A life hack (or life hacking) is any trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty method that increases productivity and efficiency, in all walks of life. The term was primarily used by computer experts who suffer from information overload or those with a playful curiosity in the ways they can accelerate their workflow in ways other than programming.
The original definition of the term "hack" is "to cut with rough or heavy blows". In the modern vernacular it has often been used to describe an inelegant but effective solution to a specific computing problem, such as quick-and-dirty shell scripts and other command line utilities that filtered, munged and processed data streams like e-mail and RSS feeds. [1] [2] The term was later extended to life hack, in reference to a solution to a problem unrelated to computers that might occur in a programmer's everyday life.[ citation needed ] Examples of these types of life hacks might include utilities to synchronize files, track tasks, remind oneself of events, or filter e-mail.[ citation needed ]
The term life hack was coined in 2004 during the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego, California by technology journalist Danny O'Brien to describe the "embarrassing" scripts and shortcuts productive IT professionals use to get their work done. [1] [3]
O'Brien and blogger Merlin Mann later co-presented a session called "Life Hacks Live" at the 2005 O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference. [4] The two also co-author a column entitled "Life Hacks" for O'Reilly's Make magazine which debuted in February 2005. [5]
The American Dialect Society voted lifehack (one word) as the runner-up for "most useful word of 2005" behind podcast . [6] The word was also added to the Oxford Dictionaries Online in June 2011. [7]
A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who achieves goals by non-standard means. The term has become associated in popular culture with a security hacker – someone with knowledge of bugs or exploits to break into computer systems and access data which would otherwise be inaccessible to them. In a positive connotation, though, hacking can also be utilized by legitimate figures in legal situations. For example, law enforcement agencies sometimes use hacking techniques to collect evidence on criminals and other malicious actors. This could include using anonymity tools to mask their identities online and pose as criminals.
Leet, also known as eleet or leetspeak, or simply hacker speech, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet. It often uses character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of their glyphs via reflection or other resemblance. Additionally, it modifies certain words on the basis of a system of suffixes and alternative meanings. There are many dialects or linguistic varieties in different online communities.
A script kiddie, skript kiddie, skiddie, kiddie, or skid is an unskilled individual who uses scripts or programs developed by others, primarily for malicious purposes.
Randal L. Schwartz, also known as merlyn, is an American author, system administrator and programming consultant. He has written several books on the Perl programming language, and plays a promotional role within the Perl community. He was a co-host of FLOSS Weekly.
Timothy O'Reilly is an Irish-American author and publisher, who is the founder of O'Reilly Media. He popularised the terms open source and Web 2.0.
Phishing is a form of social engineering and a scam where attackers deceive people into revealing sensitive information or installing malware such as viruses, worms, adware, or ransomware. Phishing attacks have become increasingly sophisticated and often transparently mirror the site being targeted, allowing the attacker to observe everything while the victim navigates the site, and transverses any additional security boundaries with the victim. As of 2020, it is the most common type of cybercrime, with the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reporting more incidents of phishing than any other type of cybercrime.
OSNews is a computing online newspaper. It originally focused on operating systems and their related technologies that launched in 1997, but is now aggregating consumer electronics news. The content is managed by a group of editors and the owner. As of 2014, its managing editor is Thom Holwerda, who joined in 2005.
Microsoft Works is a discontinued productivity software suite developed by Microsoft and sold from 1987 to 2009. Its core functionality includes a word processor, a spreadsheet and a database management system. Later versions have a calendar application and a dictionary while older releases include a terminal emulator. Works is available as a standalone program and as part of a namesake home productivity suite. Because of its low cost, companies frequently preinstalled Works on their low-cost machines. Works is smaller, less expensive, and has fewer features than contemporary major office suites such as Microsoft Office.
Internet security is a branch of computer security. It encompasses the Internet, browser security, web site security, and network security as it applies to other applications or operating systems as a whole. Its objective is to establish rules and measures to use against attacks over the Internet. The Internet is an inherently insecure channel for information exchange, with high risk of intrusion or fraud, such as phishing, online viruses, trojans, ransomware and worms.
Quicksilver is a utility app for macOS. Originally developed as proprietary freeware by Nicholas Jitkoff of Blacktree, Inc., it is now an open-source project hosted on GitHub.
Rael Dornfest is an American computer programmer and author. He was a technical fellow and CTO of Charity: Water, and was previously an engineer at Twitter. He was founder and chief executive officer of Values of N, creator of "I Want Sandy" and "Stikkit: Little Yellow Notes that Think." Previously, he was chief technology officer at O'Reilly Media. He began working for Twitter after they bought the assets of his company Values of N.
AutoHotkey is a free and open-source custom scripting language for Microsoft Windows, primarily designed to provide easy keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys, fast macro-creation and software automation to allow users of most computer skill levels to automate repetitive tasks in any Windows application. It can easily extend or modify user interfaces. The installation package includes an extensive help file; web-based documentation is also available.
A hackathon is an event where people engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over a relatively short period of time such as 24 or 48 hours. They are often run using agile software development practices, such as sprint-like design wherein computer programmers and others involved in software development, including graphic designers, interface designers, product managers, project managers, domain experts, and others collaborate intensively on engineering projects, such as software engineering.
David Heinemeier Hansson, also known as DHH, is a Danish software engineer, programmer, writer, entrepreneur, and racing driver. He is the creator of Ruby on Rails, a web framework written in Ruby. He is also a partner and chief technology officer at the web-based software development firm 37signals.
A security hacker or security researcher is someone who explores methods for breaching defenses and exploiting weaknesses in a computer system or network. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, such as profit, protest, information gathering, challenge, recreation, or evaluation of a system weaknesses to assist in formulating defenses against potential hackers.
The Scunthorpe problem is the unintentional blocking of online content by a spam filter or search engine because their text contains a string of letters that appear to have an obscene or otherwise unacceptable meaning. Names, abbreviations, and technical terms are most often cited as being affected by the issue.
On Internet usage, an email bomb is a form of net abuse that sends large volumes of email to an address to overflow the mailbox, overwhelm the server where the email address is hosted in a denial-of-service attack or as a smoke screen to distract the attention from important email messages indicating a security breach.
End-user development (EUD) or end-user programming (EUP) refers to activities and tools that allow end-users – people who are not professional software developers – to program computers. People who are not professional developers can use EUD tools to create or modify software artifacts and complex data objects without significant knowledge of a programming language. In 2005 it was estimated that by 2012 there would be more than 55 million end-user developers in the United States, compared with fewer than 3 million professional programmers. Various EUD approaches exist, and it is an active research topic within the field of computer science and human-computer interaction. Examples include natural language programming, spreadsheets, scripting languages, visual programming, trigger-action programming and programming by example.
A userscript is a program, usually written in JavaScript, for modifying web pages to augment browsing. Uses include adding shortcut buttons and keyboard shortcuts, controlling playback speeds, adding features to sites, and enhancing the browsing history.
Raycast is an application launcher and productivity software developed for macOS by Raycast Technologies Ltd. It offers fast access to applications, dictionaries, files, text snippets, clipboard, and more. Raycast is an alternative to the macOS's built-in Spotlight function, with a richer interface and the option to install extensions, providing additional ways to display varied content.