81–90 of 203 posts
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Maier is only #34 in Germany, Meyer is #6, and mine, Wagner, is at #7 ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_common_surnam...
Here in the United States we choose “John Smith” as the most generic and common name for a man. What name would a German pick? Curiously, for a supposedly common name I have never once met a John Smith.
This is technologically impressive, but I was disappointed (but not particularly surprised) to see no mention of the ethics involved in using this sort of project - in either the GitHub issues or the README/docs. This seems like a great tool for stalking people; particularly the recursive functionality (for tying identifiers together). I'm not saying the world is worse-off due to the release of software like this - i…
Software like this _already_ exists. Credit bureaus, advertising firms, data brokers, skip trace databases, three-letter agencies across the globe, and nearly all of the Big Tech companies do their business building centralized profiles of basically everyone and that certainly includes correlating online identities. The only difference here is that one is more limited and open source. "Privacy is dead, get over it."
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What's the benefit? It sounds like you might have to explain yourself one day if someone posts something racist/horrible.
I look at it differently, even if someone isn’t going around posting racist/horrible things, people and tastes change over time. I’ve been a part of fandoms that are now seen as cringey or toxic. I’ve also grown up more as a person and I look back at a lot of my old comments as sophomoric. I write differently, and my opinions on things have changed as well. I’ve had people dig through my post history on sites like Re…
Seems incredibly prone to false positives. For example, I can guarantee that I'm not the AdmiralAsshat on Reddit, Gmail, or Twitter, because that username was already taken by the time I tried to sign up for them.
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My Gmail is first.last name. I get very sensitive documents for a lawyer with my same name who resides in Texas. We've actually had some decent conversations over the years.
I had that happen once. It was a recipt for a medical purchase, at first I thought I was getting scammed. What tipped me off was the email was sent to firstnamelastname@gmail.com and NOT firstname.lastname@gmail.com. That was the day I realized google would even do that. I ended up using the phone number in the email to contact the person and forwarded the email. And yes, they had my first and last name :)
From those emails, it's nice seeing how people support each other and apparently I'm in demand giving scripture classes.
This is technologically impressive, but I was disappointed (but not particularly surprised) to see no mention of the ethics involved in using this sort of project - in either the GitHub issues or the README/docs. This seems like a great tool for stalking people; particularly the recursive functionality (for tying identifiers together). I'm not saying the world is worse-off due to the release of software like this - i…
Anything you put online is perpetual and will be used against you, any innocent hobby will or adolescent joke will become a major transgression at the right time in your life and for the right audience. Even slight grammatical idiosyncrasies in the words you type can be used to root you out by motivated parties.
Curate you official public profile like you are preparing to run for office, one day you just might; anything else should be anonymous.
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I guess with password managers, this is easier than ever
Even if you used the same username on different accounts, you should have different passwords anyway.
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As a commentary on the conundrum, not so much your post. I always think it’s strange when people make the argument that it’s good for harmful tools to be out in the open because people can/will change their behavior because of them. 99.999999% of people will never see this repo, never know things like this exist, and don’t visit sites like HN but can, and probably will be, affected by it in some way.
I agree. I think this publication is a net-loss for the world, for sure. People will find and use this code--people who could/would never create it themselves. It will be used for many reasons, but the stalking is the most obvious. Not all of my usernames are as resistant as this one, unfortunately.
It's essentially like arguing that releasing open-source ransomware toolkit is beneficial. I mean, maybe it's your right, and one can make some strenuous arguments about how it helps the "defense", but really, it just makes it easier to be a terrible person on the internet.
This is technologically impressive, but I was disappointed (but not particularly surprised) to see no mention of the ethics involved in using this sort of project - in either the GitHub issues or the README/docs. This seems like a great tool for stalking people; particularly the recursive functionality (for tying identifiers together). I'm not saying the world is worse-off due to the release of software like this - i…
On the other hand the docs are the right place to warm about potential legal implications.