[HN Gopher] Hacker Typer
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Hacker Typer
        
       Author : rvnx
       Score  : 212 points
       Date   : 2024-10-15 10:41 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (hackertyper.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (hackertyper.net)
        
       | emmanueloga_ wrote:
       | I'm in.
        
       | zzixp wrote:
       | I remember going on this site in middle school. I now have a
       | degree and can actually understand the code being written here...
       | time flies
        
       | keyle wrote:
       | Finally I can write code faster than LLM! /s
        
         | helloplanets wrote:
         | Now we just gotta combine Hacker Typer with GPT streaming a
         | token of code on every key press.
        
           | K0balt wrote:
           | Pure genius. Finally, an opportunity to parley my effusive
           | laziness into a promising career as a "coder!"
           | 
           | BTW I hate that term with a passion.
           | 
           | As someone who has crafted software for the last 45 years,
           | it's like implying that learning the alphabet makes you a Tom
           | Robbins.
           | 
           | Writing software is about understanding the problem and the
           | information involved in such a way that you can craft
           | algorithms and data structures to efficiently and reliably
           | solve those problems. Putting that into code is the smallest,
           | least important part of that skill.
           | 
           | That's why software engineering is mostly language agnostic.
           | Sure, there are paradigms that fundamentally change the way
           | that the problem space is handled, but at least within a
           | paradigm, languages are pretty much interchangeable. Some
           | just have less hidden footguns.
           | 
           | Interface design is another thing altogether, And is either
           | fruitless drudgery or fine art, depending on your
           | predisposition.
           | 
           | There is definitely room for a subclass of brilliant
           | interface designers that do not need deep data manipulation
           | intuition .... But they do need to have a deep understanding
           | of human nature, aesthetic principles, color theory, some
           | understanding of eye mechanics and functional / perception
           | limitations, accessibility/disability engineering, and a good
           | dose of intuition and imagination.
           | 
           | In short, nothing about producing quality software is
           | something that you gain by writing code snippets to solve
           | simple problems. But you do have to learn the alphabet to
           | write, and "coding" it is still a prerequisite to learning to
           | write software. It just shouldn't be sold to people as if it
           | was some kind of degree lol.
           | 
           | Give me some kid who's been building things with Arduino in
           | her basement for a few years over a coding bootcamp graduate
           | any day. I can teach her how to write good code. I'll just
           | pull out more of my non-existent hair trying to reach the
           | "coder" to actually solve problems, unless I get lucky.
        
             | lozf wrote:
             | To the untrained eye: "Coding is to a software engineer, as
             | cutting is to a heart surgeon."
        
               | K0balt wrote:
               | That is a fantastic analogy.
        
             | necovek wrote:
             | The fact that someone entered software engineering through
             | either building things with Arduino or through a coding
             | boot-camp does not indicate what is their potential when it
             | comes to software engineering.
             | 
             | I've seen people who are really great at combining
             | "recipes" off the web for anything (including hobby
             | electronics and programming), but never really get to the
             | bottom of things or develop clear understanding of how
             | things work and tie together.
             | 
             | I imagine you'd only get more out of that kid toying with
             | Arduino because of persistence ("few years"), and not
             | because of the type of things they did, but I ultimately
             | believe you'll have similar chances of developing a great
             | software engineer out of any of them in general.
        
               | K0balt wrote:
               | You're right on about the time part, that was definitely
               | a big part of what I meant.
               | 
               | You can start anywhere, and coding boot camps are useful,
               | just as following YouTube tutorials. But until you learn
               | to identify, quantify, and characterise the problem and
               | data space you aren't really doing the job of software
               | engineering.
               | 
               | My experience is that many people are deceived into
               | thinking that language fluency is the core skill of
               | software engineering, and coding bootcamps tend to foster
               | that misrepresentation.
               | 
               | That doesn't make them bad. It just means that often,
               | thrashing around with no real knowledge of the tools and
               | solving a problem with the tiny set of syntax you can get
               | to work is much, much more educational towards the goal
               | of becoming a software engineer than getting a good grasp
               | of the language as it pertains to solving toy problems
               | that require little effort to characterise.
               | 
               | Anyone that is willing to hack around a problem long
               | enough that the solution emerges is doing the real job.
               | 
               | It doesn't matter where they start, or how much they
               | "know" about "coding". The real task is to fully
               | characterise the problem and data structures, and
               | sometimes that emerges from the horrific beast that rises
               | from the tangled mess of a hacking session, a malformed
               | but complete caricature of the actual solution.
               | 
               | Then, all you have left to do is to code the actual
               | solution, the structure of the algorithm and data has
               | been laid bare for you to see by your efforts.
               | 
               | That, I believe, is the essence of software engineering.
        
           | keyle wrote:
           | Genius, here comes the funding!
        
       | mhavelka77 wrote:
       | Fun fact, the site fetches the textfile from the server at
       | '/kernel.txt' and stores it in the browser local storage.
       | 
       | The code is obviously from the Linux kernel, specifically
       | managing group memberships and permissions for processes.
        
         | dekken_ wrote:
         | ahhah, thank you
         | 
         | this code appears in the loading screens for the new game
         | "forever winter"
         | 
         | I was wondering if it was from the game or not, so it seems
         | not!
        
           | sph wrote:
           | Weirder, every time I see a code snippet on some video, it's
           | the same "struct group_info ...". It is so common that I
           | recognise it every time. I wonder where it is coming from,
           | that makes this snippet so popular?
           | 
           | EDIT: https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:786/format:webp/1
           | *3YdG... from https://towardsdatascience.com/teaching-an-rnn-
           | to-write-code...
           | 
           | The thumbnail to this image says "the source code to the
           | Matrix"... so perhaps the movie had used some Linux code, and
           | everybody is copying the movie
        
             | phito wrote:
             | It literally says under the image: code of the matrix
             | (Cloned from Keanu's GitHub), and links to hackertyper.net
             | 
             | I think it's popular due to hackertyper. If you search for
             | things like "hacker code" on google, hackertyper comes
             | first.
        
             | FredPret wrote:
             | It's the modern Wilhelm Scream
        
         | BoppreH wrote:
         | The file is groups.c from the Linux Kernel, circa sometime
         | before 2015:
         | https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/8f6c5ffc8987f4f5b5a3e...
        
       | anilakar wrote:
       | Don't forget the banana!
        
         | j3th9n wrote:
         | For scale?
        
           | anilakar wrote:
           | You're one of today's lucky ten thousand:
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcmaNJfRQf0
        
       | dev-jayson wrote:
       | I only have 3 minutes to hack into the mainframe.
       | 
       | *still finds time to write neatly crafted comments on what the
       | code does
        
         | PUSH_AX wrote:
         | Two people typing on the same keyboard can help speed things
         | up.
        
           | sevg wrote:
           | For anyone that doesn't know the reference, it's this classic
           | scene from NCIS:
           | 
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qgehH3kEQ
        
             | nuancebydefault wrote:
             | The power of the NCIS series! So unrealistic in so many
             | ways, that it becomes fun to watch.
        
         | FirmwareBurner wrote:
         | _> still finds time to write neatly crafted comments on what
         | the code does_
         | 
         | My man!
        
         | wkjagt wrote:
         | I'M IN!
        
       | pjerem wrote:
       | LPT : If you are using this website to hack the FBI or whatever,
       | don't forget to triple press SHIFT and to triple press ALT :)
        
         | coolandsmartrr wrote:
         | I knew about this website for a long time, but I just learned
         | about this easter egg!
        
         | nneonneo wrote:
         | On mobile, so I can't try this - what does this do?
        
           | tacotime wrote:
           | Triple shift pops up a red "Access Denied" message in the
           | middle of the screen. Alt just shifts focus to the browser's
           | toolbar, at least in Chrome.
        
             | pjerem wrote:
             | Alt alt alt should show a big green Access Granted :)
        
               | beeboobaa3 wrote:
               | It just opens/closes the file/edit/view menu.
        
               | extraduder_ire wrote:
               | If you press it enough times, eventually three alt keys
               | will get through to the page and it will pop up. I think
               | it could could prevent the menu appearing by using
               | preventDefault() on the keydown event.
        
           | airstrike wrote:
           | > Come on... come on...
           | 
           |  _Suddenly, the screen flashes red: "ACCESS DENIED."_
           | 
           | > Dammit, they're trying to lock me out.
           | 
           |  _Fingers fly across the keyboard. Sweat drips from their
           | forehead._
           | 
           | > Not today, FBI...
           | 
           |  _The warning turns from red to green: "ACCESS GRANTED"_
           | 
           | > I'm in.
           | 
           | > Let's see what you've been hiding...
        
         | scudsworth wrote:
         | super cute, haha. mac keyboards hit OPTION ([?]) btw
        
       | m463 wrote:
       | note that there is also superficially similar hackertyper dot com
       | which contains a cesspool of advertising
       | plugins/links/cookies/javascript.
        
       | Uptrenda wrote:
       | >No syntax highlighting
       | 
       | (anxious)
        
       | edem wrote:
       | What does hacking have to do with cybersecurity?
        
         | blooalien wrote:
         | _True (real actual)_ "hackers" often make the best
         | cybersecurity experts? :)
        
           | anthk wrote:
           | Not always. A lot of hackers aren't even networking related.
           | 
           | An easy hack would be to use echo, netcat and less to browse
           | either Reddit or HN over Gopher:                    echo
           | /live/items | nc  hngopher.com 70 | less               echo
           | /live/items/41877513   | netcat hngopher.com 70 | less
        
         | alias_neo wrote:
         | I suppose they mean the pop-culture term "hacker" which is
         | someone who breaks into digital systems in movies etc.
         | 
         | In which case, it has everything to do with Cybersecurity.
        
       | smikhanov wrote:
       | This website is not complete without the Igor-3000 coding robot:
       | https://youtu.be/q-HvY8stFxk
       | 
       | Greetings from Novosibirsk!
        
         | kunagi7 wrote:
         | That was funny, the "Igor is only powered by Ethernet" phrase
         | made me laugh way too much.
         | 
         | Also, I did not know about Hacker Typer, I will keep it around
         | :).
        
       | LeoPanthera wrote:
       | Mess with the best, die like the rest.
        
       | redbell wrote:
       | Oh, for an instant, I felt I'm a real hacker like the ones you
       | see in movies! Just randomly press any key on the keyboard, and
       | it will generate chunks of meaningful text quickly. Long-press
       | any key, and it starts behaving like ChatGPT when generating an
       | answer.
        
         | Ylpertnodi wrote:
         | The vst3 plugin 'RipChord' does similar...but your key presses
         | aren't strictly random.
        
       | who-shot-jr wrote:
       | A true hacker typer:
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzZAtrw_XDI
        
       | vindarel wrote:
       | A fork for Lisp code^^ https://vindarel.github.io/Hacker-Typer/
       | code is from the Mezzano kernel OS.
        
       | rob74 wrote:
       | Reminds me of certain (music) keyboards where you can select some
       | built-in songs and then just press random keys and it will play
       | the song correctly, but in the tempo of your keypresses. Who
       | needs piano lessons?
        
       | Gavin311 wrote:
       | # calculator.py
       | 
       | class Calculator: def __init__(self): self.history = []
       | def add(self, num1, num2):             """Add two numbers"""
       | result = num1 + num2             self.history.append(f"{num1} +
       | {num2} = {result}")             return result              def
       | subtract(self, num1, num2):             """Subtract two
       | numbers"""             result = num1 - num2
       | self.history.append(f"{num1} - {num2} = {result}")
       | return result              def multiply(self, num1, num2):
       | """Multiply two numbers"""             result = num1 * num2
       | self.history.append(f"{num1} * {num2} = {result}")
       | return result              def divide(self, num1, num2):
       | """Divide two numbers"""             if num2 == 0:
       | raise ValueError("Cannot divide by zero!")             result =
       | num1 / num2             self.history.append(f"{num1} / {num2} =
       | {result}")             return result              def
       | get_history(self):             """Get the calculation history"""
       | return self.history
       | 
       | def main(): calculator = Calculator()                   while
       | True:             print("\nOptions:")             print("1. Add")
       | print("2. Subtract")             print("3. Multiply")
       | print("4. Divide")             print("5. Get History")
       | print("6. Quit")                  choice = input("Choose an
       | option: ")                  if choice == "1":
       | num1 = float(input("Enter the first number: "))
       | num2 = float(input("Enter the second number: "))
       | print(f"Result: {calculator.add(num1, num2)}")             elif
       | choice == "2":                 num1 = float(input("Enter the
       | first number: "))                 num2 = float(input("Enter the
       | second number: "))                 print(f"Result:
       | {calculator.subtract(num1, num2)}")             elif choice ==
       | "3":                 num1 = float(input("Enter the first number:
       | "))                 num2 = float(input("Enter the second number:
       | "))                 print(f"Result: {calculator.multiply(num1,
       | num2)}")             elif choice == "4":                 num1 =
       | float(input("Enter the first number: "))                 num2 =
       | float(input("Enter the second number: "))                 try:
       | print(f"Result: {calculator.divide(num1, num2)}")
       | except ValueError as e:                     print(e)
       | elif choice == "5":                 print("\nCalculation
       | History:")                 for i, history in
       | enumerate(calculator.get_history()):
       | print(f"{i+1}. {history}")             elif choice == "6":
       | break             else:                 print("Invalid option.
       | Please choose a valid option.")
       | 
       | if __name__ == "__main__": main()
        
       | nunobrito wrote:
       | It worked well, was able to stop a nuclear bomb within 1.2
       | minutes but I've also found a defect:                    The code
       | has comments.
        
       | jonathantf2 wrote:
       | I remember getting banned from the computers at school for a
       | month for going on this and hitting F11.
        
       | alt227 wrote:
       | This doesnt work on default Firefox, as when you start typing it
       | automatically brings up the Ctr-F search box and starts typing in
       | there :(
        
         | BlindEyeHalo wrote:
         | Disable "Search for text when you start typing" in the
         | settings.
         | 
         | This 'feature' is so infuriating, as many websites have
         | shortcuts that become unusable from this. There is nothing
         | wrong with CTRL + F total idiotic feature to have on by
         | default.
        
           | alt227 wrote:
           | Thanks :)
        
           | extraduder_ire wrote:
           | Coming from the other side, an annoying number of websites
           | use '/' to focus their own search box, while I am used to
           | using it to activate quick-search, which it's bound to by
           | default. It's like the ctrl-f search, but disappears when it
           | loses focus.
        
       | SamWhited wrote:
       | In school I worked as an intern for a U.S. defense contractor
       | (which I feel rather bad about now, but that's neither here nor
       | there). Every now and then some important general or captain type
       | would show up for a meeting and walk around and look at what all
       | the various labs were doing. When they came to the room where all
       | the interns sat we would all pull up hacker typer and just
       | furiously type away while they were looking in the door.
       | 
       | The important person would always be very impressed and say what
       | a good job we were doing, and our boss who was showing them
       | around (and knew exactly what we were doing) would have to nod
       | and sweat bullets and then would get furious with us afterwards
       | (but it was worth it and we did it every time we knew someone was
       | coming to do an inspection).
        
         | shayonj wrote:
         | I have always wondered if anyone used it in a "real life
         | scenario". This was hilarious, thanks for sharing :D
        
           | imadethis wrote:
           | When I was in college, the local news was interviewing a comp
           | sec professor of mine in the computer lab. The cameraman was
           | taking B-roll footage (blinking lights from racks, cables
           | going everywhere, that sort of thing). He asked if he could
           | film a few of our screens to show what we were diligently
           | working on, which is how we got hacker typer onto the nightly
           | news.
        
         | syncsynchalt wrote:
         | Ahh, I used to queue this up on another screen when I needed
         | things to look "busy":                   cat /dev/random |
         | hexdump -C | grep 'ca fe'
         | 
         | Note that it runs a lot faster now than it used to in the 90s.
        
           | regentbowerbird wrote:
           | Super cool, thanks.
           | 
           | I wondered how its speed could be adjusted and found `pv` can
           | be used for throttling pipe throughput, so thanks for that
           | too!
           | 
           | Limited to reading 50kB per second:                   cat
           | /dev/urandom | pv -q -L 50k | hexdump -C | grep 'ca fe'
        
             | taway-20230404 wrote:
             | Alternatively, slow it down by a factor of 16 for every
             | additional specified character.                   cat
             | /dev/urandom | hexdump -C | grep '9 ca fe'
        
           | AkshayGenius wrote:
           | Only tangentially related, but on my MacBook Pro simply
           | running                  cat /dev/random
           | 
           | causes my terminal to hang and my speakers start emitting a
           | loud buzzing sound until the terminal is force-quit or system
           | is restarted.
           | 
           | I can understand the terminal not being able to handle the
           | amount of data from /dev/random but for the speakers to start
           | emitting sounds as a result of this is certainly very
           | strange. Almost like /dev/random was being piped into
           | /dev/audio or something. Anyone have an explanation?
        
       | ewooq wrote:
       | Willy Beele
        
       | ewooq wrote:
       | hi
        
       | CollinEMac wrote:
       | I wish there was something like this that could somehow turn off
       | OS keybindings.
       | 
       | I tried letting my niece and nephew play with this once but they
       | kept hitting the Super key, minimizing the window, alt-tabbing,
       | etc.
        
       | scudsworth wrote:
       | yep. thats hacker typer.
        
       | easterncalculus wrote:
       | I never knew they had a job board: https://jobs.hackertyper.net/
        
       | ramonverse wrote:
       | I'm in
        
       | stormcode wrote:
       | Love this app, the GitHub is easy to clone and modify as well.
       | Used it for a game once.
        
       | nicholasjarnold wrote:
       | This is so nostalgic. Many of the engineers at a company I worked
       | for over a decade ago used this one day when our little startup
       | was visited by some Important People. We were so 1337. Haha! Good
       | times. Good Friday post. Thanks.
        
       | kmoser wrote:
       | There's a VS Code plugin that does something similar:
       | https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=jevakall...
        
       | eccentricwind wrote:
       | A gigabyte of Ram should do the trick
        
       | gizela wrote:
       | f wklhvu befihvbevbeuv
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-10-18 23:01 UTC)