I excavated a bit of hacker history from old memories today. Not dead history either, but an important beginning of some large good things.
Category: Hacker Culture
The Adventure begins again
Colossal Cave Adventure was the origin of many things; the text adventure game, the dungeon-crawling D&D (computer) game, the MOO, the roguelike genre. Computer gaming as we know it would not exist without ADVENT (as it was known in its original PDP-10 incarnation).
The advent of ADVENT
A marvellous thing has just occurred. Colossal Cave Adventure, the original progenitor of the D&D-like dungeon-crawling game genre from 1977 and fondly remembered as ADVENT by those of us who played it on PDP-10s, is one of the major artifacts of hacker history. The earliest version by Crowther and Woods (sometimes known as 350-point Adenture)… Continue reading The advent of ADVENT
You shall judge by the code alone
I support the open letter by Drupal developers protesting the attempted expulsion of Larry Garfield from the Drupal commmunity. As a Drupal contributor who has never in any respect attempted to tie the project to his beliefs or lifestyle, Garfield deserves the right to be judged by his code alone. That is the hacker way;… Continue reading You shall judge by the code alone
PSA: “E-Shielder Security” and “CyberSec Buzz” are gangs of idiotic scum
This is a public service announcement: E-Shielder Security, describing itself as “leading importers and suppliers of high end electronic technology solution systems” is a gang of idiotic scum. Yesterday they posted a Hacktivists on the rampage in 2017, which largely reproduced my Hacker Archetypes post. They did so in obvious ignorance of who the hackers… Continue reading PSA: “E-Shielder Security” and “CyberSec Buzz” are gangs of idiotic scum
Hacker Archetypes
There’s a book about martial arts called On the Warrior’s Path that tries to understand the differing psychologies of martial artists through the lens of half a dozen archetypes – Seeker, Ronin, Tribal Warrior, and others. I have not yet read the book, but my friend and regular A&D commenter Susan Sons reports having found… Continue reading Hacker Archetypes
Things Every Hacker Once Knew: 1.12
Latest version, as usual, here. New stuff: Note just how crazily heterogenous the six-bit character sets were. FTP. Ctrl-V on Unix systems. A correction about uu{de|en}code. Timeline updates for ’74 and ’77. The pace of submissions continues to slow.
How to change the world in Zen easy lessons
This morning I stumbled over a comment from last September that I somehow missed replying to at the time. I suspect it’s something more than one of my readers has wondered about, so here goes… Edward Cree wrote: If I’m really smart enough to impress esr, I feel like I ought to be doing more… Continue reading How to change the world in Zen easy lessons
Things Every Hacker Once Knew: 1.11
The newest version of Things Every Hacker Once Knew is only a minor update. There’s material on SIGHUP; six-bit characters on 36-bit machines; a correction that XMODEM required 8 bits; and why screensavers are called that. New submissions are ramping down; I don’t expect to need to issue another update of this for some time.
Things Every Hacker Once Knew: 1.6
The newest version is here. I think it’s stabilizing. The rate of comments and submissions has been dropping. Changelog: How VDTs explain some heritage programs, and how bitmapped displays eventually obsolesced them. Explain why the ADM-3 was called “dumb” even though it was smart. There’s also a mention of RS-323 on network gear. Still nothing… Continue reading Things Every Hacker Once Knew: 1.6
In defense of recording folk history
One of my regular commenters on A&D, Random832, wrote the following in response to my inclusion criteria for Things Every Hacker Once Knew. On “common knowledge at the time”, I think the problem with dismissing things as “fascinating but obscure trivia” means too much exclusion of the real facts behind things that were already forgotten… Continue reading In defense of recording folk history
Things Every Hacker Once Knew: 1.2
The response to this piece has been remarkably broad and positive. I have to note, though, that I didn’t write it as a nostalgia trip – I don’t miss underpowered computers, primitive tools, and tiny low-resolution displays. At least people did notice that it isn’t a you-kids-get-off-my-lawn grumble. I think it’s good for younger hackers… Continue reading Things Every Hacker Once Knew: 1.2
Things Every Hacker Once Knew
As promised in the comments on my last post, here it is: Things Every Hacker Once Knew Comments and corrections welcome.
Tools generate culture: a trivial example
If I were the kind of person who grumbles about feeling ancient, I’d have been doing it today. I got reminded that younger hackers don’t know the bit structure of ASCII like their tongues know the back of their teeth. Man, we all grokked that back when I was new at this. Nowadays not so… Continue reading Tools generate culture: a trivial example
Rust and the limits of swarm design
In my last blog post I expressed my severe disappointment with the gap between the Rust language in theory (as I had read about it) and the Rust language in practice, as I encountered it when I actually tried to write something in it. Part of what I hoped for was a constructive response from… Continue reading Rust and the limits of swarm design
Rust severely disappoints me
I wanted to like Rust. I really did. I’ve been investigating it for months, from the outside, as a C replacement with stronger correctness guarantees that we could use for NTPsec. I finally cleared my queue enough that I could spend a week learning Rust. I was evaluating it in contrast with Go, which I… Continue reading Rust severely disappoints me
With a little help from my friends
I had a great time at Penguicon 2016, including face time with a lot of the people who help out on my various projects. There are a couple of thoughts that kept coming back to me during these conversations. One is “It is good, having so many impressively competent friends.” The other is that without… Continue reading With a little help from my friends
Friends of Armed & Dangerous party 2016!
This year’s meatspace party for blog regulars and friends will be held at Penguicon 2016 On Friday, April 29 beginning at 9PM 10PM. UPDATE: Pushed back an hour because the original start time conflicted with the time slot assigned for my “Ask Me Anything” event. The venue is the Southfield Westin hotel in Southfield, Michigan.… Continue reading Friends of Armed & Dangerous party 2016!
Too clever by half
The British have a phrase “Too clever by half”, It needs to go global, especially among hackers. It can have any of several closely related meanings: the one I mean to focus on here has to do with overconfidence in one’s intelligence or skill, and the particular bad consequences that can have. It’s related to… Continue reading Too clever by half
This may be the week the SJWs lost it all
This may be the week the SJWs lost it all…or, at least, their power to bully people in the hacker culture and the wider tech community. Many of you probably already know about the LambdaConf flap. In brief: LambdaConf, a technical conference on functional programming, accepted a presentation proposal about a language called Urbit, from… Continue reading This may be the week the SJWs lost it all