I worked at Ashley Madison, enough said.
How many users (women) were actually real?
Less than 1%.
Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
521–530 of 539 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#522I wrote the GNC firmware for a loitering munition and it's... complicated. I am both very proud of and saddened by it. I'm also realizing that it could be said to be the most "impactful" thing I've built.
Literally impactful. If any software needed a memory leak it's this.
Actually, I strongly disagree. Ideally, it would not be in the air in the first place. Failing that, once it's in the air, I personally prefer that it go to the intended target rather than just kind of wherever it ends up.
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#523A Linux computer for my grandma. The correct tech answer when doing things for regular people is standard tech that lots of people use.
It depends. Many people just need a web browser and an OS they can't break. Google discovered that and mainstreamed it. A non-expert trying to use Windows on the internet in three early 2000s had a near 100% chance of filling it with malware.
When I was using Windows around 2012, when I had a very low amount of computer experience, I would commonly wipe and reinstall Windows due to how often it got filled with crap.
Now I have a couple Windows installs that have been going strong for years. One of 'em has shady proprietary Chinese factory flashing tools on it, and a full development environment for TI graphing calculators. That was my old computer; I don't use either of those tools anymore so my new computer doesn't have them.
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#524I don't have anything that I deeply regret, but I have one where I somewhat regret my techincal decisions. It was for a programming language that I developed at the time called OwU[0]. It was supposed to be a sort of mashup between Lisp and K (an ASCII-friendly dialect of APL). I took a lot of design decisions from oK[1], a K dialect with a code design that I admired. The biggest mistake that I made during my decisio…
OwU is a cute name :3
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#525Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it? OP acted in good faith, had reason to believe the things were on the level, and reacted when given new information. What fault do you lay at their feet?
If the business I start takes money from my mother in law for an order, and someone within the business steals the money, I'm paying her back out of my own pocket if necessary. I'm not saying it's his fault that it got stolen, I'm saying it's his fault that his MIL never got reimbursed.
I was loathe to take direct financial responsibility for anyone’s loss due to the potential legal ramifications. Suffice it to say I have made it up to her in other ways.
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#526Earlier quoted context omitted.
Literally impactful. If any software needed a memory leak it's this.
Actually, I strongly disagree. Ideally, it would not be in the air in the first place. Failing that, once it's in the air, I personally prefer that it go to the intended target rather than just kind of wherever it ends up.
"Crash" is not something you want an aerial explosive to do.
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#527The Qatar slave helmet. My company built the smart helmet used to track Qatar’s army of abused workers. The claim is GPS and accelerometer where used to track if a worker stopped moving or fell due to an accident; the geo fencing was supposedly for tracking if they had enough workers in an area for the job. The reality is the helmets where/are used as mass surveillance tech to ensure workers are continuously active a…
This technology may sound bad but it helpes enable events like the world cup that entertain many around the world
And just think of all the cotton the plantations grew! Surely that justifies it. /s
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#528Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes the ticketing app that people were required to use to get into the events.
Nice. Hold on a sec while I uninstall all the random apps I have left over on my phone...
We're at the point where the lights in a store can be used to track you: https://www.usa.lighting.philips.com/systems/lighting-system...
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#529The Qatar slave helmet. My company built the smart helmet used to track Qatar’s army of abused workers. The claim is GPS and accelerometer where used to track if a worker stopped moving or fell due to an accident; the geo fencing was supposedly for tracking if they had enough workers in an area for the job. The reality is the helmets where/are used as mass surveillance tech to ensure workers are continuously active a…
This comment is now one of the top hits on Google for "Qatar slave helmet". And it's the only hit when I put quotes around the phrase to force an exact match. If this is real you should get in touch with investigative journalists, e.g. ProPublica. ("Get in touch with investigative journalists" probably applies to a bunch of the people posting in this thread.)
OP i am investigative tech journalist. i would love to talk about this. my dms are open and my signal number is here: https://twitter.com/alibreland @hannon22
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#530Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think I'd feel a lot better about job-taking automation if governments would require that companies adopting automation pay to retrain workers, including salary (since you still have to go on living while you're learning a new job skill). I expect this would basically kill any company's desire to automate (unless it's financially worth it in a relatively short amount of time, which I suspect wouldn't be often), so…
> My version of utopia is one where there's so much abundance and automation that no one has to work at all if they don't want to, but can still live incredibly comfortable -- extravagant, even -- lives. Or, as we call it, Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism, or FALGSC.
Which is either a very long, or a rather unpronounceable, way to spell "Star Trek".