I bet it's tokenadult. I do not have any other proof than the fact that I immediately thought of that username when I saw onetimetoken. :-)
Ooh, I like your guess. The writing style seems to be the same.
A challenge, identify this HN user, I tried twice and failed
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Re: A challenge, identify this HN user, I tried twice and failed
#12Run the following phrases on your thingy and filter by the users who use them: "The point being," ", mind you," "I fully agree with" "highlights a fundamental" ":" some text "," some text "." ", etc." " - e.g." "entirely dissimilar" Whatever user has the most instances of these signature phrases is likely your man.
That's exactly what I did and failed...
Re: A challenge, identify this HN user, I tried twice and failed
#13Out of curiosity, why does it matter who wrote it?
Re: A challenge, identify this HN user, I tried twice and failed
#14Is it marketer? http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=marketer This is merely a naive guess. He's the only other user on hacker news (according to Google) to use the term "people search engines". He also seems to have been working in the data mining business.
From a quick look at his comments, he seems to match the other heuristics seasoup mentions in that thread: meticulously correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation, use of semicolons, and use of dashes.
He also seems to comment heavily on technical issues - programming languages, database technologies, so it might make sense for him to feel heavy non-tech opinions deserve a onetimetoken. Similarly reasoned, the sentiment of "privacy is dead, there is only identity management" seems to be a realization appropriate for someone who recently started working on YC-funded companies. Seem convincing to me, but since they're all reverse-justifications, probably best to take them with a grain of salt: you might be able to draw similar conclusions combing through many other comment histories.
Interesting that this "human [powered] search engine" style of identification might have been faster than devising a machine heuristic.
Re: A challenge, identify this HN user, I tried twice and failed
#15Out of curiosity, why does it matter who wrote it?
Re: A challenge, identify this HN user, I tried twice and failed
#16Is it marketer? http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=marketer This is merely a naive guess. He's the only other user on hacker news (according to Google) to use the term "people search engines". He also seems to have been working in the data mining business.
From a quick look at his comments, he seems to match the other heuristics seasoup mentions in that thread: meticulously correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation, use of semicolons, and use of dashes. He also seems to comment heavily on technical issues - programming languages, database technologies, so it might make sense for him to feel heavy non-tech opinions deserve a onetimetoken. Similarly reasoned, the sentim…
Yeah it's almost crowd sourced. Reminds me of when the cops put a letter or riddle from a serial killer in the newspaper figuring someONE out there will recognize it, as opposed to a computer recognizing it. Or maybe that just happens in the movies.
Re: A challenge, identify this HN user, I tried twice and failed
#17Out of curiosity, why does it matter who wrote it?
I don't think the reason he wants to find out is because he wants to know. I think he wants to prove that it's possible to find out.
He thought it was long enough that he could pretty trivially have a program compare the writing style to other HN comments and determine who it was, but he failed. So it's a challenge for other hackers--can you write a program that can determine who said something simply based on the writing style and knowing that he's a member of a reasonably small sample (HN users).
Re: A challenge, identify this HN user, I tried twice and failed
#18I bet it's tokenadult. I do not have any other proof than the fact that I immediately thought of that username when I saw onetimetoken. :-)
"I immediately thought of that username"
Reminds me of "Blink", Malcolm Gladwell's book.
Re: A challenge, identify this HN user, I tried twice and failed
#19I bet it's tokenadult. I do not have any other proof than the fact that I immediately thought of that username when I saw onetimetoken. :-)
I don't think tokenadult would mind posting that comment from his own account. The person that posted this sees his HN-identity as not stating strong opinions.
Re: A challenge, identify this HN user, I tried twice and failed
#20Is it marketer? http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=marketer This is merely a naive guess. He's the only other user on hacker news (according to Google) to use the term "people search engines". He also seems to have been working in the data mining business.
From a quick look at his comments, he seems to match the other heuristics seasoup mentions in that thread: meticulously correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation, use of semicolons, and use of dashes. He also seems to comment heavily on technical issues - programming languages, database technologies, so it might make sense for him to feel heavy non-tech opinions deserve a onetimetoken. Similarly reasoned, the sentim…
He also uses lower case for facebook, twitter etc. which is what leaped out at me about the comment were trying to identify.
Edit: ok one other thing strikes me: use of the word "ton" doesn't quite fit with the rest of the language.