Once I make my money I dream of opening a 90's esque hacker space like you see in movies like Hackers.
Dark warehouse, neon lighting, The Protegy playing in the background, a place where hackers can bring there machines, talk tech and rage. Coffee in the mornings, bar at night.
That's funny, I've always wanted to open 90s-style Internet Cafe here in the bay area. Maybe not so much Prodigy, but now that my generation is all in their 40s and 50s, I figured it would be fun to combine really really good internet access with retrocomputing resources. I don't know if anyone's done that before. And I doubt it would be profitable. But I'd enjoy it.
Why hasn't this happened yet? Serious question. There are a LOT of Hackers fans here (as evidenced by the Hackers night at DNA Lounge), and a LOT of rich nerds. And the DNA Lounge is close, but it's still not Cyberdelia.
Because Hackers fans are all in their 40s and 50s, and a location like that would live or die based on its ability to attract the young, which it would not.
Jamie Zawinski [1][2] (Netscape/Mozilla/Emacs/XscreenSaver fame) is running something similar called DNA Lounge [3], and has a blog with all sorts of stuff [4], from automating things with perl to running a night club business.
DNA Lounge is a great nightclub, and it does have a Hackers-themed night most years, but I wouldn't call it "something similar". It's a nightclub. A very very cool nightclub - but a nightclub.
(PS. If you click these, and your browser correctly forwards the refer(r)er URL, you will get a "funny" image, as jwz blocks links from HN.)
When I moved to the Bay Area a decade ago, I went to DNA just assuming that it was going to be that Hacker (movie)-esque space _all the time_. Like, I just pictured that in my head many many years ago and never bothered to actually correct it, until I got there.
agreed. he has been and continues to be way over the top about it, continues citing fringe/extreme "sources" and still has "the pandemic is not over" as a headline.
he's one that covid hysteria absolutely broke.
You could do that but it takes a ton of space, and it's a pain in the ass to work in. Image finding the screwdriver you dropped in a pile of junk when the lighting is nightclub style.
We used to sit in the dark sometimes in our old makerspace but it would really know work if everyone used a computer and nothing else. In makerspaces this is rarely the case.
Dark warehouse, neon lighting, The Protegy playing in the background, a place where hackers can bring there machines, talk tech and rage. Coffee in the mornings, bar at night.