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Julie Rubicon

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Re: Julie Rubicon

#111

Post by mbostleman »

chatmasta wrote: post #3

Usually I read comments on HN before the article, but there were no comments when I saw the link, so I went straight to reading it. What a bizarre piece. How long did it take everyone else to realize it was fiction? For me, I did not realize until the very end -- and even then I still wasn't sure. It could just as well have been written by some delusional non-technical employee at Facebook.

I didn't pay attention to the url when I opened it. As I was reading, when I realized the implications of the story I looked and saw it was facebook.com. At that point I figured it was a hoax / fiction as it wouldn't have remained posted that long if it were true.

Re: Julie Rubicon

#113

Post by stray »

chatmasta wrote: post #3

Usually I read comments on HN before the article, but there were no comments when I saw the link, so I went straight to reading it. What a bizarre piece. How long did it take everyone else to realize it was fiction? For me, I did not realize until the very end -- and even then I still wasn't sure. It could just as well have been written by some delusional non-technical employee at Facebook.

At first, I expected it to be a setup for a joke about crossing the Rubicon. Or something something ides of march.

Re: Julie Rubicon

#115

Post by robinsloan »

lt wrote: post #105
state wrote: post #26

Worth noting that Robin is also the author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore [1] that others around HN would probably find pretty enjoyable. I thought it was quite fun. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Penumbra%27s_24-Hour_Books...

Yep! I'd recommend reading the short story, skipping the novel: https://www.robinsloan.com/books/penumbra/short-story/ I felt like the book was mostly filler added after the popularity of the short story.

Ha -- the short story was, sorry to say, not that popular ;)

Re: Julie Rubicon

#116

Post by state »

Falcon9 wrote: post #89
Cenk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 on this, a great book

I enjoyed it, though less than Ready Player One which has a similar vibe. I was amused that my Google-employed friend docked it a star for showing Google as a nerdy utopia which she did not feel began to accurately reflect the truth of the company.

Interesting! It was the exact opposite for me. Couldn't get through Ready Player One, but couldn't quite put my finer on exactly why.

Re: Julie Rubicon

#118

Post by merraksh »

Alex3917 wrote: post #55
chatmasta wrote: post #3

Usually I read comments on HN before the article, but there were no comments when I saw the link, so I went straight to reading it. What a bizarre piece. How long did it take everyone else to realize it was fiction? For me, I did not realize until the very end -- and even then I still wasn't sure. It could just as well have been written by some delusional non-technical employee at Facebook.

> What a bizarre piece. How long did it take everyone else to realize it was fiction? Longer than it would have taken if I'd never worked in analytics. I doubt there is anyone who has ever worked on analytics software who doesn't have stories about articles with negative page views, impossible traffic spikes, or data from the future. (And in fact Facebook's APIs are some of the worst offenders for producing garbage d…

The flatness before and after the huge spikes (for Adidas/Vernix/VW) and the fact that the plot goes back to pre-spike levels also suggest that this is not real data---though I thought of that after realizing it is fiction.

Re: Julie Rubicon

#120

Post by ambivalence »

misingnoglic wrote: post #99
outsidetheparty wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're supposed to put the spoilers after the spoiler warning.

Sure but if you saw a "Spoiler Warning" on something, you would know that it's fiction.

You can always just say:

"Read the article FIRST and then come back to read the comments. . . . Spoiler alert. Post is fiction. Yadda yadda."

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