Comment by dimator
1 year ago
phrack has always had this kind of article. i'm sure if you grep for "A hacker is" or "the hacker ethos" you'll get a hit for every phrack issue going back to the 80s.
1 year ago
phrack has always had this kind of article. i'm sure if you grep for "A hacker is" or "the hacker ethos" you'll get a hit for every phrack issue going back to the 80s.
The people in those past articles weren't crypto startup CEOs, or startup CEOs at all most of the time.
Only thing I fail to understand is why a hacker needs to know where to buy estrogen… I can more easily take the idea of hacker knowing how to cook Molotov cocktails.
This is only an example of the type of thing a hacker would do- a hacker is willing to solve problems on their own on their own even if it requires methods that are illegal, dangerous, or complex.
A lot of people throw their hands up and give up when they need an expensive medication they can't get prescribed but in general you can often buy them overseas, grey market, make them yourself, etc.
Replying to awooooo who was flagged dead:
> They want it, but it's not a necessity.
What a person "needs" is complex and individual. Unless you are their doctor or are paying for it, your opinion of what medications a person needs is irrelevant- it is absolutely none of your business.
This nit-picking is in no way central to my point as it was a general statement about hacker culture ethos not any particular person or medication, so why did you post it? With only two comments so far - It appears you joined HN just to share anti-trans bigotry? That isn't okay. This is not a "hate forum" - accepting people that are different is a fundamental aspect of hacker and HN culture.
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Estradiol valerate (which is what the article actually names) seems to be used for a wide variety of female reproductive health issues, especially when (as the article suggests) it's compounded with other drugs. It's also used by transgender people as a hormone therapy. A hacker might live in a place where gender-affirming healthcare is illegal or unavailable, or where female reproductive healthcare in general is difficult or expensive to obtain.
Reproductive healthcare is much more broadly useful than Molotov cocktails.
It's hard to say what the motivation for the estrogen is but it's a case study in pharma-bro-ing type hobbies which is fine. Life extension nootropics and such. It could be a menopausal woman juicing up. It could also be a biological male who identifies as a female, which was big tech's engineering solution as far as how to get more women in tech (turns out, innovative solution, it's easier to retrofit male programmers as females than it is to convince your average woman to sit alone in a cubicle all day fighting against a pedantic and buggy compudah) - don't announce that at google, however, or you'll be punted out next day and end up needing to settle it for a few million.
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There have been hypotheses that a significant number of trans women (i.e. biological men who identify as women) are actually on the autism spectrum. Considering natural tendency of autistic people to prefer isolated activities and puzzles, there may be a correlation between hackers and trans women.
> There have been hypotheses
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27872002/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26753812/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38803560/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38831234/
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it is very hard not to observe said tendency, though really I was hoping that it was just that programmers always been rich enough to undergo transition. is this still true, though, perhaps now you can be jobless and still somehow apply for transition? depending on GPS coordinates, of course, but possible here and there.
this mentioning of potential trans-paraphernalia in an article calling to all hackers is a little misleading (imho), biased perhaps, or even influential. it is a statement i guess.
back in our teen hacker days we heard stories of ppl building molotovs, credit card scammers, eavesdropping equipment, lock-pick etc. but biohacking and female hormonal medicine in particular has definitely not been on the list (that much) if memory serves right... and my bet is that Phrack back-archive can confirm it.
perhaps it is a logical to see a change in popular understanding what hackers can find, or do, or are defined by. curiosity and daring courage to intrude is one thing, we can all agree.
perhaps also we may agree that hacking one's body is still hacking, as social engineering IS considered hacking.
Might also depend on how you define "hacker". Most people don't know the true meaning of the word, and should be using "cracker" instead.
Even if this is true, it need not be either-or. Saying that they are 'actually' autistic seems to imply that you do not believe that they are 'actually' trans.
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What’s with this ‘biological men’ stuff? How would you define that and what about chromosomal abnormalities like XXY or XYY people? If I have Jacob’s syndrome and a penis am I biologically male or something else entirely? Explain.
If you just want to have silly ideas about trans people, that’s fine because I’m done arguing with people over that. It’s a huge waste of time to get that interested in another person’s genitals but you do you. However if you’re going to use something as silly as ‘biological male’ you have to support that.
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A few years ago I freaked out the Reddit moderators on a sub called /r/bodymods , which was, ostensibly, about modifying your body, when I asked about the feasibility of doing ones own liposuction.
I'm not saying that's a good or bad idea from a medical perspective, but I certainly was off-put by their hypocrisy at shutting me down and their myopic definition of "body mods" which apparently to them was just poking holes in their face.
Unless you think/say/repeat the same things as everyone else on a subreddit you get downvoted and shadowbanned. It has the most aggressive and militant groupthink culture I've seen anywhere, which makes it pretty useless for trying to learn new things or share new ideas.
If you have any type of niche hobby for example, and someone finds a new and better way of doing something, they will pretty much universally be attacked and censored.
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That part is definitely not aimed at every reader, but it is appropriately used to highlight how some might circumvent the lengthy legal processes involved in getting estrogen. Moreover, it points to the possible need for them to compound it themselves which in turn makes them a hacker.
They may be hacking their own body to a binary that's different from their source code
I see you have only met a narrow subset of hackers.
why not both?
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Well, the author can. You know this stuff actually works, right? It's not pie in the sky thinking.
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Trans folks may in general possess qualities that make them better hackers, but they certainly aren't the only ones, so I wouldn't call hacker culture inherently trans.
That would imply that non-trans people are somehow outsiders, which is contrary to the hacker philosophy, which respects merit and skill, regardless of the person's identity.
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I'd say queer/trans subcultures are hacker/DIY friendly, but not necessarily the other way around.
I'd say hacker culture tends to be accepting of individualism and diversity, but the vast majority of people in hacker culture have no affiliation with, or knowledge of queer/trans subcultures.
> Hacker culture is inherently queer/trans
Would like to see that explored more. I think I get where you're going, but which statement is more true: "hacker culture is inherently queer" or "hacker culture is inherently anti-authoritarian"?
Because I'm thinking it's maybe more like "Both queer culture and hacker culture are inherently anti-authoritarian, so they have many points of concordance".
But then I start thinking around the problem, and I think about the amount of privilege inherent in that white-boy-from-the-suburbs 80s/90s hacker thing ("fifty thou a year'll buy a lot of beer") and I start to wonder if the gulf is maybe a bit deeper than it first appears.
Where does the cyberpunk/libertarian stuff fit in with queer culture, which IME is a lot more communal?
I don't know. I think it's a really interesting line of inquiry.
(Edit: you've been flagged. What the actual fuck?)
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> so many transfems
Sounds interesting. How many? What proportion against the general population? Do you know?