely think that breaking and fixing stuff, or just fixing broken stuff, is vital to understanding any field where "stuff" is involved. Doctoring and nursing are both apprenticeships in part so doctors and nurses can learn how to fix broken people in a real setting, and we should do something more like that in the computer field so the kids who didn't grow up with their own systems they could break and fix can get the experience they missed.
Re: A Romanian campus computer lab pentested the world and helped protect it (2018)
#5I remember in the 00's a company I was working for was trying to recruit talent to Romania.. they were SO good! I remember that a DBA in Romania would cost the same as in the UK, and they would work miracles. I also remember they had 2x optic fiber networks, one underground and one from the telephone/uitility poles.
I am not surprised for this. At some point Romania was the DataCenter for many large companies in Europe.
If only the corruption had gone away, Romania could have been a 'mini European silicon valley'.
Re: A Romanian campus computer lab pentested the world and helped protect it (2018)
#6Funny, I too was a freshman student there in 1993, and I used the ED011 room to get my first taste of internet. I didn't know about web pages or there were very few back then but I used Gopher, and I would simply try to reach as far as I could around the world. I learned shell commands by looking over the shoulder to the guys next to me and copying what they were doing. I didn't get to use the 286 stations, just the DEC terminals. 4MB RAM seemed like a supercomputer to me, after first learning programming with a Romanian Sinclair Spectrum clone which had 16KB ROM and 48KB RAM.
Those were the days, when you had to load software from cassette tapes and even the slightest movement could make the computer reboot (but that was 4 years earlier, when I was getting into 9th grade).
Re: A Romanian campus computer lab pentested the world and helped protect it (2018)
#7I remember in the 00's a company I was working for was trying to recruit talent to Romania.. they were SO good! I remember that a DBA in Romania would cost the same as in the UK, and they would work miracles. I also remember they had 2x optic fiber networks, one underground and one from the telephone/uitility poles. I am not surprised for this. At some point Romania was the DataCenter for many large companies in Euro…
> I also remember they had 2x optic fiber networks, one underground and one from the telephone/uitility poles.
This is still an unresolved nightmare even today with some fiber hanging on telephone poles and some being dug underground. In the capital city, the underground fiber is handled by one company (Netcity) and there's been a lot of controversy around it because of discriminatory pricing.
Re: A Romanian campus computer lab pentested the world and helped protect it (2018)
#8I remember in the 00's a company I was working for was trying to recruit talent to Romania.. they were SO good! I remember that a DBA in Romania would cost the same as in the UK, and they would work miracles. I also remember they had 2x optic fiber networks, one underground and one from the telephone/uitility poles. I am not surprised for this. At some point Romania was the DataCenter for many large companies in Euro…
On average the smartest developers I've worked with from Europe have all come from that neck of the woods, I'm in the UK and our best are the equal of their best but their average is better.
They often write better English than English developers as well.
I say that as an average developer myself.
I think it's a cultural thing combined with rigorous universities and a strong work ethic.
Re: A Romanian campus computer lab pentested the world and helped protect it (2018)
#9Funny, I too was a freshman student there in 1993, and I used the ED011 room to get my first taste of internet. I didn't know about web pages or there were very few back then but I used Gopher, and I would simply try to reach as far as I could around the world. I learned shell commands by looking over the shoulder to the guys next to me and copying what they were doing. I didn't get to use the 286 stations, just the…
I think I caught the dying days of ED011. I was an Automatica freshman in 1999, when the lab and the die-hards populating it still looked like magic for outsiders like myself, but by 2000 or early 2001 all the text-only terminals had been replaced by 486 computers (I think), and the magic was gone.
The spirit of it still lived for a short while in the faculty's dorms, which had freshly been fitted with Internet connections, and it was cool to see all those network cables hanging outside of the dorm buildings while knowing that because of those cables we had access to Audiogalaxy and to playing AtomicBomberman with our colleagues from two floors bellow us. Lots of the students that helped install and set-up those cables and the dorms' network-systems ended up as key people at various ISPs.
Re: A Romanian campus computer lab pentested the world and helped protect it (2018)
#10I remember in the 00's a company I was working for was trying to recruit talent to Romania.. they were SO good! I remember that a DBA in Romania would cost the same as in the UK, and they would work miracles. I also remember they had 2x optic fiber networks, one underground and one from the telephone/uitility poles. I am not surprised for this. At some point Romania was the DataCenter for many large companies in Euro…
If you are going to stereotype, lemme add on of my own:
Ludicrous, most Romanians I worked with were very politically charged and would victimizes themselves easily and be very indifferent to other responsibilities you've in company.
Western Europeans performed better at seeing the big picture and acting according to what company needs from you, not merely your role.
Also, average IQ of Romania is lower than West Europe.
Only thing which makes them apparently better is that Soviet Style universities, where you can cheat and get away with it and you've fancy degrees to show for
We joke in Romania, how every one is a lawyer here. Because getting these degree in Romania is lot easier than anywhere else in the world!