#phreaker

[blueey-jayzilla]

I was going to wait till I did some yaoi of em, but this piece is goodie

[iconuk01]

A running gag in Transformers Galaxy Force (JP) / Transformers Cybertron (US) were the two recurring Autobots who remained "robots in disguise" in the background.

Basically, a stoplight and a pay phone in the middle of a desert highway (though they moved around a bit) they sometimes helped out at random moments (though always in their alt modes) and sometimes just chewed the fat.

In the final episode of the series, after enemies were defeated and a new day was dawning, the stop light announced that he was off to seek his destiny in the stars and we finally get this delightful little moment....

His name is finally revealed as "Signal Lancer" (though only in the Japanese series) but his phone friend, is not named at all, though eventually he was identified as "Phreaker"

[madhattersez]

Hell yeah! Had an awesome find at a thrift shop today - A 1929 Southwestern Bell Telephone technical manual and installation guide for phones of the era.

Maybe you're asking why I think this is awesome? Haha. That makes sense - Well, first of all, I -live- vintage stuff. Antiques, old books, weird ephemera of the past. This definitely fits in with all of that, and has a gorgeous, punched leather cover with the gold stamping. Such a slick piece of history.

Second, I'm an old computer nerd cat. Back in the early '90s, I was a phone phreak - a phone hacker back before mobile phones and even alphanumeric pagers were a thing. It was in these days that "Ma Bell" (Southwestern Bell) was a big Queen on the scene, in her prime.

What were common phreaker practices back in the day? Well, it was all about exploration and curiosity. We would wardial (using our home landline connections and modems to dial a huge list of numbers in a row to try and find systems on the other end rather than regular phones - I'd leave it on all day and come back with a shorter list of various systems to dial in and play around on), we would build blue (and other color) boxes from RadioShack parts to use payphones to make free calls and do all sorts of rad tricks, we would prank folks that deserved it or use said tricks to disrupt schools and business, we would navigate voicemail systems and change automatic messages, and we would generate credit card numbers (which was incredibly easy back in the day) to make free calls to our first girlfriends in Canada. Well, that last one was mostly a me thing, haha.

Basically, payphones and early phone systems were a wonderful, incredible playground for me and I have SO many fond memories of these times. To have a book like this in my hands feels like I just looked inside the Ark of the Covenant and instead of melting my face off, it just glowed real bright and whistled a 2600hz tone sweetly into my ears.

This has so many cool photos like the ones above, and lots of radical technical diagrams, too.

As a bonus, there are hand-typed notes from a division head telephone engineer that wrote about systems they were building in Galveston, TX in the '60s:

Anyways, this is such a cool relic and I'll probably not be able to bring myself to sell it.

Did you know I wrote a verse about being a phreaker for a song with Nerdcore legend YTCracker wayyyyyy back in 2010? Well, now you do. You can hear that here (I'm the second dude, of course):

Visit Original Link

[askvectorprime]

Dearest Vector Prime, i hope you're having a nice and happy birthday so far today! <3

Dear Jolly Good Fellow,

Thank you for your kind words! I did indeed have a wonderful time.

I took a trip on a star-yacht with Scorpia, surfing on the event horizon of a black hole and watching infinity stretch out ahead of us. We were almost cast into the singularity when a fleet of Paradox Pirates attacked us, seeking to plunder our unspent time together, but Scorpia's cyber-venom stingers sent them scurrying away while I repaired the damage they had done to the Ouranoboros Engine.

We met up with Safeguard to watch The Unmade Mech, a truly moving piece of holo-cinematography from Axiom Nexus; written and produced by Thundercracker and directed by an offworlder Bulkhead, I can truly say that it brought a tear to my optic. Twirl of Vaporex was unforgettable in the central role, giving a performance sure to silence any who still dismiss her as "just" a shock-pop-drama star.

When I returned to my home reality to drop Safeguard off on Gigantion, Coby, Lori and Bud made contact with an interplanetary video call to wish me the best; I shall have to thank Phreaker and Signal Lancer for setting the link up for them. Sadly, however, I could not remain for long; my physical body from that world was destroyed long ago, and so—in what seemed like no time at all—I once again faded from that reality to the realm of transwarp, the space-between-space. "Nature abhors a resurrection", as they say.

Such an abrupt farewell would have been a sorry end to such a wonderful day, so I was overjoyed to be surprised, on my return to the Realm of the Primes, by several of my siblings! After a joyous reunion, we gathered on the endless plains of Greengard to watch the sunset. Energoa manned the cy-barbecue as we shared stories and memories over glasses of engex, and toasted to memories yet to come. Onyx read poetry he had written in my honor, and Tsunaginga sang the most beautiful rendition of The Empyrean Suite I have ever heard.

As the time came to say goodbye, my brethren offered me gifts—small things, to keep them in my thoughts. Metroprime had made finely-crafted miniature replicas of the Atlantis, Lemuria, Ogygia and Hyperborea; Onyx had brought a beautiful flower, which constantly shifted its shape and chemical composition in time with the rhythms of the universe; and Alchemist gifted me an incredibly rare bottle of dimensionally-abstracted, πple-distilled finest visco.

...I confess, the last of those gifts is the reason I have been so scattershot in answering your questions, of late. A bad quantum hangover can be extremely distracting.

[guumck]

Phreak Telecom

[thoughtportal]

[askvectorprime]

Dear Vector Prime, can you please tell us what happend to Signal Lancer after he left that desert highway? Did he ever call his telephone friend from across the road?

Dear Traffic Tracker,

Signal Lancer ultimately joined the crew of the Lemuria, under the command of Metroplex. As part of that crew, he ventured to such far reaches as the planet Senal, where his ability to turn into a traffic light came quite in handy with the local lifeforms, who all communicated in light-based signals. His other exploits included being routinely hustled at Praxus Fold'Em by his crewmates Undermine and Brimstone, and helping to construct the first of many Galactic Space Bridge hubs on a planet Metroplex's crew dubbed "New Lemuria". As for communication with his old friend, Phreaker, Signal Lancer did indeed make contact again, inviting him to join them in their galactic travels as soon as they made their first return trip to Cybertron.