The Hacker Quarterly Magazine
Author: Jake Bauer | Published: 2020-08-14
A while back I asked others if they had any recommendations for physical magazines that I could subscribe to with a focus on computing and technology (though not your standard Wired magazine or anything like that). I was looking for a magazine reminiscent of the kinds of magazines which were available in the early days of computing; when these magazines were the only way for many to discover new programs and computer hacking ideas.
I was pointed to 2600.com where I could buy a magazine called The Hacker Quarterly. It’s a magazine sent out 4 times a year and the subscription cost for one year is $26.00 USD. That’s honestly not that much given the fact that it’s a physical magazine and there’s a lot of work that goes into putting magazines like that together. So, I signed up for a one year subscription as a trial and I got my first edition (this year’s Spring edition) in the mail yesterday.
The magazine was filled front to back with interesting articles and tidbits of hacker culture. The main articles in this edition seemed to focus heavily around social media and digital privacy which was expected given the front cover. There was also a section containing responses from the 2600 folk to messages fans sent in, a marketplace section, a meetups section, and more.
One of the articles that stood out to me was an article entitled “Has Your Password Been Pwned?” which discussed submitting your passwords to Troy Hunt’s haveibeenpwned.com service to check if they’ve been included in any breaches. In this article was a small shell script which allows you to pass in a password, submit it to the service securely, and check if your password had been pwned. How many physical publications do you see nowadays with code written in them?
This magazine is one of the few remaining physical hacker/computer magazines from the days of old. There’s something… humanizing about reading a physical magazine over consuming everything through digital publications. It’s definitely worth checking out if you’re into hacker culture (if you’re reading this blog post now, you’d probably be interested in it).
This is my ninety-fourth post for the #100DaysToOffload challenge. You can learn more about this challenge over at https://100daystooffload.com.