Hacker News Reader

Comment by snapcaster | Hacker News Reader

You're on _hacker_ news dude

That's an interesting statement. Are there still people on here who define hacker as a bad thing, instead of someone who wants to take things apart to see how they work?

Is tech still counter culture now that it pervades every place in society? Is it still okay to completely shirk the law now that many tech companies, for all intents and purposes, write the laws?

These are interesting questions to me.

> Is tech still counter culture now that it pervades every place in society?

Tech is not counter culture (and has in my personal observation never really been). Hacker culture, on the other hand, was counterculture from beginning on and still mostly is.

The distinction between legal and illegal hacking it relatively recent. Stealing small amounts of money or value goes way back.

And Hacker News is run by YCombinator, which has an application form that asks applications to explain a time when they cheated ("hacked") a system for personal advantage.

I'd say the stereotype may include a willingness to break the law in order to achieve some technical feat.

Or a willingness to achieve some techical feat to break a law.

Is it a technical feat to install code someone else wrote on a computer and click RUN?

To be a hacker is to know the rules well enough to work around them

Besides, breaking the law is not inherently a bad thing.

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