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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?

#411

Post by brightball »

rootsudo wrote: post #338
brightball wrote: post #174

When I was in college I finished a couple of programming projects late. My professor said if we could prove that it was done on time he wouldn’t penalize us so I found a program that would let me alter windows time stamps. I’m sure he knew and accepted it anyway because he was a great teacher that seemed to enjoy letting us creatively solve problems more than sticking to specific curriculum. Was my favorite class in…

That's so complicated. You could've just changed the system time or hex timestamps.

Honestly, I don't remember why I went that route. It was 1999 and we turned our programs in on 3.5" disks (aka - save icons).

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

#412

Post by hjek »

jliptzin wrote: post #319
hjek wrote: post #189

Worked for a company that was contracted by DOW to make an app promoting some extremely toxic agrochemicals, such as Forefront. They talked about this being so poisonious that if animals eat grass sprayed with it, then crops grown with their manure will be unsuitable for human consumption. Was also asked to fake ("round up") the calculations of how much money you'd save if by those chemicals. Read up a bit about DOW…

How does not eating animal products help with your guilty conscience in this situation?

Animal husbandry has a large negative impact on the environment. After this DOW Grassland app I felt I needed to take a look at the environmental destruction I'm contributing to.

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

#413

Post by Grangar »

Paul_S wrote: post #160
ruskie wrote: post #145

When a deadline had passed sent blank tapes to clients and then claimed the postal services had wiped them when scanning with xrays, asking the clients to send back the tapes so we bought a few more days

This also happened more recently in the CD era with intentionally badly burned CDs.

Even in the internet era. In high school I often just renamed some random file to a .doc extension and sent that in. No teacher ever had any idea. I'd just play dumb that I had a bad computer.

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

#414

Post by rjay925 »

While working with a client as a contractor in US, I was told by him, that my Manager had promised to get PhD/MS with 5 to 10 years experience. I had 4 years experience after my after Bachelors from another country. The client appreciated my work and kept my contract as long as possible. In the three years that I worked, I saw 10 people come and go. It hurts me every time I think about it.

What hurts most is that it is still in a common practice in that company and industry.

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

#415

Post by icc97 »

makapuf wrote: post #242
scott-smith_us wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to do this defensively when submitting 8-bit games for publication back in the 80s. The non-gamers at the publishing company seemed to feel they had to get back to you with a handful of changes. If your game was really polished, the changes would be pointless or even harmful things. I quickly learned to leave in a few obvious things that were trivial fixes, e.g. blocky bitmaps, misspellings, jarring colors. In…

See also the story of the duck and the queen on game battle chess https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Chess

The source of that is from a codinghorror post [0]

[0]: https://blog.codinghorror.com/new-programming-jargon/

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

#416

Post by secfirstmd »

Doxin wrote: post #389
smnrchrds wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they really? It is the sort of thing you see a lot in fiction but not on reality.

At the very least you'd end up being sued for defamation or whatnot by DOW for the next century or two. DOW is not a company you want to tango with.

Its fully possible to tip a journalist or regulator these fays with a level of anonymity these days.

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

#418

Post by hjek »

secfirstmd wrote: post #218
hjek wrote: post #189

Worked for a company that was contracted by DOW to make an app promoting some extremely toxic agrochemicals, such as Forefront. They talked about this being so poisonious that if animals eat grass sprayed with it, then crops grown with their manure will be unsuitable for human consumption. Was also asked to fake ("round up") the calculations of how much money you'd save if by those chemicals. Read up a bit about DOW…

Why not channel your feelings and talk to a journalist, NGO or regulator willing to act in the public interest?

Good idea. I don't really know anything that isn't already out there, but still happy to talk to any journalists/NGOs/regulators about it.

I have been going on about this to a journalist friend of mine who's works at a public broadcaster, but it didn't really go anywhere. Well, at least I'm airing this on HN now.

It's made me wary of wild-camping on grassy areas around farms, knowing what some farmers might be spraying there.

This is the app: http://uk.dowagro.com/grassland-weed-app-now-available/

About the killer compost it creates: https://www.sustainablemarketfarming.com/tag/tomatoes-with-d...

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

#419

Post by Twirrim »

beaker52 wrote: post #66

I worked on a penny-bidding site. These guys "auctioned" items like PlayStation, tvs, cars to the user who placed the final bid on an item after 60 seconds of no further bids. Each bid would increase the final price by 1 pence/cent, but each bid would cost 50 pence/cents. You could "win" a $20,000 car for $500.37 and the house would have taken 50,037*50 cents. It might be okay if that was it -- but I was asked to cod…

A few years back I was house hunting with my wife. We found a lovely house that was a short sale, and put in a bid.

Holy crap, that process was all kinds of frustrating and drawn out.

About 3 months after we placed the offer, the bank put the house up for auction on another site, to try and drum up more offered. On the auction day, I checked in routinely no one was bidding. All was looking great. About three hours before closing, a bid came in that was lower than our offer. OK, still good. Then another about an hour later. Still good. Then the "final hour" of the auction happened and it slowly but surely started ticking upwards, bids started trickling in and the price started climbing higher and higher. About 20 minutes before the end it got past our offer and my heart sank. As the end time drew near it started getting bumped out by further offers.

I told my wife we'd been outbid, after a stressful day, following on from months of stress and frustration.

Next day, our realtor reaches out to the selling realtor who reported that the bank told her no one else had actually bid on the house.

Yay.

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

#420

Post by icedchai »

dvtv75 wrote: post #308
icedchai wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed out. You could’ve rigged it so you could easily win yourself.

I'd fully expect the business to fire him for unethical or immoral behavior...

Well, he's leaving anyway. He may as well get some free stuff out of it.
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