
Reuters totally clueless about the meaning of "hacking" - jchung
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/03/idUS201473221420120203
======
neilparikh
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, _especially when he (Mark) defines hacker to mean
something completely different to the common, and they use that in the
article._ 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.

~~~
nostromo
> The opposition of SOPA by Silicon Valley was even mentioned in the article.

Unsurprising given that this was originally published in a Hollywood Biz rag:
[http://www.thewrap.com/media/column-post/facebook-ipo-
mark-z...](http://www.thewrap.com/media/column-post/facebook-ipo-mark-
zuckerbergs-bizarre-ode-hackers-35060)

------
neilparikh
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?

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."

What happened to proper journalism, where the author did at least a little bit
of background research before publishing an article?

~~~
derleth
> What happened to proper journalism, where the author did at least a little
> bit of background research before publishing an article?

That's always been rare. Deadlines, on the other hand, are never in short
supply.

~~~
neilparikh
Plus, this was written by a pro-Hollywood news site, so I'm assuming the
author probably knew a little bit, but decided to attempt to twist Mark's
words in a negative. Admittedly, he pretty much failed.

~~~
tfb
To us and other technologically-informed people, he failed. But to the general
public who already associates the term "hacker" with a destructive force, the
author probably further reinforced the negative connotations. People hear
(read) what they want to hear, especially if it already agrees with their
current understandings.

And it's a shame really. I wonder if some day, with the help of hackers,
technology, and the resultant spread of information, the general public won't
be so ignorant.

------
lambda
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.

~~~
dcurtis
This story appears on Reuters.com with the Reuters layout and Reuters
branding. Whether it is syndicated or not, it is Reuters-endorsed content
that, in my opinion, should bear the same weight as the Associated Press. It's
kind of sad that content of this quality has made it to their site.

------
orblivion
I will definitely agree that Reuters missed Zuckerberg's point.

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).

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.

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.

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" _for better or
worse_ (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.

~~~
nathan_f77
I actually don't think too many engineers are 'hackers'.

I certainly don't consider myself much of a hacker, and I don't think many
here are either.

We are programmers. We build stuff. We need to know everything there is to
know about security risks, but most of us stopped coding windows trojans and
worms after high school.

I don't think many of us know (or care) how to write keygens and cracks for
games, or invisibly extract cash from a bank via social engineering.

That's the definition I subscribe to. Hackers are highly specialized in
computer security, whether they're white-hat or black-hat.

So Reuters is not using the wrong definition. It just feels like school kids
giving new meanings to words, then laughing at their 'lame' parents who don't
understand.

"Tinkering" sounds kind of lame, but it is what it is.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I'm posting on Hacker News! The new meaning is fine, but don't
act like other people are stupid for not getting it.

~~~
orblivion
To be clear, I don't know that it's a new meaning. Stallman always says that
the "tinkerer" is the original meaning, and that the "tinkerer with security
holes" subset became the popular definition later.

~~~
yew
I think it might be better to say that in the days when the meaning of the
word "hacker" was still entirely up in the air, getting at the insides of
things (especially infrastructural things) was often associated with being
"one of the bad guys."

And the "thing" (for lack of a better word) about computing (and also to some
extension all sorts of other fields) that interested the relevant loosely-
defined subculture consisted, while certainly not entirely, at least
substantially of the insides of things. So you ended up dealing with security
even if that wasn't your primary interest.

That's about as clearly as I can put it, anyway. Please do note that I'm not
saying it's a good thing.

------
adrianpike
When you realize it's just syndicated off of The Wrap, which is apparently
some Hollywood news site, it makes more sense.

[http://www.thewrap.com/media/column-post/facebook-ipo-
mark-z...](http://www.thewrap.com/media/column-post/facebook-ipo-mark-
zuckerbergs-bizarre-ode-hackers-35060)

~~~
ricardobeat
How weird is that? A global news agency syndicating content from a small news
site out of nowhere.

~~~
albertsun
How is it that weird? It makes perfect sense for global news distributors to
source content from small providers.

Not saying they did a good job of it here... but the principle is sound.

~~~
ricardobeat
The role of news agencies like Reuters is to produce quality news on matters
that smaller papers might not have the resources to report themselves... like
TheWrap just exemplified.

~~~
mjwalshe
No Reuters and AP are in the business of providing cheap content to fill up
gaps in publications.

------
steve-howard
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.

~~~
hartror
Same but I don't have any adblock on, I think someone had copy and paste fail.

~~~
idspispopd
It turns up from time to time in print publications as well.

------
robertskmiles
The key error the author makes is that he fails to _Notice His Confusion_.
When something confuses you, you have to _stop_ 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.

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 _do more research_. The concept
'I am confused' is not newsworthy.

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/if/your_strength_as_a_rationalist/>

------
mustardamus
Timeline:

4:28MEZ “The word ‘hacker’ has an unfairly negative connotation from being
portrayed in the media as people who break into computers,” Zuckerberg wrote.

YEP!

4:28MEZ “In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing
the boundaries of what can be done. [...]"

Yeah, kinda...

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.

Erm? Troll?

4:28MEZ Back on HN.

------
wtvanhest
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.

Most people still don't know what silicon valley and HN mean when they say
hacker yet.

~~~
tdfx
This wouldn't be so bad if they hadn't included the part about Zuck actually
explaining what he meant by the "hacker way". It's like they breezed right
over it and started making references to Anonymous as if that has anything to
do with what he was talking about.

~~~
wtvanhest
I do think there was some link bait in there too. It was basically a bunch of
keywords jammed in to badly written sentences.

------
daviddoran
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".

------
dbecker
In all fairness, the word gets used in many ways. Further down the HN front
page there's a story "VeriSign Hit by Hackers."

They don't mean that VeriSign was hit by people who built cool software over
the weekend.

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.

~~~
clhodapp
I note that that story _also_ comes from Reuters. However, it is clear that
the definition they are using is an established one. You can tell because our
response when the word "hacker" is used that way is "You shouldn't use the
word 'hacker' that way. Our definition is older", as opposed to "That's a
bizarre and wrong usage of the word 'hacker'".

------
peterwwillis
Just another pointless post upvoted because it has the word 'hacker' in it.

You don't have to give attention to every lame story that "doesn't get it."
Even if this _was_ a story by Reuters, _which it is not_ , it still wouldn't
matter. Welcome to 20 years ago when the media stopped giving a shit about
giving hackers a fair shake.

------
john_b
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?

~~~
eck
Fishy but not unexpected. Online publications always switch off comments when
they see a huge traffic bump and realize they have made fools of themselves
and are being told as much in the comments.

For example, a few weeks ago the NYTimes Public Editor made a blog post about
whether it should be their policy to note in articles when public figures are
obviously lying in their remarks. (They're worried about seeming like the
liberal media and they think they should "fairly balance" truth and fiction on
issues like climate change or what percentage of planned parenthood's money is
spent on abortions.) This resulted in immediate outrage from the commenters
and vicious comments. Not profanity -- articulate rebuttals that just made the
NYTimes look like idiots. Comments switched off. Later they attempted to walk
it back, poorly. Same articulate rebuttals, NYTimes look like idiots again.
Comments switched off even faster. Not even sure why they enabled them on the
second post to begin with.

------
Animus7
> ... provided Anonymous isn't a featured speaker at the next shareholders
> meeting.

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.

------
EGreg
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...

LOL

------
dsrguru
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.

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.

"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)."

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.

------
pbiggar
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.

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.

------
MrKurtHaeusler
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.

~~~
david_shaw
_> 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._

While that may be your opinion -- and I don't necessarily disagree with it --
the point remains that the author took Zuckerberg's comments about hackers to
mean that he considered himself what we know as a "black hat" hacker, which he
clearly did not.

------
rewind
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.

~~~
nessus42
_it's time for that subset to let the word go, regardless of how much they
romanticized or embraced it._

Except for the fact that's just not going to happen.

~~~
rewind
I agree, but it would sure be nice if people worried more about what they do
than what they're called. It's just a word that people get attached to. When I
talk to my friends/family about what I do, I certainly don't call myself a
"hacker", nor would I even if they all understood the true meaning of the
word. The fact that people are so irrationally passionate about the word, to
me, says a lot more about them than the people who use it the wrong way.

~~~
nessus42
It's a _concept_ , not just a word and there's no other word for the concept.
Sure, if everyone were to agree to start using the word "wizfoo" instead of
"hacker" for the concept, maybe that would help avoid the confusion that
occurs due to some people confounding different definitions for the word. On
the other hand, the English language is filled to the brim with words that
have multiple (and sometimes opposite) definitions, so I see no reason why the
world can't deal with that fact here. If there's blame to be placed here, it
is certainly the fault of the journalists who refuse to acknowledge the
distinction, as it is their job to be masters of words, and to understand
these sorts of issues.

------
PaulAnunda
title should read: 'Brent Lang, Film reporter at TheWrap.com, totally clueless
about the meaning of "hacking"'

------
stevewilhelm
This article was syndicated by Reuters. By contrast, here is an article about
Facebook written by Reuters. <http://s831.us/AEOd8B>

------
ken
Unfortunately, I would say this is technically not news. If a mainstream news
source _wasn't_ totally clueless about hacking, that would be news.

~~~
apaprocki
Hey, if I ever find any reporter at Bloomberg that screws up like this I will
personally walk over and fix the situation. If you wanted the same news
without the personal editorial, this was our take:

[http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-02/zuckerberg-s-
hac...](http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-02/zuckerberg-s-hacker-way-
not-profit-to-guide-post-ipo-facebook.html)

------
thekevan
<https://twitter.com/#!/BrentALang>

Send him a message and let him know.

------
Iamahippie
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_fye
Love how neither of their "Also Read" are hyperlinks.

------
mikk0j
Just another crap blogger. Move along, people.

------
dhaivatpandya
Wow. Just wow.

------
petenixey
hacker != cracker

------
hc8217
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).

------
jessa
I believe that a good developer or engineer is also a good hacker. Peace,
dude!

