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It isn't that clear to me that the "breaking into computer systems" definition even initially started out separate from the building things definition. My impre

• kragen 5y ago
  Breaking into computer systems certainly can be "a playful use of the intellect" or "a feat the world experts in a field thought to be impossible", so it certainly can be hacking. Designing pesticides can be science, too (my second example), and certainly nothing prevents freethinkers from employing child labor (my third example)—there might even be a causal link if the local Church is prohibiting child labor. And if you're brewing up some pesticides, you might look up to scientists and think you're a scientist, even if you're really not. But hopefully you can see that it would be appalling to write an article entitled "Is Science the Next Threat to Our Food Supply?" about a pesticide disaster, saying, "Scientists sprayed pesticides on a farm, poisoning hundreds of people who ate the food;" and that this article isn't talking about anything you or I would recognize as "hacking" or "hackers". At the point where you're extorting ransom there's nothing playful about it anymore, and it's very likely that the vulnerabilities being exploited were already known. By virtue of self-identifying as "a hacker", or at least a would-be hacker, you are getting into the line of fire. So you should stand up against it.
  • Kiboneu 5y ago
    Changing a definition of a word is a big ask. As wbazant wrote, hacking has originally started as describing computer crime. The scales for what was considered computer crime has shifted quite a bit in addition to the term itself expanding. Many of us deal with this by inferring what is meant by context. I've been surrounded by hackers, and none of them caught legal or social flack for being called a hacker in public. I also don't see people getting turned off from doing computer security or other computer work because of hacking being used to describe computer crime.
    • kragen 5y ago
      Many Jewish people in Hungary, Germany, and Poland could say the same in 01880 and even in 01920: "I've been surrounded by Jews, and none of them caught legal or social flack for being called a Jew in public." Don't say I didn't warn you. I'm not clear what "hacking has originally started as describing computer crime" is supposed to mean, but "hacking" in the sense of "finding clever ways to surpass what was thought to be possible" goes back to the 01960s, while its "computer crime" meaning was created by journalists and then Hollywood in the 01980s, after Steven Levy's book "Hackers". They did this because they despised and distrusted the kind of people described in the book, us, and projected their greatest fears about computers onto us. It's not impossible to get people to stop using a group identity term in a derogatory sense. "Gay" is, perhaps, commonly used in US high schools to mean "contemptible", and "jew" in some parts of the US is still used to mean "negotiate an unfair business deal", but no US newspaper would dare to use either term that way today. If we value our lives, we need to force them to treat "hacker" in the same way.
      • josephcsible 5y ago
        Why'd you put a leading 0 on every year?
        • seoaeu 5y ago
          Probably related to https://longnow.org/ https://longnow.org/
          • josephcsible 5y ago
            Hmm, that still seems like a silly practice. The custom today isn't 4 digit years anyway; it's whatever number of digits you need and no more. For example, we say Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, not AD 0079. We'll naturally switch to 5-digit years in the year 10000 that way without needing to put a leading 0 on every year in the meantime. And 5 digits seems arbitrary anyway: what happens in the year 100000?
            • 5y ago
  • seoaeu 5y ago
    Those aren't the only definitions of hacking. "Breaking into computer systems" is also a definition of hacking, and it has been for decades. That isn't because of some deliberate slight against other sorts of hackers, but rather because initially there wasn't a distinction the different kinds of hackers: they were all members of the same community. The fact that the computer criminal element that forked off the wider hacker community ended up getting the most attention is certainly unfortunate, but I don't see why it should be interpreted as an attack against the others.
    • kragen 5y ago
      Yes, it's true that people have used the word in a derogatory sense for decades. It should be interpreted as an attack against us because in fact it hurts us, whatever the intent: by repurposing our terms of praise into a term representing people's darkest nightmares about those who know things they don't, they encourage people to confuse us with those nightmares. How often do you think kids get punished in school for browsing this very website?
• chongli 5y ago
  breaking into systems folks became increasingly less harmless and drifted away The criminal types were never part of the hacker community. Someone who sends spam or deploys ransomware is motivated by profit, not curiosity or playfulness. There are still plenty of breaking into systems people in the hacker community. They work in cryptanalysis, security research, penetration testing, etc. You can find them at their traditional conferences such as Defcon, Blackhat, and Chaos Communication Congress.