There are also reasons outside infosec concerns. For example where such PKs would be directly related to your revenue, such as orders in an e-commerce platform. You wouldn't want competitors to have an estimate of your daily volume, that kind of thing.
Author of the original Damn Interesting article here. This Today I Found Out (TIFO) video is problematic, because the host of TIFO (Simon Whistler) used to be part of Damn Interesting, he was the narrator for our audiobook and some of our early podcast episodes. Our Lake Peigneur article, the one this HN thread is based upon, was one that he recorded for us.
Simon joined TIFO without informing us, while still working as our narrator. And TIFO had long been poaching our articles, lazily rewriting our work and calling it their own. So you can imagine my dismay when I found out that our paid narrator was also being paid by a competing website to read our slightly reworked content.
This Lake Peigneur video is a particularly egregious example. Their script is extremely similar to our original article in structure and phrasing. That alone would be bad enough, but for the video's host to be a former member of Damn Interesting makes it feel really awful.
This isn't the first of our articles they have reworked into a video without our permission, and I doubt it will be the last. I'm not claiming they are breaking any laws, but what they are doing is gross and parasitic.
> Enter username to play for free directly in your browser
I was so happy after seeing this thinking, "so amazing of them to let me check it out without having to register" only to discover that it led to a register form :(
