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The Hacker's Renaissance (2025)

phrack.org

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Re: The Hacker's Renaissance (2025)

#71

Post by wsintra2022 »

tptacek wrote: post #51
ajam1507 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the kind of sanitized hacking this article is talking about.

Many of the most prolific and successful offensive hackers, the people that actually made their way into switches and onto hardened SunOS servers, were the least capable technologists. The archetype is Kevin Mitnick, who wasn't a coder and barely understood the cookbook tools he used. The field benefited enormously from its sanitization, and the 80's and 90's reputation could use some scuffing up.

He did have a great memory and skill for social engineering.

Re: The Hacker's Renaissance (2025)

#72

Post by vunderba »

smelendez wrote: post #69
vunderba wrote: post #47

From the article > Then: Phrack was the Rosetta Stone. 2600 was gospel. IRC was sacred ground. Zines were copied, not monetized. We earned respect by contributing tools, ideas, or code, never by chasing clout. 2600: The Hacker Quarterly is definitely not quite what it was decades ago, but I was still so giddy when my first article got published there that I dereferenced a null pointer on purpose.

Nobody back then would have ever said IRC was “sacred ground.” What does that even mean? And I read 2600 and also occasionally submitted, but it certainly wasn’t treated as gospel. Also of course there was clout chasing — most of the scene was teenagers trying to impress each other!

Agreed. IRC was for trading shell accounts.... uhhh.... I mean it was strictly to be used for sharing information that was both legal and educational.

Yeah that's it.

Re: The Hacker's Renaissance (2025)

#73

Post by ekelsen »

ryan_n wrote: post #64

Man everyone says every article/blog post that is on HN is written by an LLM. Almost every single post.. I actually didn't get strong AI vibes from this one but maybe I just am bad at recognizing. Sure it's a bit cringy but I think that's kinda the point? idk...i like the idea of keeping the culture of exploration of technology just for the sake of it (not to monetize everything) alive.

You're bad at recognizing it, sorry to say. You might still like the content or even the style, which is fine. But know that it was mostly written by a machine, not a human.

Re: The Hacker's Renaissance (2025)

#75

Post by bmenrigh »

These sorts of manifesto essays have never resonated with me. To me it never was—- and never has been—- about freedom. It’s about curiosity and knowledge. The essay seems to glorify the bad-old-days of fighting for freedom against corporate control (AT&T, IBM, Microsoft, etc.) as somehow the good-old-days. As far as my technological life goes, we’ve won—- MS, IBM, AT&T are irrelevant.

Re: The Hacker's Renaissance (2025)

#79

Post by AtlasBarfed »

What is striking to me now that we are three years into the LLM revolution is ... there is no foundational software that has resulted. I keep asking where the good software is now that the miracle of LLM programming has entered the firmament.

Companies were always huge piles of proprietary custom code. Slowly what would emerge from those would occasionally be foundational software like ERPs, better databases, better message queues.

What I suspect will happen now is that everyone will simply construct their own distinct stacks of code, or just pile onto the existing proprietary ones inside companies. The "export" of code for general use will functionally disappear.

It's all throwaway, to be wastefully recomputed/rerendered by armies of H100s and only apathetically checked for utility.

I could be proven wrong, I'll know if Linux starts to miraculously close functionality and usability gaps with Windows/OSX, which would be the most visible example of LLM acceleration of development, but it so far has not.

Re: The Hacker's Renaissance (2025)

#80

Post by [deleted] »

theodric wrote: post #44
inigyou wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word "hacker" comes from MIT students who would cut up circuit boards with a hacksaw and connect the pieces together in different ways. Soldering a WiFi module to a calculator is very oldschool hacker. The word you're looking for is phreaking. I must admit, since the title of TFA's website is only two letters away, it's funny you forgot it.

Ironically, the guy who soldered a Wi-Fi module to a calculator did so to gain access to AI slop with it https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/09/secre...

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