> I've been going through a very long period of anxiety and depression... I can’t help but feel guilty.
Life is arduous. It can really get lonesome pretty quickly. But take my word for it, you have no reason to feel guilty. The time you think was "wasted" was actually spent morphing you into a better human being. Be proud of the fact that you were able to get over your depression. We are all here for you.
On a different note, I'd love to help you learn programming. Shoot me an email if you feel inclined to.
singh@diwank.name
You could also look around for people looking for freelancers here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3783658
JobCo
M to N
Role: Programmer, etc, etc
Hold on. What do you mean by that?
This is clearly a horrible violation of people's integrity and privacy. It's not about "chicks" getting raped. Would you wait for a Nerds around me and see people getting bashed by goons just like that?
It's a serious threat to people's security if it makes it easier to stalk unsuspecting people. Maybe I just misunderstood you but wouldn't the threat of just a single incident facilitated by such an app be enough to reconsider the importance of privacy?
As for the nerd basher, I would expect the same treatment.
It is not about the app, but the criminal. It is about accepting responsibility for ones actions.
And yes, I would say they have every right to make a nerd basher app, if they want to (although I guess they are less likely to have open facebook profiles).
Just because the data is publicly available, it does not warrant such misuse.
It's not about free press for the devs as you make of it. I bet this app must have been doing rounds at anonynous image boards, porn sites and the like since the day it was launched. The Girls Around Me coverage is instead actually bringing to light the intense security threats such misuse of data can bring.
Merely 48 hours since these reports surfaced, the app has been yanked from the app store and its access to Foursquare data turned off. That says something about the need to bring these things to light. People who want it will find a way to get it anyway.
Other than that, I think the author makes a strong case for people sharing their info publicly. Yes, they need to be aware about the implications but efforts MUST also be made to find and penalize apps that clearly misuse the data and violates people's intentions with which they shared the info in the first place.
The only solution to this is awareness on the users part and nothing else.
But every application has a specific action. See data is just well, data. What you do with it defines your application. Take something non-intrusive for a change, say the books a bookstore sells most. There's a wealth of information there. We could predict locally trending topics or the most common problems students face. But you could also predict what kind of audience the bookstore receives. It may not sound that creepy unless you find that the store gets a lot of depression related sales. That could get creepy very fast.
> The only solution to this is awareness on the users part and nothing else.
Awareness is extremely important even vital. But that is not it. Thousands of Girls Around Me apps probably exist and it is fairly possible though tough to find them. All I am saying is that efforts should be made in that regard as well.
Completely agree. In fact, I think the author makes that point later in the article too. What is worth highlighting is the fact that "Educate people about privacy" cannot work. People share things publicly with a lot of different motivations. A potential employer may be interested in where we usually travel to but so would a stalker too.
Instead of trying to discourage people from sharing such info, I think we need to standardize the associated intent with a user's data. Most of us won't be bothered by targeted ads but anyone surely will be about Girls Around Me.
I agree that it's unlikely to fix the problem in its entirety, but I'm a bit short of easy fixes and I still think it's an important thing to do. And, although it's a politically fraught area, I'm pretty adamant that we should not always conflate explaining the world's hazards with blaming people for shitty stuff that happens to them.
We are NOT as privacy-illiterate as we are made out to be in recent articles about Girls around me. For instance, I recently applied to YC and enlisted my Facebook profile. And, I have been posting a lot of public content with that very intention in mind for months now.
I came across another instance of this when I was trying to "teach" my sister the importance of heightened privacy. She plainly refused as she often needs to plan open events and she needs to put up a lot of her information public.
We need to understand that just as you cannot ask women not to go out for fear of stalkers, you cannot ask people not to share information publicly. In fact, we need to keep up with the shift in social media to increase law-enforcement. Girls Around Me is a clear violation of the intention with which millions share their information publicly.
I think we need to standardize and associate User Intents as a first class attribute to a user's data. And find and penalize miscreants like Girls Around Me who violate the intention associated with people's information.
In fact, I'd be ready to accept your challenge. I can risk a lawsuit in order to protect my users. After all, when have patent trolls ever stopped passionate people from creating amazing products?
For various reasons for the last few months I've been considering disconnecting entirely. I lived before facebook/twitter and I'm sure I'll survive after them. I can't really think of anyway that facebook/twitter actually makes my life better in aggregate.
Why is it essential to my life that I see every stupid meme?
Why is it essential to my life that I heard about every political travesty in the world?
Does it really affect my life? What benefit do I gain from knowing these things?
> Does it really affect my life? What benefit do I gain from knowing these things?
For instance, what harm is there otherwise? In fact if you come to think of it, a main reason why you would want to disconnect is the prevalence of people ready to take you for granted. This cannot be avoided entirely but we can atleast make sure things like Girls Around Me don't thrive.
How about extending the Universal Blog API for storing user comments? That'd make it a complete out-of-the-box blogging solution (a user may opt for using a comments service provider like Disqus OR use the inbuilt comments API). The spec could look somewhat like so:
- Directory Structure:
_comments //folder with json files containing user comments
{{post identifier}}.json //could be simply the post filename.
{
"comments" : [{
"id" : "1123", //unique comment id
"author" : "Chuck Norris",
"author_handle" : "chuck@norris.com", //or a website
"date" : "yyyy-mm-dd", //comment date
"content" : "Hei! Chuck makes dumb comments."
},
{
"id" : "1124",
"author" : "Superman",
"author_handle" : "superman.com",
"date" : "yyyy-mm-dd",
"content" : "Superman is scared of Chuck."
},
]
}
Congrats Mark.