... Since when is 0x09 followed by 0x10? Why denote your release numbers in hex if you're just going to chicken out when it's time for hex to not be the same as decimal?
I am so happy to see this today. I've missed this style of writing and publication in today's noise of mostly self promoting blog posts pretending to be informational. Hopefully they keep up with the paperfeed and continue to release issues.
Cool pastebin! Does it have some way of linking up multiple pastes, or is the list linked compiled manually (the latter, I assume), i.e. manually entered hyperlinks?
Someone else just asked me the same thing, heh. I've opened an issue to do the multiple paste thing and will try to hack something in this weekend, but in this case it was just looped and uploaded. eg: http://paste.click/xcfOrg
The conclusion of the article titled "The Fall of Hacker Groups"...
> Furthermore, we dread the thought of being alike, of sharing multiple views and opinions. As such, we are turning progressively judgemental of who we should be partnering with, on the basis that "they do not understand". [..] No one ever feels like we do. They are not to be trusted and we do not have the time for them. The only attitude consonant to our search for a comfortable, safe life is to constrain ourselves to our own limitations, ignore the intelligent life out there, and surrender to the mediocracy that our society has condemned our leisure time to.
...reminded me of this:
> Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points.
Even knowing this, and knowing it's silly, doesn't really change it; it's a more ingrained habit than that, at least for me. But it's worth a mental note to self and those whom it may concern :)
Does that count as vicarious Godwin? 'Collectivism is triumphing because of too much individualism' is not a strongly coherent argument. Also note that those of the intelligent alluded to here did in fact combine, with historically significant results.
As the length of any discussion increases, the probability of $anything being mentioned reaches 1. But sure, let's ban all literature from that time period, where so many great thinkers gave their best.
> 'Collectivism is triumphing because of too much individualism' is not a strongly coherent argument.
I wouldn't equate lack of tolerance and cooperation with "individualism". Russel didn't write people should be more alike or less individualistic, at least I don't read it that way.
> Also note that those of the intelligent alluded to here did in fact combine, with historically significant results
Can you elaborate on what exactly you mean by this?
Like the original Godwin, this was a joke, not an attempt at policing. That people choose to interpret it otherwise is depressing. Well done for completely killing it with trivially true proof - you understand that's part of the joke, right?
As for what I meant, what I was trying to say is that - contra Russell - people actually did in fact overcome their differences and collectively combat the Nazis, but I obfuscated it to avoid, y'know, mentioning the Nazis.
I suppose it's too much to hope that you've just Kafka'd me into my own Godwin and are about to drop a YHBT.
> people actually did in fact overcome their differences and collectively combat the Nazis
The question is, when? Not within Germany, not at first. Or at least not to a high enough degree. Unless we simply define as intelligent those who resisted or were Jewish etc., but that would be cheating. The Nazis didn't really get much successful resistance until they openly tried to conquer the world, and I can't fathom how much more they could have gotten away with if they had stuck to annexing Austria and Poland, and had "just" murdered and brainwashed in their "own" territory. There might never be a plaque at Tiananmen square. And last time I checked, Dick Cheney still wasn't in jail. And so on. Either fascism and murder aren't actually a thing intelligent people successfully combine against to keep in check, or they suck badly at doing so.
At any rate, that there was such a monstrosity to defeat in the first place is due to lack of resistance early on, and the major political groups cannibalizing themselves before the Nazis even started attacking and murdering them. And then many intelligent people made an about-turn, too. Hannah Arendt said in an interview that many intellectuals were good at "coming up with something". That is, they adapted and came up with all sorts of elaborate rationalizations. You could say the intelligence of a person didn't determine their resistance to the Nazis, but the complexity of their justifications for not doing so. Just because there were (and are) exceptions doesn't mean it wasn't (or isn't) the rule. As the White Rose wrote in their second leaflet:
> The greater part of its former opponents went into hiding. The German intellectuals fled to their cellars, there, like plants struggling in the dark, away from light and sun, gradually to choke to death.
I enjoyed "The Fall of Hacker Groups". Clearly there is some deep nostalgia for the 2600 days out there ;)
"The only attitude consonant to our search for a comfortable, safe life is to constrain ourselves to our
own limitations, ignore the intelligent life out there, and surrender to the mediocracy that our society has condemned our leisure time to."
And their podcast is still available and can be heard on WBAI in NYC and probably streamed from there as well.
I came to 2600 late in life so I can't get nostalgic about it, but I look forward to picking up new issues at B&N and do so in order to encourage them continue stocking the store. I discovered 2600 by randomly browsing at a comic book shop and wouldn't have had that experience if it were digital or subscription only.
I also enjoyed the article but the entire thesis is incorrect, though. Anonymous has had far more of a cultural impact on society and technology than Cult of the Dead Cow, lopht etc did.
I suppose that depends on the definition of "cultural impact." L0pht talked to the US senate (and Mudge went on to join DARPA), CCC members consulted the german government, etc. Anonymous was on the front page of a whole lot of newspapers though.
--- edit ---
Doom is a good example: It both made it into popular culture (sold lots of copies, the Doom movie, etc.), but also hat cultural impact in the sense that it pushed 3D graphics. L0pht, the CCC, etc. had cultural impact in the same sense but never really made it into popular culture. Anonymous on the other hand did make it into popular culture but had no cultural impact (that I can think of right now).
What about the widespread awareness of encryption and the necessity of secure cryptographic communications? In many laypeople's minds Anonymous and the "deep web" or "darknet" are synonymous, they all occupy the same zone in the cultural consciousness. Popular culture is culture.
> What about the widespread awareness of encryption and the necessity of secure cryptographic communications?
I think Wikileaks and Snowden should get some credit for this as well. Also, I think the silk road guy should get most of the credit for "darknet" being a thing.
> Popular culture is culture.
Yup. But it doesn't necessarily affect other popular culture (which is how I defined "cultural impact").
Depends whose culture. Culture in the large or just hacker (in the given sense of 'underground scene') culture ? It could be argued that Anonymous vs (e.g.) CDC is apples to oranges.
Honestly I'm not sure, after reading it half a dozen times, not finding any unfamiliar words or concepts and reading the refs I still have absolutely no idea what the word salad between the intro and the end actually means.
On the other hand I very definitely can think of a bunch of pragmatic reasons (outwith the lack of extant unisonant collectivist hive minds) that people aren't currently busy openly forming underground, anarchist, borderline criminal (more in bravado than fact, but still) networks.
There's snitching in Anonymous too but yet it doesn't cease to be because Anonymous is tacit membership. It's much more distributed and akin to the spirit of the internet than closed exclusive groups
True. Don't forget that the whole "Matrix" and "V for Vendetta" movies that came around the same time as Anonymous attacks. They got culturally embedded as hacker symbols.
Matrix was late 90's. Same people turned a 1980's graphic novel into V for Vendetta movie. They did become hacker symbols but Anonymous rode on their fame rather than other way around. Just as they rode on, but didn't contribute to, the anonymity, privacy, and Internet tech that came before The Matrix. People owe 60's-90's computer nerds and hackers way more than Anonymous. :)
I stumbled over Phrack around issue 20-something, and have read every issue since then (and at least most of the earlier ones), something I can't actually say about the two magazine subscriptions I've kept since becoming adult-shaped.
"Smashing the stack for fun and profit", the tear drop attacks against NT, IGMP bug in Windows 95, ida pro, ollydbg, C, asm, finding help, and "test boxes" on irc...
very cool, Phrack was one of my favorite publications along with 2600. I am really happy to see this. Also there was a writer for Phrack from a long time ago I used to be friends with IRL, does anyone know who I could contact to help find him?
IMHO rarely-updated sites are exactly the sites that I wish had RSS feeds. If there's interesting content being posted every day, I just visit the site. But people won't keep visiting phrack.org every day for 4 years hoping for an update.
Phrack has a technical depth you don't often see on HN, it's a shame there aren't more people producing content like this.