Interesting that most posts here have to do with monitoring or surveillance of others. Privacy is important...
Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
61–70 of 539 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#62The Qatar slave helmet. My company built the smart helmet used to track Qatar’s army of abused workers. The claim is GPS and accelerometer where used to track if a worker stopped moving or fell due to an accident; the geo fencing was supposedly for tracking if they had enough workers in an area for the job. The reality is the helmets where/are used as mass surveillance tech to ensure workers are continuously active a…
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Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
condescending : having or showing an attitude of patronizing superiority.
I don't see anything patronizing or showing superiority in what I wrote. I am saying this as a peer, not as a superior. It's kinda weird to expect people not to make mistakes such as this if nobody tells them it's wrong. And it's normal for people to tell other people they do bad stuff if they do.
So you’re assuming that you know better than them what they’ve done wrong, that you have to tell them, and how they should make up for it. That’s how your tone is coming across.
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#64A system for tracking email marketing recipients. That is, bounce rates, open rates, recurrence and deduplication of email addresses. It dawned on me 10-20 hours into the gig that these customers were professional spammers, and that I was helping them avoid being blacklisted. I scrapped everything I’d made and eventually paid back my fee.
I'm biased as someone who used to work in email marketing, but I'd say there are some important differences between respectable email marketing and spam:
* Respectable email marketing = you have a pre-existing relationship (e.g. account on their website); spam = they found your address somewhere
* Respectable email marketing = there's an unsubscribe link that works; spam = no unsubscribe link or it doesn't work
(Could very well be that the people you're working with were actually spammers)
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see anything patronizing or showing superiority in what I wrote. I am saying this as a peer, not as a superior. It's kinda weird to expect people not to make mistakes such as this if nobody tells them it's wrong. And it's normal for people to tell other people they do bad stuff if they do.
So you’re assuming that you know better than them what they’ve done wrong, that you have to tell them, and how they should make up for it. That’s how your tone is coming across.
> you know better than them what they’ve done wrong
Hardly, since I just agreed with what they said. I suggested what IMHO is a good way to make up for it. Nothing else.
> that you have to tell them
Sure, I have to. I think everyone should say something in cases like this.
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#66I built an integration from our CRM to a sales team messaging platform. For users that exist in the CRM, it worked great. The problem was the side uses of the messaging platform for users that were not active in the CRM or never in the CRM. It’s a nightmare to keep dealing with all the exceptions related to non-active CRM users.
I usually don’t let myself get caught in such a scenario, this one slid by and I regret it.
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
condescending : having or showing an attitude of patronizing superiority.
I don't see anything patronizing or showing superiority in what I wrote. I am saying this as a peer, not as a superior. It's kinda weird to expect people not to make mistakes such as this if nobody tells them it's wrong. And it's normal for people to tell other people they do bad stuff if they do.
>I don't see anything patronizing or showing superiority in what I wrote. I am saying this as a peer, not as a superior.
And you have four different peers who have responded to you suggesting that you are being condescending. Take a step back and ask why - intention and tone are two different things, and if you get the latter wrong then we will misunderstand the former.
>It's kinda weird to expect people not to make mistakes such as this if nobody tells them it's wrong. And it's normal for people to tell other people they do bad stuff if they do.
Just let 'em be. You're not a hero. They admitted what they did, and why they know it's wrong. You're not doing anything other than going, "Yep, you sure did fuck up."
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#68I don’t think I built any regrettable things.
Except for that one time I built something pretty good and he didn’t want to pay me for it. Big regret. Shouldn’t have finished that job.
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#69I 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
Re: Ask HN: What is the thing you've built that you regret the most?
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see anything patronizing or showing superiority in what I wrote. I am saying this as a peer, not as a superior. It's kinda weird to expect people not to make mistakes such as this if nobody tells them it's wrong. And it's normal for people to tell other people they do bad stuff if they do.
>I don't see anything patronizing or showing superiority in what I wrote. I am saying this as a peer, not as a superior. And you have four different peers who have responded to you suggesting that you are being condescending. Take a step back and ask why - intention and tone are two different things, and if you get the latter wrong then we will misunderstand the former. >It's kinda weird to expect people not to make…
> Take a step back and ask why - intention and tone are two different things, and if you get the latter wrong then we will misunderstand the former.
Good point, OK.