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I remember spending a week studying for the interview. I felt so cool afterwards, like I was part of a secret club.

You were.

I don't remember any interview, but I also don't remember how exactly I got in. Did they at some point switch to simple invites?

They had both, you could get invited by an existing member or you could do an interview on IRC to show you knew the basics of MP3 encoding.

Aw, it was a little bit more to it than that. Not tons more, but I remember being quizzed on Nyquist frequencies and thinking that was pretty cool.

I think most of the interview content still exists in its spiritual successor here:

But how can one get in? .. My email is in my profile :>