The Hacker Work Ethic | Hacker News Reader

The Hacker Work Ethic

nytimes.com

23 pointssolipsist18 comments

Google referrer gives you the article, so, google " http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/himanen-hacker.html ", and click the link, with the google referrer, it will work.

Idea: Url shortener that forwards you to a link and gives the link a google referrer. Would take 5 seconds to write. Might start a paywall arms race. :P

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=site:nytimes.com+The+Hacker+Ethic

Seems lmgtfy can do more than be a mere novelty..

With "I'm Feeling Lucky", it becomes the URL shortener I was talking about. Cool.

Interestingly, if you try to do the following:

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:nytimes.com+The+Hacker+E...

It will still take you to the login gate, however using my search terms and clicking I'm Feeling Lucky from the Google main search page does work...

Appears to need a login.

Interesting tidbit I discovered when developing LazyReadr: nytimes doesn't ask for login if you say you're not a browser. You don't have to say you're a search engine crawler either. Just no user-agent header is enough.

Google Cache ftw : http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:h7y-OFV...

http://bugmenot.com/view/nytimes.com

So just register. It's free and they don't spam you. I am sick of people complaining about the NYT; they provide great content and all they want to know is who's reading it. Srsly.

Did I say I didn't register? No.

All I said was that it requires a login. As such, my intent was to provide information. Personally, I don't much care.

I choose to login to various places on a case-by-case basis. Usually I simply don't bother, purely because it's more time than I care about, and I have other things to do, other things to read. In this case I put the link to one side to consider later, if I have time.

Forcing people to register just so they know who is reading just shows how many Barney Rubbles are reading the NYT online.

Its here: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/himanen-hacker.html

It asks me for a login.

"Problems related to programming arouse genuine curiosity in the hacker and make him eager to learn more."

Ouch. I would expect NYT to be wary of gendered pronouns.

I believe this article is from 2001. It would be nice if links had a date on them if they are not current.

What was true back then about the hacker ethic is probably still true today. Not only is this a great article to read, it is somewhat relevant to what's being discussed on HN currently. What is a hacker? What are they good at? And so forth...

This google URL redirect should let you read the original article: http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://www.nytimes.com/...

Doesn't seem to work.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com