Ask HN: Just how many hackers are there?

I often think while driving "How many hackers are there within a mile of me?"

Obviously this number is higher when in a metro area as opposed to rural, but that's about all I can go off of. I don't have any data that says "There are X hackers in Tokyo, Japan but only Y hackers in Toad Suck, Arkansas" so I can't even make assumptions about overall geographical spread.

For the sake of argument, let's keep the definition of "hacker" fairly loose:

- Someone who creatively uses/writes software/hardware, and/or

- Someone who studies security and how to subvert it

I think this is an interesting question for several reasons. First, the challenge of coming up with an accurate way to gauge the number of hackers in the world is intriguing enough, without further breaking it down to "How many hackers are within X miles of my location?" Second, let's just assume we could know exactly how many and our locations. Imagine finding out that your 70-year-old neighbor who bakes you cookies every Sunday in return for helping rake her lawn also enjoys reversing malware samples in her spare time. Last but not least, I think no matter what the number is, high or low, I would be surprised.

So while this isn't a question I readily expect an answer to, feel free to ponder the details of such an experiment or to give a good estimate (along with good, solid reasoning, of course).