What this really sounds like is a rant about how Hacker News is not a very precisely named website. Hacker culture is alive and well, and there are plenty of

What this really sounds like is a rant about how Hacker News is not a very precisely named website. Hacker culture is alive and well, and there are plenty of heroes hacking the night away staring at their monitors (though LCD these days), just as there 'always' has been. There are probably more now than there ever has been, actually. There's just a lot more parasites and poseurs around, because computers are mainstream now and there's a lot more money around. There is a lot more to hacker culture than web startup culture! I don't even consider virtually anything you mentioned a part of hacker culture. PHP and databases? "Software Visionaire/Ruby Ninja"? (bad) business ideas? Of course people understand the internals of the Linux kernel. You think the people working on it don't understand it? That's a pretty good example of an island in contemporary hacker culture. You don't have to look far in a sea of recreational kernel hackers to find... hackers. The associated mailing lists generate quite a bit more discussion than HN does... There have always been poseurs and businessman hangers-on, and there always will be. They are obviously not hackers. Hacker culture, and the existence of true hackers, can never die out. It's hard wired in.