Skip to main content

Hacking put to good use...

It irks me when I hear the term hacker in mostly negative ways, then a hacker does something like this and it remains me of the original sense of hacking. On the original days of computers, hackers came together to try to come with new ways to use what they had.

Most hackers continue to do this, sometimes doing things that could be at least be called dubious just to prove it can be done. The Xbox One gamepad is one example of a hacker coming with an use that some gamers wanted, but that Microsoft wasn't giving to them.

For me, that's an area where open source can be of help to hackers and hackers can give to open source. In many ways, if you allow hackers to adapt software and hardware openly to other uses and to let them contribute their hacks back to the community is one of the best ways to make open source projects better faster. And by having those hacks occurring openly, the risk of having any malicious side of it coming out of it to a minimum.

As with anything where people are involved, there will be some that will try to come with ways to hack in ways that are not beneficial. Yet, I don't think that those will be the norm. The nature of open source will help to keep it that way, since most of the people working on those hacks can contribute it to keep those hacks from bad use.

Hack in itself it's neutral. It's the people that do that hacking, who actually use it for good or for bad. Instead of making hacking an evil act, lets make it attractive to those who will make use of it for the good of community that will make use of the hack they make.

Pushing hackers, and the skills the make use of, aside as unwanted people we are set to lose of a lot of things that could benefit us enormously. We need them to work on the open, so that their work can benefit as much people as possible. Only by doing this, can we have a more rapid progress on as many fields as possible.

Hacking is a skill set that can go both ways, but when allow it to grow in an open space that pushes it to be used for the good of us all it can do wonders for all.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Machenike and Linux Mint: quite a nice combo.

I've been using a Machenike L16A  with Linux Mint  as my daily driver for four months now, and I must admit that I'm impressed with how good the experience has been so far. The Machenike was recommended to me by a close friend about six months ago, since I told him that I was looking for a new laptop. He had bought one a while ago, and said that it was a solid machine. Not only that, Machenike laptops were quite a great value for the money since they are significantly cheaper than comparable laptops from the competitions. And to be honest, when I got my laptop i expected to be so, but not to the extent it has been so far. After four months, my laptop feels really snappy and the performance is just great. And since I upgraded to Linux Mint 22 Wilma, it only has gotten better. One of the areas where I see most improvement, in on the Bluetooth connectivity. It connects more consistently with the three Bluetooth headphone I use, and now I can see how much battery the headphones I...
Post a Comment
Read more

Machenike L16A: a great value for the money.

I recently got a Machenike L16A to replace the HP laptop I've been using for about 4 years now, and it has been quite a good upgrade. The value for the price has been excellent, it has really felt like an upgrade. Specially going from 8Gb of RAM to 16Gb. I specially notice the better performance when at work, since I use a remote desktop. I simply don't see as much slowdowns on the same use. Most of the time, at work I've the remote desktop app, Firefox , Thunderbird , Spotify , or sometimes Rhythmbox , open at the same time and having 16Gb of RAM gives the performance I need since at time around 6-7Gb are used. I also feel the AMD Ryzen CPU has been quite an upgrade, since it has more cores and threads than the Intel CPU my HP laptop has. That makes for a better user experience. But, where I see the better user experience is on the keyboard, and display side of things. The keyboard keys got stuck often, making the track pad unusable and characters to repeat themselves. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Linux Mint going for the long-term support model was the right choice.

Ever since I stared using  Linux Mint  with the long-term support mantra with the version 19 Tara release, I've come to prefer Linux distros  that use development model rather than distros that release updates more often with shorter support windows. Even though I upgrade to the new Linux Mint release as soon it becomes available, knowing that I don't have to rush it and that the testing to make sure nothing is broken with the new release is a bit more intense, gives me feel a bit safer about thing will continue working as I used to and expect them to. Besides, all the apps I use are updated as continuously. As such, I don't need to worry using versions of those apps that fall behind. Not only the that, with updates to Linux Mint come as needed and the point releases keep bring the big releases that weren't included at the original release of the OS. For my needs, Linux Mint cover them all, and it gets better with time. With each release, Linux Mint keeps feeling like ...
Post a Comment
Read more