Philipp Trommler's Blog

Paged Out! #1 is out

The first issue of the programming and hacking focused zine called "Paged Out!" is out now. It follows an – as the editors put it – experimental approach of one article per page. I've had a read and here's my opinion.

Published by Philipp Trommler. This article has also been translated to: de.

Admittedly, the magazine initially caught my attention because of the whole art style and make up of both the publication itself and the website. The reduced and "dark" design are on the one hand refreshing in the modern web world and on the other hand relaxingly self-ironic. But there's more to it.

What is it?

"Paged Out!" is a new magazine about everything related to programming, hacking, reverse engineering, code golfing and so on. The articles that it's made of are written and proposed by volunteers and then reviewed and included by the editors. Its USP is that each of those articles is exactly one page long but that doesn't necessarily lead to the same amount of content per article since the page layout is done by the author and thus differs from page to page. Hence, the whole publication has a amateur-ish look that adds massively to the magazine's appeal.

But beneath the DIY layout there's a whole lot of interesting stuff. The topics range from absolute beginner intros to very specific descriptions of current exploitation techniques that need a whole lot of prior knowledge. And that's where the one-page-per-article idea really plays out: The reader simply doesn't get to the point where he's either bored by a way too long intro or overstrained by a ten page description of a return-oriented-programming attack.

Another unique feature of "Paged Out!" is that all articles in it are published under open licenses from CC0 to a new license specifically made for the zine. This enables readers not only to re-use the articles for example as handouts during a workshop but also to print the whole magazine and publish it to the public, e.g. in hacker spaces. Even commercial prints should be possible, the editors wish to be contacted in beforehand in that case, though. Another possible use case is that most of the articles can be transferred to audio files for the visually impaired.

What is in it?

The first issue includes a variety of topics. Since I don't want to bore anyone with the full list of articles (go read it yourself! [attention, big PDF]), here are the topics that have interested me the most:

I hope I could arouse some interest with my list. Of course the other articles are worth reading, as well, they just didn't match my interests as exactly as the ones listed above. This may be totally different for you, though.

What's next?

I definitively need to have a closer look at some of the links and sources provided in the articles and I will probably try some things myself. Additionally, I hope that I manage to come up with an interesting topic and write my own article before the deadline for issue 2 (20/10/2019) to be part of this great project. Either way, I'll post a follow up once the next issue is out!

Filed under Paged Out!. Tags: magazine, reading.

Want to comment on this article? Write me at blog [at] philipp-trommler [dot] me!

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