Comments on: Can you help me find tales of l33tness?

Question: Can you help me find tales of l33tness?

ArgentCorvid — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:01:39 -0800

Can you help me find more Hacker Folklore?

There's The Story of Mel (and most of the rest of the Jargon File). There's The Story of the 500 Mile E-Mail. To a lesser degree of what I am looking for is The Origin of Quake3's Fast InvSqrt.

Do you know of anywhere that I can find more short stories in the same spirit of these? I'm talking about (probably) true stories of Techie Awesome and/or the history of Hacking. Stories about things that shouldn't work, but do.

If the story goes deep into the technical details, thats fine with me. In fact, the more details about the equipment and/or circumstances, the better.

I know that there are more out there than the three above, but I'm not sure I've been putting the right words into the search box.

Thanks in advance.

By: phrontist

phrontist — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:08:36 -0800

The Cuckoo's Egg

By: toxic

toxic — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:15:14 -0800

Steven Levy's Hackers.

By: jaimev

jaimev — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:18:50 -0800

There's Andy Hertzfeld's Folklore.org, about anectodes surrounding the original Apple Macintosh.

By: theoddball

theoddball — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:25:41 -0800

VAXen, my children, just don't belong some places.

By: scruss

scruss — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:30:58 -0800

there's a tone of UK computer folklore in Resurrection, if you dig about. Some of it goes back to 1940s codebreaking efforts in Bletchley Park.

By: waraw

waraw — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:36:34 -0800

Out of the Inner Circle was an early book by a hacker. But from your post it's unclear whether your looking for stuff on computer crime, or code wrangling.

By: djb

djb — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:43:55 -0800

More software engineering than Techie, but Joel Spolsky on his first BillG review.

By: Steven C. Den Beste

Steven C. Den Beste — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:59:10 -0800

The MIT Gallery of Hacks.

(For instance, when MIT got a new president, some students made his office vanish.)

By: phrontist

phrontist — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 17:02:38 -0800

This History of Hacking is pretty good too. Interviews with Woz and Cap'n Crunch.

By: ArgentCorvid

ArgentCorvid — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 17:02:40 -0800

@waraw: I'm looking for "Hacking" as in code/hardware wrangling. Not necessarily computer crime, but also not necessarily exclusive of it either.

I haven't got a chance to dig in it very much, but stuff like scruss's post is what i'm looking for.

By: heresiarch

heresiarch — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 17:33:09 -0800

I'm particularly fond of this story out of the jargon file (which you may have already read).

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 17:40:53 -0800

The Eudaemonic Pie

By: cocoagirl

cocoagirl — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 17:54:19 -0800

Seconding Levy's Hackers.

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 17:58:10 -0800

Also, if you're looking for more of a long n leisurely history tour, back issues of 2600 magazine would probably be of interest.

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 18:01:41 -0800

And of course LOD.

By: mumkin

mumkin — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 18:03:12 -0800

Seconding Out of the Inner Circle... I loved that book when I was a lad.

By: b1tr0t

b1tr0t — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 18:41:50 -0800

Don't forget Mel.

By: Cassilda

Cassilda — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:26:18 -0800

Masters of Deception is the story of the split between the LoD and the MoD in the early 90s. The Hacker Crackdown focuses on the Secret Service's anti-hacker efforts, including the raid on Steve Jackson Games. Fire in the Valley is the story of the early days of Microsoft and Apple Computers, which also inspired a film. In a similar vein, Masters of Doom is the story of the early days of Id Software, including a fair bit of hackish ingenuity and technical experimentation.

In the same vein of 2600 magazine (as per LobsterMitten's suggestion) is Phrack magazine. All back issues are available online.

Textfiles.com is an excellent resource, collecting lots of the old files that have been floating around BBSes and the Internet since the eighties. The Apple II, Hack, and Phreak sections might be of particular interest. There is also a well-maintained index of BBSes past and present, organized by area code, which may or may not bring back memories.

By: scalefree

scalefree — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:46:21 -0800

If you're looking for technology rather than personalities, here's some links for you:

Security Digest Archives captures the birth pangs & infancy of Internet security from the Morris worm to the creation of BugTraq.

The unix core security mailing list is by invitation only and contains sensitive material which SHOULD NOT BE REVEALED to non-members. DO NOT PUT ANY LIST CONTENTS IN LOCATIONS ACCESSABLE TO NON-MEMBERS. If you must keep copies on-line, please encrypt them at the very least.

Picking up where that leaves off: BugTraq, the first fully open source discussion of security, vulnerabilities & fixes. This archive seems to be missing the first couple weeks but there should be more than enough to hold your interest.

For good stories of technology gone bad you can't beat RISKS Digest, quite possibly the longest running mailing list under a single administrator.

No compendium of hacking history would be complete without the oldest mailing list on the Internet, Telecom Digest. And don't forget to make a stop at its spinoff, the Computer underground Digest, the most complete record of the "golden age" of computer hacking around.

By: nonane

nonane — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 05:01:37 -0800

nntp://alt.folklore.computers

By: Drexen

Drexen — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 05:19:19 -0800

Bruce Sterling's non-fiction book The Hacker Crackdown is full of this stuff. It seems there's a free e-text of it at MIT's site, here.

By: ArgentCorvid

ArgentCorvid — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 07:00:39 -0800

Jeez, I can't believe I forgot about 2600, Phrack, and Textfiles.com. They had completely slipped my mind.

I've marked some 'bests', I will mark others as I get to look at them.

By: kindall

kindall — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 11:41:31 -0800

The Devouring Fungus is a good compendium of a lot of early-ish computer tales and legends.

By: plinth

plinth — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 14:01:23 -0800

Always mount a scratch monkey.

By: papafrita

papafrita — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 01:27:11 -0800

Judging by the examples you provided, and the answers you've marked, I'm going to second Levy's Hackers. At Project Gutenberg you'll find the first two chapters, so you can see how you like it (though my favorite chapters are the ones about the Model Railroad Club, and the Sierra Online company -- probably because I loved their games as a wee one).

By: papafrita

papafrita — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 01:39:09 -0800

heh, don't know how i missed cocoagirl's comment... thirding Hackers it is, then.