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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."
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.
2600 has always painted hackers as martyrs. It's kind of their thing. Draper got busted, Mitnick got busted, they get harassed by Feds, therefore "we poor persecuted hackers just want freedom for all." You even see it in the 199x movie Hackers.
The magazine is still interesting as long as you overlook the crazy self-pitying editorials.
John
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
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.