Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022 • Hacker News Board

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#261

Post by padobson » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 1:34 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #197

SilverBirch wrote: post #156

I think to a certain extent there's an overwhelming culture in the SV VC world of being completely credulous. That exchange just seems like a uniquely weird situation of two people talking absolute bollocks and neither being willing to mention the elephant in the room. It's no wonder the second their plan hit the real world it exploded on impact. You would have thought the guy who ran twitter would actually understan…

All investors are credulous and act on hopes. The cynical ones never invest a penny.

I think it's unlikely I'll read a wiser comment on the internet today.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#262

Post by MrMan » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 1:34 PM UTC

bmitc wrote: post #172

davidatbu wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently since 1984, when he won a prize for writing a computer game at 12 years old: https://blastar-1984.appspot.com/

That makes him an engineer?

not at all, but javascript programmers cant or dont want to make such distinctions

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#263

Post by ajkjk » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 1:34 PM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #223

Reading these it makes me wonder if they know about Urbit - it’s so much of what Jack wants that I’m really curious if he just doesn’t know about it.

Well urbit is kind of, like, a joke, right?

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#264

Post by deltarholamda » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 1:34 PM UTC

llamaLord wrote: post #209

Huh1337 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? I've literally never felt this way. Every time someone wanted to have a call with me, it was so they could push me into something with their whining, or so they could misinterpret what was said without me being able to point at a timestamped sentence. For these reasons I always refuse calls about anything important - and never had any problems solving various business issues over text. How specifically is text…

Bandwidth and emotional valence. Above signal flags, text is almost the lowest possible bandwidth form of human-human conversion. It will take you an hour to write something that you could explain to someone in 5 minutes via voice. Even if you do manage to find the time to write all down, you quickly hit problem 2. Text is shit for communicating any form of sentiment or emotional valence, which is a pretty critical p…

"Emotional valence" is a sublime way of putting it.

Text is an excellent way of transmitting information. Do this, go there, this is the answer, etc. But unless you have a deep, long-lasting connection with the other person, text will lose a lot.

So much of what's on YouTube is so irritating to me because it's 10 minutes of mostly filler to transmit a few facts that could be read in a minute or less. But I'll listen to a 3 hour conversation between two people who are passionate about history or Lego or whatever and not think anything of it. The emotional valence makes it worthwhile.

Nice comment!

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#265

Post by asoneth » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 1:35 PM UTC

adolph wrote: post #221

GuB-42 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A CEO is just an employee, paid by the shareholders to do the job shareholders want him to do. Usually, the job is "get us rich". The CEO can do a lot of things regarding the company direction, but it has to match the shareholders goals. Generally, if it doesn't make profit short term or long term, it is unacceptable, and here, Jack Dorsey essentially wants to kill Twitter as a company, so of course he can't do that.…

That's right, CEO needs to focus on those quarterly numbers. For example, Apple should never have let that phone operation cannibalize their perfectly good music player business. Total mistake to let a CEO have that much control and "vision."

This is a strawman because no one has claimed that a CEO must focus on short-term shareholder profit.

The point is that the CEO works for the owners of the company. (In a publicly traded company that's typically shareholders represented by a board.) To keep their job the CEO just needs to be able to convince the owner(s) that they're making the right decisions.

In the case of Apple, most owners (shareholders) trusted Steve Jobs' decision to cannibalize existing product lines with new ones.

In the case of Twitter, I am skeptical that the owners would have trusted Jack enough to let him transition Twitter to an open protocol without some kind of long-term monetization plan.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#266

Post by CharlesW » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 1:35 PM UTC

www_harka_com wrote: post #134

brethil wrote: post #58

Is he talking about ActivityPub[1, 2] and the Fediverse[3]? Just look at Mastodon[4, 5] if you're looking for something like twitter without the centralization and the corporate greed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub [2] https://activitypub.rocks [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) [5] https://joinmastodon.org/servers

Can someone invite me to mastodon.technology? Email on my profile.

> Can someone invite me to mastodon.technology?

I find this very ironic.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#267

Post by lo_zamoyski » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 1:36 PM UTC

Huh1337 wrote: post #227

kaiwen1 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would appear by implication that you would see meetings as always less useful than documents. This is clearly not true. Calls and meetings are almost always better for working through nuanced issues.

Yes I'd never let any serious business issue be solved on a meeting. Tech talk etc, sure. Money is involved? Never. Or rather, sure, let's discuss - but then we send a written record of exactly what was agreed.

Yes, there are some narrow cases where audit trails are important, but that doesn't apply to most situations, certainly not those where you're both thinking out loud and trying to come to some common understanding or whatever. It seems you allowed some personal grievance get the better of you because in this particular context, your characterization does not apply.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#268

Post by ChrisKnott » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 1:37 PM UTC

kevinmchugh wrote: post #170

bmitc wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s easy for him to say after he’s become a billionaire making it a company. Can one give any actual credence to such a sentiment? I mean, Twitter is an internet version of Post-It notes. I don’t even know what he means that it started out as a “protocol”.

Twitter could be used from devices other than a desktop PC when it launched. This was genuinely novel and drove a lot of adoption.

Specifically I believe you could tweet via SMS which is where the character limit came from.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#269

Post by Schroedingersat » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 1:37 PM UTC

b112 wrote: post #213

Schroedingersat wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot the bit where you inherit an apartheid emerald fortune.

So your assertion is that people who start with capital, always succeed, irrespective of the parent's statement? Because loads of people have a leg up, and go absolutely no where.

I never asserted you don't need the other things.

You need intelligence, social skills, hard work, privilege, and a complete lack of morals.

Re: Jack Dorsey texts Elon Musk, March 26, 2022

#270

Post by aliqot » Fri, Sep 30, 2022, 1:37 PM UTC

jhickok wrote: post #242

bmitc wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s strange that he has apparently felt this way a long time, started Twitter as a “protocol”, was at the helm of Twitter, but now that he’s a billionaire thinks it was all a mistake. He could have made what he describes or apparently believes in but at the cost of becoming a billionaire. It’s a little too convenient isn’t it? Sounds like a billionaire just wanting to be the smartest person in the room. This is a co…

I think there is evidence that Dorsey was bothered for a long time. Scott Galloway, shareholder in Twitter and public figure, has been calling him an absent CEO for 10 years. He was largely disengaged and the board had to drag him into the room to make decisions, which many times he did not do.

Bring back Costello. At least he appeared to give a shit. Dorsey seems to thrive on the image of being a tortured and begrudging de facto CEO, a genius saddled by his creation.