What ISN'T a 'hack'?

[coach]

I remember when a hack was somebody you didn't want working on your car or house
Hacky sack was for college hippie types

 

[Bull Barrel]

A taxi or a motorcycle sidecar.

 

[Rick Courtright]

Hi,

Isn't that what your friendly neighorhood crazed axe murderer does to his victims?

Rick C

 

[Danjet500]

I don't know about hacks but I sure do like your avatar!

 

[RugerHound]

The term "Hack" has been used to represent dishonest, illegitimate or otherwise unsavory goings on for many many years! Taxicabs were called 'hacks' when they were illegal - IOW - No medallion..

Actually, when I first started messing around with computers in the early 1980s, nobody called software piracy 'hacks'. It was called 'piracy'! I used to disassemble programs that were key or password protected routinely. I'd just install a couple jumps around the offending 'protection' logic, and viola! I had a working program with no password or software key protection. I was immersed in that stuff for years, and nobody EVER called it 'hacking'. It was called Software Piracy. In fact, some friends and I used to have a small group that we called PUG which of course stood for Pirate User Group!

Somewhere in the late 90s or perhaps the early 2000s I started hearing the term 'hack'... Nowadays it's used by everyone to represent anything! Anyone who's spent more than 11 seconds on any social media such as facebook knows that there are forumula sites out there that tease users with some tidbit of information, force the user to click through 17 pages of commercials before you get the payoff which is usually a huge letdown. Many of these are using the 'hack' term for anything that repurposes something. (E.G. Turning a plastic water bottle into a solar panel that will start a diesel truck)

It's all rather silly... Everything is so formula today! Doesn't ANYONE have an idea of their own?

 

[eveled]

In my circles, a hack was a shoddy repair on a car, or house. A hacker was one who made shoddy repairs. I think it was based on hacking, or chopping.

A computer hacker was something different, but had to have "computer".

Don't forget about hack saws.

 

[exavid]

As long as we're on grammar a couple of my peeves: Impact. It used to be a noun but like a lot of words it's become a verb. Having an impact on something is a lot different than impacting something. In the latter it's become a verb. Verbalizing is another irritation. I submit that 'verbalizing ought to be the practice of transforming nouns into verbs, not simply being a more erudite sounding way to replace, saying, or speaking. Then there's 'busted'. I can accept it as meaning someone has been arrested. It grates on me to hear TV anchors referring to things that are broken as being busted, or saying someone busted into something.
I suspect these kind of irksome things have something to do with my fatal disease. It's called A.G.E.

 

[graygun]

"You were a hack at Stanford..." from The Andromeda Strain

 

[graygun]

Oh,what is not...a hick is not......

 

[Mtneer]

Hi,

Isn't that what your friendly neighorhood crazed axe murderer does to his victims?

Rick C

Naw, "hacking" is a regular morning exercise for smokers. I used to "hack" for 30 minutes every morning until a case of double pneumonia forced me to stop smoking.

 

[Bkat]

A bad writer/reporter used to be called a "hack" in the news and publishing businesses.

Bkat