I agree, I too am glad to have found HN :) To me, a hacker is much more technical in nature. Reverse Engineering, Assembly, homebrew, etc. are all keywords tha

I agree, I too am glad to have found HN :) To me, a hacker is much more technical in nature. Reverse Engineering, Assembly, homebrew, etc. are all keywords that come to mind when I think Hacker. The "programmer in his/her dark basement" is a decent stereotype to describe what a hacker meant to be when I first found HN. Your definition of Hacker is equally valid though! I don't think there is an accepted definition for the word, which makes the name all the more misrepresentative to the portion of the population that has a differing definition of Hacker than the HN community/culture.