/cyber/ - Cyberpunk & Science Fiction

I'm not sure if a lot of people on the board actually want to be called cyberpunks. I think futurism and self-education about technology is great and all, but living cyberpunk just seems retarded. You're basically looking up to people like Case from Neuromancer as role models.

If you want to dress cyberpunk don't do any wearables or clothing that single you out unless you actually have a reason to do so. Nothing wrong with getting a faraday cage lined into a jacket pocket, but just don't be dumb.

As far as food for the future I've seen some people take up Soylent, but as far as I know that's not even made by a nutritionist so look into it on your own. Whatever you eat at least make sure its good for you. I loosely follow the Hacker's Diet and you can find it online fairly easily though weights never been an issue for me.

If you want some books and shit there's the obvious stuff like Cyberia, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Snow Crash, and the whole Sprawl series. Check out Akira if you haven't already (manga and anime are both fine). Watch Serial Experiments Lain if you haven't already. I also like Testuo the Iron Man, but I don't think all would agree. Also read lainzine since they have a lot of good articles on introductory level stuff (programming, cryptography, OS, shit like that) along with more complicated stuff.

OS is honestly just a question of what you're most comfortable with. There's a big emphasis on privacy for obvious reasons and I would prefer to urge people to use OSes that protect your rights to privacy. If you want to get started on Linux try out Debian or Linux Mint. Don't get fooled by the guys spurting out Arch Linux or Gentoo.

Programming languages is such a diverse topic that really depends on your experience and knowledge. Want to start coding? Just pick up some basic language that's going to be an industry standard for a long time. I've seen a lot of introductory programming classes teach Python, C, Java, and similar languages. Just remember to RTFM. From there you could do some projects after learning syntax and start specializing. Do Project Euler problems to practice making good algorithms. Want to make games? Learn Unity or UE4. Want to make a website? Learn HTML and CSS. Maybe you'll want to go back and learn assembly so you really understand what happens to make shit work.

> OS

Any system can be classed as cyberpunk. Using windows and turning their own system against them by disabling spying and shit is quite cyber, but then again you can choose linux to do all the legwork on that for you.

> Programming Languages

Depends what you want to do with them. If you want to be a hacker in a traditional sense, learn assembly and/or C to make your own hardware for things you make. If you want to be a typical movie hacker/cracker, probably learn all command line strings, internet relay hierarchy/ports/TCP IP etc. Maybe even make scripts in python to do some interesting hacker-ish things for you.

If you just want to program, I personally (this is entirely subjective) recommend C. It's pretty universal (every system I know of has a C library in it) but my absolute favourite is assembly. It's as close to hardware as you can go without going straight to binary.

> Appearance

If you want to take on the cyberpunk aesthetic, do it in a minimalist way that makes you stand out, and not stand out, at the same time. Check the frugal cyber fashion thread(s) for more info. As >>42103 said, don't wear wearables unless you need to. Wearing a google glass in the streets is pretty much yelling "spy on me google, look I stand out". Wearing a samsung Gear S (stand-alone) smartwatch because you like running and can't carry your phone on you for some reason makes sense.

> Novels

-Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep

-Neuromancer

-1984

-Animal farm

-The Minority Report

-Mona Lisa Overdrive

-Zodiac by Neal Stephenson

etc, you'll find more at jinteki.industries

I'll give you a recommended reading/viewing list.

Books:

Neuromancer, (William Gibson)

Snow Crash, (Neal Stephenson)

The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier (Bruce Sterling)

Disneyland with the Death Penalty (William Gibson)

The Conscience of a Hacker (Mentor)

Movies:

Blade Runner(1982)

The Matrix (1999)

Akira (1988)

Escape from New York (1981)

Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

Max Headroom (TV series, 1987)

Hackers (1995)

Comics:

Transmetropolitan (Warren Ellis)

Shatter (Mike Saenz)

Akira (Katsuhiro Otomo)

Ghost In The Shell (Masamune Shirow)

Frame 137, Slave Cylinder (James O'Barr)

Music:

Atari Teenage Riot

Nine Inch Nails

Meshuggah

Vidya:

Deus Ex

Neocron

Watch Dogs

Magazines:

Mondo 2000

Wired

Ctheory

Diet? Soylent lol.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(drink)

https://www.soylent.com/

Sites:

http://jinteki.industries/

https://lainchan.org/

http://textfiles.com/

http://project.cyberpunk.ru/

https://anarplex.net/

http://n-o-d-e.net/

http://puppet.zone/

https://cyberpunkdatabase.net/

http://niggasin.space/

https://www.defcon.org/

http://www.newsreal.ca/

https://hightechlowlife.eu/

https://www.battleforthenet.com/

http://chiclassiccomp.org/

>>42112

http://lainzine.neocities.org/

> This is OP, been busy so couldn't respond.

Some great answers here so far. To kinda respond to what I'm seeing as far as appearance and programming go, I'm already pretty minimal in my appearance thanks to this video series I watch on YouTube (BlackScoutSurvival) so I have the idea of the "Grey Man" down as the typical ideal for appearance. As for what I know of computers so far, I have a small idea of how to use console for batch files, I can hack out basic code in UnrealScript, and I am getting in Java so I can make a few things on Android. Beyond that though, I don't know much so I have much room for improvement.

Also great movie/reading suggestions, gonna have to see if I can find some paperbacks.

>>42102

>>42103

Seeing some conflict here, so I'd like your guys' opinions: why Linux Mint, Debian, Arch Linux, or Gentoo? I'd like to change my operating system to see what is out there as I'm currently working with Windows 7 (of which I hear there are many issues with memory usage).

>>42107

Disabling Windows spying eh? I'm all eyes to links. Also I'd be down to learn some assembly as well.

>>42111

Of age and in a hot valley full of Mexicans.

>>42126

I wouldn't recommend Arch Linux or Gentoo. They're both memes that aren't worth using as an actual OS for a computer you're going to use on a regular basis unless you really want to be fixing errors every single day. Linux Mint and Debian are both easy distros to get into and should suffice for learning the intricacies of Linux.

>>42128

While I can't comment about Arch, I must disagree about Gentoo.

There was a dark time of instability maybe 5 years ago but these days it's pretty much the only thing to use. You can thank Based Daniel Robbins for coming back from the dead. It's the only way to use all the hardening technologies without wasting time doing Linux From Scratch type garbage, and those technologies only increase stability.

"Gentoo is a meme" is a meme. It's the easiest way to get exactly what you want. Like slackware but more autism/automated. If you don't know what you want then learn enterprise linux/unix. It'll come in handy later on and you'll eventually learn what you want by noticing what bothers you and what doesn't.

Mint sucks, the UI is shitty and slow. Yes it's possible to remove that garbage, but it's a waste of time. Why install Mint to remove cinnamon when the only reason Mint exists is to default-install cinnamon?

Debian is okay but it doesn't do anything that other distros don't do better. A baseline of "good enough".

>>42126

Not a valley full of hot Mexicans?

>>42128

Joke's on you, I use Arch+KVM as a production workstation and hypervisor at work. If you know what the fuck you're doing it's great.

>>42191

What does arch have that gentoo doesn't, other than systemd?

>>42235

I wasn't even trying to make a jab, I just know that arch uses systemd by default and gentoo doesn't. I'm more interested in the other differences, the ones I don't know about.

>>42251

Picking locks is pretty easy and can be learnt very quickly.

Any UNIX-based OS works, learn C and low level programming ( this with hardware hacking can be very handy )

Learn about radio freq / network stuff and you can do some fun stuff.

overall knowledge is always good.

I saw a lot of distros discussed here, but none about Kali.

What are you guys' opinion on Kali Linux?

>>42263

You interested in getting OSCP certed?

>>42269

Yes, I am.

>>42282

OSCP will teach you a lot, but its definitely going to take a considerable amount of time to learn. It's hard and I have a few friends that have done it and I'll probably be doing it eventually. From my friends its not worth doing just to get certed, but rather people do it to just learn. If you're looking into working IT definitely go for it.

>>42284

Is there a /cyb/ study group?

>>42284

>>42282

Anon from >>42263 thanking you guys for the info.

>>42292

Not as far as I know but it would be pretty cool. I'm sure there's people on lainchan also taking OSCP so having a combined study group would to be cool.

>>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