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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?

#81

Post by peter422 »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #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.

Yes, having built a ton of cabinet doors before for a similar project, I realized the allure of the cost savings (the raw materials are so cheap!) blinds you to the massive amounts of labor involved.

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

#82

Post by analog31 »

ShredKazoo wrote: post #79
ShredKazoo wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is now one of the top hits on Google for "Qatar slave helmet". And it's the only hit when I put quotes around the phrase to force an exact match. If this is real you should get in touch with investigative journalists, e.g. ProPublica. ("Get in touch with investigative journalists" probably applies to a bunch of the people posting in this thread.)

Actually, I want to think more about the theory of change here. It's conceivable that a ProPublica article could actually make the situation worse, e.g. by advertising the existence of the helmet to other abusive employers, or causing abusive employers to rework their labor practices in a way that looks better to the press but is actually worse. If the company that makes the helmet is based in a country with good gov…

Another possibility is to have something like ITAR, where you can't export to certain countries.

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

#83

Post by TeMPOraL »

whatwherewhy wrote: post #4
hnanon22 wrote: post #3

The Qatar slave helmet. My company built the smart helmet used to track Qatar’s army of abused workers. The claim is GPS and accelerometer where used to track if a worker stopped moving or fell due to an accident; the geo fencing was supposedly for tracking if they had enough workers in an area for the job. The reality is the helmets where/are used as mass surveillance tech to ensure workers are continuously active a…

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.

> How long ago was that? It's not like their abuse of [foreign] workers is anything new.

It's also not like it's common knowledge. Myself I only learned about it couple years ago, here on HN, because of some comment threads that segued into discussions about Qatar construction projects.

Point being, without knowing anything about OP, including where are they from, you can't assume they had a chance of knowing this before taking the job, or even learning about it on the job. The world is awash with news stories about everything - often you learn about a huge tragedy only when you chance on a story about it.

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

#84

Post by peer2pay »

pvorb wrote: post #24
peer2pay wrote: post #19

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.

Not necessarily. "Optimising" a process doesn't always mean increasing per-operator throughput with the goal of reducing the amount of operators required to keep the lights on.

You can optimise for many other things such as on-time delivery in production processes or duplicate/late/early payments of invoices just to name some straightforward examples. In the former case you're optimising the process with the goal of increasing customer satisfaction and in the latter you're optimising many things such as cash flow and working-capital while balancing early payment discounts and late payment penalties.

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

#85

Post by colecut »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #75
SoftTalker wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all software can be abused or co-opted for surveillance purposes. It's one of the reasons I've grown more disillusioned with computer tech over the years.

I had this realization in stages. 1. Almost all software can be abused or co-opted for surveillance purposes. 2. Some software comes already designed for surveillance purposes up front . 2a. This includes plenty of well-known mass appeal software; importantly, the customer-facing marketing copy and the investor pitch can present a completely different value proposition. 3. Software doesn't become used for surveillanc…

The problem is that "bad" is subjective and I'm sure most of the people making these decisions don't agree that they are being "bad"

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

#88

Post by MonkeyMalarky »

ShredKazoo wrote: post #57
hnanon22 wrote: post #3

The Qatar slave helmet. My company built the smart helmet used to track Qatar’s army of abused workers. The claim is GPS and accelerometer where used to track if a worker stopped moving or fell due to an accident; the geo fencing was supposedly for tracking if they had enough workers in an area for the job. The reality is the helmets where/are used as mass surveillance tech to ensure workers are continuously active a…

This comment is now one of the top hits on Google for "Qatar slave helmet". And it's the only hit when I put quotes around the phrase to force an exact match. If this is real you should get in touch with investigative journalists, e.g. ProPublica. ("Get in touch with investigative journalists" probably applies to a bunch of the people posting in this thread.)

How many people do you think worked on the project? If I were the OP, I'd be more worried about getting the Khashoggi treatment for speaking out.

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

#89

Post by Symbiote »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #32

I built a lighting system for to save energy by turning off hallway lights when not in use. The environmental aspect was great and saved hundreds of thousands in electricity. Someone eventually realized that the mesh network I built to connect all the lights together and report usage statistics could also be used to track employees moving throughout the building and catch them taking unauthorized breaks in the stairw…

What was the requirement?

My apartment building has lights in the hallways that are only on when needed, but they just use a basic infrared sensor.

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