alt Hacker NewsI started out in the BBS and demoscene of the 90s. The glory days of computing in my opinion, because of the technical innovation (people were making magic with 7mhz processors) and how the community arranged itself. e.g, some ANSI artists in the artpack scene went on to become legit artists, but nobody was sitting around grinding ANSIs to make millions or raise capital. I think about that era in my own open source work today, I just work on what I enjoy and find interesting and whatever happens happens as long as I can pay the bills.
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You'd probably love this latest Razor1911 prod, if you haven't seen it yet: https://youtu.be/dybkLM-1eQo
I was a former (minor) member of groups like ACiD, iCE, CIA (though I never released with them).
The cross-pollination between the hackers / college coders / warez pirates / digital artists was real. A lot of big company CEOs got their start in those days.
It was mostly just about exploring and connection, and as the BBS scene faded to irc chats (efnet, freenode, etc), that whole mixed-scene kept growing for quite awhile.
Now everything is for sale.
I wasn't alive in the 90s, and barely was in the 00s. I look at others writings about those early days, and compare it to today, then get a weird feeling of wanting to experience the "good ol' days" before python scripts made in 10 minutes by an AI and sold to investors as "vendor lock-in" was the thing to strive for.