LOL just got kicked out of @ycombinator • Hacker News Board

Re: LOL just got kicked out of @ycombinator

#201

Post by k__ » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 11:56 PM UTC

koolhaas wrote: post #136

dasickis wrote: post #120

I'm the person this original tweet was about. None of you know any of the internal details but what I can state is that Paul has no idea what he's talking about and later admits to the fact I wasn't lying. Here's the order of events: 1. I went to a neighborhood clinic in Oakland, CA that's literally next door to my house, I can see the church from my window. Paul lives in NYC which is on the opposite end of the count…

Did the church site have to turn away elderly people, or other people who cleared CA guidelines, at the end of each day?

Don't know about the state of vax in the USA, but here in Germany it's pretty chaotic.

There are vax centers for priorized people and then every doc gets a bunch of vaccinations for their own patienst, which don't have to be priorized.

Now, some vax centers are temporarily closed, because they run out of vaccinations, so priorized groups cant get vaccinated anymore.

But if you find some doc somewhere, who still got a few jabs left, you can vaccinated there even if you aren't priorized.

Re: LOL just got kicked out of @ycombinator

#202

Post by frakkingcylons » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 11:56 PM UTC

As a NYC resident, I'm surprised to hear that it's not easy for healthy people to get a COVID vaccine in the Bay Area. I thought that the entire US was at the stage where they've got more than enough vaccines, at least that's the impression I got from the news.

EDIT: Nevermind, I guess this was all something that happened back in March. Interesting that this controversy arose now.

Re: LOL just got kicked out of @ycombinator

#203

Post by nomdep » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 11:56 PM UTC

So Paul Graham is now the new DHH for the next couple of weeks

Re: LOL just got kicked out of @ycombinator

#204

Post by fruityrudy » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 11:56 PM UTC

dasickis wrote: post #120

I'm the person this original tweet was about. None of you know any of the internal details but what I can state is that Paul has no idea what he's talking about and later admits to the fact I wasn't lying. Here's the order of events: 1. I went to a neighborhood clinic in Oakland, CA that's literally next door to my house, I can see the church from my window. Paul lives in NYC which is on the opposite end of the count…

Lol and Paul is probably already fully vaccinated over in NYC…

Next he will be shouting at the Chinese breaking their laws for circumventing the great firewall by using proxies.

Re: LOL just got kicked out of @ycombinator

#205

Post by throwaaskjdfh » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 11:56 PM UTC

minimaxir wrote: post #10

The person who the original tweet was referring to (it's not private; they admitted it), just tweeted a GIF about "witnessing karma". https://twitter.com/Prafulfillment/status/140093402468041523... EDIT: Reply on HN by the author: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27400221

It's like these two people are competing for the worst self-own. From what I can tell (and the communications on this are very confusing), Biggar goes after Prafulfillment without having his facts straight enough to avoid issuing a nearly immediate correction. Then when Biggar gets canned, Prafulfillment gloats in a way that draws attention to their identity, without clarifying what actually happened, leaving Biggar's version as the only account of events. Additional tidbits of information are coming out, mainly in responses to responses to tweets... but this is a ridiculous way to conduct public relations.

Re: LOL just got kicked out of @ycombinator

#206

Post by flunhat » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 11:57 PM UTC

axiosgunnar wrote: post #172

dasickis wrote: post #120

I'm the person this original tweet was about. None of you know any of the internal details but what I can state is that Paul has no idea what he's talking about and later admits to the fact I wasn't lying. Here's the order of events: 1. I went to a neighborhood clinic in Oakland, CA that's literally next door to my house, I can see the church from my window. Paul lives in NYC which is on the opposite end of the count…

Why would people have issues with you simply posting you...went and got a jab? Is there more to the story? Sorry genuinely curious, not trying to put fuel on the fire

This was back in March when vaccine demand outstripped supply & ensuring "fair access" to the vaccine was a big concern. It seems almost quaint now that we have the opposite problem. (FWIW I think Paul's reaction was pretty unreasonable, bordering on hysterical).

Re: LOL just got kicked out of @ycombinator

#207

Post by slownews45 » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 11:58 PM UTC

I'm in Oakland, I drove someone to a clinic. It was a day of pouring rain. We got there end of day. I didn't meet whatever high priority groups were getting vaccinated (though I do have a breathing related health condition). They had extra shots, they said come get a shot, their form didn't have a spot for leftover shots being used, so the women said I'll put you down as X (which I wasn't).

This whole thing of trying to criminalize and be outraged at folks in this space seems way out of whack.

So good on ycombinator!

Same thing with masks, no one allowed to wear N95's but health care folks. I had masks from the fires and my breathing issue. I wore the same mask for a few weeks against the rules. Got flak from folks saying a) masks don't work and b) I should have saved it for health care folks. Not only is that contradictory it's dumb.

Re: LOL just got kicked out of @ycombinator

#208

Post by whimsicalism » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 11:58 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #161

whimsicalism wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not going to necessarily trust that reddit comment, especially when I know there were plenty instances of people lying about eligibility, and I think it is largely unlikely that most YC founders would have been eligible for this mobile clinic in west Oakland in mid-March.

Let's make three things very clear: - Lying to jump the queue, ahead of people who need it more is trashy, selfish, should be not just discouraged but heavily reprimanded. - A lot of the vaccine distribution is awful and disorganized. This often leads to vaccines being thrown away. - SHOTS IN ARMS. A vaccine in someone is better than a vaccine thrown away, even if it's not optimally distributed. "Just showing up" is…

I think getting vaccines to the elderly at a slightly slower rate at that time was deemed better than getting vaccines to exclusively much younger people at a somewhat faster rate.

As a fraction of the whole, there were not that many wasted doses (Oakland wasted ~0.39%, and most of those were not in these mobile clinics).

> If he's complaining about an instance of someone saying "There's unused vaccines in centers, show up at the end of the day and you can get one", then have at it.

Absolutely agreed, there were plenty of people doing this, it's totally ethical, but I don't think that was what he was referencing, as it was quite accepted in the Bay at the time.

Re: LOL just got kicked out of @ycombinator

#209

Post by mrandish » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 11:58 PM UTC

I can understand the apparent moral disparity but from a "rule-administering" POV it may just be case of

* Action A occurs which is widely agreed to be misguided and reprehensible by YC and other forum members. However, Action A was not explicitly against any existing rule at the time, it was just super-dickish. Action A was probably immediately widely (if not universally) condemned by community members and YC. YC tells the person, don't do that ever again because now it's against the rules. Maybe they spanked that person in other ways, I don't know. I'm confident the idiot was the recipient of overwhelmingly negative social consequences from members of the private community.

* Another person is very angry about Action A and commits Action B by taking private forum events onto public social media. Action B is clearly, explicitly against an existing, very simple rule. Perhaps others have already been banned for violating this rule.

Despite our intuitions to the contrary, the stupidity and gross awfulness of Action A doesn't somehow offset the fact Action B is against an existing rule and Action A wasn't at the time it was committed. It's not wrong that YC enforced the clear rule against Action B. YC may even have had very mixed feelings about it.

To me, in the absence of further factual context, it seems uncharitable to reflexively pillory YC - even though I admit I feel tempted to do exactly that.

Re: LOL just got kicked out of @ycombinator

#210

Post by dang » Fri, Jun 04, 2021, 11:58 PM UTC

The submitted title was "Y Combinator kicks out Paul Biggar over a tweet". That is inaccurate, so in keeping with the HN guidelines ("Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), I've replaced the title with the tweet text. That's the standard thing we do with titles, when people post Twitter links.

Much as I'd love to, it's not my place to say why the original title was inaccurate, so I'll just remind you all that there are two or more sides to every story and not everything on Twitter is true.

In keeping with the rule that we moderate HN less, not more, when YC or a YC startup is involved (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...), I'm not doing anything else to the submission. Normally, of course, we'd downweight this sort of petty drama.