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Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#371

Post by TeMPOraL »

nickjj wrote: post #139

Back in the day I wrote some "AOHell style" apps for AOL and Yahoo chat. Also trolled my non-programming friends who had computers by installing a personally developed backdoor that allowed me to open and close their cd-rom tray remotely. That was really fun.

In high school, almost all the IT work was done by the students who were trusted by the computer class teacher. That trust was often used to facilitate light-hearted mischief.

A colleague of mine developed and infected every student-accessible computer with a remote-access tool listening over a TCP socket. We'd mostly use it to open and close CD trays. Another colleague was unsatisfied by how the TCP approach made the CD trays go off one-by-one if you tried the batch mode, so he wrote another remote-access tool, this time masquerading as a Windows service, and listening over UDP. Then he'd use UDP broadcast to simultaneously open and close CD trays everywhere in school.

Fun times.

Oh, and one of the first things they did to me when I was getting to know them was installing and hiding simple PHP script in my WWW folder on my account on school server. The script would basically evaluate its input param in backticks. That is, a minimal remote shell accessible in my public folder. AFAIR it took me couple of months to track down why some weird things were happening to my account from time to time.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#372

Post by dabockster »

efiecho wrote: post #96

Let me answer on behalf of programmers employed by Facebook. The most unethical thing I have done as a programmer is going to work everyday.

I still hear from a lot of the younger programmers there that feel like they're still working on revolutionary social tech. Aside from everything that has happened in recent years regarding Facebook, these people always cite the fact that Facebook has connected a lot of the world together in the social graph and that somehow outweighs all the negative consequences.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#373

Post by konschubert »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #356
marktangotango wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car mechanics do this all the time, so what if an experienced mechanic can do a task in 1/10 the time, they always charge for the book time.

We have a mechanic now that constantly surprises us by billing us something like 2-5x times less than we expected. Turns out, he's good, and he bills us for actual time spent and parts cost. Like last time, I expected to pay ~$270, ended up paying $65 - $32.5 for parts, $32.5 for work time. This guy only takes work from existing customers and people referred by them, because it's widely known in the local community t…

I hope he has all the money he needs to live happy and safe. Because else I'd feel like the ethical thing for him would be to charge more.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#374

Post by dabockster »

jessaustin wrote: post #237
throwacake wrote: post #54

I present security research in big conferences. This means that I find a serious security threat that affects many systems, and then I do not say anything to anyone for 6 months so that, when I do, I can get more publicity.

Don't you typically inform the system's owner as soon as you discover the vuln? You still get "credit" in that case, don't you? Somehow I suspect you're not really a security researcher...

In a lot of non-tech business, they would probably not award credit. Some would even sue you for even implying that their "perfect" brand could be vulnerable.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#375

Post by dabockster »

CPLX wrote: post #58
pippolong wrote: post #37

Amazing there’s nothing here about crypto.

Probably because the people in question are still drinking the Kool Aid.

Sounds about right. I've only met a handful of devs in crypto. They were all in college or recently graduated individuals. I don't know if they were getting paid in cash or tokens, but it was hinted at that they were being paid, at least in part, under the table.

Most of the crypto workers I've met in the last six months have been mostly freshly minted MBAs or marketing people with tons of money to burn.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#378

Post by dirkt »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #101

I built my computer graphics final project in Haskell so that the TA wouldn't be able to run it and grade it. Then for our presentation, I babbled on and on about the math and went over time so we wouldn't have to give a really crappy demo.

Wouldn't have worked back when I was TA ...

First, I'd have been able to run it (or grade it even without running it). And yes. I've seen a lot of crappy Haskell code. I've written a good amount of that myself when I was learning Haskell back then.

Second, assuming I didn't know Haskell, I'd have stopped your babbling in the presentation at some point and asked you to run it.

Third, any student that does unusual things is either very good or very cheeky, so those students deserve special attention. So 10 minutes at your and my convenience to run the demo in my office would always have been an option.

(But then, teaching at my university probably was quite different from teaching at your university).

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#379

Post by andy_ppp »

mindslight wrote: post #314
andy_ppp wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re actually suggesting being a sociopath is a good thing because it’ll make all the bad ideas eventually die by us trying them. This is simply not true, we have to make bad ideas die by reason and logic, before we do too much harm. I suppose doubling down of fossil fuels and burning of rainforest is great, we’ll just have to adapt quicker to the super extreme weather. But we can adapt with more aircon! Yay! Maybe…

This is an extremely uncharitable reading. Infosec is a field rife with kneejerk dismissals until people actually see the exploitation in action. How long has the (ethical) tech community been warning people about the NSA and Faceboot, until Snowden and Cambridge Analytica actually happened?

Infosec is totally different because it’s exposing problems people have already created in a standard way. This is using technology for maliciousness in the first place. Try telling to those people who were abused by that system they were just collateral damage in a bigger plan.

Re: Ask HN: What is the most unethical thing you've done as a programmer?

#380

Post by TeMPOraL »

konschubert wrote: post #373
TeMPOraL wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a mechanic now that constantly surprises us by billing us something like 2-5x times less than we expected. Turns out, he's good, and he bills us for actual time spent and parts cost. Like last time, I expected to pay ~$270, ended up paying $65 - $32.5 for parts, $32.5 for work time. This guy only takes work from existing customers and people referred by them, because it's widely known in the local community t…

I hope he has all the money he needs to live happy and safe. Because else I'd feel like the ethical thing for him would be to charge more.

I think so. I kind of wish he increased his prices a bit, because he deserves it; I like him not because he's cheap, but because he's honest.
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