Update

hacking.md

@@ -8,11 +8,13 @@ Hacking (also hackerdom) in the widest sense means exploiting usually (but not n
 
 The original hacker culture is a culture of the earliest computer programmers, usually smart but socially rather isolated nerds -- at the time mostly physicists, mathematicians and engineers -- who shared deep love for programming and pure joy of coming up with clever computer tricks, exploration of computers and freely sharing their knowledge and computer programs with each other. The culture started to develop rapidly at [MIT](mit.md) in about the second half of 1960s, though other hacker communities existed earlier and in other places as well (still mostly at universities).
 
+Nowadays this original culture is very sadly becoming almost completely extinct, owing to the [modern](modern.md) world whose values -- such as self interest, consumerism, secrecy, praise of censorship, "inclusivity" of the incompetent, materialism etc. -- are mostly polar opposites of the original hacker values: a newly born man would have to reject 99% of the culture he grew up in to be able to adopt the hacker mindset. The culture seems to live on mostly in individuals, mostly the old hackers themselves, and partially in some extremely underground communities such as that of the [demoscene](demoscene.md), but even there it's degenerating greatly.
+
 The word *hack* itself seems to have come from a model train club at MIT in whose slang the word referred to something like a project of passion without a specific goal; before this the word was used around MIT for a specific kind of clever but harmless pranks. Members of the model train club came to contact with early computers at MIT and brought their slang along. These early punch-card computers were expensive and sacred, hackers treated them as almost supernatural entities; in the book *Hackers* it is mentioned that those who were allowed to operate the machines were called *Priests* -- Priests would often carry out a little prayer to please the machine so that it would bless them with computation. During 60s and 70s so called [phreaking](phreaking.md) -- hacking the phone network -- was popular among hackers.
 
-Many ideas -- such as the beauty of [minimalism](minimalism.md) -- that became part of hacker culture later came from the development of [Unix](unix.md) and establishment of its [programming philosophy](unix_philosophy.md). Many hackers came from the communities revolving around [PDP 10](pdp_10.md) and [ARPANET](arpanet.md), and later around networks such as [Usenet](usenet.md). At the time when computers started to be abused by corporations, [Richard Stallman's](rms.md) definition of [free software](free_software.md) and his [GNU](gnu.md) project embodied the strong hacker belief in information freedom and their opposition of [intellectual property](intellectual_property.md).
+Many ideas -- such as the beauty of [minimalism](minimalism.md) -- that became part of hacker culture later came from the development of [Unix](unix.md) and establishment of its [programming philosophy](unix_philosophy.md). Many hackers came from the communities revolving around [PDP 10](pdp_10.md) and [ARPANET](arpanet.md), and later around networks such as [Usenet](usenet.md). At the time when computers started to be abused by corporations, [Richard Stallman's](rms.md) definition of [free software](free_software.md) and his [GNU](gnu.md) project embodied the strong hacker belief in information freedom and their opposition of [intellectual property](intellectual_property.md). When computer technology became invaded and raped by [capitalism](capitalism.md), hackers separated themselves from the influx of coding monkeys and managers not only culturally, but also by retaining their programming philosophy -- programming of a hacker is very different from the ugly "software development" of a [corporation](corporation.md), a hacker writes [beautiful](beauty.md), [minimal](minimalism.md) code. He doesn't merely aim to "get the job done", he creates art, a code that works well while being a beauty of engineering on the inside, he isn't afraid to throw away code and rewrite it from scratch just to make it a little better (as opposed to patching it up, [bloating](bloat.md) and extending it, as a corporation would do).
 
-The culture has a deep lore and its own literature consisting of books that hackers usually like (e.g. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) and books by hackers themselves. Bits of the lore are in forms of short stories circulated as folklore, very popular form are so called Koans. Perhaps the most iconic hacker story is the [Story of Mel](story_of_mel.md) which tells a true story of a master hacker keeping to his personal ethical beliefs under the pressure of his corporate employers -- a conflict between manager employers ("suits") and hacker employees is a common theme in the stories. Other famous stories include the *TV typewriter* and *Magic Switch*. One of the most famous hacker books is the **[Jargon File](jargon_file.md)**, a collectively written dictionary documenting hacker culture in detail. A 1987 book *[The Tao of Programming](tao_of_programming.md)* captures the hacker wisdom with Taoist-like texts that show how spiritual hacking can get -- this reflects the above mentioned sacred nature of the early computers. The *textfiles* website features many text files on hacking at https://textfiles.vistech.net/hacking/. See also *Ten Commandments for C Programmers* etc. A lot about hackers can be learned from books about them, e.g. the [free](free_culture.md) book *Free as in Freedom* about [Richard Stallman](rms.md) (available e.g. [here](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5768)). A prominent hacker writer is [Eric S. Raymond](esr.md) who produced a very famous essay *The Cathedral and the Bazaar*, edited the Jargon File and has written a large guide called *How To Become A Hacker* -- these are all good resources on hackerdom, even though Raymond himself is kind of shitty, he for example prefers the "[open source](open_source.md)" movement to [free software](free_software.md).
+The culture has a deep lore and its own literature consisting of books that hackers usually like (e.g. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) and books by hackers themselves. Bits of the lore are in forms of short stories circulated as folklore, very popular form are so called Koans. Perhaps the most iconic hacker story is the [Story of Mel](story_of_mel.md) which tells a true story of a master hacker keeping to his personal ethical beliefs under the pressure of his corporate employers -- a conflict between manager employers ("suits") and hacker employees is a common theme in the stories. Other famous stories include the *TV typewriter* and *Magic Switch*. One of the most famous hacker books is the **[Jargon File](jargon_file.md)**, a collectively written dictionary documenting hacker culture in detail. A 1987 book *[The Tao of Programming](tao_of_programming.md)* captures the hacker wisdom with Taoist-like texts that show how spiritual hacking can get -- this reflects the above mentioned sacred nature of the early computers. Hacker culture very frequently mimics eastern religions and philosophies such as Taoism, Buddhism or various martial arts. The *textfiles* website features many text files on hacking at https://textfiles.vistech.net/hacking/. See also *Ten Commandments for C Programmers* etc. A lot about hackers can be learned from books about them, e.g. the [free](free_culture.md) book *Free as in Freedom* about [Richard Stallman](rms.md) (available e.g. [here](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5768)). A prominent hacker writer is [Eric S. Raymond](esr.md) who produced a very famous essay *The Cathedral and the Bazaar*, edited the Jargon File and has written guides such as *How To Become A Hacker* and *How To Learn Hacking* -- these are all good resources on hackerdom, even though Raymond himself is kind of shitty, he for example prefers the "[open source](open_source.md)" movement to [free software](free_software.md).
 
 As a symbol of hackerdom the glider symbol from [game of life](game_of_life.md) is sometimes used, it looks like this:
 
@@ -31,13 +33,14 @@ Let us now attempt to briefly summarize what it means to be a hacker:
 - **Hacker values [fun](fun.md) and playfulness** -- despite his serious dedication to the art, he hates seriousness of the business guys and "suits", as well as the self-centered, egoistic attitude of "modern hackers" who might see or present themselves as kind of [superheroes](hero_culture.md). A hacker will give his programs funny names rather than names that would make for a good business product, a hacker will insert jokes in his source code (e.g. [hex](hexadecimal.md) values such as 0xBEEFFACE), documentation and speech ([Jargon File](jargon_file.md) has a whole section on how hackers construct and use words).
 - **Hacker aims for ingenuity, cleverness, elegance, [minimalism](minimalism.md), thinking out of the box** etc. As such he loves [math](math.md), puzzles, intellectual challenges (such as [code golfing](code_golf.md)) and despises ugly commercial ways of mainstream technology, i.e. that which is [bloated](bloat.md), hastily made to impress by visuals or cheap "killer features" while hiding ugly internals etc.
 - **Hacker loves hacking and tinkering in itself -- hacking is the goal, not the means. Hacking is [art](art.md) and carries deep intellectual and even spiritual value.** To a hacker it is a joy to program computers and he aims for nothing more than enjoy endless hours of programming, programming is NOT a tool to achieve low goals such as monetary profit or mainstream fame. Many hackers claim that hacking is better than [sex](sex.md) (though it is questionable whether many of them have experience with the latter).
+- **Hacker is an elitist, attitude is not enough for being a hacker**, skill is of essential importance. Correct attitude and mindset are important and necessary but not sufficient (as ESR writes: "attitude is no substitute for competence") -- if you don't excel at hacking, you are not a hacker. This is in contrast e.g. with music genre fans where you can consider yourself to be "punk" or "metal" even if you can't play any musical instrument or with the [modern](modern.md) "inclusive" "[coder](coding.md)" culture in which you can easily be called a game developer even if you cannot [program](programming.md) etc. Part of hackerdom is also an aim for good reputation among others, to be called a hacker by OTHERS, HOWEVER this has to be achieved without asking or self promotion, merely through doing good hacking, you must not beg others to "please call you a hacker" or promote your programs with marketing to achieve cheap popularity -- no, reputation or the title of hacker is NOT the goal in itself, the goal is good hacking and reputation is an indication you achieved it.
 - **Hacker has strong opinions about technology**, for example about what the best [text editor](text_editor.md) or best [programming language](programming_language.md) is. However hackers may also sometimes disagree which results in **[holy wars](holy_war.md)**.
 
 Let's mention a few [people](people.md) who were at their time regarded by at least some as true hackers, however note that many of them betrayed some of the hacker ways either later in life or even in their young years -- people aren't perfect and no single individual is a perfect example of a whole culture. With that said, those regarded hackers included Melvin Kaye aka [Mel](mel.md), [Richard Stallman](rms.md), [Linus Torvalds](linus_torvalds.md), [Eric S. Raymond](esr.md), [Ken Thompson](ken_thompson.md), [Dennis Ritchie](dennis_ritchie.md), [Richard Greenblatt](greenblatt.md), [Bill Gosper](bill_gosper.md), [Steve Wozniak](wozniak.md) or [Larry Wall](larry_wall.md).
 
 ## "[Modern](modern.md)" "Hackers"
 
-Many modern [zoomer](zoomer.md) [soydevs](soydev.md) call themselved "hackers" but there are basically none that would stay true to the original ethics and culture and be worthy of being called a true hacker, they just abuse the word as a cool term or a brand (see e.g. ["hacker" news](hacker_news.md)). It's pretty sad the word has become a laughable parody of its original meaning by being associated with groups such as [Anonymous](anonymous.md) who are just a bunch of 14 year old children trying to look like "movie hackers". The hacker culture has been spoiled basically in the same ways the rest of society, and the difference between classic hacker culture and the "modern" one is similar to the difference between [free software](free_software.md) and [open source](open_source.md), though perhaps more amplified -- the original culture of strong ethics has become twisted by [capitalist](capitalism.md) trends such as self-interest, commercialization, [fashion](fashion.md), mainstreamization, even shitty movie adaptations etc. The modern "hackers" are idiots who have never seen [assembly](assembly.md), can't do [math](math.md), they're turds in suits who make [startups](startup.md) and work as [influencers](influencer.md), they are tech consumers who use and even create [bloat](bloat.md), and possibly even [proprietary](proprietary.md) software. For the love of god, do NOT mimic such caricatures or give them attention -- not only are they not real hackers, they are simply retarded attention whores.
+Many modern [zoomer](zoomer.md) [soydevs](soydev.md) call themselved "hackers" but there are basically none that would stay true to the original ethics and culture and be worthy of being called a true hacker, they just abuse the word as a cool term or a brand (see e.g. ["hacker" news](hacker_news.md), a capitalist circlejerk website where self proclaimed smartass "hackers" come to advertise their ugly bloated [rapeware](rapeware.md) and talk about how to best exploit the market). It's pretty sad the word has become a laughable parody of its original meaning by being associated with groups such as [Anonymous](anonymous.md) who are just a bunch of 14 year old children trying to look like "movie hackers". The hacker culture has been spoiled basically in the same ways the rest of society, and the difference between classic hacker culture and the "modern" one is similar to the difference between [free software](free_software.md) and [open source](open_source.md), though perhaps more amplified -- the original culture of strong ethics has become twisted by [capitalist](capitalism.md) trends such as self-interest, commercialization, [fashion](fashion.md), mainstreamization, even shitty movie adaptations etc. The modern "hackers" are idiots who have never seen [assembly](assembly.md), can't do [math](math.md), they're turds in suits who make [startups](startup.md), aren't afraid to suck corporation dicks and work as [influencers](influencer.md), they are tech consumers with who use and even create [bloat](bloat.md), and possibly even [proprietary](proprietary.md) software. For the love of god, do NOT mimic such caricatures or give them attention -- not only are they not real hackers, they are simply retarded attention whores.
 
 ## Security "Hackers"