The idea behind this section is to collect various resources -
digital or otherwise - expounding the frenetic and restless spirit
of hacking pursuits. Ideally, all items here should posess “the
quality without a name” so that even if they’re not explicitly about
hacking, they succeed at evoking a certain frame of mind…
John Markoff - What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry
A very West Coast, countercultural account of the development of computing and its percolation to the people. Gives a lot of background on how many of the pioneers had goals far grander than technical breakthroughs, focusing rather on augmenting the human condition.
The canonical history of the hacker community. Divided into three parts dealing with the MIT hackers (60s mostly), West Coast hardware hackers (70s) and game hackers (80s). Perhaps too exalted at times, but still fun to read.
More a visual novel than game. Centers around Evelyn, who used to work on therapeutic applications of AI for a large company. After a three-year break from her previous life she reemerges and tries to get a grip of her life again. Visually beautiful and meditative.
A hacking game set in the alternative 90s (what with the gray and red WinAmp-y interfaces). Provides an interesting and moody backstory of Moss, a former hacker/cracker battling with a neuro-degenerative disease known as the phage. Gameplay involves programming EXAs - tiny processes visualized as robots - in a simple machine language.
An electronics/assembly hacking game. An American expat in Shenzhen, China goes to work for Longteng Ltd. - an electronics company. The challenges consist of both hardware and software design. The programming model is a simple assembly language.
Text adventure written by Ron Schnell. Part of every instance of
GNU/Emacs since forever. M-x dunnet. Interesting plot twist
unfolds when…
Text adventure from IF legend Andrew Plotkin. An apprentice alchemist needs to survive after his alchemically-powered spaceship crashes on an alien planet. Paracelsus meets “Monday Starts on Saturday”, meets Count Cagliostro, meets…
Digital circuit design simulator. You’re employed by a fictional company by the name of… Microhard. Your objective is to build steadily more complicated logical components using a very simple and intuitive hardware description language. Your efforts culminate in a design for a complete (albeit simple) CPU.
Described as Zachtronics’ “love letter” to the early home computer era. Set in the environment of a fictional Sawayama Z5 computer (also known from Exapunks), it feels like actually using the system, complete with modem sounds and limited bandwidth. The BBS system from the title lets one download several games in the spirit of early days, including a logic-based dungeon puzzle, circuit simulator and biohacking. If not the most exciting of Zachtronics games, it certainly gives off a nice vibe.
A fascinating interview that Rai recommended to me a while ago. Joe interrupts Alan more than necessary, but still… This interview mentions two metric shitloads of fascinating papers and projects that have mostly been forgotten.
Musings on how interfaces get in the way of actually manipulating ideas. Taking Vim as the prime example of minimizing overhead, the author ponders the importance of getting “zenned out” easily.
In Russian. An overview of how the Soviet computer industry came about and who the key figures were. Co-authored by Anatoly Kitov, one of the giants in the Soviet school of programming. If you’d like this to be translated to English, let me know.
Zine associated with Lainchan. All kinds of articles on programming, security, cryptography, cognition, art, politics, etc.
Unix, the archetypal hacker’s choice. Love it or hate it. The UNiplexed Information and Computing Service is here to stay.
A book-sized overview of the Unix philosophy by Eric S. Raymond. This book will probably not teach you systems programming under Unix. Rather, it will serve as a systematic exposition of the decades-long accumulation of practices, design principles and historical accidents.
Fairly detailed history of how Unix came to be. Entertaining and informative. Good companion to Peter Salus’ book.
History and folklore of the hacker community and how at some point it merged with the Unix folks.
An in-depth history of Unix, GNU and Linux. Lots of tidbits, anecdotes and pointers to other resources.
A memoir of Rudd Canaday - one of the lesser known early contributors to Unix development. Canaday is claimed to be greatly underappreciated in the history of Unix.
A very informal interview with Ken, showing how a great person can be humble, funny and down to earth.
Ken discussing everything from his youth, Unix, chess, Bell Labs etc.
The sound of a tree falling when there’s nobody there to hear it. An ancient operating system designed and put together by the MIT hackers. Originated on the PDP-6, later transplanted to PDP-10. Birthplace of MacLisp, Scheme, Planner, Conniver, Emacs and many more. Featured extensively in [[*[[https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Computer-Revolution-Steven-Levy/dp/1449388396\][Steven Levy - Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution]\]][Levy’s book]]. Today it is but a memory. Or is it?
Björn Victor’s wiki about the system. Contains both historical documents and more contemporary howtos aimed at emulated instances. Closely related to the UPDATE system running in Uppsala.
Another Swede, another ITS aficionado. But seriously, MC (Michael Cardell Wiederkrantz) is very passionate about retrocomputing and this entry is far from being the only one.
What is it with Swedish ancestry and ITS? Unfortunately, this page is currently unavailable.
One place to rule them all. Largely focused on ITS, but an occasional mention of TOPS-20 is not punished by death.
An in-browser Mac emulator. Version 7.0.1
Smalltalk-78 implementation in Lively, running on WebAssembly (?).
Jef Raskin’s original personal computer, now in your browser.