Caveat Task: Hacker Culture

[mikeizbicki]

Reply to this issue with a summary of what you did for the hacker culture task. See the task instructions for instructions.

[iamasteriix]

I'm not quite sure I understand how we should summarize the list of activities we do: do we make a list for all the activities at the end of the semester, or are we allowed to have discussions about each one right after we are done with them?

Frankly, I have quite a bit to say about some of the activities I may already be familiar with, among other things I am very passionate about and might want to make people aware of.

As I await a response, allow me to start with GOOGLE IS BAD. I believe some of the most fundamental rights on the internet include privacy, anonymity and autonomy, and Google's entire business model is laser-focused on violating each one of these three, and some. You've probably read about it so I'll just focus on the search engine to try and keep you reading:

Take a look at the resulting url for the search query NFS Hot Pursuit 2 on Duck, Bing, and Google, all of them on Edge as a control:

1. Duck.com - https://duckduckgo.com/?q=NFS+Hot+Pursuit+2&t=h_&ia=web

2. Bing.com (which gets such a bad rep even though it could take on google one to one and probably win) - https://www.bing.com/search?q=NFS+Hot+Pursuit+2&cvid=b24027c1845e4730a2d0a84f373bec0c&aqs=edge..69i57j0l6j69i60l2.989j0j4&FORM=ANAB01&PC=U531

3. Google.com - https://www.google.com/search?q=NFS+Hot+Pursuit+2&sxsrf=AOaemvIDD6t-jbqa1ZLkep3c9CrBt6fiUA%3A1642732655738&source=hp&ei=bxzqYZiLJM3FkPIPhtiREA&iflsig=ALs-wAMAAAAAYeoqf8EYNHetr0_aL9mycvPkh_VFhjBw&ved=0ahUKEwjY_paD6MH1AhXNIkQIHQZsBAIQ4dUDCAo&uact=5&oq=NFS+Hot+Pursuit+2&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAMyBQguEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCC4QgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEUABYAGDfB2gAcAB4AIABe4gBe5IBAzAuMZgBAKABAqABAQ&sclient=gws-wiz

Most of us have probably wondered why Google's URL is so long, and maybe intuitively know it's some of the creepy stuff they're always doing (also, I'm focusing on Google because it's so dominant). Well, here's a list of all the stuff about you in that url and more.

Why should I care? The example I like to give is that you know how no two people use their trackpad in the exact same way? Yes? You know about health insurance is a thing, no? Companies like Google and HP have trackers on your mouse they use to analyze how you use it to predict for things like arthritis, real juicy information an insurance company can use against you. Here is a Medium article that shows how easy it is to make predictive models like this. There are a ton of other examples; my point is, you should care because this information is being weaponized against you multiple times a day, every single day.

I'll conclude by saying that my goal is never to tell people what they should do. I believe in and value autonomy a great deal, and I think harmful business practices like Google's violate people's autonomy. Ideally, we should live in a world where I don't use Google because I think it is evil, and you use it because you know exactly what they do and their consequences, and you don't see a big deal, and your concerned friend doesn't want to drop Google, but they employ tools to mitigate its extreme overreach.

If you're interested, (shamelessly promotes my blog) let's talk about VPNs, and let me know what other stuff you would want me to write about in my blog.

Happy hacking!

[mikeizbicki]

@ceejay-el

I'm not quite sure I understand how we should summarize the list of activities we do: do we make a list for all the activities at the end of the semester, or are we allowed to have discussions about each one right after we are done with them?

Whichever you prefer is fine.

Frankly, I have quite a bit to say about some of the activities I may already be familiar with, among other things I am very passionate about and might want to make people aware of.

That's fantastic that you've got strong opinions about this stuff! What you wrote, however, isn't what the task is asking for. The caveat_tasks/culture.md file contains several specific videos/readings that I've selected. You must complete and comment on those specific readings/viewings. I've selected these tasks specifically because they are historical/cultural items that come up a lot in CS circles that I think many students are unlikely to have been exposed to.

The instructions are definitely a bit confusing as-is. In the past I've assigned particular readings/viewings with no options, but I tried to add more flexibility to the assignment in this iteration so that people could focus on things that interest them a bit more. The downside is that it complicates the instructions. Per https://github.com/mikeizbicki/cmc-csci143/issues/85#issuecomment-1016567399, a PR that clarified the instructions would result in extra credit :)

[iamasteriix]

Yeah that was an intentionally wide sidestep. I, nonetheless, was wondering about the amount of flexibility we had away from the tasks.

[mikeizbicki]

@ceejay-el I like tangents :)

There's a lot of flexibility with the assignment, but you'll have to chat with me in person (once we can do that). I explicitly want to expose you to things that you wouldn't likely have seen otherwise, and I'm pretty confident I can find some material like that that would fit your interests.

[afroCoderHanane]

Culture Caveat Task Submission:

1- Phrack: The conscience of a Hacker by the Mentor

Interesting facts: I liked the fact that the mentor portrayed hacking differently by relating it to a curious mindset instead of how society views hackers. Hackers are not criminals, they are curious, the true criminals are people that build weapons dedicated to killing people.

2- Phrack Scan Man by Taran King

Interesting facts: Scan Man believes that hackers/phreaks nowadays do it to impress not to learn. An interesting fact from the scan man article is learning that Hackers are also called phreaks.

3- WarGames

I was impressed by how David hacked into the system WOPR with a password such as Joshua after spending days researching Falken. I would say the biggest lesson I learned from that movie is not to choose common and easily guessable passwords.

5- Mr. Robot Season 1:

I really thought at first that Elliott was Mr. Robot, but in fact, it was his dad instead Christian Slader. This is the best hacker movie I've ever watched. I loved the little drama involved with Evil corp and how capitalism cause the death of some employees in the past. I mean long story short, there is still a geek picture associated with computer geniuses but, as phreaks. I don't know if Elliot should be viewed as a Hero or just that typical picture of a hacker. How he was invited to F-society was really dope!

[axelahdritz]

HACKER CULTURE POST:

5 points: 1984 - George Orwell

There are some fearful trade-offs that come with the accumulation of technological power, and I was fascinated by Ingsoc's focus on language throughout the book as an instrument of political control. Something that sits uneasy with me is the abbreviated nature of Newspeak which (I assume) was created to alleviate the ideological and personal requirements of understanding that is needed to say anything at all, creating reflexive slogans of thought itself. It made me uneasy because it forced me to think about how many of our thoughts and words are abbreviated in modern internet lingo... is this something we should fight against?

1 point: “Hacker’s Manifesto”

I think the whole article—and the institutional fear presented by the mere existence of the internet community—is captured in the last line of this piece: “I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.”

4 Points: Season 1, 2, 3 of Mr. Robot

Great show. I liked the small educational references sporadically woven into the show like the mention of the Raspberry Pi that Elliot loads his program onto for Steel Mountain, which set me off on a journey learning about single-board computers and the various components of one (knowledge I have missed out on from not taking a class on comp-sci hardware). I also appreciate how “fsociety” has a very computer-friendly name, while “E Corp” is such bad form! The show titles also cheekily changed my perception on the meaning of a “show”. Rather than being played, the show runs like a program that executes a “script” on the characters themselves. Upon streaming each episode, I took the opportunity to learn about the file type that was being executed to get a glimpse into the plot of the episode and learn a little bit too. Take “eps3.8_stage3.torrent", which is an episode principally focused on the decentralized “Dark Army” which has infiltrated E Corp through Tyrell, the FBI, and more, and Elliot gaining access to the Dark Army after stage 3 (I won’t spoil too much) through his own laptop. This access to the decentralized network through ones laptop is sort of what a “.torrent” file offers in its metadata, and thus the show alludes to the “dark web” using its “Dark Army” plotline!

[Tonnpo]

1. I read the Chapter 2 of the Art of Unix Programming. I found the history of Linux quite interesting. It was like a movie. Many programmers in Unix communities were truly committed to the open source software. However, through laws, competitors, and politics, they went through lots of hardship. Eventually, when the technological development, the World Wide Web came along, all developers in the community were brought together and speed up the development of the GNU/Linux project.

2. I read the hacker's manifesto article. I must say that as a child, I thought that hackers were only bad people. The article clearly explained the story behind people becoming a hacker. They were originally amazed by the technology and curious how they work. I really like when the article mentioned that computers do exactly what they are told to do. Often times, when I get an error, I usually blame the computer "Why does not it understand what to do?" "What's wrong with this machine?". Surely, most of the times, that error was caused by myself not knowing what I was doing.

3. I watched Zero Days - Security Leaks for Sale. I was surprised that the exploits are currently legally sold in the markets (white, gray, and black). I really like how diversified the hackers community is. It is such an interesting feeling to see all types of hackers at the DEFCON. It is as if you do not really know what the people you were just shaking hand with or talking with are thinking. The video also provides a really good point on hackers' perspectives. For example, if hackers want to attack a system, the vulnerability is most likely unknown to the system.

4. I read the Cathedrak and the Bazaar - I really like the way the author described the journey on developing open-source software along with comparing with what Linus had done. It is also interesting to see the comparison between the closed and open software development. I learned a lot about software development process. What works and what doesn't. The writing touches on many aspects of development besides technicality. For example, the people and communication, the motivation, and the power relationships. Producing software becomes more like an art to me.

5. I watched Snowden - I would say that there are lots of interesting things in the movie and I really enjoyed watching it. Three main takeaways from the movie. First, access to information is power. The more accesses we have, the more power we can influence on society and individuals. Second, language is power, more language provide more ways to deliver message and information as Snowden did with the sign language. Lastly, information itself is power. The information such as the coordinate of the what they call "bad guys" gives them power to launch the attack. One more important thing I noticed is that sometimes programs are not used in the way that was intended by the creator.

[kingeddy11]

The Art of Unix Programming Chapter 1 After reading the first chapter of The Art of Unix Programming, I learned about the philosophy and ideologies Unix was built upon. Unix applies the KISS principle by making sure each program is doing one thing well. When adding new features, create new programs instead of trying to implement them in old programs. Additionally, Unix focuses on implementing simple algorithms and data structures rather than fancy algorithms in order to minimize the chances of getting a bug. Building on the principles of simplicity allows Unix to support more computing than all other operating systems put together even though it is one of the oldest operating systems.

Chapter 2 After reading the second chapter of The Art of Unix Programming, I learned about the rich history and evolution of Unix. My favorite part of this chapter was discovering that one of Ken Thompson’s motivating factors for constructing Unix was that he was left without a machine on which to play a game he had written called Space Travel which involved navigating a rocket through the solar system. Additionally, it is crazy to me that the most powerful machines in the 1970s had less computing power and internal memory than a typical cellphone of today. Unix has led the charge in open-source practices and continues to prosper in today’s open source software environment.

Chapter 3 After reading the third chapter of The Art of Unix Programming, I learned about the main elements of an operating system and how the ideals that Unix follows differ from other competing operating systems. The unifying idea among operating systems is to visualize that everything is a file and a pipe metaphor built on top of it. As a result, information is easily transferred from one program to another. One of the reasons why Unix has been competitive for so long is due to its extensive networking easily allowing smooth access between multiple users. Many of Unix’s early competitors were tied to a single hardware platform which did not have any capabilities for users to collaborate and share information on.

Chapter 4 After reading the fourth chapter of The Art of Unix Programming, I learned about the origins of modularity and the role of APIs. APIs serve as choke points between modules, preventing each module from leaking into its neighbors. A great key to testing whether an API is well designed is by writing a description in pure language without any code and seeing if it makes sense. Being able to define and describe interfaces clearly is key to making an API easy to use and functional. Additionally, being able to design an API that is compact and orthogonal helps users memorize commands without using a manual and allow them to make changes to one thing without affecting others.

Chapter 5 After reading the fifth chapter of The Art of Unix Programming, I learned about the fundamentals of textualization and the design of file formats for retaining application data in permanent storage. First off, it is interesting to note that Unix uses a text file with records one per line and colon-separated fields to validate logins rather than starting a user’s session in an opaque binary database like most operating systems. This allows text streams to be stored in a compact and tight format saving space while still maintaining its readability. Nonetheless, Unix still uses binary format for PNGs which serve as a file format for bitmap graphics instead of text streams since graphics files contain very large amounts of data. Being able to observe the flexibility between textualization and binary formats allows Unix to be very functional in multiple dimensions.

[DestrosCMC]

Points: 5 1984 by George Orwell
The book is very interesting because it displays how technology can be used to aid an authoritarian state in monitoring its citizens. Oceania used cameras to monitor its citizens and the most severe crime in the land was "thoughtcrime". The language of Newspeak tried to make some words obsolete and it seems like a technique similar to this is employed by some social media companies today.

Points: 1 Zero Days - Security Leaks for Sale The video was very insightful into the fact that there are markets for "Zero Day" exploits. It is also an interesting question about which market (white, grey, black) the finder of the Zero Day sells to. The wide range of perspectives of the people interviewed in this video was well done.

Points: 1The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (2014), After completing the twitter_postgres_indexes assignment, the scale of Aaron's downloading 760GB of PACER data is even more incomprehensible. The process of how publishing papers work in America was interesting to learn about.

[dustin-lind]

1 point: Zero Days – Security Leaks for Sale From this documentary, I learned a lot about the history of the market for computer hackers and the current trends shaping the industry. Given how integrated our lives are becoming with technology, successful hackers possess a tremendous amount of power. There are the white market hackers, grey market hackers, and the black market hackers, and each hacker needs to decide which kind he/she wants to be. One of the core messages that I got from the documentary is that we should be given incentives to hackers to spot vulnerabilities, because if we don’t, then their technical skills can be used for malicious purposes, because bad actors are willing to pay millions for Zero Days. I had to look up the definition of the term after watching the documentary, but Zero Days are essentially software vulnerabilities that are unknown to vendors and developers, and thus hackers can use to attack the systems running the software.

1 point: Coders at Work: Reflections of the Craft of Programming (Chapter 2: Brad Fitzpatrick) I decided to read this chapter because Brad was the youngest programmer that they interviewed for this book, and someone that I could probably relate to the most. Brad started programming at a very young age and has since managed to find a lot of success building widely used open-source software. He also has learned an exceptional number of different languages. I feel like I hear this story a lot: successful programmers starting to code at a very young age. My big takeaway here is that if you want to be successful at a something, it’s important to start learning early on and to surround yourself with people who will be a positive influence. In Brad’s case, his Dad as very supportive in getting him exposed to computers at an early age, and he also had access to programming resources in his community.

1 point: Coders at Work: Reflections of the Craft of Programming (Chapter 5: Joshua Bloch) I chose to read this chapter on Joshua Bloch because he is the Chief Java Architect at Google (at the time of book’s publication), and Java was the first programming language that I learned when I took AP Computer Science during my senior year of high school. Bloch has a lot of wise lesson to share to a young programmer like myself. Here are my summaries of his lessons:

• If you want to be a good programmer, you need to work hard to create good habits. If you find yourself copying and pasting code, then you should seriously ask “what is wrong with this design and how can I fix it”.
• Bloch is a huge advocate of Donald Knuth’s stance that code should be treated like literature. He says that the older that he gets as a programmer, the more he realizes the importance of producing an artifact that is readable, maintainable, and efficient.
• The most important step to designing good software is to first figure out the problem that you are trying to solve. Doing requirements analysis is very important.

1 point: Coders at Work: Reflections of the Craft of Programming (Chapter 8: Peter Norvig) I decided to read the interview with Peter Norvig because his track record is just so incredible in my eyes. He is the Director of Research at Google and prior to that he had been the head of the Computational Sciences Division at NASA Ames Research Center. I found it interesting that when he was learning how to program in one of his early CS classes, he had to write a program for Game of Life. Even 40 or so years later, that was one of the programming assignments for CS5 at Harvey Mudd! Norvig emphasizes the importance of learning how to work well on a team if one wants to become a successful programmer. Large projects are simply too hard for one developer to code by themselves. He also said that the best programmers are the ones who are good at writing test cases and are constantly thinking of the possible ways that their code could fail. I’ve never had that mindset before, so it’s something for me to keep in the back of my mind as a look to becoming a better coder.

1 point: Coders at Work: Reflections of the Craft of Programming (Chapter 15: Donald Knuth) Donald Knuth is lauded as the most famous interviewee in this book, so it goes without saying that I had to read his chapter. I’m very impressed with how many things Knuth invented and/or popularized from TeX to Big-O notation. He’s also the inventor of literate programming, which is a way of writing code to make it easier for people to read. I had a hard time understanding what literate programming is based on the interview, so I had to look it up on Wikipedia after reading the chapter. According to Wiki, literate programming is when “a computer programming is given an explanation of its logic in a natural language, such as English, interspersed with snippets of macros and traditional source code, from which compilable source code can be generated.” To be honest, I feel like that is how I’ve always programmed, so it sounds like Knuth may have had a lot of influence of the educators that taught me how to code.

[Tcintra]

Caveat task submission:

5 points: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. I think Douglas Adams creates a fictional universe on par with Harry Potter or the Lord of the Rings. I particularly loved the names of the characters, and I plan on using similar naming conventions for my variable names in my next coding projects. The creativity of translation fish and probability drives and mice using the Earth as a super computer is beyond the limits of my imagination; I found this book a very entertaining read. I was wondering what kind of database the mice must have been using when developing the organic Deep Thought (IBM's Deep Blue?) super computer, maybe it was some pangalactic version of Postgres. In general, I can see how the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy franchise has shaped hacker culture in important ways, from the number 42 (which Mudd prof's seem to love more than anything) to the general comedic and sarcastic tone hackers tend to communicate with online.

[yurynamgung]

1 point: Zero Days - Security Leaks for Sale It was really interesting to learn how computer science has changed politics and war. I was especially intrigued by the parts of this video that covered Stuxnet; I thought it illustrated well how malware can compromise physical systems similar to how bombs or other kinds of physical ammunition can. The video made me wonder how many security leaks are happening on an international scale today that people are simply not aware of.

2 points: Season 1 of Mr. Robot I enjoyed watching this show and appreciated how much detail they put into making the hacking in the show realistic. For example, I learned what dat files were through the show and I noticed that the characters used things like 'grep' on their terminal which were tools we learned in class. One thing I disliked about the show was how angsty the hackers were portrayed as and how they were outcasts from the rest of society. I thought this was a bit cliche given how hackers are typically portrayed in media as geniuses/nerds/awkward outcasts, etc.

1 point: Youtube Security Scene - phrack article This was an interesting overview of how hacker culture has permeated social media spaces, especially in the video tutorial scene on Youtube. The author pointed out how initially the increase of hacker videos was really helpful to their growth as a hacker because there was a dearth of research papers on hacking and textbooks usually covered more basic ideas that the author was beyond. I thought the concept of live-streaming hacking was especially interesting and I could see how it would be useful to see someone code live; for example, seeing Prof Izbicki use command line tools is really helpful because I learn new commands and shortcuts that I would not learn to look up on my own.

1 point: The Fall of Hacker Groups - phrack article The author of this article made the point that hacker groups such as Anonymous have much less clout today than they once had and that while hacking itself has grown, we have lost the collectivist attitude amongst hackers that breeds trust and hacking culture. I thought this article was interesting but I didn't find the argument that the author made to be quite believable. For example, the author argued that today people were less creative because they were too ego centered but given the technological explosion and progress in the recent years, I did not think this was necessarily true. The author also had some quotes such as 'more primitive societies are, the more resemblances . . . there are among the individuals who compose them; inversely, the more civilized a people, the more easily distinguishable its individual members' which seemed not really relevant to their argument and seemed to be more relevant to their personal opinions on societies in general than on hacker culture specifically.

[erdsal4]

1- Coders at Work (Brendan Eich): It was interesting to learn about the man behind JavaScript who created it in a few days. It provided me a perspective on how languages evolve, by relating the story of how EC4 failed. Also learned really good lessons about debugging. Instrumenting is key, which I got to implement in one of my classes last semester. Lastly, he talks about how he designs code from bottom-up with frequent prototyping, and reads "big code" with a combo of top-down, bottom-up and debugging approaches. This was also useful. 2- Coders at Work (Joe Armstrong): The lesson that stuck with me the most is not being afraid of opening up abstractions and black boxes that you might encounter in CS. If you want to understand how programming languages work, build one. I like this approach a lot, and it encouraged me to build stuff to learn stuff. He also talks about how he thinks very hard before he even begins programming, which also stuck with me. It might even take years for him to start actual programming. This reading really put an emphasis on designing code to become a better programmer. 3- Coders at Work (Peter Norvig): Learned about the value of solving problems to get better at programming. Also, interesting insights about the skills needed in the industrial programming setting, like working in teams and getting along with people, debugging etc. He also mentions the value of thoroughly understanding your code and its failure modes to become a good programmer in an age where piecing together libraries and interfaces instead of writing them from scratch is more common. He emphasizes continuously working on a program to make it better, which I agree. "You’ve got to be able to make progress and then improve on it. That’s all you need to be able to do in life". 4- Coders at Work (Bernie Cosell): I liked how he was confident about rewriting the code when he felt like it didn't make sense and seemed weird to him. Also his advice on writing lots of programs to learn stuff resonated with other readings, and his emphasis on trial and error as a learning path makes sense. I also liked how he said that source code is written for humans, so you better write readable, understandable code. 5- Coders at Work (Donald Knuth): It was interesting to learn that he wrote all of TEX in paper and pencil in 6 months! He only typed the program into the computer to debug it. This for me shows the importance of designing your code carefully, which is a common theme among the other programmers as well. He also talks at length about literate programming. I guess I like the idea of making your thinking process and history available to people, but I don't know to what extent you should do this to not let it be very cumbersome. I like Bernie Cosell's idea of writing code that explains itself better.

[joeybodoia]

2 points: Re-watched Season 1 of Mr.Robot:

I rewatched season 1 of Mr. Robot. I love this show not only because the storyline/plot is very captivating and interesting, but also because of all of the tech references that come up consistently. The first example of this that caught my attention came from when Elliot first meets Tyrell, and Tyrell notes that Elliot is using Gnome for his desktop environment, to which Tyrell mentions that he uses KDE. This lead me down a rabithole of looking into desktop environment choices, something that I had never even put any thought into before. To me, the thing I mainly care about is what OS I’m using, but this scene highlighted that for people that are immersed in hacker culture, things such as the graphical user interfaces for their linux distribution is something that matters to them. I also enjoyed the social engineering aspects that were involved in all of fsociety’s hacks. I feel like with a lot of other shows/movies that portray hackers, it usually just consists of the hacker typing furiously on their computer for a minute or so and then the hack is complete. However, with Mr. Robot, their hacks almost always involve a significant amount of social engineering which I found to be more realistic. The last interesting tech reference that I’ll mention is the honeypot that Gideon sets up on server CS30 after the hack on AllSafe as a means of gaining information about future hacks on that server.

1 point: CitizenFour I remember hearing about Edward Snowden a number of years ago. However, I was too young to really grasp the importance behind Snowden’s actions, as well as the magnitude of the sacrifice that he made in order to do what he felt was the right thing. As someone who values privacy, hearing Snowden talk about the infrastructure that the NSA built to intersect various forms of communications for Americans without target was incredibly scary. A specific incident that was particularly frightening for me was learning that the NSA was collecting phone records of every single Verizon customer. The most concerning aspect of this incident was that the NSA wasn’t targeting anybody in particular that they suspected of committing a crime. Rather, they were collecting data on everyone, including innocent citizens, which, in my opinion, is a huge infringement on privacy. After watching this documentary, I am grateful to Edward Snowden for the huge sacrifice that he made in leaking all of the information that he leaked. I especially respect the fact that he made sure that his name, and only his name, was connected to the leaks in order to protect those that he cared about from being dragged into the situation.

1 point: ESR’s The Art of Unix Programming Chapter 1: Philosophy I found it interesting how much emphasis was put on the technical culture aspect of engineering, and how the unwritten traditions are as important, if not more important, as the information acquired through textbooks/handbooks (I’m glad I’m doing this caveat task!). I enjoyed learning about the mechanism-not policy’philosophy that Unix exhibits. That is, "supporting an extremely general set of graphics operations and deferring decisions about toolkits and interface look-and-feel (the policy)" to the user, providing flexibility to the users and not locking users into one interface policy, which ties into the rule of separation:

separate policy from mechanism; separate interfaces from engines

Another important aspect of Unix culture that was mentioned was Open-Source Software/Open-Source Community, which creates a collaborative environment for programmers to build off of each other. A rule of the basics of unix philosophy that particularly stood out to me was the Rule of Simplicity: Design for simplicity; add complexity only where you must, highlighting the K.I.S.S philosophy. This will serve as a reminder for me going forward to always try to refrain from over-complicating my code. Lastly, I liked these respective quotes from Doug McIlroy and Ken Thompson:

This is the Unix philosophy: Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.

When in doubt, use brute force.

1 point: Phrack hacker’s manifesto One aspect of this article that I particularly resonated with the paragraph that mentioned computers being cool because they do exactly what you tell them to and any mistakes it makes are because of you. This is something that I often remind myself of when I’m programming and encounter an issue. It was also interesting to hear this person’s opinion of the like-mindedness of hackers, particularly the following sentence:

You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike

[dabalus]

1 Point: The Internet's Own Boy This was definitely an interesting piece to read and I couldn’t believe this happened in the 2000s. It is sad to see how a genius like Aaron was treated for trying to be the world a better place. With the existence of the internet in almost every part of the world, I wonder if these academic institutions are still able to charge people for accessing resources through their databases. Additionally, when I watched videos and realized Aaron was one of the creators of Reddit it got me thinking about what he would do with the internet if he were been able.

2 Point: Mr.Boot sessions 1&2 Very interesting hacker show I have watched that focuses mainly on anarchy and corporate disgust. I think the driving force behind the series was Mr. Robot's hatred of the Evil Crop and FSociety's mission to bring this corporate entity down. I really enjoyed how the show incorporated tech stuff from the ending to the end, and it is almost like educating the watchers that hackers can use the skills to prevent wrongdoings in the corporate world. Definetly will watch this show.

1 Point: WarGame After watching this show, I have become very particular when it comes to choosing a passcode for my accounts. Although it is not likely that someone would want to hack into my account if I were to be the CEO of a giant tech company or I have something interesting that a hacker would want to hack into my someday but it has just given me some extra information about choosing a strong passcode. I think it is also interesting to see how easily someone could hack into big tech companies simply by guessing their passcodes in the early 1980s.

1 Point: The “Hacker’s manifesto” “I am a hacker, enter my world ... Mine is a world that begins with school ... I'm smarter than most of the other kids”. This sentence kept me wondering about how hackers in the early computer age were viewed as

[vbopardi]

1. Citizen4: I watched Citizen4 and was reminded of the enormity of the issue relating to Edward Snowden's work and situation. I think as our world moves faster and faster towards innovation relating to AI and technology (as it is currently doing), we are going to see more figures like Edward Snowden pop up not just relating to the government, but also relating to big tech companies. One example is Tristan Harris, who was part of the documentary The Social Dilemma which I highly recommend to everyone.
2. ZeroDays: This was an extremely scary documentary, given the sensitive information that all of our computers contain today. It is frightening that all of our personal, financial, and other important information can be "sold" just because of a software bug. It only further highlights the need for strict testing and formatting when designing software systems.
3. WarGames: This movie brought similar concerns to those of ZeroDays, in that it is scary how easy it could be hack your way into a mess like David does in the film. It was very interesting that this film was made in 1983 and I was surprised to see how imaginative they scriptwriters were with the plot with how they portrayed hacking.
4. The Cathedral and the Bazaar: I enjoyed this piece from ESR. I definitely agree with his point that the more people that interact with a piece of software, the more bugs will be found. I found that his advice of writing clear, robust, code was extremely useful, and something that I see young developers struggle with (including myself).
5. The Art of Unix Programming: Another fantastic read from ESR. I read Chapter 1, and enjoyed reading all the wealth of hacking knowledge he put into the rules. A specific rule I enjoyed reading about what "design for the future because it will be here sooner than you think". In my experience, most of the programs I've built are designed for a specific task, but going forward I can do better to optimize them to also be useful for tasks I may encounter down the line.

[cristywei]

1. CitizenFour

Although I have heard of Edward Snowden and know that he was involved with revealing security/intelligence information to the public, I was pretty young when it happened and didn't really understand what he had done. This documentary was a very interesting insight into the information he leaked, and I liked that it showed the process of him going to journalists and his thoughts behind what he did.

2. Hacker's Manifesto (phrack.org)

Although I found the prose overly dramatic and self-important, I do relate to the general themes of discovering computers as a kid and the fascination associated with it. I'm not entirely sure the purpose of this manifesto, but I think the self-importance inundated in the text does not do it any favors in regards to allowing others to see hackers in a more positive light (although the impression I get from this is that they wouldn't care either way).

3. How to Make TNT (phrack.org)

From what I can tell, this article seems like it actually does give instructions to make TNT. Although I am not interested in making TNT, nor do I have the proper ingredients nor equipment to do it safely, I do genuinely wonder if it is a good recipe or not (in terms of accuracy and efficiency).

4. International Scenes, Issue 67 (phrack.org)

I found it interesting to learn about underground scenes in other countries; the part that stood out the most to me was the author talking about the Indian scene on including email addresses in messages as a way of "recruiting" people to the underground scene through the fan/hate mail received. Although a good overview, the article was also released in 2010, so I do wonder how things have changed in the decade since this was published.

5. Obituary for an Adobe Flash Player bug (phrack.org)

I initially wanted to read this article because I have fond memories of playing flash games throughout elementary and middle school and was old enough to remember when it was being discontinued and phased out. The article goes into details about how to exploit weaknesses in Adobe Flash to obtain sensitive user data; although I didn't understand some of the more specific details, it does provide a good general overview, and sheds a bit of light on one of the several criticisms of Flash and its abysmal security that presumably lead to its discontinuation.

[Luew2]

5 points: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

So this is where the famous 42 came from! I see why CS profs love it so much. Following Arthur's journey over this semester was extremely satisfying and hilarious, it has been a while since a book has grasped me as much as this one. Witty names, crazy alien characters, Arthur just being Arthur, I am sure this is a book I will re-read sometime in the future when Im itching for some sci-fi comedy. Thanks for introducing this to me!

[ohorban]

1. The Internet's Own Boy. This is one of my all-time favorite documentaries. A very touching story of giving back to the community through doing something you love even when you can get in a lot of trouble for it.
2. CitizenFour. I liked it for the same reason as the internet's own boy but the story is much less touching lol. It's also amazing that this movie had a big impact on the rights of privacy,
3. S1 Dr. Robot. I really liked the first season and the ending was just mind-blowing. It got much more boring in the second season though.
4. Zero Days. Because of that guy who used a sql injection vulnerability every time I see coupon fields on websites i try to see if a sql injection would let me shop for free. It hasn't worked a singe time yet
5. War Games. I really like this movie and it's crazy to see how far the computers and cyber security have come since the release of this movie.

[jzlilili]

5 points: 1984 by George Orwell This novel was an interesting take on an authoritarian dystopia, and I thought the several parallels to today's society were fascinating, especially since the novel was published before the start of the internet. A couple such similarities that stood out to me were the lack of privacy, which brought to mind recent cases of companies illegally customer data, and misinformation, a problem which has grown along with the prevalence of personal devices and widespread internet access. I think the warnings that 1984 presents are still surprisingly relevant despite the seventy year gap between its publication and the current day, and altogether enjoyed the novel.

[abooli]

5 points: Nineteen Eighty-Four The entire portrayal of the dystopian society in 1984 is horror, but the most frightening aspect of the novel for me comes from the catchphrase "big brother is watching you". Mass surveillance is one feature in the 1984 world that became more and more realistic. In the Oscar-nominated shorts for this year, Please Hold, it portrays a similar society where robots surveillance takeover and artificial intelligent drones became in charge of arresting and sentencing people. Moreover, this type of technology became used increasingly in the real world. Coming from the city Shanghai, I can see how drones and facial-recognition technologies are used to force civilians to stay at home and abide by the "social distancing mandates" during a covid surge recently. All of these example together illustrates concerns when novel technology could became a tool of oppression.

5 points: Ready Player One Similar to the points made above, Ready Player One also portrays a society where drones were used increasingly to spy on people. However, my biggest takeaway from the book is in the metaverse that it created. With many more companies exploring the concept of metaverse, I think there is an interesting power dynamic between the creator and its users. Some of the intricate toolkits and game items that would be worth of a fortune is, essentially, some lines of code, so I was wondering how much power do the engineers possess?

[RuiluGao]

Season 1 of Mr. Robot (2 Points) I really enjoyed watching the show as the content is interesting and the plot is engaging with great acting as well. We can not deny that there must be inaccuracy, overall, Mr. Robot still does a great job portraying the IT industry as well as hackers. In addition, I think the show also helps to emphasize the importance of cyber security, drawing more respect for people in the industry. It is until watching the show, I am able to realize how important their jobs are and how many lures they are facing in their day-by-day life given their skills. One interesting finding of the show is that for Season 1, each episode on Prime Video is in a different format of video files e.g. mov, mkv, mp4, etc.

1984, George Orwell (5 points) 1984 is about totalitarian governments which try to control every aspect of people’s lives, particularly with the use of technology. Although the book was written in 1949, it is still closely connected to people’s life nowadays. In the book, we see Oceania used cameras to monitor its citizens; in reality, there are mass surveillance measures in China, totaling about 200 million cctv cameras. With the popularization of technology and the transformation to a more digitalized world, people are and should be increasingly concerned about their privacy. About 70 years have passed since the publication of 1984, the message it sends and the warning it presents us is still vital.

[katiewu71]

1 point: The Internet’s Own Boy I had never heard of Aaron Swartz prior to watching this documentary. It was really impressive that he thought of InfoBase at 12 years old (a website that was similar to Wikipedia) and that he worked on RSS at 14 years old. Aaron seemed to be someone who was really working towards making the Internet a better place, and the so-called “stealing” of data and other activities that Aaron was involved in was prosecuted in a very severe way by the criminal justice system. Tragically, this ultimately lead to his suicide. I thought this documentary was really captivating, and I was really touched by the story of Aaron Swartz.

3 points: Mr. Robot - Seasons 1 & 2 Mr. Robot was interesting in the way that it tackled using programming to address social and political issues. I thought it portrayed really well how hacking can give people and organizations like fsociety so much power, even though the scale and the speed of the hacking felt unrealistic at times. The idea of wanting to cancel all debt was an interesting premise for the show. I also appreciated that it was set in NYC, where I’m from! Elliot being in prison during Season 2 was also interesting, since I had watched the Aaron Swartz documentary and was thinking about how internet crimes are addressed.

1 point: RevolutionOS Through watching this documentary, I learned a lot about the history of the GNU Project, Linux, and proprietary/free software. I hadn’t known that prior to people like Gates and companies like Microsoft introducing the idea of proprietary software, that software was generally always free and passed around. I liked the idea that software should be free and that money could be made through the support for the software rather than the software itself.

[anyu-yu]

5 points: Brave New World Aldous Huxley describes a twisted dystopian world where people are born and conditioned into certain roles in society. It is an interesting juxtaposition that we have with our current society, who produces workers in a different way. Brave New World's dystopian universe is made so that people that have the same role are literally engineered the same way from test tube to functioning human.

5 points: 1984 The dystopian world in 1984 is really about Big Brother and the perverse authority that the government has over its people. It's very similar to some Black Mirror episodes that I've watched. The most interesting part of it is how even though a simple tool like a camera and computers were made to make life better, they can be used in corrupt ways that can destroy peoples' lives like it happened in the book 1984.

[samcbogen]

5 Points: 1984, George Orwell: It certainly helps that I thoroughly enjoy Orwell generally, so re-reading 1984 was good fun for me. Looking into the disadvantages that development and technological might entail, especially as it involves the government. Despite the book being published over 70 years ago in 1949, it still bears impressive relevance today, especially as we view the rise of several authoritarian states throughout the world, and nations like China create "Social Credit Scores" for citizens. This rise of "Big Brother" and governments always watching their citizens certainly seems relevant in our world today.

5 Points: Ready Player One, Ernest Cline:

Ready Player One had been on my "to read" list for a while, so I was glad to give it a read for this task. Just like 1984, Ready Player One looks at a society where governments are using technology to watch and/or spy on the country's people. Thinking about the dynamic between the engineers, Wade, and the government within the Oasis definitely opened up more questions than answers in my head. On the positive side, I can now let myself see the movie (I generally will not see movies based on books until I read the book).

[leafsphere]

5 points: Ready Player One I thought it was really interesting that Wade and other students of his generation grew up with free interactive educational programs and a huge public library provided by OASIS; indeed, video games and education don't have to be mutually exclusive, though this may also be adopting a broader definition of what a video game is. When Wade brought up having trouble socializing with his peers in real life as "a side effect of spending most of [his] childhood inside the OASIS," this brought to mind how much younger kids and teenagers may be affected by having some of their most formative years of school spent online in the recent years due to the pandemic, since the spatial and temporal dimensions of interacting in-person vs. online are starkly different.

The thought of blurring the lines between the offline and the online seems more and more likely in the distant future, but I don't think a complete integration akin to that found in Ready Player One will happen in our lifetimes. In the past, I've enjoyed consuming series revolving around characters playing MMO games (both anime series SAO and Hunter x Hunter involve a component where dying in-game means dying irl, and more recently, I was obsessed with The King's Avatar, a web novel that follows the lives of professional eSports athletes both offline and online). Reading about Daito and Shoto both being enrolled in an OASIS support group for hikikomori reminded me of an RPG called OMORI that I completed a year ago, whose title is based on the same Japanese term. Since OASIS contains preexisting virtual worlds from other competitor video games, it reminded me of Super Smash Bros, one of the most popular crossover games, and I wonder if even bigger crossover games will be made in the future. Overall, I'm glad I finally got around to reading Ready Player One this semester, and I might check out the movie sometime.

[alex-muehleisen]

Season 1 of Mr. Robot - 2 Points

Really good show. I really enjoyed it. The initial premise was captivating and the first few episodes with the introduction of Elliot's personal issues and Fsociety. Elliot's general downward spiral with drugs was interesting to observe throughout the course of the season, and I thought he often became his own worst enemy at times, despite having such a clear goal in mind with Fsociety. One thing that intrigued me was the emphasis on how people always make the best exploits. It seems to be a reoccurring theme that people often make mistakes and in this digitally-advanced world today, hackers will undoubtedly exploit those mistakes. I also learned that WPA WiFi (mentioned in an episode) and I thought it was cool to know that CMC's network is very secure. The last few episodes of the show definitely got me hooked, and I'll be starting Season 2 to resolve that cliffhanger ASAP.

Snowden - 1 point

I rewatched this movie for a third time now – still really enjoyed it and was interested the whole time. The most important thing I learned from the movie is that you can never be too careful. Obviously and especially in the case of whistleblowers and hackers like Snowden, but also in everyday life for the average person. Little things like covering up your laptop's camera can restore some of the privacy sacrificed by technology and monitoring. I think the story was especially powerful coming from someone like Snowden, who grew up loving the government and wanting to protect his country, before learning the extent to which his government betrayed that trust.

Zero Days - Security Leaks for Sale - 1 point

The search for zero-days and the markets created around these software vulnerabilities were fascinating to explore throughout the documentary. As these markets continue to grow, and as exploits begin to happen more frequently, some level of raised concern is certainly valid. In response to this, a couple of the forward-facing questions asked by one of the interviewees at the end of the documentary caught my attention:

"What is the role of the government in protecting its citizens? What should the new social contract be?"

It was interesting to think about how the government might try to protect people in the future and, at least for me personally, how intertwined the socioeconomic landscape of the world might become with technology and cyberspace. I also thought the categorization of hackers into either white, gray, or black hats was quite intriguing, and I enjoyed learning more about the various ways ethical hackers attempt to keep the world safe, like submitting bugs to companies.

The Hacker's Manifesto (from Phrack) - 1 point

I enjoyed the two-sided appeal of the Manifesto. It considers the mindset of various types of people and tries to establish some connection with these people through that shared method of thinking, and I think the writer is quite smart for employing this tactic. I thought the paragraph about the hacker making a discovery – finding that first computer – was a bit sad. Especially in the sense of people feeling scared that another person may think ill of them, feel threatened by them, or flat-out not like them, and this leads them to seek refuge in a computer. I think the love that someone has for coding/problem-solving/hacking is genuine no matter where it comes from, but I do wish the story of how people get there was more of a happy one than a sad one, like the one told in the Manifesto.

[Bhargavaa1]

1 point (Zero Days- Security Leaks For Sale) Zero Days- Security Leaks for Sale showed how dangerous zero-day vulnerabilities are and how exploiting these bugs can be profitable for different types of hackers (academic, private, and even governmental). One aspect of this documentary I thoroughly enjoyed was the different perspectives the interviewees had on cyberspace and the different fields hacking can permeate to. One feature of this documentary I would improve on and I want to learn more about is the different types of vulnerabilities and how one would defend against it. Specifically, I found the shopping cart bug found by Olivier Beg to be intriguing and hope to understand the actual code leak that caused it!

1 point (RevolutionOS) RevolutionOS showed the progression of GNU/Linux in the operating system market and the significance of individual freedom/open information in developing source code. My favorite quote from this documentary was that “Open Source is not communism because it doesn’t force people.” This quote by Eric Raymond reveals that Open Source software is profitable and should be pursued as this allows source code to be decentralized. Another feature of RevolutionOS that I enjoyed was the reference to the different companies that embraced GNU/Linux (Red Hat, VA Linux Systems) and the perspective each company had on “free software.” After watching this documentary, I hope to contribute to an open source project this summer and read more about the beliefs of Linus Torval and Richard Stallman.

5 points (1984) The novel 1984 written by George Orwell is known for describing and portraying the dangers of an authoritative government, censorship, and propaganda, but I have never thought of this classic through the lens of technology. One form of technology utilized by Oceania is the telescreen which displays news and propaganda while keeping a constant eye on its “working” members. When hearing about telescreens, I immediately thought about mass surveillance and privacy in the world today. This ethical issue is important to us software engineers/data scientists and a tradeoff we must consider before conducting experiments and managing data! Another idea from 1984 that I thought was prevalent to this class was the language Newspeak and the controlled language/vocabulary it imposed on its citizens. This reminded me of shadow banning on social media (specifically Twitter and Instagram) and how some user’s content is limited for unknown purposes. After completing several Twitter projects in Big Data, I hope to explore shadow banning and how backend engineers at Twitter conduct such transactions.

[iamasteriix]

RevolutionOS

I heard somewhere that the purpose of documentaries is not to inform, but to persuade; and I'm convinced that's what this documentary meant to do right from the start. A good place to get a fairly more accurate (albeit biased by the Author's perspective) is The Cathedral and the Bazaar; which, gladly, is in one of the tasks. I might have a few reading recommendations that give an even fuller picture of what was going on at the time with Richard Stallman and the OSS and Linux and Microsoft, ATT, IBM and so on. I will say, I find it as unsurprising as it is comical that they made Bill Gates the clear villain of this story. Another bone I have to...pick...with a video (sigh)... is how the relationship with Richard Stallman and Erik Raymond was played out.

But in general the movie was a good introduction to the events and their guiding philosophies of the time, with a clear hero and villain.

The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron

Truly inspiring story; one of the best out there. Aaron is a personal hero.

CitizenFour (2014)

Netflix's Snowden got me down this rabbit hole, and then this documentary provided a touch of reality to the movie and gave a few leads about where I should go next. I would highly recommend The Hated One's channel on YouTube; one of the few places I landed.

Mr. Robot

Mr. Robot is a good show for the first two seasons. Then it starts going down this weird sinkhole of one supervillain who wants to conquer the world so let's put E-Corp sort of to the side and fight them.

One of its many merits, however, is how it provided fairly accurate portrayals of hacking. I'm still curious about how Darlene managed running whatever computation she was to hack all those important people in that building from her phone in Season 4.

The Cathedral and the Bazaar

I read the (some) book for a paper I wrote in this class at Pitzer (Technology, Capitalism, and Race with Kouross Ismaeli, if you must know). I'm more curious about whether Mike's argument about OSS is accurate. I would also recommend following this up with the story of how Linus and gang "invented" git, with a bit of Mercurial on the side (shamelessly plugs a...pitch?...that will hopefully get you hooked on hacker culture) and eventually, in a fantastic way, allowed for this interaction.

Enjoy your summer everyone!

[JSanders24]

2 Points: Season 1 of Mr Robot

I enjoyed the first season, I have watched it before yet it was still interesting to watch it again. I think it is a genre of tv which isn't represented enough because it might not have a large enough audience. I thought it was especially interesting to see one prominent technological vulnerability as the exploitation of outdated and unpatched software systems. The show overall portrays the importance of secure coding practices, understanding system vulnerabilities, and the potential ethical and societal implications of hacking and digital manipulation.

1 Point Peter Norvig Text

In Peter Norvig's essay, "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years," he emphasizes the importance of adopting a long-term mindset when it comes to learning programming. Norvig suggests that true mastery and expertise in programming require sustained effort and continuous learning over an extended period, debunking the myth of quick and effortless mastery in a matter of weeks. This essay serves as a reminder to aspiring programmers that patience, dedication, and consistent practice are key to becoming proficient in programming and to embrace the journey rather than seeking instant gratification.

1 Point ESR Text ESR offers insights into the hacker mindset and provides guidance for individuals interested in pursuing hacking as a constructive and ethical pursuit. One key lesson from the essay is the importance of curiosity and exploration in the learning process, encouraging aspiring hackers to delve deep into the inner workings of systems and technologies to gain a deeper understanding.

One thing I appreciate about the essay is how it emphasizes the significance of the hacker culture's focus on sharing knowledge and fostering a collaborative community. It highlights the value of open-source software and the hacker ethic of contributing back to the community, promoting an inclusive and cooperative approach to learning and innovation.