I guess he thinks of it as a trapdoor function - it's trivial to find his name given the comment, but just given his name it's probably hard to turn up this comment.

TIL the term "trapdoor function"—and also, you're correct[0] :-)

[0] with the added protection that someone non-HN-familiar might not know to click on the profile name to get more information

I'm not an MIT alumnus, but if I was one I feel like this joke would write itself.

maybe BalinKing IS from MIT and the joke's on all the caltech readers.

Yeah, but that’s an extra click that would require more effort than a quick Google search... I’m not worried about a determined attacker here ;-)

Also, the intersection of people thinking (burnout at Caltech = tautology) and (reading HN is a good way to flick) is sufficiently large that I really think there will be no negative repercussions if you otherwise conduct yourself honorably online.

Hi from an '03 mole whose is mildly surprised you're hitting that wall in sophomore year -- back when I was there it was junior year. But hey, I didn't do CS :)

I didn't realise clicking on the name lead to the profile for 2 months after I started lurking on HN. It's not that obvious...

Security in obscurity.

I can’t gloat, after 10 years I recently discovered I can favourite threads. It’s changed everything.

Hacker News has a number of little hidden features that you find as you keep using it. It's like an easter egg hunt of sorts, I guess. You could blame part of it on poor UI or whatnot, but I personally find it kind of fun to discover new things about the site (having a general understanding of how it works, so it's not like I am missing some critical functionality).