Slashdot Mirror
'The Word Hack is Meaningless and Should Be Retired' (thenextweb.com)
An anonymous reader quotes The Next Web:
The word 'hack' used to mean something, and hackers were known for their technical brilliance and creativity. Now, literally anything is a hack -- anything -- to the point where the term is meaningless, and should be retired. The most egregious abuse of the term "hack" comes from the BBC's Dougal Shaw. In a recent video of his, called "My lunch hack," Shaw demonstrates that it's cheaper to make your own sandwich each day than it is to buy a pre-packaged sandwich from the supermarket. Shaw calls that a hack. I call it common sense.
And that's not nearly the worst example. I haven't touched on "life hacks" yet. This term is nebulous. It means nothing and anything. It's used to describe arts and crafts... That said, the worst dilution of the term "hack" comes from growth hackers... Anyway, I regret to inform you that the word "hack" is now bad, and should be avoided.
A request for alternative words first went up on Slashdot back in 1999 -- but nothing's been settled. Back in 2014 a Gizmodo reporter wrote an impassioned plea titled "Please stop calling everything a hack" -- while others have argued the opposite.
in 2015 the editorial director of Make magazine cited hack's definition in The New Hacker's Dictionary as "an appropriate application of ingenuity," arguing that "my and other Make contributors' use of the term for clever shop techniques, ingeniously simple projects, and epic 'kluges' (i.e. Rube Goldberg-level hacks and fixes) is entirely appropriate."
And that's not nearly the worst example. I haven't touched on "life hacks" yet. This term is nebulous. It means nothing and anything. It's used to describe arts and crafts... That said, the worst dilution of the term "hack" comes from growth hackers... Anyway, I regret to inform you that the word "hack" is now bad, and should be avoided.
A request for alternative words first went up on Slashdot back in 1999 -- but nothing's been settled. Back in 2014 a Gizmodo reporter wrote an impassioned plea titled "Please stop calling everything a hack" -- while others have argued the opposite.
in 2015 the editorial director of Make magazine cited hack's definition in The New Hacker's Dictionary as "an appropriate application of ingenuity," arguing that "my and other Make contributors' use of the term for clever shop techniques, ingeniously simple projects, and epic 'kluges' (i.e. Rube Goldberg-level hacks and fixes) is entirely appropriate."
The BBC's Dougal Shaw is a hack.
s/hack/tip/
Would this be a removal hack?
If you use su to open the mayonnaise does that make it a hack?
You have to go down 14 definitions of "hack" to get to to this:
---------
Computers.
to modify a computer program or electronic device in a skillful or clever way: to hack around with HTML.
to break into a network, computer, file, etc., usually with malicious intent.
http://www.dictionary.com/brow...
----------
Hacking may have been popularized to describe computer hacking, but it means MANY OTHER THINGS TOO.
Hacker is a term favored by many hacks, but hackers don't care what it's called as long as the hack is effective.
As it so happens, one of the definitions of "hack" is "a writer or journalist producing dull, unoriginal work".
Is that relevant? It sounds relevant.
English is a hack and you can't do diddly shit about it!
Table-ized A.I.
Have gnu, will travel.
1) To circumvent a restriction (usually technical) through the application of obscure knowledge or by exploitation of unexpected behaviors of a system.
"This stupid thing's security routine has tripped again-- Can you hack it for me Bob?"
Hack (n):
1) An implementation of an exploit or technical circumvention of an imposed restriction on a system. Usually technical.
"I wrote a dirty hack to get root access to fix Steve's login problem; The security model of this system needs some serious revision."
2) A person who is unqualified for their current vocational position.
"I met the new database administrator today. The guy is a total hack; could not put together a tuple query to save his own ass."
So-- Am I using these words wrong in terms of modern parlance?
Trump is a hack.
The word meaningless means meaningless and should to be retired.
The unwashed 'you' listened so well when the community dictated that 'hacking' was to be reserved for productive uses of technology rather than malicious 'cracking.'
The unwashed 'you' listened so well when the community dictated that 'hacking' was to be reserved for uses that required technical skill rather than script kiddies' ignorant throw-it-at-the-wall uses of others' prepackaged tools.
But now, now the unwashed 'you' will listen to advice to avoid calling everything 'hacking' and the results a 'hack.'
Bwahahaha... keep dreaming.
There's a little-known language hack that can help you feel less stressed out by things like this. It's called a homonym.
That's when different words with different meanings have both the same spelling and pronunciation. Strange, but true.
How can you tell them apart? Well, you have to use context:
If somebody is talking a about a "hack" that uses apple cider vinegar, then you know that it's some silly folk remedy.
If somebody is talking about a hack that involves breaking into a computer system, then you know that they're talking about cybercrime.
If somebody is talking about a hack that involves a clever and unorthodox programming method, then you know that some geek figured out a labor-saving way to solve a problem.
If somebody is talking about a hack and it involves felling a tree, then you know that they're wielding an ax.
The list goes on, but you get the idea. This is how human language works. If you accept that, then you will live a less stressful life.
This is like when ethnic groups adopt a derogatory term so that you can no longer use it in it's previous form.
The commoners have won.
Facebook got cucked. All your info was stolen.
I think you missed #7. The first six are all variants of "cut, crudely". The first definition other than "cut" is:
Computers.
A) to modify (a computer program or electronic device) or write (a program) in a skillful or clever way:
B) to circumvent security and break into (a network, computer, file, etc.), usually with malicious intent
As a career "hacker", I'd say that 7b could be refined to better indicate what is meant by "circumvent security" or "break" into. Knowing somebody's password isn't breaking in. That's just going in. Circumventing, breaking into a computer, requires doing something clever or skillful. It is therefore a subset of 7a.
That definition is also overly specific - people hacked the phone system, and specifically pay phones, before they hacked computers. They used the word hacking for that, as well as phreaking.
In my opinion and usage, to hack means to manipulate a system in order to use it in a way very much not intended by the creators of the system. Especially manipulating it to use it in a way that the creators sought to prevent.
Hacking old, out-of-print, unsupported software could be for good motives, such as retrieving data for the user. Hacking Slashdot could be done for bad motives. The commonality is that the creators didn't intend to allow or facilitate the action.
I've modified the compiled binaries of swf files long after the source code was lost, in order to keep a site working. I hacked the files - nobody ever intended for swf files to be updated by directly modifying them, such as with hexedit.
Sad little penis.
And yet any posts about improper use of words and terms are met with cries of "pendant!". This is why we can't have nice things. You children break them all.
Requir'd viewing for life hacks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h5WrWncDZw
I don't usually enjoy Papa Franku but this is spot on.
that is stupid
what if I'm watching a cyber-horror film and the protagonist is accessing files illegally to track down a killer that chops up his victims who is also a failing writer of homeopathic books?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Hack - "lifehack" Code - "learn to code" Cloud - "in the cloud" to mean "I don't know where it is" or "to give away all one's personal data" Ping - "ping me later" Program - "program my phone"
The article about the sandwich hack says "Media playback is unsupported on your device".
This means I just managed to hack the BBC's website, and/or defeat a news site video player. 't was easy but I'm proud regardless.
It is in the nature of words to have more than one meaning, and to acquire and lose ones depending on the cultural environment and the shifting sensibility. The very usage of the word "hack" to mean "to program" is the result of a fad in a certain scene. Don't play the dictionary police, it's infantile and counterproductive.
Isn't everything a hack, nigga?
Whatever the original technical (and by no means restricted to computing!) meaning was*, modern parlance really only serves one purpose:
To show that the speaker knows diddly squat and/or assumes you do. I have found this very effective at filtering out bullshit from my news diet. As in the computer security industry (no original meaning "hackers" to be found there, as they're all s'kiddies unworthy of what was originally an informal badge of merit) uses it to scare computer users into becoming computer security "service" customers, and as in media trying to paper over that they're serving empty bullshit by liberal application of "hack" and/or "hacker". Or even as in hollywood-type parlance, where "hacker" essentialy means "bogeyman" (possibly with added "cyber"), capable of just about anything, the big unknown and unknowable threat in your computer and computer network that therefore must be capable of just about anything scary you might imagine. Just imagine!
So the word has become essentially meaningless, unable to be used wrong, but also unable to convey concrete meaning, only conveying meta-meaning. This has become especially stark with security breaches, even moreso with security breaches with cryptocoin exchanges: There the meaning has become specific again, but always in the meta: Either the people claiming to be "hacked" are themselves criminally incompetent, or they're absconding with the coins. Since they were in charge of customers' coins and the coins are now gone, they at minimum betrayed their customers' trust in them and instead of fessing up are pointing fingers to some bogeyman. Syeah.
This is why the argument is exactly what it is: The word has become meaningless. You can wave around your pet definition all you want, but that doesn't help against all the other people's own pet definitions. What part of "The Word Is Devoid Of Meaning" did you fail to understand here?
The only remedy is to stop using the word, especially in computer security-related reporting. Tell us what you know instead. At which point you (and all your readers) will have come to terms with the fact that you knew diddly squat and are not merely bereft of useful words to say things with, but are bereft of useful things to say. And yeah, that'll hurt quite a bit. So it won't happen. But it needs to happen if, especially computer security, is to move forward and become even just a tiny little bit useful.
* The result of a technical prowess-fueled creative act that causes in the onlooker new insight in a mind-twisting way. Typically moreso in onlookers themselves technicall well-skilled. But of course new insights are only new the first time you see them. This is completely orthogonal to the "us vs. them" "security" game that pervades "modern use" of the word. "The number you have dialed is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again."
The tech-illiterate media essentially stole the word to fearmonger with, then its meaning became diluted and distorted though constant overuse and improper use.
I offer this definition:
That definition fits everything from making a paper airplane (among the simplest hacks, that almost everyone has seen), hardware/software exploits, to cybernetic implants, and most of what the maker community does. Importantly, it says nothing about the moral/virtuous nature of the functional change, only that there was a change.
We, the technical community, need to seize control of the word and enforce its proper usage.
Trump is meaningless and should be retired
Quick, delete all english words with more than a single clear meaning.
We'd have only a very small and barely functional language if we had that.
"set" has way too many meanings. Thus it's meaningless and should be retired.
This guy is really full of himself.
He should puncture his body several times just to let all of himself out of himself.
Hack-gate!
Language is fluid. Over time, words change meaning through use - sometimes in ways we find stupid or annoying. But that’s just the way it goes.
I hate the term “life hack”. I hope it dies in a fire. But I have very little control over whether that excremental little turn of phrase ends up having staying power, or if it deservedly fades into oblivion along with the talentless hacks (hey, see what I did there?) who are trying to promote themselves by adopting it.
#DeleteChrome
If you're arguing word abuse, don't do it yourself.
If you don't learn from your hack each time you do it, it's not a hack. The things people call hacks aren't really hacks by that definition either. This original definition isn't in the article that I could find.
Unfortunately geek culture was high-jacked by people unwilling to apply those standards to themselves and that is something we have to acknowledge. If course the short answer is not to derive a new meaning but to reclaim it by associating deliberate breaches of computer security with cracking and learning a new computer hack as hacking.
Who gives a shit if the mass of people get it wrong if nerds and geeks use it the way it is intended, just let them go Huh? and try to figure out how they got it wrong. Nothing is foolproof because fools are so ingenious and since no one has invented a way to fix stupid I see little point wasting brain power on inventing a new terminology when I could be hacking my way through code.
What about that for a hack?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Programmers need to form a secret society with a secret handshake and magic words not to be uttered to outsiders. Oh, and a magic mysterious symbol. Then they could hand out power rings and decoders.
E Proelio Veritas.
It has too many uses and now mean nothing. We should use some other fancier word instead... which will then be deprecated as it means the same things as retired.
Don't people have any real problems to focus on any more? (I know I have, but those have been retired for the more meaning full task of arguing schematics on the Internet)
Which is why, in the absence of effort to prevent it, it runs downhill till it reaches a drain.
The best you can do is mentally label anyone who uses it as an utter bell-end and move on.
P.S. Bizarre thing - the double quotes look OK in your post but when I copied them they went all a-hatty. WTF?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The dumbest fucking thing you could possibly be mad about!
The MIT Museum, in Cambridge, Massachusetts has a good hall of good hacks. It's described at http://hacks.mit.edu/exhibits/..., but the web page does *not* do it justice. I was involved in a few of them, back in the 80's, and MIT's hacks have a proud tradition.
Just because something has multiple meanings doesn't make it meaningless, technically it makes it quite the opposite.
Here's a simple litmus test for if a word should be "retired":
1. Use word in context. Does someone know what you're talking about? > Don't retire word.
This language hack brought to you by someone who's not at war with the ability to communicate with others.
Don't like the word hack? You have 3 options:
1. Find an english community that doesn't use it.
2. Pick a language that doesn't use it.
3. Sit around miserable and hope that one day it will change.
people aren't going to stop, give it up
Editor David is also Meaningless and Should Be Retired.
At the bottom of the
They ran a few clickbait ads, so it was hacked and poor Hillary lost.
Language is dynamic, not static. Words don't have explicit meaning, they have usage. When people no longer have any use for a word, it will automatically run out of fashion and out of the general vocabulary. Arguing to 'retire' words just because a word has loss its use for YOU is, in my opinion, rather arrogant.
The words:
"Cookie" & "Consent"
Those words has lost all meaning now.
Burn them, and piss on the ashes!
Oh, and:
"Policy"
How dumb is that article?
Does nobody read the classics in school anymore?:
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less."
Lewis Carroll - "Through the Looking Glass"
That book is of course compulsory reading, over and above any other, for anyone involved in creating software.
...yet still as promiscuous as ever.
Sounds like you are too young to know what you are talking about.
Yes "hack" had that meaning among the group and the period you describe.
What about before?
Don't know do you.
No it should not. The entire article is garbage. A word should be used based on its meaning, not because it upsets some category of retarded social outcasts.
In Norway these life hacks and other stuff is what would be categorized as "old ladys advice" or home remedys/advice and yes, common sense.
My biggest irk is still the use of hack/hacker to depict someone buying a cheat of the net and using it in a game to gain an advantage.
If someone were to use loaded dice at a casino we would all agree they are cheating. This even holds true for online casinos. Somehow if it's on a game it's hacking?
Popular words become abused. Annoying words are forgotten. Let's revive a word and use that for game-cheaters: From now on I'll call any game-cheater for a twerker. I'll say they are twerking and let's see if I can make it catch.
The word "hack" was always an insult translating to "sloppy and just barely working."
I hacked your slashdot account so I can post using your name now.
Maga! Trump 2020!
Unfortunately, people coopted this particular technical term hundreds of years ago in the context of cutting things. That must have really pissed off the early computer hackers of the period.
"The most egregious abuse of the term "hack" comes from the BBC's Dougal Shaw. ...
And that's not nearly the worst example."
Writers complaining about sloppy language should be more careful about their own language. :)
The original usage was someone who "hacked" at something, instead of crafting it. It was pejorative. If someone was a "hack", they worked without thinking and didn't really know what they were doing, and a "hacker" was the same thing. Then TV shows and news reports came out glorifying this, and the meaning became congratulatory.
Basically to change the behavior to serve you or someone else better.
One hack is to make a program elevate your permissions to root.
But another hack could be to make an http server serve as a ftp server, or add sftp support to a ftp server that didn't support it.
Making a Sandwich for lunch is not a hack, eating your won sandwich at the restaurant would be.
Putting a stone in front of a self closing door to prevent it from closing is also is also a hack.
Then there is hacks and there is hacks, putting a stone in front of the door is very common and easy to figure out, to know common problems in computerprograms and then be able to figure out how to get it to elevate your permissions requires alot of expertise and some intelligence.
Making windows stop auto restart due to updates push adds on your start menu is mostly a matter of google fu.
Who the hack wrote this?
https://youtu.be/9H2CVS3Eyu8
"Cut with rough or heavy blows"
I wouldn't suggest using that on your computer or your sandwich.
"Hacker" is not a technical term.
The word "hack" has been used for all sorts of things: cab drivers, writers, prison guards - not to mention smokers and hacky-sack players.
I think the author's a hack.
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
Most things lose their value because we get used to them.
The more people exaggerate, using hyperboles and strong terms for nothing, the more those words will wear off.
Being at home in multiple cultures and languages, I find it interesting to see the much faster "recycling" of words and phrases in english than, e.g., in german. Somehow, the english/US culture seems to be more geared towards "selling" (not always literally w.r.t. goods, but also in trying to convey ideas to the public at large) and advertisement.
Thus, you see a fast inflation of the meaning of words in english, and a constant popping up of new words to recapture the original meaning of older words. It is kind of confusing and not very productive, IMHO.
German, in contrast (note that I'm not a native german speaker, just my outside observation), has a much lower pace of new words, and the meaning of existing words seems to wear off not so fast. Probably just a result of a more conservative and reserved culture.
Icelandic and finnish are even more conservative (as a language) and hardly have changed in the past 1000 years.
Last I checked, "hack" was far older than computers. Older, even, than ingenuity.
https://www.etymonline.com/sea...
https://www.etymonline.com/wor...
chopping wood, coughing, routine work...
Nice that 700 years later, computer criminals adopted it too. Not surprising that this particular word has finally made it back to its roots.
Next you'll be saying that "gay" is suddenly being used to describe everyone who's happy. Wait for it.
When the fake news redefined hack to include purchasing ads on social networks and participating in online forums, the word lost its last shred of meaning.
After the election, I had friends asking me how the Russians "hacked" the election. They assumed it was a technical hack like flipping votes in the counting machines or something like that. I explained that the Russians bought ads on Facebook, made memes and participated in online forums. These friends were annoyed that the news would use the term "hack" in such a misleading way.
Don't use Hack.
This is the worst article I've ever read on slashdot
You don't need to stop using a word just because its become less specific. In that case, we should stop using worlds like "thing" and "person" too.
https://imgur.com/a7pT6fl
Hipsters ruin everything.
This is a fruitless argument. Nothing can be reversed here. It reminds me of a 5th grade teacher I had, (many decades ago) who said about the word queer when it was first began to be used to define a homosexuals. He said that he was going to do every thing in his power to see that queer wasn't used to define homosexuals. I guess he went to his grave trying.
Manipulate:
1. To manage or influence skillfully, especially in an unfair manner:
to manipulate people's feelings.
Social engineering, manipulating the human part of the system, is the first definition of "manipulate".
Brute forcing very rarely works, so I wonder if you actually mean dictionary attacks. Sometimes people use these terms incorrectly :) A GOOD dictionary attack involves a bit of skill, including figuring out which potential passwords would be allowed by the system, what defense systems are in place, etc.
... because there's a qualifying context of use.
TFS tells us nothing we haven't already known. Hack is a kind of saw; it's a severe cough, it's a chopping motion of an ax, it's a taxi, and it is a term for picking a computer lock.
Tilting at windmills includes the misnomer "floppy," for a rigid disk.
And, outside the confines of the Internet, what the fuck does "google it," even mean?
Chill out and let it go.
I have never had a problem with mixed-meanings regarding the word, "hack."
Perhaps you should find a quiet place and see if you can come to terms with it.
See what I did there.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
No they weren't, quit polishing your rod.
.. Tha the Venn diagram of "People who actually hack" and "People who whine and moan about arbitrary words and thier definitions" consist of two none-overlapping circles about a AU apart from each other.
I didn't know words could be retired. Is there a form somewhere for this? Do you have to pay a fee?
// This is not a sig.
You have to go down 14 definitions of "hack" to get to to this:
---------
Computers.
to modify a computer program or electronic device in a skillful or clever way: to hack around with HTML.
to break into a network, computer, file, etc., usually with malicious intent.
http://www.dictionary.com/brow... ----------
Hacking may have been popularized to describe computer hacking, but it means MANY OTHER THINGS TOO.
An older non-computer definition was applied to computers originally. "Hacking" was just slapping thing together in a shoddy unprofessional way, albeit often in an experimental way, an exploratory learning way, but sometimes slapped together shoddily, unprofessionally, for expediency, time constraints.
"Hacked together" vs engineered.
They used “ and ”, sounds like your Browser expects latin-1 instead of UTF-8.
If the word hack still had a meaning, I'd recommend a quick hack to fix the problem, but oh well.
I'm someone who grew up during the DOS era, and later Windows. I know EXACTLY what the "hack" computer slang means. It means what everyone at that period knew it meant, which is "break into a computer system that you're not authorized to access", it's that freaking simple.
No. As someone from the Apple II era I can say that your definition is one of many redefinitions. In your era a "hack" could also mean an unsophisticated shoddy manner of doing something. Perhaps to save time on the job, perhaps because the person is poorly trained or unskilled, or perhaps because its a one time unimportant disposable effort so proper engineering practices are unnecessary.
... so yeah the word is kind of meaningless. It requires context or accompanying text to indicates what era's fashionable definition should be applied.
"Hack" has been redefined so many times it has evolved to where it can be the opposite of itself, both skilled and unskilled, sophisticated and unsophisticated, brilliant and crude,
The origin of 1 (noun and verb) is from "hack saw". The verb "hack" means literally to use the hack saw. It then was used to mean doing a simple ugly fix using the hack saw, a kludge,or a bodge.
It seems I did some real hacking in the late 80s. I used a hacksaw to cut a hole into the side of my PC case so I could get the 80386 In Circuit Emulator plug and cabling to the CPU socket. I couldn't just leave the case open, it was my monitor stand. :-)
We were on the same floor as the CEO. He wandered into my cube to find out what the hell that god-awlful noise was about, took one quick look, uttered "I'm not even going to ask why", turned around and left.
On second thought the hacksaw notion sounds like a redefinition too. An earlier definition might refer to an axe rather than a hacksaw. Since I hacked away at some trees in the 70s I guess that was my first "hack". Definitely not a skillful job of felling those trees.
I'll stop using the word hack just as soon as hacks stop using all of the following meaningless words:
REST
Agile
Cloud
AI
Until then fuck off with telling people what words people should or should not use just to whore hits to your crappy online news site.
I used the straight double-quote on both sides; but iOS, in its infinite wisdom, probably did an automatic replacement.
I could use less of Apple trying to be cute like that, and more of Apple paying attention to details - like overriding whomever the stupid fool was that thought randomly changing the size of the iOS space bar was a good idea.
#DeleteChrome
If what you're doing isn't written about in the 1984 book, you're not hacking. You're misappropriating other people's coolness and need to cut the crap.
Would brute force debugging be considered hacking?
There are systematic ways of debugging problematic code or even a miss-wired circuit such as divide-and-conquer to isolate the location of a bug, doing a diff against a functioning earlier version, conducting tests to verify assertions and so on? Is it hacking when you keep testing the code with change A, change B, change C in the hope of fixing it?
As in, "I am just hacking, I need to get up and walk around to clear my head and get back to working on this systematically?"
I think of this as hacking in that one way to "hack" into a system is to probe known vulnerabilities systematically whereas another way is to just keep trying plausible simple passwords that people use?
do a thing which causes a thing. you know, like, action or something. hack that!
As someone who grew up during the ipad era, I know EXACTLY what the word "hack" means. It means what everyone knows it means, which is installing an app without Apple's permission. That's what it means, whether you like it or not.
I even double-checked with the genius at my local apple store and he said that's totally what "hack" means. My friend asked him if he was a hack and we were thrown out and banned from the store. Which is annoying because now I'm going to have to go to the store in the next town to line up overnight when the next iphone comes out.
All the weirdos trying to claim that it's not what I think it is are just weird and definitely not people who were using the term 30 years before I was born. Just deal with it.
It didn't fucking work with fuck, so why hack hack?
i have a great hack to hack all these invalid hacks of the work hack.
simple, just hack the hack out of it, even a hacker could do it!
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Yesterday I hacked my lentil soup by drinking it straight from the bowl. I saved water resources and time by being able to consume the soup faster and not having to wash a spoon. Haxx0rRulz.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
The one that grates on me is when someone says "My iTunes account was hacked". No, it wasn't hacked, you had a simple password and someone exploited it.
A lot of people use both of these words that really have no clue what they used to actually mean... I was quite excited to learn about Memes back in the 90s when the idea of 'ideas as a structural, mutable, transmissible unit of information' was seriously being talked about. Now I am just sad that it only means 'quasi witty/simi-humorous jpegs'. Almost impossible to find real discussions about true memes.