

Joybubbles, an indie documentary about a phone phreak - loupereira
http://joybubblesthemovie.com/synopsis.html

======
dang
Url changed from
[http://joybubblesthemovie.com](http://joybubblesthemovie.com) since this page
explains more.

------
greenyoda
Joe Engressia's story was the subject of one of the segments on today's
broadcast of the wonderful public radio show RadioLab:

[http://www.radiolab.org/story/187724-long-
distance](http://www.radiolab.org/story/187724-long-distance)

(The podcast of this show hasn't been posted yet.)

~~~
tombrossman
2600's Off The Hook interviewed him in 1991 and have the podcast online below,
for those wanting to listen to something right now. Looking forward to the
RadioLab episode as well!

[http://www.2600.com/offthehook/1991/1191.html](http://www.2600.com/offthehook/1991/1191.html)

------
projectileboy
The Minneapolis Star Tribune did a story on him back in '91:
[http://explodingthephone.com/docs/dbx0988.pdf](http://explodingthephone.com/docs/dbx0988.pdf)

------
api
I got interested in "hacking" (sense two) when I was about fourteen, and I
feel somehow very privileged to have actually used a 2600hz tone... once.

Back in 1992-ish, there were still a few phone systems on Earth that used
tones. They were in weird rural places, third world locales, etc. People would
set up hacked relays and PBX systems, and there were instructions passed
around every now and then about how you could call one of these, then call
another number, and get routed through one of these ancient telephone
networks.

I did it, and using a program called Blue Beep managed to hear the "kerchunk"
and silence that followed a successful 2600hz injection into an open phone
line:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlueBEEP](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlueBEEP)

From there I tried to do a few things, but it didn't seem to work very well...
just ended up getting a weird fast busy signal and getting disconnected.

I remember hanging on this article's every word:

[http://www.lospadres.info/thorg/lbb.html](http://www.lospadres.info/thorg/lbb.html)

I also did the call myself around the world trick in 1993-1994, but using
hacked PBXes. Not legal, but fun... but I was fifteen or so, so the fact that
it was illegal made it cooler.

I've got a project out there now that runs on a geo-distributed architecture,
which means I've got several cloud nodes scattered on four different
continents. A while back I ssh'd to myself around the world... San Francisco
-> Singapore -> Amsterdam -> New York -> back to my laptop. Did it after
seeing a story about this stuff, for old time's sake. :)

I really miss the old hacker culture, which overlapped both senses of the
term.

I feel like today's hacker culture is really two major kinds of people. You've
got people trying to hustle startups, which is similar in some ways but isn't
the same. Outside of that you've got this snarky troll-infested "hacker"
culture full of mean-spirited people who... well... let me put it this way...
are not as smart as they think they are. Their idea of a hack is to "raid"
some social media site or deface a web site or whatever... it has nothing to
do with exploration or invention. The derogatory term "neckbeard" is often
used to invoke the popular stereotype. A person like Joybubbles would just get
insulted and laughed at in this sphere, but when I was fourteen I was
fascinated by characters like him. I looked up to their curiosity, and saw the
way they used the early net to escape the confines of blindness and run around
the world on wires as incredibly romantic and... well... fucking cool.

