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While I agree with you, the notion that hackers are unemployed 16 year olds living in someones basement doesn't really correlate with reality, at least in the c

While I agree with you, the notion that hackers are unemployed 16 year olds living in someones basement doesn't really correlate with reality, at least in the circles I'm in.

wolco2 6y ago
And how many 16 year olds are employed? Some have part time jobs, some have full time jobs in the summer. They generally treat education as a full time activity.
- Kaze404 6y ago
  Depends where you live. When I was 16 (this decade), where I lived it was expected for 16 year olds to have full time jobs to help with family expenses.
jessehorne 6y ago
I'm on HN I think we can assume I agree with you. I think you misunderstood or I didn't explain correctly. The people working on this case should get a job, instead of going after a bunch of hackers. I have a basement and really I was envisioning some really cool space with all sorts of computers, rom chips, LED's, monitors and all that. IDK if I ever become a super notorious, evil, DANGEROUS, absolutely insane video game console modifier, you can bet your butt that I'm gonna be doing it in style, in my basement. EDIT: Some people work for a living...others have a suspect board on their wall with pictures of people that modify video game console, thinking that they're doing good in the world by putting these people in prison. If someone on this case walked by my house, I'd lock the door. You have to be a straight up psychopath to want to throw these people in prison.
marcan_42 6y ago
We all start as unemployed 16 year olds living in someone's basement (I was 16 when the Wii was released, hi!). Then one of three things happens: - You have morals, grow up and shift into a related career (infosec whitehat or some other computer engineering thing), and optionally stay part of the community, staying well away from piracy stuff. - You end up as a government-side black hat, i.e. NSA, NSO, and its ilk. Whether this is moral, that's for you to decide. - You have no morals, embrace piracy, see the money in the business (especially if you also don't care for your users and just want to extract as money from them as possible), and join or start a commercial piracy-focused operation, i.e. modchips and such. This is the Xecuter guys (re not caring for their users, they wrote bricking code for people who tried to mess with their devices, and it had false positives). The Xecuter guys aren't the good guys. Look for the open not for profit homebrew communities if you want legitimate effort to have control over your own hardware. Xecuter just caters to pirates.
- Kaze404 6y ago
  This just sounds like you're saying people who disagree with you have no morals, which is an interesting way to see the world to put it mildly. Either way, not sure how it relates to my comment. I wasn't passing judgement on Team Xecuter or the comment I replied to.
- scaramanga 6y ago
  Or you have no morals whatsoever and decide to join the highest order children's pocket money thieves in the world. The computer games industry. There you can be exploited labour to produce a $100m budget game which makes a 50% profit margin in its first weekend and then 5 years later still ask children for $70 per copy. Or, if they're feeling charitable, they can pay you $150 to get a virtual horse or hat with the game. If you don't like how they play with the toy. You can just steal it right back out of their hands by banning them from playing it with their friends remotely. You can use your profits to lobby for laws which imprison anyone who takes the tiniest dent out of your profits and have them thrown in to prison next to terrorists and serious criminals. Or you can use it to just sue children who are curious about computers. Hi sony!
  - marcan_42 6y ago
    You don't need to lecture me about Sony, seeing as I was named as a defendant in that lawsuit :-) I never said the games industry are the good guys. Certainly not Sony. Though, for comparison, Microsoft hired some of the Xbox 360 hackers, and now the Xbox One has the best security of all the consoles. Food for thought.
    - girvo 6y ago
      The Xbox One also deterred myself from even needing to look at hacking it, by allowing me to run my own code on it (with restricted functionality to be fair). Homebrew is why I was a part of the GCN scene back in the day :)
      - Kaze404 6y ago

While I agree with you, the notion that hackers are unemployed 16 year olds living in someones basement doesn't really correlate with reality, at least in the circles I'm in.

wolco2 6y ago

And how many 16 year olds are employed? Some have part time jobs, some have full time jobs in the summer. They generally treat education as a full time activity.

Kaze404 6y ago
Depends where you live. When I was 16 (this decade), where I lived it was expected for 16 year olds to have full time jobs to help with family expenses.

jessehorne 6y ago

I'm on HN I think we can assume I agree with you. I think you misunderstood or I didn't explain correctly. The people working on this case should get a job, instead of going after a bunch of hackers. I have a basement and really I was envisioning some really cool space with all sorts of computers, rom chips, LED's, monitors and all that. IDK if I ever become a super notorious, evil, DANGEROUS, absolutely insane video game console modifier, you can bet your butt that I'm gonna be doing it in style, in my basement. EDIT: Some people work for a living...others have a suspect board on their wall with pictures of people that modify video game console, thinking that they're doing good in the world by putting these people in prison. If someone on this case walked by my house, I'd lock the door. You have to be a straight up psychopath to want to throw these people in prison.

marcan_42 6y ago

We all start as unemployed 16 year olds living in someone's basement (I was 16 when the Wii was released, hi!). Then one of three things happens: - You have morals, grow up and shift into a related career (infosec whitehat or some other computer engineering thing), and optionally stay part of the community, staying well away from piracy stuff. - You end up as a government-side black hat, i.e. NSA, NSO, and its ilk. Whether this is moral, that's for you to decide. - You have no morals, embrace piracy, see the money in the business (especially if you also don't care for your users and just want to extract as money from them as possible), and join or start a commercial piracy-focused operation, i.e. modchips and such. This is the Xecuter guys (re not caring for their users, they wrote bricking code for people who tried to mess with their devices, and it had false positives). The Xecuter guys aren't the good guys. Look for the open not for profit homebrew communities if you want legitimate effort to have control over your own hardware. Xecuter just caters to pirates.

Kaze404 6y ago
This just sounds like you're saying people who disagree with you have no morals, which is an interesting way to see the world to put it mildly. Either way, not sure how it relates to my comment. I wasn't passing judgement on Team Xecuter or the comment I replied to.
scaramanga 6y ago
Or you have no morals whatsoever and decide to join the highest order children's pocket money thieves in the world. The computer games industry. There you can be exploited labour to produce a $100m budget game which makes a 50% profit margin in its first weekend and then 5 years later still ask children for $70 per copy. Or, if they're feeling charitable, they can pay you $150 to get a virtual horse or hat with the game. If you don't like how they play with the toy. You can just steal it right back out of their hands by banning them from playing it with their friends remotely. You can use your profits to lobby for laws which imprison anyone who takes the tiniest dent out of your profits and have them thrown in to prison next to terrorists and serious criminals. Or you can use it to just sue children who are curious about computers. Hi sony!
- marcan_42 6y ago
  You don't need to lecture me about Sony, seeing as I was named as a defendant in that lawsuit :-) I never said the games industry are the good guys. Certainly not Sony. Though, for comparison, Microsoft hired some of the Xbox 360 hackers, and now the Xbox One has the best security of all the consoles. Food for thought.
  - girvo 6y ago
    The Xbox One also deterred myself from even needing to look at hacking it, by allowing me to run my own code on it (with restricted functionality to be fair). Homebrew is why I was a part of the GCN scene back in the day :)
    - Kaze404 6y ago