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Comment by userbinator | Hacker News Reader

Not surprised at all to see where the researcher is from. I've noticed people from Eastern Bloc countries tend to have a certain mindset and skills that leads to being able to do such things.

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Because they can be content and get by with what they've got without wasting time complaining. Also the mindset that there is no difference between use and misuse - intended purpose is meaningless, creative reuse is a virtue.

This ethos should be standard everywhere.

Because they managed to survive the communists and not get killed by Stalin

Or because their math education system was excellent and broadly accessible.

The testing part of math education in Russia is anything but excellent in my own experience. You have to do EVERYTHING from memory. So it tests your memory first, your actual understanding second. I've always had serious problems with this stupid memorization part.

And it's not just math. Most of the education is reading the book and then reciting the book at an exam. Nothing else. No original thinking required. Just dumb information retrieval. It's humiliating, really.

But maybe the actual teaching is better than in other countries. I don't know. It's the testing that traumatized me.

I've got an education in Russia and I don't recall such practice. Maybe some of professor do that, but that's more like an exception. Most others test your way of thinking. They even allow you to use text books when preparing the answer, though usually they allows only books they bring to the exam.

I don't know specifically about Russian education system, but I have impression that critics of rote memorization and pencil-and-paper testing are rarely from less successful countries or are themselves low achievers. I think it's just sausage making. Sausage is fine.

probably also because of piracy and the cracking scene. you're too poor to buy software, so you learn to crack it. you learn how to read assembly and use a debugger, a ton of obfuscation techniques and how to circumvent them, cryptanalysis through writing keygens. I'm not from the Eastern Bloc but I picked up some serious reverse engineering skills as a teenager from the warez scene.

Same here couple decades ago, but along with that being poor also limits your alternative forms of entertainment as well as access to the latest high performance HW. Which leads to both the boredom required to think that sitting in front of ones computer for days on end hacking as well as the motivation to figure our how to hack some game to run slightly better.

I freqently think that my parents best parenting choice was the choice to not have a TV in our house when I was growing up. It both saved them money but removed a very common time wasting/entertainment outlet. My own kids went from playing with legos, creating art, or messing with science kits to playing on their phones as soon as they were given that choice. And i'm still of the opinion that providing that choice was a big mistake, they are experts on the latest social media fad, and quite ignorant about things I wish they would have learned.

So, yes enviroment matters, some kids will hack even when given an xbox and a pile of games, but I think more of them will try it if they aren't given those choices.

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