Tmp.0ut Volume 5 | Hacker News Reader

Tmp.0ut Volume 5

tmpout.sh

219 pointsghuntley42 comments

Seeing stuff like this reminds me why I got into computers in the late 90s. Human ingenuity paired with love for the art and the craft.

Good to have a reminder that it’s software engineering that has changed, not me.

Things were less load-bearing back then.

``` How can people write big systems in general?

We do, but as you say, they're often debugged into existence rather than cleanly designed into existence. ```

A small window to how we used to spread deep computer topics in the 90s. No substacks or X posts. Very cool.

No boring themes either. There was more than the corporate bland aesthetic.

They all converged to looking the same though.

An unreadable fantasy font logo at the top, multiple concentric frames, dot lines, l33t speech etc.

And I absolutely remember people complaining about slop in such intros even in the 90s, they just didn’t use that term.

This one was good:

Interview: Doug McIlroy: https://tmpout.sh/5/2.html

That was an amazing read.

Good interview with McIlroy. Fix this: Goldstine, as in the citations, not Goldstein, as in the body text.

Also, the text mentions CDC 1620. I don't think this existed. Either it was IBM 1620 or CDC something else.

I'd be just as happy with clear readable type, but the content is the thing.

Wow, it's been a while since anyone published anything this interesting.

Agreed. Love stuff like this. Keep it comin’

- i like visual

- can we get a whole magazine that explains ideas like this? https://visualrambling.space/neural-network/

Love the aesthetic. There was another ezine like this years ago focused on cybersecurity, I’ve forgotten its name now but the ASCII art involved was top notch.

Does anyone have any idea? It was definitely when Twitter was still Twitter as I remember reaching out to them about their ASCII art.

Maybe you're thinking of Phrack [1]? I wonder if there'll be another edition of it, and if yes what it would look like, now that the AIpocalypse seems to have reached security research...

[1]: https://phrack.org

Not Phrack but I did find it, ThugCrowd [1]!

[1]: https://thugcrowd.com/archive.html

Edit to add, apparently one of the ThugCrowd people is part of tmp.0ut so that would explain why my mind immediately went there.

there will be a new Phrack this year still!

Thank you, that is very reassuring to know :D

(and interactions like these are part of the reason why I <3 HN)

Darnet Diaries'episode about the legendary phrack

https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/170/

The mixtape is great. Not sure what genre this would be considered but it's very interesting

https://soundcloud.com/blotter1/blotter_tmp0ut_2026

Direct link, no tracking: https://soundcloud.com/blotter1/blotter_tmp0ut_2026/

Thanks. I don't use SoundCloud so didn't recognize that as a tracking link. Will edit the post

I'm sure someone has a more precise idea on what it's called, but I would lean towards minimal DnB.

Feels a bit like a waste that the lovely diskmag interface doesn't seem to have a play button for this mixtape. Hope they add that in future issues.

The interview with Doug McIlroy is incredible. It's almost worth a link all on its own.

Very cool and BBS/hacking style. BUT almost useless on mobile :(

I prefer to use a PC but that kind of articles are perfect to read when commuting.

You could just use <br> instead of fixed length words per line.

Agreed. Though apparently you're being downvoted for a legitimate issue. I'm laying down using my phone and it's not particularly enjoyable to read.

It's 2026 - the site can look like an old-skool zine being displayed with monospace fonts on a computer monitor and easily still have alternate formats for mobile devices. Not having it is just pure laziness.

I wouldn't mind if Reader Mode could deal with the text, but it can't. Oh well.

wow, actual hackers

This reminds me that I have a stack of 2600 magazines in the garage somewhere. I need to revisit them...

Damn, that's a lot of magazines!

Sorry, couldn't resist. Never got those as it was a bit before my time, I started coding in 2004'ish in EU and wasn't aware of 2600 until much later. Not sure if they ever moved digital?

Ha! It took me a few more ms than it should have. Yes it seems they have digitised at least in part: https://www.2600.com/

Very nice aesthetics.

really missed an opportunity to make this available via SSH shell or renderable in lynx.

When I zoom in, the right half of the page becomes invisible.

I miss the ezines scene!

Is the zero instead of capital O in the title intentional?

https://tmpout.sh/5/1.html

> Welcome to tmp.0ut Volume 5!

They are kinda inconsistent about it, looking at the social media handles, ascii logos, etc.

Decades before leetcode, we already had leetspeak! This is that.

It would be great if you hacked your website to be better usable on a smaller mobile device! I need to zoom in to read, but then I also need to scroll sideways because of fixed layout.

You can do both, achieve a cool retro style and publish in a more modern format that supports multiple output devices.

…Or use a non-modern format and serve it as .txt, which supports all devices. The only downside is you’ll lose colors, but they are not strictly required.

Cloudflare's captcha uses half of the obfuscation techniques from the code virtualization article, but in javascript

So does alibaba for their platform anti abuse/fingerprinting shit

This is gorgeous; supremely impressive.

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