Unnoticed by average Joe we are currently experiencing the advent of autonomous machines. This development will undoubtedly result in epochal change of our way of live. Naturally this has the potential to cause enormous problems. Two key issues will be how to tame the risks these autonomous machines pose and how to deal with the impact their wide proliferation will have on societies. A few years ago these questions were only important in science fiction. Today “killer” applications are no longer an academic topic. Now it is on us to start thinking about this questions and to preemptively develop new practices. Curiously, what might be a large part of the solution has already been central to the hacker community for decades: hacker ethic.