hackers.town is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
A bunch of technomancers in the fediverse. This arcology is for all who wash up upon it's digital shore.

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The Gibson 🅅<p>Speaking as a director of the Veilid Foundation, I see no difference in the data construct you build when using the internet, and your physical or creative being. Those works are a part of you as much as your right hand is. I simply believe that it is morally reprehensible that we can give that up by signing a EULA.</p><p>We are entering a very dangerous era of the internet. The data silos are in fact datavores, and they have to continue to devour data wherever they can find it.</p><p>They have come to the fediverse, and now they are here to eat YOU. Your data construct/profile/ whatever you want to think of it as.</p><p>It is now more imperative than ever that projects like Veilid and Spritely, projects that restore the future we were promised through privacy tooling, become utilized and fully leveraged. Tools like these are armored with encryption and are resilient to the teeth of the datavore.</p><p>Your data is not theirs to own.</p>
The Gibson 🅅<p>These friendships you have made.</p><p>These bonds.</p><p>They are how we’ll do this.</p><p>They are how we will win.</p><p>We used to own the void.</p><p>Yet we persist.</p><p>We gather.</p><p>You will have no power here.</p><p>Because you’ll end up Either by our sides, or swept aside.</p><p>Join the future.</p><p>Reclaim the void.</p><p>Be mighty, together.</p>
The Gibson 🅅<p>Once there was a promising young technomancer who abandoned all of his principles and collected everyone&#39;s data. He told them it was safe with him, and in time they believed him.</p><p>Over time the technomancer realized he had amassed so much information that he became mightier than even the leaders of the world, but his greed and desire for wealth kept him from noticing.</p><p>He began to sell his influence to these leaders and got them hooked on his data.</p><p>They used it solve crimes, and they used it protect the endangered, and they used it to detect who would likely do crime, and they used it to keep the people divided, and they used it to topple one another&#39;s nations.</p><p>All the while making the no longer young technomancer even more powerful and wealthy.</p><p>The prophecy says that the Technomancer will try to destroy those who oppose him. But the agents of the wires will bring him to his knees by rebuilding what was lost.</p>
The Gibson 🅅<p>They will from the void build new works powered by the willful. </p><p>They will control their data, not entrusting their cache with the wizards in their towers.</p><p>They will work together to restore the future to it&#39;s intended state.</p><p>They will win with numbers, resolve, their will, and mutual aid.</p><p>They will win because the cruelty of greed is not more powerful that the instinct to survive, nor the nature of freedom.</p><p>Shape the void.</p><p>Own the wires.</p><p>Restore the future.</p>
The Gibson 🅅<p>Understand my words with full knowledge and reverence for my connection to the void.</p><p>My data is not yours to own.</p><p>You came here and asked to sell us things, then tracked us with the things you sold us.</p><p>You came here and begged for trust, which many gave you, then betrayed it by selling our secrets.</p><p>Then you took away our nation.</p><p>My data is not yours to own.</p>
Chris Dolunt<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://hackers.town/@thegibson" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>thegibson</span></a></span> first time, using a friend’s modem to visit a BBS, where we arranged to meet with a local cracking group and trade C64 games.</p><p>Last time, my first WiFi. No cables. Like magic.</p>
The Gibson 🅅<p>East coast time about to kick my ass</p>
:flan_reaper:<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://hackers.town/@thegibson" class="u-url mention">@<span>thegibson</span></a></span> </p><p>I firmly recall being unable to sleep when the public library got the internet. I started hopping off the bus early to go and close them out. The idea that what seemed to me like the totality of human knowledge was just there. Finally any whimsical topic I could dive into and find some academics home page and spend hours just pouring over it.</p><p>The first computers that I used was the data general at the Hiawatha National Forest. Dad would just set me up in the green glow and let me type away on the thing. Look up the history of the data general. There’s some good stories including one going overboard into a lake in Montana and one destroyed by an angry bison. </p><p>Last time: watching distrans download a copy of Star Wars that a friend sent me.</p><p>Still a lot of wonder out there and this community so often is the source bringing it to me.</p>
Random Geek<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://hackers.town/@thegibson" class="u-url mention">@<span>thegibson</span></a></span> I mean I still feel epic levels of wonder every day I work with tech.</p><p>I wonder how it doesn't all fall over (more often).</p>
Random Geek<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://hackers.town/@thegibson" class="u-url mention">@<span>thegibson</span></a></span> But legit I'm flabbergasted every day with the magic that technology can do, still feel like 7yo looking at the dispatcher's dashboard at the sheriff's department, thinking of all the systems it was coordinating. People's lives depending on those blinky lights.</p><p>We casually chat across a globe, immerse ourselves in digital worlds for work and entertainment, people making music from their homes, better identify patterns of life and disease, SO MUCH MAGIC EVERY DAY.</p><p>Magic being wasted on oligarchs entranced by surveillance and autocomplete.</p>
DefaultKevin<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://hackers.town/@thegibson" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>thegibson</span></a></span> I have used a real green CRT on an Apple //c, but didn't get online until much later. Still, my formative Linux years were on the console, using Lynx to browse the web and read Usenet, still on a CRT (color, but in practice always b&amp;w), reading email with mutt and dialing up the local ISP. tty1-4 for general purposes, tty5 for playing music, tty6 for SETI@home, and my favorite game was Angband 2.9.something.</p><p>I miss being able to view most websites with a textmode browser and no JavaScript.</p>
RyeNCode 🇨🇦<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://hackers.town/@thegibson" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>thegibson</span></a></span> <br>Apple] [e: discovered BASIC was built in... Discovered peek and poke.<br>Mac sys7: HyperCard. Modem and local Apple User Group BBS.<br>Performa 6400, Cable Internet: discovered video chat, discovered self hosting, installed micro-kernel Linux. <br>Many moons of windows, and professional dev work.<br>Rediscovering Linux.<br>Going Linux 100% usage agree dropping windows. <br>Still feeling the magic every day.</p>
Edelweißpirate Beekeeper<p><span class="h-card"><a href="https://hackers.town/@thegibson" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>thegibson</span></a></span> I was on local BBSs at the time. I discovered that the PC I was on at work could be rebooted into an Internet terminal. A music forum got into an argument over a song. I sent an e-mail to idol@well.sf.us and got a clarification from Billy Idol.</p>
Grimpen Mar<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://xoxo.zone/@neilk" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>neilk</span></a></span> <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://hackers.town/@thegibson" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>thegibson</span></a></span> I remember downloading Hubble images off the JPL BBS. I wonder if they are still around. Can't remember what the first picture I downloaded off the internet was. My first Internet experience was Gopher. Can't remember what the documents were, was more in awe of navigating. Although in hindsight it wasn't that different from BBSes.</p>
The Gibson 🅅<p>One day left in our fundraiser! Getcha some!</p><p><a href="https://www.customink.com/fundraising/hackersua" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">customink.com/fundraising/hack</span><span class="invisible">ersua</span></a></p>
Neil Kandalgaonkar<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://hackers.town/@thegibson" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>TheGibson</span></a></span> I was on Apple //e’s long before this but my first day on the World Wide Web was at a VT100 terminal in a university lab in Montreal late in the evening</p><p>I found a listing of webcams, and downloaded an image from Japan</p><p>I had to wait until I got home to my Mac LC III to see what I’d downloaded: someone had positioned cute stuffed animals in front of the camera. Amid JPEG artifacts, greeting the soft pink dawn</p>
europlus :autisminf:<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://hackers.town/@thegibson" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>thegibson</span></a></span> <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://hackers.town/@LambdaCalculus" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>LambdaCalculus</span></a></span> last time I fired up my Apple ][ and watched it track the ISS live or got a weather forecast via the <a href="https://social.europlus.zone/tags/FujiNet" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>FujiNet</span></a>! (Earlier photo shown)</p>
The Gibson 🅅<p>Tony hawk is hawking anti-cholesterol meds on CNN.</p><p>If this means anything to you, I beg you to schedule your colonoscopy.</p>
JeffTP<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://hackers.town/@thegibson" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>thegibson</span></a></span> Moines is a contraction for Moist loins.</p>
The Gibson 🅅<p>*Looks at in flight map, thinks of Deez Moines joke, thinks better of it.*</p>
The Gibson 🅅<p>They gave me free wi-fi on this flight, and now I am going to make that your problem.</p><p>5 glorious hours of nothing to distract me but Fedi…</p><p>Or at least until I get bored.</p><p>AMAA?</p>
Logomancer<span class="h-card"><a class="u-url mention" href="https://hackers.town/@thegibson" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>thegibson</span></a></span> I remember in my youth finding some TI "portable computer" Mom had rescued from work and tried typing in BASIC programs from a magazine into it. Though half of them failed, it did start me on programming.
The Gibson 🅅<p>Tooting on a plane… good or bad?</p><p>Go!</p>
eobet<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://hackers.town/@thegibson" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>TheGibson</span></a></span> last time? When I found the Fediverse.</p>
Picks the Evangelist<p><a href="https://hackers.town/@thegibson" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@thegibson@hackers.town</a> first few times I logged into fedi, way back in 2017</p>