spk

I would be interested if you count. Perhaps I should post this in a new thread but here it goes..

I have seen a few "hacking" (cracking) games back in 1999-2002 but most of them where too simple to be interesting. They always had one clear solution, to a beginner in cracking like me, and you never got that feeling of accomplishment. Althouth I am still interested in cracking nowdays I'm wathcing it from the opposite side, i.e. what are the most common security threats and how do I keep my code safe from them. I have bought/read a few security/cracking related books/articles that were recommended or written by experts on the field but as they were too specific they were of no interest, except from an academic perspective, to me. E.g. phrack.org articles. What I would really love to see is some free course in cracking that would combine theory and practice in some sort of sandboxed environment that would be level and field based but more free than just having an assignment, e.g. find a way to create an sql injection to delete all entries in a db.

If there are any willing crackers on HN I would really appreciate it if they could share how they started cracking and what would be their recommended way for a beginner to start now. If this is too off-topic and/or illegal just say it, if it's not against rules I'll start a new thread.

I've almost finished Accelerando. I can't remember which was the previous one..

I've been a cigarette smoker for 14 years, but in the last 6 months i've switched to pipes. It's a whole new approach to nicotene delivery. Much more enjoyable, and healthier in some ways imho. To other smokers, you should really try it. Cigarettes is to smoking as hearing the same loop of music over and over again while pipe smoking is like having all of the itunes store available for you to listen. A side benefit is that as it's an active process, contrary to just lighting up a cig and letting it burn on it's own, you keep your attention focused on it, you relax, and your subconcious is free to engage in all sorts of thoughts.

(Although you can achieve similar results by taking a bike ride for example)

To those who have quit smoking well done and keep it up.

One thing that I don't get about this contest is that they included Chrome and not Opera. Yes chrome is the "new kid in the block" but the other one, despite it's low market penetration, has been around for many many years.

(PS: I am an Opera user, but not a fanatic/fanboy etc. I am not trying to start a browser flame here.)