[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
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