6 ms·

This whole thing comes off as very “edgy”. We just like to tinker with things. It’s really not that deep for most of us.

dimator 2y ago
phrack has always had this kind of article. i'm sure if you grep for "A hacker is" or "the hacker ethos" you'll get a hit for every phrack issue going back to the 80s.
- larodi 2y ago
  Only thing I fail to understand is why a hacker needs to know where to buy estrogen… I can more easily take the idea of hacker knowing how to cook Molotov cocktails.
  - TZubiri 2y ago
    They may be hacking their own body to a binary that's different from their source code
  - Retr0id 2y ago
    why not both?
  - Jaccca 2y ago
    That part is definitely not aimed at every reader, but it is appropriately used to highlight how some might circumvent the lengthy legal processes involved in getting estrogen. Moreover, it points to the possible need for them to compound it themselves which in turn makes them a hacker.
  - bitwize 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - bheadmaster 2y ago
      Trans folks may in general possess qualities that make them better hackers, but they certainly aren't the only ones, so I wouldn't call hacker culture inherently trans. That would imply that non-trans people are somehow outsiders, which is contrary to the hacker philosophy, which respects merit and skill, regardless of the person's identity.
      - bitwize 2y ago
        Hacker culture has changed in the past ten years or so. The lodestar is no longer ESR's Jargon File, nor the GNU Manifesto, nor Steven Levy's Hackers. They're just ideals of what we think hacker culture should be, but that's not how hacker culture is actually practiced (if it ever was). As more and more queer and trans people have gotten involved with hacker culture, they've brought queer and trans political and philosophical thinking with them and with it, a new orientation. They're sort of terraforming the hacker space to make it more comfortable and welcoming to people like them. I mean Mara Bos, a leading developer in the Rust ecosystem, states that her goal is to "make the Rust standard library more gay". Cishets are still welcome, of course, inasmuch as they give due respect to queer and other marginalized people in the community and do not express regressive opinions about the same. The Q in LGBTQ can stand for Queer, or it can stand for Questioning; and maybe that's the basic mindset of queer theory that's applicable here: to question everything, especially your assumptions, and examine critically the social constructs that are intrinsic to the environment in which you live and work. Especially give thought to who is centered and who is marginalized by your efforts. Allison Parrish does a great job of explaining this attitude in her talk "Programming is Forgetting: Towards a New Hacker Ethic": http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/programming-forgetting-new-hacker-ethic/ http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/programming-forgetting... > which is contrary to the hacker philosophy, which respects merit and skill Coraline Ada Ehmke slew the meritocracy buddha in 2018: https://where.coraline.codes/writing/meritocracy/ https://where.coraline.codes/writing/meritocracy/ She and Parrish are probably the most prominent exponents of what constitute the new norms of hacker culture. Oh, and uh, both are trans women. That's the thing: Hacker culture never was as inclusive as people claimed it was. It was still oriented around the cishet white male nerd; inasmuch as others outside that template were allowed to participate, it was made more difficult for them because of the cishet-white-male-nerd-oriented assumptions and norms that were intrinsic to the community (as Parrish elucidates with her example about Margaret Hamilton being unable to assemble her programs on the surreptitiously modified PDP-1). That's what's changing. Remember, traditional hacker culture could never exist without vast sums of DARPA money to supply funding for the equipment, resources, payroll, etc. It only came about because the military-industrial complex wanted the missile to know where it is as it hurtled through the sky on its way to blow up thousands or millions of Others. It is inadequate as a general framework that allows for talented people regardless of background to make a contribution. The queer hackers are attempting to modernize this framework to better meet the goal of welcoming valuable contributions regardless of the contributor's identity, using their experience as outcasts among outcasts.
  - bheadmaster 2y ago
    There have been hypotheses that a significant number of trans women (i.e. biological men who identify as women) are actually on the autism spectrum. Considering natural tendency of autistic people to prefer isolated activities and puzzles, there may be a correlation between hackers and trans women.
    - leptons 2y ago
      Might also depend on how you define "hacker". Most people don't know the true meaning of the word, and should be using "cracker" instead.
    - newzisforsukas 2y ago
      > There have been hypotheses https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27872002/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27872002/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26753812/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26753812/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38803560/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38803560/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38831234/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38831234/
      - bheadmaster 2y ago
        As with any novel phenomena, especially in sociology, it is very hard to provide tangible evidence for anything. If you demand nobody speaks of anything of sort without hard evidence, rarely anything would ever be said.
        newzisforsukas 2y ago
        > If you demand nobody speaks of anything of sort without hard evidence, rarely anything would ever be said. Eh, that is some bullshit, but there is evidence though. I edited my comment to provide it, instead of asking you to do so.
        bheadmaster 2y ago
        > I edited my comment to provide it, instead of asking you to do so. Nice of you to do that. Thank you.
  - jellyfishes 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - immibis 2y ago
      Well, the author can. You know this stuff actually works, right? It's not pie in the sky thinking.
      - jellyfishes 2y ago
        Only in that it can cause a relatively unusual male body type to materialize.
        saagarjha 2y ago
        I have an unusual male body type without any additional hormones involved. Maybe don’t judge people for how they see their bodies?
  - gosub100 2y ago
    A few years ago I freaked out the Reddit moderators on a sub called /r/bodymods , which was, ostensibly, about modifying your body, when I asked about the feasibility of doing ones own liposuction. I'm not saying that's a good or bad idea from a medical perspective, but I certainly was off-put by their hypocrisy at shutting me down and their myopic definition of "body mods" which apparently to them was just poking holes in their face.
    - _yb2s 2y ago
      Unless you think/say/repeat the same things as everyone else on a subreddit you get downvoted and shadowbanned. It has the most aggressive and militant groupthink culture I've seen anywhere, which makes it pretty useless for trying to learn new things or share new ideas. If you have any type of niche hobby for example, and someone finds a new and better way of doing something, they will pretty much universally be attacked and censored.
      - hsbauauvhabzb 2y ago
        And somehow, it’s still less toxic than stackoverflow.
  - _yb2s 2y ago
    This is only an example of the type of thing a hacker would do- a hacker is willing to solve problems on their own on their own even if it requires methods that are illegal, dangerous, or complex. A lot of people throw their hands up and give up when they need an expensive medication they can't get prescribed but in general you can often buy them overseas, grey market, make them yourself, etc.
    - awooooo 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - _yb2s 2y ago
      Replying to awooooo who was flagged dead: > They want it, but it's not a necessity. What a person "needs" is complex and individual. Unless you are their doctor or are paying for it, your opinion of what medications a person needs is irrelevant- it is absolutely none of your business. This nit-picking is in no way central to my point as it was a general statement about hacker culture ethos not any particular person or medication, so why did you post it? With only two comments so far - It appears you joined HN just to share anti-trans bigotry? That isn't okay. This is not a "hate forum" - accepting people that are different is a fundamental aspect of hacker and HN culture.
      - awooooo 2y ago
        [flagged]
      - awooooo 2y ago
        [flagged]
      - _yb2s 2y ago
        @awooooo - nonsense, you have people minding their own business and being themselves, and you don't approve so you are insulting them, and trying to say they need to hide who they are or be different. That is just plain old bigotry. Being trans doesn't hurt of affect other women in any way. I'm willing to bet you are different in some way that isn't acceptable to others, so you feel the need to hide it out of fear, or hoping for acceptance. It's true of most people, and the fact that people need to hide themselves is awful.. and what you are contributing to here. I'm not trans but I am neurodivergent in a way that I can't hide, and was bullied and attacked for being different a lot of my life. Bigots that only know of one way people can be different would call me "queer" when they cornered me in the school hallway in groups to try to hurt me. Luckily for me, I'm a strong guy, and even being in groups they usually had a worse time of it than I did. I understand what that is like, and don't wish it on anyone. I want a world where people can mind their own business as themselves without hiding and without awful people trying to shame or attack them.
  - immibis 2y ago
    I see you have only met a narrow subset of hackers.
  - AdamH12113 2y ago
    Estradiol valerate (which is what the article actually names) seems to be used for a wide variety of female reproductive health issues, especially when (as the article suggests) it's compounded with other drugs. It's also used by transgender people as a hormone therapy. A hacker might live in a place where gender-affirming healthcare is illegal or unavailable, or where female reproductive healthcare in general is difficult or expensive to obtain. Reproductive healthcare is much more broadly useful than Molotov cocktails.
    - fasa99 2y ago
      It's hard to say what the motivation for the estrogen is but it's a case study in pharma-bro-ing type hobbies which is fine. Life extension nootropics and such. It could be a menopausal woman juicing up. It could also be a biological male who identifies as a female, which was big tech's engineering solution as far as how to get more women in tech (turns out, innovative solution, it's easier to retrofit male programmers as females than it is to convince your average woman to sit alone in a cubicle all day fighting against a pedantic and buggy compudah) - don't announce that at google, however, or you'll be punted out next day and end up needing to settle it for a few million.
      - hsbauauvhabzb 2y ago
        The article didn’t articulate why or how these were used and you somehow turned it into a big tech transgender conspiracy. Get some help before it’s too late, cooker.
- easterncalculus 2y ago
  The people in those past articles weren't crypto startup CEOs, or startup CEOs at all most of the time.
0xEF 2y ago
Phrack's tendency toward the edgy sentiment aside, I sort of understand it. Sort of. I grew up in the era of BBSs, microcomputers giving way to full desktops in the US and payphones we're still slightly interesting. though phreaking was sadly in its final days. I also had (and have) severe social anxiety, but had no idea what that was at the time. I just knew I did not understand the world or people much at all, seeing them as sloppy systems that seemed to operate without any predictable set of rules aside from maybe self-preservation and immediate gratification. So when I started taking apart computers, futzing with software and seeing what made the beige boxes tick, I found I could understand those with far more clarity. I also found other people like me in the message boards and a local library. Naturally, this became my world, because I knew how to navigate it better than people who had little interest in using a computer for anything beyond homework or accounting. It really felt like there was this whole reality that sat on top of the "common" reality and I had ascended to it with some silly notion of secret knowledge. You can image how addicting that would feel to someone who does not do well social and felt very, very outcast as a kid. I guess the difference between myself and a lot of Phrack authors, whom I still very much respect for laying the paving stones that I got to walk on, is that as I got older, I dealt with my anxiety and found that my genuine curiosity was more of an asset to enriching myself than a key to the door of some secret counter-culture. Hacking, colloquially speaking, went mainstream and sort of left me in the dust, having become impossible for any one person to keep up with the flood of new methods, exploits, etc as the Internet exploded and suddenly everyone had computers in some form or another. I moved on, more or less. Yes, I still tinker, as a hobby and a form of therapy, but mostly with old computers and industrial machines, since that's part of my adult career, but I miss that feeling of being part of some counter-culture-like group, whether it was real or not. I can totally see where it would be hard to let go of that. Heck, I'd post that some of the Phrack authors have no business letting go of it since they helped define that whole world and need to keep it alive. I say let them be edgy. I have trouble with that, myself, but I respect it. Sorry, this turned into a "Hacker Perspective" 2600 article, I guess.
- elefanten 2y ago
  Thoughtful and insightful reflection, thanks for sharing. I think that interplay between personal sense-making, personal strengths and the addictive/rewarding aspects of belonging to a specialized/esoteric community are a very common combination driving the creation of new narratives, new factions/interest and, ultimately, all kinds of change in general… for better or for worse, usually only time and intervening chance can tell. It’s cool how meaningful it is to the participants, and also cool when you can zoom out and connect it to the experiences of others across space and time.
beardedwizard 2y ago
Different kinds of hackers then, I suppose.
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]

dimator 2y ago

phrack has always had this kind of article. i'm sure if you grep for "A hacker is" or "the hacker ethos" you'll get a hit for every phrack issue going back to the 80s.

larodi 2y ago
Only thing I fail to understand is why a hacker needs to know where to buy estrogen… I can more easily take the idea of hacker knowing how to cook Molotov cocktails.
- TZubiri 2y ago
  They may be hacking their own body to a binary that's different from their source code
- Retr0id 2y ago
  why not both?
- Jaccca 2y ago
  That part is definitely not aimed at every reader, but it is appropriately used to highlight how some might circumvent the lengthy legal processes involved in getting estrogen. Moreover, it points to the possible need for them to compound it themselves which in turn makes them a hacker.
- bitwize 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - bheadmaster 2y ago
    Trans folks may in general possess qualities that make them better hackers, but they certainly aren't the only ones, so I wouldn't call hacker culture inherently trans. That would imply that non-trans people are somehow outsiders, which is contrary to the hacker philosophy, which respects merit and skill, regardless of the person's identity.
    - bitwize 2y ago
      Hacker culture has changed in the past ten years or so. The lodestar is no longer ESR's Jargon File, nor the GNU Manifesto, nor Steven Levy's Hackers. They're just ideals of what we think hacker culture should be, but that's not how hacker culture is actually practiced (if it ever was). As more and more queer and trans people have gotten involved with hacker culture, they've brought queer and trans political and philosophical thinking with them and with it, a new orientation. They're sort of terraforming the hacker space to make it more comfortable and welcoming to people like them. I mean Mara Bos, a leading developer in the Rust ecosystem, states that her goal is to "make the Rust standard library more gay". Cishets are still welcome, of course, inasmuch as they give due respect to queer and other marginalized people in the community and do not express regressive opinions about the same. The Q in LGBTQ can stand for Queer, or it can stand for Questioning; and maybe that's the basic mindset of queer theory that's applicable here: to question everything, especially your assumptions, and examine critically the social constructs that are intrinsic to the environment in which you live and work. Especially give thought to who is centered and who is marginalized by your efforts. Allison Parrish does a great job of explaining this attitude in her talk "Programming is Forgetting: Towards a New Hacker Ethic": http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/programming-forgetting-new-hacker-ethic/ http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/programming-forgetting... > which is contrary to the hacker philosophy, which respects merit and skill Coraline Ada Ehmke slew the meritocracy buddha in 2018: https://where.coraline.codes/writing/meritocracy/ https://where.coraline.codes/writing/meritocracy/ She and Parrish are probably the most prominent exponents of what constitute the new norms of hacker culture. Oh, and uh, both are trans women. That's the thing: Hacker culture never was as inclusive as people claimed it was. It was still oriented around the cishet white male nerd; inasmuch as others outside that template were allowed to participate, it was made more difficult for them because of the cishet-white-male-nerd-oriented assumptions and norms that were intrinsic to the community (as Parrish elucidates with her example about Margaret Hamilton being unable to assemble her programs on the surreptitiously modified PDP-1). That's what's changing. Remember, traditional hacker culture could never exist without vast sums of DARPA money to supply funding for the equipment, resources, payroll, etc. It only came about because the military-industrial complex wanted the missile to know where it is as it hurtled through the sky on its way to blow up thousands or millions of Others. It is inadequate as a general framework that allows for talented people regardless of background to make a contribution. The queer hackers are attempting to modernize this framework to better meet the goal of welcoming valuable contributions regardless of the contributor's identity, using their experience as outcasts among outcasts.
- bheadmaster 2y ago
  There have been hypotheses that a significant number of trans women (i.e. biological men who identify as women) are actually on the autism spectrum. Considering natural tendency of autistic people to prefer isolated activities and puzzles, there may be a correlation between hackers and trans women.
  - leptons 2y ago
    Might also depend on how you define "hacker". Most people don't know the true meaning of the word, and should be using "cracker" instead.
  - newzisforsukas 2y ago
    > There have been hypotheses https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27872002/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27872002/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26753812/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26753812/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38803560/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38803560/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38831234/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38831234/
    - bheadmaster 2y ago
      As with any novel phenomena, especially in sociology, it is very hard to provide tangible evidence for anything. If you demand nobody speaks of anything of sort without hard evidence, rarely anything would ever be said.
      - newzisforsukas 2y ago
        > If you demand nobody speaks of anything of sort without hard evidence, rarely anything would ever be said. Eh, that is some bullshit, but there is evidence though. I edited my comment to provide it, instead of asking you to do so.
        bheadmaster 2y ago
        > I edited my comment to provide it, instead of asking you to do so. Nice of you to do that. Thank you.
- jellyfishes 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - immibis 2y ago
    Well, the author can. You know this stuff actually works, right? It's not pie in the sky thinking.
    - jellyfishes 2y ago
      Only in that it can cause a relatively unusual male body type to materialize.
      - saagarjha 2y ago
        I have an unusual male body type without any additional hormones involved. Maybe don’t judge people for how they see their bodies?
- gosub100 2y ago
  A few years ago I freaked out the Reddit moderators on a sub called /r/bodymods , which was, ostensibly, about modifying your body, when I asked about the feasibility of doing ones own liposuction. I'm not saying that's a good or bad idea from a medical perspective, but I certainly was off-put by their hypocrisy at shutting me down and their myopic definition of "body mods" which apparently to them was just poking holes in their face.
  - _yb2s 2y ago
    Unless you think/say/repeat the same things as everyone else on a subreddit you get downvoted and shadowbanned. It has the most aggressive and militant groupthink culture I've seen anywhere, which makes it pretty useless for trying to learn new things or share new ideas. If you have any type of niche hobby for example, and someone finds a new and better way of doing something, they will pretty much universally be attacked and censored.
    - hsbauauvhabzb 2y ago
      And somehow, it’s still less toxic than stackoverflow.
- _yb2s 2y ago
  This is only an example of the type of thing a hacker would do- a hacker is willing to solve problems on their own on their own even if it requires methods that are illegal, dangerous, or complex. A lot of people throw their hands up and give up when they need an expensive medication they can't get prescribed but in general you can often buy them overseas, grey market, make them yourself, etc.
  - awooooo 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - _yb2s 2y ago
    Replying to awooooo who was flagged dead: > They want it, but it's not a necessity. What a person "needs" is complex and individual. Unless you are their doctor or are paying for it, your opinion of what medications a person needs is irrelevant- it is absolutely none of your business. This nit-picking is in no way central to my point as it was a general statement about hacker culture ethos not any particular person or medication, so why did you post it? With only two comments so far - It appears you joined HN just to share anti-trans bigotry? That isn't okay. This is not a "hate forum" - accepting people that are different is a fundamental aspect of hacker and HN culture.
    - awooooo 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - awooooo 2y ago
      [flagged]
    - _yb2s 2y ago
      @awooooo - nonsense, you have people minding their own business and being themselves, and you don't approve so you are insulting them, and trying to say they need to hide who they are or be different. That is just plain old bigotry. Being trans doesn't hurt of affect other women in any way. I'm willing to bet you are different in some way that isn't acceptable to others, so you feel the need to hide it out of fear, or hoping for acceptance. It's true of most people, and the fact that people need to hide themselves is awful.. and what you are contributing to here. I'm not trans but I am neurodivergent in a way that I can't hide, and was bullied and attacked for being different a lot of my life. Bigots that only know of one way people can be different would call me "queer" when they cornered me in the school hallway in groups to try to hurt me. Luckily for me, I'm a strong guy, and even being in groups they usually had a worse time of it than I did. I understand what that is like, and don't wish it on anyone. I want a world where people can mind their own business as themselves without hiding and without awful people trying to shame or attack them.
- immibis 2y ago
  I see you have only met a narrow subset of hackers.
- AdamH12113 2y ago
  Estradiol valerate (which is what the article actually names) seems to be used for a wide variety of female reproductive health issues, especially when (as the article suggests) it's compounded with other drugs. It's also used by transgender people as a hormone therapy. A hacker might live in a place where gender-affirming healthcare is illegal or unavailable, or where female reproductive healthcare in general is difficult or expensive to obtain. Reproductive healthcare is much more broadly useful than Molotov cocktails.
  - fasa99 2y ago
    It's hard to say what the motivation for the estrogen is but it's a case study in pharma-bro-ing type hobbies which is fine. Life extension nootropics and such. It could be a menopausal woman juicing up. It could also be a biological male who identifies as a female, which was big tech's engineering solution as far as how to get more women in tech (turns out, innovative solution, it's easier to retrofit male programmers as females than it is to convince your average woman to sit alone in a cubicle all day fighting against a pedantic and buggy compudah) - don't announce that at google, however, or you'll be punted out next day and end up needing to settle it for a few million.
    - hsbauauvhabzb 2y ago
      The article didn’t articulate why or how these were used and you somehow turned it into a big tech transgender conspiracy. Get some help before it’s too late, cooker.
easterncalculus 2y ago
The people in those past articles weren't crypto startup CEOs, or startup CEOs at all most of the time.

0xEF 2y ago

Phrack's tendency toward the edgy sentiment aside, I sort of understand it. Sort of. I grew up in the era of BBSs, microcomputers giving way to full desktops in the US and payphones we're still slightly interesting. though phreaking was sadly in its final days. I also had (and have) severe social anxiety, but had no idea what that was at the time. I just knew I did not understand the world or people much at all, seeing them as sloppy systems that seemed to operate without any predictable set of rules aside from maybe self-preservation and immediate gratification. So when I started taking apart computers, futzing with software and seeing what made the beige boxes tick, I found I could understand those with far more clarity. I also found other people like me in the message boards and a local library. Naturally, this became my world, because I knew how to navigate it better than people who had little interest in using a computer for anything beyond homework or accounting. It really felt like there was this whole reality that sat on top of the "common" reality and I had ascended to it with some silly notion of secret knowledge. You can image how addicting that would feel to someone who does not do well social and felt very, very outcast as a kid. I guess the difference between myself and a lot of Phrack authors, whom I still very much respect for laying the paving stones that I got to walk on, is that as I got older, I dealt with my anxiety and found that my genuine curiosity was more of an asset to enriching myself than a key to the door of some secret counter-culture. Hacking, colloquially speaking, went mainstream and sort of left me in the dust, having become impossible for any one person to keep up with the flood of new methods, exploits, etc as the Internet exploded and suddenly everyone had computers in some form or another. I moved on, more or less. Yes, I still tinker, as a hobby and a form of therapy, but mostly with old computers and industrial machines, since that's part of my adult career, but I miss that feeling of being part of some counter-culture-like group, whether it was real or not. I can totally see where it would be hard to let go of that. Heck, I'd post that some of the Phrack authors have no business letting go of it since they helped define that whole world and need to keep it alive. I say let them be edgy. I have trouble with that, myself, but I respect it. Sorry, this turned into a "Hacker Perspective" 2600 article, I guess.

elefanten 2y ago
Thoughtful and insightful reflection, thanks for sharing. I think that interplay between personal sense-making, personal strengths and the addictive/rewarding aspects of belonging to a specialized/esoteric community are a very common combination driving the creation of new narratives, new factions/interest and, ultimately, all kinds of change in general… for better or for worse, usually only time and intervening chance can tell. It’s cool how meaningful it is to the participants, and also cool when you can zoom out and connect it to the experiences of others across space and time.

beardedwizard 2y ago

Different kinds of hackers then, I suppose.

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]