Why the Girl Scouts Are Learning to Pick Locks and Hack Computers | Hacker News Reader

Why the Girl Scouts Are Learning to Pick Locks and Hack Computers

popularmechanics.com

131 pointsohjeez52 comments

This really makes me happy.

When I was in Girl Scouts in the 1960s, we were taught to cook. I guess that was how they prepared us for our then-expected roles in life.

Even when I went to Girl Scout Camp (as I did from age 7 to 12), the outdoor skills we were encouraged to learn were watered-down versions of what boys learned. I canoed across lakes, where my husband canoed in wilderness areas on 10-day trips.

Well, despite this being HN, I'd still argue that for most people, knowing how to cook is a more valuable skill to have than knowing how to pick a lock.

Probably, but there are plenty opportunities to learn to cook, but not many to learn lockpicking. Moreover, the argument “don’t teach skill X because skill Y is more useful on average” leads to silly consequences — it entails that you should never learn any advanced or obscure skills, which is absurd. Cooking is also more useful than programming, and yet you can make good money and have fun writing code. The point here is that learning is not exclusive, you can learn both to cook and to pick locks.

>knowing how to cook

One Google query, two attempts and you know how to prepare a dish. It's not as difficult as most people think.

Some people would say the same thing about learning to code.

That doesn't mean it's true.

Coding is about thinking. It's difficult. Cooking is about repetition. It's much easier.

I think being a locksmith earns more than most cooks (although certainly less than high end chefs). Opening locks without keys is a big part of locksmithing.

I think they meant cooking as a life skill. Over a lifetime you'll save more money on eating out, if you know how to cook, than you would on locksmith services, if you know how to pick locks. Unless you're ridiculously careless with your keys and get locked out every week, I guess. Knowing how to cook will also keep you healthier and the value of good health is immeasurable.

What about high end chefs gender balance? One would argue the education shouldn’t stay in the way here.

FWIW as a Boy Scout in the 80s we definitely learned to cook. There was no "merit badge" I'm aware of for cooking, but when we went camping we were expected to prepare 3 meals a day, mostly cooked. So in the mornings we might cook eggs and bacon. For lunch we usually did something relatively simple like heat up canned or cook dry mix soup. Dinners were on the spectrum everywhere from a hot dog on a stick to cooking steaks. We did various baking tasks such as making a solar stove to cook canned biscuits and the "foil packs" where you put veggies, potatoes, meat, and seasonings wrapped in foil into a fire to steam/cook them. I don't know what your cooking experience was like, and it sounds like from the other responses my experience might have been unique, but those things definitely laid a foundation and created confidence for future cooking tasks out of a cook book or something.

It's a merit badge now https://meritbadge.org/wiki/index.php/Cooking

And apparently has always been

> The Cooking merit badge was one of the original 57 merit badges issued by the Boy Scouts of America in 1911.

Why am I so angry that I didn't get the cooking merit badge? I learned to cook, damnit!

As a Boy Scout I am very envious of your cooking class. None of the scouting badges I earned have been very useful. Cooking on the other hand is something I could of used all my life and never really learned until I was in my 30s.

I think the most amount of cooking we did in Boy Scouts was making doughnuts on a trip to the cabin one time.

Cooking merit badge is required for Eagle: https://meritbadge.org/wiki/index.php/Cooking. That link also says it was one of the original 57 merit badges, which I didn't know, but find interesting! I don't remember whether it was overly camp-cooking focused when I did it, but the current requirements include a "cooking at home" section.

Personally, what I have come to appreciate about the Boy Scouts merit badge system is breadth. None (or at least very few) of the merit badges require you to learn much about their topic, but they teach you a little, and introduce you to at least one person who knows some stuff about that thing. I feel that I learned a little bit about a lot, and my Computers merit badge instructor was one of the first computer "experts" I knew; he taught me how to wipe and install Windows 98, and was the first to show me the innards of a computer. I like to think (but don't really know) that lots of other folks stumble upon a passion in a similar way while working through the broad survey in the catalog.

I think it can be a bit hard for kids to find (or stated differently, for parents to provide) this sort of breadth, and I'm strongly in favor of any program that attempts to provide it, not just the boy / girl scouts.

I feel that camping taught me a lot about cooking; especially with backpacking; You learn what will keep, what's heavy, what ingredients you can replace with what, and what, with limited ingredients you can make into a good meal.

Examples: way too many combinations of sealed chicken/tuna, macaroni, and broccoli; eggs, pasta, using oil and water without/instead of milk, the food safeness of dried sausage.

I made the BEST Apple Brown Betty when I was 8 years old.

Though my husband _did_ learn how to cook in Scouts. (It helped that he went through serious wilderness camping trips, so he knew how to do everything from gig a frog to roast a chicken... starting with a live chicken.)

It sounds like what I did at Boy Scout Camp in the 1990s more closely resembled your Girl Scout Camp experience 30 years prior.

Well, boy scouts were started as attempt to make boys more prepared for war time and based on army activities - to teach them being right kind of boy from that point of view.

No such motivation for girl scouts, more like attempt to make something proper feminine and still kind of similar.

Applaud the Girl Scouts for helping girls build skills for the 21st century!

What "skills" exactly? Burglary and cyber crime?

This comment breaks the site guidelines. They ask: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."

They also ask: "Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

Please (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and follow those rules when posting here, so we can all avoid boring flamewars.

This is part of a larger ethos of curiosity about how things work and building, modifying and demystifying tools used everyday; e.g hacker culture. I don’t think it is particularly fair to reduce skills like this, or frankly exploration of skills like this on private property, to one negative and narrow usecase.

My family recently moved and, during the move, our file cabinet was accidentally locked. The key was lost years ago. Being able to pick the lock came in handy. Not all skills that CAN be used for illegal purposes WILL be used for illegal purposes.

Wanting to become a hacker is what got me into programming. Never became a hacker. Now do software dev for a living.

I was a cracker in my early to mid teens. Never malicious, just exploratory. Owned my HS network and college networks. Had a moment when I realized how much I was in for if I was caught, and then just walked away, cold Turkey. Do financial software engineering now. Only crack myself now.

just to add to what others pointed out. it's only criminal in its unlawful usesses. locksmith and pen testing are things. in these activities there is usually a understanding and knowledge of how the thing works.

Probably people have to check their cookie boxes for listening devices now...

Much, much better turn for the free-labor cookie-selling machine the Girl Scouts has become over the past decade ($0.60/box back to the troop, and available year round...).

Well, $.60/box goes to that specific troop (15%) but $2.50/box (50%) goes to that local troop’s organization, so in my area that would be the Northern California’s Girlscout Organization

So happy to see someone else flag this horrible abuse.

I would rather donate the cost of a case of cookies to the Guides than support the free labour, but of course the policy forbids such donations. I would think many other people would be happy to offer a 5$ donation direct to the Guides rather than line the pockets of a corporate parasite.

> horrible abuse

I mean, it’s voluntary and frankly not exactly torture. I understand how it could be considered somewhat exploitative if you look at it from a business standpoint but it seems like a fun and friendly competition which tons of people like to support and indulge. They aren’t selling life insurance. I guess I get where youre coming from but that statement seems a bit hyperbolic.

At least here in the US, it's quite easy to donate directly to a local chapter (as well as higher levels of the organization). I've done it.

Is that not the case where you are? Or is the problem that you're trying to support a specific troop or want to support a specific individual, and that's forbidden?

Do you have a link to something documenting the prohibition you've encountered?

When the girls are doing their rounds, I don't believe you are able to donate directly as an "instead of" option. That is, instead of cookies, a donation box, which would clearly state _all_ proceeds would be going to support the local troop.

It is also quite shameful that the distribution of funds isn't clearly indicated when the girls are funding. I suspect more people would donate directly instead of the cookies if they saw the distribution ratios.

Here, I believe the Guides take 3.00$ of the 5.00$, with a mere 1.00$ going to the girl in question. I would prefer to simply give 100% of the 5.00$ to the local troop that the girl is supporting, and in turn support five girls in her troop for the same donation amount.

> I don't believe you are able to donate directly as an "instead of" option.

I'm pretty sure that's not the case, at least here, as I've been personally present when a friend did exactly that.

Again, I question that what you're describing is a matter of any explicit prohibition due to policy, rather than your conclusion based on observed behavior (which, itself, can be explained by optimizing for maximum overall revenue, rather than maximum revenue to any particular participant).

To me, the split between the individual girl and the scouting organization (at troop, regional, national, or whatever level) is immaterial, because, at least here [1], the scouting organizations have routinely been in the news for their inclusive policies, even of otherwise politically marginalized girls, including putting their money behind such policies.

[1] Again, the US. Other countries may well be different.

And because it's cool? Not a girl, but I was a scout and if we were seriously learning lock picking then the number of people going would have skyrocketed.

If they learn to make poison and stealth, then I can finally roll a rogue class.

Start small: assassin merit badge.

Because there’s a large gender skew in prison population?

Awesome.

Well, seeing as how that was not taken well...

Growing up, I had an uncle teach me lock picking. Each one opened came with a story, and some new thing he would share.

Those girls will likely see the world a bit differently, and yes. Awesome.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com