51–60 of 132 posts
My best advice to any budding hacker would be for them to find a job as unrelated to computers as possible, but which leaves them with enough free time to tinker with whatever currently tickles their fancy.
That's interesting. Not sure I agree -- being into computers as a kid is what got me into programming. But there's probably more than one way to do it.
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…
"A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth." -- Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
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…
Are those courses at Vrije Universiteit open in some way? Is the best approach to grab the syllabus for each one and go through it that way?
I know it's the COVID season(s) but other than that: these courses cost 1200 euro's for non-EU students, I think. I'm relatively sure about the price (range: 1000 - 1500 euro's). I'm not sure if they allow contract students from the US.
Let me think about this for a bit.
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.
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 as anyone else.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m sure this works for some people in the right context, but so many great OG hackers were career computer scientists and engineers. I mean, people like the original Xerox PARC guys, Woz, Cerf, Diffie, the RSA guys, TBL, and too many more to name. They were all working in jobs or started companies that allowed them to devote the bulk of their time and energy to hacking and building. There are only so many hours in t…
Most of those guys operated under circumstances vastly different from today. If you can land a job like those at PARC or Bell Labs, then yes, "carreer hacking" is certainly possible. Considering how many IT professionals there are now and how few there were back then, I'd say those kinds of jobs are even more scarce now than they used to be. It's not impossible, but it's not a realistic expectation. > If you’re devot…
A hacker might be the modern independent scholar. You can follow your tech curiosity, self-study and work on your own little projects and be intellectually and creatively rewarded. Start anywhere, any programming tutorial, or any arduino project recipe. Get immersed and always figure out how the stuff really works. You are most likely smart enough to do it. If employment is an issue, well, what you learned from the a…
Kevin Mitnick destroyed any faith I had in what being a hacker was about.
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…
I love how, this being Richard Stallman, I actually believed the sword thing.
If you need to ask How to Become a Hacker, you are not going to be one. It all depends on your personal curiosity, either you have it or you don't. PS: Found 0day on Paypal when I was 12 in the early '00s, never got paid or recognized for it :(
There is a certain kind of person that will become some kind of hacker no matter what, but with advice and guidance they will get a lot further than without.