/cyber/ - Cyberpunk & Science Fiction

>>42297

Let's make it happen.

>>42112

am I the only one who thought Snow Crash fucking sucked?

The basic plot / idea about the sumerian language shit was really good but it was written so poorly IMO. Characters are super shallow and so goddamn over-the-top (the main character calls himself one of the last true hackers and the best swordfighter of the world, wtf is that?). If I read a novel about a badass person I don't want the novel to literally read "He was a badass dude" or even worse, have the dude talk about how badass he is, I want to find that out from plot and context.

Sprawl series was super cool and I'm halfway through the Altered Carbon trilogy and I really like it so far too.

>>42464

>am I the only one who thought Snow Crash fucking sucked?

You're not alone buckaroo.

>idea about the sumerian language shit was really good

bruh for me that's when the silliness got to be too much. The basic idea seemed nifty but then it just went too far.

And it was pretty lame how le canoeing indian could make le super sharp glass harpoon that can cut through anything.

>>42465

>And it was pretty lame how le canoeing indian could make le super sharp glass harpoon that can cut through anything.

Yeah that was retarded. I loved the idea of Sumerian as assembly language for wetware though.

>>42465

okay, "really good" isn't really what I meant to say, but I thought it was a novel idea.

>

And it was pretty lame how le canoeing indian could make le super sharp glass harpoon that can cut through anything.

I totally agree about Raven, exact same problem as with hiro though. I only read it recently and there is an actual passage where Hiro talks about how he hasn't been trying to be the most badass motherfucker since his twenties since Raven IS the most badass motherfucker to ever be alive. Why do you write shit like that? And why do you make a character that fucking OP? He just kills everything, always, in "super cool" style and everyone anywhere is afraid of him. wooow.

>>42467

Yeah, Raven sucked as a character. And the whole refugee raft arc sucked and was boring as hell for no real point. I don't want to read about Abdul and Jamal trying to immigrate through the Pacific on shitty rafts.

>>42464

>am I the only one who thought Snow Crash fucking sucked?

It was acceptably-written prose poetry. It felt like gritty jello but stopped critical thought like a stack of phone books.

If you want to read a story out loud, Snow Crash is very euphonious.

As sci-fi, it was too soft to be soft sci-fi; it was science fantasy.

However, being science fantasy is pretty common in cyberpunk.

Sadly _Snow Crash_ was the author's best work. _The Diamond Age_ was much worse.

>>42102

>same as /tech/ (i.e. Gentoo and Lisp/C)

Kek, even /tech/ doesn't think C is good, and Gentoo is supposed to be an absurdist joke.

>>42101

>> OS

OpenBSD and most Linux Distros are good. FreeBSD, Windows, and MacOS are garbage and only FreeBSD is /cyber/ out of the three.

I used to use Arch, then spent a few months on Gentoo before I realized I got meme'd. I'm using OpenSuse now. It's gr8. Would reccomend. Slackware was fun to use, but the only rewarding part is the nerdcred.

>> Programming Languages

LISP, Fortran, Prolog, and Ocaml are all very /cyber/. Haskell has a /cyber/ logo. Golang would fit within a /cyber/ universe pretty well, since it's made by a spying megacorp with some oldschool programmers.

Python isn't /cyber/ in the slightest, but it's a really good first language and you'd save us all a lot of trouble by learning it first.

>> Appearance

Wear black techwear if you're mildly attractive and thin. If you're ugly or weighty, just go for a greyman-esque look so people won't pay attention to you.

>> Novels

"Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep" and "Neuromancer" are both really good classic cyberpunk novels, but if you want something a -/cyber/punk- would read, go for "Nineteen Eighty-Four" or "Fahrenheit 451".

>>42297

>tfw no /cyb/ study group

>>42561

Reamde is breddygud.

Bump for interest.

>>43585

Dude that would be gr8

>>42424

I'll make the logo

>42424

AYY

>>42101

A piece of advice: anyone who actively identifies themselves as a cyberpunk, or as partaking in a cyberpunk lifestyle, isn't one.

>>42112

>Soylent

Literally turns you into a woman. Better off with whey protein.

I'll add some recommendations to your list -

Books:

The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester) (note: not cyberpunk per se but contains many elements that would define the genre 30 years ahead of the game, worth reading)

Movies:

Split Second (1992)

Burst City (1982)

Electric Dragon 80,000 Volts (2001)

Death Powder (1986)

Gunhed (1989)

Genocyber OVAs (1994)

Videodrome (1983)

Comics:

Fireball (Katsuhiro Otomo) (note: unfinished, sadly)

Battle Angel Alita/Gunnm (Yukito Kishiro)

Appleseed (Masamune Shirow)

Music:

John Carpenter film scores

Chu Ishikawa film scores

Lazerhawk

Power Glove

Droid Bishop

Early Læther Strip is also acceptable

Vidya:

Snatcher

Policenauts

Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2

Metal Gear Rising

Shadowrun: Dragonfall

Shadowrun: Hong Kong

Shadowrun (1993 SNES version)

>>45136

I would add Transmetropolitan to the comics list. Great series, treats the "City" as the rapid progression of unrestricted growth and misguided innovation.

>>42112

>wired too

>>42101

It's important to understand your own system as a philosophy.

For a daily driver os, I would say trisquel or debian. To get into the nuts and bolts I'd say slackware or gentoo. The arch wiki is good but the system is shit, it started as i686 compiled but it's too bleeding edge and maintained by tweens.

Python, it's easy and does almost everything.

I like olivia dunham' look from fringe. It's not like shadowrun, it's dark and understated. It's less punk and more lowlife.

Neuromancer. Oh god I loved that book, ending was a little sad.

>>45136

add Blame! to the comics list for cyberpunk aswell

mainly the aesthetic of the entire megastructure of the city and the attitude of the characters is cyber as fuck

any1 who hasnt checked it out needs to

>>42464

I could never get into the writing style of Snow Crash. Dropped it after about 15 pages.

>>45172

I checked out Blame! and I decided that it sucked and it was not worth my time, which I will never get back.

Basically, weeaboos keep recommending it in an effort to appear cool on the Internet.

>>45193

>It couldn't possibly be that I'm a shazbot with poor taste

>Everyone's just trying to impress people on anonymous imageboards

>>42102

>watch dogs

How come nobody has linked this here yet?

http://project.cyberpunk.ru/idb/cyberpunk_manifesto.html

>>43088

>most Linux Distros are good.

No. And if you want to be /cyber/ you'd ditch systemd because muh megacorps.

>Programming Languages

You forgot Forth, it is schwayy, next to Forth is Factor. Also Assembly.

Gecko Linux based off OpenSUSE is quite good. Arquetype is based off of Red Hat but it suddenly disappeared.

Solus is rather nice. Kali is awesome would be an interesting project on laptop. It really doesn't require too much knowledge to start using it. Try out the wifi cracker as it is a good start to fucking shit up.

If you want ultra security and privacy try Tails. Just realize you might get on some kind of list.

A straightforward move is to get rid of your phone or seriously limit it. You could stop using a service provider and just make calls through wifi.

If you haven't seen it already look for the pdf thread on here and download what you find useful.

>>42112

Ill add a couple more magazines.

Machete Girl

https://archive.org/search.php?query=machete%20girl&and[]=subject%3A%22magazine%22

Carpe Nocturne

http://carpenocturne.net/

>>45308

>You could stop using a service provider and just make calls through wifi.

I do that because I'm fucked if I want to pay for a phone (my country requires contracts etc, it's bullshit, I VOIP to everything).

>>45401

How do you manage to do that, if you don't mind sharing information. I'm afraid I'll have to to do that because it's stating to be a hassle to try talking to people over regular phone.

I like cyberpunk

But I pretty much suck at computer stuff.

Can I still be cyberpunk?

>>45912

if you're here you probably know more than the average person about 'computer stuff'. You don't have to be a programmer/ sysadmin at all. There is punk in cyberpunk which is about not caring what people think of you right? So if you feel the need to ask 'am I cyberpunk' 'can I still be cyberpunk if x' then most likely you need to think about why you care what other people think.

Some may label you as a poser if it feels like you're trying too hard to fit into what you think other people think is cyberpunk.

For example, most people in this thread say to dress greyman and blend in, however my lifestyle I like to have some things that may make me stand out in some situations (eg I tend to carry a lot of things so I wear military pants with lots of pockets, I wear big boots and I have an unusual hair style because I like it). Doesn't matter if you think other people will agree with your choices just do you man.

>>45926

heh thanks.

It's not that I care what other people think, and the question was a bit ironic, it did address the "am I cyberpunk if x" meme actually.

I was really just stating that I suck at programming and sysadmin, but it did bear some truth: I feel out of place now that I'm apathetic towards computerstuff while also hear /cyber/ music erryday and this is my main board.

>>42102

>If you stalk a corp merc in the streets, you don’t want them to recognize you among the horde of normies. You may keep a black hoodie and a schway mask (and gloves: no fingerprints!) for when you sit on the roof of a tall building at night staring down at the worthless wage slaves.

Why I can't read this board anymore.

>>42107

>Using windows and turning their own system against them by disabling spying

Whoops I fogot about that. Just go to services.msc and disable the spying.exe service or better yet, set the start type to 0x8 "REVERSE_IT". If you do not trust microsoft, running their operating system is actually retarded. If you do not trust conical, running ubuntu is absolutely retarded. Running If its running RING 0, if its your OS, you better trust the vendor. Even with Open Source, Even if you read all the source code, reproducible builds are not yet a thing.

>>50437

>reproducible builds are not yet a thing.

Actually, they're to become less of a thing, since adress space randomization is necessary to avoid most injection attacks.

>>50436

User's post reads like a mix of halfchan /r9k/, /tech/ and /fa/.

What the shit

>>50436

This is why Cyberpunk is sci-fi and not a subculture. No one can take this shit seriously, except desperate social retards.

>>50444

Not to contribute to the autistic obsession over microdetails, and general toxic dunning-kruger expert problem here but address space randomization has absolutely nothing to do with reproducible builds.

Adresss space randomization is about where segments are loaded into memory. Position Independant code can be loaded to any address and still function. Address Space Randomization doesn't prevent an inject, but makes an exploit much harder.

ASLR has nothing to do with reproducible builds. Reproducible builds are about verifying a binary corresponds to source code. If ASLR was based upon recompiling the binary before binary before each run, and ending up with a diffrent binary things like signature verification/ OS integrity/ AV would be impossible.

Reproducible builds are important, and absolutely not depreciated for ASLR. Its not even related.

>>50457

This is unrelated, but do you think it'd be possible to make a sort of DNS-like system for checking file hashes? The same way you can put in human readable addresses and get IPs back, could you put in an address like Download.com/winzipInstaller.exe and receive a hash back to compare against what you downloaded? I'm always skeptical of download sites, but also hobbiest sites seem insecure as well. Or if the ISP decides to reroute all requests for tor.org/download/tor.exe to fbi.gov/tracking/tor.exe

I know this is possible by hand if the site publishes the hash and you can calculate it yourself with something like 7zip. But would there be an automated way to integrate it with the browser? Such that every time an author puts up a new build, the new hash would propagate out to the hash servers?

>>42107

>animal farm

That's highschool entry

>>50460

>DNS-like system for checking file hashes?

Technically DNS or DNS like in that it returns a number from a human readable string?

Techinical DNS could happen through txt records but would be a huge PITA.

nslookup WINZIP1-15.exe.winzip.com.hashserver.org

Why do this? You would have a more usuable product serving file hashes over HTTP with a restapi

GET http://hashserver.org/winzip.com/winzip1-15.exe could return text of an Hash only.

Part of the problem is associating files with domains isn't nessasirily useful. For example winzip might be mirror everywhere, whats unique is the executable not the name, or location. There is also a problem with trust. I could setup my own hash server, but what business do you have trusting me to tell you what executables are safe to run (Do you trust winzip? I don't). Computer users largely are not demanding this, and developers already publish hashes and GPG keys which is supposed to mitigate the MITM risk, but GPG isn't widely used. VirusTotal provides hashes and AV Scans, but why trust VirusTotal or AV Vendors?

Perhaps a federated network of GPG signed hashes would be nice. Something like I certify that I have validated the signatures of Winzip1-15.exe and its safe to use. So you could effectively ask your friends which products they use/ trust/ have validated signatures from the developers on. But, given that GPG hasn't taken off, I am skeptical of a solution like this being widely used.

Besides, most people intrested in checking hash are probably Linux Users (windows doens't even have a built in tool to do so), and their distribution effectively does that for them.

>>42561

Anathem was amazing

>>50462

not if you were a professional shazbot in HS

>>54904

personally I could not get past the first few pages, should I try again?

>>55086

It depends on what you like.

I liked the idea of the 'math' as a quasi-religious academia removed from the bullshit of everyday life. That goes away more and more and details about quantum mechanics, configueration space, neutron bombs, etc. start emerging, and the ending is an interesting excersize in strategy.

Its not cyberpunk per say, but definitely high tech, and kind of educational if you like science. Stephenson is an excellent writer generally. If the science stuff sounds boring, and you didn't like the beginning, you might not find it all that interesting. Its a long read, but I enjoyed it.

>>55087

Historically, pure math has always been the purview of the religious and philosophical, not of technicians. In fact, even to this day, technicians and other sorts of "uses math but doesn't develop it" types scorn pure math as being a useless trade, since most of modern routine human endeavour is achievable with only fairly basic math which is true but ignores the effects of the highest tiers of technicians/engineers/etc that do use advanced math creating that rising tide of technology that lifts all boats, necessitating more and more math skills be learned all the time to just stay relevant in the face of technologies that become newly common