5 ms·

The Hackers Manifesto

32 points by spoiledtechie 18y ago

spoiledtechie 18y ago
Such a long time ago....
gaius 18y ago
Not our kind of hacking.
- revelude 18y ago
  Not your kind of grossly capitalistic hacking. :)
  - eru 18y ago
    I lived in a so called socialistic state for the first five years of my live. That's enough for a whole live.
marcus 18y ago
I prefer this one "Imagine a school with children that can read and write, but with teachers who cannot, and you have a metaphor of the Information Age in which we live."
- stcredzero 18y ago
  I had one teacher was trying to teach us about the moon landings. She threw up a picture of the Lunar Lander and said, "Oooh, look, it's a Moon Walker!" That's wrong on three levels at least. Mush-for-brains imprecision is one thing when teaching history. Now imagine that applied to teaching about technology. Ugh.
megaduck 18y ago
Wow. Flashback to 9th grade. Glad I'm not there anymore.
- stcredzero 18y ago
  Enough pointless raging against "the machine" or "the man." Create something useful or beautiful or both.
  - Harkins 18y ago
    It can be both useful and beautiful to rage against the man.
    - Scriptor 18y ago
      No, it's just old and might get a few heads turned from some people who say, "Yeah, that guy's a nonconformist. Just like me!" Then nothing happens. We need to do something against the man.
      - unalone 18y ago
        There's a quote from Steven Bond, some guy whose web site I read a while ago, regarding why he critiques awful movies: "Why do I review crap? Simple: for pleasure. For the sheer joy of it. Every piece of crap you like is an immense world of delight waiting to be explored. Crap is a driving force, crap is inspirational: nothing urges me to set things right more than seeing them done wrong. I'm especially pleased when the crap is so bad it makes me angry — for anger is a pleasant sensation. To feel your bile rise and your blood boil, to feel a rush of fury — why, it's the pleasure of being alive, of feeling some actual emotion instead of the constant dull fuzz of the easily contented." http://plover.net/~bonds/stupidresponses.html http://plover.net/~bonds/stupidresponses.html Partly it's that. Anger towards the system very often gives you the energy, motivation, and experience enough to make something great. The two big projects I've done - the book I wrote last year, and the site I'm building the beta of now - both had some element of hate against the system that was preventing me from doing something. It's not good to dwell in the emotion, but using it is useful.
        stcredzero 18y ago
        Then don't dwell. Innovate or fix. Open source or sell.
anuraggoel 18y ago
Teen angst. "You build atomic bombs..." Oh, not you Mr. Feynman. You're fine.
tptacek 18y ago
This is to hacking what The Cure's "Disintegration" is to popular music.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
brentr 18y ago
I find it amazing that many of these people complain about the school system leaving them behind, behind in the sense that it didn't fulfill all of their curiosities. I felt the same way, but I didn't complain; I went to the library.
- LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
  The system doesn't leave you behind. It locks you into your seat with your eyelids taped open with turgid pap being projected onto a screen in front of you. Any creativity or individual initiative which resists the system is swiftly punished.
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
  - brentr 18y ago
    I read books while many of my teachers lectured. They knew there was only so much they could do for me without seeming to neglect the rest of the class. I was left alone to read or do what I wanted as long as I did the work that was assigned.
    - unalone 18y ago
      I was put in detention for reading in class, I had books taken from me and thrown away, I had long lectures from teachers in front of classes to humiliate me. I was sent down to several offices and lectured by several administrators who told me something like, "We understand you can do this, but it's disrespectful to your teachers and the school operates in loco parentis while you're here." And I thought the school system was a very good one overall. If you can get away with that stuff, it's great. But more often than not you don't have a choice.
      - kaens 18y ago
        More or less the same experience here, except that I don't think the school I went to was very good at all. I tried really hard to get my school to let me test out of classes and be in classes where I would actually be learning something, they refused. I spent the entire time there pissed off and frustrated at having to sit through a whole lot of boring, and in many cases inaccurate shit when there was so much out there to actually learn about. An example: I got suspended for correcting a teacher that told the class that Germany was a communist country during WWII.
devicenull 18y ago
I had this memorized at one point..
mdakin 18y ago
Wow, memories. Reminds me of going to the 2600 meetings in the Pru's food court and hanging out with guys from the other sides of Boston who I'd have known no other way. Guys with whom I'd later go to college and/or start companies. Reminds me of learning how computers actually worked by reading and finally understanding "Assembley for Cracking" by the shepherd, playing with Macsbug, ResEdit's code editor, and referring to a Morotola m68k manual which Motorola sent me for free after I called and asked for one. Reminds me of cracking software for fun. Neither distributing the cracks nor really even using the cracked software but knowing that I could do it. Reminds me of trying to find every way possible to locate the base-address of the VRAM and then blitting pixels directly into it "by hand for speed." That MOV16 instruction on the 68040 was really something. Back then my little brain focused so much energy on this stuff and it's something I don't even remember unless someone posts something like this to news.yc. So strange. Oh and if anyone has "Assembley for Cracking" I'd love to read it again! :)
kwamenum86 18y ago
What is the significance of the image at the end?
- pistoriusp 18y ago
  It's a screenshot of logs showing someone trying a brute-force attack so gain entry via ssh. They used the username "Hitler."
  - eru 18y ago
    It's on Windows. That spoils the whole page. I mean you can go work on Windows when you have calmed down and want to make money (or actually explore the system etc). But an angry young hacker on Windows?
  - kwamenum86 18y ago
    I got that but...what does that have to do with the rest of the article?

32 points by spoiledtechie 18y ago

spoiledtechie 18y ago

Such a long time ago....

gaius 18y ago

Not our kind of hacking.

revelude 18y ago
Not your kind of grossly capitalistic hacking. :)
- eru 18y ago
  I lived in a so called socialistic state for the first five years of my live. That's enough for a whole live.

marcus 18y ago

I prefer this one "Imagine a school with children that can read and write, but with teachers who cannot, and you have a metaphor of the Information Age in which we live."

stcredzero 18y ago
I had one teacher was trying to teach us about the moon landings. She threw up a picture of the Lunar Lander and said, "Oooh, look, it's a Moon Walker!" That's wrong on three levels at least. Mush-for-brains imprecision is one thing when teaching history. Now imagine that applied to teaching about technology. Ugh.

megaduck 18y ago

Wow. Flashback to 9th grade. Glad I'm not there anymore.

stcredzero 18y ago
Enough pointless raging against "the machine" or "the man." Create something useful or beautiful or both.
- Harkins 18y ago
  It can be both useful and beautiful to rage against the man.
  - Scriptor 18y ago
    No, it's just old and might get a few heads turned from some people who say, "Yeah, that guy's a nonconformist. Just like me!" Then nothing happens. We need to do something against the man.
    - unalone 18y ago
      There's a quote from Steven Bond, some guy whose web site I read a while ago, regarding why he critiques awful movies: "Why do I review crap? Simple: for pleasure. For the sheer joy of it. Every piece of crap you like is an immense world of delight waiting to be explored. Crap is a driving force, crap is inspirational: nothing urges me to set things right more than seeing them done wrong. I'm especially pleased when the crap is so bad it makes me angry — for anger is a pleasant sensation. To feel your bile rise and your blood boil, to feel a rush of fury — why, it's the pleasure of being alive, of feeling some actual emotion instead of the constant dull fuzz of the easily contented." http://plover.net/~bonds/stupidresponses.html http://plover.net/~bonds/stupidresponses.html Partly it's that. Anger towards the system very often gives you the energy, motivation, and experience enough to make something great. The two big projects I've done - the book I wrote last year, and the site I'm building the beta of now - both had some element of hate against the system that was preventing me from doing something. It's not good to dwell in the emotion, but using it is useful.
      - stcredzero 18y ago
        Then don't dwell. Innovate or fix. Open source or sell.

anuraggoel 18y ago

Teen angst. "You build atomic bombs..." Oh, not you Mr. Feynman. You're fine.

tptacek 18y ago

This is to hacking what The Cure's "Disintegration" is to popular music.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

brentr 18y ago

I find it amazing that many of these people complain about the school system leaving them behind, behind in the sense that it didn't fulfill all of their curiosities. I felt the same way, but I didn't complain; I went to the library.

LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
The system doesn't leave you behind. It locks you into your seat with your eyelids taped open with turgid pap being projected onto a screen in front of you. Any creativity or individual initiative which resists the system is swiftly punished.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- brentr 18y ago
  I read books while many of my teachers lectured. They knew there was only so much they could do for me without seeming to neglect the rest of the class. I was left alone to read or do what I wanted as long as I did the work that was assigned.
  - unalone 18y ago
    I was put in detention for reading in class, I had books taken from me and thrown away, I had long lectures from teachers in front of classes to humiliate me. I was sent down to several offices and lectured by several administrators who told me something like, "We understand you can do this, but it's disrespectful to your teachers and the school operates in loco parentis while you're here." And I thought the school system was a very good one overall. If you can get away with that stuff, it's great. But more often than not you don't have a choice.
    - kaens 18y ago
      More or less the same experience here, except that I don't think the school I went to was very good at all. I tried really hard to get my school to let me test out of classes and be in classes where I would actually be learning something, they refused. I spent the entire time there pissed off and frustrated at having to sit through a whole lot of boring, and in many cases inaccurate shit when there was so much out there to actually learn about. An example: I got suspended for correcting a teacher that told the class that Germany was a communist country during WWII.

devicenull 18y ago

I had this memorized at one point..

mdakin 18y ago

Wow, memories. Reminds me of going to the 2600 meetings in the Pru's food court and hanging out with guys from the other sides of Boston who I'd have known no other way. Guys with whom I'd later go to college and/or start companies. Reminds me of learning how computers actually worked by reading and finally understanding "Assembley for Cracking" by the shepherd, playing with Macsbug, ResEdit's code editor, and referring to a Morotola m68k manual which Motorola sent me for free after I called and asked for one. Reminds me of cracking software for fun. Neither distributing the cracks nor really even using the cracked software but knowing that I could do it. Reminds me of trying to find every way possible to locate the base-address of the VRAM and then blitting pixels directly into it "by hand for speed." That MOV16 instruction on the 68040 was really something. Back then my little brain focused so much energy on this stuff and it's something I don't even remember unless someone posts something like this to news.yc. So strange. Oh and if anyone has "Assembley for Cracking" I'd love to read it again! :)

kwamenum86 18y ago

What is the significance of the image at the end?

pistoriusp 18y ago
It's a screenshot of logs showing someone trying a brute-force attack so gain entry via ssh. They used the username "Hitler."
- eru 18y ago
  It's on Windows. That spoils the whole page. I mean you can go work on Windows when you have calmed down and want to make money (or actually explore the system etc). But an angry young hacker on Windows?
- kwamenum86 18y ago
  I got that but...what does that have to do with the rest of the article?