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This web page is called "Hacker News". I became a hacker because when I was a kid I did all those things with a computer that I was not meant to do. I edited th

by hannob 9y ago

This web page is called "Hacker News". I became a hacker because when I was a kid I did all those things with a computer that I was not meant to do. I edited the AUTOEXEC.BAT (that's probably a crude analogy to the settings these days). I tried to understand options about memory management to some of the commands that probably weren't meant for anyone except for the developers (with limited success I must say). A lot of things happened during my childhood that were not good for me. Using a computer in unintended ways wasn't one of them. If you want no more hackers in 20 years you should give your kids devices so locked down they can't do anything.

fit2rule 9y ago
You could edit AUTOEXEC.BAT and write your own version. Kids can't do anything like that, at all, on an iPad. They are so far removed from anything even approaching productive tools for modifying/creating new apps on the iPhone, its just not feasible. Your argument would be fair and valid if in fact there were tools onboard to write apps for iOS .. just like there was a copy of EDIT.EXE and/or DEBUG.COM for you to play with on your old PC. But to make things equivalent, you'd have to have encrypted your old DOS disk and locked it down so it only ran one app, and there'd be no chance in hell you'd ever get anywhere even remotely close to GWBASIC.EXE .. So, no not really equivalent. Yes, kids should be encouraged to hack their computers. No, iOS does not allow this in any way, whatsoever. The tools of production have been removed from us.. a technological class system is being enforced by imperial masters. No compiler for you!
- fooker 9y ago
  Did you totally miss 'Playground'? Or are you ignoring it for the purpose of making an argument?
  - andai 9y ago
    Link?
    - morituri 9y ago
      I believe he's referring to Swift Playgrounds https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/ https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/
- Boulth 9y ago
  > Yes, kids should be encouraged to hack their computers. No, iOS does not allow this in any way, whatsoever. The tools of production have been removed from us.. a technological class system is being enforced by imperial masters. No compiler for you! I reached the same conclusion some time ago that smartphones are basically consumer devices designed to, well, consume content, not create anything. I still remember dreaming about a portable computer that I could carry with me when I was a kid but this is not it. Of course you can install termux on Android and there are some toy interpreters but the entire platform is just designed for end users, not creators.
  - matwood 9y ago
    > not create anything. Maybe not in a programming sense, but for image and video creation iOS (and I assume android) has some amazing editing tools.
    - jsjohnst 9y ago
      Let’s not forget music too. There’s amazing music production apps on iOS / Android. On the programming front, I think Swift Playgrounds is fantastic for younger audiences.
- jsjohnst 9y ago
  I guess you don’t realize there’s many equivalents to GWBASIC.EXE on iOS? If you swap out for a different language (say Python as just one example), there’s even more options. That’s not even counting the awesome Swift Playgrounds.
danieldk 9y ago
I agree, I initially got hooked because my dad told me "don't use the computer without my supervision and especially not Norton Commander, since a wrong keypress can remove important directories". So what do I do the next day when he was at work? But during our youth (especially if you are > 30) there were also fewer distractions. No addictive social network sites. And a lot of games were designed to be fun to play, rather than to be addictive so that people buy more in-app purchases. IMO an iPad is a bad device to stimulate a hacker mindset, period (with or without parental controls). For homework (except perhaps writing essays), pen and paper is still pretty hard to beat. As a work 'canvas' paper is far more natural and you have to do the thinking.
- drdaeman 9y ago
  > since a wrong keypress can remove important directories This is actually how one learns to do their backups ;) And it's much better do it as a kid deleting their savegames, than as an adult dropping the production database. > except perhaps writing essays And math. As long as the machine's properly treated as a helper that runs the well-understood transformations without making human mistakes, not some magic tool that gives the right answers. Okay, maybe that's my childhood "trauma" speaking, where I had miscopied "+" as a "-" in a few final transformations (not really affecting anything) and had some quite unpleasant time arguing about this.
dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
That's correct - kids are more and more shielded from the underlying technology. On the other hand, in some countries they are also given an opportunity to program microcontrollers directly (BBC micro:bit), something many of us could only dream of.
ubernostrum 9y ago
This web page is called "Hacker News". I became a hacker because when I was a kid my parents refused to provide me with a computer. So I did all those things I was not meant to do. I collected sand and used a furnace to turn it into silicon wafers. I smelted my own wires and circuits. If you want no more hackers in 20 years, you should give your kids devices that are already built so they don't have to learn the fundamentals and do it themselves. (hint: the above is satire, but is as logically valid as what you posted)
- majewsky 9y ago
  > I collected sand and used a furnace to turn it into silicon wafers. I smelted my own wires and circuits. I've actually done this already... in Minecraft.
vanderZwan 9y ago
> If you want no more hackers in 20 years you should give your kids devices so locked down they can't do anything. Sure, but for the average person iPads are devices that are so locked down that they can't really do anything. People herald the original iPhone as a revolution, but don't seem to realise what kind of revolution. Its main innovation appeared to be the touch-screen interface, but aside from the flexibility this gave for UI design, what this mainly meant was that all of its surface could be turned into a screen. The actual edge it had over the competition is that it was hyper-optimised as a consumption device, a pocket television so people can sell you more crap (oh sorry, "apps") any time of the day, any place in the world. The device itself is a perfect billboard. The iPhone and iPad are designed to appear as having impressive, magical, hard to grok technology under the hood that allows ease of use at the surface. Apple consciously seals the majority of people off from the actual power within, except through buying apps. By default, an iPhone either lets you consume, or create media for consumption yourself via photos and videos. Just think about how much less freedom you have to tinker with your phone on iOs compared to Android as an end-user (and let's not even talk about the demise of Nokia). You have to fully buy into the Apple ecosystem and become an app developer. Because my goodness we can't have people actually be empowered to fully use their computers, can we? Alan Kay has described modern computers and their interfaces as bikes encrusted in gold bling and jewels compared to the "bikes" of twenty, thirty years ago, but we're still stuck with the training wheels[0]. I say this definitely applies to iOs. And if we accept that iOs hardware is mainly designed to be used as a consumption device, that its success comes from being that portable TV (and don't misunderstand: I do have problems with that being the case), then the demands of the author of the article are perfectly sensible, especially if you keep discussions like [1][2] in mind. I doubt you would protest if instead of an iPad, the article described a portable TV with YouTube. EDIT: corrections [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsy9Lotcdbg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsy9Lotcdbg [1] https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-internet-c39c471271d2 https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-in... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16783748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16783748
stuntkite 9y ago
This story is slightly off topic, but I think fits enough. My parents decided to try to lock down my computer usage around 11yo, not so young as OP's kids. My mother was very religious, my step father kind of passive and quiet but a bit radical leaning. I think our eight year cold war over what they thought was pornography was actually something that helped me get more interested in computers. I mean, not that I didn't have an interest in pornography but no more than any other preteen boy. In fact probably a lot less. However, their entire evidence was banners from crack sites left in the cache and an MP3 on a zip disk of 'Fatboy Slim is Fucking in Heaven', but when they ran it it was a video that didn't play because they didn't really know what an MP3 was. Anyway, he had site black lists on the system and later the router, a special censoring ISP, and definitely monitored me like crazy. But I deployed key loggers, booted linux (from any weird media I could figure out), set up ssh tunnels and vpns to scavenged boxes my friends would let me put at their houses, I learned tricks of the windows file system to hide entire sections of the drive. He would nuke my keyloggers and not tell me and rotate his admin passwords. I even monitored him remotely via CDC BackOriface. I learned how to use a hex editor to mask it from virus scan. We have still to this day, never talked about it. I think he was/is proud. I think it's really good to keep the very young ones from wandering into places that will hurt them, but a kid with a curious mind probably isn't going to be stopped with countermeasures. I think communication is key over all. When I look back at it, the thing that upset me the most is the never talking to me about their fears but snooping then gathering whatever confirmation of their fears that they could find and attempting to penalize me. This closed off a lot of communication opportunities we could have had to grow as I was learning about the world, but in the end it helped me learn something that's a big part of my life in a way I wouldn't have learned quite the same way otherwise. Hack the Planet.
jasonkostempski 9y ago
More locked down devices might actually inspire a new generation of hackers. iOS devices are right at the sweet spot where most users wont bother trying to circumvent the restrictions. But the various Amazon devices seem to lite a "fire" under even the slightest of tech literate asses.

by hannob 9y ago

fit2rule 9y ago

You could edit AUTOEXEC.BAT and write your own version. Kids can't do anything like that, at all, on an iPad. They are so far removed from anything even approaching productive tools for modifying/creating new apps on the iPhone, its just not feasible. Your argument would be fair and valid if in fact there were tools onboard to write apps for iOS .. just like there was a copy of EDIT.EXE and/or DEBUG.COM for you to play with on your old PC. But to make things equivalent, you'd have to have encrypted your old DOS disk and locked it down so it only ran one app, and there'd be no chance in hell you'd ever get anywhere even remotely close to GWBASIC.EXE .. So, no not really equivalent. Yes, kids should be encouraged to hack their computers. No, iOS does not allow this in any way, whatsoever. The tools of production have been removed from us.. a technological class system is being enforced by imperial masters. No compiler for you!

fooker 9y ago
Did you totally miss 'Playground'? Or are you ignoring it for the purpose of making an argument?
- andai 9y ago
  Link?
  - morituri 9y ago
    I believe he's referring to Swift Playgrounds https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/ https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/
Boulth 9y ago
> Yes, kids should be encouraged to hack their computers. No, iOS does not allow this in any way, whatsoever. The tools of production have been removed from us.. a technological class system is being enforced by imperial masters. No compiler for you! I reached the same conclusion some time ago that smartphones are basically consumer devices designed to, well, consume content, not create anything. I still remember dreaming about a portable computer that I could carry with me when I was a kid but this is not it. Of course you can install termux on Android and there are some toy interpreters but the entire platform is just designed for end users, not creators.
- matwood 9y ago
  > not create anything. Maybe not in a programming sense, but for image and video creation iOS (and I assume android) has some amazing editing tools.
  - jsjohnst 9y ago
    Let’s not forget music too. There’s amazing music production apps on iOS / Android. On the programming front, I think Swift Playgrounds is fantastic for younger audiences.
jsjohnst 9y ago
I guess you don’t realize there’s many equivalents to GWBASIC.EXE on iOS? If you swap out for a different language (say Python as just one example), there’s even more options. That’s not even counting the awesome Swift Playgrounds.

danieldk 9y ago

I agree, I initially got hooked because my dad told me "don't use the computer without my supervision and especially not Norton Commander, since a wrong keypress can remove important directories". So what do I do the next day when he was at work? But during our youth (especially if you are > 30) there were also fewer distractions. No addictive social network sites. And a lot of games were designed to be fun to play, rather than to be addictive so that people buy more in-app purchases. IMO an iPad is a bad device to stimulate a hacker mindset, period (with or without parental controls). For homework (except perhaps writing essays), pen and paper is still pretty hard to beat. As a work 'canvas' paper is far more natural and you have to do the thinking.

drdaeman 9y ago
> since a wrong keypress can remove important directories This is actually how one learns to do their backups ;) And it's much better do it as a kid deleting their savegames, than as an adult dropping the production database. > except perhaps writing essays And math. As long as the machine's properly treated as a helper that runs the well-understood transformations without making human mistakes, not some magic tool that gives the right answers. Okay, maybe that's my childhood "trauma" speaking, where I had miscopied "+" as a "-" in a few final transformations (not really affecting anything) and had some quite unpleasant time arguing about this.

dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago

That's correct - kids are more and more shielded from the underlying technology. On the other hand, in some countries they are also given an opportunity to program microcontrollers directly (BBC micro:bit), something many of us could only dream of.

ubernostrum 9y ago

This web page is called "Hacker News". I became a hacker because when I was a kid my parents refused to provide me with a computer. So I did all those things I was not meant to do. I collected sand and used a furnace to turn it into silicon wafers. I smelted my own wires and circuits. If you want no more hackers in 20 years, you should give your kids devices that are already built so they don't have to learn the fundamentals and do it themselves. (hint: the above is satire, but is as logically valid as what you posted)

majewsky 9y ago
> I collected sand and used a furnace to turn it into silicon wafers. I smelted my own wires and circuits. I've actually done this already... in Minecraft.

vanderZwan 9y ago

> If you want no more hackers in 20 years you should give your kids devices so locked down they can't do anything. Sure, but for the average person iPads are devices that are so locked down that they can't really do anything. People herald the original iPhone as a revolution, but don't seem to realise what kind of revolution. Its main innovation appeared to be the touch-screen interface, but aside from the flexibility this gave for UI design, what this mainly meant was that all of its surface could be turned into a screen. The actual edge it had over the competition is that it was hyper-optimised as a consumption device, a pocket television so people can sell you more crap (oh sorry, "apps") any time of the day, any place in the world. The device itself is a perfect billboard. The iPhone and iPad are designed to appear as having impressive, magical, hard to grok technology under the hood that allows ease of use at the surface. Apple consciously seals the majority of people off from the actual power within, except through buying apps. By default, an iPhone either lets you consume, or create media for consumption yourself via photos and videos. Just think about how much less freedom you have to tinker with your phone on iOs compared to Android as an end-user (and let's not even talk about the demise of Nokia). You have to fully buy into the Apple ecosystem and become an app developer. Because my goodness we can't have people actually be empowered to fully use their computers, can we? Alan Kay has described modern computers and their interfaces as bikes encrusted in gold bling and jewels compared to the "bikes" of twenty, thirty years ago, but we're still stuck with the training wheels[0]. I say this definitely applies to iOs. And if we accept that iOs hardware is mainly designed to be used as a consumption device, that its success comes from being that portable TV (and don't misunderstand: I do have problems with that being the case), then the demands of the author of the article are perfectly sensible, especially if you keep discussions like [1][2] in mind. I doubt you would protest if instead of an iPad, the article described a portable TV with YouTube. EDIT: corrections [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsy9Lotcdbg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsy9Lotcdbg [1] https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-internet-c39c471271d2 https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-in... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16783748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16783748

stuntkite 9y ago

This story is slightly off topic, but I think fits enough. My parents decided to try to lock down my computer usage around 11yo, not so young as OP's kids. My mother was very religious, my step father kind of passive and quiet but a bit radical leaning. I think our eight year cold war over what they thought was pornography was actually something that helped me get more interested in computers. I mean, not that I didn't have an interest in pornography but no more than any other preteen boy. In fact probably a lot less. However, their entire evidence was banners from crack sites left in the cache and an MP3 on a zip disk of 'Fatboy Slim is Fucking in Heaven', but when they ran it it was a video that didn't play because they didn't really know what an MP3 was. Anyway, he had site black lists on the system and later the router, a special censoring ISP, and definitely monitored me like crazy. But I deployed key loggers, booted linux (from any weird media I could figure out), set up ssh tunnels and vpns to scavenged boxes my friends would let me put at their houses, I learned tricks of the windows file system to hide entire sections of the drive. He would nuke my keyloggers and not tell me and rotate his admin passwords. I even monitored him remotely via CDC BackOriface. I learned how to use a hex editor to mask it from virus scan. We have still to this day, never talked about it. I think he was/is proud. I think it's really good to keep the very young ones from wandering into places that will hurt them, but a kid with a curious mind probably isn't going to be stopped with countermeasures. I think communication is key over all. When I look back at it, the thing that upset me the most is the never talking to me about their fears but snooping then gathering whatever confirmation of their fears that they could find and attempting to penalize me. This closed off a lot of communication opportunities we could have had to grow as I was learning about the world, but in the end it helped me learn something that's a big part of my life in a way I wouldn't have learned quite the same way otherwise. Hack the Planet.

jasonkostempski 9y ago

More locked down devices might actually inspire a new generation of hackers. iOS devices are right at the sweet spot where most users wont bother trying to circumvent the restrictions. But the various Amazon devices seem to lite a "fire" under even the slightest of tech literate asses.