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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?

#431

Post by magduf »

andy_ppp wrote: post #295
derefr wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, as both a writer and a programmer, I often consider implementing the systems that I’ve written dystopian fiction about. Not to create a dystopia, but for the same reason I write: to point one out, such that people can get incensed, laws can be made, etc. To put this another way: the most efficient way we could have possibly found to get the use of nuclear arms in war globally banned, was to have someone u…

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…

I think there's merit to his argument. People really are very stupid, especially in groups. Maybe you're smart enough to realize that burning rainforests and doubling down on fossil fuels is a stupid strategy, but there is no shortage of people in the US, who actually have an education no less (unlike many people in developing nations where the rainforests are being burned), who really think we can't hurt the environment and laws to protect the environment are wrong. In fact, there's probably a bunch of them right here on this site; they usually call themselves "libertarians", and will scream about "private property rights" in regards to this issue.

It'd be nice if humanity was smart enough and empathetic enough to avoid the horrible mistakes we've made, but we're really not.

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

#433

Post by yebyen »

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

Came here to say this! I've told this parable of the duck before, but I did not know the origin of the story... "get that duck out of there please otherwise looks OK"

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

#434

Post by kaku_s »

wean_irdeh wrote: post #385
dirkt wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thin…

What does crappy Haskell code loook like?

The most common thing I can think of is putting everything in IO/ST, also known as "C++ in Haskell".

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

#435

Post by pc86 »

dirkt wrote: post #378
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 thin…

I'm not sure how you think this comment makes you come off, but it's certainly not good.

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

#436

Post by pc86 »

Rzor wrote: post #348
netaustin wrote: post #289

After Jared Kushner originally bought the New York Observer, I was hired to lead the tech team, which I did for a year and a half in house then for three more as a vendor. He asked me, out of band, to blackhole articles critical of his commercial real estate colleagues and I complied.

You should've used a throwaway.

The number of people who led that team for a year and a half as an employee and three years after as a vendor is probably sufficient to identify them regardless of the account used.

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

#437

Post by pc86 »

curare wrote: post #281

At a previous employer we used the data referenced in the question. We bought the "anonymised" telecom data from one of the big providers in the USA. We would then analyse that data to figure out where the phone spent 6-8 hours during the night to determine where the phone owner lived. Then we'd pull the USA consensus data(free!) so the system would know what demographic the user probably belongs to. We got a surpris…

Is there anything even remotely unethical about this?

Compiling publicly available data with purchased/proprietary data is basically the foundation of competitive/market research, isn't it?

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

#438

Post by pc86 »

solarkraft wrote: post #122
Raed667 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the reasons that stopped me: - He asked me privately during a lunch, without telling the people that do the actual work about it. - I only knew that he intended to fire these people later when started putting the spec of the project. - He asked me (someone very junior/intern) instead one of his more confirmed devs, which means he didn't want the company to know yet. - I had a lot of sympathy and even kind of…

"I wasn't paid enough for it" is probably close to the best reason. To even consider doing it (for me) the value I gain should at least relate to the value I'd produce.

It's the only thing close to a justifiable reason, honestly. But even then, if you're paid for a full-time job as a developer, and asked to develop a piece of software, you can't very well say "I'm paid enough to develop all the other stuff you want, but not this one thing" with a straight face. You could certainly use your development of it as a good reason for a raise, though!

While there are some truly bad things in the top-level comments, it seems a non-trivial percentage of the responses here are some form of "my employer attempted to make money, sometimes even a profit, in legal ways."

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

#439

Post by krageon »

chrismcb wrote: post #392
fucking_tragedy wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But see, I can understand weapons building. This is my point. Eventually someone will come in and say the system in the OP was necessary for the company to stay afloat, pay its employees or retain value for its retired shareholders.

There is a difference between defending your nation and defending your country. But in this particular case, some of the things described are actually illegal. While building a weapon is not necessarily illegal. Ignoring the ethical implications.

There is not really all that much difference. Weapons are used to terrorise and murder people. What this person wrote will give some humans stress but it will never cause physical harm.

That you think one is justified and the other is not has very little to do with their relative harm, which is by no means a solved problem or a given. It has to do with your view of it, and those views will differ between different people.

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

#440

Post by saluki »

movedx wrote: post #303
iamdave wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.....isn't HostGator by chance is it? Sounds like the kind of stuff they would have pulled back in their days

No. They're UK based.

Hostgator was started in a dorm room in FL and their HQ is now in Houston, TX. Interesting story would be curious which hosting company. Daft move.
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