This might be a good time to bring up a something that's been on my mind for a while. Hopefully it counts as a post that should be in this forum...

The May 2010 issue of Wired: Journalist Stephen Levy interviews hackers young and old for an article on the current (and future) state of hacking. Two people interviewed are Tim O'Reilly and Bill Gates. At the end of the article, they both bring up the same point; the future of hacking is in biology. Gates goes as far as to say that if he were a teenager again, he'd be hacking biology ("Creating artificial life with DNA synthesis. That's sort of the equivalent of machine-language programming", he says).

This upset me a little because there's no way someone can build a lab in their home to play with DNA. Just learning how to do it requires a lifetime of classes and a ton of money. Hacking, I think, depends on availability. Phreaking got started because everyone involved had easy access to a phone. Computer hacking came into play because computers became available to colleges and then later to the general public. That led to robotics hacking with the Lego Mindstorms and the Roomba and others. It seems a little far-fetched to think that any time soon there will be teenagers creating clandestine organisms using a home-brewed genetics lab in their home.

That said, where do you think the next stage of hacking will be? I say robotics. Everyone wants something to make their life a little easier. The person who makes a singular robot that can clean any given bathroom top-to-bottom is going to make a mint.

>>15

for the sake of sci-fi fans, i'd say neurology.

Seriously, no one's heard of biohacking?

http://diybio.org/

Stuff being done cheaply in the garage.

Remember the hackers in the early home computer days spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on equipment that would do nothing but earn sneers today. The price of an Apple II in 1976 was famous for being $666.66 (that's $2593 today), the Commodore 64 was introduced at $595. By the time you added a monitor (usually a TV) and some kind of mass storage (Yay, cassette recorders!) you could increase the price considerably.

Biohackers today should be able to get a decent start for that budget. They can start with the basic protocols and learn along the way and the Internet has all kinds of resources to help.

>>22
Honestly, I hadn't. I would have thought that serious biohacking (like the genetics subject mentioned earlier) would be outside the skills and funds of the average person.

I haven't had a chance to go through the blog at that link just yet, but I will when I have the chance. What are the more common biohacking projects? Or is it a phenomena that's only just getting started?

>>23
There's a lot more resources out there than just the diybio site, for instance the openwetware wiki.

It's been slowly growing for a few years now, people are doing basic stuff like dna extraction right now, I'm sure that there are biohackers that are more advanced but they fly low under the radar since it isn't clear what the official response from the government will eventually be.

If you look at news stories there is a pattern of heavy handed treatment of home/garage labs mainly because of the war on drugs.

I know hacking != cracking.
But I don't know how to do either.

>>15
>>22
>>24

You guys sparked my interest, I'm going to look into this. Thanks for the links.

biochemist here,

the reason computing was grown in garages because it was never done before.

i assure you that every university around you is doing all that and more for biology. there are huge stakes in the bio game, unlike the beginning of computing which was seen as a hobby for nerds.

you have the internet, get googling. let me help: http://www.pubmed.com/

>>71
Yah, most of the early computer work was done in labs and universities too. In fact, computers were seen by the public as being something that only the government, big business and universities would need.

To bring a computer into the home? That was crazy talk in the '70s until people started _doing_ it.

We are at a similar parallel with biohacking. Science is seen today as the domain of the government, corporations and universities.

A chemistry lab in your backyard shed? You must be making meth! A microbiology setup in your basement? Terrorist! You want play with DNA in the garage? You'll put your eye out, kid (and put an extra on your dog).

>>75
You point out an interesting and critical difference. Would the personal computer boom have happened if hackers in their garage were getting busted on suspicion of terrorism and contraband? Right now governments and big business and universities are protected from this. They have resources and credibility (at least in the eyes of the policymakers)

The average person, though? That's a little tougher.

>I love it when a chan gives me a new purpose to live.

It includes Reshma Shetty of Ginkgo Bioworks discussing what might be suitable as a DIY-biology-friendly organism. E. coli is pretty standard in labs, but as she points out it tends to be associated by the public with words like "pathogenic" and "flesh-eating". ("Flesh-eating" would probably test badly in a focus group.) She suggests that another great candidate might get the upper hand in this case: moss. She's right, of course - even the Daily Mail would have trouble getting people scared of a patch of moss.

And the actual case for playing with this stuff is hard to ignore. I'd love to make bacteria change colour or emit the smell of bananas. That'd be way more fun than another pointless Maplin soldering kit. And we're probably not far off a world where a working knowledge of bioengineering will be as useful and ubiquitous as familiarity with HTML.

>>22

I know there's more to hacking than cracking, but fucking around with Fly DNA "for fun" is fail. Unless your creating a bioweapon or freaks of nature, there's no point. Your not discovering the next miracle, and even if you did, some pharmaceutical company will steal and take credit for your achievement. If you seriously plan to "hack" DNA, go to college and work for a Research laboratory like an adult instead of playing scientist in your basement.


Real hacking is done to eventually achieve 0wn and lulz. Real hackers value information, skills, and chaos to eventually achieve pWn and lulz. They're in control of their lives and live on the edge.

This is a Real hacker:
http://www.phrack.com/issues.html?issue=67&id=2#article

There is a clear difference between a sociopathic streetpunk/corporate hacker getting laid and the nerdy loveshy moralist virgin playing w/toys (sorry "models") at age 30 who wrote his own "1337" operating system in C. One grew up, one didn't. One smells of win, the other smells like ChrisChan.

tl;dr
If there's no achievement, what's the point?

>>114
I don't totally disagree, but I don't think the two sides are opposed to each other, either. Some hackers (of whatever type) seek to make something useful. Other hackers (of whatever type) just want to see what they can do. The two sides are symbiotic. They feed off each other.

I know some guys who are very goal oriented. One in particular won't explore a new technology or device until he finds an answer to the question of "how does this make someone's life better?" I know others who don't care what the outcome is; they just like to explore an idea and see where it leads.

Like you I am not sure what the value of biohacking is, but I suspect we're both on the outside looking in. There was a time when people thought little Johnny was wasting his time messing with those computer things as well. Then one day computers took off, and people like Johnny were in demand.

Everything starts from somewhere.

>>116
>flames (/b/ad troll habit, sorry)
>expecting b& and elitism like every other *chan
>intelligent post in a knowledgeable community
>looking forward to joining 789chan community on a regular basis

Thank you.

>>119
this. adding it to my short list.

biohack objective numero uno: maximizing the methane output of a cow/goat/pig ass.

pic related

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I don't like the idea of Bio hacking.
I'm interested in computers, not biology.
Also, here's a neet website that holds hacking textfiles from the 80's.
>textfiles.com
It's down at the minute, but bookmark it and check back.
It's a really interesting website worth a read.

>>262
The idea that bio-hacking is gaining steam does not mean you have to give up computer hacking. Computer hacking will be around as long as there are computers that require people to develop software for them (as opposed to some kind of automated software development). Bio-hacking is just another interest for those who want it.

textfiles.com is an interesting find. I wonder how much of the hacking stuff is still relevant.

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>>277
**test** //test2//

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>>14
It might be

Why are you saying that hacking is the same thing as cracking? Clearly you have misinterpeted the definition.

Hacking is about finding new purposes for old things and accomplishing goals in an unconventional manner. Cracking is misusing technology to do things like steal credit card numbers and give people computer viruses. They'r e very different.