5 ms·

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.
    - hatware 5y ago
      Can you provide a counter-example or is this all anecdotes?
- rolph 5y ago
  these young adults havent learned the utility and nessecity of anonymity
- monocasa 5y ago
  A lot of them started as young adults, but the scene has been going on for over 20 years. Some people quit over time, and some other joined as they got old enough to contribute, but I wouldn't paint with as wide of a brush as you're doing.
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.

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.
  - hatware 5y ago
    Can you provide a counter-example or is this all anecdotes?
rolph 5y ago
these young adults havent learned the utility and nessecity of anonymity
monocasa 5y ago
A lot of them started as young adults, but the scene has been going on for over 20 years. Some people quit over time, and some other joined as they got old enough to contribute, but I wouldn't paint with as wide of a brush as you're doing.

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.