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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?

#471

Post by TeMPOraL »

pc86 wrote: post #425
TeMPOraL wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This outlook, along with "well if I don't do it someone else will anyway", is why tech workers are quickly becoming the new bankers in the view of the public. Which really annoys me, because while moral indifference of some tech workers is wrong, there are still the business guys actually giving the immoral orders . Those are conveniently forgotten in the new narrative.

At what level of technical skill/background does a business guy become a tech guy? People are people and this "oh the business guys are the bad ones, not poor little programmer making $200k/yr implementing business guy's idea" mindset is odd.

It's not about the skills/background, but decisionmaking capacity. The blame for executing an order is separate from the blame for issuing one. If a tech worker is both the decisionmaker and the implementer then they get to be blamed for both, of course.

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

#472

Post by d21d3q »

I was asked to generate fake data from renewable energy sources. Solar panels, wind turbines, heat pumps, all in EU project. Company needed to prove that estimations (about energy production provided in application) were correct in order not to return money. I was pulling data from weather api and "scaling it to power", and making monthly reports of energy balance (electricity, heat which was bought, produced, lost) Fun part was when guys from committee saw those reports, they told: "Finally somebody made right reports. Let us make a copy and show it to others as example" :)

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

#473

Post by ameixaseca »

hjek wrote: post #465
ameixaseca wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the alternative - ie, relying on annuals for food production - destroys top soil and relies on fossil-based fertilizers. It's the epitome of nonsusteinability and environment destruction. Perennials combined with animals can be made into a much more self-sustainable cycle. Be careful with numbers, they can be useful but fail to show the full picture at the same time.

Back when I was eating meat, I was probably still aware that it was harmful, but in a kind of cynical denial about it. I've heard that one about "the annual crops" before, and it's simply not true that it's "the" alternative. It's claimed in this one study that's echoed in loads of articles[0][1][2][3] that assumes that vegans don't eat perennials, which is kind of ignoring the existence of apples, apricots, asparagu…

It's not a question of being harmless but sustainable. Everything you do will harm or imbalance the environment somehow, the question is how much the environment can recover or if it can at all.

There are a ton of lines I could go to discuss your points, from "meat is not equal to beef" to "could one live healthily only on the things you listed?" (hint: no).

I see tons of articles with statements of journalists but no real evidence, if you want to discuss with references I suggest going to better sources. Actually, I suggest checking your references as well - this was written on [4]:

"[a major report into the environmental impact of meat eating claimed] eating some meat was good for the planet because some habitats benefited from grazing."

So yeah, even your references "disproving" what I'm saying are actually are actually agreeing with me to a certain extent.

Last, but not least, it's not about who eats what but about sustainable systems - either the system works as a cycle or it will eventually run off. You need to look at the bigger picture.

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

#474

Post by tcgv »

ibudiallo wrote: post #234
iamleppert wrote: post #209

I created software that was used by call center agents to bid on “bathroom” break time slots and kept track of who was on break and actively punished those who didn’t follow the rules. It rewarded those that had higher performance and who took less breaks with higher priority. If an agent didn’t come back from their break a security guard would automatically be dispatched to find them. For the same company I also mad…

hmmmm, you and I need to have a little talk... Edit: Since I am getting downvoted, I will just add context -> https://idiallo.com/blog/when-a-machine-fired-me I was on the other end of a similar system.

I read your post the other day and would definitely link it here if you hadn't done it already. The other side of the story xD

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

#475

Post by curare »

pc86 wrote: post #437
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?

In my opinion the sale of phone location data is already unethical on it’s own.

The location data was pretty accurate too in suburban areas. And the provider in question was not very good at anonymising it either. On multiple occasions we could track individuals over a longer period of time. Which would shut down the entire project until it was fixed.

So the company did the right thing whenever the data was compromised. Probably because they were publicly traded and had a good name. I doubt scrappy startups would do the same.

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

#476

Post by valar_k »

iamdave wrote: post #236
movedx wrote: post #196

Not a programmer at the time, but a system administrator. I won't mention the company. This was 2011-2012 -ish. We hosted dedicated servers and most of the time, they were mostly Plesk or cPanel servers run by people selling email and or web hosting to hundreds of clients from a single server. This one time a client joins the network, buys a server from us, and migrates from Rackspace. We wondered why he'd move from…

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

Was gonna say, it sounded like HostGator.

One of the HostGator former admins actually doxxed one of my old accounts on reddit by typing my full name in response to some random comment. When I asked him how he knew it, it's because my reddit username was the same as my domain name at the time, and he remembered looking through my server. Whenever the admins would get bored, they'd just dig through peoples' servers and see what they had. He remembered mine because I had a lot of sheet music on it.

They get people like this because they put their admins through the puppy mill process. Basically hire anyone not braindead, train them to do basic shit, and then pay them peanuts. The company men eventually get a high position in the hierarchy for a negligible pay bump and then help keep the new ones in line.

Such a shitty company, but I don't host anything sensitive there and it's been reliable for the last 10 years so I haven't migrated anything yet.

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

#477

Post by s3krit »

fao_ wrote: post #244
fucking_tragedy wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will always be someone who can find a moral reason that such systems need to exist. Engineers build weapons, after all.

But see, I can understand weapons building. The motivation is protective towards one's society, and that is the intended result, even if that might not be the actual case. Whereas the intention of building an oppressive system such as the one described above is, what, selfishness? Laziness? Programmers, because of the high-demand nature of our role, do not tend to be subject to the usual financial pressures that othe…

>But see, I can understand weapons building. The motivation is protective towards one's society, and that is the intended result, even if that might not be the actual case.

Not really.

If you work for Raytheon, you are supporting a company that sells arms to the following countries: https://www.raytheon.com/ourcompany/global

Northrop Grumman have a list of their worldwide presence here: https://www.northropgrumman.com/AboutUs/OurGlobalPresence/Pa...

If you work for a defense contractor, you are not 'protecting your society' - that's not even the intent. The intent is to make money by selling tools designed to kill other human beings.

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

#478

Post by jessaustin »

dabockster wrote: post #374
jessaustin wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not really theirs to give, is it? If a researcher has a credible narrative of what she found, when she found it, some logs and other records, and any history of research at all, most people would believe her even if the owners of the researched system said "nuh uh we're perfect don't believe anyone who says otherwise!" Especially since such a system would be less likely to be fixed at the time of the presentation, so anyone interested could verify the vulns for themselves.

Of course the courts are open for business no matter what the circumstances, so a researcher might not take credit so as to not be sued.

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

#479

Post by wavefunction »

personlurking wrote: post #461
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…

A bit of a take on Cunningham's Law. Implementing the wrong answer as a means of others reaching the right one.

More of like an empty self-serviing justification for great evil against your fellow humans, if such you can still be considered.

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

#480

Post by netaustin »

netaustin wrote: post #450
Rzor wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should've used a throwaway.

I appreciate the sentiment, but I've been open about this on Twitter and to a team that wrote a profile of him in the wake of the election. That a newspaper publisher would participate in an administration that labels the press the enemy of the people is a total betrayal of the journalists and other media professionals who worked hard for him for years.

For posterity, Buzzfeed News reported this: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stevenperlberg/jared-ku...
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