whoami

Perfectly matured homo sapiens with his gracefully aged dog who is changing their career path midlife. Going from 20+ yrs in retail and now seeking a new career as an hacker.
To learn how to break in to things, and afterwards get paid to break in to things. Bingo!
I have always had a curiosity for how things work, what make them tick, what happens if… I disassembled my toys to find out how they worked. Sometimes I even managed to assemble them back again. But hey, what fun is a toy if you can’t find out how it works?
My first contact with computers was an ZX Spectrum which my uncle lent to me. This was truly amazing! If I tell you to type my name, you do it. Add some lines of code and you type my name indefinitely, until I tell you to stop.
Information was scarce regarding home computers in Sweden (yeah, I’m a swede) in
the mid 80’s. Libraries had dusty copies of ABC80 books and some rare programming in Cobol book.
But I was in luck! When me and my friend played Football Manager on ZX Spectrum,
the program crashed and I was able to see the code. It was written in Basic, a very basic(!) programming language, so it was fairly easy to read and understand.
I started programming with trial and error, and copying from whatever sources
was available. I wrote a simple little game with text-graphics, but afterwards I didn’t know how to save it on a tape. I knew how to load programs, but not how to save.
With no internet to ask and with my computer plugged into the only tv in the house
I had to pull the plug. My creation gone! First lesson learned, always save your work.
Few years later when my harddrive died I learnt lesson number 2, always backup!

As years past computers became more and more mainstream in Sweden. The real
breakthrough was the C64, when it became affordable. Followed by the Amiga, although I had an Atari ST, and finally the home PC.
In the 90’s Sweden had a very generous tax-reduction for employees on home computers. Every third year you got, if you were employed, a new tax free computer.
Add to that a bunch of companies underbidding each other to provide the fastest, cheapest internet connection and soon there was a connected computer in every swedish home (almost).
For me that wasn’t all good news. I wont elaborate more on the subject, instead read
John Perry Barlow’s ‘A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace’ as it captures
the essence of my view on the subject.

The interconnected world should be about sharing, caring and help a fellow out.
Open Source community is a good example and there is several others. But when more and more governments around the globe are restricting the flow of information or companies trying to monetize the last cent out of everything it’s time to do something.
Information equals power is a well known fact, and when someone is trying to withhold
you information they are in the same time trying to suppress your power.

/T