Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

All these Brilliant People at Facebook Make Me Sad

hueniverse.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 181 posts

Re: All these Brilliant People at Facebook Make Me Sad

#71

Post by dimitar »

temphn wrote: post #61
frossie wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair to the OP, their argument isn't "since I don't use it, nobody uses it". Their argument was a (totally defensible IMHO) personal expression of disappointment about all the brain work going into something whose impact seems to have peaked (in that those who want it already have it, and the rest of us don't have a problem it can solve). Sure, Facebook is a utility to millions or even billions of people, but s…

Respectfully disagree that Facebook has peaked. Once growth settles down at 700 million users or so, they will roll out service after service. Start thinking about all the things you could do with it. Overthrowing countries is just the beginning.

Facebook or twitter didn't overthrow anyone. Those are just communication tools and there plenty of those.

Also Facebook sucks privacy-wise. You write something and everyone sees it. You don't want your police and ruling-party friends see your pics at a protest and criticizing your government.

When people are already on the streets - then its on Facebook. Which is an effect not a cause.

Re: All these Brilliant People at Facebook Make Me Sad

#72

Post by iaskwhy »

Some days ago a friend asked me if I could work on Apple, Microsoft or Google, which one I would choose and I stopped for a while thinking. Then he said "oh and Facebook" and my answer got out in a microsecond. It's pretty much the only company in the world where you work with people (as a whole, their life) and not with a user or a buyer.

Re: All these Brilliant People at Facebook Make Me Sad

#73

Post by abhishekpathak »

llimllib wrote: post #27

> I am in no way suggesting that almost 600 million people are wrong. The massive and highly engaged Facebook user base clearly gets value and satisfaction from the product. I am also in no way critical or judgmental about those who find value there. Good for them! But for me, there are so many other unsolved problems in the world, and they have little to do with social. Hot tip: whenever anybody writes "I am in no w…

>Hot tip: whenever anybody writes "I am in no way suggesting ", the chance that they are suggesting approaches 100%.

Rather, the chance that they unconsiously percieve approaches 100%, but they, at the same time, are sane enough to realise that there is a distinct line between truth and perception.

Re: All these Brilliant People at Facebook Make Me Sad

#74

Post by gubatron »

btipling wrote: post #7

They are doing useful things, they're helping create scalable technology that can serve 600 million people. Cassandra, HipHop, Thrift, etc are all products from those minds. In addition the kinds of problems they are solving, such as creating a platform for third party integration can be applied to many different other areas. So yeah they're working on a social network, but all the while all this good stuff is happen…

Cassandra, ha ha ha.

Gotta love how inconsistent that thing is.

HipHop, have you tried it? I think that technology only works for them.

Re: All these Brilliant People at Facebook Make Me Sad

#75

Post by wisty »

frossie wrote: post #58
patio11 wrote: post #24

My mother, who was disabled by a stroke some years ago, relies on no non-medical technology as much as she relies on Facebook. It is how she keeps up with the family, who are scattered across the country (and, er, world), without which she would never get to talk to aunts/uncles/cousins since they see each other only at events/reunions and she often isn't well enough to travel. I respect that folks don't find a lot o…

To be fair to the OP, their argument isn't "since I don't use it, nobody uses it". Their argument was a (totally defensible IMHO) personal expression of disappointment about all the brain work going into something whose impact seems to have peaked (in that those who want it already have it, and the rest of us don't have a problem it can solve). Sure, Facebook is a utility to millions or even billions of people, but s…

Facebook just doesn't have many engineers. "Over 2000 employees" (wikipedia says) just isn't that many. Compared that to Google (~20,000 to 30,000?), Microsoft (~90,000), or the IRS - over 100,000, or the Pentagon - 757,000.

Facebook has an order of magnitude less than just about any other similarly sized organization. It's bigger than Wikipedia, though.

Re: All these Brilliant People at Facebook Make Me Sad

#76

Post by abhishekpathak »

btipling wrote: post #7

They are doing useful things, they're helping create scalable technology that can serve 600 million people. Cassandra, HipHop, Thrift, etc are all products from those minds. In addition the kinds of problems they are solving, such as creating a platform for third party integration can be applied to many different other areas. So yeah they're working on a social network, but all the while all this good stuff is happen…

The scalable, cluster computing-based engineering at companies like Facebook and Google is inspirational to say the least.I work on Hadoop and thrift among other technologies and the Facebook Engineering team notes available on the web have been a great resource.

It might take some care to appreciate,but the way they manage to slice and serve such massive (ever-growing) user database accurately and relatively fast is amazing by modern standards.

Re: All these Brilliant People at Facebook Make Me Sad

#77

Post by gubatron »

georgieporgie wrote: post #43

Random prediction: ten years from now, a student in China will connect with a student in Germany over Facebook (or whatever mass-appeal social site rises to power). A friendship will grow into a partnership, yielding some of the greatest advances in energy technology of the century.

They'd be more likely to connect on StackOverflow or GitHub than Facebook.

Facebook is a place where you go to chill and waste time, connect with old friends, check pics of old crushes, catch up on gossip, play games, or share links.

The last thing you'd do there would be to search for another student, it's not built for that.

Re: All these Brilliant People at Facebook Make Me Sad

#78

Post by gubatron »

saool wrote: post #9

While I don't buy the "facebook is just games and noise" stuff, I do think we should be focusing a bit more in things like clean tech, space missions, etc. Why does almost everybody want to go work for facebook instead of tesla or any other innovative company not primarily focused in "web" development? And yeah, the big equity bucks, but I think those could be moving towards other tech fields too...

why? getting stock options and getting rich when it goes IPO, that's why.

Re: All these Brilliant People at Facebook Make Me Sad

#79

Post by gubatron »

tybris wrote: post #69

What are "useful" jobs?

figuring out how to generate power cleanly and cheaply on every home in the world. A whole continent like Africa would surely have a great use for cheap+clean energy generation.

making self driving vehicles.

creating better battery technology.

figuring out a way to get rid of lawyers.

working on super intelligence.

brain computer interface (the one input mechanism that would do away without keyboards)

augmented reality projection straight to your visual cortex, no more computer monitors would only be the beginning of something like that.

robotics robotics robotics

space exploration

deep sea exploration

longevity research

...

Re: All these Brilliant People at Facebook Make Me Sad

#80

Post by 46Bit »

I very much have to agree. Perhaps I'm unsociable, perhaps it's because my interests long since diverged from those of most of my now-ex fellow students, but I really couldn't give a flying monkeys about most of their inane ramblings.

To use a sentence which at times gets posted all over Twitter: Facebook is where you meet old friends you don't really care about, Twitter is where you meet new friends. Fact is, it's true.

The one point I definitely do disagree with is that the focus on startups which aren't really that much about pushing humanity forward is so bad. Look at SpaceX - admittedly it came out of something which definitely did have intrinsic value, but 10 years down the line there might be an ex-Facebook biotech.

Post reply on HN