I tracked down my impostor • Hacker News Board

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#201

Post by aero-glide2 » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 9:09 AM UTC

DoubleGlazing wrote: post #95

kfoley wrote: post #6

Reminds me of something I experienced on HN and Reddit, though my case was a far less significant level. I posted a comment on HN in response to some article about Emacs. Later that day I saw someone had copied my comment word for word in reply to the same article on Reddit. I still have no idea why someone would do that. I thought at first it was some kind of karma farming operation but the post history of the Reddi…

Happened to a friend of mine. He'd posted an article on a website devoted to a specific form of fluid dynamics discussion. This was a site with less than 50 active users. Someone submitted the article (edited to sound more academic) to a journal - and with extra authors added. The journal almost published it, but they didn't because at the last minute one of their reviewers felt they recognized the content as having…

>specific form of fluid dynamics discussion I've been searching for niche forums such as this, if you don't mind, which forum was that?

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#202

Post by Veen » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 9:24 AM UTC

unishark wrote: post #189

oasisbob wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How obnoxious. I would hate that too, and would be tempted to refuse. Is that a common thing to do these days? With the seriousness of academic dishonesty charges, I don't see why students would put up with this. If someone wants to bring meritless flimsy accusations, I wouldn't want to help them do their homework in running down all the accidental matches found by their commercial provider, let alone rewrite my work…

They aren't accusations just match scores. The scores are pretty meaningless unless there's a really good match. Obviously one shouldn't use that alone to determine guilt. Charges are decided by professors and committees, not turnitin. Yes some students might be concerned about the partial matches to the point of anxiety, but the solution is to simply assuage those fears. Because unfortunately, too many others habitu…

> the solution is to simply assuage those fears

The parent commenter's experience suggests that teachers are not doing that; instead, they're encouraging people to rewrite non-plagiarised work so that it doesn't trigger partial matches.

That is my experience too: teachers don't want the hassle of figuring out what a false positive really means.

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#203

Post by nvarsj » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 9:33 AM UTC

disabled wrote: post #106

I have been a victim of this, and it is still an ongoing matter. If you don't want to find yourself a victim of these kinds of people, then you better keep these two links as a reference, and always take them to heart: Narcissists Online: http://www.issendai.com/psychology/narcissism/narcissists-on... What to Remember When Dealing with a Narcissist: http://www.issendai.com/psychology/narcissism/narcissists-wh... Peop…

I was also a victim of this. At my first engineering job, I came up with a novel way to handle project estimation for a very large company, using a combination of basic statistical techniques (hierarchical linear regression, markov chains). It replaced an existing terrible model by the resident PhD in statistics, which was doing a very simple 2 degree fitted curve.

Anyways, this person seemed to really dislike our team and what we had accomplished, and was constantly trying to road block us for a long time. Then out of the blue, he asked us to come and explain it to him. I thought he was reconciling, and we showed him all the details and spent a while so he could understand. We provided him the implementation as well. Then 3-4 weeks later, he quit to go work at Apple. It seemed like he'd stolen our work to improve his career.

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#204

Post by psychiatrist24 » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 9:40 AM UTC

kergonath wrote: post #56

autophagian wrote: post #19

For the curious: this emerged as a twitter thread back in Jan https://twitter.com/mattlodder/status/1350192856154198016 . In it, Dr. Lodder posts a comparison between his tattoos and his imposters, as well as a talk his imposter gave based on his work, while dressed as him. Creepy.

That’s some dedication. And some nerve. I wonder why he’d try that in academia; there are probably other jobs in which his skills would be more useful.

Not sure - where can you get by with submitting another person's work?

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#205

Post by jacquesm » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 9:43 AM UTC

nvarsj wrote: post #203

disabled wrote: post #106

I have been a victim of this, and it is still an ongoing matter. If you don't want to find yourself a victim of these kinds of people, then you better keep these two links as a reference, and always take them to heart: Narcissists Online: http://www.issendai.com/psychology/narcissism/narcissists-on... What to Remember When Dealing with a Narcissist: http://www.issendai.com/psychology/narcissism/narcissists-wh... Peop…

I was also a victim of this. At my first engineering job, I came up with a novel way to handle project estimation for a very large company, using a combination of basic statistical techniques (hierarchical linear regression, markov chains). It replaced an existing terrible model by the resident PhD in statistics, which was doing a very simple 2 degree fitted curve. Anyways, this person seemed to really dislike our te…

If he took the implementation with him to Apple that's IP theft. Did you mention this to legal at your employer? They might have a case there.

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#206

Post by nvarsj » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 9:46 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #205

nvarsj wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also a victim of this. At my first engineering job, I came up with a novel way to handle project estimation for a very large company, using a combination of basic statistical techniques (hierarchical linear regression, markov chains). It replaced an existing terrible model by the resident PhD in statistics, which was doing a very simple 2 degree fitted curve. Anyways, this person seemed to really dislike our te…

If he took the implementation with him to Apple that's IP theft. Did you mention this to legal at your employer? They might have a case there.

Maybe we should have. This was well over a decade ago now. It wasn't something we could easily prove either. We just had strong suspicions based on the timing and his behavior.

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#207

Post by glangdale » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 9:49 AM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #73

ajcp wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right? Hopefully he didn't get them purely for the scam. He could genuinely like the tatts and general style of the guy. Hipster kitsch isn't even that unique.

That's what I was thinking. The picture reminded me of that one story about a Hipster going after some website over an article claiming all Hipster look alike that he found used his picture without permission ... only to find out that it wasn't him. From the pictures of him and his colleague it seems that the people who study tattoos are into getting tattoos as well, I find it absolutely plausible that the guy got th…

Did you read the article as well as look at the pictures?

You do know that it's about someone who plagiarized another person's academic papers as, apparently, his entire output as a Master's student?

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#208

Post by passenger » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 9:54 AM UTC

psychiatrist24 wrote: post #204

kergonath wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s some dedication. And some nerve. I wonder why he’d try that in academia; there are probably other jobs in which his skills would be more useful.

Not sure - where can you get by with submitting another person's work?

Software Development?

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#209

Post by glangdale » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 9:57 AM UTC

brandonmenc wrote: post #119

autophagian wrote: post #19

For the curious: this emerged as a twitter thread back in Jan https://twitter.com/mattlodder/status/1350192856154198016 . In it, Dr. Lodder posts a comparison between his tattoos and his imposters, as well as a talk his imposter gave based on his work, while dressed as him. Creepy.

> a comparison between his tattoos and his imposters There is nothing very special or original about his tattoos. Just about everyone has tattoos that look like this nowadays. Anyone can walk in and select these out of a flash book. This is like complaining that someone is wearing the same t-shirt. Yes, I realize the imposter is mimicking other aspects of his personality, but I see a dozen copies of this guy walking…

I'm enjoying the comments from people who have read a couple of comments here on HN and looked at the pictures in the original article and come to hold forth on how "it's probably just a coincidence".

They're apparently so excited that they can slag off an academic for having tattoos that are, in their minds, Not All That, that they are excusing themselves from the difficult work of reading TFA.

"Yes, I realize the imposter is mimicking other aspects of his personality"

... like, umm, copying vast tracts of his academic work?

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#210

Post by jacquesm » Sun, Mar 28, 2021, 10:11 AM UTC

nvarsj wrote: post #206

jacquesm wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he took the implementation with him to Apple that's IP theft. Did you mention this to legal at your employer? They might have a case there.

Maybe we should have. This was well over a decade ago now. It wasn't something we could easily prove either. We just had strong suspicions based on the timing and his behavior.

It wouldn't surprise me at all. One of the things that we check for during technical DD is to ensure that all of the IP the company claims as theirs really is theirs. Large dumps of code into a repo just after incorporation or just after a new hire are pretty suspicious and require an explanation, such an explanation isn't always available.

Good team leads / code reviewers / laywers can be real assets because they will stop such a thing before it gets to the stage of doing significant damage to the company.

If you have a 1000x programmer on your team you may have a problem (or you've hired Fabrice).

Copyright lawsuits have one interesting property: the statue of limitations starts when you first became aware of the infringement, not when the deed was done. So you may still have a case, even today, because technically you are still unaware that the infringement happened, it may have happened, but you have no proof. If such proof ever surfaces then that would be the point in time to trigger the suit, and such proof can be obtained through the weirdest channels.

I once became aware a company had been started by an ex employee based on a large body of code that I wrote, and through sheer chance I found a tiny sliver of really hard proof. That's what set the ball rolling.