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Are Hackers the New Luddites? [audio]

novaramedia.com

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Re: Are Hackers the New Luddites? [audio]

#51

Post by reaperducer »

narrator wrote: post #5

I was trying to get a zoomer relative of mine interested in technology. I said, "let's mine cryptocurrency." He didn't want to because, according to him, "that's hacking." Kids these days!

I was trying to get a zoomer relative of mine interested in technology. I said, "let's mine cryptocurrency." He didn't want to because, according to him, "that's hacking." Kids these days!

The Z's are shaping up to be... interesting. From what I've seen so far, they're turning out to be very much like Gen X.

On the other hand, I see very little difference between the Millennials and the Boomers. I find it amusing to see them trading barbs about one another, while exhibiting nearly identical traits. (Social media addiction, persecution complex, entitlement complex, obsession with money, etc.)

Re: Are Hackers the New Luddites? [audio]

#52

Post by N00bN00b »

100011_100001 wrote: post #29
SCHiM wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grew up reading Phrack too. Work as pentester these days. I understand code deeply, and have tried my hand at everything from memory corruption exploits to javascript SPA apps. I hate technology more and more. It's moving in the wrong direction. Almost everything technological seems to be used to increase control over individuals, extract money, track or predict. No company can seem to withstand the lure and the powe…

Not a pentester but a code monkey. Here is what worries me. As we get tracked more, algorithms will start making better predictions about us. The negative side of this is that you will get offered ads that are specifically tailored to your interests, at the time you are most likely to buy at a price point you can afford. Essentially you will get controlled and primed by machines to consume, feel certain ways, agree w…

>The negative side of this is that you will get offered ads that are specifically tailored to your interests, at the time you are most likely to buy at a price point you can afford.

To me the current system doesn't seem all that different. It's more crude, but it's already trying to do that. So I think we both have been in this dystopia for some time now.

I don't see a problem though. Consumption of ads is a free choice. People have made the choice of wanting to be manipulated for thousands of years (religion or patriotism are common examples).

I removed all ads from my household nearly two decades ago. Anyone that doesn't do that, doesn't object to the manipulation. Everyone knows what ads are for, what they do. It's not like it's a secret. A lot of people just don't mind being manipulated. And changing that I suspect is impossible.

Re: Are Hackers the New Luddites? [audio]

#55

Post by AnimalMuppet »

IAmWorried wrote: post #6

Beside the point, but IMO, all podcasts should have a transcription option as well. I unfortunately just don't have the attention span to listen to hours of people talking, but put it in text format and I have zero issues.

You can't control-f video.

Re: Are Hackers the New Luddites? [audio]

#56

Post by calvinmorrison »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #35
calvinmorrison wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My job offered to 'train' me in using salesforce, all paid trip with training etc. I switched jobs. Now I read perl for a living so who knows if I made the right move!

> Now I read perl for a living so who knows if I made the right move! I know it's fashionable to hate Perl these days, but I think this sounds like great and rare fun in 2021.

Perl is great. Also we're hiring several roles

https://www.fastmail.com/about/jobs/

Re: Are Hackers the New Luddites? [audio]

#57

Post by ethbr0 »

kodah wrote: post #27
ethbr0 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you can simplify this entire thread into: Software that's built with money, keeps making design decisions that increase profit. Software that's built ambivalent to money, makes other design decisions. Most software is built with money. The only thing that feels like it will fix this is a software/hardware bill of rights. E.g. right to repair, right to source, etc. Otherwise, things will get more exploitive, a…

Right to source sounds strong, but I am curious about how a right to source for software that's no longer produced would work. This could be very beneficial to society, and perceivably speed up progress quite a bit.

IMHO, that should be seen as a tangential right to repair.

Either the entity that sold you the software (or their successors) gives you standard access, tools, and specs to effect standard repairs.

Or if that entity cannot fulfill that responsibility (say, because they went bankrupt), their code is open-sourced.

The situation to avoid is "nobody cares about this thing, and nobody is available to service it."

Re: Are Hackers the New Luddites? [audio]

#58

Post by ethbr0 »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #24
ethbr0 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you can simplify this entire thread into: Software that's built with money, keeps making design decisions that increase profit. Software that's built ambivalent to money, makes other design decisions. Most software is built with money. The only thing that feels like it will fix this is a software/hardware bill of rights. E.g. right to repair, right to source, etc. Otherwise, things will get more exploitive, a…

Frankly, any discussion about this invariably becomes a critique of capitalism. If you further generalize “software” to “organization”, your examples would include the various decisions companies make to increase profit: polluting, exploiting their workers, etc. At some point, we just have to acknowledge that a free market simply does not work.

A free market is extremely efficient at some things. It's also extremely terrible at other things.

Of all the options, a free market with regulation to internalize social externalities seems the optimal solution.

Re: Are Hackers the New Luddites? [audio]

#59

Post by TacticalCoder »

I'm not against technology: I'm against inferior technology. I know what you can build with a computer: with a smartphone not so much. I don't see many professional sound engineers, architects, chip engineers, developers and all the myriad of profession requiring serious tools to do serious work working from their mobile phone or from their Internet-of-Insecure-Shitty-Poinless-Thing-with-a-3-inches-screen (yup, I know, there's that one guy who made a hit pop music tune using only his smartphone, but that's more than uncommon).

Yet because there are a very select few megastar who became famous because they kept posting selfies taken with their smartphones, we are to believe that the smartphone "is the new computer".

Luddite? What about we talk about the specs of my workstation vs your IoT device? We'll see who's adopting modern tech ; )

Re: Are Hackers the New Luddites? [audio]

#60

Post by shadowgovt »

_wldu wrote: post #39

A better term than Luddite may be obstructionist. Hackers object to new technology due to their disagreeing with everything Cloud, Tracking, limited user rights, DRM, etc.

It depends on how wide you cast the net of "hacker."

I think people who take things apart for fun and mash them together in new, unplanned ways can tend to build up a healthy respect for unexpected consequences. That can translate into an extremely reasonable tendency to shoulder the role of doom-sayer for any large system that could have huge societal impact. That's the thing about the Luddites... They were, perhaps, short-sighted, but they weren't exactly wrong. The Industrial Revolution was absolutely disastrous for entire ways of life and paved over tens of thousands of people on the path of progress. I personally see their failing not in their desired goals but in their methods.

... but on the other hand, hackers are also the ones building cloud services, user tracking systems, and DRM protocols. Again, depending on how wide you cast the net.

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