Probably not for hackers

http://essays.kuntz.co/you-re-probably-not-for-hackers/

by dkuntz2 • 13 years ago

149 105 13 years ago

essays.kuntz.co

gue5t• 13 years ago

"Hacker News" exhibits this pretty badly. Where do you guys suggest to hear about interesting hacks instead of politics and startups?

unimpressive• 13 years ago

https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=%22sho...

Could be a start.

trobertson2• 13 years ago

Honestly, I would pay for a site that was only hard-core tech articles. Hacker News' guidelines are decent, but are incredibly open. Citing sentence 3 of the guidelines:

    If you had to reduce [what's on topic] to a sentence,
    the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's
    intellectual curiosity.

That's a vast, vast pit of 'anything goes'.

krapp• 13 years ago

Dude... go build it and have people pay you.

samweinberg• 13 years ago

Lobste.rs is pretty much what you're describing here.

jjsz3• 13 years ago

There's http://hackaday.com/.

willurd3• 13 years ago

I've come to accept that HN is the place I go to satisfy my "intellectual curiosity" and more focused lists are where I go to get my learn on. For example, for JavaScript stuff:

* http://reddit.com/r/javascript (yeah it's on reddit, but it's a great resource)

* http://javascriptweekly.com/ ( https://twitter.com/JavaScriptDaily )

* http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/tag/javascript/

* http://dailyjs.com/

* http://javascriptshow.com/ (been a while since the last episode)

* http://javascriptjabber.com/ (I haven't listened to any episodes yet, but I plan on it soon)

xenophonf• 13 years ago

Google hack-a-day. It's what I read now instead of alt.hackers. Might be too hardware-centric for this crowd, though.

mjn2• 13 years ago

They tend to be more subject-specific communities. Lambda the Ultimate (http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/) is good if you care about programming languages, for example.

coldtea• 13 years ago

But very very bad if you care about programming and creatings things (that arent PL).

readme• 13 years ago

Of course, this used to be called "Startup News" but then PG picked the more general "Hacker News" instead.

While not everyone reading and posting on HN is a hacker, the website was founded by one of the world's greatest. So, I think that justifies the title.

Still, no matter what you publish, those outside your intended demographic will always read it. If you made a website called "Gangsta News", I'm sure white suburban kids from middle class families would read it.

_bfhp2• 13 years ago

I'm no experienced software or hardware hacker but I would have to guess that the best way to hear about "interesting hacks" (whatever those are) is to start doing some. Whether it be NERF guns or C, I can only imagine that one would get in tune with the community fastest if you actually have interest in learning the subject rather than just in the novelty of a Neat Trick.

jw_2• 13 years ago

I've read hackaday.com on and off over the past while and it's generally interesting. More of a hardware bent than software, but still interesting.

bdcravens• 13 years ago

/r/programming has a lot of the same links that you find on HN of the "hack" variety

grundprinzip• 13 years ago

And less brogramming...

serf3• 13 years ago

Agreed. I thought that immediately when Logdown was being shown off.

I feel like 'hacker' is being turned into a market, and that very concept brings about a certain amount of sleaze(marketing).

I thought a hacker was someone that made the tools available work for them; not someone that used something tailored to them perfectly..not that a hacker would be against such a thing -- but rarely does the capability of a tool also meet the flexibility requirements of a hacker without further modification.

obstacle1• 13 years ago

'Hacker' has been a market since personal computing became a thing. How do you think people got parts back in the day? By being marketed to through magazines and user groups.

_bfhp2• 13 years ago

I think you're misunderstanding what was meant by a "market"; the OP is saying that a consumerist market may be emerging to provide "stuff that a REAL hacker would own", like how ThinkGeek.com et al is the market for geeks.

serf3• 13 years ago

A computer parts company offers (what was was) an exclusive service; computer parts.

A blogging platform that heavily reinforces markdown is still a blogging platform.

The example given by the guy who replied to you was a good one. ThinkGeek. It's Sharper Image, but with a science spin. They often overcharge, but they do so because of who they market towards,and how they do so (with their form of propaganda)

I understand why these markets spring up, it's profitable. People WANT to self-identify as a hacker and thus gravitate to services that say they are spun for that 'kind' of person. I just happen to think that it's sleazy to take advantage of the trend lately to self identify as a hacker.

rmrfrmrf• 13 years ago

it's funny you say that, considering HN is a breeding ground for shady marketing techniques. The most common kind here seem to be these generic "how to" articles that briefly mention some obscure product as an essential part of one's workflow (but maybe only by name so as to seem like it's an established product). That's usually followed up by someone in the comments asking about the product and -- wouldn't you know it -- the product owner showing up to give an elevator pitch along with a few satisfied customers.

I mean, consider where you are: a forum that's owned by a tech incubator. I'm not suggesting a mass exodus or anything, but I'm just saying that tech-savvy people have been marketed to for a while now, and it's up to you to recognize when you're getting played.

davidw5• 13 years ago

Because "marketing" == "sleaze"...

I used to have those kinds of ideas about marketing, but I realized they are close-minded and not very productive. I've met some very good, and very smart marketers. Maybe the field attracts a wider range of bozos, because it's less 'concrete' than other things, but that doesn't mean it's all bunk.

Here's a great book about marketing and how to do it wrong:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001C6MQA8/?tag=dedasys-20

Schiphol2• 13 years ago

The question is not whether you can do good marketing (you surely can) but what counts as good marketing: identifying and exploiting dispositions to behave irrationally in your target. A very good and very smart marketer will do this very well. It will still be sleaze.

Dylan168073• 13 years ago

Marketing correlates with sleaze. Don't accidentally fight a strawman.

James_Duval• 13 years ago

I think he was just passing marketing to sleaze as an argument.

mkr-hn• 13 years ago

I see what you did there. It took me a while to get over the popular idea that marketing is evil. Turns out you can do some good things once you realize marketing is just a tool.

bhauer• 13 years ago

Wow. I'm not even sure how to process this.

I'll keep it short: I'm all for ranting. I love ranting. But give the guy(s) a break. Just ignore it if it doesn't meet your definition of a tool crafted for hackers.

efa• 13 years ago

Thank you! Man, some people have way too much time on their hands. Stop writing your stupid blog and get some real work done!

jmcdonald-ut• 13 years ago

I don't know the specifics, but perhaps the company's target market isn't hackers in the true sense of the word. Example: many people are "techies" but when you push their knowledge a bit further most of what they know comes down to trivial knowledge about product specs between two or three devices.

hardwaresofton• 13 years ago

Hey <sup>™</sup> would have gotten you that trademark logo

dkuntz25• 13 years ago

The larger issue was that I thought my generator had some flags set that weren't set. But, thanks, I didn't even notice that it wasn't superscripting things in ^().

GuiA• 13 years ago

"If you quibble about what makes you and what doesn't make you a hacker, you're probably not a hacker"

dkuntz25• 13 years ago

Sure, maybe, but that's tangential from my point. My point was if you're making something that can't be tinkered with it's probably not for hackers.

The entire subculture stems from people who tinkered with things, specifically guys making model trains do cool things, like adjust based on what someone sends in from a telephone. I would expect that the minimum that everyone calling themselves a hacker has is an urge to tinker.

jamesaguilar• 13 years ago

At the very least, quibbling like this is arguing about definitions, which is a waste of time if the word in question isn't technical.

lsc• 13 years ago

"If you quibble about what makes you and what doesn't make you a hacker, you're probably not a hacker"

have you ever been to a D&D game? rules lawyering is central to nerd social interactions.

saraid216• 13 years ago

"Gaming the system".

diziet2• 13 years ago

Octopress, on the other hand, is for hackers.

dkuntz25• 13 years ago

Well, sure, but I'd think that Jekyll is to a larger extent, because Octopress is just a collection of plugins for Jekyll...

diziet2• 13 years ago

The combination of Octopress being built on top of Jekyll and the fact that Octopress is much faster/easier to jump into and do things with makes Octopress more hacker friendly in the "get things done" hacking way.

ronaldsvilcins• 13 years ago

100% Agreed.

fergal• 13 years ago

Probably wouldn't have down well in the media if Obama correctly said "I'm not going to scramble drones to catch a 29 year old cracker".

fsqcds• 13 years ago

Looks like stupid paid prose.io clone.

alan_cx• 13 years ago

I'm confused.

As I understand it, HN is a news forum associated with ycombinator, which I understand is all about startups, VCs, and business building. "Hacking" has little to do with that at all, except the programmers who make the bones of these internet businesses may well consider themselves "Hackers". But what about the rest of the team? Sales, marketing, accounts, admin etc. None of them are considered hackers. But even then I don't quite get it. Such programmers "create" primarily. They are not hacking, unless they want to admit to using other's work and hacking it to re-purpose it (which I have no problem with). But they aren't really hacking as such at all. They are building and creating.

Having read the definition of a "hacker", Im even more confused. To me, hacking is not about intimate knowledge, depth, deep interest, or even computer systems. Hacking to me is about knowing enough about something to fix or re-tasking it, even create something new from it. In the case of a media or Hollywood hacker, such a person is not a deep in-depth knowledge person, they are some one who knows the part of the system well enough to attack. That does not mean they know the whole system. Tech wise, I think of something like installing Linux on a PSP, or non IT, the way people in the third world use everything and anything to keep cars going. You don't need in depth knowledge at all. You just need enough knowledge to get the part fixed, or shoe horned in. The modification and re-tasking of open source software is also hacking. Or even something like scrapheap challenge is hacking. Surely all this comes from writing, where a poor journalist or writer is known as a "hack". Not suggesting my definition is universal, its just how I personally see it.

Then, as per the article's 3 bullet points, I dont see how providing flexibility is servicing hackers. All that is doing providing more flexibility as a part of the service or website. So, using such functions is just using the site as designed and intended. Not hacking. Hacking would be getting round problems with such a site, or using the site for something it wasn't originally intended. Although, such tool provided would allow fixing or re-tasking. I accept a fine line there, but I hope one sees the point.

So, to me sites like hackaday and instructables are actual hacking sites, where as this site is a great niche news aggregation site, with a great user base for decent, intelligent discussion, about anything of interest to it's users. HN is certainly not my first point of call for "hacking" at all. Its my first port of call for interesting news and discussion.

Cant help thinking that half the problem here is that this YC news site is called "Hacker News". I think that confuses people.

Dylan168073• 13 years ago

The best definition of hacker uses the word 'ingenuity'. It's true that you can do clever things with limited knowledge, but the best and most impressive hacks require deep knowledge. It follows from that that a site for hackers will encourage system knowledge and clever, unexpected adjustments. And if you're following complete instructions you're not hacking.

gmac• 13 years ago

I disagree. Normal people overwhelmingly (and often annoyingly) want WYSIWYG, so I think relying on Markdown warrants the "for hackers" claim.

If they'd said "perfectly addresses every hacker's every need" — that would have been over-reach.

Probably not for hackers

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