4 ms·

You would be surprised by the amount of high-schoolers doing incredible work in open source software.

by ognarb 6y ago

tomnipotent 6y ago
Like George Hotz, who at 17 removed the SIM lock on the iPhone and a few years later got sued by Sony for breaking security on the PlayStation 3.
- Medox 6y ago
  Obligatory George Hotz (geohot) PS3 rap from back then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iUvuaChDEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iUvuaChDEg First time he appeared in the PS3 jailbreak scene I was like "wait, is this a Romanian?! Some boy-genius expat?!" because George is a common first name here and (fun fact) Hotz means "thief". Actually it is written hoț but Romanian teens sometimes write tz instead of ț. He was meant to be a key thief, I guess. I still wonder if they got to examine the video in the courtroom...
- marcan_42 6y ago
  As someone who has seen both of them work (and who got sued on the same lawsuit)... I wish people would stop putting geohot up on a pedestal. His entire career has been about self-promotion (something which he is very good at), but he got his start taking credit for other people's work (that SIM lock stuff was largely just implementing stuff other people told him about). He even took credit from my/our (fail0verflow's) work when he did the thing that got him sued (published some PS3 private keys), which was just him implementing the ECDSA attack we had detailed in a presentation a week prior, without a single mention until I emailed him to ask him to do so. Alyssa's Panfrost work is leaps and bounds ahead of anything geohot has ever personally done. Pretty much everyone of our profile gets started at around that age (I was porting Linux to a weirdo ISP router at 14 and working on Wii hardware and homebrew, the first "well known" thing I did, starting at 16-17), but somehow geohot has marketed himself to be some kind of genius when he's one of the more mediocre hackers I've known. He's not bad these days, but he has always represented his skills as being way better than they actually are, and taken solo credit for work that involved other people, his entire career.
  - tomnipotent 6y ago
    There's more than enough recognition to go around.
    - jiofih 6y ago
      [Original comment: “How did you manage to make this about you?”] Someone mentioned the person that stole his work as someone to look up to. It seems like a pretty justifiable personal grudge.
      - marcan_42 6y ago
        I just wish he weren't the default "genius teenage hacker" that people keep bringing up in completely unrelated threads. Let that honor go to any of the many humbler folks more skilled than him and who can actually work in teams with others :) (there's a reason why he's never been able been able to hold a job more than briefly as an intern...)
        dmix 6y ago
        I don’t follow the above stuff close enough to have an opinion on the matter, mostly just hijacking this thread to say I’ve been following you on Twitter for a couple yrs now and have tons of respect for the work you do. A rare talent that from what I’ve seen. Who also gets respect from people way smarter than myself. That’s always a signal I look for when I’m in out of my scope. I hope this project works out for you. Always so much BS on the people side in OSS, something I learned the hard-way long ago. But talent is talent, work speaks for itself, etc. You’ve certainly chosen a general enough topic/niche to draw lots of generic opinions and the whole peanut gallery stuff. So I predict this road will require quite of bit of blinders to operate without the constant distractions from the non contributing opinionated mediocrity. The only way to stay productive in such an environment IMO.
        rohit89 6y ago
        > there's a reason why he's never been able been able to hold a job more than briefly as an intern... Guess that's why he decided to start his own company :)

You would be surprised by the amount of high-schoolers doing incredible work in open source software.

by ognarb 6y ago

You would be surprised by the amount of high-schoolers doing incredible work in open source software.

Like George Hotz, who at 17 removed the SIM lock on the iPhone and a few years later got sued by Sony for breaking security on the PlayStation 3.

Medox 6y ago
Obligatory George Hotz (geohot) PS3 rap from back then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iUvuaChDEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iUvuaChDEg First time he appeared in the PS3 jailbreak scene I was like "wait, is this a Romanian?! Some boy-genius expat?!" because George is a common first name here and (fun fact) Hotz means "thief". Actually it is written hoț but Romanian teens sometimes write tz instead of ț. He was meant to be a key thief, I guess. I still wonder if they got to examine the video in the courtroom...
marcan_42 6y ago
As someone who has seen both of them work (and who got sued on the same lawsuit)... I wish people would stop putting geohot up on a pedestal. His entire career has been about self-promotion (something which he is very good at), but he got his start taking credit for other people's work (that SIM lock stuff was largely just implementing stuff other people told him about). He even took credit from my/our (fail0verflow's) work when he did the thing that got him sued (published some PS3 private keys), which was just him implementing the ECDSA attack we had detailed in a presentation a week prior, without a single mention until I emailed him to ask him to do so. Alyssa's Panfrost work is leaps and bounds ahead of anything geohot has ever personally done. Pretty much everyone of our profile gets started at around that age (I was porting Linux to a weirdo ISP router at 14 and working on Wii hardware and homebrew, the first "well known" thing I did, starting at 16-17), but somehow geohot has marketed himself to be some kind of genius when he's one of the more mediocre hackers I've known. He's not bad these days, but he has always represented his skills as being way better than they actually are, and taken solo credit for work that involved other people, his entire career.
- tomnipotent 6y ago
  There's more than enough recognition to go around.
  - jiofih 6y ago
    [Original comment: “How did you manage to make this about you?”] Someone mentioned the person that stole his work as someone to look up to. It seems like a pretty justifiable personal grudge.
    - marcan_42 6y ago
      I just wish he weren't the default "genius teenage hacker" that people keep bringing up in completely unrelated threads. Let that honor go to any of the many humbler folks more skilled than him and who can actually work in teams with others :) (there's a reason why he's never been able been able to hold a job more than briefly as an intern...)
      - dmix 6y ago
        I don’t follow the above stuff close enough to have an opinion on the matter, mostly just hijacking this thread to say I’ve been following you on Twitter for a couple yrs now and have tons of respect for the work you do. A rare talent that from what I’ve seen. Who also gets respect from people way smarter than myself. That’s always a signal I look for when I’m in out of my scope. I hope this project works out for you. Always so much BS on the people side in OSS, something I learned the hard-way long ago. But talent is talent, work speaks for itself, etc. You’ve certainly chosen a general enough topic/niche to draw lots of generic opinions and the whole peanut gallery stuff. So I predict this road will require quite of bit of blinders to operate without the constant distractions from the non contributing opinionated mediocrity. The only way to stay productive in such an environment IMO.
      - rohit89 6y ago
        > there's a reason why he's never been able been able to hold a job more than briefly as an intern... Guess that's why he decided to start his own company :)