Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now • Hacker News Board

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#961

Post by MisterMower » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 4:47 AM UTC

space_fountain wrote: post #905

MisterMower wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can Elon be a villain if you don’t think villains exist in the real world? Your comment doesn’t make sense.

I'm speaking in two senses of the word villain. It's clear that for basically everyone if you dig deep enough you can understand why they do things, it's also true that some people do bad things and cause harm and it's not the craziest thing to call those people villains

Some people act like villains and it’s okay to call them villains but if you dig deep enough to understand their motives they’re usually just misunderstood and actually not villains at all. Makes sense to me. Thank you for explaining!

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#962

Post by ramraj07 » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 5:13 AM UTC

DonHopkins wrote: post #959

ramraj07 wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did my PhD under possibly the most narcissistic, ruthless, and petty professors anyone around me had ever heard of, so I might be able to comment on this. I and the few people who managed to actually graduate with our sanity intact (out of like 50) learned to play this game you suggested where we have to play to their egos, and try and salvage their shitty, shitty ideas into workable projects that will end with us…

Achieving a PhD in dealing with narcissistic assholes is a valuable career skill, that will benefit you in any field, no matter the topic of your thesis. The most important skill I learned getting a BS in CS was how to BS.

You’re absolutely right about that. I switched over to tech, and pretty much feel like Will Ferrell in the final season of office, “this job is a joke” and all this politics is so silly and petty and so easy to game and overcome! Life is literally in easy mode now. I highly recommend a PhD to anyone who wants to just become wiser about life in general not just to do research.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#963

Post by beambot » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 5:39 AM UTC

bigmattystyles wrote: post #157

notatoad wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>were likely reviewed/edited by a third person or else just had the benefit of more time to think about them. i certainly know i say some dumb stuff, but if i write it down and think about it for a week before saying it to anybody else, i'm going to censor like 90% of the stuff that comes out of my head.

That was always the dumbest criticism of Obama - that he took frequent pauses when speaking (the uuuuhs) and chose his words carefully - his critics used it against him where anyone with half of brain understood why. That being said, Trump essentially DDoS the art of the inartful / wrong / dumb, so maybe that was a better way to go. Who knows....

Very off topic, but... Most presidential speeches are written by a speech writer & displayed on the teleprompter, not ad libbed on the spot. The "uuuuhs" were an intentional mannerism.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#964

Post by giardini » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 6:02 AM UTC

kmlx wrote: post #903

kmlx wrote: post #850

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well he did very publicly call the cave diver who saved 12 children a pedophile because he was jealous of him. this is false. he called him that after the cave diver told Musk to “stick his submarine where it hurts”. it only takes 1 minute to search google.

https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon-musk... > Musk visited the cave system himself. Unsworth said the billionaire “was asked to leave very quickly”. He also told CNN Musk could “stick his submarine where it hurts”.

Thanks for posting a link to the back-and-forth between Musk and Unsworth (the British cave explorer), which was pretty damned funny.

They obviously didn't get along, to say the least!

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#965

Post by r_hoods_ghost » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 6:07 AM UTC

LawTalkingGuy wrote: post #818

r_hoods_ghost wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a villain? Well he's utterly screwed his employees and broken employment law in multiple countries by not giving proper notice or consulting on redundancies, but hey who gives a shit about workers rights? Not you obviously.

You don't need to give notice as long as you give proper severance pay.

In which country? Different countries have different legal regimes, and, I realise this is shocking for many, the USA is not the world and Twitter has a presence in multiple countries and is bound by the laws of those countries.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#966

Post by MylesDelfin » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 6:08 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #350

I'm not leaving Twitter. It seems more likely than not that Elon will reverse the ban on links to other social media sites. I just don't want to hang out there in the meantime. Plus given the way things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn about alternatives. I still think Elon is a smart guy. His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself. Nor do I think he's the villain a lot of people try to make him out…

The man making the decisions in Twitter may be smart but that's irrelevant because of the fact that he's irresponsible. Others might find it outlandish but social media is a tool for tyrants in some parts of the world such as where I'm living. By tyrant, I don't mean someone who merely violates the right to free speech. Thousands have lost their lives because of the irresponsible implementation of ideas in places where loss of revenue is the only consequence for mistakes.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#967

Post by r_hoods_ghost » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 6:09 AM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #697

r_hoods_ghost wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a villain? Well he's utterly screwed his employees and broken employment law in multiple countries by not giving proper notice or consulting on redundancies, but hey who gives a shit about workers rights? Not you obviously.

I am fine with this actually. It is not Amazon warehouse workers we are talking about. These people were highly paid and Twitter seems to run just fine without them. FAANG can probably get rid of 70% of the bloat. Elon did give them 3 months severence which is quite amazing.

Some of them are, but even at Twitter not everyone is a highly paid dev and those people have been fired as well. Let's not even go I to the ridiculousness of expecting people to sacrifice their health and wellbeing by being a hardcore worker for the further enrichment of one of the world's richest men.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#968

Post by thomasahle » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 6:17 AM UTC

flutas wrote: post #62

ipsum2 wrote: post #3

It's news to me that that users are not allowed to mention other social networks' accounts on Twitter anymore. Seems short sighted, how many users is Twitter losing to Instagram/Discord/Mastodon?

>It's news to me that that users are not allowed to mention other social networks' accounts on Twitter anymore. Isn't that a mischaracterization though? The new policy they announced, as far as I've seen, only applies if the account is "solely" promoting other brands. [0] > Specifically, we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usern…

Did they delete the policy already? I can't open either link.

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#969

Post by detaro » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 6:19 AM UTC

thomasahle wrote: post #968

flutas wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's news to me that that users are not allowed to mention other social networks' accounts on Twitter anymore. Isn't that a mischaracterization though? The new policy they announced, as far as I've seen, only applies if the account is "solely" promoting other brands. [0] > Specifically, we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usern…

Did they delete the policy already? I can't open either link.

yes

https://web.archive.org/web/20221218194037/https://help.twit...

Re: Paul Graham is leaving Twitter for now

#970

Post by ehsankia » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 6:24 AM UTC

axlee wrote: post #871

ehsankia wrote: post #837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, Twitter is absolutely nothing like SpaceX or Tesla. Twitter's problems aren't engineering issues, they're political and related to moderation. Content moderation is one of the hardest problems current which no company has managed to solve. Especially when you have the user-creator-advertiser triangle. It was clear from the very start Elon has no clue what he was walking into.

TikTok seems to have managed it well. Well, except from being chinese-owned.

TikTok is a complete black box, no one has any idea how any of it works, so it's easier to pretend everything is fine if no one knows what's happening. They could be over-moderating and erring on the side of having more false negatives, and no one would know.

Also, I wouldn't really say so, there are plenty of stories about the algorithm serving harmful content to kids. But again since each person has a different FYP, it's hard to tell. Just because you don't fall into a bad rabbit hole doesn't mean some kid out there won't.