Headline July 24, 2017/ ''' HACKING 4 HONOURS '''

''' HACKING 4 HONOURS '''

WERE AMBASSADOR MALALA YUSUFZAI     -ever to look for heroes for honours, say, even to role-model, her search would be best served to know:

Students : Merium, Rabo, Haleema, Dee, Eman. Sarah,  Saima, Sameen, Aqsa, Eman, Zilli, Lakshmi/India,  Sanyia, Shahbano, Tooba,  Hussain, Shahzaib Khan Yusafzai-

Haider, Bilal Malik, Jordan, Salar Khan Yusufzai, Vishnu/India,Toby/China, and  Zaeem............and all the other heroes joining up..............  

FOR SURE, THEY ARE YOUNG  -but not selfish,  brilliant, Yes. but not dorky,  engaged but not political.

The current class of  college-age  Hackers will soon dominate technology and shape our future.   

In his tiny dorm room,  six guys are crowded together,  lounging in desk chairs, slouched on the loft beds, or standing-

Everyone's either holding or looking at a computer. They're all part of a self-started hacker group called  Sthacks,  short for  Stetson Hacks, and David's is their informal HeadQuarters, HQ.

The floor is covered with throw rugs and grubby bath mats and on the wall is is a vanity license plate that reads  M3MES. David's Corsair keyboard glows red in front of his curved  LG monitor-

My geek pride inflates when I notice we own the same mouse, a  Razer DeathAdder  Chroma. I search for a bookshelf, but I can find only one physical book,  *Essentials of Programming Languages.

I have them count the number of Internet enabled devices in the room; Davis has 13, his roommate has has  11,  and the others carry two apiece, for a total of 34.

Shortly after I arrive,  the Sthacks members wander out, giving David and me the room. In an unhurried drawl, he tells me he was born to nontechie parents in 1998; he tended sheep, goats and pigs at his small middle school outside Washington, D.C.

Out of curiosity, he taught himself to program on his  TI-84 Plus graphing calculator in seventh grade and got into finding bugs in high school, when he discovered an  XSS  vulnerability on his school's website.

From there he branched out into corporate bug bounties, starting with AT&T  [where the nature of his work was confidential under the Section 5 of AT&T's  terms and conditions]-

And attended some hackers events, where he skewed on the young side  -last summer his father had to chaperone him to Def Con in Las Vegas, because the hotel was  21-and-over.

He says he loved high school, which trips my red flag, because what kind of freak loves high school? So I ask him what he hates. ''I don't hate anything,'' he says.

Poverty, racism, war?  What about global warming?  ''I'm concerned, it's an issue, and it needs to be dealt with.'' he says.

Davis always says issue instead of problem. and the most negative word he'll use is annoying. Not only does he hate nothing, but he claims he has no regrets, no worries, insecurities, or recurring bad thoughts.

The most personal thing he'll tell me is that he's allergic to the orange part of muenster cheese. He won't even take a public stance on  Edward Snowden's NSA disclosures, except to say, ''I object to massive spying programs.''

Maybe it's not surprising that a security obsessive would be uncrackable cipher of niceness.

But is he just a naturally private person, like he claims? Does it only seem natural because he has grown up in an era when secrecy is a healthy norm?

Or is he posing as a do-gooder for the lulz? Should I be reassured as terrified that he ain't worried about anything? Maybe he's just young. Or I'm old.

Before  I can probe further, the Sthacks guys reenter with laptops in hand. Lest you picture some  Revenge of the Nerds tableau, they wear the archetype lightly    -no snort-laughs or Comic-Corn merch; only one pair of glasses, tapeless.

They're dressed in  T-shirts and cargo shorts. Some have girlfriends, all make eye contact.

These  NU  freshmen are what you might call  Nu-Nerd    -confident, articulate, nonneurotic, and sharp as katanas.

They're all, in their own way, just as whizzy as David : There's Sam [!WOW!] a chatty former competitive  League of Legends player; he argues constantly with Peter, a pugnacious arch capitalist who pulls in five figures a year with a  web design business.

Jacob is a deadpan wiseacre ; the soft spoken Taha is considering pursuing three minors and two majors  [he dropped a third, mechanical engineering, because he figures he can pick it on his own].

David's roommate,  Alec, knows three languages, plays three instruments, and has a penchant for the  tie-dye and sweatpants.

And Matt, a baby faced  Ping-Pong  enthusiast with an  11 o'clock shadow, is the only one whose pants fit properly.

Like the  Midnight's Children or the  X-Men, they have talents that seem to have emerged spontaneously and  in isolation, from everywhere and for no reason, united here through the sheer chance of dorm assignments and the lingua franca of tech.    

The Honour and Serving of the latest operational research on Technology, Hacking and Nu-Nerds continues.

With respectful dedication to the Hackers, Nu-Nerds, Students, Professors and Teachers of  the World. See Ya all on !WOW!   -the World Students Society and Twitter-!E-WOW!  -the Ecosystem 2011:

''' !WOW! '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless