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

I was once a Facebook fool

public.numair.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 177 posts

Re: I was once a Facebook fool

#131

Post by davidhollander »

kwamenum86 wrote: post #126

Interesting article and definitely a good read. But I find it interesting that it has broken the top 20 most upvoted articles of all time on HN and is threatening the top 10. This probably has to do with f8 and whatever amount of "upvote inflation" that may be taking place as a result of more users being on HN (6 of the top 10 all-time most upvoted links are from this year. Only one in the top 20 comes before 2010).…

> the top 20 most upvoted articles of all time

I don't think that's an accurate list, as it excludes [dead]ed articles. Zed Shaw's "Programming, Motherfucker" received 870 upvotes: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2355427

Re: I was once a Facebook fool

#133

Post by njn »

numair wrote: post #88

Wow, well, this got way more attention than I wanted. First, to be clear -- I have nothing against the guy who took Dave Morin's job (who wasn't supposed to be named -- Amazon CloudFront didn't bother to invalidate its cache when I uploaded the final edit of that paper). He played his cards right, came out hundreds of millions of dollars ahead, and then he got out . He's not in this to control your social life or any…

uhhh. someone needs to smoke a really fat blunt.

Re: I was once a Facebook fool

#134

Post by nitrogen »

chrischen wrote: post #124
joebadmo wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think he's comparing FB to water, he's comparing social networking/communication/connection to water. Facebook would then be the utility company, with a de facto monopoly, but no check on its power. (Personally I think competition is the check, and I'm on team Google.)

I don't think he's saying Facebook is like water. I think he's saying facebook is NOT like a stable utility like water or power.

From the top-level comment: "this is very basic and very global stuff, similar to water or power, and you shouldn't have to question its integrity."

So yes, unless my English fails me, he is indeed saying that social networking is (or should be) like a utility.

Re: I was once a Facebook fool

#137

Post by [deleted] »

mmaro wrote: post #115
larrys wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That type of behavior is representative of someone with an anger problem. And you're right this could also be chalked up to someone, anyone, having a bad day. But in this case (as you described) he was doing an interview and is for all intents and purposes retired and having a great time being toast of the startup town. He's didn't just get fired from HP or anything. (And of course what you described is what I did ex…

http://ifile.it/mdk43ht - this link will probably be dead in a week or two (BTW, if you save everything you find interesting, you realize just how much disappears from the Internet. The half-life of the average link is about 4.5 years.)

[deleted]

Re: I was once a Facebook fool

#138

Post by rquantz »

philwelch wrote: post #109
randomdata wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharecropping is an arrangement with a land owner who rents out their land to a farmer for the payment of a percentage of the crop instead of cash. It reduces the risk for the farmer because they only have to pay based on what they are able to grow instead of a fixed amount as seen in most cash-rent arrangements. The landowner stands to lose if the crop is a failure, but can make more if the crop is a success. The te…

Most Americans have long left the "rural community" and equate sharecropping with the exploitation of freed slaves after the end of the Civil War.

Thank you. At least in the United States, sharecropping has historical associations with racism and Jim Crow. Suggesting that sharecropping is a low risk way to farm is ignoring the cultural implications if the term. As if former slaves and their descendants made a rational economic decision to become oppressed.

Re: I was once a Facebook fool

#140

Post by saturn »

randomdata wrote: post #87
raganwald wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I accept that in response to abuses, the practice may have evolved over time. However, that does not in any way diminish the value of the metaphor, because the vast majority of people who encounter the word “sharecropper” think of the kind of farmer who can be evicted after harvest and often were. Further to that, I strongly suspect that most of those who are aware that the practice has evolved since those draconian…

The term computer used to mean a person who sat at a desk doing mathematical calculations. When someone talks about their Amazon computing cluster, I don't picture a huge office building full of people putting pen to paper, crunching numbers all day long, even though that is exactly what computing cluster would have meant at one point in time. When the term sharecropper is used, one will naturally turn to the meaning…

I also interpreted the word as randomdata did.

I think this is an American thing. When I think of sharecropping it makes me think of farmers under a landlord in medieval England or something. Not a great power dynamic but the word isn't all that negative, it just emphasises (when used as a metaphor elsewhere) that you work and stay at the landlord's pleasure.

I've heard americans use the word before but didn't realise it came loaded with all this historical meaning from the slavery era, turning it into a highly negative concept.

Post reply on HN