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Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?

#21
I decided to build my own kitchen cabinets from scratch. I only had my small townhouse in which to build them. They eventually came out great, but it took 2 years to complete them.

The lesson I learned is to make it easier to abort large projects. Even if it delayed me by 6 months, I should have found a rentable workshop.

Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?

#22
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh... Was it really that hard to guess what they're gonna do with it? How long ago was that? It's not like their abuse of [foreign] workers is anything new.

7-8 years ago. I was a lot more naive back then and knew very little about any of the Middle East petro states.

No post body was provided.

Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?

#24

At a previous employer I helped build an employee monitoring system that was essentially a keylogger and would also take screenshots periodically and on every click. All this data was piped into our cloud and could be used by middle management for granular monitoring and evaluation. The whole product was positioned for process optimisation but I know for a fact that it was used to monitor and eventually reduce headco…

Process optimization and reducing headcount are more or less the same thing. It's about reducing the amount of work first. Only if you manage to find more customers to keep work at the same level you can avoid reducing headcount.

Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?

#25
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7-8 years ago. I was a lot more naive back then and knew very little about any of the Middle East petro states.

Quoted post unavailable.

That’s quite condescending.

Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?

#26

At a previous employer I helped build an employee monitoring system that was essentially a keylogger and would also take screenshots periodically and on every click. All this data was piped into our cloud and could be used by middle management for granular monitoring and evaluation. The whole product was positioned for process optimisation but I know for a fact that it was used to monitor and eventually reduce headco…

I'm too forgetful to log and fill in time sheets reliably, so I started building a tool do it for me automatically and retroactively (so I don't have to press start/stop on some timer, or even remember to run the software ahead of time) based on data gathered from the system, like file timestamps, browsing history, syslogs, etc.

I got deep into gathering all the data and ML analysis, to the point I started brushing with digital forensics. I got spooked and abandoned it when I've realized I can never release such tool without it being abused for surveillance ;(

Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?

#27
post #8

I built a crypto invoice system that was originally targeted towards our freelance dev clients, which was soon overrun with drug sellers, weapons sellers, and when it reached a point where some of the invoice descriptions included words like "8yo.mp4" we realized it was time to put it down. We reported the IPs of the people involved and shut down the servers. Luckily I live in a third world country and not somewhere…

It could become very useful honeypot for the police or some government agency tracking crime. Those people found another way to get paid. Although I couldn't ever blame you for shutting it down. I'd probably do the same and try to forget about it for many years.

Unfortunately, I was not contacted by any intelligence agency with a promise of money and lack of prosecution, so that was my choice at that time.

Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?

#28
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

7-8 years ago. I was a lot more naive back then and knew very little about any of the Middle East petro states.

Quoted post unavailable.

If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?

#29
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the official name of that product?

Sounds like https://www.wakecap.com/ .

Just wow... from their FAQ

>How do workers benefit from WakeCap?

>Workers’ location and activity is identified within the boundaries of a project for the greater good of all involved within the project and to ensure every worker is safe especially when it comes to fall from height detection, ambient temperature extremes, and confined space crowd control, and more. We found that workers responded positively to the technology.

>Do you have proof that it works?

>WakeCap connected 15+ job sites with 2000+ workers per project...Predominately mega construction projects in Dubai and Saudi Arabia.

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