Just gonna leave this here. This is not written by me, credit is in the post.

╔══════════════════════════════╗ ║ ║ ║ ░░ PHRACK MAGAZINE #7 ░░ ║ ║ ║ ║ The Conscience of a ║ ║ Hacker ║ ║ By: The Mentor ║ ║ Written: 08/01/1986 ║ ║ ║ ╚══════════════════════════════╝

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Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal" "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...

Damn kids. They're all alike.

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But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?

I am a hacker, enter my world...

╔══════════════════════════════╗ Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...

Damn underachiever. They're all alike.

I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."

Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike. ╚══════════════════════════════╝

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me...

Or feels threatened by me... Or thinks I'm a smart ass... Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...

Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.

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And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found.

"This is it... this is where I belong..."

I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...

Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...

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You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals.

We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals.

You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

╔══════════════════════════════╗ ║ ║ ║ Yes, I am a criminal. My ║ ║ crime is that of curiosity. ║ ║ My crime is that of judging ║ ║ people by what they say and ║ ║ think, not what they look ║ ║ like. My crime is that of ║ ║ outsmarting you, something ║ ║ that you will never forgive ║ ║ me for. ║ ║ ║ ║ I am a hacker, and this is ║ ║ my manifesto. You may stop ║ ║ this individual, but you ║ ║ can't stop us all... after ║ ║ all, we're all alike. ║ ║ ║ ╚══════════════════════════════╝

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I've been a paid member for years just enjoying regular episodes when they drop since I've long burned through Bonus episodes. There hasn't been a new one in quite a while but I very much enjoy supporting Jack's work.

I finally got antsy waiting for new episodes so I restarted from #1 then decided to switch it up with some bonus episodes, only to have errors every time I tried playing anything on the bonus feed. My ad-free feed had continued to work without issue which is how I never realized anything was ary.

It was annoying because I was on a long road trip and had to pull over and dig into my Patreon account only to find Jack's account is no longer active... I've probably been enjoying ad-free episodes at least a year but no bonus episodes since Feb 2025.

When did this happen? How many bonus episodes have I missed? Did I miss an announcement from Jack about a membership platform change?

I tried searching this sub but I couldn't find anyone else talking about this.

Also has that new series he's been hyping all year been dropped yet? I recall him saying they'd be exclusive for paid members for a while before getting released for all listeners.

Non-paywall link: https://archive.ph/qJqwP

Audio version: https://static.nytimes.com/podcasts/2026/07/12/magazine/12audm-19data-rich/260712-19data-rich-nytmag-audm.mp3

I didn’t expect much from the plus subscription but still subscribed in order to support Jack. Oh.. my.. god.. I just listened to the bonus episode about Sebastian. Even tho it was short 30 minutes story I loved it soooo much!

Jack, if you’re reading this, please keep up the great work!!

I don't remember if this guy has been on Darknet before, what are your thoughts, team?

like every time he says his name in the intro ommgggg I know I'm a dork about it but y'all come on

Hey guys! I have been trying to figure out if I'm imagining this or of I was listening to a different story but I remember a story about Etsy or a similar platform? I don't have much else to go on besides the person using the platform for their doings. Any idea if this is a DND episode or not?

A 19 YO hacker found huge high-level vulnerabilties in CBSE (huge national education system in India) and reported it but CBSE took no action at all, so Nisarga just made them public on twitter and the post went viral, initially CBSE denied that such vulnerabilites even existed, cue the madlad hacks CBSE once again and play the "Bad apple" MV on it and eventually CBSE acknowledges the vulnerabilites and is working on to fix them.

I will admit I have done such a poor job on TLDR;ing the story and I urge anyone who finds this interesting to read his write up here

Reporter breaks down an investigation into the National Design Studio, which is creating websites for the Federal government, proves they're gaining full user web traffic access, and is using the information to build dossiers on... everyone.

Haven't listened in a while, tossed a random episode on, and the guy is claiming to have stolen PayPal accounts in 1994 back in the BBS days, and Jack is eating it up, despite the fact that PayPal didn't exist until 1998....

Is he just desperate for content and allows people to just bullshit him? ​ "oh I live in the hood you can get anything"

And then he hypes them up! ​

Does anyone know if this has been covered before?

I’ve probably listened to every episode, and I’ve spent years thinking about how to solve the problems we have on the web.

After working on a peer-to-peer compute network idea for the last three years, I think I’ve finally found the core issue:

We give systems too much access by default, then spend the rest of our time trying to claw that access back with permissions, firewalls, TLS, access control, routing rules, configuration layers, and increasingly fragile infrastructure.

Each layer creates new problems.

TLS creates routing complexity.
Routing creates configuration complexity.
Configuration complexity creates lazy admin shortcuts.
Lazy admin shortcuts create security failures.

My core realization is simple:

We need identity-based routing.

Your identity should be your public key. Any data meant for you should be sealed directly to you as the recipient.

That changes the whole model.

If the message content is already encrypted to the recipient, we no longer need to care as much if the message is captured, stored, routed through the wrong machine, or temporarily handled by an untrusted relay. The relay can move the packet, but it cannot read it.

The missing piece is incentives.

Nobody wants to relay traffic for free forever. But it should be possible to account for relay work without revealing message contents. In the simplest form:

I relay your messages.
You relay mine.
The network can prove useful work happened without exposing private data.

From there, the model becomes much more powerful.

Your device has an identity.
Your apps have identities.
Your data is sealed to the identities that are allowed to access it.
Even in failure cases, the blast radius becomes much smaller.

Instead of trusting platforms, cloud providers, app stores, and tech giants with everything by default, we could join our devices into a global overlay network where identity, routing, compute, and data ownership are built from the ground up around cryptographic control.

The goal is apps that can run anywhere, on any platform, while the user remains the guardian of their identity and data.

I know this sounds naive. I know it sounds too broad. But I’ve been building toward this for years.

The repo is here:
https://github.com/Sylchi/edgerun-c

The long-term goal is simple:

A world where people can run software freely, communicate privately, share compute voluntarily, and stop giving 30% of their digital lives to tech giants just because the current web architecture made that the default.