For YCombinator and the like, “hacker” is actually just code for “disruptor”. It is a subtle but powerful conflation designed to retroactively strengthen the hi

For YCombinator and the like, “hacker” is actually just code for “disruptor”. It is a subtle but powerful conflation designed to retroactively strengthen the historical positioning of e.g. Jobs, Woz, Zuckerberg while simultaneously praising disruptive technologies that will “eat the world”. Of course, none of those people ever fit the more common definition of hacker for more than a few years, if ever, even if you assume hacker means “good coder” or similar. And they certainly never fit the information security definition.