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2600 Profiled: "A Print Magazine For Hackers"
HughPickens.com writes: Nicolas Niarchos has a profile of 2600 in The New Yorker that is well worth reading. Some excerpts: "2600 — named for the frequency that allowed early hackers and "phreakers" to gain control of land-line phones — is the photocopier to Snowden's microprocessor. Its articles aren't pasted up on a flashy Web site but, rather, come out in print. The magazine—which started as a three-page leaflet sent out in the mail, and became a digest-sized publication in the late nineteen-eighties — just celebrated its thirtieth anniversary. It still arrives with the turning of the seasons, in brown envelopes just a bit smaller than a 401k mailer."
"There's been now, by any stretch of the imagination, three generations of hackers who have read 2600 magazine," Jason Scott, a historian and Web archivist who recently reorganized a set of 2600's legal files, said. Referring to Goldstein, whose real name is Eric Corley, he continued: "Eric really believes in the power of print, words on paper. It's obvious for him that his heart is in the paper."
"2600 provides an important forum for hackers to discuss the most pressing issues of the day — whether it be surveillance, Internet freedom, or the security of the nation's nuclear weapons—while sharing new code in languages like Python and C.* For example, the most recent issue of the magazine addresses how the hacking community can approach Snowden's disclosures. After lampooning one of the leaked N.S.A. PowerPoint slides ("whoever wrote this clearly didn't know that there are no zombies in '1984' ") and discussing how U.S. government is eroding civil rights, the piece points out the contradictions that everyone in the hacking community currently faces. "Hackers are the ones who reveal the inconvenient truths, point out security holes, and offer solutions," it concludes. "And this is why hackers are the enemy in a world where surveillance and the status quo are the keys to power."
"There's been now, by any stretch of the imagination, three generations of hackers who have read 2600 magazine," Jason Scott, a historian and Web archivist who recently reorganized a set of 2600's legal files, said. Referring to Goldstein, whose real name is Eric Corley, he continued: "Eric really believes in the power of print, words on paper. It's obvious for him that his heart is in the paper."
"2600 provides an important forum for hackers to discuss the most pressing issues of the day — whether it be surveillance, Internet freedom, or the security of the nation's nuclear weapons—while sharing new code in languages like Python and C.* For example, the most recent issue of the magazine addresses how the hacking community can approach Snowden's disclosures. After lampooning one of the leaked N.S.A. PowerPoint slides ("whoever wrote this clearly didn't know that there are no zombies in '1984' ") and discussing how U.S. government is eroding civil rights, the piece points out the contradictions that everyone in the hacking community currently faces. "Hackers are the ones who reveal the inconvenient truths, point out security holes, and offer solutions," it concludes. "And this is why hackers are the enemy in a world where surveillance and the status quo are the keys to power."
...there's a slogan in there somewhere....
30 years in the making?
paints such an interesting, far-from-the-truth picture of reality. Hackers being some personable people that point out flaws in current solutions to complex technological problems along with possible solutions instead of the OCD code warriors they likely tend to be for the sake of coding itself. People actively seek out flaws for the sake of flaws themselves, not some happenstance that they exist except in the most trivial issues.
"It still arrives with the turning of the seasons, in brown envelopes just a bit smaller than a 401k mailer."
Which would be how many Libraries of Congress?
I used to buy it whenever I came across it - usually in chain bookstores in Toronto. Learned some great stuff and loved the pictures of payphones on the back. Went to one of the listed 2600 meet ups in Toronto once. There was only one other guy there (with an Apple Newton set up with box frequencies - not a blue box, but whatever one allowed you to tell payphones you'd put in certain denominations of change. Anyway, we got bored and dumpster dived behind the Bell Canada headquarters. Didn't find anything decent, but it was fun.
Haven't seen a hard copy of the mag in a while, but I'm in Costa Rica now so that could be why.
Maybe I'm paranoid, but I always buy it with cash.
"Hackers are the ones who reveal the inconvenient truths, point out security holes, and offer solutions," it concludes. "And this is why hackers are the enemy in a world where surveillance and the status quo are the keys to power."
That is delusional. I find it fascinating that the impression that hackers often have of the government is that they're so over-the-top powerful that they are keeping tabs on and surveilling a vast majority of the populace, while at the same time so utterly incompetent that one low level contractor can walk out the NSA's door with a bunch of files or some delusional Specialist can download a ton of files and send it to Wikileaks. The impression that hackers have of the government is a self-serving fantasy: they are "so powerful" in their massive surveillance, but not as powerful as the hacker who takes him down, so the hacker becomes more powerful in his own selfish image by taking down a more powerful entity.
The truth is the government doesn't give two shits about hackers and information releases in terms of their own power base; there are scandals but no power-enabling conspiracies that keep governments in power. The government cares about what the populace thinks, and the general non-hacker populace thinks hackers are geeks who live in their basements talking about conspiracy theories, or guys who break into their banks and steal their credit card numbers and identities. The government also cares when a hack reveals their intelligence processes so the real bad guys, people who want to cause chaos or kill people like terrorists or foreign agents, now know how to avoid being caught.
Seriously, what tangible benefit has come about from any of these big data leaks? Snowden's release only made it harder for the NSA and CIA to track terrorists as they recently claimed. It damaged the US' diplomatic efforts, and in many cases enabled dictators and bad governments to paint the US as the bad guy and the dictator as the savior from the meddling USA, keeping them in power (see Maduro and Venezuela). Sure, the mass surveillance program of US citizens has stopped, but has that resulted in an improvement of any US citizen's life? Do we have a better, more representative government system? (No.) Has it reduced the growing gap between the rich and the poor? (No.) Has it stopped mass arrests for things people did in their homes? (That never happened so No.) Has anyone been arrested of the crime of warrant-less mass surveillance? (No.) So what tangible benefit, in light of the detriments, has it resulted in? Nothing I can see.
But when I did read it, it was only on occasion, once every couple years. I found the left-wing politics distasteful.
Besides, all the latest cutting-edge material is on the Internet.
After reading 2600 off and on for at least 20 years, it's getting hard to find. Their publisher went insane, B&N doesn't seem to want to carry it. Frustrating.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
He has a weekly show called Off The Hook Here: http://wbai.org/server-archive... scroll down to ; Off The Hook Wednesday, October 15, 2014 7:00 pm you can download or listen
I went to the 2600 meetings in Houston several times in the very late 90s. They were pretty interesting, but the most interesting thing was how we had people taking our photos from a distance. I remember about 8pm in the evening someone dressed in a FedEx uniform taking our photo... We waved to him and tried to get him to come over.. He didn't seem interested. It was a gathering in plain clothes in public with nothing really drawing attention to it being a meeting of any sort.. Just was interesting.. Figure it was just another little star on my profile the government was keeping on me. Paranoid? Well they knew quite a bit about me when they came to knock on my door one time...
s/©//g
You don't learn to hack, you hack to learn.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Um. Didn't Esquire or GQ or some glossy magazine of that sort in need of editorial filler profile 2600? Like.... 20 years or so ago?
OK, so maybe the profiled Captain Crunch. Same difference.
I vaguely recall, but the dementia seems to be kicking-in.
I just saw it at Barnes & Noble the other day.
After 'bailing out' of a DoD agency in 1994, my "Career", I landed in Ohio, and in northeast Ohio, at a Barns-N-Nobel of the day I would get a Mocha and sit back in a chair with the latest 2600, and write notes in my scratch pad, i.e. a real paper and pencil note taking device. What fun!
Ha ha what fun. And! I still have my old 'scratch pad'! It does not require batteries!
Jolly Good!
A little more than ten years ago, I submitted an article to 2600. It was a juvenile article that accomplished nothing more than spilling inside information about how to rip off a retail/rental store via telephone. (More precisely, it provided information on how to read and understand a numerical code and act as an insider). I asked 2600 in the submission to choose a pseudonym for me. Stupidly, I sent it from an email box that had my real name listed.
A few weeks later, an editor of 2600 sent me an email back, telling me that my submission was accepted, I would be published in 2600. Although I would not get paid I would get a subscription to it for life (it was only a quarterly, printed on half of an A4 sheet) and a T-shirt.
To my horror, when I saw my article in 2600, they had printed using my email's return name - my real name. Within a month I lost my job. It was my own damn fault and it was a life lesson I still remember to this day. I have no illusions that what I did was anything other than morally and ethically wrong.
Thing is: they never sent me my subscription nor my T-shirt.
"2600—named for the frequency that allowed early hackers and “phreakers” to gain control of land-line phones—"
yet another factual error by a reporter. was this done as intentionally as his predecessors did on the topic of phreaking?
2600Hz was the trunk idle tone and did not—could not control phones.
I didn't know the New Yorker was cool with regular expressions.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I used to read it in the 90s, but the quality of the content had a sharp drop-off in the early 2000's when it became surprisingly un-technical.
At some point it became a soapbox for potheads and those with a pro-crime mentality. There's plenty of outlets for people like that to make their ill-informed rants other than 2600.
holy crap i'm old......
Anyone who's been a long time reader of 2600 can see that its dying a slow death... The quality of articles has declined significantly over the years with the letters section being the largest part of the mag now. I used to get it to learn now its just filled with letters with stupid questions from newbs fiction and articles that seem more like some kids report for a class they had in highschool then actual technical knowledge. It might have something to offer to people new to the scene but after a certain point you out grow it. Now when ever I pick it up I just keep thinking about how it used to be.. But who knows maybe the Slashdot effect will get it some much needed press and some actual tech articles again..
Does anyone really think that people are communicating underground hacking techniques by publishing material that is available to anyone for a few dollars? That makes it no longer underground. It's no longer a secret The manufacturers can fix these issues, since now, EVERYone knows about them. It's like saying zero day patching is a hacking window. No, the issue was there before hand, but now everyone know about it.