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Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

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Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#131
Is it just me or is this spectacularly creepy? "I bet you can't cyber stalk my friend! I bet you we can!" I could understand if this was at defcon or a security/privacy related conference and all parties involved were in the field, but just cyber stalking some random woman? What's the point?

Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#132

Wow. It is stunning how oblivious nearly everyone on this thread is to how douchey it is to BET YOUR BROGRAMMER PALS THEY CAN CYBERSTALK A GIRL. Advice to woman: Run. Advice to startups: Don't let your sales and engineering teams be giant douche canoes and if they are certainly don't publicly brag about it.

Yeah, this was my thought too. This whole situation is just creepy and its even creepier that so many people have a million other ways they would stalk somebody. Sure you can do all of these things, but if you have ethics you just don't.

Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the actual method that worked was "another photo" mentioned by grecy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6369669 an hour ago?

This method likely would have worked by itself. The method that worked sooner wasn't just "another photo" found online of her friends as grecy mentioned. It was a photo we had taken ourselves, and it didn't have anyone else in it. But I'm not ready to tell Justin more details about it.

This strikes me as odd, albeit a clue. You had a photo of a girl you'd presumably never met. A photo you'd taken, that you didn't know was her at first.

Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#135
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty confident it would have, but we ultimately "stopped" it after getting the answer confirmed, so I can't say with 100%.

So you stumbled on a piece of information which proved useful, notwithstanding that you didn't intend to look for. If Justin observed correctly, you guys were very impressed with yourselves. Had you retrieved the answer by methods of which you were confident, you would've still been impressed, but not greatly.(I'm making a lapse conjecture here, of course) Since you were confident that you would be able to find her,…

Wait, whats the solution?

Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#136

Wow. It is stunning how oblivious nearly everyone on this thread is to how douchey it is to BET YOUR BROGRAMMER PALS THEY CAN CYBERSTALK A GIRL. Advice to woman: Run. Advice to startups: Don't let your sales and engineering teams be giant douche canoes and if they are certainly don't publicly brag about it.

Or, have some faith in humanity, considering:

- This was just a fun bet between friends. Justin really didn't think it could be done and I wanted to show him how a little information goes a long way online.

- Justin treated this girl well and she even knew about this bet.

- "Look up online" != Stalking

- None of the discovered information has been posted publicly online. This isn't even her photo.

Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#137
post #122

This is dumb. You can get a private investigator to do this for $100 - $200, with almost surely a better method that Phil used. Given what Phil does, the most cost effective (rational) method he could have used was to spend those hours working, and then pay a private investigator. If he wanted to do it himself, the easiest way is to facebook search for people who went to her high school in the right date range, then…

except that this is an intellectual challenge, more like a puzzle.

You could pay a puzzle solver to solve a puzzle, but that defeats the purpose.

Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#139

Wow. It is stunning how oblivious nearly everyone on this thread is to how douchey it is to BET YOUR BROGRAMMER PALS THEY CAN CYBERSTALK A GIRL. Advice to woman: Run. Advice to startups: Don't let your sales and engineering teams be giant douche canoes and if they are certainly don't publicly brag about it.

Or, have some faith in humanity, considering: - This was just a fun bet between friends. Justin really didn't think it could be done and I wanted to show him how a little information goes a long way online. - Justin treated this girl well and she even knew about this bet. - "Look up online" != Stalking - None of the discovered information has been posted publicly online. This isn't even her photo.

When I told her about the bet she laughed and took it all in stride. She thought it was funny.

Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#140
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

post pic on craiglist/similar in Austin area. Say you found wallet/purse/camera/etc with her picture. Anyone that knows her please call/email w/ Name/Address for you to send back. Use highschool for validation when contacted. Might have some error.

This is the closest I've heard to one of the ideas that we expected to work, so I'll share. - Create an ad on Facebook with her picture. - Target people that went to her high school within 4 years of the range of years we thought she graduated within. Was only a few hundred people so the cost of running the ad would likely only be a few bucks. - The ad copy / landing page just needed to be convincing that we weren't…

she applied for work with your company, and you had her photo and info from the cv?
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