No, come on, I didn't hear about "lifehacks" here, I heard about it on other non-computer related sites where people were making fun of how stupid they were. So I think that means the whole concept was invented to appeal to people even dumber than the average person, which is evidence completely un-HN type people have some sense of hacking as being positive.

It's not like the positive sense is unrelated to the negative sense either. A clever shortcut/trick/program could be illegal or unethical or not depending on context.