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."
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.
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?
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.
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.
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"
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.
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.
"set" has way too many meanings. Thus it's meaningless and should be retired.
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.
When I think of "Hacker"-- the thing that immediate comes to mind is the august usenet/bbs article known as "Smashing the stack for fun and profit", which details the finer points of identifying a section of code that can be used for a buffer overflow/stack smash attack, how to create a payload to get executed, and how to implement the attack-- in general terms, rather than specific instances.
You know, this lovely thing:
http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley....
Very informative, but not for the novice. In many respects it is just as applicable today as it was when it was written, albeit with some caveats about heap randomization and some other modern features intended to frustrate this kind of attack.
Maybe I am just old and don't realize it?
I know, it became "Cool" (ahem) to become a "Hacker" in the 90s and 2000s, and now there are all sorts of people who believe (falsely) that they are real hackers. But they really are not. No, if you want to find those, (real hackers) look for the people who bust open game consoles, and who do the actual research and development of the tools all the kiddies use. Using the tools others made does not make you a hacker. Knowing how to make those tools, and how those tools actually work-- that is what makes you a hacker. You need to have the domain knowledge needed to have a firm grasp of a system and its architecture to identify and then exploit potential areas where "unanticipated" behavior can occur, then be clever enough to engineer reliable circumstances to trigger those "unanticipated" behaviors. Without that, you cannot perform the task, and so-- not a hacker.
It does not matter if you are hacking a payphone with a home-made bluebox, of if you are hacking your microwave oven to be able to produce high intensity plasma balls, or hacking a security system to gain privileged access. All of those things require domain knowledge that is not widespread, and is often controlled in its distribution. (which is why I used the word "obscure" in my definition.) Hacking can be enjoyable and easy, if you possess that knowledge. That knowledge is not easily obtained. It is at once difficult to obtain in the first place, and secondly, requires a specific kind of intellect to grasp fully. Hackers are basically masterful system users, that understand the systems they interact with better than their designers, and enjoy getting those systems to perform tasks the designers did not envision, or actively sought to prevent.
This whole "Life hack" stuff is a result of previously widespread domains of knowledge becoming obscure.
You know, like cooking. Can you produce a reduction glaze for your duck l'orange? Most people can't. For those people that know how to cook, it is a fun thing to make some time. Not something you want to do all the time, but if you want duck l'orange, you are not forced to go to a fancy french place and pay 200$. You can make it at home for closer to 15$. In this case, the "system" being exploited is the modern societal system, where the domain knowledge for being a good cook is becoming more rare, and the ability to gain the knowledge is becoming more difficult, (due to increasing time demands on people, so they lack the time or energy to develop the skill sets), and much like script kiddies using "quick and easy" methods produced by real hackers to accomplish tasks, there are "Life hacks" that allow people who haven't got a clue about something that used to be "ordinary to the point of banality", but are now the subject of ever more restricted domain knowledge and skill sets.
It is not so much that the word is diluted; It is that the scope of what constitutes a system that can be exploited has been expanded, as people's domains of knowledge become smaller and smaller, (and as such, more and more previously banal domains of knowledge become obscure), and the upcoming generations simply do not know how to do something, do not really know w
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.
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 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.
It's not so much recommending that the use continue, as explaining how the apparent "dilution" has occurred.
You stated your own take earlier, that a hack needs to be clever and inspiring. This requres suitable domain knowledge. again, when the baseline level of domain knowledge is very low, the conception of the idea to try something will not occur, and so even what to use appears to be a "No shit, idiot." suggestion can in fact be a "wow! COOL! I had no idea!" thing to a lot of people.
Sadly, this includes doing dumbshit things with popcicle sticks, like most "Life Hacks" are.
It is not a dilution of what at the core is the basis for the word "hack" or "hacker", it is a narrowing of the knowledgebase, and the subsequent dilution of what is considered state of the art in terms of "clever."
People dont know that some things have been discovered/known about, and known about for a very long time--- because they are outside their knowledge domain. They independently discover it again, post a "hack" article, and other people in their social domain-- who likewise are intellectually starved-- find it amazing and cool. Yet, for old bastards like us, who have wider knowledge bases, the idea is "No shit. Tell me when you discover the wheel-- this is some old shit bro. Show me something really clever."
This issue of the "wow" factor being such low fruit is how all that clickbait shit like "One weird trick!" is so powerful, and why the internet gets plastered with it like shit in a monkey pen.
They are using the word properly. The problem, is that they are ignorant idiots that are easily impressed.
Editor David is also Meaningless and Should Be Retired.
At the bottom of the
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"
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.
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."
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 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.
"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.
https://imgur.com/a7pT6fl
If you seldom use the su command, because you generally run your computer as root, does that make you a hack?
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.
Somebody copulated with Facebook's spouse, which Facebook is aware of and has done nothing about?
As you rightly mentioned prior, anyone who uses a poorly defined boogey man to sell you on an idea, policy, or product-- is not someone that should ever be considered trustworthy.
Typically, the sales reps for such services, lobbyists for such policies, or apostles of such products--- are completely and totally unable to tell you the finer details of exactly *HOW* that service, policy, or product is able to defend against their boogey man, because they rely on an inherently unspecific and ephemeral view held by the majority of persons to make their cases.
You might ask (of the sales rep), "Yes, I know about heap randomization and the use of hypervisors to catch possible overflow based escalations and the like-- that's script-kiddy stuff, and while I am glad your product implements that, I am much more interested in how your product claims to be able to "stop hackers." As you may be aware, many modern processors have features that are now considered design flaws. Especially those centered around speculative execution as a means of improving branch prediction, and mitigating the risk of a cache miss as a performance enhancement, which has previously unconsidered behaviors that allow a clever individual to deduce enough information about a system, and do so reliably, that even with heap randomization and a hardware based hypervisor, they can gain consistent control of a stack to not only smash it, but also gain control of the hypervisor itself. What exactly does your product do to alleviate these newer vulnerabilities that allow these old methods to be used so much more aggressively, and with so much more potential risk, given that many production systems these days are virtual servers, and gaining control of the hardware hypervisor would give the attacker control over many, MANY production platforms?"
The result will likely be a stupefied look, and a lot of stammering.
This is because the sales rep is not a security expert. The sales rep is a SALES expert.
Now, he could probably talk your ear off about clever things to do to trick people into buying a product they do not need, or talk shop about how their parent company makes unrealistic sales goals in the endless search for more money-- and may even hold some very insightful ideas about generalized human psychology that revolves around wants, and how to pitch products to make them seem to be able to satisfy those wants, regardless of what those wants actually are---- But actually answering a deep question about the product he is hawking? Outside his knowledge domain. His job is to sell you a product or service; to convince you to part with your money either right now, or on a contractually recurring basis-- and to do so as often as is possible.
When you really consider that a modern corporate entity is not a moral actor of any kind, and is instead a very immoral actor held at financial gunpoint by a legal system to actually fulfill the promises it makes in exchange for money-- and that it does everything it possibly can to get the most money with the least actual delivery of promise-- you will be better able to see the situation. (or at least, see it the way I see it.)
News organizations have long since stopped being about actually informing the public in a nominally efficient form-factor. Take a long hard look at say-- Fox News, (since it is so goddamn blatant..) and honestly tell me that they are trying to be informative, rather than seeking to make money by entertaining the existing biases of their viewers, with stories and "experts" that are cherry picked to do exactly that.
Or, in the more mainstream internet--- That news organizations have not adopted similar tactics to use targeted big data techniques to promote news articles that you are likely to find more agreeable (EG, to "like"), so that you spend more time on their news site, generating ad impressions--- rather than giving everyone the same news experience, that has been tailored to be factually sound, and informative about topics of national or global int
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.
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.
sudo make me a sandwich
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
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 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?
Some old journalistic 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.
The only root I use on my mayonnaise is horseradish. Which I guess is a bit of a food hack.
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
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.