It's been years since I last read something from phrack, but I remember it being a huge inspiration to me back around their #50th issue. I was talking to a couple of guys during dinner a few days ago (one of them antirez, of Redis fame) and we noted about how serendipitous it was that all 3 of us had a background on compsec and reconnected many years later in a conference.

It's interesting to see that these things aren't dead and that people who care deeply about their craft (regardless of what craft that might be) actually succeed. I kinda wish today was a little more like the late 90s.

Now that we're in 2010, though, I kinda wish this stuff was instapaper-able (I'm curious about what these guys are publishing these days). I know we're talking about Phrack, but there's no real reason why this looks and feels like 1986. (as an aside: .tar.gz link is dead. Was going to make a pdf version of this to put on the ipad.)

Wow, ok. I thought "How to make it in prison" was going to be some ironic title on breaking out of a chroot prison or something. Nope, its actually about being in real-life prison. Some topics include whether to join a gang and how to gain respect once you get in.

Phrack is still writing the same things that you could find there 15 years ago, when it was great. Now it is not anymore I fear.

It's interesting to compare the treatment of Albert "soupnazi" Gonzales in phrack, http://phrack.com/issues.html?issue=67&id=3#article, vs. the treatment in the NYT article, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/magazine/14Hacker-t.html?p... which was also linked here recently.

Wow, this brings back memories.

I've been reading Phrack so long web browsers didn't exist. This makes me feel very old.

I especially appreciate the email from Rachel, mostly because I can masturbate about how much I agree with everything in it.

Too bad I was mountains in edu-debt before I realized I could be happy with a netbook, a roof, and 10 Mbps downstream.

"Hacking the mind for fun and profit" is highly recommended... I haven't laughed that hard in months. Not with the author, unfortunately, but there you go.