September 2015 – Whispers of Life

Companies Know You Are Pregnant… Before You Do.

One day companies might know you better than you know yourself.

It has already happened – Target is able to identify 25 products that can accurately ascertain if you are pregnant or not – and send you coupons before you even need them.

When you get a membership card from Target, they are not offering you discounts for free – they seek to link your real world purchases (credit cards used) with your online impulse buys. Some even sell or ‘exchange’ your anonymized information with so-called data brokers. However, research has shown that such anonymized info can pretty much identify a specific person with great accuracy.

One day, such tracking will be so pervasive and invasive that we will wonder if there was ever a notion of privacy.

Some select responses

Let’s consider though that MLH is a young organization that is exploring the hackathon space in a novel way. With 100s of hackathons under their belt they made a rushed call. We as students of logic can understand that it was nothing personal or malignant, right? This was a professional failure. Some of you have pointed out the fact that most big hackathons do not need the support that MLH provides and existed just fine prior to MLH entering the scene.

MLH isn’t the hackathoner’s Mondo Burger run by greaseballs counting their money and giggling, just by 3 dudes counting their money and giggling. MLH hides behind a vision to solve problems and bring joy by fusing the creative and analytical powers of the human mind, instead of addressing actual community issues. MLH was brought about by hackers just like you and me who saw what we could do when we work together and who understood the efficiency that structure provides, yet do not collaborate with the community. Let’s not spit in the mirror but let’s also not wash over the shortcomings and ignore them and MLH’s insistence on not communicating about them. As people who have accepted a lifelong dedication to solving problems, let’s stay focused and think of ways we can get MLH to prevent future confusion and further build this community that we’ve all invested in.

Of course, before we do anything, let’s take a bit of time to cool off. Oh wait, MLH has had a day. Nevermind. I implore anyone who wrote reviews to reconsider taking further action as MLH still will not address these issues. We, with a MLH who has proven they cannot take criticism from the community, must consider other ways to be a lifeline for those people and bestow them with the power to sculpt and strum technology. This mishap won’t break us. Let’s stay true to the course; I believe MLH can fix this if they will communicate with the community they claim they “serve”.

MLH is a for-profit company. They make profits selling the hackers that attend their sponsored events as a product to the sponsors.

If you attend these hackathons, MLH is profiting off of you, and therefore you ARE entitled to a reasonable experience at the very least. If even one of us are made forfeit what is due us, then we all lose out.

Not to mention that they’re profiting off of the college organizers, and by superseding their authority on their own venue, they are being incredibly disrespectful at the very least. We all lose yet again.