I would think twice about executing bash code from people's profiles. Sure, the prior probability of trolls is pretty low on HN, and I know that your specific snippet is safe, but it's easy to get fooled, even if you think you know what you are doing. See https://superuser.com/questions/996795/how-and-why-is-this-s....
While I agree with you about executing snippets of unknown origin not being a good idea, I expect that the average HN user would at most need to copy the part in quotes, and they would be already familiar with the rest of that line.
...which would still get you pwned for the snippet in the question I linked.
Again, I know that for someone reasonably familiar with base64 and bash it's obvious that the base64 example is indeed safe. Maybe you want to filter out people that don't have that level of familiarity (or aren't naive enough to execute bash code they don't fully understand). That's both very arbitrary and unnecessary though - HN is quite diverse. But of course, it's also up to everyone what they do or don't put in their profile.
I stand corrected, thanks for the link, from that one I followed this link which is even more interesting as it explains the process of creating that snippet: https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/blog/?p=766
This version doesn't require the knowledge of any system or programming language:
"To obtain my e-mail address reverse the following text from left to right, letter by letter: moc.elpmaxe@raboof".
Note that grandparent cpach, if you check their profile, is actually relying on the good old (dot) (at) obfuscation system, and not the base64 command they proposed in the comment.
This sort of thing has worked in specific Usenet newsgroups. If you're posting to comp.unix.programmer or comp.unix.shell, everyone there understands what it is, and that it's safe.
Then in the next newsgroup over, like comp.lang.lisp, you have the Lisp version of it, and so on.
Not so sure about HN. Sure it's "Hacker" News, but the audience is a bit broader than just native speakers of Unixese. You never know who might go looking for you through your HN profile.
> I’m fairly sure that no spammer has scraped my address from here.
In my HN profile, I use a unique throw-away address that is specific to this site.
It's been harvested in the past. I think only once? At most twice, in any case.
My currently installed alias, the one with a 997-169-9629 local part before the domain, was created on "2020-07-01 16:14 PDT". Almost exactly a year and a month ago. It was used for a couple of legitimate mails; no spam so far.
I'm going to err on the side of caution and just leave my account blank. I don't see why I should put my neck on the line to improve someone else's browsing experience.
While you are of course entitled to protect your privacy however you see fit, the original post was suggesting that _both of you_ might benefit from further interactions.
