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Reuters totally clueless about the meaning of "hacking"

215 pointsby jchungover 13 years ago

30 comments

neilparikhover 13 years ago
I'm not angry at Reuters for using the word hacker in the common way, since it is used by everyone that way, and they are not in the wrong for using a term with the definition the public uses. I'm angry that Reuters used Mark saying that he is a hacker to imply that he is associated with people who damaged Fortune 500 companies, <i>especially when he (Mark) defines hacker to mean something completely different to the common, and they use that in the article.</i> This entire article was a thinly veiled attempt to launch an ad hominem attack against Silicon Valley for opposing SOPA. The opposition of SOPA by Silicon Valley was even mentioned in the article.
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neilparikhover 13 years ago
Wait, what? He clearly quotes Mark saying, "In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done." Then he (the author) says, "That’s a spirited defense of a means of protest that has wreaked havoc on a litany of Fortune 500 companies over the last year." How is building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done, a means of protest, and how does that wreak havoc on Fortune 500 companies?<p>And I found this pretty insulting too, "Wall Street probably won’t mind all the idealism as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the stock price -- provided Anonymous isn't a featured speaker at the next shareholders meeting."<p>What happened to proper journalism, where the author did at least a little bit of background research before publishing an article?
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lambdaover 13 years ago
Just a note to everyone: this isn't "Reuters" writing this. If you notice the byline, "By Brent Lang at TheWrap", this is content syndicated from "The Wrap", which appears to be some Hollywood celeb gossip rag.
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orblivionover 13 years ago
I will definitely agree that Reuters missed Zuckerberg's point.<p>But this made me think of another point: Who are we to assign connotations to "hacker"? The only complaint we legitimately have is the corruption of language, if you want to make the argument that the definition of the word was originally 'tinkerer' and not 'exploiter of systematic weaknesses or loopholes' (or even more crudely, digital breaker-and-enterer).<p>If somebody is using a systematic weakness in IP to take down a website, that's within a class of thing, we can call it A. If somebody wants to take apart a device and re-purpose it, that's within another class of thing, we can call it B.<p>So you and I, more or less, consider A as a subset of B. Over here, we define "hacking" as B, while the media tends to define it as A. Meanwhile we get up on our high horse, saying that "real hacking" is actually B (which, again, encompasses A). But, apart from the corruption of the language, who cares? I think that our reaction to the media calling A both evil, and "hacking", puts us on the defensive, because we think of "hacking" as B, and as such, to us it sounds like the media is attacking tinkering as dangerous.<p>But that's nonsense, the media doesn't care about, or understand, tinkering. We could just as well change the name of B to "tinkering" and dodge any negative connotation. The only reason we stick to "hacking" <i>for better or worse</i> (I'm not saying we should run away), is that it's our legacy, in a way. So given all that, I think we're in the position of promoting a definition of "hacker" that is new to the media, rather than telling them that they're using the "wrong" definition.
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adrianpikeover 13 years ago
When you realize it's just syndicated off of The Wrap, which is apparently some Hollywood news site, it makes more sense.<p><a href="http://www.thewrap.com/media/column-post/facebook-ipo-mark-zuckerbergs-bizarre-ode-hackers-35060" rel="nofollow">http://www.thewrap.com/media/column-post/facebook-ipo-mark-z...</a>
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steve-howardover 13 years ago
I found it funny that the in-text "also read this" spam was about Megaupload. Might be something in my adblock, but it didn't show up any different than the article text and wasn't a link.
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robertskmilesover 13 years ago
The key error the author makes is that he fails to <i>Notice His Confusion</i>. When something confuses you, you have to <i>stop</i> and figure out why you're wrong. You can't be confused and right at the same time. If you are confused, then something you believe is false.<p>So when a man known to be highly intelligent and very successful makes a statement which you find "bizarre", you don't write an article "Zuckerberg makes baffling statement", you think "Why am I baffled? Clearly I'm missing something about what's going on here", and you <i>do more research</i>. The concept 'I am confused' is not newsworthy.<p><a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/if/your_strength_as_a_rationalist/" rel="nofollow">http://lesswrong.com/lw/if/your_strength_as_a_rationalist/</a>
mustardamusover 13 years ago
Timeline:<p>4:28MEZ “The word ‘hacker’ has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers,” Zuckerberg wrote.<p>YEP!<p>4:28MEZ “In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. [...]"<p>Yeah, kinda...<p>4:28MEZ That’s a spirited defense of a means of protest that has wrecked havoc on a litany of Fortune 500 companies over the last year.<p>Erm? Troll?<p>4:28MEZ Back on HN.
wtvanhestover 13 years ago
Seriously though, when I first found HN I was wondering what I had stumbled in to. A few days later I was hooked. Now over a year later, when I read the term hacker about someone doing something illegal I react weirdly to it.<p>Most people still don't know what silicon valley and HN mean when they say hacker yet.
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daviddoranover 13 years ago
I wrote a corrections request to both Reuters and The Wrap. Little good it will do, I'm sure, but it offends me to see a journalist spend so little effort trying to be correct. How absurd to use quotes which actually indicate the opposite of your conclusion? It's the equivalent of quoting "Many companies in our industry treat their employees poorly, but we're different.", and concluding "Mr. X and his company take advantage of the poor standards of the industry to mistreat their employees".
dbeckerover 13 years ago
In all fairness, the word gets used in many ways. Further down the HN front page there's a story "VeriSign Hit by Hackers."<p>They don't mean that VeriSign was hit by people who built cool software over the weekend.<p>Reuters is a major news organization, and they should know the definition as Zuckerberg is using it... especially since he explains it in the quote. But they aren't making up a new definition out of thin air.
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peterwwillisover 13 years ago
Just another pointless post upvoted because it has the word 'hacker' in it.<p>You don't have to give attention to every lame story that "doesn't get it." Even if this <i>was</i> a story by Reuters, <i>which it is not</i>, it still wouldn't matter. Welcome to 20 years ago when the media stopped giving a shit about giving hackers a fair shake.
john_bover 13 years ago
I was going to leave a comment, but the comments are closed on that article. Reuters allows comments for a "limited period after publication" but the article has only been there for less than 3 hours. Smells a little fishy to me, maybe they were called out for their nonsense?
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Animus7over 13 years ago
&#62; ... provided Anonymous isn't a featured speaker at the next shareholders meeting.<p>Not content with mere ignorance about what "hacking" is and conflating it with cracking and script kiddies, the author ices the article by demonstrating ignorance about cracking and script kiddies as well.
EGregover 13 years ago
I bet Brent Lang from Reuters will really fall off his chair when he realizes his article has been trending second on -- gasp -- Hacker News! You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy...<p>LOL
dsrguruover 13 years ago
Obviously the author of this article has a bone to pick with the technology industry as a result of SOPA being shut down for now, but if we divorce ourselves from our knowledge of tech lingo, this doesn't read as a "thinly veiled attempt to launch an ad hominem attack against Silicon Valley." The author clearly is unfamiliar with the way we use the term "hacker" or even that it has another definition and, therefore, when Zuckerberg says that the term "has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers," he doesn't realize Zuckerberg is trying to say that the term has an entirely different meaning from breaking into computers. He clearly thinks Zuckerberg is saying that hackers (which he reads as "people who break into computers") are unfairly portrayed as people who break into computers to do bad, when in reality they sometimes break into computers for constructive reasons. He doesn't realize Zuckerberg is literally saying that the media mistakenly interprets "hackers" as "people who break into computers, period." Zuckerberg's use of "connotation" instead of "denotation" makes it sound like he's defending cracking philosophically as opposed to saying that hacking has a totally different meaning to people in the tech industry.<p>I've reprinted his quote of Zuckerberg with parenthetical glosses showing how the author and anyone not innoculated by knowledge of hacker culture would probably interpret it.<p>"In reality, hacking (breaking into computers) just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. Like most things, it (breaking into computers) can be used for good (to fight what you perceive as unjustice) or bad (personal gain or schadenfreude), but the vast majority of hackers I've met tend to be idealistic people (hippies who hate corporations) who want to have a positive impact on the world (by getting rid of capitalism)."<p>With that reading, I think most of us too would be disappointed or even furious with Zuckerberg. I'm glad that wealth and fame haven't compromized Zuckerberg's view of himself as a hacker in our sense of the word, but I think he did a really bad job explaining to the media that the word is used completely differently by techies. That is unfortunate since he is one of the few people with enough influence to get the public to understand and adopt our usage of the word.
pbiggarover 13 years ago
This was an excellent article, when looked at through the lens of making ad revenue, which is the only lens through which this drivel could flourish. Simply put, online content providers (I refuse to call this crap "news") need eyeballs, and writing crap like this causes eyeballs to appear.<p>Fortunately, about 50% of the eyeballs are protected by adblockers, but still a great day at the office, for which I suspect he will get much kudos, and be asked to write similar crap again.
MrKurtHaeuslerover 13 years ago
Hacktivism is still a fairly big part of "the hacker way", and so it should be. I think the concept of wreaking havoc on fortune 500 companies is actually a fair representation of the hacker spirit, whether it is done by damaging their websites, or creating small startups to compete against them. I prefer the latter, but it is perfectly ok to associate the former as part of the same hacker ideal.
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rewindover 13 years ago
Once societal mainstream embraces -- and misuses -- a word that a subset of society previously held dearly, it's time for that subset to let the word go, regardless of how much they romanticized or embraced it.
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PaulAnundaover 13 years ago
title should read: 'Brent Lang, Film reporter at TheWrap.com, totally clueless about the meaning of "hacking"'
stevewilhelmover 13 years ago
This article was syndicated by Reuters. By contrast, here is an article about Facebook written by Reuters. <a href="http://s831.us/AEOd8B" rel="nofollow">http://s831.us/AEOd8B</a>
kenover 13 years ago
Unfortunately, I would say this is technically not news. If a mainstream news source <i>wasn't</i> totally clueless about hacking, that would be news.
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thekevanover 13 years ago
<a href="https://twitter.com/#!/BrentALang" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/#!/BrentALang</a><p>Send him a message and let him know.
Iamahippieover 13 years ago
My brother thinks that hackers are all blackhats, and isnt aware of the terms black hat or white hat, lol hes fucking retarded, plus he thinks he knows how to use a computer yet tcip completely slipped out of his vocabulary
lo_fyeover 13 years ago
Love how neither of their "Also Read" are hyperlinks.
mikk0jover 13 years ago
Just another crap blogger. Move along, people.
dhaivatpandyaover 13 years ago
Wow. Just wow.
petenixeyover 13 years ago
hacker != cracker
hc8217over 13 years ago
Good find, thanks. I wouldn't say Reuters is 'clueless' about the meaning and they quoted Zuck several times laying out exactly what it means to him. Their point really was that the word hacker has different connotations to most people and this was an odd time for him to attempt to sway public opinion on the definition of the word. I agree with them, it was an odd time. That doesn't make it bad, maybe it was brilliant - but it was a strange thing to see in an IPO filing (again strange != bad).
jessaover 13 years ago
I believe that a good developer or engineer is also a good hacker. Peace, dude!