My Last Post on This Domain

OK guys,

I think that it is time for me to publish the last post on this blog using WordPress as a domain. As you probably already know, GitHub is my favorite company and I have decided to switch my blog to a completely new domain.

I have published a couple of posts exclusively on the new domain and backed up every post from this domain to my new address (with one exception, but I’m working on it). I feel confident now to make the switch and I started to feel really comfortable using GitHub + Jekyll as a blogging platform, so I’ve decided to drop by and say good bye to my old domain.

From now on, you can follow me on r3bl.github.io. Be sure to use the http version of the site because https version is currently not properly implemented in the code. If you run into some issue while browsing the site or you miss a feature that I had implemented on this domain, feel free to report it here.

As always, you’re more than welcome to contact me anytime on aleksandar.todorovic@mail.ru. I hope that you’ll continue to read me on my new address.

Sincerely,
Aleksandar Todorović

What exactly is a hacker?

Quote:
Not to be confused, hacker is a person who wants to share his knowledge about computers with others. Hacker is every person who thinks in an unconventional way. An idea that a hacker is someone who does something malicious is an idea created in Hollywood.

This is a quote from a report about a hacking convention called BalCCon 2k14 that took place for the second year in a row in Novi Sad, the second biggest city in Serbia.

I think that this quote describes perfectly what a hacker is. I feel kinda tired of all those “you call yourself a hacker, you’re going to end up in jail” conversations and Google+ posts in hacker communities where idiots ask stuff like: “teach me how to hack fb plz”.

I do realize that 95% of people don’t understand us who call ourselves hackers and I do realize that they will probably never learn, but I feel so tired of this that I had to share this quote with you.

If you’re not sure what a hacker is, I suggest you to start learning by reading this Wikipedia article about a term hacker. You will start to realize that the hacker is a much more broader term than the one you have in mind, although I don’t think that this article explains it a lot.

In the end of this post, I want to share another quote with you. This quote is from Bruce Schneier‘s book called Secrets and Lies (2000) and I think that this definition covers it all.

Quote
A hacker is someone who thinks outside the box. It’s someone who discards conventional wisdom, and does something else instead. It’s someone who looks at the edge and wonders what’s beyond. It’s someone who sees a set of rules and wonders what happens if you don’t follow them. A hacker is someone who experiments with the limitations of systems for intellectual curiosity.

EDIT:
Here are some other articles written about what a term hacker is.