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Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by ravi-delia on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @07:24PM (#24771485)
Oh boy, thank God people my age don't have to worry about the incredibly embarrassing things we did, or embarrassing fanfiction we wrote, preserved publicly forever.

Gen Z, woooooo. Woo.

I'm doomed.

Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by kibwen on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @08:10PM (#24771816)
My internet coming-of-age was between 2000 and 2008, and I was happy to learn that all the forums I used to frequent are now kaput, with no public archives. It's always a bit of a shame to lose historical documents, but who knows what embarrassing comments I'm now free of forever. (And don't worry, my mortifying preteen Super Mario RPG fanfiction yet survives in personal backups.)
Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by spydum on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @08:29PM (#24771920)
Never fear, most of those phpBB and ubb forums got breached and no doubt a database dump survives somewhere on a torrent ;)
Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by _Qeomash_ on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @09:06PM (#24772140)
That is very oddly specific. Hello, fellow old school SMRPG fan.
Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by Polylactic_acid on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @08:09PM (#24771809)
I'm Gen Z too and for my whole life the advice has been "Don't put your real info on the internet". The only thing that comes up when you search my name is my gitlab profile and a technical blog. All of my cringy forum posts still exist but they are all under random usernames and would be very difficult to link back to me.
Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by LargoLasskhyfv on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @08:27PM (#24771911)
Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by Polylactic_acid on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @08:35PM (#24771959)
Yes I'm quite aware that if governments were after me they could probably dig up this stuff but thats not my concern. I'm focused on random internet users being able to dig up 10 year old posts which would be insanely difficult given how much crap there is on the internet and how much I have changed since then.
Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by LargoLasskhyfv on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @09:19PM (#24772218)
I remember reading corporations crawling the so called "deep web" and even the "dark nets", advertising their capabilities as superior for gathering new insights/intelligence a few years ago. Was just a short blip on my radar, because I haven't seen it mentioned afterwards.

Anyways, what can be done probabably will be done, for whichever reason because it's getting cheaper and cheaper.

And then the next leak happens.

And somewhere on some site like Have I been owned?, or in a torrent there is a comma separated list with many, or even all of your former pseudonyms connected with your current address, social security, drivers license, younameit.

Gotcha!

Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by nl on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @01:52AM (#24773532)
This really isn't how this works.

Stylometry is a thing, sure. But it's rarely accurate enough to use on bulk archives in an automated way, especially when archives come from different domains (eg, technical vs social writing).

It's useful for identifying possible alternate authors plays attributed to Shakespeare[1], but a lot less useful for trying to tie a reddit identity to a github profile.

Anyways, what can be done probabably will be done, for whichever reason because it's getting cheaper and cheaper.

Crawling and storing is cheap, but analysis is harder. Automated spell checking ("probabably" above not withstanding!) and auto-complete means stylometry is even less useful now.

Source: myself - I work in natural language processing, and have talked to people applying these techniques.

[1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.0028...

Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by LargoLasskhyfv on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @02:36AM (#24773766)
Consider the spelling "chaff" for Rokos Basilisk :)
Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by Godel_unicode on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @09:36PM (#24772302)
Who does this kind of wild speculation help?
Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by nitrogen on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @09:50PM (#24772371)
It's not speculation, it's basically an open source intelligence tool. I can't recall the name of the company I somehow stumbled upon, but they exist. Palantir, as an example, might be someone who you'd expect to develop commercial tools for intelligence gathering. High frequency traders or other investors also.
Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by Godel_unicode on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @10:34PM (#24772560)
It is speculation. They do not exist. You're thinking of Maltego, and it's very far from what is being described. Palantir makes software, not a panopticon for their own use. High frequency trading is entirely unrelated to scrounging the deep dark web for crumbs to stitch together forum accounts.

This is a fantasy spurred on by too many dark mirror episodes, nobody does stuff like that for the hell of it. Storing the amount of data we're talking about is expensive. Collecting it is expensive. Processing it is expensive. There's little money to be made with it, but it sounds really good if you don't think too hard about it. It's illuminati conspiracy mumbo jumbo for nerds.

Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by LargoLasskhyfv on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @12:06AM (#24773004)
Chill...
Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by dumpsterdiver on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @08:53PM (#24772064)
For any who are interested in witnessing a fictionalized example of applied Stylometry, I highly suggest the Star Wars Thrawn series by Timothy Zahn. Thrawn's specialty is making tactical inferences based on the physical art pieces created by a culture. It's a really interesting read, but don't take my word for it!
Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by mjayhn on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @08:23PM (#24771891)
Well there's a decent chance you're going to be working for millennial and gen-X'ers nowadays. We're the ones who were hiding all our online lives (still) from our parents. I'm glad my Myspace was deleted to my teenage angst.

Point being a lot of us I think are really respective of privacy and the fact that people (even teachers and nurses!) have lives that don't revolve around work.

Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by TedDoesntTalk on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @09:55PM (#24772389)
Nice to see Gen X mentioned. In the several years, the media has mentioned only Boomers, Millennials, and Gen Z. It’s like Gen X is the lost generation.
Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by boulos on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @10:56PM (#24772679)
The Lost Generation were the people who came of age during WW1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Generation
Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by Izkata on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @10:57PM (#24772682)
Apparently before the name "Generation X" stuck, one of the proposed names was "New Lost Generation".
Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by ddingus on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @11:30AM (#24777679)
Gen X here. Apt
Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by Jaruzel on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @01:16AM (#24773333)
This is something that I've been aware of for a while now. Us (Gen-Xrs) have had a rough time of it; The boomers rode the financial booms and mostly did well, and the millennials are pandered to everywhere you look, whereas we had to suffer more than one financial crash, and the media and retail pretend like we don't exist, so nothing is aligned to our values or desires.

Even worse, there's a large chunk of millenials who don't even believe that Gen-X exists, and think that the generation above them are all boomers.

Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by mjayhn on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @09:45AM (#24776432)
This is very far off from my millennial experience

1; I’m a 34yo millennial, 2; my siblings are ~40ish yo gen-xers, 3; my parents are 65yo boomers.

My genx siblings all bought massive houses around 2008 when I was starting my career which in 2008 meant being lucky to make $40k as a sysadmin. Obama subsidies all over the place if you had 5-10 years to put together a downpayment, though. I don’t think my paycheck became NOT hand-to-face until I was in my mid-late 20s and making well into 6 figures. And I’m not eating avocado toast or buying starbucks.

This is my 2nd recession since I started my career. In the first I was a “JR” and couldn’t get a job. Now I’m a SR and overqualified at most places. I barely know any millenial colleagues of mine that are home owners. And once again, I’m in my mid 30s.

And no, I don’t have children along with half of my mid-30s friends because we can’t afford them along with the 70k+ Of college debt and $600k starter houses.

The truly sad part though, millennials actually remember and know what life was like starting out around ~2008. We’re very open to mentoring and hiring gen-z. Social media wasn’t what it was back in 2008, of course, but I don’t remember any genxers going out of their way to get us millennials hired, go over our resumes, refer us, etc. I luckily landed my first engineering job from another millennial over IRC. This goes into the culture of the company, interviewing, everything. The people bitching about having to describe how to throw a rock or explain why manholes are round? They’re millennials who got those stupid questions when we were JRs because of a horrible job market that Boomers/Genx allowed to continue as the status quo. Not all, of course, but there’s a lot.

Instead of working to make things better for those coming up behind you, you’re acting like the victim. We can all come up with reasons that things suck. Let’s try to improve things.

Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by ddingus on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @12:07PM (#24778195)
Mentoring is right up there at the top of things we can all do to improve the world for everyone.

Yeah, it does suck. Has for a long run now. You are not wrong.

I was mentored by boomers who passed the power and importance of it on to me. GenX'er here

That may be rare. I don't know.

What I do know is when we all help the new, up and coming people, it pays off nicely.

Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by TedDoesntTalk on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @04:29PM (#24781215)
> The people bitching about having to describe how to throw a rock or explain why manholes are round? They’re millennials who got those stupid questions when we were JRs because of a horrible job market that Boomers/Genx allowed to continue as the status quo.

I’m a GenX and I got those stupid interview questions. I don’t think that is related to generation.

Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by mjayhn on Thursday October 15, 2020 @09:42AM (#24788569)
Oh of course you did, my point was more that you got those questions but also a lot of your peers continued asking those stupid questions. I remember when I was hired after getting a manhole question; the genx managers (i was probably 19) used it as an inside joke, "gotcha" just to see how candidates responded. I always thought it was gross.

So I don't ask those questions to people that I interview, because I remember how stupid they made me feel and how unrelated to the job they are.

It's the genx'ers that were asking me that, probably asked by boomers. I don't know why you'd continue to repeat those biased systems.

Genx isn't exactly well known for standing up for itself as opposed to continuing to normalize trash systems, that's the entire problem.

Be better than those before you, that's it. Make things better for those coming up or going out. There's no reason work should suck.

Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by TedDoesntTalk on Thursday October 15, 2020 @07:31PM (#24795606)
> you’re acting like the victim

Now you’re the victim... of bad interview questions that have nothing to do with generations. There are assholes of all ages. Just because YOU don’t ask interview questions about manhole covers does not make it a generational trend. I still get these questions and you can delude yourself that all the people asking them are GenX or Boomers if you want.

Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by mjayhn on Thursday October 15, 2020 @10:11PM (#24796698)
You still get those questions because you’re a shitty developer interviewing at shitty development shops. That’s it. Nobody gives one fuck that you’re a boomer, you just act like one.

Stick to your namesake, the “doesn’t talk” part. We don’t want or need your input, bud.

Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by baby on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @10:52PM (#24772653)
I mean if everybody has something to be embarrassed about then nobody really is.

But yeah if youtube existed when I was young I would probably be internet famous in a bad way.

Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by smoe on Tuesday October 13, 2020 @09:52PM (#24772379)
I’m glad not being a teenager these days where everything is constantly photographed and filmed then shared everywhere without consent.

At least with my old embarrassing forum posts and such it was me actively sharing it :)