The Conscience of a Hacker (1986)

As a anarchistic punk teenager, The Hackers Manifesto deeply resonated with me.. I actually had it written on my bedroom wall.

Loyd Blankenship, better known by his pseudonym The Mentor, is an American computer hacker and writer. He has been active since the 1970s, when he was a member of the hacker groups Extasyy Elite and Legion of Doom.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyd_Blankenship

What is this version? It has a ton of typos, "junk" instead of "heroin," and three instances of "Come on... Ain't Got All Day!!" where there are typically zero. Curious to know if this is authentic and Phrack [0] edited it in all the ways I just mentioned, or vice versa.

Anyway, I first read this some 20 years ago, and I get the same goosebumps now as I did then.

[0] http://www.phrack.org/archives/issues/7/3.txt

The Jargon File has a facetious etymology for "hacker" as being originally a term for "someone who makes furniture with an axe".

Loyd Blankenship had, for a time, a business selling custom made furniture. So he's a hacker across all definitions of the word.

He's been known to post on hackernews, replete with bits of 90s leetspeek which gives me a frisson of joy and nostalgia: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=loydb

Now that's cool.

In drawing comparison to the "Angry Young Men" [1] of British playwrights, did this piece of writing establish a new wave of "Angry Young Hackers"?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angry_young_men

I remember it from when he wrote it. Talk about some memories. Egad. Had that hanging on my wall for a long time.

Ahh..yeah, good stuff.

Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.

I remember when programming was an act of curiosity and vision instead of a job where we feed bloated corporate behemoths another mouthful of our lives.

I was poor back then. The sure sign that I've sold my soul is that I'm not sure I know whether this is better.

What is with the weird spelling mistakes and typo’s? Are they intentional? Is there a hidden message in this? O.o

Written Loyd Blankenship of Legion of Doom.

I am more a kernel hacker.