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KS FEATURE REQUESTS: I was trying to go 60 days without posting on HN. I't been 42 days. This is important enough to break my silence and at least make a req

KS FEATURE REQUESTS: I was trying to go 60 days without posting on HN. I't been 42 days. This is important enough to break my silence and at least make a request. Kickstarter: You deal with personal and financial data. Could you please enable two things for those of us who understand security issues and want better security: 1- Give me the option to not use my email as the login user id. I've warmed-up to the idea of using randomized user names on sites that allow it. Something like "aoc4sour*!Z". On such sites I have completely different and randomly generated user id's and passwords. Pretty much impossible for an intruder to associate those accounts with any other accounts. ...unless... They can access personal information such as real name, email, mailing address, phone and other personal identifying data that could contribute towards social engineering into other sites. hence... 2- Please enable an option to choose two factor authentication. This should be there as a firewall to access any personal data at all, even email and real name. It should also be required for any financial transaction, including pledging any amount on a project. I'd say make it optional because the less informed (or less paranoid) might not want to bother. finally... 3- I love questions such as "What's the name of your first pet?". How about some of those? I am being a bit sarcastic here. When answered honestly these questions are really dangerous. It doesn't take a lot of social engineering to figure out most of them when armed with enough personal data. However, I like to answer such questions with a random set of words. So, the name of my first pet might be "blue ladder tent aquifer". In other words, pretty much impossible to guess even if I gave you access to my facebook and linkedin accounts. When used in this fashion these questions, I think, are actually useful. I'd venture to guess that most people don't do it this way because they don't understand the implications of providing straight answers. These kinds of breaches have been accelerating. At least that's the feeling I'm getting. This to the point that I had a sit-down security meeting at home to make sure everyone at home understands what's going on and the fact that we need to make sure we use different passwords for every site and service and even different user names where possible. Pain in the ass but far less so than having your life turned upside-down by one of these idiots. Any thoughts, comments or improvements on the above will be highly appreciated. BACK TO LURKING: In the meantime, I am going to see about going back into mostly lurking mode on HN. I found it quite revealing to take a real break from reading and posting on HN. For the last 42 days I've checked HN's first page nearly daily and only scan a few threads very quickly, dismiss most of them and refrain from posting comments (until this one). ON ANOTHER TOPIC: HELL-BANNED? I wanted to initiate a thread to share my observations and reflections after, well, now 42 days of just glancing at HN and not posting. However, either I am the subject of a strange hellban or something is broken. I can post comments all I want but I don't seem to be able to start new threads. Not sure how to fix it. Too bad.

jacquesm 13y ago
> I can post comments all I want but I don't seem to be able to start new threads. Join the club.
- robomartin 13y ago
  Well, I know why it happened. And rightly so. I got too involved in a number of threads involving politics. I probably went counter to the ideology supported by those moderating HN and eventually got chopped-off at the knees. I say "rightly so" because after taking a 42 day break from HN I look back at this community with different eyes. It should be about tech and startups with as little extraneous stuff as possible. That's where HN delivers value. Taking several steps back and looking at what I've seen over the last 42 days it is obvious that most discussions that stray far away from tech are pretty much pointless whining from one side or the other of the argument. Most of these are a total waste of time. In a lot of cases they blow out of proportion because the average HN poster/reader is younger and lacking enough real-world experience. So you have worlds colliding with nothing of any measurable use being produced. Even with technical discussions there's a lot of wasted typing on HN. Everyone is responsible of this to one extent or another. I am not excluding myself from any of these characterizations. Over the last 42 days I've clicked through threads and, more often than not, I tend to dismiss them as "typical difficult programmer nit-picking" which is what I typically see when discussions between programmers turn into endlessly going back and forth on fundamentally insignificant details. Programmers are some of the most difficult people to argue with. It must be the automatic "if-then-else" and "switch" statements that you develop over the years. Anyhow, it sucks to be able to comment but not initiate threads. On the other hand, it's also a nice way to limit the time one devotes to such things. Would I like to have my thread starter privileges restored? Of course. Am I going to get into political or minutiae discussions? Nope. Waste of time, for all involved.
  - jacquesm 13y ago
    Spot on. For me it's simple: I should care less, not more about these things. Thanks for the extensive comment, apologies for not responding earlier (on assignment).

jacquesm 13y ago

> I can post comments all I want but I don't seem to be able to start new threads. Join the club.

robomartin 13y ago
Well, I know why it happened. And rightly so. I got too involved in a number of threads involving politics. I probably went counter to the ideology supported by those moderating HN and eventually got chopped-off at the knees. I say "rightly so" because after taking a 42 day break from HN I look back at this community with different eyes. It should be about tech and startups with as little extraneous stuff as possible. That's where HN delivers value. Taking several steps back and looking at what I've seen over the last 42 days it is obvious that most discussions that stray far away from tech are pretty much pointless whining from one side or the other of the argument. Most of these are a total waste of time. In a lot of cases they blow out of proportion because the average HN poster/reader is younger and lacking enough real-world experience. So you have worlds colliding with nothing of any measurable use being produced. Even with technical discussions there's a lot of wasted typing on HN. Everyone is responsible of this to one extent or another. I am not excluding myself from any of these characterizations. Over the last 42 days I've clicked through threads and, more often than not, I tend to dismiss them as "typical difficult programmer nit-picking" which is what I typically see when discussions between programmers turn into endlessly going back and forth on fundamentally insignificant details. Programmers are some of the most difficult people to argue with. It must be the automatic "if-then-else" and "switch" statements that you develop over the years. Anyhow, it sucks to be able to comment but not initiate threads. On the other hand, it's also a nice way to limit the time one devotes to such things. Would I like to have my thread starter privileges restored? Of course. Am I going to get into political or minutiae discussions? Nope. Waste of time, for all involved.
- jacquesm 13y ago
  Spot on. For me it's simple: I should care less, not more about these things. Thanks for the extensive comment, apologies for not responding earlier (on assignment).