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How to Become a Hacker

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Re: How to Become a Hacker

#111

Post by svat »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #37
cutler wrote: post #26

Sometime last year I was taking a short bus ride home from a local supermarket in Leytonstone (London) when a passenger boarded with a slightly louder American voice. I thought he looked familiar then it hit me - Richard Stallman. I didn't have much time to decide what to do as he was about to get off at the next stop so I left the bus at the same stop and caught up with him. After an introduction and short conversat…

Does this make me a hacker? Donald Knuth was giving a presentation to celebrate someones birthday by debugging his old FORTRAN code. He was having trouble giving it since his PDF of his presentation was autoforwarding using Adobe Acrobat. I figured out that Preview would avoid this outcome. I think this is the largest contribution I will have to Computer Science.

Pretty sure you mean this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP2D4DEQBTU — the contribution was crucial IMO :)

I've seen Knuth give other (more recent) talks out of slides like that one (https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/karp80.pdf) where each PDF page is a possibly different size and he wants it displayed full screen individually, but don't recall that problem from other times… so the impact of your contribution may extend beyond that one talk!

Re: How to Become a Hacker

#112

Post by swinglock »

techopoly wrote: post #55
zitterbewegung wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this make me a hacker? Donald Knuth was giving a presentation to celebrate someones birthday by debugging his old FORTRAN code. He was having trouble giving it since his PDF of his presentation was autoforwarding using Adobe Acrobat. I figured out that Preview would avoid this outcome. I think this is the largest contribution I will have to Computer Science.

Nice. Mine's not so impressive, but when I was green and in college, I was casually job shadowing an older friend for a day at a major tech company, and was asked to take a look at some code that had an issue. I spotted the bug in 30 seconds. It was then I realized that even at the top of our profession, everyone is still human beings with their own sets of strengths and weaknesses, and I have just as much potential…

New eyes help a lot. Haven't you glossed over something that once found is obvious, both yourself and with the help of others?

This power is only multiplied when having to answer good questions about the system and even explain it in ways that may be different from your usual model but that clicks better with the other person.

Re: How to Become a Hacker

#113

Post by hvis »

pacomerh wrote: post #109
hvis wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious to see this comment on "Hacker News". Did you think this resource was about the infiltration profession?

Yup, on hacker news, that doesn't mean I like the name of this page, right?

It's clearly not "new", at least.

Re: How to Become a Hacker

#114

Post by zitterbewegung »

svat wrote: post #111
zitterbewegung wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this make me a hacker? Donald Knuth was giving a presentation to celebrate someones birthday by debugging his old FORTRAN code. He was having trouble giving it since his PDF of his presentation was autoforwarding using Adobe Acrobat. I figured out that Preview would avoid this outcome. I think this is the largest contribution I will have to Computer Science.

Pretty sure you mean this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP2D4DEQBTU — the contribution was crucial IMO :) I've seen Knuth give other (more recent) talks out of slides like that one ( https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/karp80.pdf ) where each PDF page is a possibly different size and he wants it displayed full screen individually, but don't recall that problem from other times… so the impact of your contribution m…

I'm reminded of a quote from Steve Jobs about optimizing the Macintosh.

"Well, let's say you can shave 10 seconds off of the boot time. Multiply that by five million users and thats 50 million seconds, every single day. Over a year, that's probably dozens of lifetimes. So if you make it boot ten seconds faster, you've saved a dozen lives. That's really worth it, don't you think?"

I must have optimized Computer Science at least maybe a minute or two. Too bad it won't change my Erdos number.

It was really cool getting a selfie with him.

Re: How to Become a Hacker

#116

Post by boogies »

dsiah wrote: post #81
mettamage wrote: post #19

I'm reposting part of a comment I wrote (and adding to it). My version on how to become a hacker. It's just another reference point. Step 1: Go to http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html Step 1b (bonus): read Hacker News (it actually helped, it also really distracted, the latter part is why it's labeled as bonus ) Step 2: Complete Binary and Malware Analysis at the Vrije Universiteit Step 3: Complete Computer…

Serious Question, why is there such a heavy infatuation / prerequisite to running Linux to become a hacker? Is it for folks who are focused on going below the application layer (working on OS/Kernal etc) or just general. I find my MacOS to be such a comfortable system to hack and wonder if I actually need to move to Linux natively to get more involved in projects below the application layer.

To quote the original guide (http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#skills2) "Under Mac OS X it's possible, but only part of the system is open source — you're likely to hit a lot of walls, and you have to be careful not to develop the bad habit of depending on Apple's proprietary code."

I've enjoyed learning hacking skills by configuring GNU/Linux partially guided by an excellent MIT course by MacOS users (freely available at https://missing.csail.mit.edu/). On MacOS you can get a lot out of customizing your shell, text editor, terminal multiplexer, etc. with dotfiles. But I prefer a more completely free (libre/open) operating system because it doesn't stop there, I've patched and compiled my own custom window manager as well, and my entire operating system has the level of hackability that I love in the terminal. I guess all of the software I've mentioned is not below the application layer but above other applications (except for the most part the text editor).

Re: How to Become a Hacker

#117

Post by __turbobrew__ »

arexxbifs wrote: post #108
non-entity wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can land a job like those at PARC or Bell Labs, then yes, "carreer hacking" is certainly possible. I wonder what the modern version of these are.

In "UNIX: A History and a Memoir", BWK claims he doesn't know of anything equivalent today.

It's kind of sad. Working at 1960-1990 Bell Labs 1127 is my dream.

Maybe in 100 years people will realize that maybe there is something more to business than short term appeasement of shareholders.

Maybe in 100 years people will realize that regulated monopolies are not necessarily a bad thing.

Re: How to Become a Hacker

#118

Post by wbsun »

mettamage wrote: post #19

I'm reposting part of a comment I wrote (and adding to it). My version on how to become a hacker. It's just another reference point. Step 1: Go to http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html Step 1b (bonus): read Hacker News (it actually helped, it also really distracted, the latter part is why it's labeled as bonus ) Step 2: Complete Binary and Malware Analysis at the Vrije Universiteit Step 3: Complete Computer…

So you read ESR's definition of hacker in step 1 but instead focus on what he called "cracker"[1] in step 2/3/4 (not 4b)/5? Either you misunderstood "hacker" or unintentionally gave a misleading example of learning...

[1]: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#what_is

Re: How to Become a Hacker

#119

Post by wbsun »

platz wrote: post #40

Kevin Mitnick destroyed any faith I had in what being a hacker was about.

I have given up educating people I met in daily life who misunderstand "hacker" and "cracker", but now I feel sad even on HN and with ESR's article [1] that people here still misunderstand these two.

Hope most HN readers are not coming here looking for new system breaches or vulnerabilities.

[1]: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#what_is

Re: How to Become a Hacker

#120

Post by porknubbins »

ProAm wrote: post #24

Being a programmer is not being a hacker. This article is about how to become a decent programmer .

The more I learn I’ve started to think more and more there is not a separate skill of hacking except maybe to learn a few tools- the best engineers to reverse engineer a system are generally the ones capable of forward engineering it.
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