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"hacker"/"cracker" are terms only used/understood with nuance in the tech community.

For the non-tech community:

hacker = person committing computer crimes (black hat)

cracker = a tasty snack (or, if you are in the American South, a contemptuous term for a white person)

tinkerer = someone who tinkers around with stuff (what tech community traditionally called hacker as in hacker news)




The top two are wrong.

The concrete definitions are:

Hacker: A programmer; someone who embodies the spirit of the programmer's way of thinking

Cracker: A programmer that commits crimes by illegally breaking in to systems.




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