Hackerbooks came into being when a group of us round at a local meetup where discussing the changes in the Hacker as well as the IT community, since the 90’s most of us had been in the game long enough to remember a time before USB-plug and play some of us even remembered green screen computer systems.
as we talked we got discussing what really griped into our time and efforts, which was as we all mutually found out was no real surprise but the simple endless repetition of questions, problems and issues on how to do various tasks we often refer to as “basic it support” or at most “hacker work” / “ethical hacker work” or “general IT Support” depending on who you ask of course
which individuals will happily spend hours debating what it qualify’s as thus derailing any meaningful result from the question itself
many of these questions or tasks we all consider to be straight forward, or concepts that should be again quite easy to grasp, with a minimal amount of research. but often we found elements in the hacker community’s and outside in IT community’s often swamped with individuals who “explained or mansplaining” their own unique take on, whatever the question is, which quite often is simply incorrect or incorrect in 90% of circumstances, or is an generalization based on a faulty assumption and the exceptions where not pretty ether often with a sexist, racist or widely unrelated conspiracy theory added in for good measure.
in short we where all getting very very tired of trying to help people with the worst kind of “special snowflakes/trolls/ bored manchild” giving advice in subjects they nether understood, had no experience in or was just generally making answers up. “so so much making answers up”
We often wished we could just give them a google answer, but after a couple years more and more “tech advice sites” giving the same kind of advice where popping up, and it was getting worse since so many where falling into “politically motivated” or “shock for $$$” as ways to push their agenda/opinion or simply to make money with no regards to accuracy or honesty
Several of us, had been giving tech advice under various Alias online for well over a decade, some of us had operated a tech support forum that catered to online users and for several company’s for five years when the same questions and problems would again be popping in, again having to explain why the advice they received from elsewhere was wrong, essentially tech support became spoon fed and “anything up for debate” is the world actually round, does gravity actually exist, do you need a x to do y
as you can imagine this became very frustrating, very quickly, but one book would not solve the issue it never does, but perhaps a two dozen or more can at least help some individuals out, give advice in a simple format for “n00bs” and the humble, advice that can be applied to a number of sectors and individuals
“hacker books” a set collection of books, each designed to cover specific needs of a given subject, so when the common questions, pop up a single book can qualm the need for answers, give an explanation and an analysis in the simplest format. each book gets a update as required and sold as cheap as possible, when a certain amount has been profited by the book, a digital version becomes free for all to download
a modern Reference Library for any Hacker/computer security/ IT Support/Technomage or anyone else
when we where developing this project we where asked why not just send people to pre-existing works, but the problem was, many where simply outdated, details where left out and you had to assume you ether already knew some detail or again refer to three or more other books, other books where also somewhere massively bloated in themselves,
we need books out there, that have a simple purpose, explain the problem, give a solution, give an analysis of both has a troubleshooting section. each dated and version controlled, and reasonably priced, along with a list of books for further reading for those truly inclined.
Our First three books are the mono collection which target the three main operating systems “a book covering other operating systems is being written later”
The White Book – The Hackintosh Build Project
The Grey Book – The Linux Expression
The Black Book – The Windows Menagerie