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Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?

#411

Post by drstewart »

kelnos wrote: post #257
Negitivefrags wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is so bad about catching people taking unauthorised breaks?

It's more about the negatives of pervasive electronic surveillance. The marginal benefit to the business of catching employees taking a break (which, honestly... they're probably all overworked and should have more breaks anyway) does not outweigh the downsides of our inexorable slide toward being monitored as we do everything .

>which, honestly... they're probably all overworked and should have more breaks anyway

And your best solution to this is building automated lighting systems that omit functionality? That's your grand plan?

Reminds me of people that complain about seats being removed from buses to make more room for passengers because homeless people sleep on them.

When you're trying to solve things via tertiary order effects you should consider if that's the real issue at hand .

Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?

#412

Post by ethanbond »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #283
ethanbond wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amp up the sort of disdain that might, for example, prevent international organizations from granting legitimacy to these regimes. Things like FIFA, as a completely random example.

I think it's clear that FIFA gives anti-fucks about slave labor.

Sure, but FIFA cares about money and at least some people care about not giving their money to deeply unethical entities. That’s what it’s meant to accomplish.

Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?

#413

Post by CM30 »

Hmm that's a tricky one. I guess there was one situation where one of the clients we built a website for turned out to be a scammer/con artist who got arrested for forex fraud. I guess our work in making their site look/function as well as possible sadly helped them gain customers to rip off, and gave them a false sense of legitimacy. But no one there knew the customer's company was a dodgy operation, so I guess hindsight is everything there.

I guess there have also been a few previous companies I worked on sites for that weren't exactly the most ethical operations overall.

But I don't think I can recall ever working on anything that was used for surveillance, or that itself was built for unethical ends. It's usually things associated with questionable companies that I didn't really know were questionable.

Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?

#414

Post by jylam »

I worked on a private jet plane computer for months, saving the project reluctantly (because private jets are very very rarely used for "good", mostly by entitled very wealthy persons, and are very polluting), just to learn the component I was working on would be used on a military plane as well. YMMV, but I don't work for military stuff, and it still haunts me.

Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?

#416

Post by VoodooJuJu »

Simon_O_Rourke wrote: post #349

I worked in an Ad-tech start-up in Berlin run by two of the most evil f*kers I've ever encountered. I built out their principal ad auction algorithm and a lot of the back-end to support it, and all they did with it was target vulnerable groups of people at particular times of the week when they thought they were at their lowest ebb. One meeting in particular really stands out still, a social media giant that everyone…

>"OK guys, let's go get some beers and bring some girls". Then this despicable excuse for a man promptly walked out into the office, points at a few female employees and says "You, you and you, come with us now".

And did everyone clap?

Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?

#417

Post by lodovic »

liketochill wrote: post #314
Scoundreller wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And limiting torrent speeds to 40k/s during "peak" hours. Which I kinda understand, but not when its unilaterally launched against the 3rd party providers leasing the lines too! (I guess Bell Canada, which also sells TV services, lost too many customers over this policy to their unthrottled competitors) https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/small-isps-fight-ruling-that... Canadian telecom regulators are gutless. Though I k…

In my memory Napster was before torrents? Did the idea for torrents, receiving pieces of the same file from multiple peers, come from Napster?

Napster was first, but it was called peer to peer (p2p) then. Bittorrent improved on it.

Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?

#418

Post by jylam »

zinodaur wrote: post #69

I worked for a company that made deep packet inspection based network equipment. Western customers mostly used it for "security" and media streaming man in the middle attacks (actually a useful feature saving lots of bandwidth). The boxes were also sold to Syria and Burma, and were used to facilitate censorship and human right abuses

Ho, I got the same one. Sold to me as a tool for low-cost ISPs (or hostels) (mostly in Africa at the time) to advertise mobile subscriptions as "Free MSN & Facebook, 1GB per month otherwise". After a month or two, I understood it was sold to various dictatorships in south America to spy on citizen's MSN and Facebook private conversations. I left immediately, with a very upset boss wondering why every Linux kernel programmer was so political. Not proud of this one.

Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?

#420

Post by Marc_Bryan »

Created a LIMS system (Lawful Interception and Monitoring Systems) in 2000-2001.

It was abused at a large scale in some large enterprises in India to monitor it's employees network communication.

Thought I was doing a good work for govt. agencies, but in turned out otherwise due to the abuse and affected a lot of privacy. Since then, I've made myself away from any and all mass techs as much possible and stuck with manual methods, cash and privacy friendly alternatives.

It's like creating a double edged sword. All the newer age, continuous monitoring and etc, etc., are doing more harm then what it solves...

Like in medical community, but an opposite... Risks outweigh the benefits!! Enough said! Peace!

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