I tried to read through all the direct replies to this comment and I didn’t see this (apologies if I missed it). There’s a huge component of this that’s worth

I tried to read through all the direct replies to this comment and I didn’t see this (apologies if I missed it). There’s a huge component of this that’s worth recognizing: — The current legal landscape and lack of anonymity makes most hacking a non-starter — In the early days someone could explore really far as long as they didn’t call up a government agency or try to steal property. They could play pranks, hook up Rube-Goldberg call chains that circumnavigated the planet, break apart any hardware they owned and assemble it in to anything else, dig in to the binary of any file on a computer, rip apart the memory of any process, post the results in a magazine or even collaborate openly online. And most of the world had no idea. The only time they got in trouble was when authorities saw something they didn’t like and even then most of the time they had no laws to leverage (there are some significant notable examples that got the book thrown at them but those were outliers). Now? Now you can be retroactively targeted for making an emulator for a decades-old game system. Or sharing a single piece of copyrighted content. Or getting close breaking to the DMCA. Or (insert wacky future laws here). The risk is extremely high and the rules are way too thorny. Working for a company means you’re going to have clear guidelines about what you can and can’t use and therefore protection from the worst of the legal minefield that is the US. It also means you have a cushion for if/when you’re targeted. Does anyone know how many true hackers are growing up right now who have already taken their first steps at learning and who have had their posts wiped from the internet or their inboxes “graced” with cease and desist letters (or worse), or their accounts outright terminated? I don’t think there even is a way to know. How many of those kids would be crazy enough to keep being public, and how many of those would learn enough through private self-discovery that they can significantly contribute to the hacking scene as adults?