[HN Gopher] The early 90s tech scene that created L0pht, the leg... ___________________________________________________________________ The early 90s tech scene that created L0pht, the legendary hackerspace Author : ecliptik Score : 193 points Date : 2023-03-17 00:25 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (cyberscoop.com) (TXT) w3m dump (cyberscoop.com) | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | Whenever I read stuff about BBSs, I always feel so glad that I | skipped this entire subculture by being on initially Bitnet and | then Usenet plus a bit of IRC. Most of the descriptions of BBSs | make them sound like an entirely different place, and although | maybe more "hacker intensive", certainly less cordial. But then | again, maybe that was just the bit of Usenet I was on. | jeffreygoesto wrote: | OMG the Bitnet. 91 there were about a hundred machines from | which people came into the relay (chat) and we thought we knew | them all... Had to press Enter every once in a while on the IBM | 3270 terminal to see if somebody wrote in the chat. If there | was a sudden storm of answers you got really busy reading and | answering... | | /signon | | That was before all those people started to shuffle into IRC | even... | | I also remember getting the "Datenschleuder" where you could | read how to build your own 300baud acoustic coupler... | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | I was using Bitnet in 1986, and my main memory is the way the | "hottub channel" would get busy as the USA headed into | nighttime (east coast first, later west). It was amazing how | lascivious people could be with just text! :) | ghaff wrote: | There were definitely different cultures within the BBS world. | I was on a fairly small-time but professionally run BBS that | wasn't really part of the warez/hacker community. One thing | that was different a lot of the time from Usenet was that, | given you were dialing up from home at a time when telephone | calls were expensive, if you were into BBSing, you tended to | get a subscription to a local board, so it was fairly natural | to form a local community around the main board. | | I guess Usenet had some local forums but my Usenet experience | was that it was mostly locationless. (The bigger BBSs like the | one I was on had relay boards like Fidonet but there was | definitely a local vibe on the main board.) | | There also just wasn't a lot of overlap between BBSs in their | heyday and the people who had access to the Internet from | school or work. | provenance wrote: | Manifesting an angel to sponsor a low key hackspace on Oahu. Plz | email rapht at nshkr.com | | Aloha | yourpaltod wrote: | This thread made me check in on https://www.pigdog.org/ and yep, | it's still bad craziness. | weld wrote: | If you are in the Bay Area during RSA Conference, Space Rogue and | me, Weld, are going to be fireside chatting and signing books at | the W Hotel. Come get one and hang out! | https://info.veracode.com/rsa-2023-book-signing.html | Slix wrote: | Are there any online/remote hackerspaces? Seems like a good idea. | Being physically together is too much time and energy sometimes. | legerdemain wrote: | Meanwhile, here in South Bay, an activist board member (who is a | senior lead at Tesla by day) just fired our longtime hacker space | director with zero days notice because membership wasn't growing | fast enough. Now our events are struggling and members are | leaving because of this cavalier display of leadership. | | It is almost impossible to find tech-adjacent countercultural | spaces in the Bay that aren't fully co-opted by a self-devouring | corporate mindset. | rolph wrote: | these may help | | https://hackaday.io/hackerspaces/ | | https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Bay_Area_Consortium_of_Hackers... | sacnoradhq wrote: | Old and outdated lists. | | The best thing to do is find some cool rich peeps, go in on a | small commercial/industrial space to make it sort of like a | college dorm, and keep the membership invite-only and tiny. | weld wrote: | My space in Cambridge is not on the list. It's | hastypastry.net. Been there for 20 years. It's private so | no need to advertise. I think it's good to be on these | lists so people know hacker spaces exist | rolph wrote: | yes old and outdated, but breadcrumbs... finding the trail | and the desired endpoint is often an effective filter for | prestige accounts [hey, im on 31l337h4X0r space] that dont | have the properties of "adept hacker" | | 900913 maps is probably anathema to some thus they dont | show up. | | its best to look thru a span of search engines with | different DNS providers, you can dive deeper past the | search bubbles | legerdemain wrote: | The closest one to me on the map is something called "the | fifth space," but I can't find any online presence at all for | it (it shares a name with an interfaith org in India, which | is what most results are for). | | The consortium lists spaces in SF, Oakland, and father out. | This could be a major motivator to move _to_ SF. | rolph wrote: | not all of these are considered active, some may have gone | gray in presence, but still exist in some form. | legerdemain wrote: | I appreciate your well-intentioned effort to help. Thank | you. | dannyobrien wrote: | you may wish to visit Noisebridge someday | legerdemain wrote: | I'd need to move from South Bay to SF first to make repeated | visits worthwhile. Over an hour each way is... yeah. | medion wrote: | Counterculture in general seems scarce, everything and everyone | feels so hyper normal these days. | ljf wrote: | There is heaps of counter culture both online and in the real | world - even in my small English town. And so much of what | was counter culture has been co-opted into general culture | now too. | | I'd say things, ideas, opportunities and ways of | being/thinking are even broader now than they were than when | I was a teenager in the 90s. | icelancer wrote: | There is a pretty strong reason for this; deviancy from the | norm is punished heavily on social media. No one wants to be | the main character when they have 300 followers and they're | just posting their opinions. | anthk wrote: | Mastodon, Gemini and the 2007-reborn Gopher. | | But yes, you are right. Back in late 90's/early 00's Linux | and Unix desktop were trully different and unique. Fluxbox | had zillions of different themes. 3D, black, retro, flat- | ish, metal-ish, Java styled, Gnome styled, KDE-alike, | Gaudi, childish, Bohemian, alien looking... every style was | fine for anyone. | | Ditto witht the icons. One day I felt technical and I | switched into the Slick theme being "workstation/highend" | themed with a gray color scheme, and the next day I felt | nice and cheerful and switched into Noia with a blue | Keramik theme. | | Now everything looks bland, flat and everyone looks afraid | on having an style. | throwawaaarrgh wrote: | Leave the bay area, or go find some artists with a warehouse | and give them some cash to let you keep some machines there | kurthr wrote: | Come on you're just holding it wrong, Zero to One is the most | important thing! One to zero is next. | | Really, how did he become a board member? Donated money or | self-important resume? The rest of the board let him do it so | it's a bigger problem than just him. Get the email list of | membership and start a real space... there's lots of empty | office space now so you might be able to get a donation since | they get to write it off at old pricing, but it's a huge amount | of work for very little return (unless you like running these | sorts of things). | | Sorry for your situation. | legerdemain wrote: | Yeah, I'm not incorporating and ponying up $30k to get an | office lease. There's commitment, and then there's | _commitment_. | | Our hacker space has had tons of leadership drama over the | years, from misuse of funds to a co-founder trying to get a | trademark on our name to do a hostile takeover. | | Basically, if your hacker space exists because some tech | people made big money in company stocks and decided to buy a | personal playground, you're constantly subject to their whims | and caprices. | sacnoradhq wrote: | Hahah. Yep. Is that Hacker Dojo or some shitty place like that? | | Corporate, BMW SUV-driving assholes who think of themselves as | "liberals" but are ready to turn on anyone for any reason and | excommunicate them without the possibility of fair treatment. | electrondood wrote: | You clearly never spent any time at Hacker Dojo. | weld wrote: | The L0pht had no leadership. Only partners that paid rent and | utilities. You had to pay to cover your share of expenses but | also contribute with sweat equity. We ended up kicking out a | couple of people that ceased to contribute to the common good | even if they paid. | recuter wrote: | You remind me of a guy called Brian. He is a very naughty boy. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WboggjN_G-4 | thrown123098 wrote: | So start one that's completely toxic to the current mainstream | culture. People forget just how unpopular tech was in the | 90s/00s. Or that counter cultures are always reviled by the | majority. | localplume wrote: | [dead] | myself248 wrote: | This was something that blew my mind when I visited out | there. Visited every space I could, and the | startup/commercial culture was just incredibly pervasive. | Couldn't talk about a cool idea for more than a minute or two | without some tech bro trying to monetize it. | | Maybe that's someone's jam, but I just wanted to hang out | with some nerds that reminded me of back home. Everywhere | else I've traveled, I could visit the local hackerspace and | get my fix, but the bay area was..... different. | weld wrote: | In the 90s the L0pht was not commercial and was funded as a | hobby. Nearing 2000 we wanted to make it our day job and | not a hobby and transition from to jobs we all had working | for someone else. It was the beginning of my journey to | entrepreneurship but this transition was very rocky. Manu | didn't survive. It was a huge learning experience | documented in Space Rogue's book. | thrown123098 wrote: | But then those nerds can't be sexist, or racist, or | translhobic, or smell bad or ... basically people want | their office mates to be in the hacker space but also | somehow be magically interesting. | gtirloni wrote: | That's a false dichotomy. You don't need be sexist, | racist, transphobic or smell bad to be interesting. | Jensson wrote: | Depends on how strict your definitions for those things | are. The kind of person who works hard to not be sexist, | racist, transphobic or smell bad is often very boring. A | person who cares less about those things will have more | interesting things to say and opinions, and about the | smell thing a person who doesn't dare to smell | differently will constraint their hobbies and activities. | | For example, you have probably heard people say they | don't want to do X since it would make them sweat. That | makes them more boring than a person who would just do it | without caring that they might smell a bit afterwards. | atleastoptimal wrote: | > The kind of person who works hard to not be sexist, | racist, transphobic or smell bad is often very boring | | Most smart people don't need to "work hard" to not be any | of those, it's a bare minimum and takes barely any | effort. | | To think that avoiding smelling bad or being racist is | some sort of mental drain that leads to people becoming | boring is a silly notion. It romanticizes a kneejerk | contrarian misanthropy that's just as boring. | Jensson wrote: | > Most smart people don't need to "work hard" to not be | any of those, it's a bare minimum and takes barely any | effort. | | That was exactly my point, those things doesn't take any | effort. But if you put in a lot of effort to get as far | away from those things as possible then you will be | boring. And such people will often accuse others of being | racist or sexist even when they weren't, thus forcing the | entire environment to become boring. | | If I didn't agree with your here I wouldn't say "depends | on how strict". But of course you here is too strict, | since me even talking about that made you judge me. | Thankfully this website is pretty open and not very | strict, so interesting opinions are allowed here, while | you seem to want to shut down interesting discussions | even when they aren't racist or sexist. | | > It romanticizes a kneejerk contrarian misanthropy | that's just as boring. | | How is diversity ever more boring than monoculture? I | support diversity and therefore I am against monoculture. | The important part here is to not judge people. | Traditional internet forums were full of feminists etc as | well, they weren't mono culture, it was very rich. | PhasmaFelis wrote: | > you seem to want to shut down interesting discussions | even when they aren't racist or sexist. | | No one has tried to "shut you down." They're just | disagreeing with you. Isn't that what you wanted? A | vigorous, diverse dialogue? You can't praise diversity of | opinions and then claim oppression when someone's opinion | diverges from yours. | Jensson wrote: | I assumed he argued that we should shut down such | conversations. I am perfectly fine with people | disagreeing with me, otherwise I wouldn't post these | things. In fact, the whole reason I post these things | here is that I know people will disagree with them, I | don't post in monoculture forums. | PhasmaFelis wrote: | > I assumed he argued that we should shut down such | conversations. | | Perhaps you shouldn't assume things that were never said. | Jensson wrote: | Well, he said that the strictest versions of anti-sexism | and anti-racism are very easy to adhere to and should be | enforced more or less. Because that was what he argued | against. However later it turned out that he didn't | really read my post, meaning that he really agreed with | me from the start. | | So yeah, although he never said it he strongly implied | it. And then we resolved the differences later. Anyway, | the whole point is that people go extremely hard on you, | so they misread what you say and take it you are racist | or sexist etc for basically nothing, that is why these | things results in so boring communities. And his post is | an example of such a missunderstanding, in a less | accepting community I would have been banned there and | never be coming back. | atleastoptimal wrote: | > you seem to want to shut down interesting discussions | even when they aren't racist or sexist | | I'm not shutting down the discussion, I'm adding to the | discussion by offering my opinion. You're adopting a | persecution complex when there isn't one to the extent | you're implying. | | I do agree there are the normal people who are honest | about their biases but generally try to treat people | fairly, and the "hyper-PC" people who make it a game of | being the most "on the right side of history" to the | extent that it becomes all they care about. I know those | people and they are just as annoying and vitriolic as | those who are openly sexist. However my point is | generally that isn't not a simple "both sides" issue. The | golden mean isn't a medium amount of sexism and | transphobia, it's a neutral yet accepting attitude, which | by default isn't anything phobic, thus leans more towards | not being either than being either. | [deleted] | Jensson wrote: | > I'm not shutting down the discussion, I'm adding to the | discussion by offering my opinion. You're adopting a | persecution complex when there isn't one to the extent | you're implying. | | I guess you just didn't read what I wrote, that is fair, | I make such mistakes all the time. If you read it you | would notice that the thing I said is basically exactly | what you said here, and since you disagreed with that it | makes sense that I thought you wanted to shut down | interesting conversations. | | The anti-"isms" have a large mottle and bailey problem, | so when people say they don't want you to ban racists or | sexists they mean that they don't want to force everyone | to tiptoe around sex or gender, it doesn't mean that they | are fine with racism or sexism. | | I think the level of racism and sexism on HN is roughly | optimal. It isn't enough to drive people away, but | discussions are still allowed. Too much and you create a | racist/sexist monoculture. | tptacek wrote: | You will be flagged dead, rightly, and eventually banned | from the site if you engage in racist and misogynist | tropes on HN. The community here isn't tolerant of it in | any meaningful titration. What little of it survives here | is couched, hedged, and obscured to the point of | plausible deniability. If you like HN's culture, as I do, | you like a culture that rigorously pushes this form of | "interesting" thought out. | Jensson wrote: | Nothing you said there disagrees with anything I've said | though. HN is much more accepting of sexism and racism | than most parts of reddit for example, and that makes HN | much more interesting. I don't think that HN would become | better if we moved more towards reddit style mono | culture. | | For example, I would have gotten banned from most | subreddits for what I said here. | atleastoptimal wrote: | > sexism and racism than most parts of reddit for | example, and that makes HN much more interesting | | My point, in my first post in this thread, was with this | point, which is what I identified as what you were | implying in your first post. You have a mentality that | accepting racism/sexism is what causes HN to be | interesting, or at least more interesting than Reddit. | Your general mental frame seems to be "Reddit is always | tip toeing about racism and offending people, which | neuters how interesting/dynamic their discussions are, | while HN explores the full range of thought and doesn't | trivialize itself with those matters" | | You are claiming that accepting racism/sexism causes | things to be more interesting, but I'd wager it's a | symptom of the general difference in culture, not a | cause. | | It's still possible to have a very interesting culture of | discussion without racism or sexism, it just slightly | narrows the scope of discussing not what is | racist/sexist, but what simply appears racist or sexist. | At what point, however, would discussing the history of | development in nuclear physics, or compiler libraries, or | any technical topic, be more interesting if racism/sexism | were tolerated vs not tolerated? | | I think the few cases where things which may be | considered racist/sexist being tolerated making the site | more interesting are cases where HN discusses caste | discrimination, or the causes of the discrepant gender | ratios in the tech world, or certain aspects of human | behavior. But even so, what makes those discussions | interesting isn't the subset of the discussions that may | be sexist or racist, but rather the general analytical | and investigative culture this forum has borne out of the | more libertarian edge of 2000s silicon valley and | internet culture. | | My gripe is that a lot of people think that the capacity | to tolerate sexism/racism is an inherent strength, an | inability to be phased by the squeamishness and hall- | monitoring style policing that affects most people, when | in reality it's just their ability to justify their | normal human biases with their intellect. | asveikau wrote: | > The kind of person who works hard to not be sexist, | racist, transphobic or smell bad | | Agree with the sibling comment to say this isn't hard | work. Generally speaking you're saying basic requirements | to be a functioning human in society, which also involves | a certain amount of emapthy. | | > is often very boring. | | I don't understand the correlation here. There are plenty | of exist, racist, smelly transphobes who are also boring. | Jensson wrote: | > Agree with the sibling comment to say this isn't hard | work. | | Read my first sentence: "Depends on how strict your | definitions for those things are." | | Or do you think that the strictest versions of anti- | racism and anti-sexism are easy to adhere to? If not you | agree with me. | sprkwd wrote: | > The kind of person who works hard to not be sexist, | racist, transphobic or smell bad is often very boring. | | Yeah. That's a weird hill to die on. | Jensson wrote: | Do you agree with "racism and sexism are bad for all | definitions of racism and sexism"? I disagree with that | statement, I don't think it is wrong to disagree with | that. But lots of people agree with it, and then define | racism and sexism to be whatever they don't like and you | get a boring monoculture. | | That is why I hedged my comment with that it depends on | how strict you are. Depending on how you define racism | and sexism all of those things will change. So blanked | statements that we need to ban them without properly | defining exactly what we are banning is really bad, but | that is what happens almost everywhere in discussions. | thrown123098 wrote: | Then why are all the most anti-ist people dull as | dishwater and working in hr? If you have no opinions that | mainstream culture finds repulsive then you're not done | much thinking. | | There's even a pg essay about it: | http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html | escapecharacter wrote: | Part of why I moved out of the Bay Area and to NYC! | | I'm not anti-monetization by any means, but so often I'd | end up in conversations that the other partner wanted to be | a startup pitch, and I wanted to just talk about something | cool. There's so much premature optimization of | monetization out there. | nikanj wrote: | Rent for a suitable space is one umptillion bucks per month. | You need to be corporate-friendly to score a sponsor for the | rent | goodpoint wrote: | > It is almost impossible to find tech-adjacent countercultural | spaces in the Bay that aren't fully co-opted by a self- | devouring corporate mindset. | | HN being a prime example outside of SF. | legerdemain wrote: | A news website run by a VC firm that is also a startup | accelerator? "Countercultural"? | renewiltord wrote: | Yeah, but the website community is decidedly anti-startup | so that does make it countercultural in the local culture. | goodpoint wrote: | Not at all, I'm saying that HN is coopting the word | "hacker". | matt3210 wrote: | I remember this stuff going on but I was very young (8) and just | starting out with my ISA breadboard at the time. | hunter2_ wrote: | > ATDT | | Ah. Brings back memories of talking Hayes commands directly to my | modem via HyperTerminal, or maybe VB5. | anon25783 wrote: | Those whom this interests should check out the Tildeverse | 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: | I miss the more genuine and naive world of 90s hacking, or even | something as simple as local LAN parties with people dragging | their giant CRTs with them to be in a sweaty room with a bunch of | other early PC gamers. I suspect those worlds aren't making a | comeback. | joshvm wrote: | LAN parties grew into eSports and once the internet took off, | local network gaming became a bit redundant (outside couch play | on consoles). Still a thing at nerdy conventions, too - with | all the sweat. ETH Zurich still has the PolyLAN society which | is alive and well [0] | | [0] https://polylan.ch | dasil003 wrote: | As a teenager at the time, there was a palpable feeling of | being part of a counter-culture that was on the bleeding edge | of an inevitable future which adults simply could not grok. | That world definitely ain't coming back, in large part because | global internet connectivity has rendered quaint the very | notion of counter-culture. | | On the other hand, retro computing and nostalgia for the era | has never been stronger or more accessible: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3NQQ7bPf6U | RGamma wrote: | You know, being part of any culture (and not just leftovers) | would be nice these days... | b800h wrote: | I predict that your second sentence will be thoroughly | disproven by the next generation, who will go offline en | masse to find reality once AI makes the entire Internet | inauthentic. | Jensson wrote: | They wont be able to go back to their childhood programs | because they wont exist any more, so nostalgia computing | wont be a thing for them even if they wanted it. | b800h wrote: | I'm thinking a bit more broadly than that. It'll be about | real-flesh experiences, learning physical musical | instruments and playing with others, experiencing real | physical peril, a thorough rejection of transhumanist | ideals; essentially a reiteration of the Romantic | movement which led to things after the Industrial | revolution like the Kibbo Kift: By their very nature, | things which can't be ingested by an AI and monetised. | | Of course, after that you'll have a synthesis of the two | ideas emerging. That's too many steps ahead for me to | predict, but there are passages from Iain M. Banks' | Culture books which might be on the money. | NovaDudely wrote: | Computer nostalgia is neat for a little while and | emulation is making it easier than ever. | | As for the next generation - They won't go back to what | we had but move forwards onto something completely | different and new. Hopefully we will understand it, or | just be the old folks yelling at clouds and children | about how the world has changed! | RGamma wrote: | *Big-eyed wide-mouth filter face pulls up, 10s of Top10 | song in the background* Hey guys! *5 seconds of grimaces* | Today we lick toilet seats and find out whether you can | drink pee (doesn't actually do it). Please download Raid: | Shadow Legends Infinite *10 cuts in 5 seconds* Please | like and follow and leave a comment below if you would | drink pee. | | 50 million views, 100k advertising dollars. | ragnot wrote: | This is an insight I'm going to remember for a while. | mindcrime wrote: | _who will go offline en masse to find reality once AI makes | the entire Internet inauthentic._ | | I've been thinking about this a bit lately, albeit from a | slightly different angle. I think people will begin looking | for a different "reality" due to the homogenization of | everything due to AI. That is to say, it's not | "inauthenticity" as such that I think people will react to, | but lack of originality and creativity. | | I mean, when ChatGPT is writing all new books, screenplays, | whitepapers, business plans, etc., etc., it seems to me | that everything is going to collapse to one boring, | homogeneous, "everything is the same as everything else" | state. If my theory is right, the currency of the future | might simply be "novelty" and human creativity. | | This is, of course, all based on the idea that (current) | AI's are, as Emily Bender put it, "stochastic parrots"[1]. | All they can really do is spew up a somewhat randomized | pastiche of human reality circa 2021 or so. So far they | don't really have any innate creativity as such. That said, | I don't see any reason in principle to think that AI won't | also eventually be able to be creative is the same sense | that we are today. What happens then is a whole other | question. | | [1]: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922 | [deleted] | spiritplumber wrote: | I'm glad I caught the tail end of this. | ilamont wrote: | I'm also a BU grad from that era. Loved reading this. Don't know | the author, but I did know many of the places mentioned. Not sure | where the loft was located, but it sounds like the area around | Fort Point channel which used to be an artists colony (and also | near the site of the infamous Channel nightclub) which is now one | of the most expensive pieces of luxury real estate in Boston, the | "Seaport" district. | | One observation about 80s and '90s tech communities: it's | fascinating how groups of people would coalesce around interests, | schools, small businesses, or whatever. | | In Taiwan, my landlord's eldest son eagerly showed me "Yamnet" | which was a local BBS and hacker group he belonged to, I think | through his college. I was listening to "How I Built This" | podcast interview with one of the founders of Alienware, and his | group in Miami was included a lot of second-generation Cuban | Americans who got into 90s LAN games and building custom PCs. | Even my hometown had a little group of teens who gravitated to | the local indie computer store, "The Bit Bucket," to hack on | TRS-80s, Commodore-64s, Apple IIe's and early PCs. | | These communities seemed to be everywhere, even if they were | largely invisible to most people. | leroy-is-here wrote: | Is there a second part to this article? It felt like it ended | only part-way through. What happened after being invited to the | space? History I suppose. | | Engaging writing in any case. So engaging that I thought there | should be more lol. | ecliptik wrote: | It's an excerpt from the book Space Rogue: | https://books2read.com/spacerogue | leroy-is-here wrote: | Thanks, I missed that somehow. I went back and checked the | article and, sure enough, I just have banner-blindness. If it | doesn't look like text in a <p> tag I just ignore it. | max182 wrote: | Once I make my money I dream of opening a 90's esque hacker space | like you see in movies like Hackers. | | Dark warehouse, neon lighting, The Protegy playing in the | background, a place where hackers can bring there machines, talk | tech and rage. Coffee in the mornings, bar at night. | edvinbesic wrote: | Are you me? | anony23 wrote: | We are all us. | LeoPanthera wrote: | That's funny, I've always wanted to open 90s-style Internet | Cafe here in the bay area. Maybe not so much Prodigy, but now | that my generation is all in their 40s and 50s, I figured it | would be fun to combine really _really_ good internet access | with retrocomputing resources. I don 't know if anyone's done | that before. And I doubt it would be profitable. But I'd enjoy | it. | narrator wrote: | I was around in the early 90s on BBSs. One of the things that | amuses me about people asking AI how to do bad stuff and all the | handwringing about AI safety is that one of the popular things | that was available for download on some of the less reputable | forums in the early 90s were various "text files" that would give | instructions for doing various illegal or morally dubious things. | | There were hundreds of these and it was a practical thing to | share back when 1 megabyte took an hour to download. One that | cracked up to no end that I still remember vaguely was "How to be | a gigolo.". Apparently, you have to move to South Florida and | wear a sport coat. I don't remember anything else from it except | it was hilariously written. Good times. | | Also, since BBSes required a lot of technical knowhow to get | into, it was this back channel for all the extreme teenage geeks | in the local calling area. It was this phenomenally fun secret | club that I met some exceptionally weird people through, but also | lifelong friends. There were some great magazines of the time | like Mondo 2000, and the ethos was real techno-libertarianism, | information wants to be free, and all that fun stuff. Everyone | was coming off the high of the Soviet Union falling apart and | believed that now human liberty would flourish everywhere. | ilrwbwrkhv wrote: | Same. I also remember totse which was such a fun read and there | was this book on how to be a professional assassin. It was | riveting. Now everyone is on the internet so I guess those days | are never coming back. | rco8786 wrote: | Jolly Rogers Cookbook comes to mind | bink wrote: | Shout out to Jason Scott and textfiles.com | | http://textfiles.com/directory.html | RGamma wrote: | This feels appropiately oldschool, thx | totetsu wrote: | These text files really show that it was only a very specific | type of human who's liberty was flourishing. | zozbot234 wrote: | Hindsight is always 20:20. What matters is that we live in | a much freer and more open world today than in the 1980s | and information of all kinds is vastly more accessible, | often available for free. So these predictions have | basically proven quite accurate. | alexsereno wrote: | Thank you for this | jamesfmilne wrote: | Yup, I remember the Anarchists Cookbook, telling you how to | make mortars, and napalm out of polystyrene & petrol. | ghaff wrote: | From about the mid-80s to the mid-90s, after grad school, I was | active on another 617 area code BBS (Channel 1). It was a | mostly aboveground thing though pretty much all BBSs had dark | corners you could peer into. Quite a few of the regulars on the | main board ended up getting together semi-regularly in real | life. | spiritplumber wrote: | I miss that spirit, how do we get it back? | narrator wrote: | The problem with the tech incubators and hackathons and so | forth of today is that it's only tangentially about having | fun. | | Back then it was 90% fun and maybe a few random guys were | trying to figure out how to start some sort of tech business. | It was mostly hobbyists just screwing around. That sense of | play and screwing around is what made it so magical. | | The last time I felt that kind of magic was when I attended | an event called BIOcurious (Note the 'O' in previous word) | where they showed complete novices how to use a minION device | to sequence DNA with pipettes and reagents. It's the kind of | thing that you need to be physically present for. The tech is | not easy, but crazy powerful. With biotech gear getting cheap | enough to be prosumer, maybe there will be that kind of | extreme hobbyist thing forming around biotech? In a similar | way, in the 80s computers went from things only big companies | could afford to prosumer and even consumer devices and so all | these people were getting involved just to see what they | could do with these new magical devices. | samstave wrote: | >> _" Also, since BBSes required a lot of technical knowhow to | get into"_ | | HA!!! I ran a BBS Warez Site out of my North Tahoe High School | CAD lab on an everex step cube on a 9600 baud modem in 1991 | | I was 14. | | I was grounded for a MONTH for calling long distance into a BBS | in San Jose CA in order to play "The Pit" and "Trade wars" and | the phone bill was $926 and I failed to buy all the wheat in | the galaxy and accidentally SOLD all my wheat failing to corner | the market, but flooding it... | | Yeah, that was on a 286 with an amber monitor that I convinced | my dad he needed a computer for his business... and then a 2400 | baud modem was important... so I could play Populous with a | friend over modem. | mytailorisrich wrote: | I got onto the internet in the second half of the 90s and as a | rebellious teenager I, of course, started by downloading the | various 'cookbooks' (anarchist, phreaking, etc) that were very | easy to find through Alta Vista just to play cool and boast to | my friends. | | I would not ask Google about those stuff today and I would | certainly not dare downloading them for fear of triggering so | many alerts and red flags. Today it would probably be possible | to be jailed (in the UK) just for having this material on your | computer. | Cthulhu_ wrote: | One Rumour I heard is that the ones about making bombs was | actually written and published by the CIA and intentionally | wrong. | mytailorisrich wrote: | Well, I was sensible enough not to try so I cannot say! | ganoushoreilly wrote: | Given they did this with terrorist literature, it wouldn't | be surprising. | 0xGod wrote: | Why is the UK full of so many weak nannies and wannabe | tyrants that your state can tell you what you can and cannot | read over there? | holoduke wrote: | Really? Is it that bad? You cannot google what you like. I | ask obscene questions all time. Just out of interest. Whats | wrong with that? | mytailorisrich wrote: | At least in the UK I believe that your search history over | the last 12 months is accessible by the police. So if for | whatever reason you become under investigation it is | sensible to ask yourself what the police would think about | what you searched... | samstave wrote: | MONDO 2000 was Amazing! | | Its wear i learned the first of Jaron Lanier and UI/AI/etc | whatever he was talking about at the time. | | Was later a long time subscriber to WIRED before they got too | smug. | narrator wrote: | I've bumped into R.U Sirius a couple of times. Whenever I do | I always congratulate him on Mondo 2000 and being so far | ahead of the curve at the time. | dstroot wrote: | I was only "hacker curious" back then. I always wondered - was | it pronounced "loft" or "low fat"? I know dumb question but I | always wondered... | lagniappe wrote: | pronounced as "loft heavy industries" | sanswork wrote: | Loft. | thrwawy74 wrote: | 1) I'm against restricting things behind technical know-how to | select for "the right group of people" on principle. I'm not | talking about then, but now. | | 2) I wonder if this magical period was only possible because it | was reachable by a few, and this knowledge was not largely | abused because of the entry fee. | | 3) AI is lowering the barrier to entry. The great equalizer, to | see what we do with valuable insight ~ Politicians should fear | computers more than disgruntled citizens. | | 4) I hope we don't see export laws changed to cover AI models | like encryption was. | raverbashing wrote: | I kinda agree but technical know-how is probably one of the | more "honest" ways of self-limiting something if only because | freeloaders usually don't have the patience for anything too | complicated | | And punishment for abuse is mostly non-existent | flatiron wrote: | I remember getting local admin on my high schools nt3.5 box with | l0phtcrack just to setup a http proxy so I can read wwf.com at | the library. Fun times. | oldstrangers wrote: | My entire identity growing up was L0pht, cDc, 2600 magazine, | defcon, etc. | | Even the "original" Hacker News was ran by a guy from L0pht. | | Fond nostalgia for that era. | lagniappe wrote: | All episodes are on youtube, it was spacerogue's show. HNNCast. | https://www.youtube.com/@HackerNewsNetwork | hereforphone wrote: | I'd like to post my perception since I was a 90s hacker. | | Inclusivity is arbitrary here - no one in the scenes that I was | familiar with were excluded because of race or sex - it's just | that certain demographics weren't attracted to that 'scene'. | Those like me, ADHD, awkward, and not extremely socially capable | at the time, were however sometimes excluded. There were still | the cool nerds and the lame nerds. I was pretty involved in the | scene, being a staff writer of 2600 (several articles published | under various handles, my name listed in the cover for a couple | of years), and spending some time talking to "famous" people. | | Later I grew up, spent 4 years in the military, then used money I | earned to finally go to college, graduating eventually with an | engineering Master's in my 30s. As I grew up I realized that the | whole 90s / early 2000s hacker scene was mostly just a social | clique. I learned that many people who were revered had marginal | skills. I learned that the paranoia and self-aggrandizement ("The | FBI totally monitors #2600 to learn our skills") was really just | immaturity. The whole thing eventually seemed lame as I grew into | an adult. I realized 2600 was really just a money machine and a | manipulative scheme. Phrack went downhill quick, sadly (I also | published there). | | Still, this was a classic and wonderful time. Even _I_ made | friends - some that I talk to now, 20+ years later. I learned a | lot. I got started on a tech path that took me very far and into | regions of tech I 'd never learn about otherwise like radio and | telephone. I'm still a hacker, but legally. I don't miss the | "scene" at all, but I do wish I was more included in it at the | time. As this article illustrates it must have been great. | sambull wrote: | The FBI did monitor #2600 irc.. it wasn't to learn our skills. | But they most definitely ran a bot logging it - they showed me | irc logs, asked questions about specific other people I was | hanging out with in the SF scene at the time and warned my dad | I was in with the bad hacker crowd. This was after a Red hat | 6.2 box I built was owned by some php vuln and the person I did | it was taking credit cards via email on that same box. He | basically pointed at me and said I must be in some l33t hax0r | gang stealing his customer credit cards info. | bink wrote: | I generally agree, but some of those claims were true. It | wasn't entirely immaturity. I was part of the group at the 2600 | meeting near the Pentagon that got raided by Secret Service | dressed up like mall security. They conducted some busts a few | weeks later based on things illegally confiscated from that | raid. | | https://www.2600.com/secret/pc/pc-pressrelease.html | | https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/11/12/h... | EvanAnderson wrote: | I was on the periphery of the 90s "scene" and this rings true | to me. One year at DefCon I ended up (somehow) tagging along w/ | (some of?) the Cult of the Dead Cow crew and friends to a | dinner. I had a decidedly "Wow, I'm sitting at the cool kids | table..." kind of feeling. | | Age and location had a lot to do with it, too. I was in rural | Ohio versus in Boston, Chicago, NYC, etc. I also did community | college versus moving away. There were fewer opportunities for | face-to-face hacker interactions when you might be the only | person in your county into that kind of stuff. | | I still lean on my telephony knowledge from back then. It's | amazing how much of it is still relevant even in the world of | VoIP. | sokoloff wrote: | dildog joined the same company I worked at for a short time | and I met some of the cDc folks through that. It was a good | continuation of my life education on "no matter how good you | thought you were [with computers], someone is better." | myself248 wrote: | > many people who were revered had marginal skills. | | Yeah, socially organizing and motivating people doesn't rank | very high on technical achievement, but it's often the | difference between groups you've heard of and groups you | haven't. | | And guess who inspires more young people to go learn? | nikanj wrote: | Nerds are upset social people do not respect technical skill, | proceed to bash social skills | aestetix wrote: | It sounds to me like part of your growing up was realizing that | the people you looked up to were human, and it shattered some | illusions you had. | | In truth, pretty much every social "scene" has a small core of | dedicated people surrounded by a much larger social clique. | This becomes more and more true as it grows in size. There will | always be the "talkers" who are good at communicating but have | "marginal skills," but I'd argue everyone has different | strengths. For example, there are some absolutely excellent | hackers who are terrible writers, and other people who write | quite well _about_ hacking, but cannot hack themselves. We need | both types. | | While quite a lot of the worry about government monitoring | might actually be paranoia, I'll simply note that Snowden's | relevations showed that a lot of the fears were justified. | Perhaps there are tradeoffs in privacy that you are willing to | make, which others refuse to make. | [deleted] | anthk wrote: | A must read. The Hacker Crackdown. | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/101 | | In Spanish (PDF): https://underpost.net/ir/pdf/cyberpunk/la-caza- | de-hackers.pd... | sacnoradhq wrote: | This is a hilarious revisionist history labeling a "hackerspace". | | That Wikipedia also calls w00w00 a "think tank" when it was a | social forum for teenage / college students is laughable too. | Thorentis wrote: | Just to be pedantic, he said that the BBS could only accommodate | 8 char usernames, but that he picked "Space Rogue" - 10 chars | without the space. | weld wrote: | He used spacerog ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-03-18 23:00 UTC)