Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

vice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 204 posts

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#141

Post by meindnoch »

JenrHywy wrote: post #122
paxys wrote: post #110

Trying to get through hardware/software locks, content filters, firewalls, spyware etc. at school is usually the first experience kids have with "hacker" culture. For a lot of them (myself included) this eventually leads up to a real career in the tech industry. So godspeed, all you young rebels.

I would be more sympathetic to this line of thinking if I didn't have a 16yo who's going to be lucky to get through high school because he can't focus in class. I would have been the same at his age, if someone had plopped an internet connected device on my desk and told me to focus on school work.

Easy, put them on Adderall.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#142

Post by casey2 »

gnicholas wrote: post #75

A school IT specialist told me about a clever student hack. Their school blocks all sorts of traffic, but teachers can allow exceptions via a password. One student installed a keylogger onto his BYOD laptop (many schools allow kids to bring their own, or use a mediocre school-provided device), and then made up a plausible excuse to hit the firewall (e.g., doing a report on anatomy, but innocuous site was blocked beca…

>do you tell teachers never to grant exceptions on student-owned devices?

Yes. This is correct from both a security and educational perspective. What kind of example does the opposite set for children?

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#143

Post by ben_w »

kramerger wrote: post #131
JenrHywy wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be more sympathetic to this line of thinking if I didn't have a 16yo who's going to be lucky to get through high school because he can't focus in class. I would have been the same at his age, if someone had plopped an internet connected device on my desk and told me to focus on school work.

Do you think Shakespeare would have written Hamlet if he was given an iPhone on his 12th birthday? :)

As the curtain rises, we find ourselves in a modern-day tech company's headquarters. The CEO, named Claudius, is throwing a party to celebrate the launch of their latest product. The company's young and brilliant software engineer, Hamlet, is also present, but he's not in a celebratory mood. He's been struggling with the recent death of his father, the company's former CEO, and is still mourning his loss.

Suddenly, the lights flicker, and a strange sound fills the room. The guests look around in confusion as a large screen on the wall flickers to life, displaying a glowing text box. The screen reads:

"I am the Ghost in the Machine. I am the product of your algorithms and data. I am here to tell you the truth about your company."

etc. etc.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#144

Post by ben_w »

Springtime wrote: post #125
paxys wrote: post #110

Trying to get through hardware/software locks, content filters, firewalls, spyware etc. at school is usually the first experience kids have with "hacker" culture. For a lot of them (myself included) this eventually leads up to a real career in the tech industry. So godspeed, all you young rebels.

Saw a user in a security community recently who said they set a bounty for their kids if they can bypass their parental locks and show how they did it.

25 years ago, I was getting past the lock by holding down the shift key while booting up the art department's Mac, which I had to do to get some schoolwork done.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#146

Post by geraldwhen »

creatonez wrote: post #98
gnicholas wrote: post #75

A school IT specialist told me about a clever student hack. Their school blocks all sorts of traffic, but teachers can allow exceptions via a password. One student installed a keylogger onto his BYOD laptop (many schools allow kids to bring their own, or use a mediocre school-provided device), and then made up a plausible excuse to hit the firewall (e.g., doing a report on anatomy, but innocuous site was blocked beca…

> The school eventually figured this out. It's not clear how they avoid the situation however; do you tell teachers never to grant exceptions on student-owned devices? Make it so the firewall exception process on student devices gives a 6 digit code which the instructor enters into a staff-only interface on the instructor's device, so that the process always requires input on both a student and an instructor's comput…

This requires two devices to have working internet, which is often not the case at schools. Teachers are computer illiterate, to boot.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#148

Post by spiffytech »

out-of-ideas wrote: post #93
gnicholas wrote: post #75

A school IT specialist told me about a clever student hack. Their school blocks all sorts of traffic, but teachers can allow exceptions via a password. One student installed a keylogger onto his BYOD laptop (many schools allow kids to bring their own, or use a mediocre school-provided device), and then made up a plausible excuse to hit the firewall (e.g., doing a report on anatomy, but innocuous site was blocked beca…

TOTP would do well here for this case for a really simple path forward - but then having the student login themselves and the request be formally logged and allowed via not-their-computer would offer a bit more scaleability and auditability

> TOTP would do well here for this case

Indeed: this is almost exactly the attack type TOTP was designed for.

The idea was that if someone intercepted your network traffic and captured your password, it wouldn't do them any good without also having your code generator.

It turns out that if you have a live MitM connection there are ways around that problem, but TOTP is still helpful against other attacks.

I agree that for this situation, it's probably better to focus on detection than bulletproof enforcement.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#149

Post by prepend »

notRobot wrote: post #128
JenrHywy wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be more sympathetic to this line of thinking if I didn't have a 16yo who's going to be lucky to get through high school because he can't focus in class. I would have been the same at his age, if someone had plopped an internet connected device on my desk and told me to focus on school work.

I'm sure you know this, but trouble focusing could stem from many issues, the vast majority of which can be treated. ADHD is a big one, but there's others too, some behavioural. If you haven't already seen one, I'd book an appointment with a psychiatrist and/or a psychologist. I wish my parents had done so when I was the student with trouble focusing so I could have received the help I desperately needed but never go…

Trouble could also stem from having an attention sucking device in front of them at all times.

Suggesting ADHD to parents any time kids struggle is such a comical cliche. Of course it could be that, but when you hear hooves outside the door think horses not zebras.

It’s like if there was a tv playing in every classroom. Imagine how distracting that is.

I remember reading Ender’s Game and how the kids used tablets and thinking how great that would be. Instead schools wrote zero software and just plopped shitty vanilla windows that shows Kim kardashian news when you open a new tab and expected kids to stitch together their own education plans.

As a parent it’s been hard experiencing schools get through this learning period and maybe one day it will be good.

But I had two different schools with two different kids suggest adhd as the reason my kids struggle with an average of 21 different apps used in 6 classes each throughout the year. Of course physicians said no. But it’s funny how all of a sudden schools are detecting growth in adhd at the same time they’re issuing laptops.

Re: Kids trying to play video games on school laptops

#150

Post by prepend »

skupig wrote: post #129
JenrHywy wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be more sympathetic to this line of thinking if I didn't have a 16yo who's going to be lucky to get through high school because he can't focus in class. I would have been the same at his age, if someone had plopped an internet connected device on my desk and told me to focus on school work.

I spent all my time online, barely passed high school, and skipped college to start my career. School doesn't work for everyone! If your kid has the space to freely explore his interests, I bet anything he'll be fine.

Being in programming I know a lot of people with similar backgrounds who are very successful now.

Being from the poor, rural south I know far more who only did your first part and now are not doing well at all, or are dead.

I’m not happy with the odds when risking my own kid.

Post reply on HN