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Is true hacking dead? What we lost

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Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost

#161

Post by anthk »

KaiserPro wrote: post #69

Sounds like gatekeeping to me. Hacking of yore largely was like theoretical maths. Isolated from the real world and of little practicable use, yet. It was a closed eco system in the 70s-90s. You either had to steal or be rich to get access to a machine. Yes, real steel from the likes of DEC, IBM, ICL et al were magic. The early days of networked OSs equally wonderful. But. Now, with an ESP I can have a battery powere…

I'd setup a micro-controller based BSD 4.4 lite 2, but they are very short in RAM. If they were 4-8MB, they could be my main microPC setup.

Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost

#162

Post by peteforde »

dep_b wrote: post #142
Animats wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the author wasn't talking about hacking but recreating the exact same conditions that existed when he was a young person... That sums up the article. Kids can do far more today than in the Commodore 64 era. On the other hand, the field is much bigger, so they won't be doing the same thing as their local friends. But there will be someone on the web doing something similar to talk to.

> Kids can do far more today than in the Commodore 64 era. Kids can do far more but they're not instantly warped into a fully programmable environment. You enter the following: POKE 53281,8 And you're immediately changing stuff like the background color, something you also saw happening in turbo loaders or those quick color cycling screens before a game started. You get the feeling that it's possible to achieve anyth…

First, I think you need to be realistic: we're going into the third decade of the 21st century and no kids are going to be POKEing, not even on Facebook.

Second, I think you underestimate how tangibly incredible it is to hit play on a basic scene in Unity and see it come to life. I think that this is the reason Roblox is so popular, and Unity is the next step.

Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost

#163

Post by peteforde »

80386 wrote: post #51
scoutt wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacking is just interesting only if you are not following any "tutorial". Today you can run an embedded linux under 10 minutes with less that 20 bucks with a RPI by reading some tutorial or watching a youtube video. What's the fun about that? I remember too hacking my commodore and the only help I had was just a book in a strange language (english in my case) and my dad (he was into 8086 at that time) when I was a ki…

Linux is... a little alienating, isn't it? How many people can hold the whole thing in their head? Not many - and I don't think it's seamless enough to work as another layer of magic, either. People accept OS X because it's another layer of magic. TempleOS was written by one guy, so I assume it can fit inside one head. Linux has been written by a lot of people over several decades. Maybe I'm completely wrong about th…

TempleOS was written by one guy. He just happened to be a lunatic who did little else. It was a very sad story, TBH. Thankfully, there's very little about TempleOS that has anything to do with a massive influx of kids hacking.

Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost

#164

Post by peteforde »

z3phyr wrote: post #138
peteforde wrote: post #16

There was a time when I used to fret that the era of tinkering was coming to an end. Crypto was going to be illegal, they were going to put DRM on speakers, and our computers are designed to be completely locked down to the degree that you can't even add more RAM to a MacBook Pro. However, I think that the rise of Linux, Raspberry Pi and Arduino, OSS and Github and massive package repos for every language, Adafruit,…

> The author also calls out Unity as part of the problem I am sorry, where does he do that?

Because your Ctrl-F key is broken:

> Steam, the Apple store, Microsoft XBLIG, Youtube, Twitch, Spotify... Unity, Pico8, Dreams passing through Minecraft and Roblox and the game modding community.

In other words: all of these perfect souls are being captured by less-pure tools before they can make their way to someone experiencing the frustration of learning BASIC on a C64 in the early 1980s.

Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost

#165

Post by peteforde »

Heyso wrote: post #24
peteforde wrote: post #16

There was a time when I used to fret that the era of tinkering was coming to an end. Crypto was going to be illegal, they were going to put DRM on speakers, and our computers are designed to be completely locked down to the degree that you can't even add more RAM to a MacBook Pro. However, I think that the rise of Linux, Raspberry Pi and Arduino, OSS and Github and massive package repos for every language, Adafruit,…

Unity is amazing, I agree. Moving from scratch to unity seem like a big step. Why not play with a 2d game library on the browser (with typescript, and a teacher to give a starter project and the basics) ? Making games in 2d is a very similar experience a smaking game in 3d, just easier. Unity can be overhelming with the richness of what it propose.

I promise you that you can build something interesting in VR in Unity with free assets and without writing a single line of code. The optimal outcome - "can I do X?" - where the young person in question is asking to take it further... that's achieved far faster than anything in a browser context. Keep in mind: kids today are not likely to be so impressed with moving a square up and down in a browser. Maybe interesting, but who cares? vs "wait, you can make this sword into a FIRE SWORD?"

Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost

#166

Post by peteforde »

scoutt wrote: post #32
peteforde wrote: post #16

There was a time when I used to fret that the era of tinkering was coming to an end. Crypto was going to be illegal, they were going to put DRM on speakers, and our computers are designed to be completely locked down to the degree that you can't even add more RAM to a MacBook Pro. However, I think that the rise of Linux, Raspberry Pi and Arduino, OSS and Github and massive package repos for every language, Adafruit,…

Hacking is just interesting only if you are not following any "tutorial". Today you can run an embedded linux under 10 minutes with less that 20 bucks with a RPI by reading some tutorial or watching a youtube video. What's the fun about that? I remember too hacking my commodore and the only help I had was just a book in a strange language (english in my case) and my dad (he was into 8086 at that time) when I was a ki…

Yeah, I just don't agree. I don't think you (or we) get to decide what makes someone feel that hacking feeling.

There's a term for not finding "you can run an embedded linux under 10 minutes with less that 20 bucks with a RPI by reading some tutorial or watching a youtube video" exciting: jaded. "What's the fun about that?"... seriously, dude? Listen to yourself. It's only not fun because you've done it so many times. It's fucking incredible.

News flash: the fact that you were able to be alive at a time when C64s and XTs were happening, that you had someone who loved you in your immediate family that could help you if you got stuck was an enormous privilege.

I challenge you to explain to me how someone today learning to hack a Pi from a Youtube video even though their parents are manual labourers and electricity isn't always available is somehow less hacker than you ever were. Get out of your own head.

Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost

#167

Post by ChuckMcM »

lonesword wrote: post #60
ChuckMcM wrote: post #11

I don't think true hacking is dead, its just lost in a sea of non-hacking. The number of students who could write code in my high school of 2000 was perhaps 35. Those 35 were amazing because they had to work to get access to a computer, so we had already eliminated everyone who was just "oh that's too hard". Of the 35 perhaps a dozen kept at it beyond one class in BASIC. In my daughter's similarly sized highschool 40…

> Compulsive puzzle gene Did you observe this in _all_ of the mentioned 35 students in your high school? Do you think that an aptitude for puzzles is a de-facto pre-requisite? I know that it shouldn't be, but I'm wondering if you have actually met people who are not good with puzzles but are extremely good when it comes to making a computer do things.

> Did you observe this in _all_ of the mentioned 35 students in your high school?

No. The one trait that was common to all of these students in my high school and in my daughter's high school was curiosity. The question "Why does that work that way?" or "How does that even work?" were common.

When friends have asked how to raise their kids to be more engaged technically with the world I have always advised them to feed their curiosity. Keep answering 'Why?' questions until you both have to look it up in a good reference. (Also answered the question for them why, in this day and age, did I have an encyclopedia set in my living room. Answer, to do tactile research and explore the world in real time with my kids.)

Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost

#168

Post by ChuckMcM »

jaxn wrote: post #144
ChuckMcM wrote: post #11

I don't think true hacking is dead, its just lost in a sea of non-hacking. The number of students who could write code in my high school of 2000 was perhaps 35. Those 35 were amazing because they had to work to get access to a computer, so we had already eliminated everyone who was just "oh that's too hard". Of the 35 perhaps a dozen kept at it beyond one class in BASIC. In my daughter's similarly sized highschool 40…

"compulsive puzzle gene" I like that a lot. I'm curious if you hire people and if you use that concept in that process.

I do, and I do. Although it is more about unconstrained thinking rather than strictly puzzles. I have observed a high correlation between people who can temporarily 'change the rules' and think about things with a different mindset, with original and creative solutions to problems. Solutions to problems that people with constrained thinking cannot see.

Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost

#169

Post by _y5hn »

shantly wrote: post #139
geocar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An astonishing thing happened when we finally made it possible for everyone in the world to tell a computer what to do: We discovered nobody knows what they want the computer to do! We were surprised (if also for other reasons) because we confused the product with the means, or to paraphrase Feynman, hacking is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.

> An astonishing thing happened when we finally made it possible for everyone in the world to tell a computer what to do: We discovered nobody knows what they want the computer to do! I feel this way. I've been at this a long time but all my non-work computing is either futzing about or incredibly low-value. Spreadsheets are pretty nice but I could do without them. Some kind of instant messaging or email is pretty us…

Some of us started around with ZX Spectrum and C64, playing some games we wouldn't bother glancing at today. You actually can find emulators for this stuff, but we're living in a much higher vibration for this stuff to even trigger a yawn. What did we "create" at the time?

10 PRINT HELLO

20 GOTO 10

Aside from futzing around with C++, x86 assembler (never could find a book for C64, so never got to learn it on 6510), there were the same "rules" then as now. The builders build, and most just futz around, play and watch some movies.

It will take time. Dedicated effort. Sweats, pain and troubleshooting. There's never been a better time than now. No need to lay the foundation, one can start right off the bat. The trick is that it has to be fun, involving and based on true motivation (hunger).

https://store.unity.com/#plans-individual

I'm leaning on the conclusion that nothing fundamentally really changed.

Re: Is true hacking dead? What we lost

#170

Post by stebann »

Hacking is not dead, but it has become complex because you have to deal with many layers of abstraction. In fact, we have to deal with complex concepts, implementations with different layers of complexity, more protocols... so the knowledge to hack something goes beyond that, because you have to understand how something works, maybe completely, to add something novel to it.
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