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

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431–440 of 539 posts

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

#431

A Linux computer for my grandma. The correct tech answer when doing things for regular people is standard tech that lots of people use.

It depends. Many people just need a web browser and an OS they can't break. Google discovered that and mainstreamed it.

A non-expert trying to use Windows on the internet in three early 2000s had a near 100% chance of filling it with malware.

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

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't cut parts for beehive frames again. What a pain using 2x4s, and slightly dangerous with such small pieces.

Completely an aside, but consider using hand tools.

Not for making 100+ frames.

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

#433
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't cut parts for beehive frames again. What a pain using 2x4s, and slightly dangerous with such small pieces.

It's an easy decision also by being cheaper to buy the precut from places like brushy mountain.

It was actually much cheaper to use 2x4s (back then anyways). You could get about 10 frames out a $3 2x4.

Also, I made frames for a warre hive. Those are extremely expensive if you can find them.

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

#434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa. Surprised this is the only post along these lines. FB is no different from big tobacco in these times.

That's somewhat unfair. Facebook doesn't give you (and people around you) cancer.

Facebook doesn't cause cancer of course, but there's no shortage of evidence that it harms some of its users, as well as contributing to social phenomena that harm non-users. The Rohingya genocide is a prominent example.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_content_management_...

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

#435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There may be consequences to quitting, perhaps disproportionately felt between you and the company This is why unions are so important, even in a field like software engineering. If you quit on your own, the company may not care. But using the threat of strikes, workers can demand better conditions for themselves and more ethical directions for their company.

Why are tech workers so resistant to organized action? Their owner employers sure are organizing adversarially in a multitude of ways in the open and behind closed doors

Because most of them think someday they will be the owner employer.

They won't, but its a delusion that favours capital over labour.

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

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech workers disproportionally 1) believe in meritocracy, and 2) believe that the existing arrangement in IT is it, or at least closer to it than it would have been with unions in the picture. Why that is the case is another interesting question.

Which is to say that even very intelligent people can be very vulnerable to believing in things which are patently false provided that the end result is the ability to continue to live in a state of complete denial, and a world of pure imagination, where no action is required on one's own part and you can just continue to hope that all of this is a temporary aberration that will get better on its own :)

Yep. Even clever engineers can be delusional fuckwits.

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

#437
post #104

I worked for a company that made deep packet inspection based network equipment. Western customers mostly used it for "security" and media streaming man in the middle attacks (actually a useful feature saving lots of bandwidth). The boxes were also sold to Syria and Burma, and were used to facilitate censorship and human right abuses

Ultimately you are like a kitchen knive maker whose knive was used in a stabbing. It was entirely the stabbers fault and does not diminish the utility of your product. In a corporate setting, mitm'ing TLS and blocking sites by category is routine practice (better ways to stop bad stuff but expensive firewals are a waste when most traffic is TLS).

> In a corporate setting, mitm'ing TLS and blocking sites by category is routine practice

Deep packet inspection is a terrible practice in my opinion. It adds more security vulnerabilities than it typically helps avoid. I’ve seen one implementation use client software to extract keys from a machine to send to a centralized server. How some companies don’t see how this model can be easily exploited is beyond me. Me and a VP friend of an organization have had long debates about this topic and he insists it makes more sense for him because the employees have been more competent at the companies I’ve worked at than the company he managed (which could be true since his company had high turnover leading to many engineers being hired out of need rather than evaluated merit).

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

#438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are tech workers so resistant to organized action? Their owner employers sure are organizing adversarially in a multitude of ways in the open and behind closed doors

> Why are tech workers so resistant to organized action? I am not actually so much resistant to unions, as I do not see what benefit I’ll get from them. What exactly in my life would have changed for better if I had been a part of a union? Just one thing, can you name?

Probably better default settings when it comes to vacation, your off hours not being invaded by on-call, pay transparency, WfH/remote policies, etc.

If you have ever gone up against HR over anything ever, a union would have benefited you.

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

#439
post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to be snarky here, but did it surprise you that a system built to obfuscate financial transactions would be used for illegal activities?

I thought nobody would be stupid enough to try to slang rocks on "clearnet", and also Bitcoin is not built to obfuscate, that's Monero.

I wouldn’t care too much about the people who try to “slang rocks”, the “8yo.mp4” is infinitely worse in my eyes.

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

#440
post #346

When I was at Akamai about 5 years ago, I was involved in building the system for making their CDN compliant in China. There were two main features, and they were activated on all servers running inside mainland china (not HK, macau or Taiwan) 1. Logs of the CDN were sent in real time to the ministry of technology -- there was about a 15 minute delay if I remember correctly, and they could impose fines if they were d…

Thank you. This is very informative. And don't feel guilty, nobody will get jailed for visiting a website. This is mostly for censorship.

> This is mostly for censorship.

As if that makes if any better?

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