Comedy Central
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2021–2025
6:57 · 2.2M views · Nov 4, 2017
A Nathan For You sketch in which Nathan Fielder tackles customers' privacy fears at computer repair shops with an awkwardly absurd business solution. It is a comedy clip from the Comedy Central show.
HN uses it only as a joke when computer repair privacy comes up.
3 comments from Hacker News
"Obviously a VPN provider can also do this, but you might hope they're less likely to." So you have identified some marginal privacy issue, and have identified that a VPN doesn't solve it, but rather that it moves the risk to a third party actor you subjectively feel is better. Well I feel that, subjectively, introducing a third party generally decreases security. I believe that not all privacy and security considerations can or should be solved technically, but rather we have extra-technical mechanisms like law and social norms that provide some protection on the edge cases. For example, an employee cannot lookup information for personal reasons on a system they are entrusted to in a professional capacity. I'm no expert, but you probably have first laws that prohibit that, second corporate policy that prohibits that, and thirdly social pressure that prohibits that to some extent. Are they perfect? Not necessarily which is why for the most part we rely on technical encryption and security mechanisms. But at some point these examples become so contrived and the medicine becomes the poison, so you enter into territory that is pretty standard in other industries, what's to stop a waiter from spitting into a cup? There's no spit filter in place of McDonalds, there's other mechanisms protecting us. On a similar note, logic and debate is not the only way to convey this phenomenon, so here's some more artistic retort to privacy schizophrenia. this video
Talented business consultant Nathan Fielder covered this topic not long ago. I believe he was the first one to spot this gap in the market for an asexual computer repair service. He actually shares his findings with us here: this video "Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come."
Nathan Fielder (who graduated from one of Canada's top business schools with really good grades) tried to address this in an episode of Nathan For You (s04e07). The plan? Put customers at ease by offering the world's first asexual computer repair. this video