Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Scientists hit with massive bills after speaking at COVID-19 ‘webinars’

science.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 156 posts

Re: Scientists hit with massive bills after speaking at COVID-19 ‘webinars’

#101

Post by baz00 »

Obscurity4340 wrote: post #63
baz00 wrote: post #2

Someone did this recently to me i.e. showed me something I'd signed which I didn't. Fortunately this lead to their demise as I am friends with their manager which was unknown by the party in question. Historically I tend to try something on with employment contracts too - I return an unsigned copy to the company. Only 1 out of 6 companies I worked for didn't just stick it in a filing cabinet and forget about it. Ulti…

Sorry, what happened with your friend? They forged a digital signature for you and threw it in your face later or something? What was the context for all this?

They were asked to prepare a report about a safety incident at an event I went to. They provided a statement to their manager which was more than a bit economical with the truth and copied my signature off a contract signing that the statement was accurate. I ahd neither seen, agreed to or signed the statement.

Re: Scientists hit with massive bills after speaking at COVID-19 ‘webinars’

#102

Post by baz00 »

bdjeudug wrote: post #8
baz00 wrote: post #2

Someone did this recently to me i.e. showed me something I'd signed which I didn't. Fortunately this lead to their demise as I am friends with their manager which was unknown by the party in question. Historically I tend to try something on with employment contracts too - I return an unsigned copy to the company. Only 1 out of 6 companies I worked for didn't just stick it in a filing cabinet and forget about it. Ulti…

You’re intentionally returning unsigned contacts to employers hoping they don’t notice? Seeing how you’re first action in each of your new jobs is done in bad faith I think I see why you’ve had to fill out six of them…

It's a brutally fair competence test. They were all cowboys and I left within the year.

Re: Scientists hit with massive bills after speaking at COVID-19 ‘webinars’

#104

Post by casmike »

Roark66 wrote: post #79
Jnr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whole EU and EEZ has standard approved verified electornic signature format. So in EU even cross country signing is possible.

Indeed, it is a pretty cool system, but every time I look into it I'm puzzled by the variety of costs for essentially the same thing. You can buy a cheapest personal certificate that is recognised as equivalent to a physical signature for contract signing for 50eur for 1 year. Or you can spend 500EUR for the same thing. Some come with a smart card, some don't. For some you get software that works offline, for some yo…

In Lithuania, the majority of mobile providers offer an end-to-end solution to their customers at €1 per month or less. This includes pay-as-you-go plans and is likely to reflect the actual cost of this tech used on a large scale, given the significant adoption rate (which I estimate to be more than 5% of the Lithuanian population).

To provide m-signature services, mobile carriers in Lithuania burn a client biometrics-linked key into the SIM cards they provide. This setup allows the use of phones with these special SIM cards for two-factor authentication, which can be considered three-factor with some caveats due to the inclusion of biometrics. The mobile signature technology has good UX where a user, while signing a document, usually enters their tax ID and phone number into a web form. They then react to a prompt on their phone by inputting one of two memorized PINs. It's easy, cheap, and secure.

I also don't believe this technology is subsidized by the government. Though it's challenging to find specific legal language around subsidies for m-signatures, the price of this tech seems to be asymptotically approaching real costs through free market competition. In the Western world, a similar demand for electronic signatures exists. Although the market is currently dominated by costly certificate providers, they seem to lack moat, and it brings hope that this technology may be more widely adopted in places like the UK and US, once prices naturally fall.

Lithuania is N=1 but it's an interesting case study for how mobile signatures can be made user-friendly (or at least "user-reasonable") and mass-adopted.

Re: Scientists hit with massive bills after speaking at COVID-19 ‘webinars’

#105

Post by thayne »

dmix wrote: post #14
bdjeudug wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re intentionally returning unsigned contacts to employers hoping they don’t notice? Seeing how you’re first action in each of your new jobs is done in bad faith I think I see why you’ve had to fill out six of them…

You could easily get by by saying it was just a mix up and you emailed the wrong PDF. Not saying it's ethical though. I'm also not really sure which situations an employment contract would really hurt you in tech besides maybe some IP stuff. NDAs are usually separate.

> I'm also not really sure which situations an employment contract would really hurt you in tech besides maybe some IP stuff

In my first contract for a dev job:

- noncompete

- agreement to work for a minimum amount of time, while my employer could terminate me at will (I don't think this one was actually enforceable where I live, since I didn't get a signing bonus, but I didn't know that at the time)

- IP stuff

- agreement to arbitration for any disputes (and employer chooses the arbitrator of course)

I would probably dispute some of those now, but as at the time I was naive, fresh out of college. And even if I had pushed back, I didn't have much leverage. I had just moved, and had no money, I couldn't afford not to take the job.

Re: Scientists hit with massive bills after speaking at COVID-19 ‘webinars’

#106

Post by baz00 »

jawns wrote: post #36
petesergeant wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I tend to try something on with employment contracts too - I return an unsigned copy to the company. So you email it back without comment, which shows you received it and understood what it was, and then started work… I suspect that’s binding in many jurisdictions, and the lack of an actual signature is simply an inconvenience

What if they crossed out a few clauses and signed, and the employer never noticed. Are you saying that because they begin working for the company, that represents the company's tacit acceptance of the modifications to the contract?

This is exactly what I do. I have an amendment on my contract about intellectual property being owned by the company changed from "while under employment" to "using company equipment in employed hours". They sent me two copies they had signed, I modified both with the change, signed it and scanned the contract.

The returned copy was accepted by HR via email (not sure if they ever read it or not)

What will be interesting is if this ever gets to be tested as not ever sheet in the contract was signed.

Re: Scientists hit with massive bills after speaking at COVID-19 ‘webinars’

#107

Post by scrollaway »

thfuran wrote: post #78
peteradio wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this the normal thing to do? As a physicist I might set up a large pendulum to knock over a foe or perhaps a frictionfull ramp with a uniform cylinder to flatten my foe.

I have done in no fewer than three enemies by forcing them into infinite loops.

My accountant trapped his ex wife into accounts receivables. I think she’s still in there today.

Re: Scientists hit with massive bills after speaking at COVID-19 ‘webinars’

#108

Post by oefnak »

baz00 wrote: post #106
jawns wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if they crossed out a few clauses and signed, and the employer never noticed. Are you saying that because they begin working for the company, that represents the company's tacit acceptance of the modifications to the contract?

This is exactly what I do. I have an amendment on my contract about intellectual property being owned by the company changed from "while under employment" to "using company equipment in employed hours". They sent me two copies they had signed, I modified both with the change, signed it and scanned the contract. The returned copy was accepted by HR via email (not sure if they ever read it or not) What will be interest…

You changed the document after they signed it? If you didn't also remove their signature, that's forgery.

Re: Scientists hit with massive bills after speaking at COVID-19 ‘webinars’

#109

Post by mindslight »

ghaff wrote: post #18
Mandatum wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do. You just won’t pay for it. When you sign a mortgage or take out a loan and it’s all online, lenders will pay someone to come to your house, take a photo of you, verify it, and then video tape you signing. It’s just not convenient.

I had to do a one-off brokerage (where I don't have a personal representative) transfer fairly recently and, although they loosened up a bit during COVID, they were back to basically requiring me to show up at a brokerage branch in person. In theory, I could have gotten a Medallion Signature from my bank but it turned out they couldn't do it at my local branch and getting their central system to do it failed, so I ju…

Online account recovery could go a long way by bootstrapping off the notary system, and then having a waiting period to mitigate forgeries. But companies don't want to add the complexity where a user could commit to a less convenient process for more security, so we're at an impasse. Also they'd have to hire someone to verify the authenticity of incoming physical documents, and having skilled labor do things that aren't "scalable" is verboten.

Re: Scientists hit with massive bills after speaking at COVID-19 ‘webinars’

#110

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

Ever heard about the bogus ChemArxiv (as opposed to ChemRxiv) a few years ago?

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/cen-09446-notw13

It turns out the same scammer (Krzysztof Siennicki from Villa Europa) had its part in it:

https://www.adrforum.com/domaindecisions/1764106.htm

Post reply on HN