<story><title>UK Teen Hacked 150,000 Printers</title><url>https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/this-teen-hacked-150000-printers-to-show-how-the-internet-of-things-is-shit?utm_source=mbnl</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>OJFord</author><text>This deserves a better, less clickbaity (which I think has the opposite to intended affect with this audience) title.&lt;p&gt;Particularly towards the end, s&amp;#x2F;he comes across extremely self-aware, and makes some salient points around the state of school CS education in the UK. It certainly resonated with my experience.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ihatestylometry</author><text>He&amp;#x27;s way too young for this attitude.
I&amp;#x27;ve hacked things in my teenage years too
and was obsessed with hacking for many years
before I started to do freelance work
- the feeling of being superior is a common problem
for all types of skills if you&amp;#x27;re young, no matter what,
so he definitely shares wisdom with his last paragraphs.&lt;p&gt;But I don&amp;#x27;t think the problem is not that society has problems finding
interesting challenges for highly skilled young people like him.
It&amp;#x27;s unfortunate his school doesn&amp;#x27;t have hackathons and other
activities, but he&amp;#x27;s not dependent on such circumstances.
I think his problem is that he doesn&amp;#x27;t recognize
that he&amp;#x27;s in full control of his life.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve talked with several security researchers who hack IoT gadgets and other things
for a living - they write their own ROP chains, hack web applications
and test software for airlines with very high security standards
- and they told me that they take every talent they can get.
They&amp;#x27;re getting 4 to 5-digit daily rates for penetration test gigs and are
well-respected.
So there&amp;#x27;s demand and there are great people who want to share their knowledge.&lt;p&gt;So my question:  
Instead of hacking printers, why not talk to companies who are searching for his talent?&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not defending the current state of CS education, it&amp;#x27;s really bad and decoupled from reality,
but it&amp;#x27;s no excuse for gifted people to give up and justify blackhat hacking - which is just
another word for being criminal.&lt;p&gt;Edit: Absolutely agree on the click-baity title!</text></comment>
<story><title>UK Teen Hacked 150,000 Printers</title><url>https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/this-teen-hacked-150000-printers-to-show-how-the-internet-of-things-is-shit?utm_source=mbnl</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>OJFord</author><text>This deserves a better, less clickbaity (which I think has the opposite to intended affect with this audience) title.&lt;p&gt;Particularly towards the end, s&amp;#x2F;he comes across extremely self-aware, and makes some salient points around the state of school CS education in the UK. It certainly resonated with my experience.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dcole2929</author><text>I agree. It says a lot about society that someone who has clearly found his thing, due to some admittedly poor decision on his&amp;#x2F;her part, has basically zero options with which to pursue his interests in a controlled environment. I&amp;#x27;m not from the UK so I will refrain from commenting on the state of their education system, but I&amp;#x27;ve definitely seen this scenario play out here in the states. I&amp;#x27;m not an educator but it&amp;#x27;s obvious that people are slipping through the cracks and that&amp;#x27;s something that should be deeply disturbing to most.</text></comment>