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Use Jonathan's card to buy yourself an iPad

sam.odio.com

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Re: Use Jonathan's card to buy yourself an iPad

#111

Post by burgerbrain »

niels_olson wrote: post #103

To all who want to slam on Sam Odio's moral code: You're seriously arguing that a hack that converts money into fat, caffeinated Americans and corporate profit is better than a hack that hacks that hack to feed the poor? We should be finding more ways to prevent the conversion of money into American fat. In fact: as a doctor, there's my challenge to you: please find ways to catch calories before they land in middle-c…

To those who want to slam on those "slamming" on Sam Odio's (reprehensible) moral code:

You're seriously arguing that that we should re-evaluate our outlook by slinging around childish insults?

Re: Use Jonathan's card to buy yourself an iPad

#113

Post by mzahir »

sequoia wrote: post #37
mzahir wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like giving a gift. It's making a donation for a specific cause and then having the funds misspent on something different. The publicly accessible debit card was part of the 'social experiment' which seems to result in what we already knew a long time ago. People are happy to abuse the system for what they believe to be the greater good.

How is what he's doing not "part of the social experiment?" Q: What happens if you let everyone contribute to and take from a Starbucks card? A: We are in the process of finding out, and the answer wasn't what we expected! Why isn't this just an interesting, unexpected result? Furthermore, condemning this guy is like condemning Lulzsec for exposing security vulnerabilities. Do you think that no one would have figured…

Yes, it's part of the social experiment and it was a pretty cool hack.

I think a more accurate scenario is: Q: What happens if you let everyone contribute to and buy coffees from a Starbucks card? A: We are in the process of finding out but some very smart but unethical folks are pulling funds outside of coffee purchases and ruining the pot for everyone else.

Re: Use Jonathan's card to buy yourself an iPad

#114

Post by burgerbrain »

sp332 wrote: post #18
gareim wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read his comment? His point was that the OP seems to think we can't indulge ourselves occasionally and must always work towards solving those big problems. We're human. We should allow ourselves to have some fun once in a while.

That's not the context of the quote. He's wondering if people will bid over the face value of the card, or if no one thinks that charity is more important than caffeine. He's not dissing on Jonathan's Card, he's wondering about his auction.

He should do that with his own money. Not stolen funds.

Re: Use Jonathan's card to buy yourself an iPad

#115

Post by filmgirlcw »

niels_olson wrote: post #103

To all who want to slam on Sam Odio's moral code: You're seriously arguing that a hack that converts money into fat, caffeinated Americans and corporate profit is better than a hack that hacks that hack to feed the poor? We should be finding more ways to prevent the conversion of money into American fat. In fact: as a doctor, there's my challenge to you: please find ways to catch calories before they land in middle-c…

He's not feeding the poor, he's feeding his ego and acting holier than thou. If he wanted to make a donation to charity, he could do that without subverting an experiment under the guise of "helping people who really matter."

I find this entire episode disgusting and if being a "successful entrepreneur" means acting like a douchebag like Sam, may I never be successful. Incidentally, MOST successful entreprenurs I know (and many are far more successful than Sam could ever hope to be) don't act like this. They have better things to do than jack money off a community Starbucks card so that they can create Internet drama.

Re: Use Jonathan's card to buy yourself an iPad

#116

Post by rjett »

I find it ironic that the OP, who hacked the experiment to divert funds onto his own card (which are now going to a just cause), is the brother of the person in the original comments thread who was posturing about whether or not the card had been hacked.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2858120 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2858226

Perhaps Sam made this script well after there was a question as to whether or not the card had been hacked, but if not, this is just funny.

Re: Use Jonathan's card to buy yourself an iPad

#117

Post by esmevane »

Used to work for Starbucks. We once had a day where all of our customers decided to 'pay it forward', and buy the next person's drinks.

It led to a lot of accounting for me, but the final tally was something in the vein of 800 transactions in an unbroken chain.

The high points involved folks buying $50 or more worth of transactions, down the line. The low points involved people trying to put down $20 and the next person using all of it up on silly frappucinos.

To answer another topic, I think that the assertion here that buying Starbucks coffee for someone else as intrinsically frivolous, when we could be doing something valuable, like perhaps Saving the Children, or Helping Starvation, is itself frivolous.

Helping one another is helping one another, and criticizing how it's done is missing the point altogether. I have to wonder where the utility is in comparing the weight of one charity versus another. It seems pointless.

Re: Use Jonathan's card to buy yourself an iPad

#118

Post by keidian »

ay wrote: post #72
Udo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if he stole enough to buy an iPad, that's a large chunk of the missing money from the card right there. I'm willing to bet most of the other people stealing from the card aren't rich and successful YC graduate entrepreneurs either but somehow that makes what he did much worse in my opinion. He's also a rich guy lecturing people on how they should be donating every little bit of their excess money to charity. I'…

Now the community should do a social experiment of encouraging Sam to return the same amount of money onto the card as he stole and see if it works.

Or a social experiment of avoiding his new YC startup Freshplum

http://allthingsd.com/20110621/sam-odio-i-left-facebook-to-r...

Re: Use Jonathan's card to buy yourself an iPad

#119

Post by sharjeel »

The original post about Jonathan's card Stated that the experiment is inspired by "'take a penny, leave a penny' trays at convenience stores in the US".

Then here is what happened:

People started using the tray, taking them as well as leaving them. Then one day a guy started showing up at the store. He would intermittently dump the tray into his knapsack whenever there were enough pennies. Not only he did this for many days, but later he also proudly publicly announced that how he did it. Since all the people who show up at the store are rich and wealthy, it makes more sense to give that money to poor in some other parts of the world.

If this logic is acceptable then I should be allowed to break apart any petty charity collection box and use the money for the purpose I deem more noble.

Re: Use Jonathan's card to buy yourself an iPad

#120

Post by lotharbot »

rjett wrote: post #116

I find it ironic that the OP, who hacked the experiment to divert funds onto his own card (which are now going to a just cause), is the brother of the person in the original comments thread who was posturing about whether or not the card had been hacked. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2858120 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2858226 Perhaps Sam made this script well after there was a question as to whether or…

Good find.

Also note that danielodio put some of his startup's money on the card ($100, $49, $300 mentioned in HN comments, and a total of $85 mentioned on twitter). So he almost paid for Sam's withdrawals.

EDIT: I find myself wondering if, in a few hours, Sam and Daniel will give this as a further explanation, and reveal that they'd actually donated the full amount to the card that was taken out. The whole thing is a social experiment; it may not be over.

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