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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

#191

Post by dsugarman »

philfreo wrote: post #79
mmmooo wrote: 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…

You were stalking her. Amusing story though

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

#192

Post by photorized »

socialist_coder wrote: post #74

This is obviously a shill post setup to advertise close.io and HN fell right for it. Why would this post be hosted on the close.io blog and not on a personal blog? It has nothing to do with close.io. Why would he mention close.io so many times? Why would he ask about the quality of the "close.io engineers" instead of just his coworker or friend? Smells fishy to me.

That was my immediate reaction, too. Company name is not relevant to any of this.

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

#193

Post by vacri »

abalone wrote: post #153
philfreo wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> - This was just a fun bet between friends… she even knew about this bet. No, from what you guys have said you didn't tell her about it until after the fact. That's super douchey and retroactive permission doesn't change anything. If you grabbed a girl's butt and she laughed it off as "fun between friends," it doesn't make it ok. You need to ask permission first. If you think cyberstalking is only bad if you add dox…

Calm down. The engineers were proving to the sales guy that it's possible to get this kind of information online. They weren't seeking any advantage over the subject at all, directly or indirectly.

Keep in mind that the information that they were looking for could just as easily have been volunteered by the sales guy in other circumstances, so it's not like this information was tightly under her control in the first place. "What's her name? Where does she live?" - these are pretty common questions when discussing romantic liaisons with friends and colleagues.

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

#194

Post by philfreo »

dsugarman wrote: post #191
philfreo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You were stalking her. Amusing story though

"stalk [verb] to follow, watch, and bother (someone) constantly in a way that is frightening, dangerous, etc."

No, we weren't. And she knew about it, was amused by it herself. No bad intentions.

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

#195

Post by 001sky »

philfreo wrote: post #194
dsugarman wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were stalking her. Amusing story though

"stalk [verb] to follow, watch, and bother (someone) constantly in a way that is frightening, dangerous, etc." No, we weren't. And she knew about it, was amused by it herself. No bad intentions.

stalk. verb: to follow (an animal or person that you are hunting or trying to capture) by moving slowly and quietly

stalk. slang defination: hound, spy, solicitation for a certain kind of information

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

#196

Post by abalone »

philfreo wrote: post #184
abalone wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - This was just a fun bet between friends… she even knew about this bet. No, from what you guys have said you didn't tell her about it until after the fact. That's super douchey and retroactive permission doesn't change anything. If you grabbed a girl's butt and she laughed it off as "fun between friends," it doesn't make it ok. You need to ask permission first. If you think cyberstalking is only bad if you add dox…

She knew what was going on, not just after the fact. I've just re-read the definitions for "stalking", "cyberstalking", and "harassment" and I can assure you none of what we did qualifies given the actual scenario of how things really occurred.

That directly contradicts what your colleague says. He says when she found out about it she laughed it off.

So which one of you is telling the truth?

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

#197

Post by kjs3 »

philfreo wrote: post #194
dsugarman wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were stalking her. Amusing story though

"stalk [verb] to follow, watch, and bother (someone) constantly in a way that is frightening, dangerous, etc." No, we weren't. And she knew about it, was amused by it herself. No bad intentions.

sophistry [ˈsɒfɪstrɪ] n pl -ries 1. (Philosophy) a. a method of argument that is seemingly plausible though actually invalid and misleading b. the art of using such arguments 2. subtle but unsound or fallacious reasoning 3. an instance of this; sophism

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

#199

Post by sergiotapia »

abalone wrote: post #116

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.

I'm not one of those social-justice tards. Believe me. 90% of things online don't even phase me, but this post just left me with a gross feeling.

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

#200

Post by pmorici »

philfreo wrote: post #17

I'm the engineer he's referring to. I still get a laugh seeing Justin's amazement when we told him her name. To answer a few questions... - This isn't the actual photo but looks similar, except that she was alone. Justin was afraid of reposting the same photo after the results of handing over a photo last time :) - There was no useful exif data in the image. - We knew her high school and approximate age in Austin, bu…

Here is my guess:

The second photo you realized you had showed the subject holding the device used to take the picture sent to your colleague. You investigated that particular device and found a way to uniquely identify it's pictures based off some characteristic of it's photos, not necessarily EXIF, then scoured the Internet for photos with the same unique characteristic until you found one that revealed more information about the subject?

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