malachismith

I haven't commented here in years.

I watched the steady decline as the bros slowly took over. I tried commenting, only to be flagged and downvoted. I tried sharing articles, only to have them flagged. Starting with Gamergate, and then accelerating with Musk's purchase of Twitter, and metastasizing into its current form when leaders in the community (Andreesen, Thiel, Sacks, Rabois, Calcanis, Horowitz, Palihapitiya, Maguire, Zuckerberg, Altman, etc) decided that fascism was worth protecting their crypto deals. And it's time to accept that this is the reality of Hacker News today (and it's time to forget what it once was).

This is quite literally one of the most significant cybersecurity fails of all time.

And yet, right now, it's not on the Hacker News home page. But an article about how many supernova explode per year is. An article about how to "win an argument" with a toddler or similar set-in-stone-thinker is. The number one submission is about a "back-of-a-napkin" probabalistic calculator.

So let's just say it like it is...

If you're going to be forgiving, you can say that Hacker News is consistently gamed by the bros who have taken over the tech industry. If you're in a less forgiving mood, you can say that Hacker News is the Pravda for the bros of the Venture community.

"Oh... it's hard with an algorithm!!!" Total BS. Hacker News is making a choice. Hacker News made a choice a long time ago. Hacker News continues to make the same choice.

For what it's worth, I also made a choice and walked away from this place. You all can do the same.

I love that it took facial expression software for people to understand this. All anyone had to do was talk to a dozen internationally competitive athletes to understand this. Happiest competitor is the one who wins. Second happiest is the one who finishes third. Third happiest is second. Fourth happiest are all the finalists who didn't medal and didn't take fourth. And fourth place... Yeah. Fourth place SUCKS.

This is the exact sort of feedback shared privately among experienced entrepreneurs - it's just finally accessible to everyone. From my look at the reviews I'd say it's about 80% true to my experience.

You can understand why, here on Hacker News, we might have interpreted your statement that she "directly authored many foundational pieces of Mozilla and (arguably) the internet" as claiming that she contributed code, rather than just drafting some legal docs and marketing pieces.

Mozilla Corporation is a for-profit business

Sorry, but you've misunderstood. I am merely correcting the (common and frustrating) claim that Mozilla is a non-profit.

It's clearly wrong to market yourself as a non-profit when you are a for-profit company.

Again... The Mozilla Corporation is NOT a non-profit.

Mozilla Corporation is NOT a non-profit.

What "foundational pieces of Mozilla and (arguably) the Internet" did Mitchell Baker "directly author"?

If you make a claim like that, you need to provide some evidence or citation to back it up.

To be clear... this charts the comp of ONE person at Mozilla (the Board Chair - and now interim CEO).

Many of us in SF would like to PREVENT this city from turning into a place like NYC. Yes... there is a problem with capitalism (or, more accurately, with unfettered "market driven" capitalism). But there are two other problems which you ignore. First - in the Bay Area the problem isn't just capitalism, it's also the behaviors of those working in startups. These behaviors make startups in particular (and tech in general) a very (VERY) easy target. Second - do we want homogeneity in our lives? Do we want SF to be just like NYC? Is there something different and special about SF that deserves preservation?

"I find it difficult to distinguish what tech is doing to the valley and SF from what Wall Street has been doing to New York and London for decades."

I couldn't have said it better myself. And sadly the author doesn't see anything wrong with the statement while for many of us - this sums up EVERYTHING that is wrong.