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Change.org Petition: Tell media not to use 'Hacker' when they mean 'Cracker'
- noonespecial 12y agoI'm afraid that ship has sailed, returned, unloaded the cargo and then sent the crew home for hiatus.
- austinstorm 12y agoAgreed - it's waaay too late to change this now.
- pgl 12y agoShouldn't this post title have a "(1998)" next to it?
- MattBearman 12y agoWe'd have more luck just inventing and adopting a new word to replace hacker, any suggestions?
- artumi-richard 12y agoCraftsman or Artisan strike me as a good place to start.
- waterfowl 12y agooh yes venerated software 'craftsmen' because we don't have enough ego as programmers.
- sp332 12y agoIn some countries, e.g. Canada, you can get a serious Software Engineering degree that's right up there with mechanical engineering etc. In fact, you're not allowed to call yourself a software engineer without that degree.
- sschueller 12y agoI always saw hacker as a computer security term (so did popular culture) and not a term for tinkering/making. This community is using the wrong term not the media.
- sp332 12y agoI think we already have words for these people. Criminal and suspect cover the general case. To get more specific we have vandal, thief, industrial spy, stalker, fraudster, and so on. I guess there are some newish crimes - virus wrangler and DDoS participant? They're so different it's hard to make an umbrella term for them.
- comeonnow 12y agoIsn't the definition of hacker infact a cracker? I don't think a community (not HN, just in general) can just coin a term and expect to change the definition for all.
- stcredzero 12y agoA minority community can take ownership of a pejorative. A pejorative is often a word appropriated by a majority. Both of the previous sentences apply here. And no, you are incorrect.
- comeonnow 12y agoThanks for outright saying I'm was incorrect, really inspires confidence in one's self. Thanks for shining some clarity on this for me. I was merely asking a question followed by a thought, I didn't claim to be correct. I was simply asking.
- barrystaes 12y agoAnswering, that is what questions are for.
- thu 12y agoNot for everyone, and the one we advocate isn't new at all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28term%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28term%29
- nanofortnight 12y ago> Hackers from this subculture tend to emphatically differentiate themselves from what they pejoratively call "crackers". This has been going on for tens of years. Hackers feel like the media has wrongly appropriated the word, but nothing has changed in the meantime. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28programmer_subculture%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28programmer_subculture...
- 12y ago
- motters 12y agoFinding a word other than "cracker" to designate people using computers for illegal purposes would be a useful exercise. Otherwise a lot of entirely legitimate activity gets tarnished and if you describe yourself as "hacking" then ordinary folks get the wrong impression.
- mwww 12y agoWe started using "intruder" instead of "hacker"/"cracker" at Rublon. It seems to work pretty well.
- hmsimha 12y agoI usually refer to 'crackers' as 'black-hat hackers'
- kissickas 12y agoI feel like this does a great job at exemplifying the futility of petitions on Change.org.
- jamesrom 12y agoNo. Own it. Hackers share many of the qualities and flaws. Get over it.
- nl 12y agoI'm pretty sure I read this complaint on Slashdot, circa 1997. Despite what people claim, it wasn't true then and it isn't true now. For example the movie "War Games"(1983)[1] uses the term Hacker to refer to someone who hacked into computer systems. A word can have multiple connotations without causing problems. [1]http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames
- krisgenre 12y agoBack in the 90's and early 2000's this is what I thought 'Hacker' and 'Cracker' meant Hacker - A person who circumvents a walled network. Cracker - A person who circumvents a walled software.
- davb 12y agoBy the late 90s this is exactly how I understood the terms. Even now I don't hear many people in the local tech community (Scotland) refer to hackers as we mean here (unless it's prefixed with something, for example "Python hacker").
- sschueller 12y agoAnd so does everyone else over 30. You can't just take a word to mean something new and petition to have the old meaning 'removed'.
- oneeyedpigeon 12y agoIn my experience, even those who use the term not in the 'Cracker' sense disagree on its meaning. Definitions range from 'elite programmer' to 'programmer who operates in a disorganised, haphazard manner'. 'Cracker' also has racial connotations in the US, doesn't it? Language is complicated.
- leephillips 12y agoThis is probably as futile and misguided as Stallman's effort to get everyone to say "GNU/Linux". Once a word serves its functional purpose within a community it's going to be used to communicate whatever idea it communicates. Words are often used contrary to what their etymology and history would seem to imply. I don't use "hacker" to mean "intruder," but I'm not going to waste any effort "correcting" people who do.
- davb 12y agoI agree. I think the generally accepted meaning has evolved over time. Hacker, to most people, now means cracker/intruder. Perhaps a more positive way to approach this is to popularise a different term for what we mean by hacker (tinkerer, maker). It's not admitting defeat by abandoning the original meaning - it's taking the path of least resistance and evolving with the language.
- imdsm 12y agoThe thing is, a cracker/intruder is also most likely a hacker, in the more mild sense of the term. They wouldn't be able to crack/intrude without 'hacking' in order to have that ability/knowledge. The problem is that people think of A when they read B, because to them, they don't understand, or care, enough about the history of word to properly use it.
- rpenm 12y agoMost crackers are script kiddies, using exploits or code developed by someone else. So most crackers are not hackers in the Stallman sense.
- davidgerard 12y agoIt started meaning that. http://imranontech.com/2008/04/01/the-origin-of-hacker/ http://imranontech.com/2008/04/01/the-origin-of-hacker/
- davb 12y ago
- barrystaes 12y agoI have seen the term "hacking" been used to describe using a device via its interface, as intended.. Starting my car with a key is not hacking, starting my neighbors car with his key is neither. Obtaining the key without consent, might be. But that again could in fact be social engineering. In comparison, using another (master)key that happens to fit would be akin to "cracking". If one engineered the key himself, thàt (along with the required investigative research work) might be hacking.
- brador 12y agoCracker also has a racial definition.
- richbradshaw 12y agoThing is that 'cracker' is already two things - a flat savoury biscuit, and something you pull at christmas. Hacker only has one popular meaning.
- eruditely 12y agoChange.org is one of the most accurate signals of "ineffective people".
- jacknews 12y agoIt's just not going to happen. Either resign to the fact, or simply come up with a better term to describe what a hacker is. In fact, what is a hacker anyway, just a talented coder? What about hardware hackers? A maker? Someone technical, but concerned with beauty? What about jailbreakers, are they crackers?
- smcl 12y agoCan we not just accept that "hacker" now has two meanings?
- duncans 12y agoWhilst you're there, get them to stop using "cyber" too...
- mkohlmyr 12y agoPersonally I would settle for them not referring to heartbleed as a virus..
- jdg1 12y agoAt first I thought this is the most pointless petition ever. But then I realised the whole point of it is to promote their website. It's kind of sad to see petitions being used in this way.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- ig1 12y agoEarliest recorded usage of the term "hacker" in a technology context: ---- 1963 The Tech (MIT student newspaper) 20 Nov. 1 Many telephone services have been curtailed because of so-called hackers, according to Prof. Carlton Tucker, administrator of the Institute phone system. … The hackers have accomplished such things as tying up all the tie-lines between Harvard and MIT, or making long-distance calls by charging them to a local radar installation. One method involved connecting the PDP-1 computer to the phone system to search the lines until a dial tone, indicating an outside line, was found. … Because of the “hacking,” the majority of the MIT phones are “trapped.” --- (I wrote an article on this many years ago http://imranontech.com/2008/04/01/the-origin-of-hacker/ http://imranontech.com/2008/04/01/the-origin-of-hacker/)
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- hitchhiker999 12y agoYep, sorry guys - I know I'll get crap for this, but: The word is the clue as it implies 'invasive force'. Any other meaning is only going to be accepted when enough of you agree 'it is so'. The original meaning (and I've always known it as such, 30+ years) is perfectly outlined by the paragraph above. It does not refer to white-hat stuff. The original word is 'hack': cut with rough or heavy blows. hack off the dead branches a rough cut, blow, or stroke. he was sure one of us was going to take a hack at him" (in sports) a kick or hit inflicted on another player. a cut or gash. a tool for rough striking or cutting, e.g., a mattock or a miner's pick. I'm going to catch shit for this. Can't we all just get along? :) EDIT: Fine down-vote me you evil b'stards - b'stard is a person without married parents :)
- nl 12y agoActually, that definition matches the other usage, too: people force a system to do things it isn't supposed to do; they "hack" at it until it works. (But I agree that "hacker" has meant invading systems as long as it has meant anything else)
- 12y ago
- return0 12y agoHow do we call "people obsessed with how mainstream media represents them" ?
- tool 12y agoRather make a petition to stop people with no real technological skillsets glorifying themselves as "hacker" every chance they get. Be it on HN, their own blogs or facebook. Making wordpress themes isn't hacking, no matter how hard you want to ride the web 2.0 train.
- slowmotiony 12y agoI'd also like to petition SV people to stop using the term "growth hacker".
- xiaoma 12y agoI first heard of pg through a slashdot article on his book Hackers and Painters. I remember lots of people writing that that word "hacker" was utterly lost and should be retired. The mere existence of the petitioner in this article—Hacker Rank—a company that is taken seriously by the tech industry shows how wrong those commenters were. That the site I write this comment on—Hacker News—is so heavily trafficked by creative builders rather than malicious intruders is icing on the cake. It's hard to change the meaning of a word, but in this one case a reclamation is well underway.
- davidgerard 12y ago"cracker" was invented as a derogatory neologism to attack one group of people that called themselves "hackers" by another group of people that called themselves "hackers". That ship sailed approximately with the first documented use of the word "hacker": http://imranontech.com/2008/04/01/the-origin-of-hacker/ http://imranontech.com/2008/04/01/the-origin-of-hacker/ This petition is bad and its creator should feel bad.
- __david__ 12y agoAm I the only one not concerned about a word having two (or more) connotations? It seems common in English... Sometimes I say "painter" and I mean a guy who paints walls, and sometimes I mean a guy who paints pictures.
- jacquesm 12y agoDon't sweat it and let context guide you. It's not as if hackers are some kind of minority group that needs protection. Moniker, no moniker, who cares.
- dingdingdang 12y agoListen please: the original meaning of "cracker" is someone who defeats locally installed software protections through patching/modifying the compiled program code. "Cracker" as a term is historically unfit for describing online exploits. Look up "SKIDROW" or "Phrozen Crew" or "Razor 1911" for examples of groups that (at least originally) worked/works primarily as crackers.
- adlpz 12y agoI'm afraid I'm just adding to the pile here, but still: this is complete nonsense. Hacker is a word that always had several interpretations. And, in fact, the network intruder one is of the oldest. In fact, cracking, in software, is a very specific thing: bypassing copyrights/copy protections/limitations. If you don't like what Hacker has meant and still means, don't apply it to yourself.
- IanCal 12y ago"Dear media, please stop using a word your readers understand, instead say a racial epithet that's been used for the last 140 years." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_(pejorative) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_(pejorative)
- err4nt 12y agoI have an idea, let's use the term 'honkey', it even almost sounds like 'hacker'…
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- genofon 12y agoI would like to sign a petition not to use 'Hacker' to hype basically anything. Shorter even banks will look for "Hacker" accountants.
- mynameismonkey 12y agoBetter to petition them to use the term "malicious hacker".
- xxs 12y agoHow to accomplish this: need some group to determine and call themselves 'hackers' and sue everyone for actually associating with crackers by calling them hackers. Hence it'd be politically incorrect to call them hackers. Done!
- eli 12y agoHow about just stop reading the Huffington Post if you don't like the way they write?
- kanungoparth 12y agoIt's not just Huffington Post. There are more newspapers and publications added in the list.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- NaNaN 12y agoPLEASE HACK INTO THE ENEMY FIRST
- Shorel 12y agoWhile we are at it, we can tell modern religious literalists that 'Baal' means Lord, and that El and YHVH are different Gods as well, and that all three once competed for followers.
- rpenm 12y agoMore lost causes on Change.org
- ForHackernews 12y agoHackers can be either white hats or black hats (or something in between: grey hats). The moral ambiguity is part of what makes the appellation interesting. This whole attempt to make "cracker" happen feels like a bunch of people desperate to call themselves "Hackers" and feel cool, but without scaring off boring BigCorp employers.
- dethtron5000 12y agoFighting semantic drift is literally the hardest thing in the world.