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Everything about it is fascinating. These people all have day jobs yet they provide a better experience than the multi-trillion dollar corporations that are rel

Everything about it is fascinating. These people all have day jobs yet they provide a better experience than the multi-trillion dollar corporations that are releasing the product in the first place.

londons_explore 5y ago
These people probably all have day school... I think most people who get past school age tend to retire out of this crowd of people...
- Wiseacre 5y ago
  I would just like to point out that this is a forum called Hacker News.
  - nurettin 5y ago
    People come to HN to discuss whether the hacking blog's title was too big for their tastes or if the content is readable by every disabled person under the sun. The comment section is literally pain incarnate for actual hackers.
- hatware 5y ago
  Are you implying that young adults are more responsible for the state of piracy today than adults? I don't see that at all.
  - dijit 5y ago
    I feel like I have to defend the parent here. My experience in the nulling/warez/pirating community is that it tends to be young adults doing the majority of the work and mostly they do it for kudos and not monetary benefit. Adults might be giving them the kudos, but the hard work (again, in my experience) is young adults, of school age.
    - hatware 5y ago
      Young adults aren't breaking into streaming devices to extract the CDM keys. They also aren't running trackers like Orpheus and Redacted. Those are small examples, but I'm not sure I understand how young adults would ever have the mobility and network to do these things.
      - floatingatoll 5y ago
        Er, you may not have been a young adult with l33t hardware hacking skills, but others were.
        hatware 5y ago
        Odd comparison, I wasn't basing this off of my experience as a young adult.
      - betterunix2 5y ago
        George Hotz (geohot) was a teenager when he cracked the iPhone and was 20 when he cracked the PS3. So...yes, young adults certainly can extract keys if they have the time and motivation, and being young adults they often have plenty of time on their hands.
        hatware 5y ago
        Using George Hotz as an example is pretty disingenuous. He is clearly not your average young adult, even for the average of HN.
        Sunspark 5y ago
        That was some funny stuff. Watching this guy make Sony freak out and chase after him down the street with lawyers. Halt varlet, for I shalt sue!
      - selfhoster11 5y ago
        They are. Plenty of them are more than talented enough for it.
  - Commodore63 5y ago
    It was definitely the case for me! I aged out of warez when I got a full time job.
    - jorvi 5y ago
      I think the warez ‘golden age’ was 1995-2015. Before that most of the protections were just not that severe (and thus interesting), and after 2015 Steam, Netflix and Spotify severely stemmed the influx of people being exposed to piracy and thus potentially going deeper into the culture. Tangentially related but I think that’s also why in a strange way the advent of the smartphone and other ‘curated technological experiences’ has lowered computer literacy for the average person born after ~1995.
      - arsome 5y ago
        Yeah, I think software piracy was a huge part of technological learning for me from an early age, figuring out how to the name of what I was even looking for (cracks, Warez), using astalavista, early torrent clients, forwarding ports, finding good torrents, using a firewall to block applications, applying cracks, learning about loaders, key generators, patches, protectors, and later reverse engineering and cracking software myself... staring at assembly in IDA for a few days straight so you can do something no one else online has done is a pretty interesting experience and probably one of the most formative ones to my enjoyment of computing.

Everything about it is fascinating. These people all have day jobs yet they provide a better experience than the multi-trillion dollar corporations that are releasing the product in the first place.

londons_explore 5y ago

These people probably all have day school... I think most people who get past school age tend to retire out of this crowd of people...

Wiseacre 5y ago
I would just like to point out that this is a forum called Hacker News.
- nurettin 5y ago
  People come to HN to discuss whether the hacking blog's title was too big for their tastes or if the content is readable by every disabled person under the sun. The comment section is literally pain incarnate for actual hackers.
hatware 5y ago
Are you implying that young adults are more responsible for the state of piracy today than adults? I don't see that at all.
- dijit 5y ago
  I feel like I have to defend the parent here. My experience in the nulling/warez/pirating community is that it tends to be young adults doing the majority of the work and mostly they do it for kudos and not monetary benefit. Adults might be giving them the kudos, but the hard work (again, in my experience) is young adults, of school age.
  - hatware 5y ago
    Young adults aren't breaking into streaming devices to extract the CDM keys. They also aren't running trackers like Orpheus and Redacted. Those are small examples, but I'm not sure I understand how young adults would ever have the mobility and network to do these things.
    - floatingatoll 5y ago
      Er, you may not have been a young adult with l33t hardware hacking skills, but others were.
      - hatware 5y ago
        Odd comparison, I wasn't basing this off of my experience as a young adult.
    - betterunix2 5y ago
      George Hotz (geohot) was a teenager when he cracked the iPhone and was 20 when he cracked the PS3. So...yes, young adults certainly can extract keys if they have the time and motivation, and being young adults they often have plenty of time on their hands.
      - hatware 5y ago
        Using George Hotz as an example is pretty disingenuous. He is clearly not your average young adult, even for the average of HN.
        Sunspark 5y ago
        That was some funny stuff. Watching this guy make Sony freak out and chase after him down the street with lawyers. Halt varlet, for I shalt sue!
    - selfhoster11 5y ago
      They are. Plenty of them are more than talented enough for it.
- Commodore63 5y ago
  It was definitely the case for me! I aged out of warez when I got a full time job.
  - jorvi 5y ago
    I think the warez ‘golden age’ was 1995-2015. Before that most of the protections were just not that severe (and thus interesting), and after 2015 Steam, Netflix and Spotify severely stemmed the influx of people being exposed to piracy and thus potentially going deeper into the culture. Tangentially related but I think that’s also why in a strange way the advent of the smartphone and other ‘curated technological experiences’ has lowered computer literacy for the average person born after ~1995.
    - arsome 5y ago
      Yeah, I think software piracy was a huge part of technological learning for me from an early age, figuring out how to the name of what I was even looking for (cracks, Warez), using astalavista, early torrent clients, forwarding ports, finding good torrents, using a firewall to block applications, applying cracks, learning about loaders, key generators, patches, protectors, and later reverse engineering and cracking software myself... staring at assembly in IDA for a few days straight so you can do something no one else online has done is a pretty interesting experience and probably one of the most formative ones to my enjoyment of computing.