Heh. I identified a Reddit IAMA once this way.
A challenge, identify this HN user, I tried twice and failed
21–30 of 152 posts
Re: A challenge, identify this HN user, I tried twice and failed
#22Out 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 wr…
You got it. Sorry for not being more clear, I thought it was an interesting challenge, and since I've used up my 'two guesses' I think it is more appropriate to admit failure rather than to keep on hammering away at it until I hit the right user.
PG would have an easy time of it (log files) :)
Re: A challenge, identify this HN user, I tried twice and failed
#23Heh. I identified a Reddit IAMA once this way.
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Re: A challenge, identify this HN user, I tried twice and failed
#24I am Spartacus
Re: A challenge, identify this HN user, I tried twice and failed
#25Simple psychology would lead me to guess that it is you Jacques. If I wanted to tell how easy it was to identify an anonymous comment, then I'd make one. I'd then publicise it, and challenge other people to crack it.
Maybe I'm being too clever for my own good...
Re: A challenge, identify this HN user, I tried twice and failed
#26Do you keep a corpus of all HN comments? I doubt PG would appreciate all of us hammering the HN server to collect the data.
It's slow enough as it is :/
Re: A challenge, identify this HN user, I tried twice and failed
#27Do you have any proof that the guy would acknowledge you are correct even if you identified him?
Seems like a good thing to verify first. Maybe you already got the guy and he just said "no it's not me."
Re: A challenge, identify this HN user, I tried twice and failed
#28Run 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...
How do you know you failed?
Re: A challenge, identify this HN user, I tried twice and failed
#29Do you have any proof that the guy would acknowledge you are correct even if you identified him? Seems like a good thing to verify first. Maybe you already got the guy and he just said "no it's not me."
I'm a big proponent of fair play and I think the author would identify himself when asked, but at the same time only PG can be sure.
Of course you can be paranoid, but I think the bigger chance is the author seeing a chance here at sowing some disinformation. Such as participating in this thread and giving false pointers and / or confusing the issue.
For the really paranoid, of course the last person to participate in this thread is 'the one'...
It wasn't me, that's for sure :)
Re: A challenge, identify this HN user, I tried twice and failed
#30Simple psychology would lead me to guess that it is you Jacques. If I wanted to tell how easy it was to identify an anonymous comment, then I'd make one. I'd then publicise it, and challenge other people to crack it. Maybe I'm being too clever for my own good...
Or it is you nagrom.