The Glider: An Appropriate Hacker Emblem (2014)

http://www.catb.org/~esr/hacker-emblem/

by prajjwal • 12 years ago

65 44 12 years ago

catb.org

Schiphol• 12 years ago

A still life would be even better. The emblem would be doing what it is supposed to be doing: stay put.

skj• 12 years ago

That is very difficult to google for.

tgb• 12 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life#Example...

sp332• 12 years ago

There's a whole wiki that just documents shapes, ideas, and software for Conway's Game of Life. http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/Still_life http://www.conwaylife.com/wiki/List_of_common_still_lifes

dllthomas3• 12 years ago

I like the notion that you can't tell whether it's a snapshot or running.

But on the flip side, a still life isn't getting much done.

sanqui• 12 years ago

I love the glider as a hacker emblem. Here's a tiny version with Unicode Braille: ⠠⠵

sramsay• 12 years ago

The page says May 2014, but this is quite old. ESR proposed it in 2003 and it . . . failed to catch on.

aroman• 12 years ago

the article says this in the first few sentences

lambda• 12 years ago

It definitely caught on in some circles; I've seen a number of other blogs that contain a badge with this emblem. Hasn't by any means become universal among hackers, but isn't a complete flop either.

1ris• 12 years ago

I saw it once or twice at the 31c3. It didn't catch on, but it's not unknown either.

fishnchips• 12 years ago

I'm not convinced that the glider represents the 'hacker community' as a whole - I know a good few folks (not only 'web developers') who have no idea about Game of Life. Damn, I know at least one good coder who never heard of IRC. So much for shared experience.

In all fairness I don't think a 'hacker community' as such exists any more - if there ever was one.

hobs• 12 years ago

And the glider continues off into infinity, unconcerned, unchanged by its lack of neighbors.

jonsen• 12 years ago

Until...

c3RlcGhlbnI_• 12 years ago

The article is by ESR and in his mind "hacker community" is a very specific group. A group who happened to have their heyday when the game of life had just been published and Conway was still offering a prize for an infinitely expanding pattern. This makes it really more of a coincidental thing rather than a representation of any inherent trait of the community.

Though even for that community(and people now who really like the game of life) I don't think it is a great logo. Circles are not a very pretty or pleasant way of representing the game of life and it makes me think of a board game when I look at it.

Retra• 12 years ago

The Game of Life was first implemented on Go boards.

DonHopkins5• 12 years ago

I'm totally unconvinced that Eric "The Flute" Raymond represents or speaks for the 'hacker community'.

For one thing, very few people I know of in the hacker community are as racist as ESR. He's out there with Terry Davis when it comes to being racist and mentally ill, but he can't hold a candle to Terry Davis's hacking ability.

robotkilla2• 12 years ago

I've long felt that some variation of the anarchy symbol would be more appropriate for a hacker symbol being that hacking represents total freedom (in my mind).

acjohnson55• 12 years ago

Not all hackers are anarchists, though.

robotkilla2• 12 years ago

That's why we shouldn't adopt the anarchist symbol as is. A variation would be needed.

jsilence• 12 years ago

If you consider that the basic meaning of Anarchism is "no hierarchies!" and compare that in a not-too-strict sense to core principles of the hacker and maker community, it becomes clear that a hacker culture and anarcism are not too far apart.

High emphasis on collaboration, egalitarian mindset and a "respect stems from knowledge" attitude come to my mind.

But still most of the hackers I know don't want to be associated to anarchy, even though they act like anarchists. I think the reason is that their acting like anarchists simply is appropropiate for what they are trying to achieve and not a political act or message by itself.

Rhapso• 12 years ago

This, along with a life-long fascination with cellular automata, inspired me to get a tattoo of the glider sequence a few years ago. It is a tattoo that is occasionally difficult to explain to innocent bystanders but it constantly reminds me of what motivates and inspires me.

Sophistifunk• 12 years ago

Yup, I have one too. It's timeless, does not resemble any sort of contemporary physical artifact of technology, like a bar code or a circuit board, and to anybody who doesn't recognise it, it's just a small decorative piece.

cognitive-waste• 12 years ago

Might have caught on if it were hackable in plaintext. The graphic is abhorrent.

agumonkey• 12 years ago

These linked ones are quite pleasing http://swain.webframe.org/tshirts/conway_life_zoom.jpg/

wslh• 12 years ago

Don't forget to read the "The idea of using Life patterns as an emblem was semi-anticipated by some hackers in Argentina" part. I would say it was anticipated... it uses a still life instead of a moving pattern.

[1] http://swain.webframe.org/tshirts/conway_life_zoom.jpg

ajarmst• 12 years ago

We're nonconformists! You can tell by our uniform!

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

I hadn't realized esr was suggesting the glider as a sort of hieroglyph of hackerness. I think it, like the Kline bottle shape, evokes a certain kind of resonance in folks who enjoy algorithms and mathematics.

drew-y• 12 years ago

I like the idea, not really into the emblem.

praptak• 12 years ago

I cringe at the idea of using it myself. I believe the title of hacker shall be earned from peers ("Cool hack!") not self-assigned.

oneeyedpigeon• 12 years ago

"When you put the glider emblem on your web page, or wear it on clothing, or display it in some other way, you are visibly associating yourself with the hacker culture. This is not quite the same thing as claiming to be a hacker yourself — that is a title of honor that generally has to be conferred by others rather than self-assumed. But by using this emblem, you express sympathy with hackers' goals, hackers' values, and the hacker way of living."

gonzo2• 12 years ago

"I believe, but cannot prove, that global “AIDS” is a whole cluster of unrelated diseases all of which have been swept under a single rug for essentially political reasons, and that the identification of HIV as the sole pathogen is likely to go down as one of the most colossal blunders in the history of medicine." -- Eric S. Raymond.

DonHopkins5• 12 years ago

"In the U.S., blacks are 12% of the population but commit 50% of violent crimes; can anyone honestly think this is unconnected to the fact that they average 15 points of IQ lower than the general population? That stupid people are more violent is a fact independent of skin color." -Eric S. Raymond http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=129

DanBC• 12 years ago

Homosexuals are child abusers http://armedndangerous.blogspot.co.uk/2002_06_16_armedndange...

gonzo2• 12 years ago

I'll take Alan Turning over the Glider, anytime.

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1046#comment-236592

dllthomas3• 12 years ago

At the intersection of both the objects mentioned in your post, I still find it amazing that one can build a UTM in Conway's Game Of Life.

DonHopkins5• 12 years ago

Life is overrated. Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" goes a lot further and is much more amazing than that, with much simpler rules than life.

DonHopkins5• 12 years ago

The historic cellular automata rule that would be MUCH more appropriate than Life to represent hacker culture would be John von Neumann's 29 state cellular automata [1], and the most appropriate pattern to use would be his universal constructor, which can reproduce itself given the right input, thus is a two-dimensional cellular automata quine.

He's the ORIGINAL hacker's hacker, who figured all of that out on paper, without the use of computers. And his Universal Constructor [3] is much more beautiful and interesting that a simple Life glider, in my opinion. Now that would make an impressive tattoo!

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_cellular_automaton

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_construct...

[3] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/Nobili_Pe...

(By the way, it's Alan Turing, not Turning -- a common and understandable mistake!)

(Also by the way, children and nice people read Hacker News, so please do not link to ESR's reprehensible web site, promote his racist ideology, or buy into his bullshit that he is a hacker or speaks for hackers.)

ForHackernews• 12 years ago

Isn't this document much older than 2014?

Edit: Here's an archived copy from 2003: https://web.archive.org/web/20031202225527/http://www.catb.o...

The Glider: An Appropriate Hacker Emblem (2014)

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