7 ms·

There was a time when "hacker" meant "a wizard's wizard"; and a time where it meant a digital vandal over POTS lines; and a time where reclaiming the word "ha

There was a time when "hacker" meant "a wizard's wizard"; and a time where it meant a digital vandal over POTS lines; and a time where reclaiming the word "hacker" became fashionable; and important computer hackers began quietly wearing the word; and then there was the time where marketers became growth hackers and musicians became harmony hackers. But the digital vandals never fully wrested away the word from AI lab wizards; Ruby on Rails hackers never recovered it from the digital vandals; and harmony hackers never even intended to break away from this sedimentation of connotation; and investment funds and hackers both posted and read "hacker news"; and no one disavows anything.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
reaperducer 7y ago
and a time where it meant a digital vandal over POTS lines; Well, those were "phreakers." In the 70's, "hacker" was a person who "hacked" out the credits from public domain software and put their own name in it for resale. And you bought it anyway because software was so hard to come by.
- kragen 7y ago
  This is not something I have ever heard of; in the US in the early 1980s we shared software at user group meetings and in BBSes.
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    This was mostly before BBSing was a thing, but continued into the early 80's because not everyone could afford a modem and phone bill. The real problem was access. There really were very few computer stores. I remember driving nearly an hour to get to one of the very few computer stores in northern New Jersey (Wayne Software). The other option was to buy software from those tiny ads in the back of the computer magazines. Those were where you really got the "hacked" stuff. Sometimes you'd see an ad for the same program on multiple pages. And even though it was hacked, you still had to pay $99 for a very basic text editor. Even blank floppy disks were hard to come by. I remember having to get floppy disks at the famous FAO Schwartz toy store in Manhattan because it was one of the few non-office supply houses that had them. I think they cost something like $5/piece ($15 in today's money).
  - Aperocky 7y ago
    Nostalgia for a simple time, but also a deep appreciation for how people managed to create software/OS with primitive hardware we had in the 80s. Respect.
- cosmodisk 7y ago
  This is correct.
- Zaskoda 7y ago
  And those hackers became competitive to see who could put the coolest looking intro in front of the hacked/cracked software bragging about who crack it. And then those intros eventually gave rise to what they called the Demo Scene where "hackers" would gather to see who could write the coolest visual/audio experience under various levels of constraint. And many of the graphic algorithms derived by hackers in the demo scene gave rise to the algorithms used in today's 3D videocards.
  - mustacheemperor 7y ago
    > those hackers became competitive to see who could put the coolest looking intro in front of the hacked/cracked software bragging about who crack it. I recall seeing a website that collected a large number of such intros, I think posted here a while back. It was very aesthetically interesting and quite pleasantly nostalgic and now I can’t locate it, hopefully some other visitor to this thread can.
    - PokeyCat 7y ago
      Probably pouet.net . I'm still amazed by so many of the 64k demos on there... incredible what you can do with that little space.
    - ebbe 7y ago
      you might be thinking pouet.net
  - analognoise 7y ago
    "And many of the graphic algorithms derived by hackers in the demo scene gave rise to the algorithms used in today's 3D videocards." Is there anything to support this?
- cmroanirgo 7y ago
  It lasted into the '90s. I was approached in uni to do exactly this. It wasn't public domain though. (I declined)
- Legogris 7y ago
  Maybe this is something that change during the 80s, but my understanding is that the people you are talking about were mainly referred to as "crackers". The demos in keygens and intros were commonly known as "cracktros".
atoav 7y ago
and the old hackers used that changing environment to explain why they didn’t want to teach and learn with young hackers, and missed the chance to sow the seeds for a new spring, whose fertility they pessimistically misinterpreted. (on a more serious note: this is not the case everywhere, in Germany e.g. the CCC does a wonderful job with the youngsters)
Iv 7y ago
They see me hackin' They hatin'
segfaultbuserr 7y ago
The history of hacker culture is not as simple as the "hacker" vs "cracker". The hacker culture has two distinct branches: the academic insiders, and the social outliers, those two have significant different culture. Both of them can be described as the hacking culture, it was just than the access to computers were very limited at the time. The insiders were those who was privileged to work inside institutions - they used Unix on PDP machines and talked on Usenet, this culture was already well established in MIT in the early 80s. Meanwhile, we also has the outsider who were social outliers, including highschool kids and independent hobbyists, they hacked on home computers (and later PCs), they talked on BBS (or free phone conference by cracking Bell's system), to wardial phone numbers, cracked programs, hacked 6502 assembly, participated in demoscene, etc. If you read the early releases of Phrack, you'll see that many things described in them is cracking, and didn't have much intellectual accomplishment. But remember those were highschool kids playing with their computers in the early 80s, writing a password bruteforce cracker and log into a mainframe was already a huge achievement, not too different from the MIT students who played lockpicking. Yes, there were some people who did significant damages, they were noticed by the media, and the media started to use "hacker" to label all malicious attackers. So we had "Hacker" vs "Cracker", or "Black Hat" vs "White Hat" terminologies - yes, they are useful terms and I strongly recommend the use of them. Bun just be aware that the actual history is not black-and-white. The establishment from the first group are biased toward the "real hacking culture" inside the academics, and like to label everyone from the second group as "crackers". For example, > The problem with screen names or handles deserves some amplification. Concealing your identity behind a handle is a juvenile and silly behavior characteristic of crackers, warez d00dz, and other lower life forms. Hackers don't do this; they're proud of what they do and want it associated with their real names. So if you have a handle, drop it. In the hacker culture it will only mark you as a loser. - Eric S. Raymond, How to Become a Hacker But it's not the full picture, many people from the second group clearly demonstrated The Hacker Ethics, such as accessing to computers, mistrusting authorities, free information, creating arts, etc. It was just that the circumstance was different. As time went forward, the outsider world was getting increasingly sophisticated as well, by the 90s, we already had world-class information security researchers, such as Aleph One or Solar Designer. Throughout the 80s, the two groups of people mostly stayed inside their circles and didn't have much interactions (but check Homebrew Computer Club and People's Computer Company, which established the foundation of hackers in the home computer generation). Finally, in the late 90s, the rise of the Internet and universal access to computers eventually merged the two streams of hacking together, and formed the hacker culture as we know it on Hacker News. Linux was the most significant example.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

reaperducer 7y ago

and a time where it meant a digital vandal over POTS lines; Well, those were "phreakers." In the 70's, "hacker" was a person who "hacked" out the credits from public domain software and put their own name in it for resale. And you bought it anyway because software was so hard to come by.

kragen 7y ago
This is not something I have ever heard of; in the US in the early 1980s we shared software at user group meetings and in BBSes.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  This was mostly before BBSing was a thing, but continued into the early 80's because not everyone could afford a modem and phone bill. The real problem was access. There really were very few computer stores. I remember driving nearly an hour to get to one of the very few computer stores in northern New Jersey (Wayne Software). The other option was to buy software from those tiny ads in the back of the computer magazines. Those were where you really got the "hacked" stuff. Sometimes you'd see an ad for the same program on multiple pages. And even though it was hacked, you still had to pay $99 for a very basic text editor. Even blank floppy disks were hard to come by. I remember having to get floppy disks at the famous FAO Schwartz toy store in Manhattan because it was one of the few non-office supply houses that had them. I think they cost something like $5/piece ($15 in today's money).
- Aperocky 7y ago
  Nostalgia for a simple time, but also a deep appreciation for how people managed to create software/OS with primitive hardware we had in the 80s. Respect.
cosmodisk 7y ago
This is correct.
Zaskoda 7y ago
And those hackers became competitive to see who could put the coolest looking intro in front of the hacked/cracked software bragging about who crack it. And then those intros eventually gave rise to what they called the Demo Scene where "hackers" would gather to see who could write the coolest visual/audio experience under various levels of constraint. And many of the graphic algorithms derived by hackers in the demo scene gave rise to the algorithms used in today's 3D videocards.
- mustacheemperor 7y ago
  > those hackers became competitive to see who could put the coolest looking intro in front of the hacked/cracked software bragging about who crack it. I recall seeing a website that collected a large number of such intros, I think posted here a while back. It was very aesthetically interesting and quite pleasantly nostalgic and now I can’t locate it, hopefully some other visitor to this thread can.
  - PokeyCat 7y ago
    Probably pouet.net . I'm still amazed by so many of the 64k demos on there... incredible what you can do with that little space.
  - ebbe 7y ago
    you might be thinking pouet.net
- analognoise 7y ago
  "And many of the graphic algorithms derived by hackers in the demo scene gave rise to the algorithms used in today's 3D videocards." Is there anything to support this?
cmroanirgo 7y ago
It lasted into the '90s. I was approached in uni to do exactly this. It wasn't public domain though. (I declined)
Legogris 7y ago
Maybe this is something that change during the 80s, but my understanding is that the people you are talking about were mainly referred to as "crackers". The demos in keygens and intros were commonly known as "cracktros".

atoav 7y ago

and the old hackers used that changing environment to explain why they didn’t want to teach and learn with young hackers, and missed the chance to sow the seeds for a new spring, whose fertility they pessimistically misinterpreted. (on a more serious note: this is not the case everywhere, in Germany e.g. the CCC does a wonderful job with the youngsters)

Iv 7y ago

They see me hackin' They hatin'

segfaultbuserr 7y ago

The history of hacker culture is not as simple as the "hacker" vs "cracker". The hacker culture has two distinct branches: the academic insiders, and the social outliers, those two have significant different culture. Both of them can be described as the hacking culture, it was just than the access to computers were very limited at the time. The insiders were those who was privileged to work inside institutions - they used Unix on PDP machines and talked on Usenet, this culture was already well established in MIT in the early 80s. Meanwhile, we also has the outsider who were social outliers, including highschool kids and independent hobbyists, they hacked on home computers (and later PCs), they talked on BBS (or free phone conference by cracking Bell's system), to wardial phone numbers, cracked programs, hacked 6502 assembly, participated in demoscene, etc. If you read the early releases of Phrack, you'll see that many things described in them is cracking, and didn't have much intellectual accomplishment. But remember those were highschool kids playing with their computers in the early 80s, writing a password bruteforce cracker and log into a mainframe was already a huge achievement, not too different from the MIT students who played lockpicking. Yes, there were some people who did significant damages, they were noticed by the media, and the media started to use "hacker" to label all malicious attackers. So we had "Hacker" vs "Cracker", or "Black Hat" vs "White Hat" terminologies - yes, they are useful terms and I strongly recommend the use of them. Bun just be aware that the actual history is not black-and-white. The establishment from the first group are biased toward the "real hacking culture" inside the academics, and like to label everyone from the second group as "crackers". For example, > The problem with screen names or handles deserves some amplification. Concealing your identity behind a handle is a juvenile and silly behavior characteristic of crackers, warez d00dz, and other lower life forms. Hackers don't do this; they're proud of what they do and want it associated with their real names. So if you have a handle, drop it. In the hacker culture it will only mark you as a loser. - Eric S. Raymond, How to Become a Hacker But it's not the full picture, many people from the second group clearly demonstrated The Hacker Ethics, such as accessing to computers, mistrusting authorities, free information, creating arts, etc. It was just that the circumstance was different. As time went forward, the outsider world was getting increasingly sophisticated as well, by the 90s, we already had world-class information security researchers, such as Aleph One or Solar Designer. Throughout the 80s, the two groups of people mostly stayed inside their circles and didn't have much interactions (but check Homebrew Computer Club and People's Computer Company, which established the foundation of hackers in the home computer generation). Finally, in the late 90s, the rise of the Internet and universal access to computers eventually merged the two streams of hacking together, and formed the hacker culture as we know it on Hacker News. Linux was the most significant example.