selmnoo

You really think Zuck's PAC will succeed? Right now the political climate is being more controlled by the right, and it seems they're dead set on combating any immigration reform of any sort anytime in the foreseeable future. I'm pretty sure it's not happening, but would like to hear your thoughts on why it might.

> you could output it as .dvi or something more exotic, such that the hiring manager will have no trouble running through his command line to look at, but non-technical peoples' attempts to view/modify it will be wholly stymied.

That's more likely to backfire than prove to be a good strategy. Because the non-technical are usually on the frontline weeding out "bad" applicants. If you make it tough for them, you're done.

I speak from experience. (Remarkably similar experience to what we're talking about now actually... I was almost not hired, until I went on to jump over the HR and speak directly to the technical higher-ups (I could do this because my I had contacts within the company)).

> He introduces a cuisine of naturality, which revolves around three elements: fish, cereals and vegetables.

More cereals, vegetables, fruits, less fat, sugar, salt and animal proteins sounds great. Not sure about fish. I encourage everyone to watch Mission Blue (it's on netflix), a documentary about what overfishing is doing. Oceanographer Sylvia Earle who's perhaps the most knowledgeable person about large water bodies suggests we pretty much cut it out.

[1]: http://ideas.ted.com/2014/08/20/should-you-stop-eating-fish-...

Consider that the post was killed by moderators, then brought back alive, then drchrono individuals made a comment, and then that comment was shot up. There were a slew of submissions crying out "censorship" this day and they were all similarly killed. I can recall like 20 such instances of similar happenings involving YC-funded startups, and having a similar situation around them. So, honestly, dang, the plausibility of the chain of events you've listed from your side in this specific instance is tenuous at best, and unfortunately again, dishonest and deceitful at worst. But I'm going to suspend my tingly senses and give you the benefit of doubt at this moment, and not go on any further about this particular issue.

dang, I understand that you, in your position, have to be mindful of optics, you have to think of ways to say things that are best for YC. That's great, you should do that. All individuals of a company who have a public presence have to do that. The thing is, you must not focus entirely on optics -- you absolutely must in your heart have the right view. Not only because if you don't, some people will eventually find out what's up, but also because it's the right thing. Actions that favor YC companies (beyond a certain line) on a public forum such as HN are unethical. I think there have been enough things done at this point that the only way that trust can again be restored is by having more transparency -- for example, by showing comment scores at all times in some way.

> No offense kid, but you're fucking delusional. And HN is worse because of your inability to self-reflect.

Even if you had a point, you just lost it. Because when you present a point in this way with this kind of language and in this kind of behavior, you just lose everything.

I'm a pretty skeptical person (see my skepticism on my last comment, for example!) who views most actions by most companies very skeptically and tries to see if there might be ulterior motives. And I've gotta say, you're wrong in this instance.

> As to your claim that you aren't soft on Libertarians.

They're not (they're not soft/hard based on ideological beliefs). For example, DanielBMarkham, perhaps the most outspoken libertarian on this site, is rankbanned. Now, I do have serious doubts about whether or not they're "soft" on folks saying negative things about YC companies/people.

Lastly, I've gotten to know etherael quite well -- he's got a sharp tongue, but he never quite struck me as an asshole. I do know that he's very talented at what he does, and almost always provides good, intelligent conversation about anything I bring up to him - and in that way, fits right at home here on HN. I guess though maybe you caught him in a bad time being especially rude? The best of us lose it sometimes. I hope etherael is more thoughtful in his future replies.

dang, I think HN has improved for the better, especially since some effort has been made to make things more transparent.

But it would be despicably dishonest for you guys to deny that routinely you guys do things here to protect YC companies (including manipulating voting points on comments/ submissions).

One example (on the top of my mind) is the drchrono post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7178004

Even though Skeletor made that comment like ... 20 days after the HN submission, it somehow found its way to the top. Obviously, this was through manual action. Obviously, a non-YC company is not afforded such a privilege.

Idling in #startups of freenode (unofficial HN channel), I've heard too many of these stories. The stories of rankban upon some critical comment on a YC-funded company, a slowban because of a critical comment on some YC personality, etc. etc. There are countless examples.

When these things happen one after the other, you lose trust, we cannot believe you anymore. Please stop doing this. I think the only way to win trust back at this point is if you again expose voting points at all times.

The weirdest thing is that I think this might be an act of revisionism. I recall reading a post on HN a few (or more than a few) months back about a startup writing a post-op article with reasons about why they had been rejected by YC, and among them was some musing that maybe it was because they didn't look like Zuck. pg responded in the comments not by saying that "it's a joke!" but that they once made that mistake and learned from it. That would at least vindicate the NYT usage of the 'meme'.

I do want to note, that on the face of it, it does not sound like pg was joking. Couple that with the fact that pg did say sometime ago that strong accents are a part of negative predictors. So following that up with the comment about Zuck-doppelgangers being more likely to succeed, the quote doesn't strike one as being a joke -- “I can be tricked by anyone who looks like Mark Zuckerberg. There was a guy once who we funded who was terrible. I said: ‘How could he be bad? He looks like Zuckerberg!’ ” So, YC did go on to fund this guy. Considering that YC is pretty competitive in choosing the right people and has a low acceptance rate... and this guy did get in, can it really be said that his looking like Zuck had zero sway?

I think pg & co. should just move on with this, not by trying to weasel out of this, but by saying they made a mistake and they'll try to do better.

One thing I'm interested in knowing is whether Reddit manipulates the votes on its own submissions. See, for example, r/blog: http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/new/

Every submission made there went to the frontpage. What are the chances? I mean, it's hard to believe that mainstream Redditors at this point are so interested in Reddit news that they keep sending every Reddit announcement to the top. What's more likely, to me at least, is that Reddit is either leveraging its knowledge of how things work to get to the top in a surefire way, or it's plain messing with the upvote numbers. I would love to see data on these submissions, if possible. Of course, there's good reason for them to actually do this -- they need to advertise the Reddit marketplace stuff and so on, it's how they make money.

Can you expand upon why you think it would not be desirable?

Right, I only brought it up in light of rayiner's comment -- that saying misogynistic, shitty things makes you lose your job as CEO. It doesn't, at least not when you control the board.

> The moral of this story is that you don't support a high-level executive that calls your users "sluts" and still keep your job as CEO.

That's an interesting conclusion to draw from this.

Because, as others have pointed out, he still would have had his job if he had control of enough seats on the board, like Zuckerberg did. Indeed Zuckerberg still has a job after calling FB users "dumb fucks" and offering his friend private information of anyone at Harvard (including private photos, private messages, etc. etc.) http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims...

Not really a reasonable expectation, unfortunately. To discuss stories of "I know this other person who also similarly fell sick" and "The current system is so bad if you get into trouble, X,Y, and Z should be different for better results" is very much a part of the coping and mourning process. And of course we wish mindcrime a speedy recovery.

> So, run out of money - steal?

Pretty much. Though, compared with how corporations are fucking over little people left and right, it's hardly unwarranted.

This is not an unfamiliar story. There are people who did everything right, were kind and philanthropic their entire life, more than they should have been probably, but they find their whole lives suddenly ruined with just one accident. There are supposed to be certain trade-offs in a society, when one agreed to a social contract that they'll be nice to everyone, be law-abiding, pay their taxes which in part fund medical research, fund creation of roads and infrastructure that enable corporations to function and rake in money, etc., they expected for the system to be there for them in return when they had a time of sudden misfortune. If it's not there, I say fuck it, this is then time they also stop playing nice.

The two people should just leave the United States, start a life elsewhere. Argentina, Germany, Thailand, whatever.

I suggest the same thing to folks with unmanageable student loan debts with no clear answer in sight.

I think it's unfair for society to have burdened such debts on people who didn't know any better, who weren't equipped with the resources or the knowledge to make the right decisions. What do you do? Be 'unfair to society right back, don't pay, get away, start over again somewhere else.

Facebook, Microsoft and others do end up using consulting firms like Cognizant, which generally provide them H1-B immigrant workers. The conditions of their employment, at least in my eyes, are similarly predatorial in nature.

    This bullying persists at the bottom of a complex system 
    that supplies workers to some of America’s richest and 
    most successful companies, such as Cisco Systems, Verizon 
    and Apple.

I find this extremely confusing, why companies like Facebook and Apple and others in SV, that're sitting on an unbelievable shitload of cash take filthy shortcuts like this, screw the very people that work for them so badly. I mean, seriously, I'm at a loss for words. Why? Why not just pay them a reasonable wage when you are more than capable enough to?

> Hear hear. If you're worried about the privacy implications of Facebook, don't use it. I don't have a facebook account and I'm still alive.

I hear that a lot, and it frustrates me very much, because it fundamentally betrays an understanding of Facebook's true nature.

I do not have a FB account, never have, and never will. Yet, my pictures are on there. Because my peers inevitably do use FB and take pictures of social gatherings where I'm at... and I get tagged. I have really no real recourse to this. At this point I actually cannot tell my friends to not take pictures of me... because that is not a reasonable request. A group picture has me in addition to other folks... the other folks may want the picture to be up on FB. So now, if I don't want to be on Facebook, I have to kill my social life.

> Facebook adds extreme value to your social life

But you fail to catch a crucial part of this: it adds value to your social life at the expense of so many other things. It may add some social value to your life, but corrupts and molds society at large. I think the tradeoff is absolutely not worth it. I touched on this in a comment below as well.

Social networking is a task that should probably be left for a 'Public Benefit Corp.' to do, as Ello seems to be trying to do. I'm hoping and praying that these sorts of companies start to take off, that pay-for-service becomes cool and commonplace again.

I honestly don't get it. This isn't 'Hacker News', at least, this 'Hacker News' forum is no longer occupied by 'Hackers'.

Incidentally, this reminds me -- later Summer this year, I had the chance to meet a lot Linux kernel developers. At some point a handful were speaking casually about Facebook -- and guess what, each and every one of them were 20 times more paranoid about Facebook and its intent than I am (and I'm pretty skeptical of everything FB does). I'm honestly very confused. I don't want to make the jump and say "astroturfing" -- but I don't know, maybe we have some Facebook developers here who probably work on some engineering tasks and never are exposed to the questionable side of things and genuinely think FB is up to only good. In real world, every true hacker that I personally know greatly distrusts Facebook and all that Facebook touches.

edit: ok, I think I may have said that a little too soon. Posts doubting Poitras are now more toward the bottom than the top, and my two posts are no longer negatively scored.

It is strange to read what you've written.

Mostly because I personally think the long-term effects of corporations, particularly Facebook, ganging on our society is going to be immensely more deleterious than anything our government could do or wants to do. When Facebook thwarts free and organic growth of something in favor of content pushed by those who have money (shoddy companies selling fat-loss pills which are going to moreso fuck you up than make you lose weight), I consider that something seriously screwed up. When it reduces exposure of content that's non-compatible with your views on your feed to keep you warm and cozy, perhaps in an attempt to prime you for certain political ads, that's some serious shit.

Facebook really IS something extremely horrible, people don't realize it. It's very sad that even on HN you see strong defense of Facebook. Facebook and its founder have been involved in one sleazy act to another (from privacy zuckering (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebooks-evil-interfa...) to offering his friends private information -- "yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard; just ask; i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns" - http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/09/20/the-face-of-fac...).

Right now, it isn't Poitras who has done one thing after another to make me doubt the words coming out of her mouth, it's someone else.

Pretty useless to mourn about such hypotheticals. I had a few bitcoins about 3 years ago that were lost to a failed harddrive (beyond repair -- believe me I tried to get it come back). I think about how much I would have every now and then... but meh, this is an opportunity lost that's just somehow more realizable than probably a handful of other opportunities lost that I can't even identify. So, just keep on going, be vigilant and hope for better for another day.

Yes that was probably not a very good analogy. I was trying to highlight the fact that we're really good at getting users to do what we want (things, specifically, that hurt them and make us more money). So far, we (the tech industry) have put a lot of effort into tricking them to do what we want, now maybe it's time to trick them for their own benefit, rather than ours.

Half our industry is built on fooling users. Exploiting their cognitive biases. Seriously, we understand where they fall, and if we really wanted to, we absolutely could look out for them -- at least, certainly better than we're doing right now.

Your response is like saying when Facebook was privacy zuckering (http://darkpatterns.org/library/privacy_zuckering/), the user clicks right through the settings that should have sounded an alarm.

What can Apple do? They could make a better browser (I like how Chrome and Firefox do things - you have to go out of your way to reach a page with bad SSL -- compare Safari's rather passive and enabling error message: http://blog.serverdensity.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/ssl... vs. chrome's: http://i.imgur.com/ttmmDJ8.png -- you have to REALLY see and think how to access the site despite the warning, it's that good). They could be more vigilant in alerting users of where and how this can happen.

If we were talking about any other young startup, your apology might fly -- not so with Apple, they're sitting on billions, they have the resources to think of a solution and implement it.

Of course, just as America likes to spy on everyone as well. But let's not completely pardon Apple, they can always do something more to strengthen their systems to be more and more resilient to these attacks. It might well be a cat and mouse game, but they should at least try and play rather than just give up. They're sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars, they get hundreds from many of us, the least they can do is look out for us a little more.

Hm, okay. Though, it's not clear to me why porn sites en masse would be classified as "High Risk"? Are you sure this is always the case? How are current popular porn sites doing this?

And, now that Stripe is quite big, don't they have some leverage over the banks to be able to say they do want porn sites et al. to be able to work with Stripe?

You haven't really refuted any part of GP poster's points. There's no technical info on the site, there's no telling what kind of user data they may be taking and doing who-knows-what with it. This is solid grounds to stay away from the product.

In the end Stripe could not work with her or other startups that feature "a naked person" on the product they're selling (the article seems to claim), is that correct? I'm assuming then pay-for-porn sties are not permitted business with Stripe either?

I say this as a person who has worked as a front end engineer for a fair bit of time that a handsome-looking salary (like, say, ~200k) is more than good enough for great work on the laundry list of non-tech tasks of a startup in the beginning stages. Couple that with the fact that right now this is a tech engineer's market, not the business/frontend person's -- even the great ones are a dime a dozen out there.

> The truth is you can be 8 years in, but only 10% of the way there.

I don't think this is true for tarsnap. tarsnap at this moment is a finished application people can get right now. The technology component of the company is completely solid, not in need of any repair or improvement, it's only the UI and other things that have to be improved. Colin's gotten it more than 80% there.

Alright, I'll start "following" him. Still, very curious -- what specifically has he said of YC? Doing a ctrl-f on yc|ycombinator on his twitter page didn't reveal much, so still in the dark I am a little bit.

> Maciej Ceglowski, you either can't tolerate the thing (Maciej)

What critical things did he say about YC?