Hacker Friendly

What do you think of when you hear the word hacker?

Does the word invoke visions of pale-skinned teenagers, crouched over a flickering computer screen in a darkened room, smoking cigarettes and drinking endless cups of coffee while merrily stealing your credit card, running up your phone bill, unleashing viruses on your computer, and mocking your private life in public chat rooms?

Maybe the word hacker reminds you of a friend or co-worker who is “the one who knows about computers”. They are probably young and hyper (or perhaps older and slightly overweight), and they likely seem a little off-beat and speak in a highly technical dialect that sounds like a foreign language.

Maybe you yourself think you know the difference between the “white hats” and “black hats”, being a regular SlashDot reader (and occasional troll), having memorized the jargon file and occasionally dabbled in the fine art of being a BOFH.

We’re here to tell you that these aspects of hackerdom, while amusing and pervasive, are a bit… limited. Not to mention dated. It turns out that there is no need to fear the hacker after all, and that there is much more to hacking than knowing the endianness of your favorite architecture, or even what AYBABTU means.

Hacking is simply doing the best that you can with whatever you’ve got.

And the best part is, you don’t even need a computer to do it.

The mission of Hacker Friendly is to introduce you to the real hackers. These are people who see the world not as one sees a movie (by buying a ticket and watching it happen), but by getting completely immersed in the parts that they like and asking, “Now what can I make that do?”

There is no need to fear the hacker once you realize that you can hack, too…