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Would You Open Your Home To a Hacker – For Free?
coondoggie writes "What do you get when you mix access to Google's ultra-fast fiber network and old fashioned grass roots business ideas? Well, in this case you'd get someone living on your couch for free for three months. This week a group calling itself the 'Kansas City Hacker Homes' launched a program that calls on the good folks of Kansas City to open up their homes to entrepreneurs and developers who would live and work there for a period of three months, rent and utility free. They have to buy their own food."
Someone tell them what the "board" in room & board means, I don't think they know.
Every claim in that article has already been discredited repeatedly by every party involved except two people. It was all the work of a liberal arts student trying to start a movement. "Hackers" are no different from any other group in the world.
This is America, chukco. We know what "Room and Board" is - that's what happens when they lock you up at Gitmo.
Really, please try and keep up.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
While I can admire the idealism behind this concept, from a practical viewpoint it leaves much to be desired.
For example, will Kansas City Hacker Homes bond and insure the hackers, so as to indemnify the homeowners against theft or lawsuits from their "guests"? Very doubtful, which means the burden falls on the homeowner (and his/her insurance policy).
What happens to the homeowner if the hacker decides to skirt the law (e.g. breaking into someone's network, taking drugs, or downloading copyrighted material) while living in the house? What if he runs up hundreds of dollars on your cable bill watching pay-per-view movies? How do you get your money back? Can you even evict him on the spot, or will local laws give him "squatter's rights" for a limited time, as they often do for non-paying renters?
You wouldn't really know anything about this person in your house, besides what he told you. Will Kansas City Hacker Homes provide you with a background check of the hacker's criminal and civil record? Again, highly unlikely.
So basically you're rolling the dice with some total stranger, taking all the risk, and with no promise of getting anything in return. Not a smart move for any homeowner.
Why do you always have to knock my Leiagram project?!
Should also have a Bathing Clause.
Why would anyone do this? Why would I invite a stranger to live in my house for free?
Also, what kind of startup are you doing where you need incredibly high download speeds? Seriously. There is nothing you could do which would be using such large files that this is an issue and be processable on a laptop.
Free would be a huge step up! Since I use Windows I am, in fact, inviting hackers into my system every day and paying for the privilege.
This program is supposed to get entrepreneurs and developers access to high speed fiber, I understand that; but why do they have to live there? Not that I'd allow anyone onto my network either way, but if the end result is getting some of these awesome startups on the net with a good connection, I'd be a lot more willing to let them put a server in an out-of-the-way place in my house. I don't ask to set up a bed in my data co-location center, why do they need a bed in these houses? They can even have access to their hardware whenever they want, provided it's supervised and at an appropriate time. Also, my electricity isn't free. I'd sure like some small kind of cut from the profits (assuming they make a profit sometime).
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try." -Homer Simpson
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You can issue a very simple document saying that the person waives their right to sue in the event of injury. Cave owners do it all of the time when cavers wish to enter their property. For example:
http://www.caves.org/grotto/jamesrivergrotto/JRGCaveTripReleaseForm.PDF
Rental property does it:
http://monkeyshines4kids.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Monkey-Shines-4-Kids-LLC-General-Liability-Release.pdf
and you can get a free one from nolo here:
https://www.rocketlawyer.com/secure/interview/new.aspx?id=154&utm_source=103&try=1&v=3&gclid=CPuF3peHg7ICFQmpnQodiCwAcw#q1
Shut up and start helping people.
Note: I have put my money where my mouth is. I live with two foreign PhD students who pay drastically reduced rent. They are also the nicest people people that I have lived with.
for bootstrapping kansas city's high tech industry
How? Just how many startups require ultra-fast fiber at their development site? Wherever the startup hosts their public server(s) may already have such a connection.
I live in Kansas City although not in one of the first phase of fiber hoods. On a local forum we had a discussion about this site already and I brought up the terms of service for residential fiber service.
and hereis the page containing those rules. So without a written agreement you can't run a server. The "providing commercial services" part most likely means no sharing your gigabit connection, not "you can't work from home". I don't think google wants their residential fiber service to be used to start the next facebook.com. They want those entrepreneurs to pay a more for the business service. Whenever google fiber was first announced and what we heard on the local news was something to the effect of it's going to be an experiment by google to see what people will do with a giga-bit connection. At first that sounded like (to me anyway) that they would let us run our own web servers from home, but now it looks more like they just want to offer a web browsing only service for residential customers(like Time Warner).
My question to anyone who has an answer: How could someone use google fiber residential service to get their startup off the ground without breaking the terms of service?
"the fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached to it." - Grandpa Simpson
And there won't be a crappy NAT router between you and the fiber?
No. Hackers hack. That doesn't mean it is bad. It sounds like you've redefined the tem, but a lot of people would disagree.
The common old terminology, where a programmer or writer were called 'hackers' is definitely replaced with the group of people that bypass security in pursuit of knowledge... but I don't agree that the common conception is that they are all doing bad things.
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You can issue a very simple document saying that the person waives their right to sue in the event of injury. Cave owners do it all of the time when cavers wish to enter their property.
I'd be willing to bet that your contract there isn't even enforceable in a lot of areas. People can sue you for damages that occur to them while they are breaking into your property, stealing your stuff, or otherwise causing mischief and mayhem to the person they are suing. And they'll win, too, if it can be shown that you should have resolved the problem that they are suing you over. You can sign those contracts all day long, but still sue the caving company under the right circumstances. Same with the home owner. You'd have to be an idiot to do this with people you do not know, and have no way of trusting.
At least your foreign PH.D Students are unlikely to know their way around the local legal system, and are likely to be responsible and caring people. For all you know that hacker that is moving in with you just got kicked out of a homeless shelter for assaulting another inhabitant.
After hurricane Katrina, a brother of mine let some refugees stay in his house in Texas. These people stole things from him, damaged his property (the physical structure), and ruined furniture and bedding. I'd trust these Kansas City hackers less than a refugee.
...to: Would you open your house to a homeless person?
I wouldn't even share a hotel room with a total stranger, let alone my entire house. I've given food and money to homeless persons, but there is where my "openness" ends. Letting someone you don't know into your life, 24-hours-a-day, is a HUGE risk, no matter how well educated they are, people are still people...and knowing people as I do, I know most people have at least ONE dark secret, and you may not want that secret to be a part of your life, I know I wouldn't.
People do the weirdest stuff in their privacy, believe me - you don't really want to know, we're talking spitting on the floor, peeing fetiches, shooting boogers here and there, messing around with your stuff, stealing little by little, lying about not having broken stuff, and that's just the Safe-For-Work stuff.
Watch the program "The worlds worst tenants" for some happy inspiration, also - watch caught on the job, and you'll see what people are. These are also the people we consider good, the only tolerable people to have in my home (for me) would be close friends, and family - and yes...they too have these weird habits, admit it...you have at least one too.
Think about that before you open your door, sweet dreams ;)
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
We don't mind that language evolves. We just wish that you would follow suit!
Hint: Language doesn't necessarily discard valid definitions when it evolves, and it certainly didn't in this case.
Sure, you can use the word to refer to crackers, but it remains a subset definition. Just as Jack The Ripper is believed to have been both a surgeon and a serial killer, referring to him as a surgeon doesn't mean that all surgeons are serial killers.
When people say a hacker broke into a system, that hacker is also a cracker. Just because the general populous doesn't understand this doesn't mean that we don't.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun