Reviews and Comments

Picked this one off the DefCon reading list on a whim. At first it feels like you're reading a book by the kind of person who would eventually tell you that COVID-19 isn't real.

But as the book goes on the authors compassion and expertise begin to shine through and it becomes something special. I'm already nearly done with it.

Here's one straight from the Underground Culture section of the DEF CON reading list. This was (supposedly) the first book to document the hacker ethic with its original release in 1984.

Looking forward to this one. I hope it lives up to the hype.

The story of John Carmack and John Romero, archetypes of the hacker and the gamer. The book follows a similar arc to many rock biographies.

There is a steady rise to rock star status, a life of fame, the price of hubris, and its aftermath. Carmack comes across as a brilliant programmer, but obsessed with work and lacking in empathy. Romero is written as a man with an intimate understanding of what makes games fun, but a tendency to try and do everything at once all the time. The story is like a tragedy where you watch these flaws become their undoing.

Worth a read if you've never heard the story. It was all news to me. The whole thing feels a little too neat and I have to wonder what was left out, but that's an Internet search for another time.

This book feels really dense at first, but once you get into the flow it becomes pretty easy to understand. In chapter 1 (Programming), the author will explain a programming concept, show some C code illustrating the concept, then disassemble the code, and then show process in memory with gdb. He repeats that process for several concepts and you can follow along in a VM with a provided .ISO.

The initial explanation of some concepts (like CPU registers) feels incomplete, but as he layers things on he explains more about those concepts. I can see a full picture coming together as the chapter winds on.

I wish I had an explanation of pointers this succinct when I was in school.

The intro chapter suggests a book that will explain the mechanics of hacking at a low level. I already work as a penetration tester, but I'm hoping to learn the fundamentals of computing at a deeper level so I can discover more exploits on my own.

Absolute banger.

Almost finished with Where Wizards Stay Up Late and it's been pretty inspiring. I think I'd like to build something.

"The idea on which Lick's worldview pivoted was that technological progress would save humanity. The political process was a favorite example of his. In a McLuhanesque view of the power of electronic media, Lick saw a future in which, thanks in large part to the reach of computers, most citizens would be "informed about, and interested in, and involved in, the process of government." He imagined what he called "home computer consoles" and television sets linked together in a massive network. "The political process," he wrote, "would essentially be a giant teleconference, and a cam- paign would be a months-long series of communications among candidates, propagandists, commentators, political action groups, and voters. The key is the self-motivating exhilaration that accom- panies truly effective interaction with information through a good console and a good network to a good computer.""

Something I'm passively reading on my phone when I get some time.

Man, even as a child Carmack seems like a bit of an asshole.

Where'd this whole Internet thing come from anyway?

Had this one on my shelf for seven years or so. Guess I should finally get to it.

The history and activities of the legendary cDc. The first third feels pretty dry, but once you hit the hacktivism activities things begin to pickup.

I'm already considering a re-read to make sure I absorb it better. Well worth the time so far.