malachismith

I haven't commented here in years.

I watched the steady decline as the bros slowly took over. I tried commenting, only to be flagged and downvoted. I tried sharing articles, only to have them flagged. Starting with Gamergate, and then accelerating with Musk's purchase of Twitter, and metastasizing into its current form when leaders in the community (Andreesen, Thiel, Sacks, Rabois, Calcanis, Horowitz, Palihapitiya, Maguire, Zuckerberg, Altman, etc) decided that fascism was worth protecting their crypto deals. And it's time to accept that this is the reality of Hacker News today (and it's time to forget what it once was).

This is quite literally one of the most significant cybersecurity fails of all time.

And yet, right now, it's not on the Hacker News home page. But an article about how many supernova explode per year is. An article about how to "win an argument" with a toddler or similar set-in-stone-thinker is. The number one submission is about a "back-of-a-napkin" probabalistic calculator.

So let's just say it like it is...

If you're going to be forgiving, you can say that Hacker News is consistently gamed by the bros who have taken over the tech industry. If you're in a less forgiving mood, you can say that Hacker News is the Pravda for the bros of the Venture community.

"Oh... it's hard with an algorithm!!!" Total BS. Hacker News is making a choice. Hacker News made a choice a long time ago. Hacker News continues to make the same choice.

For what it's worth, I also made a choice and walked away from this place. You all can do the same.

I love that it took facial expression software for people to understand this. All anyone had to do was talk to a dozen internationally competitive athletes to understand this. Happiest competitor is the one who wins. Second happiest is the one who finishes third. Third happiest is second. Fourth happiest are all the finalists who didn't medal and didn't take fourth. And fourth place... Yeah. Fourth place SUCKS.

This is the exact sort of feedback shared privately among experienced entrepreneurs - it's just finally accessible to everyone. From my look at the reviews I'd say it's about 80% true to my experience.

You can understand why, here on Hacker News, we might have interpreted your statement that she "directly authored many foundational pieces of Mozilla and (arguably) the internet" as claiming that she contributed code, rather than just drafting some legal docs and marketing pieces.

Mozilla Corporation is a for-profit business

Sorry, but you've misunderstood. I am merely correcting the (common and frustrating) claim that Mozilla is a non-profit.

It's clearly wrong to market yourself as a non-profit when you are a for-profit company.

Again... The Mozilla Corporation is NOT a non-profit.

Mozilla Corporation is NOT a non-profit.

What "foundational pieces of Mozilla and (arguably) the Internet" did Mitchell Baker "directly author"?

If you make a claim like that, you need to provide some evidence or citation to back it up.

To be clear... this charts the comp of ONE person at Mozilla (the Board Chair - and now interim CEO).

Many of us in SF would like to PREVENT this city from turning into a place like NYC. Yes... there is a problem with capitalism (or, more accurately, with unfettered "market driven" capitalism). But there are two other problems which you ignore. First - in the Bay Area the problem isn't just capitalism, it's also the behaviors of those working in startups. These behaviors make startups in particular (and tech in general) a very (VERY) easy target. Second - do we want homogeneity in our lives? Do we want SF to be just like NYC? Is there something different and special about SF that deserves preservation?

"I find it difficult to distinguish what tech is doing to the valley and SF from what Wall Street has been doing to New York and London for decades."

I couldn't have said it better myself. And sadly the author doesn't see anything wrong with the statement while for many of us - this sums up EVERYTHING that is wrong.

Actually.... I would argue that the "TechCrunch / HackerNews" mentality (as you describe it) is more common OUTSIDE of the Bay Area than it is within it.

In the Bay Area you are surrounded by real world examples of success and failure, and enough of each so that you can actually derive repeatable lessons. Outside the Bay Area there is the tendency to believe that if it's written about on one of these sites it's gospel.

Just because you don't NEED to be in Silicon Valley to build a successful venture backed start-up doesn't mean your odds of success are not IMPROVED by locating there.

So in other words you're saying that your time is so incredibly valuable that you should be made exempt from the generally acceptable standards of behavior?

(I've spent 20+ years in the tech biz. I've probably hired a few hundred people myself. I've never been "too busy" to live up to the bare minimum professional standards of behavior. To me this smells less like being too busy - and more like being too arrogant.)

Anyone interested in putting something together so that we can start aggregating the worst violators? I know I'd use that list not just to filter out the time-wasters but also to apply pain-pricing.

probably a combo of mysql drivers and connection pooling.

Sure... as long as you have the migration and rewrite plan done and ready to go, and have engineered the product for that rewrite. Otherwise you're gonna be wishing you'd failed rather than succeeded.

If you do research and analysis NOT to find out the answer to a question but rather to JUSTIFY the answer you have decided (without evidence) is correct then the value of the results is nil.

Fantastic response. Thank you so much for writing and sharing. Cuts through all the spin and FUD effectively.

The comment thread here is incredibly sad and depressing and perfectly illustrates how deeply misogyny is threaded through this community and industry.

You might want to go and find a female friend and have them read what you wrote. I think their responses might be enlightening.

Close... but the business model for most of these operations is traffic generation. Need 1M uniques this month to hit your numbers? No worries!! Enter your credit card here!

Perhaps you misread the headline or post? They are being acquired by Facebook

"wasn't informed"?!?!?! Umm... this is a hiring fail. You shouldn't have to be informed about the dominant player in your market.

Wow. So the problem was that their messaging wasn't right? Seriously? Not that their sales people are clearly dialing for dollars from some boiler room using scraped lists? Not that they're hiring people who don't know someone who ANYONE working at a CMS related company should know? Not that they're lazy and sleazy and weak?

Partial Cliff Notes for the works of Eric Ries.

Seriously?!?!?! Ummm.... I'd suggest seeking professional help. It's pretty clear you have some deep-seated issues.

Having worked in both, I actually do not think the developer community is better (or less awful) than the advertising / media / sales community. The former is simply more nuanced and subtle. The sexism in the Ad / Media / Sales world is simply more obvious, unhidden and honest. Both are horrible and grotesque - but to be frank, I think that while there is less respect for women in the Ad / Media / Sales world, there is more women-hating in the Developer community.

Depends on who you are trying to reach. If you want to reach developers and the "entrepreneurial market" then Hacker News drives more traffic (and if the product / audience fit is good will convert better too). If you want to reach business buyers and investors, then Techcrunch converts better (and drives better engaging traffic). So... who is your customer / user?