Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most? • Hacker News Board

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

#451

Post by DonHopkins » Sun, Nov 20, 2022, 3:18 PM UTC

pornel wrote: post #26

peer2pay wrote: post #19

At a previous employer I helped build an employee monitoring system that was essentially a keylogger and would also take screenshots periodically and on every click. All this data was piped into our cloud and could be used by middle management for granular monitoring and evaluation. The whole product was positioned for process optimisation but I know for a fact that it was used to monitor and eventually reduce headco…

I'm too forgetful to log and fill in time sheets reliably, so I started building a tool do it for me automatically and retroactively (so I don't have to press start/stop on some timer, or even remember to run the software ahead of time) based on data gathered from the system, like file timestamps, browsing history, syslogs, etc. I got deep into gathering all the data and ML analysis, to the point I started brushing w…

No need to use actual surveillance and machine learning to fill out time sheets.

I had a friend Josh who worked at Los Alamos National Labs, who wrote a script that automatically filled out his timesheet with plausible looking working hours and tasks, an emailed it in at the right time every month.

One month his boss was chatting with his assistant about how happy he was with how promptly and efficiently Josh always sent in his time sheets, saying what a good worker he was, and that he just received his timesheet on time that day.

The assistant explained to the boss that Josh was actually away on vacation that week.

So when Josh finally got back from vacation, his boss summoned him into his office for an awkward sit down talk.

And insisted that Josh set him up with the same system to automatically fill out and send in his time sheet, too!

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

#452

Post by t-3 » Sun, Nov 20, 2022, 3:18 PM UTC

lasfter wrote: post #158

gnat wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Thing is, when the company that pays you actively wants to track everyone, there's little you can do as the person that creates tech form them." You can quit. Literally, there is something you can do. If your boss asks you to write or adapt something to surveil, then you can quit. There may be consequences to quitting, perhaps disproportionately felt between you and the company, perhaps consequences that you won't e…

> There may be consequences to quitting, perhaps disproportionately felt between you and the company This is why unions are so important, even in a field like software engineering. If you quit on your own, the company may not care. But using the threat of strikes, workers can demand better conditions for themselves and more ethical directions for their company.

That well has been poisoned in the US. It's tough to find any extant union which isn't a corrupt sellout organization leeching off the workers they're supposed to represent. It's hard to change, because laws around unions are designed to lead to the current situation. Cross-industry/informal/extra-organizational action and coordination using the internet is probably a far more workable idea than traditional unions.

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

#453

Post by t-3 » Sun, Nov 20, 2022, 3:21 PM UTC

eyelidlessness wrote: post #243

int_19h wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech workers disproportionally 1) believe in meritocracy, and 2) believe that the existing arrangement in IT is it, or at least closer to it than it would have been with unions in the picture. Why that is the case is another interesting question.

I disagree. I think most tech workers identify more with their employers and their class than their own status and that of their colleagues. They’re moving up, fast, and they’re satisfied with their prospects more than anything they might get from solidarity. In Marxist terms, lumpenproletariat is a close approximation, but a weird accident of history.

That's not strange is it? If you're making 100k+/year, you're well into bourgeois territory, and FAANG benefits are practically near-instant-owner-class. Why would you expect anybody getting that kind of money to identify with the lower classes?

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

#454

Post by jasonhansel » Sun, Nov 20, 2022, 3:51 PM UTC

derangedHorse wrote: post #426

jasonhansel wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was powerless to stop it. You couldn't have stopped someone from building it. But you could have refused to work on it on principle, or even have become a whistleblower. Yes, doing so might have been infeasible for you, particularly if you couldn't risk a temporary loss of income. But your involvement was, nevertheless, a choice, and it's important to acknowledge that. edit: If it was exactly 5 years ago, you may…

If they refused the work and let someone else who cared less about limiting the amount of data, things would be worse. Also what would whistleblowing do? A lot of companies were operating in China and followed similarly privacy-hostile regulation. Also to bring up Uighurs in this is ridiculous. Logging ips and urls has no direct correlation with being able to round people up in concentration camps. It has nothing to…

You may recall that, when someone blew the whistle on Google Dragonfly, a censored search engine intended for use in China, the public outrage was enough to bring the project to a halt. The same might well have happened to Akamai.

Regardless: this whole attitude strikes me as an overly utilitarian outlook. Yes, if someone else handled the development, the consequences might well have been worse. But it is still wrong to participate in an injustice when you have the opportunity not to do so. "I was just following orders" is a pretty weak excuse.

Again, if the commenter had no other options because they couldn't risk the loss of income, that would be a good reason, but it isn't clear that that was the case.

I think it's pretty naive to assume that this project wouldn't have been used against the Uighur population, given how China has used extensive surveillance against them.

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

#455

Post by jasonhansel » Sun, Nov 20, 2022, 3:59 PM UTC

slim wrote: post #346

052c7028e wrote: post #253

When I was at Akamai about 5 years ago, I was involved in building the system for making their CDN compliant in China. There were two main features, and they were activated on all servers running inside mainland china (not HK, macau or Taiwan) 1. Logs of the CDN were sent in real time to the ministry of technology -- there was about a 15 minute delay if I remember correctly, and they could impose fines if they were d…

Thank you. This is very informative. And don't feel guilty, nobody will get jailed for visiting a website. This is mostly for censorship.

This is kind of like saying, "don't feel guilty, this weapon won't be used for murder, it's mostly just for arson."

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

#456

Post by NoGravitas » Sun, Nov 20, 2022, 4:01 PM UTC

gnat wrote: post #139

leidenfrost wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, when the company that pays you actively wants to track everyone, there's little you can do as the person that creates tech form them. If the piece of software you created is unbiased and unopinionated, it can be used for evil purposes. If you make the software deliberatedly against that, you have to (a) take measures without the company knowing (b) have the manpower to do it alone while still reaching devel…

"Thing is, when the company that pays you actively wants to track everyone, there's little you can do as the person that creates tech form them." You can quit. Literally, there is something you can do. If your boss asks you to write or adapt something to surveil, then you can quit. There may be consequences to quitting, perhaps disproportionately felt between you and the company, perhaps consequences that you won't e…

> You can quit. Literally, there is something you can do. If your boss asks you to write or adapt something to surveil, then you can quit.

If you had a union, or even a professional association whose code of ethics had teeth, you could refuse without having to quit. It's incredible to me that in 2022, most programmers are still anti-union.

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

#457

Post by jasonhansel » Sun, Nov 20, 2022, 4:03 PM UTC

michaelcampbell wrote: post #128

peter422 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, having built a ton of cabinet doors before for a similar project, I realized the allure of the cost savings (the raw materials are so cheap!) blinds you to the massive amounts of labor involved.

(One of) the old woodworking mottos; why buy it when you can build it for 3x the cost and 10x the time?

Only 10x?

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

#458

Post by NoGravitas » Sun, Nov 20, 2022, 4:05 PM UTC

t-3 wrote: post #452

lasfter wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There may be consequences to quitting, perhaps disproportionately felt between you and the company This is why unions are so important, even in a field like software engineering. If you quit on your own, the company may not care. But using the threat of strikes, workers can demand better conditions for themselves and more ethical directions for their company.

That well has been poisoned in the US. It's tough to find any extant union which isn't a corrupt sellout organization leeching off the workers they're supposed to represent. It's hard to change, because laws around unions are designed to lead to the current situation. Cross-industry/informal/extra-organizational action and coordination using the internet is probably a far more workable idea than traditional unions.

Have you considered that that's what Porky wants you to think about unions?

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

#459

Post by inglor_cz » Sun, Nov 20, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

toss1 wrote: post #446

CamperBob2 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One argument in favor of this is that it would pretty much force governments to set reasonable speed limits, rather than optimizing them to ensure that the police have an excuse to pull over almost anyone at any time.

No, it would allow them to adjust the limit to whatever brings in the most revenue without crashing the economy or engendering open revolt. It would always be entirely unworkable at anything resembling the current fine structure, with fines in the $100s for a single infraction. These are based on the assumption that people are rarely caught. I could see a surveillance-based system working, something on the lines of a…

"engendering open revolt"

In France, messing with the people's ability to drive affordably led directly to the Yellow Vest riots.

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

#460

Post by inglor_cz » Sun, Nov 20, 2022, 4:10 PM UTC

fknorangesite wrote: post #239

Negitivefrags wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is so bad about catching people taking unauthorised breaks?

> What is so bad about catching people taking unauthorised breaks? Your profile indicates that you've commented on HN on a weekday. Don't worry - this behavior has already been reported to the authorities.

Not the OP, but a lot depends on the context.

If both pilots left the cockpit mid-flight in order to chill with the stewardesses, I would be fine with them being barred from working as pilots ever again.

I couldn't care less if a receptionist catches a quick smoking break during a slow hour.