12 ms·

Why was this secret?

411 points by mkuhn 13y ago

clarkm 13y ago
You should've asked her if you could scan it, OCR it, and upload it to a publicly available, web-crawlable, SEO-optimized website where it would be scooped up and stored on archive.org for all eternity.
IvyMike 13y ago
One of my favorite Dilbert strips is Asok asking "Why is this document stamped CONFIDENTIAL? If I spent my entire life trying, I would not be able to find anyone who cared to read it."
- sokoloff 13y ago
  http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1997-09-29/ http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1997-09-29/
hosh 13y ago
This was indeed the conclusion I came to as well though my journey through there was a lot more convoluted. And then, there are things like: http://www.xojane.com/it-happened-to-me/charlotte-laws-hunter-moore-erin-brockovich-revenge-porn http://www.xojane.com/it-happened-to-me/charlotte-laws-hunte...
Qantourisc 13y ago
"So if someone is going through my private things, for example, and gets upset about what they find, then that’s their problem, not mine!” Must agree... until someone makes it your problem, by social standards, laws, or anything else they can use to make your life harder.
- JimboOmega 13y ago
  My thoughts almost exactly. It's all fine until you wind up on some sort of watchlist because of something "someone" found, and then travelling by air is a nightmare. I'm not sure why, exactly, we decided that people we don't like but we can't pin any crimes on are punished by having limited access to air travel, but that's how it is! On a related and more personal note, I once got in a large amount of trouble for a slashdot post. The company I worked for found a post I wrote when I wasn't an employee discussing social engineering attacks on building security(not theirs, mind you, but general ones). This led to some very tense discussions where I was accused of being a hacker, not caring about security, and plenty of other things. My personal (though public) livejournal came to the discussion, too. It was to the point where, if they tried to haul me in again, I would have requested an attorney. It ultimately blew over and was recognized for what it was; Corporate Security trying to justify the money they spent on data mining. But it was a very tense period. After that incident I keep things a lot less public.
  - Peaker 13y ago
    If finding a job isn't difficult for you, would you stay? I wouldn't stay for a company that shows such contempt for its employees and such incompetent waste of everybody's time.
  - mcb3k 13y ago
    I had a similar thing happen to me back in high school, where my personal blog I was keeping had repercussions with some of the student populace. Pretty quickly after, I set the whole thing to private and stopped updating. I've run several blogs after that, but none of them where public and containing personal information.
- PeterisP 13y ago
  Well then, the most important problem that needs fixing is those social standards and laws which cause harm without any acceptable reason.
deleted 13y ago
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datakid 13y ago
This is such bullshit - poorly formulated hippy dribble. If he was really interested in such ideas, he would know and use GPL/AGPL/MIT/Apache licences already for his code, and CC for his writings. Instead he makes everyone hippy dippy stupid about secrecy and privacy. It might all be fine when you are rich, cis-straight and white, but a single non friendly idea and you are a threat to the state. People that cheapen our privacy and secrecy rights shouldn't be allowed this much airtime. Ridiculous. -1
- packetslave 13y ago
  Not sure why you feel the need to be so aggressive?
- TwiztidK 13y ago
  This is honestly the most worthless comment I have ever seen on HN. Besides ad hominem, there is literally nothing here other than a giant pile of conspiracy.
  - datakid 13y ago
    So samstave put it better, but essentially my argument isn't ad hominem, it's attacking the notion that YOUR secrets mean nothing to ME, which can be generalised to ANYONE's secrets mean nothing to ANYONE. Which is obviously untrue. Yet that is the conclusion he comes to. The other possible conclusion, as I noted, is that he has previously been unaware of Free/Open Source and Creative Commons based licenses. In which case he needs not talk on secrets but rather on licensing.
    - chc 13y ago
      You seem to have changed what he said into a bizarre absolute. The point of Derek's post is that many of us unnecessarily keep many things secret for no rational reason at all. He's just suggesting that we ask ourselves, "Why is this secret?" Because a lot of the time, we're just needlessly building paper walls around our insecurities rather than keeping important secrets. And given that Derek has code licensed under MIT, your conclusion that he was unaware of that license is obviously incorrect.
samstave 13y ago
>"I was surprised it was all meaningless to me. These pages meant the world to her, but to me they meant no more than any non-secret conversation we’d ever had. It was the same stuff that we all think." Uh - yeah this is completely naive. Here is why; the informatin is meaningless to you only if you are not looking to manipulate, exploit, blackmail or have the upper hand of the person holding the secrets. This is why the dragnet is insidious. Because it may be insignificant to the rural farmer; but valuable aagainst the urban lawyer seeking office, the corp exec or other heeled/monied power wielders...
- Munksgaard 13y ago
  I don't think he's making a point the NSA dragnet (which I'm assuming you're referring to) - that's obviously a completely different thing. He's talking about individuals willfully releasing information, not some secret government program to collect all your personal data that has ever been on the Internet.
  - samstave 13y ago
    While that may be true - this article is addressing the sentiment of privacy in general; "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about" -- and it uses a very personal anecdotal perspective on this matter: ones Diary. He, as I quoted, notes that this information in the super-super private diary was not only provided to him for perusal over cider, but that it was nothing that was of interest to him. This is a ridiculous statement, to me, on several levels. To illustrate, please provide me the email address of the friend with the super-super private diary; I would like to ask anonymously over the internet to be afforded the same luxury of reading this material. Do you think my request would be agreed to? No, this guy had a personal relationship with this diary author, however intimate/or not, but it was a personal relationship none-the-less. The idea here is that there is private information that one should have private from anyone - but will choose to share it with those in their intimate circles. This is not the same as saying "Why is anything that is factual secret" and thus who cares if it gets read by some anonymous entity that may or may not have any vested interest in knowing my secrets.
- 13y ago
jarrett 13y ago
In the context of coding projects, the author's conclusion seems realistic. Given current events though, I can't help but wonder if there's a subtext about privacy and snooping. If so, then I would venture this observation: Your friend's super-secret diary is meaningless to you only because you have no desire to abuse the access you've been given. Suppose instead your friend's devious enemy obtained the diary. Then, he could probably use it to damage your friend's relationships and/or career. Now imagine a dystopian future when all such diaries are available to a privileged subset of society. Imagine the power that subset would hold, and all the ways it would likely be abused. Unless we want to ensure our every communication and personal note is fit for public consumption, some things are by definition our secrets.
- B-Con 13y ago
  While searching for the Dilber strip IvyMike mentioned, I came across one relevant to your post: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-10-24/ http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-10-24/
- jfoutz 13y ago
  For me, the information asymmetry is what's upsetting. Everyone's location data being free and public seems, well, ok to me. But no exceptions for any reason.
  - jacalata 13y ago
    Really? You think that, for instance, someone trying to leave an abusive partner doesn't have more reason to want their whereabouts unknown than someone with no psychotic acquaintances? Someone who turned state's witness against their drug dealer friends?
    - kisielk 13y ago
      On the other hand if they and everybody else knew the whereabouts of their abusive partner, wouldn't that actually contribute to their safety?
YuriNiyazov 13y ago
When you open to the public the contents of your instance of Beekeep and Peeps databases, then you will have a point.
- Jtsummers 13y ago
  FTA: I still believe in privacy. It’s just a matter of questioning which things need to be private, and which things really don’t. Doesn't this address your attempt at a point? He has some things which he realized he kept private for no reason so he opened them up. The content of peeps is, in fact, not his to share (if I gave you my phone # to contact me, I would not consider it reasonable, without foreknowledge, for you to dump it into a public DB).
robobro 13y ago
Wonderful! Seems to be public domain, too?
- chc 13y ago
  It's not public domain — he hasn't put in a license at all. I'm sure he'll correct the oversight sooner or later. Right now it looks like he just switched the private flag on his existing repos.
Procrastes 13y ago
I've often said that the best way to get a quick competitive advantage against our rivals would be to send them our source.
- dinkumthinkum 13y ago
  Ok, send me your source.
PhasmaFelis 13y ago
My favorite thing on GameFAQs is the angry verbiage at the end of every FAQ promising dire legal consequences should anyone attempt to appropriate and profit from their work. Do you really think anyone anywhere is going to pay for your Donkey Kong Country strategy guide? If I ever write a game FAQ, it's going to end with "if you figure out a way to make a profit off of this, you are legally required to let me know how you did it so I can congratulate you."
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  Surely this is to stop somebody from simply using a bot to scrape all of the website content and republishing it on a new ad-supported website?
- jaggederest 13y ago
  That's actually a serious concern. There are lots of spammy sites that rip gamefaqs content and throw up really terrible advertising. That said those disclaimers offer no more power than a faq without a disclaimer.
- pekk 13y ago
  People buy crappy "game guides" all the time. How easy would it be not to even pay a bad author, but just scrape the internet and use it without attribution?
ChuckMcM 13y ago
It makes for an interesting thought about what is intrinsically valuable versus what isn't. The diary is 'non-intrinsic' because he doesn't have the context in which the information makes sense. A series of usernames and passwords is secret because it is self referentially useful. Stuff in the first category can become useful over time (the Mosaic effect) when someone suddenly lashes out about something and that connects the context of a series of family dramas. Stuff in the latter category is useful right away. Its useful to think about both cases. (oh and I really enjoyed reading through the ideas, they are fun) I should put my list up somewhere as well.
jmtame 13y ago
Great idea. Here's mine: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pn5vL3TY3VKr3WyZrKBpWnGW_zYi9AOA1b8c5NBiDFg/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pn5vL3TY3VKr3WyZrKBpWnGW...
- Nicholas_C 13y ago
  I have a Google doc with the same exact title of "Ideas." Yours is far more extensive though.
  - jmtame 13y ago
    I've had this going for a year or two now. It's hard to come up with ideas when you want them, and they seem to come to you quickly when you don't need them or once you've started paying attention to problems. By no means is my list complete or good, but I've found it helpful to write them down otherwise I'll forget them.
- buttonsmasher 13y ago
  You got some good ideas in there. I love your Yelp idea!
throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
There's an old joke: so this guy is trying to get rid of an ugly old sofa, he puts it out on the curb with the sign "free sofa!". Days pass; no luck. So he puts up a new sign saying "sofa: $50, call ###-####" and it's gone in ten minutes.
- caf 13y ago
  That's not a joke, if I want to get rid of a piece of old furniture on the footpath I'll always put a $5 sign on it.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - dangayle 13y ago
    Works wonders with largish appliances like washers or refrigerators. Free? Must be broken. $10? Must still work.
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      That's one of the paradoxes of pricing: price itself is inferred to be an indicator of quality, so "free" is often perceived as "lower quality". While this can be true, it isn't entirely reliable.
- binarycrusader 13y ago
  The argument I imagine is that if you value something you produce or own as worthless, so will everyone else. It's one of the reasons why I think game creators and music creators shouldn't be afraid to take a stand on pricing. What is your time and work worth?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
eCa 13y ago
The important part missing here is that it must be a choice. If I want my location data public I can make it public. If I want my super-secret diary read by anyone I can post it on Tumblr. But if I don't want to no-one should judge me for making that choice. And I should not judge those that choose differently.
mathattack 13y ago
This is consistent with what I see about supposed corporate secrets, and source code. What's on paper matters less than the people behind it, their interest and motivation, and how creating the "secrets" changed them.
sidgup 13y ago
It is only meaningless to others until they choose to abuse it and use it to put you at a disadvantage. That is when this argument fails. Yes my code is probably useless to others and so are my super-super secret diaries. However, it is only a matter of time that a smart con-man will connect the dots to ruin my life - my relationships, steal my identity etc. "Going through my stuff... if they become upset, its their problem, not mine!". Right, until I realize that going through that stuff actually made them happy instead because of how they could use it to profit themselves.
m0nastic 13y ago
I can't even imagine about what privacy is going to look like in 20 years, or how society will adapt to deal with it. What seems missing from his thought experiment is how to address privacy for things that concern more than just a single participant. I don't particularly worry about my individual privacy, or care about securing my things. If someone managed to get a hold of my email, I wouldn't be very put out. I don't encrypt my hard drives, or even back anything up. My lack of security and privacy hygiene, however, doesn't extend to my work stuff. I care about maintaining the confidentiality and privacy of that stuff because it's part of a social contract (and I suppose also an employment contract) that I have with my work and my clients. Instead of his diary example, what if he had asked his friend "Can I copy all of the emails off of your phone, or all the phone numbers in your addressbook?" Maybe they still wouldn't care, or maybe they'd now have to take into account the fact that all that data also involves other people, and maybe they wouldn't find it acceptable for you to give our their cell phone number to anybody who asks. So much of the data that we accrue is increasingly more interconnected with other people. I feel like that's where we run into trouble, because there is no universal consensus around what's private and what isn't. We have rudimentary laws protecting the smallest subset of data which the government has decided should be considered private, but everything else is a value judgement for individuals (and is part of the current internet company land-grab). I feel like his position is going to be harder and harder to maintain, as more and more of the "personal" data he's okay with sharing includes other people's data.
- ZoFreX 13y ago
  > I can't even imagine about what privacy is going to look like in 20 years, or how society will adapt to deal with it. You might like the book "The Light of Other Days"!
  - Pelerin 13y ago
    I think about that book a lot when any discussions of privacy arise. A great depiction of a post-privacy world.
  - m0nastic 13y ago
    Thanks, I'll check it out! I don't generally like science fiction, but the premise sounds interesting and I did like some of Clarke's other books.
kgen 13y ago
This is an interesting point, I think the tendency of most people who are creative/idea types (myself included) are kind of an over thinking of their own ideas, like they are somehow more important and prone to "theft", but the more I work on my own stuff, and the more I do on in open source, the less and less I think that’s the case. Like when I was working on Capsulr (http://capsulr.com/ http://capsulr.com/, shameless plug), I worried about showing people stuff too early, until I just realized that most people probably wouldn’t even see the site, or if they did, most wouldn't even see the product the same way that I see it evolving. It’s kind of helped me to start documenting my work, and I find that sharing notes publicly (just with myself) is a load of pressure off my shoulders and is worth the tiny possibility that someone might take it and run with it.
andrewfong 13y ago
"We got two ciders and she patiently waited while I spent 20 minutes reading through it. Pages filled with words about processing family drama, formulating goals, plans for life changes, romantic details, lists of regrets, contemplations, etc." "I was surprised it was all meaningless to me. These pages meant the world to her, but to me they meant no more than any non-secret conversation we’d ever had. It was the same stuff that we all think." The key here is "meaningless to me". It's obviously meaningful to her. And it would also be meaningful to her family, or romantic partners, or a potential employer, etc. Privacy is contextual. I often joke that it wouldn't bother me personally if Google or the NSA poked around my e-mail. But it would bother me a lot if my mom did.
- neura 13y ago
  This is mostly how i feel about it. With the addition that, there's a big difference between a friend asking to read your diary (who, we'll note, was not in the diary, as he pointed out) and a friend (or anybody) asking to distribute your diary to the public. I think that's the main thing most other people are commenting on as well. There are many levels of private and making something public is not the same as making it publicly accessible.
- dinkumthinkum 13y ago
  Yes it's a silly, flippant response by the OP. What if sivers.org posted her diaries for HackerNews to read? I bet you could find people for which her diaries would not be "meaningless" and could make this person not feel happy about that information being known here. Here, we can make someone like Nelson Mandela seem horrible, just think how would we could make this women feel. You don't have to get out dystopian examples of why this view is basically stupid. It doesn't stand up to common sense.
detcader 13y ago
If you have nothing about your personal life you want to hide, I think you're pretty boring
sanderjd 13y ago
I think you could also ask the opposite question about pretty much anything - why was this public? And I think the answer is the same - because I wanted it that way. Why should it need to be justified either way? If I want to keep something secret for a reason or by default or just on a whim, I should be able to, and if I want to make something public, I should be able to do that too. I don't think one choice is any better than the other as a default.
kinkora 13y ago
It is meaningless to you because you have no use for that information which is probably why she shared the "super super secret" diary with you. In terms of your relationship with your friend, you present a harmless consumer of that information. As a though process, lets replace "you" with: a) her employers, colleagues, etc b) any of her family members that she talked about c) her significant other, partner, etc. Now, do you think she will let these people read her diary? Do you see how dangerous these "secrets" are if these parties get their hands on it? IMO there are always valid or invalid reasons for keeping secrets (privacy is actually the real topic here) but the real question is whom are you keeping this secret from.
lukeqsee 13y ago
When you live in a society where anything you do or say (or accidentally appear to have said or did) will be held against you, privacy matters. It matters so much you don't log-in to online messaging services because you're wary of SSL MitM attacks or send non-encrypted emails from that network or do a litany of other "normal" things. It definitely means you aren't 100% open like Sivers is suggesting. How do I know this? I live in a very small, strict university setting that presents a picture of the potential of a future of "complete transparency". Even the hint of "lawbreaking" (i.e., rule-breaking) can land you in serious trouble. Trust me, I take privacy very seriously. Not because I have something to hide, but because I have everything (in the short-term) to lose. I know what I've said is mostly anecdotal due to the implicit nature of choosing to be in this environment; however, were this environment the world at large, I believe my anecdote would be normative.
- jnbiche 13y ago
  Since you've shared that anecdote, may I ask why you chose to go to such a university? I'm guessing it's probably a religious university (don't know of any non-religious schools with such strictures). Was it for spiritual reasons, or for financial reasons? Personal question, obviously, so feel free to tell me to shove off, but I'm very curious how intelligent people make these decisions.
  - lukeqsee 13y ago
    I'd be happy to discuss those personal decisions in a private setting (email me, if you wish, it's on my profile). I don't think a public discussion will yield much benefit. Also, I would argue military academies have such demands upon the person.
- PeterisP 13y ago
  It's also related the other way - if everything you do or say is public, it won't be held against you. Noone cares about your sexual kinks or comic tastes, if everyone knows about the even weirder issues of the president and all the congressmen.
natch 13y ago
Is Sivers really suggesting that just because she was OK with him reading the diary, she would be OK with anyone reading it? That seems like a highly naive assumption. And seriously, this is your entire project list? "Everything is listed..." As a programmer and someone who sees how other programmers work, I am not buying it. Please don't lecture us on secrets with weak false examples. It comes off as disingenuous.
- acuozzo 13y ago
  > And seriously, this is your entire project list? I wish my list would grow past 0 items. I honestly have no itches to scratch.
  - nrivadeneira 13y ago
    > I wish my list would grow past 0 items. > I honestly have no itches to scratch. Looks like you do have an itch to scratch...though I can't think of any good solutions to wishing for more projects.
- dinkumthinkum 13y ago
  This is such a great comment. I would have liked to put it so succinctly as this!
enraged_camel 13y ago
No one cares about other people's family drama. But if Valerie led a secret life as a private escort or ran a sex-cam operation from her bedroom to make ends meet, I doubt she would be OK with Derek reading about them.
d0m 13y ago
Hopefully he removed all private keys from the earliest commit before pushing them publicly ;-)
headgasket 13y ago
overused but appropriate. There are 2 rules to success: rule 1: Never tell everything you know. edit: read a bit about Derek Sivers, this guy is either the counter example or his rule no2 is really worth knowing. Almost all my best reads of the past 10 years are on his book list. He sold his company to a perpetual charitable trust which then sold it to a third party, shielding himself and saving a bundle in capital gains tax and providing residual for his whole life + supports his cause(music education). Kudos Derek. I'll be reading the books on your list; maybe to catch a glimpse of your rule no2? :-) Cheers,
001sky 13y ago
Discretion and secrecy are related but not interchangible concepts. Is this author really suggesting discretion be non-existent? That opportunistic manipulation has never occurred? The need for NDAs has never once made sense? What it is disporportionately valuable to you, is more costly to you, once taken away, too.
tillinghast 13y ago
All I want is your GitHub password.
grellas 13y ago
Why was her diary secret? Well, because she wanted it so. And that should be enough. When it comes to information that any given person regards as intimate about oneself, that should always be enough. It doesn't matter that someone else might peruse that information and say, "there is nothing special here." Why? Because it is not that person's judgment to make. There may be nothing special about my exact bank balance or net worth or state of my health or sex life or political or religious affiliations (or lack of affiliations) or any other information that I may consider private but that doesn't mean I want that information broadcast to the world only to invite identity thieves, malicious third-parties, political enemies, or anybody else who might bear a grudge or harbor an animus to have a field day with it. But they are just "facts", you might say. No, in the wrong hands, they are ammunition by which to hurt you if people want and, even if the facts themselves are innocent enough, people have a ready capacity as may suit their whims or prejudices or any other ulterior motives they may have to do you wrong and what may appear as innocent "facts" to one person can easily be transmuted into a vile weapon that can cost you your job, your important relationship, or any other of many things that might be the subject of someone's jealousy or other animus toward you (a lifetime of courtroom experience has certainly shown me how easy it is for a motivated adversary to take otherwise innocent facts and twist them into malicious aspersions if they really want to). What is more, even if nobody had any interest whatever in harming me through misuse of that information, it is part of my essential humanity that I can separate that which I regard as intimate (to me) from that which is made freely available for public consumption. There is a reason why the word "vulgar" developed negative connotations over the centuries: it originally meant nothing more than "belonging to the crowd." Well, crowds can trample on things you might regard as precious and it should be your choice and no one else's whether you want to open up important parts of your life for public consumption. If I happen not to want to keep any part of my life secret, well, that is fine too. That is a choice every person can make for himself so long as he doesn't go about over-sanctimoniously proclaiming that others must do the same or harming others about him by revealing things that they consider intimate as he opens the book of his own life to the world. It is the same in the business world. One can open-source his own works as a matter of commitment to the idea that all information ought to be free or for any other reason but that doesn't mean the law ought to abrogate protections for proprietary, trade secret information that most businesses need to keep confidential information as a matter of competitive advantage. If I am a broker who depends for his livelihood in serving a customer base that it took years to develop, I would be rightly upset if someone came in and simply handed all my customer information over to my competitors. So too would a development team that has invested huge amounts of money and time into a development effort that gives them a significant competitive advantage over others and whose business model turns on keeping that advantage to themselves exclusively. So too would most any company management if its confidential business plans for winning key markets suddenly got broadcast publicly over the web. Examples of this type can be multiplied endlessly and really are self-evident to anyone who has had much in the way of real-world business experience. Again, any private business is free to make a contrary judgment and to open itself up at every level so that it maintains no private or secret information whatever. That is their choice. But, if I want to keep things secret in my business, no one should be able to force me to do otherwise or to try to shame me into believing that I am doing something wrong. Laws and public policy cannot make these choices for us as individual actors but it is essential that they set up a structure to protect those who would seek to keep their confidential information private. How and to what degree that happens in practical execution can be a complex topic in our technological age but the abiding principle, to me, is very clear: privacy is valuable in any society and laws should be shaped accordingly. So, why, then, is this secret? Because the person it most affects wants it that way and the rest of us should respect that person's wishes to keep it so.
mmanfrin 13y ago
Derek -- what are your credit card numbers and SSN? No reason to keep those private!
benched 13y ago
About half of my friends post every move they make throughout the day, photo-illustrated, to Facebook. They also have numerous short conversations with their friends, that are clearly just between the two of them and would normally be of no interest to anybody else. It's the equivalent of having private conversations out loud in front of everyone each of them have ever met in their lives. I do not understand any of this behavior. I'm said to be a 'private person.' But it's clear to me that the zeitgeist is definitely not on my side here. I also wonder what all of this will be like in 20 years, given that Facebook has only been in widespread use for an utterly paltry 5 years.
ilaksh 13y ago
This person realized that with the NSA and however many other agencies spying on us, and other issues, we may not effectively have any real privacy anymore, and therefore he has come up with one or more rationalizations for why this is OK. This is probably a common thing. Seems a bit similar to Stockholm syndrome. Anyway its probably an automatic self-defense mechanism. The scary part is that a significant portion of the population is probably also doing a similar sort of rationalization now. People will eventually accept any circumstance that they can't change, unless it is going to kill them. Actually, even if it _will_ kill them. In fact, our inevitable death is one aspect of life that people will often rationalize in the most determined way. We can change this circumstance though. We can have privacy, even in the digital age. Don't give up your natural rights so easily.
zobzu 13y ago
Now imagine that instead of her boyfriend, someone who hates her finds the diary. Yeah. You're stupid. That's not a secret tho - it's just a fact. I'd happily sugar-coat it but I'm tired of feeling like we're degrading our minds since internet came around with fast paced sensationalistic crap.
visakanv 13y ago
My interpretation of Derek's point: "A lot of us keep things secret for the sake of keeping them secret without particularly evaluating whether the secrecy serves any purpose. On average, this means that there are things that are secret that shouldn't necessarily be. We might all be better off if we were a little more willing to share things that might not actually need to be secret." Not everything needs to be secret != everything should be public His post is written to describe his personal journey about his personal attitude towards his own work. I think a lot of people are misinterpreting him to be saying something broader and blunter than he actually is.
- natch 13y ago
  "Everything is listed..." Everything is a pretty broad word.
- sivers 13y ago
  Thank you Visakan. You got it, and others didn't. A major challenge in communication is to not be misunderstood. I must not have been clear enough. I never said anywhere that everything should be public. Only that I decided my code and ideas didn't need to be secret. I think maybe commenters here are reacting more to other commenters, instead of the actual article, now.
  - grey-area 13y ago
    I went and read the article, and I think it's obvious in retrospect why your point about your code is being ignored, and not just by people who haven't read the article. You start with this premise, which you appear to agree with: I’m not worried about someone finding out my secrets, because secrets are just facts, right? and go on to an example of a diary, one of the most personal artefacts we have, and imply that sharing it all with anyone who asks (as per the above statement) is absolutely fine. The implication of the above statement is that all secrets are pointless, including personal ones. In the context of a society in which governments and corporations are spying on every communication and looking for ways to justify it, this attitude is actively damaging and is an after-the-fact justification of that spying. I think many people would agree with you that opening up your private code repos is a worthy thing to do, and it's certainly an idea worthy of discussion, with pros and cons (as you rightly point out, to do with maintenance and the public commitment more than anything else). The mistake in this article is relating that to personal privacy, and implying that secrets are just facts is a statement worthy of consideration. If secrets are just facts and cannot hurt you, there is no point in keeping anything secret at all. Unfortunately other people in the world are quite capable of twisting the most mundane facts about your life (like your location at every moment, your sexual preferences, whatever), and using them to destroy your life, either because of their prejudices, or because of those of society at large. Witness politicians brought down because of some affair, or their private sex life - we don't know how many of those are leaked by our 'security services' for political gain but they certainly have done that in the past. No-one deserves that much power over others, and because of the asymmetry of power in our society, private information is far more useful to some people than others. Perhaps that is not what you intended to imply, but that is the logical conclusion of the statement and your interpretation of it, and that's why people are reacting so strongly to it.
deleted 13y ago
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auggierose 13y ago
I am not sure why an article goes to Nr. 1 that has a made up table full of silly unjustified numbers in it.
dinkumthinkum 13y ago
I think this is just la la land jibber jabber. You all can pretend privacy is irrelevant and you don't care if everyone knows everything about you because it is "meaningless" or whatever ... But unlike some on HN, I will continue to live in the real world.
vubuntu 13y ago
Flawed argument by the poster... >> "Pages filled with words about processing family drama, formulating goals, plans for life changes, romantic details, lists of regrets, contemplations, etc" C'mon, those are her super super private secrets? Thats ridiculous. 'romantic details' may be a little bit... Thats why she says "So if someone is going through my private things, for example, and gets upset about what they find, then that’s their problem, not mine!”" But things people like to keep really secret (and not coyly secret) and worry about others finding out, are those that would upset themselves (and not the readers) if they get discovered. These would be things that one is ashamed of, that one is afraid of being discovered, that if known to others will result in loss of respect/love/admiration/consolation etc that they are currently receiving from others. Or those if discovered by the wrong person can leave one vulnerable to exploitation/blackmail etc. Any other type of secrets are just silly and overblown.
garthdog 13y ago
Just because privacy is worthless to you does not means it's not of value to me. Throw away your privacy but please don't contribute to the meme that privacy is disposable. Lots of people have secrets that are harmless but can destroy them if they end up in the wrong hands, e.g. homosexuality within a conservative community.
droopybuns 13y ago
This is bullshit naievete. Move the clock back 40 years on the romance section. Imagine it references homosexuality, and ask yourself if the author's theme of "what's the big deal" is appropriate. OP is under the mistaken belief that everyone else shares their morals and mores. They have plenty of time to be rudely defenstrated. This is the danger of confusing exhibitionism with free-spiritedness. It is a first-principle error to devalue privacy. OP should be ashamed of themselves. They need to read up on humanity's very short history of tolerance for true individualism. OP should read up on Alan Turing for fuck's sake. Fuck this fool.
- PeterisP 13y ago
  "Keeping it a secret" is a non-solution that killed Alan Turing. Telling the intolerants to suck it up, in particular by openly leaving the closet, was the solution that worked to solve the problem.
ryanklee 13y ago
How about this: No one can predict the import of what's recorded NOW. Not the person who records it, not the person who observes it, not the person who comes upon it 5 minutes, 5 years, 5 decades later. Keeping your material projections close to the vest, keeping them out, as far as possible, from the unpredictable hands of the future is just good sense. The times are changing. We have very little grasp on how what we record now - private, public, or otherwise (?) - will impact us in the future. There's a virtue in openness, to be sure. But maintaining privacy is no bad thing. No matter what the talking walnut says. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKd7z5CY4BU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKd7z5CY4BU
shurcooL 13y ago
I've basically made the same realization a few years ago and decided to stop going through the trouble of keeping my personal code private. It's been great so far. I get all the benefits (like godoc.org providing docs for my code, free github repos, easy to share links with people, etc.) and none of the disadvantages. It's a personal choice, and not for everyone. But it just makes life so much easier. In fact, I'm trying to reduce the number of things that I'm forced to keep private because they're considered to be "security questions". On theft of ideas: https://twitter.com/shurcooL/status/266294572949327872 https://twitter.com/shurcooL/status/266294572949327872
nadam 13y ago
Regarding source code in a business context the question is: What is your competitive advantage? Well, as an experienced software developer who is not nearly as experienced in other things, sometimes my only chance to have competitive advantage is private source code. You may argue that I do not even have that competitive advantage, but then why bother competing in any market at all?
rmc 13y ago
“I’m not worried about someone finding out my secrets, because secrets are just facts, right? So if someone is going through my private things, for example, and gets upset about what they find, then that’s their problem, not mine!” Sure, it's their problem. But they might have power over you. If some intolerant family members discover you're gay, you might get kicked out of the house. If parents discover their child is trans, they might try to "beat it out of them". An abusive husband might find where his wife has run off to and "finish the job". But, hey, they're problem! right?
linux_devil 13y ago
With respect to ideas in start-up phase , I think if it's your idea , you will pursue it more passionately as compared to others . Idea can struck to anyone , wonder out of billions of people around how many are pursuing similar ideas ? It's the one who do it in right way and right time makes it big.
rejschaap 13y ago
I think the diary analogy is great, but the author fails to explore it properly. It ignores aspects such as self-awareness, self-consciousness and self-censorship. Notice a lot of 'self's in the previous sentence? A diary is a very personal thing. When you are writing in your diary you poor your heart out about everything and anything. You can do this because you are the only person who will ever read this stuff. Imagine writing something that other people will read, like your mom (anything sex-related is out of the question), your colleagues (better not say your boss is a total jerk), your friends (don't mention that secret Anne told you about Peter, or you wlll lose 2 friends) or your government (no wait, they already know everything anyway). Similar things happen when you are writing code for yourself and yourself only. When I write code for my own pleasure. I don't care so much about documentation, clarity, robustness, polish, etc. Yes, I am a bad, bad person. Anyway, compare writing code for yourself with code you share with friends (generally supportive, but add some polish and fix that hack so they don't think you're a complete idiot), colleagues (semi-critical yet supportive, maybe try to score some bonus points using a FactorySingletonVisitorBean) or hackerne.ws (super-critical, probably rewrite it in the language-du-jour first, prepare to be burned at the stake anyway).
mnw21cam 13y ago
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. -- Howard Aiken
dutchbrit 13y ago
She probably would of said no, if there was any negativity about you in there. You should of asked what her pincode was for her ATM card...
eplanit 13y ago
Interesting how the author, and the woman who's the subject of his anecdote (and several here), conflate and confuse privacy with secrecy.
AsymetricCom 13y ago
This article is long, rambling and stupid. Of course your friend got nothing from your diary, they weren't trying to take advantage of you.

411 points by mkuhn 13y ago

You should've asked her if you could scan it, OCR it, and upload it to a publicly available, web-crawlable, SEO-optimized website where it would be scooped up and stored on archive.org for all eternity.

IvyMike 13y ago

One of my favorite Dilbert strips is Asok asking "Why is this document stamped CONFIDENTIAL? If I spent my entire life trying, I would not be able to find anyone who cared to read it."

sokoloff 13y ago
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1997-09-29/ http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1997-09-29/

hosh 13y ago

This was indeed the conclusion I came to as well though my journey through there was a lot more convoluted. And then, there are things like: http://www.xojane.com/it-happened-to-me/charlotte-laws-hunter-moore-erin-brockovich-revenge-porn http://www.xojane.com/it-happened-to-me/charlotte-laws-hunte...

Qantourisc 13y ago

"So if someone is going through my private things, for example, and gets upset about what they find, then that’s their problem, not mine!” Must agree... until someone makes it your problem, by social standards, laws, or anything else they can use to make your life harder.

JimboOmega 13y ago
My thoughts almost exactly. It's all fine until you wind up on some sort of watchlist because of something "someone" found, and then travelling by air is a nightmare. I'm not sure why, exactly, we decided that people we don't like but we can't pin any crimes on are punished by having limited access to air travel, but that's how it is! On a related and more personal note, I once got in a large amount of trouble for a slashdot post. The company I worked for found a post I wrote when I wasn't an employee discussing social engineering attacks on building security(not theirs, mind you, but general ones). This led to some very tense discussions where I was accused of being a hacker, not caring about security, and plenty of other things. My personal (though public) livejournal came to the discussion, too. It was to the point where, if they tried to haul me in again, I would have requested an attorney. It ultimately blew over and was recognized for what it was; Corporate Security trying to justify the money they spent on data mining. But it was a very tense period. After that incident I keep things a lot less public.
- Peaker 13y ago
  If finding a job isn't difficult for you, would you stay? I wouldn't stay for a company that shows such contempt for its employees and such incompetent waste of everybody's time.
- mcb3k 13y ago
  I had a similar thing happen to me back in high school, where my personal blog I was keeping had repercussions with some of the student populace. Pretty quickly after, I set the whole thing to private and stopped updating. I've run several blogs after that, but none of them where public and containing personal information.
PeterisP 13y ago
Well then, the most important problem that needs fixing is those social standards and laws which cause harm without any acceptable reason.

deleted 13y ago

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datakid 13y ago

This is such bullshit - poorly formulated hippy dribble. If he was really interested in such ideas, he would know and use GPL/AGPL/MIT/Apache licences already for his code, and CC for his writings. Instead he makes everyone hippy dippy stupid about secrecy and privacy. It might all be fine when you are rich, cis-straight and white, but a single non friendly idea and you are a threat to the state. People that cheapen our privacy and secrecy rights shouldn't be allowed this much airtime. Ridiculous. -1

packetslave 13y ago
Not sure why you feel the need to be so aggressive?
TwiztidK 13y ago
This is honestly the most worthless comment I have ever seen on HN. Besides ad hominem, there is literally nothing here other than a giant pile of conspiracy.
- datakid 13y ago
  So samstave put it better, but essentially my argument isn't ad hominem, it's attacking the notion that YOUR secrets mean nothing to ME, which can be generalised to ANYONE's secrets mean nothing to ANYONE. Which is obviously untrue. Yet that is the conclusion he comes to. The other possible conclusion, as I noted, is that he has previously been unaware of Free/Open Source and Creative Commons based licenses. In which case he needs not talk on secrets but rather on licensing.
  - chc 13y ago
    You seem to have changed what he said into a bizarre absolute. The point of Derek's post is that many of us unnecessarily keep many things secret for no rational reason at all. He's just suggesting that we ask ourselves, "Why is this secret?" Because a lot of the time, we're just needlessly building paper walls around our insecurities rather than keeping important secrets. And given that Derek has code licensed under MIT, your conclusion that he was unaware of that license is obviously incorrect.

samstave 13y ago

>"I was surprised it was all meaningless to me. These pages meant the world to her, but to me they meant no more than any non-secret conversation we’d ever had. It was the same stuff that we all think." Uh - yeah this is completely naive. Here is why; the informatin is meaningless to you only if you are not looking to manipulate, exploit, blackmail or have the upper hand of the person holding the secrets. This is why the dragnet is insidious. Because it may be insignificant to the rural farmer; but valuable aagainst the urban lawyer seeking office, the corp exec or other heeled/monied power wielders...

Munksgaard 13y ago
I don't think he's making a point the NSA dragnet (which I'm assuming you're referring to) - that's obviously a completely different thing. He's talking about individuals willfully releasing information, not some secret government program to collect all your personal data that has ever been on the Internet.
- samstave 13y ago
  While that may be true - this article is addressing the sentiment of privacy in general; "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about" -- and it uses a very personal anecdotal perspective on this matter: ones Diary. He, as I quoted, notes that this information in the super-super private diary was not only provided to him for perusal over cider, but that it was nothing that was of interest to him. This is a ridiculous statement, to me, on several levels. To illustrate, please provide me the email address of the friend with the super-super private diary; I would like to ask anonymously over the internet to be afforded the same luxury of reading this material. Do you think my request would be agreed to? No, this guy had a personal relationship with this diary author, however intimate/or not, but it was a personal relationship none-the-less. The idea here is that there is private information that one should have private from anyone - but will choose to share it with those in their intimate circles. This is not the same as saying "Why is anything that is factual secret" and thus who cares if it gets read by some anonymous entity that may or may not have any vested interest in knowing my secrets.
13y ago

jarrett 13y ago

In the context of coding projects, the author's conclusion seems realistic. Given current events though, I can't help but wonder if there's a subtext about privacy and snooping. If so, then I would venture this observation: Your friend's super-secret diary is meaningless to you only because you have no desire to abuse the access you've been given. Suppose instead your friend's devious enemy obtained the diary. Then, he could probably use it to damage your friend's relationships and/or career. Now imagine a dystopian future when all such diaries are available to a privileged subset of society. Imagine the power that subset would hold, and all the ways it would likely be abused. Unless we want to ensure our every communication and personal note is fit for public consumption, some things are by definition our secrets.

B-Con 13y ago
While searching for the Dilber strip IvyMike mentioned, I came across one relevant to your post: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-10-24/ http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-10-24/
jfoutz 13y ago
For me, the information asymmetry is what's upsetting. Everyone's location data being free and public seems, well, ok to me. But no exceptions for any reason.
- jacalata 13y ago
  Really? You think that, for instance, someone trying to leave an abusive partner doesn't have more reason to want their whereabouts unknown than someone with no psychotic acquaintances? Someone who turned state's witness against their drug dealer friends?
  - kisielk 13y ago
    On the other hand if they and everybody else knew the whereabouts of their abusive partner, wouldn't that actually contribute to their safety?

YuriNiyazov 13y ago

When you open to the public the contents of your instance of Beekeep and Peeps databases, then you will have a point.

Jtsummers 13y ago
FTA: I still believe in privacy. It’s just a matter of questioning which things need to be private, and which things really don’t. Doesn't this address your attempt at a point? He has some things which he realized he kept private for no reason so he opened them up. The content of peeps is, in fact, not his to share (if I gave you my phone # to contact me, I would not consider it reasonable, without foreknowledge, for you to dump it into a public DB).

robobro 13y ago

Wonderful! Seems to be public domain, too?

chc 13y ago
It's not public domain — he hasn't put in a license at all. I'm sure he'll correct the oversight sooner or later. Right now it looks like he just switched the private flag on his existing repos.

Procrastes 13y ago

I've often said that the best way to get a quick competitive advantage against our rivals would be to send them our source.

dinkumthinkum 13y ago
Ok, send me your source.

PhasmaFelis 13y ago

My favorite thing on GameFAQs is the angry verbiage at the end of every FAQ promising dire legal consequences should anyone attempt to appropriate and profit from their work. Do you really think anyone anywhere is going to pay for your Donkey Kong Country strategy guide? If I ever write a game FAQ, it's going to end with "if you figure out a way to make a profit off of this, you are legally required to let me know how you did it so I can congratulate you."

jiggy2011 13y ago
Surely this is to stop somebody from simply using a bot to scrape all of the website content and republishing it on a new ad-supported website?
jaggederest 13y ago
That's actually a serious concern. There are lots of spammy sites that rip gamefaqs content and throw up really terrible advertising. That said those disclaimers offer no more power than a faq without a disclaimer.
pekk 13y ago
People buy crappy "game guides" all the time. How easy would it be not to even pay a bad author, but just scrape the internet and use it without attribution?

ChuckMcM 13y ago

It makes for an interesting thought about what is intrinsically valuable versus what isn't. The diary is 'non-intrinsic' because he doesn't have the context in which the information makes sense. A series of usernames and passwords is secret because it is self referentially useful. Stuff in the first category can become useful over time (the Mosaic effect) when someone suddenly lashes out about something and that connects the context of a series of family dramas. Stuff in the latter category is useful right away. Its useful to think about both cases. (oh and I really enjoyed reading through the ideas, they are fun) I should put my list up somewhere as well.

jmtame 13y ago

Great idea. Here's mine: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pn5vL3TY3VKr3WyZrKBpWnGW_zYi9AOA1b8c5NBiDFg/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pn5vL3TY3VKr3WyZrKBpWnGW...

Nicholas_C 13y ago
I have a Google doc with the same exact title of "Ideas." Yours is far more extensive though.
- jmtame 13y ago
  I've had this going for a year or two now. It's hard to come up with ideas when you want them, and they seem to come to you quickly when you don't need them or once you've started paying attention to problems. By no means is my list complete or good, but I've found it helpful to write them down otherwise I'll forget them.
buttonsmasher 13y ago
You got some good ideas in there. I love your Yelp idea!

throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago

There's an old joke: so this guy is trying to get rid of an ugly old sofa, he puts it out on the curb with the sign "free sofa!". Days pass; no luck. So he puts up a new sign saying "sofa: $50, call ###-####" and it's gone in ten minutes.

caf 13y ago
That's not a joke, if I want to get rid of a piece of old furniture on the footpath I'll always put a $5 sign on it.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- dangayle 13y ago
  Works wonders with largish appliances like washers or refrigerators. Free? Must be broken. $10? Must still work.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    That's one of the paradoxes of pricing: price itself is inferred to be an indicator of quality, so "free" is often perceived as "lower quality". While this can be true, it isn't entirely reliable.
binarycrusader 13y ago
The argument I imagine is that if you value something you produce or own as worthless, so will everyone else. It's one of the reasons why I think game creators and music creators shouldn't be afraid to take a stand on pricing. What is your time and work worth?
deleted 13y ago
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eCa 13y ago

The important part missing here is that it must be a choice. If I want my location data public I can make it public. If I want my super-secret diary read by anyone I can post it on Tumblr. But if I don't want to no-one should judge me for making that choice. And I should not judge those that choose differently.

mathattack 13y ago

This is consistent with what I see about supposed corporate secrets, and source code. What's on paper matters less than the people behind it, their interest and motivation, and how creating the "secrets" changed them.

sidgup 13y ago

It is only meaningless to others until they choose to abuse it and use it to put you at a disadvantage. That is when this argument fails. Yes my code is probably useless to others and so are my super-super secret diaries. However, it is only a matter of time that a smart con-man will connect the dots to ruin my life - my relationships, steal my identity etc. "Going through my stuff... if they become upset, its their problem, not mine!". Right, until I realize that going through that stuff actually made them happy instead because of how they could use it to profit themselves.

m0nastic 13y ago

I can't even imagine about what privacy is going to look like in 20 years, or how society will adapt to deal with it. What seems missing from his thought experiment is how to address privacy for things that concern more than just a single participant. I don't particularly worry about my individual privacy, or care about securing my things. If someone managed to get a hold of my email, I wouldn't be very put out. I don't encrypt my hard drives, or even back anything up. My lack of security and privacy hygiene, however, doesn't extend to my work stuff. I care about maintaining the confidentiality and privacy of that stuff because it's part of a social contract (and I suppose also an employment contract) that I have with my work and my clients. Instead of his diary example, what if he had asked his friend "Can I copy all of the emails off of your phone, or all the phone numbers in your addressbook?" Maybe they still wouldn't care, or maybe they'd now have to take into account the fact that all that data also involves other people, and maybe they wouldn't find it acceptable for you to give our their cell phone number to anybody who asks. So much of the data that we accrue is increasingly more interconnected with other people. I feel like that's where we run into trouble, because there is no universal consensus around what's private and what isn't. We have rudimentary laws protecting the smallest subset of data which the government has decided should be considered private, but everything else is a value judgement for individuals (and is part of the current internet company land-grab). I feel like his position is going to be harder and harder to maintain, as more and more of the "personal" data he's okay with sharing includes other people's data.

ZoFreX 13y ago
> I can't even imagine about what privacy is going to look like in 20 years, or how society will adapt to deal with it. You might like the book "The Light of Other Days"!
- Pelerin 13y ago
  I think about that book a lot when any discussions of privacy arise. A great depiction of a post-privacy world.
- m0nastic 13y ago
  Thanks, I'll check it out! I don't generally like science fiction, but the premise sounds interesting and I did like some of Clarke's other books.

kgen 13y ago

This is an interesting point, I think the tendency of most people who are creative/idea types (myself included) are kind of an over thinking of their own ideas, like they are somehow more important and prone to "theft", but the more I work on my own stuff, and the more I do on in open source, the less and less I think that’s the case. Like when I was working on Capsulr (http://capsulr.com/ http://capsulr.com/, shameless plug), I worried about showing people stuff too early, until I just realized that most people probably wouldn’t even see the site, or if they did, most wouldn't even see the product the same way that I see it evolving. It’s kind of helped me to start documenting my work, and I find that sharing notes publicly (just with myself) is a load of pressure off my shoulders and is worth the tiny possibility that someone might take it and run with it.

andrewfong 13y ago

"We got two ciders and she patiently waited while I spent 20 minutes reading through it. Pages filled with words about processing family drama, formulating goals, plans for life changes, romantic details, lists of regrets, contemplations, etc." "I was surprised it was all meaningless to me. These pages meant the world to her, but to me they meant no more than any non-secret conversation we’d ever had. It was the same stuff that we all think." The key here is "meaningless to me". It's obviously meaningful to her. And it would also be meaningful to her family, or romantic partners, or a potential employer, etc. Privacy is contextual. I often joke that it wouldn't bother me personally if Google or the NSA poked around my e-mail. But it would bother me a lot if my mom did.

neura 13y ago
This is mostly how i feel about it. With the addition that, there's a big difference between a friend asking to read your diary (who, we'll note, was not in the diary, as he pointed out) and a friend (or anybody) asking to distribute your diary to the public. I think that's the main thing most other people are commenting on as well. There are many levels of private and making something public is not the same as making it publicly accessible.
dinkumthinkum 13y ago
Yes it's a silly, flippant response by the OP. What if sivers.org posted her diaries for HackerNews to read? I bet you could find people for which her diaries would not be "meaningless" and could make this person not feel happy about that information being known here. Here, we can make someone like Nelson Mandela seem horrible, just think how would we could make this women feel. You don't have to get out dystopian examples of why this view is basically stupid. It doesn't stand up to common sense.

detcader 13y ago

If you have nothing about your personal life you want to hide, I think you're pretty boring

sanderjd 13y ago

I think you could also ask the opposite question about pretty much anything - why was this public? And I think the answer is the same - because I wanted it that way. Why should it need to be justified either way? If I want to keep something secret for a reason or by default or just on a whim, I should be able to, and if I want to make something public, I should be able to do that too. I don't think one choice is any better than the other as a default.

kinkora 13y ago

It is meaningless to you because you have no use for that information which is probably why she shared the "super super secret" diary with you. In terms of your relationship with your friend, you present a harmless consumer of that information. As a though process, lets replace "you" with: a) her employers, colleagues, etc b) any of her family members that she talked about c) her significant other, partner, etc. Now, do you think she will let these people read her diary? Do you see how dangerous these "secrets" are if these parties get their hands on it? IMO there are always valid or invalid reasons for keeping secrets (privacy is actually the real topic here) but the real question is whom are you keeping this secret from.

lukeqsee 13y ago

When you live in a society where anything you do or say (or accidentally appear to have said or did) will be held against you, privacy matters. It matters so much you don't log-in to online messaging services because you're wary of SSL MitM attacks or send non-encrypted emails from that network or do a litany of other "normal" things. It definitely means you aren't 100% open like Sivers is suggesting. How do I know this? I live in a very small, strict university setting that presents a picture of the potential of a future of "complete transparency". Even the hint of "lawbreaking" (i.e., rule-breaking) can land you in serious trouble. Trust me, I take privacy very seriously. Not because I have something to hide, but because I have everything (in the short-term) to lose. I know what I've said is mostly anecdotal due to the implicit nature of choosing to be in this environment; however, were this environment the world at large, I believe my anecdote would be normative.

jnbiche 13y ago
Since you've shared that anecdote, may I ask why you chose to go to such a university? I'm guessing it's probably a religious university (don't know of any non-religious schools with such strictures). Was it for spiritual reasons, or for financial reasons? Personal question, obviously, so feel free to tell me to shove off, but I'm very curious how intelligent people make these decisions.
- lukeqsee 13y ago
  I'd be happy to discuss those personal decisions in a private setting (email me, if you wish, it's on my profile). I don't think a public discussion will yield much benefit. Also, I would argue military academies have such demands upon the person.
PeterisP 13y ago
It's also related the other way - if everything you do or say is public, it won't be held against you. Noone cares about your sexual kinks or comic tastes, if everyone knows about the even weirder issues of the president and all the congressmen.

natch 13y ago

Is Sivers really suggesting that just because she was OK with him reading the diary, she would be OK with anyone reading it? That seems like a highly naive assumption. And seriously, this is your entire project list? "Everything is listed..." As a programmer and someone who sees how other programmers work, I am not buying it. Please don't lecture us on secrets with weak false examples. It comes off as disingenuous.

acuozzo 13y ago
> And seriously, this is your entire project list? I wish my list would grow past 0 items. I honestly have no itches to scratch.
- nrivadeneira 13y ago
  > I wish my list would grow past 0 items. > I honestly have no itches to scratch. Looks like you do have an itch to scratch...though I can't think of any good solutions to wishing for more projects.
dinkumthinkum 13y ago
This is such a great comment. I would have liked to put it so succinctly as this!

enraged_camel 13y ago

No one cares about other people's family drama. But if Valerie led a secret life as a private escort or ran a sex-cam operation from her bedroom to make ends meet, I doubt she would be OK with Derek reading about them.

d0m 13y ago

Hopefully he removed all private keys from the earliest commit before pushing them publicly ;-)

headgasket 13y ago

overused but appropriate. There are 2 rules to success: rule 1: Never tell everything you know. edit: read a bit about Derek Sivers, this guy is either the counter example or his rule no2 is really worth knowing. Almost all my best reads of the past 10 years are on his book list. He sold his company to a perpetual charitable trust which then sold it to a third party, shielding himself and saving a bundle in capital gains tax and providing residual for his whole life + supports his cause(music education). Kudos Derek. I'll be reading the books on your list; maybe to catch a glimpse of your rule no2? :-) Cheers,

001sky 13y ago

Discretion and secrecy are related but not interchangible concepts. Is this author really suggesting discretion be non-existent? That opportunistic manipulation has never occurred? The need for NDAs has never once made sense? What it is disporportionately valuable to you, is more costly to you, once taken away, too.

tillinghast 13y ago

All I want is your GitHub password.

grellas 13y ago

Why was her diary secret? Well, because she wanted it so. And that should be enough. When it comes to information that any given person regards as intimate about oneself, that should always be enough. It doesn't matter that someone else might peruse that information and say, "there is nothing special here." Why? Because it is not that person's judgment to make. There may be nothing special about my exact bank balance or net worth or state of my health or sex life or political or religious affiliations (or lack of affiliations) or any other information that I may consider private but that doesn't mean I want that information broadcast to the world only to invite identity thieves, malicious third-parties, political enemies, or anybody else who might bear a grudge or harbor an animus to have a field day with it. But they are just "facts", you might say. No, in the wrong hands, they are ammunition by which to hurt you if people want and, even if the facts themselves are innocent enough, people have a ready capacity as may suit their whims or prejudices or any other ulterior motives they may have to do you wrong and what may appear as innocent "facts" to one person can easily be transmuted into a vile weapon that can cost you your job, your important relationship, or any other of many things that might be the subject of someone's jealousy or other animus toward you (a lifetime of courtroom experience has certainly shown me how easy it is for a motivated adversary to take otherwise innocent facts and twist them into malicious aspersions if they really want to). What is more, even if nobody had any interest whatever in harming me through misuse of that information, it is part of my essential humanity that I can separate that which I regard as intimate (to me) from that which is made freely available for public consumption. There is a reason why the word "vulgar" developed negative connotations over the centuries: it originally meant nothing more than "belonging to the crowd." Well, crowds can trample on things you might regard as precious and it should be your choice and no one else's whether you want to open up important parts of your life for public consumption. If I happen not to want to keep any part of my life secret, well, that is fine too. That is a choice every person can make for himself so long as he doesn't go about over-sanctimoniously proclaiming that others must do the same or harming others about him by revealing things that they consider intimate as he opens the book of his own life to the world. It is the same in the business world. One can open-source his own works as a matter of commitment to the idea that all information ought to be free or for any other reason but that doesn't mean the law ought to abrogate protections for proprietary, trade secret information that most businesses need to keep confidential information as a matter of competitive advantage. If I am a broker who depends for his livelihood in serving a customer base that it took years to develop, I would be rightly upset if someone came in and simply handed all my customer information over to my competitors. So too would a development team that has invested huge amounts of money and time into a development effort that gives them a significant competitive advantage over others and whose business model turns on keeping that advantage to themselves exclusively. So too would most any company management if its confidential business plans for winning key markets suddenly got broadcast publicly over the web. Examples of this type can be multiplied endlessly and really are self-evident to anyone who has had much in the way of real-world business experience. Again, any private business is free to make a contrary judgment and to open itself up at every level so that it maintains no private or secret information whatever. That is their choice. But, if I want to keep things secret in my business, no one should be able to force me to do otherwise or to try to shame me into believing that I am doing something wrong. Laws and public policy cannot make these choices for us as individual actors but it is essential that they set up a structure to protect those who would seek to keep their confidential information private. How and to what degree that happens in practical execution can be a complex topic in our technological age but the abiding principle, to me, is very clear: privacy is valuable in any society and laws should be shaped accordingly. So, why, then, is this secret? Because the person it most affects wants it that way and the rest of us should respect that person's wishes to keep it so.

mmanfrin 13y ago

Derek -- what are your credit card numbers and SSN? No reason to keep those private!

benched 13y ago

About half of my friends post every move they make throughout the day, photo-illustrated, to Facebook. They also have numerous short conversations with their friends, that are clearly just between the two of them and would normally be of no interest to anybody else. It's the equivalent of having private conversations out loud in front of everyone each of them have ever met in their lives. I do not understand any of this behavior. I'm said to be a 'private person.' But it's clear to me that the zeitgeist is definitely not on my side here. I also wonder what all of this will be like in 20 years, given that Facebook has only been in widespread use for an utterly paltry 5 years.

ilaksh 13y ago

This person realized that with the NSA and however many other agencies spying on us, and other issues, we may not effectively have any real privacy anymore, and therefore he has come up with one or more rationalizations for why this is OK. This is probably a common thing. Seems a bit similar to Stockholm syndrome. Anyway its probably an automatic self-defense mechanism. The scary part is that a significant portion of the population is probably also doing a similar sort of rationalization now. People will eventually accept any circumstance that they can't change, unless it is going to kill them. Actually, even if it _will_ kill them. In fact, our inevitable death is one aspect of life that people will often rationalize in the most determined way. We can change this circumstance though. We can have privacy, even in the digital age. Don't give up your natural rights so easily.

zobzu 13y ago

Now imagine that instead of her boyfriend, someone who hates her finds the diary. Yeah. You're stupid. That's not a secret tho - it's just a fact. I'd happily sugar-coat it but I'm tired of feeling like we're degrading our minds since internet came around with fast paced sensationalistic crap.

visakanv 13y ago

My interpretation of Derek's point: "A lot of us keep things secret for the sake of keeping them secret without particularly evaluating whether the secrecy serves any purpose. On average, this means that there are things that are secret that shouldn't necessarily be. We might all be better off if we were a little more willing to share things that might not actually need to be secret." Not everything needs to be secret != everything should be public His post is written to describe his personal journey about his personal attitude towards his own work. I think a lot of people are misinterpreting him to be saying something broader and blunter than he actually is.

natch 13y ago
"Everything is listed..." Everything is a pretty broad word.
sivers 13y ago
Thank you Visakan. You got it, and others didn't. A major challenge in communication is to not be misunderstood. I must not have been clear enough. I never said anywhere that everything should be public. Only that I decided my code and ideas didn't need to be secret. I think maybe commenters here are reacting more to other commenters, instead of the actual article, now.
- grey-area 13y ago
  I went and read the article, and I think it's obvious in retrospect why your point about your code is being ignored, and not just by people who haven't read the article. You start with this premise, which you appear to agree with: I’m not worried about someone finding out my secrets, because secrets are just facts, right? and go on to an example of a diary, one of the most personal artefacts we have, and imply that sharing it all with anyone who asks (as per the above statement) is absolutely fine. The implication of the above statement is that all secrets are pointless, including personal ones. In the context of a society in which governments and corporations are spying on every communication and looking for ways to justify it, this attitude is actively damaging and is an after-the-fact justification of that spying. I think many people would agree with you that opening up your private code repos is a worthy thing to do, and it's certainly an idea worthy of discussion, with pros and cons (as you rightly point out, to do with maintenance and the public commitment more than anything else). The mistake in this article is relating that to personal privacy, and implying that secrets are just facts is a statement worthy of consideration. If secrets are just facts and cannot hurt you, there is no point in keeping anything secret at all. Unfortunately other people in the world are quite capable of twisting the most mundane facts about your life (like your location at every moment, your sexual preferences, whatever), and using them to destroy your life, either because of their prejudices, or because of those of society at large. Witness politicians brought down because of some affair, or their private sex life - we don't know how many of those are leaked by our 'security services' for political gain but they certainly have done that in the past. No-one deserves that much power over others, and because of the asymmetry of power in our society, private information is far more useful to some people than others. Perhaps that is not what you intended to imply, but that is the logical conclusion of the statement and your interpretation of it, and that's why people are reacting so strongly to it.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

auggierose 13y ago

I am not sure why an article goes to Nr. 1 that has a made up table full of silly unjustified numbers in it.

dinkumthinkum 13y ago

I think this is just la la land jibber jabber. You all can pretend privacy is irrelevant and you don't care if everyone knows everything about you because it is "meaningless" or whatever ... But unlike some on HN, I will continue to live in the real world.

vubuntu 13y ago

Flawed argument by the poster... >> "Pages filled with words about processing family drama, formulating goals, plans for life changes, romantic details, lists of regrets, contemplations, etc" C'mon, those are her super super private secrets? Thats ridiculous. 'romantic details' may be a little bit... Thats why she says "So if someone is going through my private things, for example, and gets upset about what they find, then that’s their problem, not mine!”" But things people like to keep really secret (and not coyly secret) and worry about others finding out, are those that would upset themselves (and not the readers) if they get discovered. These would be things that one is ashamed of, that one is afraid of being discovered, that if known to others will result in loss of respect/love/admiration/consolation etc that they are currently receiving from others. Or those if discovered by the wrong person can leave one vulnerable to exploitation/blackmail etc. Any other type of secrets are just silly and overblown.

garthdog 13y ago

Just because privacy is worthless to you does not means it's not of value to me. Throw away your privacy but please don't contribute to the meme that privacy is disposable. Lots of people have secrets that are harmless but can destroy them if they end up in the wrong hands, e.g. homosexuality within a conservative community.

droopybuns 13y ago

This is bullshit naievete. Move the clock back 40 years on the romance section. Imagine it references homosexuality, and ask yourself if the author's theme of "what's the big deal" is appropriate. OP is under the mistaken belief that everyone else shares their morals and mores. They have plenty of time to be rudely defenstrated. This is the danger of confusing exhibitionism with free-spiritedness. It is a first-principle error to devalue privacy. OP should be ashamed of themselves. They need to read up on humanity's very short history of tolerance for true individualism. OP should read up on Alan Turing for fuck's sake. Fuck this fool.

PeterisP 13y ago
"Keeping it a secret" is a non-solution that killed Alan Turing. Telling the intolerants to suck it up, in particular by openly leaving the closet, was the solution that worked to solve the problem.

ryanklee 13y ago

How about this: No one can predict the import of what's recorded NOW. Not the person who records it, not the person who observes it, not the person who comes upon it 5 minutes, 5 years, 5 decades later. Keeping your material projections close to the vest, keeping them out, as far as possible, from the unpredictable hands of the future is just good sense. The times are changing. We have very little grasp on how what we record now - private, public, or otherwise (?) - will impact us in the future. There's a virtue in openness, to be sure. But maintaining privacy is no bad thing. No matter what the talking walnut says. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKd7z5CY4BU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKd7z5CY4BU

shurcooL 13y ago

I've basically made the same realization a few years ago and decided to stop going through the trouble of keeping my personal code private. It's been great so far. I get all the benefits (like godoc.org providing docs for my code, free github repos, easy to share links with people, etc.) and none of the disadvantages. It's a personal choice, and not for everyone. But it just makes life so much easier. In fact, I'm trying to reduce the number of things that I'm forced to keep private because they're considered to be "security questions". On theft of ideas: https://twitter.com/shurcooL/status/266294572949327872 https://twitter.com/shurcooL/status/266294572949327872

nadam 13y ago

Regarding source code in a business context the question is: What is your competitive advantage? Well, as an experienced software developer who is not nearly as experienced in other things, sometimes my only chance to have competitive advantage is private source code. You may argue that I do not even have that competitive advantage, but then why bother competing in any market at all?

rmc 13y ago

“I’m not worried about someone finding out my secrets, because secrets are just facts, right? So if someone is going through my private things, for example, and gets upset about what they find, then that’s their problem, not mine!” Sure, it's their problem. But they might have power over you. If some intolerant family members discover you're gay, you might get kicked out of the house. If parents discover their child is trans, they might try to "beat it out of them". An abusive husband might find where his wife has run off to and "finish the job". But, hey, they're problem! right?

linux_devil 13y ago

With respect to ideas in start-up phase , I think if it's your idea , you will pursue it more passionately as compared to others . Idea can struck to anyone , wonder out of billions of people around how many are pursuing similar ideas ? It's the one who do it in right way and right time makes it big.

rejschaap 13y ago

I think the diary analogy is great, but the author fails to explore it properly. It ignores aspects such as self-awareness, self-consciousness and self-censorship. Notice a lot of 'self's in the previous sentence? A diary is a very personal thing. When you are writing in your diary you poor your heart out about everything and anything. You can do this because you are the only person who will ever read this stuff. Imagine writing something that other people will read, like your mom (anything sex-related is out of the question), your colleagues (better not say your boss is a total jerk), your friends (don't mention that secret Anne told you about Peter, or you wlll lose 2 friends) or your government (no wait, they already know everything anyway). Similar things happen when you are writing code for yourself and yourself only. When I write code for my own pleasure. I don't care so much about documentation, clarity, robustness, polish, etc. Yes, I am a bad, bad person. Anyway, compare writing code for yourself with code you share with friends (generally supportive, but add some polish and fix that hack so they don't think you're a complete idiot), colleagues (semi-critical yet supportive, maybe try to score some bonus points using a FactorySingletonVisitorBean) or hackerne.ws (super-critical, probably rewrite it in the language-du-jour first, prepare to be burned at the stake anyway).

mnw21cam 13y ago

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. -- Howard Aiken

dutchbrit 13y ago

She probably would of said no, if there was any negativity about you in there. You should of asked what her pincode was for her ATM card...

eplanit 13y ago

Interesting how the author, and the woman who's the subject of his anecdote (and several here), conflate and confuse privacy with secrecy.

AsymetricCom 13y ago

This article is long, rambling and stupid. Of course your friend got nothing from your diary, they weren't trying to take advantage of you.