
Ask HN: Where do the real hackers hangout? - factorialboy
Is it still Freenode &#x2F; IRC?<p>Why do I ask?<p>I remember 15 years ago, say 2004, technical sites weren&#x27;t commercial. Except Experts Exchange ofcourse.<p>Nowadays I can&#x27;t trust opinions of people because I fear they are selling me something. Framework authors are only building frameworks on the side, their real business is building a hosted service for whatever they are building.<p>Nothing wrong with that.<p>I just miss a simpler time. And want a slice of that again.
======
roadbeats
I had similar feelings a year ago and wanted to setup a “diet” for my mind;
I’d only allow quality information, opinions to enter my mind, not just random
stuff.

Firstly, the best way to access/find valuable knowledge is still books. Then,
I have Freenode open in background for technical conversations, and also
follow some good quality podcasts in non-technical subjects; from history to
art.

If I got a question, I either ask in Freenode or ask trustworthy people by
e-mail.

No social media. No news websites (except HN).

I’m a lot happier with this set of communication and information channels.

~~~
factorialboy
That's a great way to put it - a diet for the mind.

On that note, do you mind sharing the list of podcasts you subscribe to?

------
silverfox17
Freenode is a good place.. the /list command will show you channels once you
connect. Popular ones are #hardware, #linux, #windows, #python, #debian,
#bash, ##networking, etc. There is a channel for most major technologies.

~~~
EnderMB
My biggest gripe with Freenode is that a lot of popular channels are silent.
Hundreds of users, but all lurking with very little conversation going on.

For me, the best channel was always #csharp. Every time I logged in, there was
always a group of people talking. Any time I had a question, I could ask it
and a handful of people would either give you the answer or would talk you
through the problem and help you come up with an answer. That kind of guidance
is often lacking from modern programming forums/q&a sites.

~~~
Jugurtha
> _I could ask it and a handful of people would either give you the answer or
> would talk you through the problem and help you come up with an answer._

The best times for me are when members help me come up with a _question_. I'd
have a problem I could vaguely formulate in long paragraphs, and then someone
from the #python channel would write down my problem in one concise question
of technical writing that is so spot on that I immediately think of the
correct solution.

The #python (and mailing list) crowd has done this to me so many times.

------
todd3834
I think I’m one of those people you are talking about. I don’t hang out in a
secret place. I hang out here, subreddits for languages I’m interested in,
many Slack groups for things I’m interested in, iMessage/SMS with current and
previous co workers whom are enjoyable to talk to. I also hang out with my
family and read a ton of programming books. If you find a secret place with
more of these people I would love to know.

------
gorbachev
Please define "real hackers".

~~~
monster99
People who don't sellout to the corporate agenda... watching HN'ers downvote
me for pointing out the videogame industry has been stealing PC games for the
last 20 years was alarming. We went from owning diablo, warcraft and starcraft
games to not owning them... that is a major change and to see a place that
calls itself the place of "hackers" and nerds, who theoretically should all be
about fighting to preserve culture against the corporate onslaught against our
basic rights to own our own software and not have it tied to "the cloud" is
disturbing in it's own right.

Seems everyone wants to be a slave to the mainframe and have no privacy and no
general computing.

Not getting that the corporations of the world are hell bent on turning the PC
into a dumb client and everyones bending over is disturbing.

The stuff Microsoft has in the pipe with UWP and encrypted computing is
alarming on its own, "honest files" of the past, not trapped in some vm or
some remotely controlled new microsoft file system and license servers for
this new Software as a service (aka stealing your software an selling to back
to you at inflated prices) is madness itself.

There is no reason for any piece of software whether that be an OS, Office
application or Game to be divided between our computers and the companies.

~~~
paulriddle
I see what you're saying. But I'm curious what the future you described will
actually look like. I am NOT curious in the least about the good old days. I
know it, it's boring to me. Having privacy and total control over your
computing is fine, whatever, I've seen it a thousand times already. It's good.
But in today's world what is the benefit of that? The market doesn't respond
to that, does not reward it. Human psychology likes the alternative of thin
client and total survelience much better because it's more convenient and
because it already has more momentum.

So I'm curious what will happen when you can't do almost anything on your
computer without it being inside proprietary cloud. When everything I do is
recorded, aggregated, and analyzed by mismanaged big data experts. When real
life decisions are made that affect me based on this data by some faceless
entity without consulting me. Kind of like what China does with their social
credit score but much more elaborate. When there are people who are within
this system and those who are outside because they are rich and powerful.

It really fascinates me. It can't get so bad as to be intolerable in my
lifetime. And what if I become rich and get real power? The ability to make
important decisions that change the global landscape. Will I be good or evil?
Nowadays rather than complain about the top 0.0001% it's better to put the
energy into becoming the top 0.0001%.

And by the way, you never owned Warcraft or Diablo. I suspect that to satisfy
you all one needs to do is to realse a few really good and engaging games. You
shall have your games and you will play them in the evenings. But during the
day you WILL write survelience code for collecting plausable reasons to crush
somebody inconvenient to the illuminati.

------
Daviey
There is no such thing as a real hacker. Same as there is no true Scottsman -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman)

I take issue with "real" hacker categorisation as it implements a gatekeeping
barrier for people and the definition of what a hacker is differs between
communities.

------
Millennium
Mostly the same places they always did. Inertia is strong like that. Most of
them miss a simpler time, just like you do, but hey, so it goes.

------
neon_me
mostly (and still) on the un-encrypted IRC :D

~~~
non-entity
Ok, so hear me out: I'm a young dumb kid, and I just don't get irc. I'll join
a supposedly active irc channel for something I'm working on, do whatever the
channel wants as far as registering, etc. Once I'm in, nothing.

No one seems to be chatting about anything, the only messages I see are
logging people joining and leaving. One time I left an irc client open for
hours and i finally saw some other human asked a question. After that , more
nothing, I don't think anyone replied to them. These servers often show 100s
or 1000s online too!

Am I doing something wrong, or am I missing something I need to use irc?

~~~
demygale
This is my experience on irc today as well. It’s dead.

I used to keep a few channels open at work all day long in 2007. #j2me, #java,
#c. The conversation was active with no more than a few minutes of silence at
a time. People would say good morning at the start of the day, goodbye at the
end, they would talk about their weekend. It was like a virtual break room
where you could ask tech questions (except #c was hostile to questions, those
guys were weird) and make friendships.

It’s not just less active now. It’s dead every time I look.

~~~
leetbulb
This is just over the past couple days:
[https://i.imgur.com/WUFiL18.png](https://i.imgur.com/WUFiL18.png)

I wouldn't call it dead at all.

~~~
Orion21
where/how do you connect to these rooms? I would love to hang out in the
#linux room

~~~
sjs382
The channels from his screenshot are on Freenode.

~~~
Orion21
thank you!

------
seapunk
I spent a part of my youth on Open Projects network especially in phreaking
channels, I think real hackers are still there. Also I think that some of them
decided to be more public and start to be active on Twitter or Telegram
communities.

------
ScottFree
Most likely in private, invite-only chat servers and email lists of various
kinds. Anything that's publicly exposed to the internet has too much noise
these days. I remember when it was difficult to moderate a chat channel or a
web forum back in the 00's. It's much tougher today because of the volume of
people you're exposed to.

"Only once you can successfully wrestle a herd of monkeys will you truly be
ready to manage your forum."

[https://megatokyo.com/strip/209](https://megatokyo.com/strip/209)

~~~
catacombs
> Most likely in private, invite-only chat servers and email lists of various
> kinds. Anything that's publicly exposed to the internet has too much noise
> these days.

Honestly, this is the best answer. I would argue private IRC channels and
servers because the people who use IRC are less likely to use the data-
collecting behemoths that are Slack and Discord.

~~~
paulcole
Didn't the Capitol One hacker brag about it on Slack?

------
rolph
what/where lone wolf hackers do to hang out

A cheapo router as in goodwill or bargain basement, that has nas
functionality, can often find a home in starange places. be creative about
using other than factory casings, and find a place to piggyback some power,
you will have a dead drop. secure the router with something hackish for a
password, and even use LAN encryption. Keep doing this as often, and as
wideley as possible, and when you come back to maintain the drop, and review
the dropped material to scrubb out the knuckledragger porn and flaming, you
can reveal a number of precious gems. it doesnt need to connect to the
internet it only needs to be reliable and have storage. you may even get
enough access points to mesh them.

[https://www.instructables.com/id/Wireless-
DeadDrop/](https://www.instructables.com/id/Wireless-DeadDrop/)

this should give you some ideas as well:

[https://hackaday.com/2018/06/27/literary-camouflage-for-
your...](https://hackaday.com/2018/06/27/literary-camouflage-for-your-router/)

look for old telephone subscriber boxes or other casings that are common in
the wild to put your dead drop into.

Im from the era when BBS ing was moby huge, and we would war dial all night to
get a list of potential BBSs and other fun numbers that gave a modem
handshake.

------
simonsarris
Not hacker specific but IMO its somewhat unfortunate that most of the
good/intellectual internet has moved into private chats, secret slacks, etc.

This is OK except that it makes it much more difficult for newcomers to find
the good thing, so the pipeline is worse. Sometimes nowadays it is hard to
discover and be discovered.

Twitter still works OK.

------
pmoriarty
Check out Noisebridge in SF.[1] It and other hackerspaces around the world are
full of people tinkering with and making stuff. You only have to stroll around
the space to see the fruits of their labor.

[1] - [https://www.noisebridge.net/](https://www.noisebridge.net/)

------
client4
Other peoples boxes /joke

------
root_axis
If you have to ask, you're probably not leet enough to join us... jk, freenode
of course!

------
johnmarinelli
digital - freenode, in person - hackerspaces. try googling hackerspaces in in
your town/city. if there aren't any, start your own.

------
adreamingsoul
I don't imagine that information will be shared here in an open forum.

~~~
factorialboy
Clarification - I don't mean "hackers" as depicted in the movies.

I'm referring to nerds, geeks, engineers, tickerers etc. who do it for the
love of doing it. Not for building a commercial operation.

~~~
Indronil
in the walled gardens of the r&d department of big corporates

~~~
muzani
lurking in private Slack channels and Blind

------
dlphn___xyz
group meetups

------
segmondy
github issues

------
yummypaint
Try your local makerspace

------
espeed
True hackers can see the underlying structure of things others don't see. True
hackers have the ability to solve problems others don't see. Real hackers are
somewhere learning to see and helping others connect what's true so they can
see too.

~~~
dmitryminkovsky
So, Slack?

~~~
vorpalhex
Riot, Keybase, Freenode, the list goes on...

