Thanks to those of you who are visiting this site.
Feel free to make updates as you see fit, but be open to the idea that some hackers may differ from your habits. However, entries with lots of spelling mistakes will simply be deleted. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

According to RMS, it is difficult to pin down the exact nature of a hack (he's considered something of an authority on these matters).
A few properties of a hack always hold true: cleverness, playfulness, and exploration. This file is about those who self-identify as hackers, and they mostly program and tinker with computers.

To be exact, a hacker is "a person who creates and modifies computer software and computer hardware, including computer programming, administration, and security."

Negatively viewed hackers include black-hats, software crackers, and phreaks.

• Phreaks, like hackers, are not always "evil." The Woz was a phreak. Phreaks may just have a telecommunications obsession.
• Black-hats are the hackers you'll typically hear about on television, the "bad" ones.
• Grey and white hats are generally just after information or exploring to help find security flaws.
• Software crackers just plain aren't hackers (at least if they illegaly distribute the software).

There isn't a general hacker appearance. Why? Because there isn't one nationality, there isn't one race, there isn't one sex, and there isn't one style of a hacker. Since hackers come from all over the world, the same applies. But again, the media helps
poison the minds of the young and old, the smart and the stupid by propagating the idea of what a hacker looks like. They say a hacker is usually a heavy man, with glasses, bald(ing) head, lonely, and typing away at a computer. Wrong! There's not a specific
style that this culture lays claim to.

Just t-shirts and jeans, and a sweatshirt/jacket when necessary. Hackers really despise dressing up. Why the hatred for dressing up? It takes time away from important things and involves conforming. It must be bad.

Besides technical manuals, hackers do tend to read lots of science fiction. Some specific books that seem to show up on various hacker cultural examinations are Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash (Stephenson was a programmer), William Gibson's Neuromancer, and
Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Outside, Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Stephen Levy's Hackers are fairly common. The only really required fantasy series is Lord of the
Rings. Apparently hackers like fantasy, although science fiction is definitely the dominant form of fiction. A hacker often just reads things that expand their intellect. Some subjects include hard science, philosophy, mathematics, technology in general,
and perhaps some history and social science (although the social sciences are a bit fickle. quantitative data is more respect-worthy than qualitative). The webpage slashdot deserves special mention. Keeping slashdot karma up may qualify as an "interest."
There are some competitors emerging in the geek news site arena, digg being the real stand-out.

Following news probably is a hacker interest (hacker news, at any rate). Topics related to FOSS, Linux, BSD, and other off-shoots of the programmer/hacker community are popular. Hardware hacking, case modding, system administration, robotics, and general
technology, of course.
Privacy, encryption, and security are all obsessions of hackers, and privacy basically amounts to the only political issue hackers are deeply concerned with (besides anti-trust laws), at least in most cases. Developing general knowle
dge
(see reading habits).
Keeping up to date on science advances and science fiction releases seem to be the other main hobbies.
Gaming is abundant, especially first-person shooters, real-time strategy games, puzzle games, classic/emulated games, and role playing games (especially MMORPGs, but some Eastern console RPGs and a few MUDs are likely to be on a hacker's list of frequently played games. A few Western single player RPGs are played as well, mostly classics such as Zork and nethack).
Hackers lean towards games they can hack, of course (not in the black hat manner, but games easily modifiable. This needs to be said because black-hat hacking is a major issue in gaming, and has taken on the name "hacking").
Some games especially popular among hackers are the (not completely) open source games Quake, Wolfenstein, and Doom; also Unreal Tournament, Half-Life, and World of Warcraft, though not all hackers play those games because they are not OSS.
The relation between hackers and hobby games isn't really there, except for roleplaying games and board games.
Miniature wargames and collectible card games are very impractical, and not played as often (often the winner is the one who has spent more of his money, especially in CCGs. Miniature wargames take long amounts of time away from hacking and in order to play you have to glue and paint dozens of little men, often in identical fashion.
Its incredibly wasteful, especially in these days when you can simply download Freeciv or something).
A few hackers also will LARP/go to SCA meetings on occasion, but not if it involves a lot of make-up or impractical clothing.
Basically hackers often play "mind sports" like settlers of chess, draughts, and go, along with D&D or some other system, and perhaps some sort of brain-teasing puzzle. Hackers love puzzles, and favorites include PopCap Games games and Rubik's cubes.
Anime deserves mention in this section, especially science-fiction classics such as Ghost In The Shell, Cowboy Bebop, and Neon Genesis Evangelion. Hackers are likely to read the latest updates to various webcomics and perhaps some real graphic novel/mangastuff.
Prime examples of loved movies/shows include: Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek, and The Matrix. Babylon 5 also seems to be imporant, and there are plenty of hit sci-fi shows that hackers enjoy. Monty Python is beloved of hackers, and they can often recite sketches for you.
Hackers look down on newbie Pythonites who can only quote The Holy Grail. Hacker humor involves showing cleverness, especially clever use of language, and subtle intellectual currents. Pranks are always amusing and reversible. Looney Tunes may be a surprising example of comedy hackers enjoy.

Hackers love music. Music that hackers enjoy is likely to be complex or just very good. They enjoy most genres of music (pop, R&B, hip-hop, and popular rock being exceptions). Hackers will often have anime or science fiction soundtracks.
They are likely to play instruments that involve lots of gadgetry, such as (but definetely not limited to) electric guitar and bass.
Take note outsiders: Hackers aren't obsessed with only math, science, and engineering. They have strong minds for the humanities as well (digital audio, video, photagraphy, design, graphics, music, roleplaying, case modding, fan fictions, and the list goes on!).


Often attend college for at least a bachelor's, especially in current times when employers are very biased against autodidacts.
Most common majors will be computer science and electrical engineering, and less commonly computer engineering (sub-branch of EE), IT/Information Systems, and software engineering.
Those are all very interelated subjects. Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, physics, and linguistics are disciplines computer science research often crosses into, according to wikipedia.
Hackers will often just study challenging and interesting courses that cover a little humanities (philosophy, arts related to their other interests) and a little social science (anything heavily statistical and scientific, linguistics), besides all of the math and science and engineering, which will dominate their courses.

Some of the best universites for hackers are the following: MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Berkeley, Stanford, and Illinois-Urbana-Champaign. (they are supposedly the best colleges for EE/CS/EECS).

Dressing up. Vocal religious extremists. Vocal and not-too-bright people. Poor spellers. Republicans. Democrats. AOL users. RIAA. Script kiddies. Whiners. Hacker wannabes.
Spoiled little brats, Bureacracy, bad music and popular television (with a few exceptions, see other interests). Boredom, dishonesty, etc. COBOL, BASIC, and FORTRAN.

Quick and unusual. Quick will usually win the day. Pizza. Ramen. Junk food in general like Mexican food, Oriental food(mostly chinese take-out).

Anti-authoritarianism. Anti-DRM(Data Rights Management; advanced during the Clinton Adminstration and is the reason you can go to jail for making backup copies of your DVDs and various other forms of electronic media)

Commonly White/Jewish/Asian males. Hackers do want diversification, but for socio-economic reasons most of America's races have not caught up with those three.
No true hacker is openly prejudiced, and those who are inwardly prejudiced fight it (that would include all hackers).
There is a small amount of females, but most women have, unfortunately, developed a fear of computers. Hackers want this stuff to change, but don't go around making people feel guilty about sociological processes that are beyond their control.

On a controversial note (perhaps worthy of ESR), Jews and Asians have cultures that (stereotypically) value study. Practicing Jews spend lots of time studying religious texts, and Japanese students have a very high rate of suicide. This isn't to say that
other races may not value study, but Judaism requires it, and so does Asian society. Of course hackers want diversification, and realize that there are a lot of stupid Jews, Asians, Whites, and people in general.

Atheism, non-believing, neo-pagans, and a few parody religions, with some mainstream religions included. Christian, Catholic, and Jewish hackers are not unknown. Hackers do however want diversity and don't supress religeous practicing that does not limit their autonomy. Worshipping the pantheon found in a fantasy novel is not uncommon, but usually done with some sarcasm.

CAFFEINE owns the life of all hackers. Hackers will not take drugs with possible negative effects to brainpower, so no marijuana or speed ("octagons"). Presumably hackers tolerate stimulants and hallucinogens a bit more than other segments of the population. Maybe some of the odd ones who read Wired and Mondo 2000 in the early 90s, listened to industrial, and have seen the Matrix at least five hundred times use nootropics, or "smart drugs."

Somewhat polite, large vocabulary, fairly quiet. Generally can write well. Can give quite the "tongue lashing" to those who are beligerently ignorant and hostile towards them.

Largely in Northeast and Pacific West, although technology jobs are springing up everywhere.

Gay and bisexual hackers are more outspoken than in the general population, and tolerated. Hackers are known to have less sex than others, but sexual activity is pretty normal in reality.

Hackers tolorence to other cultures extends to other sexualities
"Weirdos." Possibly lazy, but in general pretty focused. Intelligent, individualistic. Rarely hardcore gothic, emo 'hackers' are rare and shunned. Those who pick verbal fights are usually pwnd; but because of the time spent at the computer hackers dont
have much time to work out and tend to shy away from physical encounters.
To use pseudo-scientific personality theories, hackers are INTPs in Myers-Brigg, and Type 5 in enneagrams. Descriptions of Type 5s and INTPs are nearly the same as the
hacker personality, this isn't just a stereotype.

J. Random Hacker doesn't believe the hacker personality has any weaknesses. So it was decided to put "arrogance," and being a little harsh towards "not-so-smart" people.

Hackers are very unorganized in their physical world. They have awful handwriting, almost as a rule.
Dont get on the bad side of a hacker, because of their nature they will find it easy to come up with...unorthodox ways of getting revenge.

Observe two sides, blackhat and whitehat, relating to their intentions.

Another Jargon file: http://ursine.ca/Jargon

Google.com