I'm resigning from my job at Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/timothy.j.aveni/posts/3006224359465567 <comment><USER2> 250 comments in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23394671](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23394671)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hrm, yes, though flagged.

(I'd searched the FB link, didn't see the LinkedIn post.)

<comment><USER3> Why was it flagged?

<comment><USER4> Flags are generally from user votes- so probably too inflammatory/political to some here.

Per the guidelines: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand why doesn't Facebook just: -Allow all posts -Allow users to customize what they want to see (e.g. "dont show me posts that glorify violence" or "only allow covid posts that match WHO guidelines" or "allow exceptions from political figures or of historical significance") and allow users to ban hide posts that are found untruthful by third parties (snopes, etc).

To me effectively everyone wins. Facebook users who want to curate their experience can do so. Facebook gets out of the censorship business so governments can lay off. Governments will have a hard time objecting because it is the users controlling their information, not the company. "Sources of truth" have to compete to get the customer's business.

Its hard but not that hard, and its Facebook's core business.

<comment><USER6> Ah, that word "just." Whenever I see "just" in some kind of kind of technical demand in the first line, I immediately know that there's a lot of stuff to unpack.

Here, you have requested something fairly close to a general AI which understands both written language, images, and even more fun, images of language. Cartoon violence right on down to "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" And will quoting Henry II of England set off your detector?

Let's unpack your COVID post thing -- note that WHO guidelines have changed a few times. Recall that era wherein they said that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission. Also, don't buy masks. So you'd have to factor in a time domain as the guidelines change, in addition to your generalized AI as above.

In IT, I have frequently heard requests for "why can't we just get the things we know we will like?" and such. It all boils down to that mind-reading, future-predicting generalized AI.

Why don't we just turn it on?

<comment><USER7> Okay, but companies like Google, FB, and Twitter are already putting great efforts towards implementing that type of thing in production.

Whats so difficult about letting a user toggle those existing filters on and off? Or allowing users more control over their news feed, such as allowing it to be chronological? Or hiding items based on keywords?

Its our job as technologists to not only tell people if/when their request is technologically impractical/impossible, but more importantly, to make informed recommendations of what _is_ technically feasible and most closely matches their intended goals (which they might not yet even fully understand themselves).

<comment><USER6> Eh, I haven't seen it in production.

I hate seeing politics of any stripe in my news feed, for example. I get enough of it elsewhere. But how can Facebook take an image, recognize that it is a cartoon, and that the cartoon is based on something political? We're not there yet. We're not anywhere near there yet.

You and I, as humans in this time period, will likely recognize a drawing of a man with kind of mocha-y skin, ears that stick straight out, large-ish front teeth, and kind of a squint as a standard issue caricature of a particular former President of the USA. We can immediately go "aha, politics!"

So I suppose we could try to train some AIs on a historical set of caricatures of politically-relevant figures. Of course, caricaturists and cartoonists of all stripes are called upon to produce new stylized exaggerations of people as they step into the limelight (or are dragged into it), so our training set must be updated on a daily basis. Hrm, some more work there ...

But then it gets into "politics you would like to hear" versus "politics you would NOT like to hear," and that is just going to be something that will require a mental model of what you do and do not like.

Right now, Amazon and Netflix cannot get my recommendations even CLOSE and their data is much better curated than what someone might type into a Facebook text box.

Chronological? Reasonable! Probably doable. Keywords? Who is putting those in? Who is curating that set of keywords?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> He's standing up for what he believes. You can disagree with his convictions, but you should admire anyone who risks personal and financial consequences for sticking to their guns. That's what actual morality is—not just a "belief" that is talked about but acted upon even when the results will be costly.

<comment><USER9> It's a highly privileged position to be in to make a personal stand and leave your $250,000 job for another $250,000 job.

Not judging this way or that, just saying.

<comment><USER10> Of course it is. Arguably the people with that privilege should have more obligation to exercise it in the service of what's right.

<comment><USER9> Whilst his stance is to be applauded, it lessens the value of the stance given that he's not sacrificing much and won't suffer for his cause.

Doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do, just that it would carry more weight if he was leaving to go work at Burger King. Then you'd say "man that guy stands tall".

Edit: Ok reasonable criticism, I'll withdraw.

<comment><USER11> He would stand even taller if while he was quitting Facebook, he was running in to a burning building to save a child. Of course, while saving a child is to be applauded, it lessens the value of his stance that he's not also saving 10,000 from starvation. Of course, that would be nothing next to achieving world peace while eliminating corruption in every government in the world. I'm not saying he shouldn't quit Facebook over his convictions, it's just that it would be awfully nice if he solved every global problem and then was crucified on an actual cross for doing it on the way out.

<comment><USER12> While there's no proof of life on other planets, there's equally no proof there's not, and it might be suffering terribly and frankly I don't see this guy doing anything about that either.

Until he does it's just virtue signalling.

(yeah, I don't get some people either)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Social media is fast food. If you eat it all the time it makes you feel awful and will destroy your mental and physical health. But its cheap, easy to get and tastes really good...

So stupid people love it.

<comment><USER14> You're _on_ social media

<comment><USER15> HN is a forum, but very different from places like Facebook and Reddit.

<comment><USER14> If that is a notable categorisation then what is the difference that makes forums better?

<comment><USER15> I feel the trigger of social media is getting dopamine-like reward signal when people like/share your posts. Its underlying acceptance of "you" aspect of it, rather than the idea itself that you share. In a forum, being an anonymous user, it doesn't affect you as much on a personal level which allows for a more rational discussion by detaching the "personal" side of you from it. Of course, that is only true in theory as we are all prone to taking everything personally (myself included) but I try consciously to change that.

<comment><USER14> This website has rapid interaction from other users and visible upvotes that add up over time to create a personal score that nets you extra benefits. If I worked for Facebook, I'd like stronger evidence than amateur psychology for me to feel morally compelled to give up my livelihood.

Edit: furthermore many users post with real or pseudo-real names that reward them with real life social clout.

<comment><USER15> For example, is there any revenue generated from people visiting users' profiles on HN? But there is revenue from ads on Facebook and Instagram profiles that millions subscribe to. There is no "subscription" like cult on this forum (afaik). I do not see content based on whether user has high points or not. Unlike social media, where people with more followers get more visibility. So I think the scoring vs followers is not really comparable.

I use adblocker so I do not see ads on HN. Correct me if this is different from your experience.

I can imagine, as you point out, the impact on "social life" for users with real/pseudo real names. Back in the day forums were used for anonymous discussions when you would not trust strangers on the internet. I guess now the opposite is trending.

<comment><USER14> I've expanded on this in another comment but I do think that YC gain a real but indirect financial benefit from operating this website.

>Back in the day forums were used for anonymous discussions when you would not trust strangers on the internet. I guess now the opposite is trending.

While writing this I was thinking of the famous 'LINUX is obsolete' thread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I respect his decision. But I for one do not want our president, no matter who she or he is to be censored. I want to know exactly what they are saying and when. That includes any government official for that matter because it directly affects my voting decisions and actions.

<comment><USER17> Corporations using their power to silence an elected government official is pretty much the corporate-fascist dystopia I thought we were all against.

<comment><USER18> it's a tough problem to solve or reason about. i personally don't have any answers around this, but do you allow hate to spread and then be reactive about it and deal with the consequences? or do you nip it at the bud proactively allowing for potentially something that you wrote? some sort of censorship. how do you deal with it?

<comment><USER19> How about don't remove anyone or anyone's post unless it's illegal?

Certainly don't target certain politicians while leaving others alone.

When you can't win your argument on merit, you censor.

It's up to the politicians and constituents to call out lies, why should some Ministry of Truth decide what's a lie?

<comment><USER18> i don't necessarily disagree, but what happens when other politicians/constituents aren't doing their jobs?

<comment><USER19> That's a hypothetical I disagree with.

Politicians will always address their counterparts and should always try to inform their constituents. It's up to the constituents to stay educated.

Censoring politicians because people _might_ be too stupid is a really bad reason.

<comment><USER18> sure, but realistically this is exactly what has been happening if you just look at the last few years. many people are extremely misinformed and there are tons of propaganda campaigns. finding the real truth is borderline impossible. what is the solution? continue as is until someone more and more radical comes along bending truth to their will? there's gotta be some middle ground between a ministry of truth and just completely lawlessness.

<comment><USER19> > if you just look at the last few years

No, you've been told that because people aren't happy with the current status quo.

There has always been propaganda and the truth is always possible to find.

Unless you have something specific I feel like you're using hyperboles (think of the children!!!) to win your way.

It's not lawlessness, people aren't extremely misinformed (if they are that's on them), the truth isn't borderline impossible.

This truth hunt will die out when the people seeking it are back in charge.

Yes remove threats, but don't remove lies. Having lies on your platform is not lawlessness, it's the internet.

If you don't want lies then take 230 away from them and make them take down libel/slander/lies that EVERYONE says, not just the people they choose to target.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It is overwhelming to see folks in the tech community come forward to support a cause like this. Protesting and speaking up is one thing, leaving a job is another. Kudos.

</comment><comment><USER21> Kudos to them; this is great. I think both the resignation but also announcing so directly are brave (they have career ops and compensation to think about). Announcing publicly helps build a groundswell among tech workers not only at Facebook but other tech companies.

Plenty of companies hiring, I know my company is specifically looking for good people that are leaving because of layoffs and principled reasons.

</comment><comment><USER22> Zuckerberg has always made it clear to investors and employees that Facebook is not a democracy. Mark is in charge and has full control of the company to do as he pleases when he pleases. When they IPOed he made it clear that's how the company works. IPO materials made it clear that if you don't like that don't invest in it.

Not saying I agree with his actions (or inactions) and decisions but he's been very clear about how Facebook works as a company and who's in charge. Part of the big issue I see here with these "employee protests" at Facebook is that it seems employees didn't pay attention to what they were signing up for when they joined. Mark is doing exactly what he said he would do in running the company. It's not a democracy.

<comment><USER23> That's somsething of a sideways argument though. I mean, it's speciously true of any organization that isn't _actually_ a democracy. Google isn't a democracy. Apple isn't a democracy.

But most corporate environments act at least a little like democracies anyway. And that's not by choice, it's a darwinian thing. Companies that can't motivate their employees to work towards shared goals don't tend to succeed. And so on some level you absolutely do have to do what your employees want to do.

And if you don't, they quit and work somewhere else. Which is literally what the linked article is about. That thing up there in the headline? _That 's democracy in action. At Facebook._

<comment><USER22> Most large corporate environments don't have the CEO as the sole controlling shareholder in the company.

While CEOs are powerful and have a lot of autonomy on day-to-day decision making they too are generally employees employed at the discretion of the board. The board itself exists and is populated by individuals at the pleasure of a diverse set of shareholders. There's real accountability. That's not the case at Facebook. Again not saying that's good or bad but the model was no secret when people signed on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> First of all, I'm glad this person has seen the light and hopefully others that work at Facebook will see the light and stop working for this evil company.

With that out of the way though, I'm obligated to say that there have been many stages in the lifecycle of Facebook where one could have said "how could they do something this despicable" and leave for another "high impact" job, and it saddens me that things have to reach such a high boiling point (what with all the protests, riots, and so on going on in the US) in order for people to actually realize that they've been propping up an extremely disingenuous and immoral organization.

There have been many opportunities in Facebook's history to say, you know what, what they're doing is really messed up, and it's really immoral, and I can't put up with it anymore.

The cynic in me is saying that this person is piggybacking off of this incredibly tense situation to go viral basically everywhere. His LinkedIn post has north of 200K likes [0] and he'll have absolutely _no_ problem finding work. I truly wish him the best of luck in doing so. But I'm honestly disappointed that it's taken people this long to realize that Facebook is not the bastion of good that they thought it was.

[0]: [https://www.linkedin.com/posts/timothy-j- aveni_blacklivesmat...](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/timothy-j- aveni_blacklivesmatter-activity-6673316720993824768-q_dU/)

<comment><USER25> > But I'm honestly disappointed that it's taken people this long to realize > that Facebook is not the bastion of good that they thought it was.

The cynic in me says that they haven't realized that at all. They've just made a value judgement that making a loud public statement and switching to another adtech surveillance capitalism corporation is a career move that will make them more money than working at Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's strange to me how the two things Facebook gets the most shit for, this and the Cambridge Analytica scandal, are far down the list of reasons that I see as reasons to abhor Facebook. In both cases there are sane arguments to be made in Facebook's defense, unlike other aspects like their decision on their business model. However, if politics is what it takes for the exodus to begin, so be it.

<comment><USER27> Can you elaborate what you think the main reasons should be? (Genuinely interested.)

<comment><USER26> The creation of a nearly impossible to control machine that profits off of manipulating human behavior. A product with such toxic social systems it brings out our worse selves and divides us from one another, feeding into our base desires to read only opinions we agree with and see anyone else as "others", free to hate. I could go on :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Fair enough I suppose. He would like to work in a place that is willing to suppress the speech of the POTUS so as to avoid exciting the violent ignoramus. I am glad that isn't Facebook and I hope he finds a nice job as long as he is never, ever, put in a position where he gets to decide what information others have access to.

</comment><comment><USER29> The engineer describes Facebook as being on the "wrong side of History." I take this opportunity to remind my fellow readers that History is not an infallible goddess to be worshipped. The moral arc of the past several hundred years has bent towards liberty and tolerance, but this has not been consistent and was not inevitable. It is precisely when your values are on the "wrong side of History" that you should be defending them the most strongly.

Justify your actions because they are right, not because they will be popular.

<comment><USER30> I think you don't understand the phrase.

Optimists believe that the future will be better, that people will be wiser.

They believe that those future enlightened people will look back at some people and actions, and believe that they were on the wrong side of history.

It's not a popularity contest. It's a belief that we get better over time by making moral actions.

"It is precisely when your values are on the 'wrong side of History' that you should be defending them the most strongly."

No one believes their own values are on the wrong side of History.

"Justify your actions because they are right, not because they will be popular."

Everyone thinks their own values are right.

And if you are an optimist, you believe the future will be better. And so therefore, you are advocating doing things that would make the future worse. It's a very odd way to think.

Unless, you're a pessimist? And you think the future will be worse, and so you're trying to prevent the backslide? And you're saying "screw you" to those idiots in the future?

<comment><USER29> We have gathered here, by and large, to discuss and cheerlead a campaign which calls for political censorship of a major political figure, one who earned the vote of just under half of the USA. We assembled beg for a world in which a megacorporation will enact content restrictions, deciding what types of view are acceptable to express.

The politician in question, far from offering a meaningful alternative that advances freedom, attempts to use his office to restrict opposing speech as well. He may well win re-election and further implement policies which advance the ideas the Facebook employee objects to.

Elsewhere in the world, the Chinese Communist Party builds its surveillance state, installing their secret police in Hong Kong to crush protests.

Free speech may die within my lifetime, and the Chinese Communist Party in particular is fairly well positioned to make a claim that history will be on their side. Of course I'm a god damn pessimist.

<comment><USER30> Hi, you're bending the words "right side of history" beyond how anyone else uses them. So, don't be surprised if people have a hard time understanding you.

You have legitimate concerns, but your phrasing of them is not easy for _anyone else_ to follow.

<comment><USER29> If I am bending words, it is specifically to demonstrate how hollow they are, how readily the cause of History can be co-opted by the utopian rhetoric of strongmen and oppressors.

<comment><USER30> If people can't understand your meaning, because you bend your words so hard, that undermines your goal.

Cheers.

<comment><USER29> As far as I can tell, you're the only one who has a material misunderstanding today.

<comment><USER30> Cool, ignore feedback meant to help you communicate. Good luck with that.

<comment><USER29> Thank you for this latest feedback, just as condescending as the earlier feedback.

<comment><USER30> I meant it constructively. But I accept your criticism that it sounded condescending. I'll try to work on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is what solidarity should look like, It takes courage to walk away from a company such as Facebook but it's a great move nonetheless. We should not become complicit

<comment><USER32> why the but and the nonetheless?

<comment><USER31> Figure of speech.I think most would feel scared by leaving a company as big as Facebook and the backlash or job possibilities being clouded if they'd leave a company on bad terms

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> And once again we're back in 2018 trying to figure out whether these private companies should be considered "public squares".

I personally think speech censorship, even by a private company, is wrong. However, there's so much grey area that one could argue either way.

<comment><USER34> > speech censorship, even by a private company

It seems to me that Facebook (or at least Mark Zuckerberg) actually agrees with you and _wants_ FB to be an open platform, but are being pressured by activists to censor against their wishes. This kind of goes beyond "they're a private company, they can do what they want": it would appear that they can't do what they want.

<comment><USER35> I am just amazed that people are for private companies censoring politicians. You really don't want to see __everything __politicians want to tell you? Even if it 's a complete lie? You want Mark and Jack and others to hide that info from you?

What is going on? I feel I am completely losing touch. It's scary.

<comment><USER36> People keep jumping between the extremes of "show or don't show the post"

There are options in between like decrying the post for violence. Twitter did a good job here IMHO by having the post visible, but restricted behind a click through. They also didn't cast aspersions on it, and sent you to more links to learn more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I wouldn't hire this person. But I'm glad he found a job.

<comment><USER38> Can you please explain why would you not hire this person?

<comment><USER39> If I were running a platform, I wouldn't want employees that would quit on me over not censoring news on the platform exactly to their taste.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Interesting that someone would give a public resignation like this but still give two weeks notice (presuming he gave notice on Monday). I'd imagine it likely that the company would just let him go immediately after making a public statement.

<comment><USER41> He had to do it because of contractual obligations, obviously. He's probably on garden-leave now. Standard procedure for resignations in a big security- aware company (which I hope FB is) is to immediately suspend all access and escort out of the building. You can always ask him to come back to help with stuff later, as a visitor.

So in the end, firing him after he resigned like this would be counterproductive: you don't gain any organizational advantage and you're actually inviting trouble from the media.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Focus on impact. Do you have more leverage as an ongoing employee, or as a soon-to-be outsider who literally called the CEO a liar?

If it's personal morality then so be it, but if that's the case then keep it personal, otherwise you are really just virtue signaling.

I suspect June 12 being their last day is wishful thinking. If I treated my employer with this much contempt I would expect to be a walked out.

<comment><USER43> As a former FB employee, I can almost assure you that he will get to stay until June 12. The PR trainwreck that would be firing him not is not worth 7 days of his salary.

<comment><USER44> You can do both. A local private-sector employer has a category of employee that is walked out generally within the hour of tending notice of their resignation. It's a standard protocol, everyone is aware, there are parameters but they are paid for the time they are out and most folks will start doing some basic KT ahead of time to avoid the void.

It's obviously a bit silly but this is where lessons from the past have landed the company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I get a sense that he would be equally upset at Facebook if they had followed their content policy and censored the George Floyd video. The reality is that Facebook doesn't want to censor anything that is "newsworthy." The President's stance on the riots is certainly something that many people would be interested to know.

</comment><comment><USER46> I appreciate anyone who has the courage to do this. I've done it before, and it's definitely hard. Congrats and I wish more people would stand up for themselves and others.

It's always better to receive downvotes and do the right thing, than merely sit by and go along with the hive. Especially when you know in your gut the hive is wrong.

</comment><comment><USER47> Well, we live in a time where information spreads faster than the news. We see history developing in front of our eyes on sites like twitter, reddit or facebook before they move through the newspaper filter. It's a wonderful thing to behold.

On the other hand, we also get in touch with radical posts or "fake news" or news which try to influence readers in various forms from all different kinds of sources.

So on one hand, our tech enabled information to move more freely. On the other hand, extreme, biased or untrue information can be dangerous.

But we don't have the means to filter or flag this content objectively in an automated fashion. That's why we have a problem. And as long as humans are involved in this filtering process, we have other problems.

It's very similar to self-driving: As long as we cannot find a way to make this 100% automated and safe according to rules we all adhere to, we won't find a solution.

</comment><comment><USER48> Well said and all best wishes for the future.

> My last day will be June 12th.

Well ... it _might_ just come a little sooner than that ;-)

Much respect. I salute you.

<comment><USER49> > Well ... it might just come a little sooner than that ;-)

Why would it come sooner? You think they would fire him a week early just so he can claim unemployment from them?

<comment><USER48> No, not fire him - he's just resigned - I mean put him on "gardening leave" from now until his official last day.

<comment><USER49> Oh yeah, absolutely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> If you like it or not, free speech works in two directions. A private company censoring the president is not the right approach.

It's our job as a society to not blindly follow what is being said by politicians and more importantly, to take action with our vote.

</comment><comment><USER51> A solution to this would be to use congress instead of expecting companies to comply.

Create a law that prevents elected or people who have declared themselves a candidate for office from using social media platforms. Extend it to their offices/teams/associates etc.

Politics shouldn't be reduced to 160 characters in my opinion. I don't want to live in a society where this is the primary way this kind of important information is conveyed.

Keep social networks for the chattering class, not the political class.

</comment><comment><USER52> I read this word " privilege" more in the comments. I just want to say to all used it , leaving a job with a public stunt from a high paying job is never an easy decision for anyone. We all love money. But when someone chose to stand up for what they thought is right, is a big thing. I believe we should honor and respect that. Being dismissive or saying he/she is privileged to make a decision is nothing but dishonor.

</comment><comment><USER53> People that speak out in favour of virtue and signalling thereof get praise and admiration, other people that speak their opinion, which may be unconventional, get fired from their jobs or lose scholarships to universities. How did it come to this? Seems like this situation is a grotesque twisting of freedom of expression, something that the internet was supposed to endorse, not condemn.

</comment><comment><USER54> I don't use facebook, but I thought trump posts on twitter, not facebook? Is there a trump site on facebook that also posts his twitter stuff?

</comment><comment><USER55> Congratulation to new found insight.

I am wondering though, how much eye closing exactly is needed, to work for FB for any stretch of time.

I guess for some people the glass can still overspill and they can only take that much. At some point some reason comes along, that makes it easier to just leave and give the exterior a good explanation for leaving. That's actually a good thing. Shows, that some conscience is still there.

</comment><comment><USER56> Stunning and brave!

<comment><USER57> To be fair, quitting a high-paying job for moral reasons in the midst of a pandemic and a major recession takes courage. I don't agree with his view, but I'll give him that much at least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Is pretty much the consensus within my friend groups who joined Facebook left than a year ago is

"yeah but cmon you know what you're at Facebook for, it isn't for a moral debate" _cue laughter_

I would be more impressed to see people quitting that just got their $100K signing bonus and were within their first year of vesting, feeling kind of probationary.

</comment><comment><USER59> Fulltext for people who blocked facebook:

 _I 'm resigning from my job at Facebook.

For years, President Trump has enjoyed an exception to Facebook's Community Standards; over and over he posts abhorrent, targeted messages that would get any other Facebook user suspended from the platform. He's permitted to break the rules, since his political speech is "newsworthy."

"when the looting starts, the shooting starts."

Mark always told us that he would draw the line at speech that calls for violence. He showed us on Friday that this was a lie. Facebook will keep moving the goalposts every time Trump escalates, finding excuse after excuse not to act on increasingly dangerous rhetoric. Since Friday, I've spent a lot of time trying to understand and process the decision not to remove the racist, violent post Trump made Thursday night, but Facebook, complicit in the propagation of weaponized hatred, is on the wrong side of history.

I cannot keep excusing Facebook's behavior. Facebook is providing a platform that enables politicians to radicalize individuals and glorify violence, and we are watching the United States succumb to the same kind of social media- fueled division that has gotten people killed in the Philippines, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka. I'm scared for my country and I'm done trying to justify this.

My last day will be June 12th. If you have contacts in the San Francisco Bay Area looking to recruit a software engineer, please DM me.

#blacklivesmatter_

</comment><comment><USER60> I guess selling people's innermost thoughts for a bit of ad revenue is OK in his book, then.

</comment><comment><USER61> I admire you, and I hope you get a better position in a more ethical environment. All the best

</comment><comment><USER62> Can't read and admire person for quitting job at facebook because content is on facebook.

</comment><comment><USER63> Zuckerberg has been very principled on free speech and Facebook and society as a whole is better for it. I hope this FB employee is replaced with someone more grounded on liberal ideals of free speech, tolerance and openness.

</comment><comment><USER57> I respect the moral stance he took, though that this is a public open letter is a little self-serving (but even with that quitting a well-paying job in the midst of a pandemic and a huge recession is not easy).

I disagree wholeheartedly with his position that Facebook should be wading into politics and interpreting Trump's tweets and posts because with Trump (and even politics in general) everything is in the eye of the beholder. It's one of the most frustrating things with the Trump presidency where the same statement will be interpreted in WILDLY different ways by those that hate Trump and those that love Trump. The most surreal example of this was when Trump called MS-13 members 'Animals' and it was interpreted by many people and the media as a dog-whistle that all immigrants are 'animals'. Trump for sure brings this bad faith on himself with his temperment, but that just reinforces the view that a platform like Facebook should wade into this quagmire with trepidation because once you get in, you open a pandora's box of unintended consequences.

<comment><USER64> It may be self-serving but it may also be targeted to other Facebook employees and recruits or to the general FB-using public to let folks know how dire and complete their complicity with things is.

As someone who is repeatedly contacted by FAANG recruiters, I can tell you there are two of them I keep asking hard questions about company culture and role in society. They stop responding, then a different recruiter reaches out a few months later. I imagine you can guess which two.

<comment><USER57> >It may be self-serving but it may also be targeted to other Facebook employees and recruits or to the general FB-using public to let folks know how dire and complete their complicity with things is.

Fair enough and I do consider his action to be a moral stance that took courage to make. And I certainly respect your decision to not work for these companies.

Having said that, I think you are way overstating how bad FB or Twitter or Google is (I wasn't sure which two companies you were talking about). And I say that because I look at the full picture of the economy that has, for example, timeshare companies, payday lenders, banks and credit card companies, casinos, alcohol and beer companies, pharmaceuticals (especially with opiates). Products from those companies can have terrible real-world consequences on people that may take decades to rectify, and then when I look at Facebook and the negative things they bring .. Facebook doesn't even rank. I'm sure FB has problems that they need to work on fixing but the hyperbole around them is so outrageously disproportionate, it feels like gaslighting.

<comment><USER64> If you think abiding fascism can't have real-world, long term consequences please review your history. The same if you think abuse of having everyone's private data is no big deal.

The two companies, by the way, are Facebook and Amazon. Unfortunately I'm in a position that I use both, but I don't intend to work for either as things currently stand. I'd probably go to Amazon before Facebook, but I have concerns about their treatment of warehouse staff and entering markets they've built around other sellers and undercutting them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> He took a direct shot at Facebook's culture and it's highly effective PR, hopefully many others open their eyes on what they are supporting when they choose to execute orders from the top down and stay.

</comment><comment><USER66> Good for you man. Especially if you think Facebook, or rest of Silicon Valley (except Jack Dorsey) cares.

Does anyone know if we can already apply for his "soon to be empty" position? :)

</comment><comment><USER67> I'm sure you'll survive. But most other companies don't have ad dollars fueling your 500k$ salary so you might need to look for a few bucks less.

</comment><comment><USER68> Sure, great. Good.

But without the followup call to action, "... and you should too," this is just self-congratulatory behavior.

Don't just clap, follow this guy's lead.

</comment><comment><USER69> If his job description did include censorship policy, good for him to resign. Otherwise he is throwing rocks up the wrong tree for 5 minutes of fame.

</comment><comment><USER70> >A junior software engineer taking a stance on a public matter goes to front page on HN.

I guess you are really emotional on this topic.

</comment><comment><USER71> Facebook deliberately drives wedges in between people to drive engagement. Burn it down for all I care.

</comment><comment><USER72> He just hit one year according to his linkedin. I wonder what he vested into last week.

<comment><USER73> Viewed another way: If he waited to vest, that means he took away a substantial sum of Facebook's money.

It is a good thing when thoughtful people have resources.

<comment><USER74> By that logic, he could have taken even more money by continuing to work.

<comment><USER73> Continuing to work would abet processes with which he disagrees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Can someone paste the text for those of us that have blocked all facebook subdomains?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23417060](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23417060)

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> In this topic: many pessimists struggling to twist a virtuous act into a bad thing.

</comment><comment><USER77> It amazes me that people haven't caught onto the shtick yet. Trump keeps doing this to them over and over again. Trump takes some popular position and exaggerates it or maybe just plainly takes the position a little too far. And then his opposition, who reflexively just put a negative sign in front of everything he says, come out strongly against the popular opinion. "Propagation of weaponized hatred" is lunacy. At worst it's an exaggeration or slight overstep of the popular mainstream opinion.

People want the police to come in and stop the looting and burning of small businesses. Seeing people calling these peaceful protests while there's literal burning cars in the background is the most Orwellian thing I've ever seen. And when you point that out you get the "just a few bad apples" argument, which makes it even more hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER78> Good luck dude. Hope the stain on your CV is not already too great.

</comment><comment><USER79> I was supposed to interview at Facebook this week. My company is struggling and I expect I'll be laid off before the year is over, so I figured that maybe I could push my ethical frustrations with the company aside and just go make some good money and ignore the fact that this company is undermining democracy and many of the things I value.

Seeing resignations from existing Facebook employees really woke me up and made me realize that I can't sacrifice my values for a paycheck and stable employment.

I contacted the recruiter at the beginning of the week and told them I was going to stop the process and my reasons.

I hope that engineers taking a stand like the OP know that it is having an impact.

It's tempting to be cynical, no job in tech right now is without faults, so why not just play the capitalist game? Everyone makes their own choices, but struggling to make the right choice for you is better than refusing to struggle.

<comment><USER80> In a similar boat here. I am not in danger of losing my job but I kinda thought I spend some time at Facebook see what "state of the art" looks like for a big tech company and then do something else a few years down the line. I passed their coding screen and I am waiting to schedule a full day interview but as far as the big tech companies go Facebook does get a bad rap. Although I think its unavoidable. I used work in NYC making not as much as a FANG worker but enough money to know, it's impossible to make that kind of cash without moral compromises. It's simply a feature of the capitalist system, companies like FB are just taking it to its logical extremes, the commodification of your society down to the individual level.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> Anybody working for Facebook is knowingly and willingly helping promote fascism. These people have some of the best job options out there, and they're actively choosing to work for a company that's actively harmful to society.

<comment><USER82> Facebook is promoting "facism" for not deleting Trump?

lol

<comment><USER81> Might want to read up on some of Facebook history in promoting extremist ideology because it's good business. Here are a couple of links to get you started

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-it-encourages- di...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-it-encourages-division-top- executives-nixed-solutions-11590507499)

[https://www.start.umd.edu/pubs/START_PIRUS_UseOfSocialMediaB...](https://www.start.umd.edu/pubs/START_PIRUS_UseOfSocialMediaByUSExtremists_ResearchBrief_July2018.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> I wonder if this is related to JWZ's call yesterday for Facebook employees to quit.

[edit: Removed link. JWZ: Not cool. Archive.org link in reply below]

<comment><USER84> JWZ links to disgusting image when accessed with HN as referrer, I suggest you remove this link.

<comment><USER85> Holy shit. I was wondering why so many old hn accounts were linking to an insulting meme and this was upvoted in few other threads so I wonder what those people saw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Related:

Thread on June 2 MZ@FB open call with employees:

[https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1267891378102497281.html](https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1267891378102497281.html)

NYT: Zuckerberg Defends Hands-Off Approach to Trump's Posts

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/technology/zuckerberg- def...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/technology/zuckerberg-defends- facebook-trump-posts.html)

</comment><comment><USER86> do we get a better outcome if morally upstanding quit the platform, or stay to make things better?

</comment><comment><USER87> My solution has always been to not bother with Facebook. A few employees quitting was already on Mark's radar, he expected that and is willing to accept that. Honestly seems like Mark fears actions by Trump against social media - Mark cares about the existential threat, he can hire more people. A very large boycott of Facebook by its users might actually get Mark's attention. We seem to have forgotten how to effectively boycott for change.

</comment><comment><USER86> so he resigns over a post by trump vs all the other egregious things facebook has done?

</comment><comment><USER88> It's about time this started happening! Facebook employees of HN, how about joining him?

<comment><USER89> Possibly worried about the money and status bump from having Facebook on their resume.

But having on your resume that you left Facebook because of this would be the biggest status bump of all.

<comment><USER88> Agreed. If Tech cares about the diversity as much as it claims, it's hard to think this would damage ones career.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> Good riddance, I guess?

</comment><comment><USER91> If you resign from Facebook and don't tell anyone, have you really resigned?

<comment><USER92> I feel like your question is snark designed to criticise the vocal/dramatic way the FB employee has resigned. I hope I'm wrong. Personally, I'm grateful for their post. I think it is designed to bring awareness to the problem and to pressure FB to do the right thing.

<comment><USER93> I've seen this one person's resignation on nearly every site I follow this past week. My hope is that this is the start of a substantial shift in the company with more employees walking out (I don't believe senior management there will do anything on their own), otherwise it's just what the parent commenter's implying: a lot of noise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> For background: I am a married white male, in 50s, with one teenage child, and I've made a comfortable 6 figure income for a number of years now. And I had three honorary godfathers that were my father's best friends and good friends of the family (Haitian, an ex-Black Panther, and an Asian-American real-estate broker). But I wasn't always comfortable - I have worked in metal finishing plants, leather-working plants, and for ARC when I was much younger and struggling. This whole thread speaks to privilege to me.

There are people who do not vote because they cannot afford the couple hours or so away from their job without fear of getting fired. And we think someone should quit, before even getting another job, if they disagree with a company's stance on a social media issue?

If you were a cop, then yes..I could see quitting, though the braver thing would be to stay, rise, and change from the inside (just watch your back).

You want to help, and your organization is not one of the ones actually killing Americans? Don't quit your job. Unless you are truly essential personnel you leaving will be a hit, but one the company can likely recover from pretty quickly with not too much pain. Instead: Speak out; take a stance; help protesters and civil rights leaders locally with your donated skills. Better yet, also work to convince your company to take a stand.

I applaud anyone's desire to protest, in any way they feel comfortable with. I also applaud anyone's desire to be an ally without protesting, in however you can, if you feel you have to protect your life and those around you and protesting scares you too much that you won't be able to do that. I do not applaud anyone who protests as a way of getting likes, or protests as a way to act out, or protests as a way to say 'look at me'.

Also, if you protest..act out, but abhor violence. As Presiden Obama said..civil disobedience and the political process are not mutually exclusive and must be used hand in hand together until you are heard.

Actions speak louder that words. I abhor violence now, and do not advocate it, but I remember an incident when I was 10 in W.Va. A senior in high school, a white kid, was picking on three of us, myself and and white boy (B) in my class and an African-American (C) in our class. He was picking on the African- American boy the most, with racial epithets and physical shoving and occasional punch as he would walk by. This happened over a span of time.

C was upset but didn't want to tell his parents. He told me was ashamed that he was being singled out. Let that sink in a moment. The victim felt ashamed for being victimized. The other boy B said we should avoid him as best we could, changing where we played and missing out on playing on the river. It happened again and again until I got fed up, picked a broom up by the handle, swung it over my head and whacked the senior in the head with the other end, making him need 5 stitches. I should have tried non-violent actions, but I did something, whereas B did not. I got a lot of trouble for that, but he never picked on any of us again.

The point of the story is that action that has impact is needed. Action without action is action for the sake of saying you did something. And yes, I abhor violence now, but I cannot blame people for violence during protests when they can go buy baby formula in the middle of the night and wonder if they'll be killed by those who are supposed to protect us, for the crime of DWB.

</comment><comment><USER95> What if I told you I don't care?

</comment><comment><USER96> I've never seen so many people try to censor a political rival as recently with President Trump.

If you can make a compelling argument in the marketplace of free ideas, you don't need to censor.

If they are going to censor Trump for calling the looters 'thugs', they need to censor the people calling for violence against cops (which is way worse)

</comment><comment><USER97> Today I opened facebook to reply to a message from my mum, I got autoplaying videos of Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro "destroying" liberals and trying to discredit George Floyd. I hope we come out of this period with a better understanding of the responsibility we have of the effect of the technology we build, pretending the things we build are neutral and hiding behind "free speech" is not working

<comment><USER57> I don't follow Candace Owens so I can't speak to that, but Ben Shapiro has been very sympathetic towards justice for the murder of George Floyd and calling on the cop to be punished - pretty much daily since the video came out.

Why would you say he's trying to discredit George Floyd?

<comment><USER97> The Ben Shapiro video was the one title "destroying liberals" arguing against women being able to access healthcare / have abortions, the Candace Owens one was talking about how George Floyd wasnt a martyr.

Ben Shapiro's twitter is predictably a constant stream of ridiculing the protests, that isnt being sympathetic towards justice for the murder, thats just saying something obvious that people have to agree with you before you announce your contrarian view.

<comment><USER57> >Ben Shapiro's twitter is predictably a constant stream of ridiculing the protests

I don't follow his twitter, but, at least on his radio show, he criticizes rioters and looters and takes care to differentiate them from protestors. I think that's fair. Rioting and looting is not the same as protesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> This is all nonsense to me.

Trump said if you loot, you get shot. Isn't this how our society works?

If you steal you may end up getting shot.

People are trying to react as if he said "if you walk down the street you'll get shot".

Sensitive topic, I guess.

* EDIT: The nonsense part is people calling Trump to be censored, like OP.

I am not condoning violence but I do think looting may lead to it, it's not too far from the truth.

I think the argument is that he wanted to cause violence with his comments, which could be true, but seems like an idiotic to argue over that.

What he said seems to be a fact, so I am not convinced he should be censored

<comment><USER99> Yes in a fascist society sure but the use of deadly force by the police is usually only when a life is in danger and not any property.

Usually non lethal means are employed when the police are following SOP i.e teargas/water or a baton charge.

<comment><USER100> Except that "looting -> shooting" doesn't necessarily involve the police at all, because the American population is armed and, in many jurisdictions, empowered to use lethal force in certain circumstances.

A few examples: [https://www.startribune.com/man-shot-dead-outside-lake- stree...](https://www.startribune.com/man-shot-dead-outside-lake-street- pawnshop-during-unrest-is-identified/570865962/)

[https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-protests- looting-...](https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-protests-looting-gun- store-south-philly-shot-dead-20200602.html)

There's also the flip side, where determined and armed looters slay the innocent: [https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/03/us/david-dorn-st-louis- po...](https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/03/us/david-dorn-st-louis-police-shot- trnd/index.html)

At any rate, the President's tweet of "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" is an accurate statement, irrespective of the employment of the police, martial law, fascism, etc...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> Oh he's so brave demanding censorship for the masses. President Trump speaks for those that have lost their voice in the chicomm and leftist controlled media and big tech. As he says himself, big tech censors those that dare speak the truth.

I don't care, let the downvoting and misguided leftist justice ensue on my hacker news account. After all, you must censor my speech any way you can.

</comment><comment><USER102> Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

</comment><comment><USER103> And yet, the machine keeps churning along. Facebook is what it looks like when an open democratic society develops cancer.

</comment><comment><USER82> > i resigned because my employeer refuses to censor a user (in this case, the > POTUS) who says things i disagree with

wow, imagine being this entitled

</comment><comment><USER104> All these "good" people pushing for censorship of a democratically elected president and social networks. Don't you see this is precisely what tyranny looks like?

</comment><comment><USER105> this dude is just being an attention grabber now. yesterday he posted to linkedin and now today facebook. what's next? a frontpage ad in the nyt or a billboard in times square? great... you quit your job on your beliefs, who really gives a sh*t.

<comment><USER106> A big chunk of any protest is getting your voice heard. So yeah, he's trying to grab attention. That is entirely the point here.

<comment><USER105> more of a kid crying that he doesn't like the way things are than a protest in my book, but your entitled to your opinion.

<comment><USER106> Likewise your very comment can be dismissed as a kid crying (You are just jealous he's getting more attention than you).

If you don't respect the right of others to speak out, don't expect your opinions to be respected in turn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER107> What happened to everyone leaving Facebook when Hillary lost ? Their active users have grown orders of magnitude since then.

<comment><USER92> > Their active users have grown orders of magnitude since then

That's a bit of an overstatement. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of- monthly...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly- active-facebook-users- worldwide/#:~:text=With%20over%202.6%20billion%20monthly,network%20ever%20to%20do%20so).

</comment></comment><comment><USER108> So he doesn't believe that one should be able to protect their property?

If looting is not the one that should be discouraged with shots, then what about rape? If that also not, then where it starts?

How do you stop looters? Asking nicely? Mob has its own personality and it doesn't have conscious.

I don't like current US president (BTW I'm not US citizen, nor do I live there), but that quote wasn't the one people should complain about.

<comment><USER58> yeah the property is unfortunate, but why are police killing citizens with little accountability?

thats the focus here, don't get it reversed

<comment><USER108> > ... why are police killing citizens with little accountability?

Any statistics to back that up?

"it is known" is not good data

<comment><USER58> which part would you like data on?

police killing citizens?

what is your goal post on accountability?

I'll try to match those standards with sources once I know what your standards are

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER109> Presidents have all kinds of privileges that others don't. Why should their privilege on social-media be diminished? To me the problem is not the platform but the fact that they have such exceptional privilege to begin with.

What I don't understand is how you can be Facebook _employee_ and also think the platform is the problem - lots of these especially in the React community [1].

If you believe Facebook is the problem, and you're quite vocal about it, and you continue working for Facebook, then that seems as close to paradoxical as you can possibly get.

If that's the case you are by definition working for a company which values you disagree with. That's similar to working for an oil company while being a climate change activist on social media.

1\. [https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/1267544361929256966](https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/1267544361929256966)

<comment><USER110> >Why should their privilege on social-media be diminished?

Why should a president, prime minister or government/parliament member should have "privilege" ? should they be allowed to swear or show their naked ass on public TV because they are special? The rules should apply equal to all citizens no exceptions for the ones in power.

IMO the algorithm that decides if a post should be banned or not should not have as input who is the author.

<comment><USER111> The next sentence of GP is

> To me the problem is not the platform but the fact that they have such > exceptional privilege to begin with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER112> Can Facebook fuck off with closing the current tab I am in whenever I click one of their links? Sometimes undoing the closed tab doesn't work and there is no way to recover my previous tabs history.

This has gotten so annoying and used to be things we only expected from spam sites

<comment><USER113> That's most likely Firefox's Facebook container. Once you click on a link that leads outside Facebook, the container closes and you can't go back anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER114> Why would you hire this guy? What tech companies wants employees that are just going to walk off whenever some crisis of the year erupts? Why not take a stand and continue to work to make Facebook better from within?

I know, because he doesn't actually give a shit about Facebook and this is a convenient way for him to gain some social exposure while also quitting a job he wanted to quit for a while anyway. He happily took home the $250k loot for years. Is he donating a good portion of that excess cash to relevant organizations? Probably not.

</comment><comment><USER115> There is nothing praise-worthy about taking a stand now, you should have been out of there ten years ago or never started to begin with. Zuckerberg has been consistently out of control and unaccountable since the Beacon fiasco, which was in like 2008.

This is slightly more annoying than all the government officials who only dare criticize the executive branch after they retire. We have way more data over a longer period of time about how horrible this company is, you should have figured it out a long time ago.

The last thing I want to read in 2020 is essays from wealthy tech workers who already cashed out talking about "taking a stand". You're not brave, you're a coward.

<comment><USER116> We praise people for changing in a positive direction. If we wait for perfection, we couldn't praise anything.</comment></comment>


Building multi billion search engines using open source technologies - <AUTHOR> https://www.slideshare.net/AndreiYigalLopatenko/building-multi-billion-search-engines-on-open-source-technologies <comment><AUTHOR> open-source vs closed-source/proprietary vs SaaS Is recently released Amazon Kedra available as open-source?</comment>


Udacity lays off 125 people in global strategy shift - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/29/edtech-unicorn-udacity-lays-off-125-people-in-global-strategy-shift/ <comment><USER2> I've completed 10 online learning courses and probably spend 20 hrs/week learning online.

Udacity Likes: I loved Udacity's production quality & instructors. I think they are generally awesome in the balance of teaching concept and practical knowledge. They also don't shy away from more complicated topics like autonomous vehicles, InfoSec, AI / ML, etc., which is a unique asset.

Udacity Dislikes: They are placing too large of a bet on the nanodegree concept. There isn't a clear ROI for students - and it's fairly clear that most companies don't really give a hoot about online certifications.

Their classes are too expensive. Both Udacity and Udemy have great Web Dev classes. Udemy's was $10 for 19 hours of content + responses to any questions I had within hours, and gave me everything I wanted + more. Unfortunately, I had to sift through the Bootcamp and Nanodegree madness on Udacity.

They are unaccredited. My company (maybe most companies?) only subsidizes classes that are accredited. I have a $10,000 annual credit and I use it all on university classes. I would definitely consider Udacity nanowhatevers if I could use my credit on them.

<comment><USER3> I got a bad taste in my mouth from Udacity when I tried their React Nanodegree. It was oozing with the expert-in-a-week, fake-it-till-you-make it mentality.

Early on, I asked for help for why my code wasn't working, explaining why I thought it should. My question was handled by _the actual face of the course_ \-- the ostensible expert, Richard Kalehoff, and yet he had only a superficial understanding. All his answers were some variant of "I don't know why this isn't working, copy the example more closely." The conversation went roughly:

Me: Why isn't this code working?

Him: Obviously, because you called .setState in multiple places. Didn't you listen to the lectures? It's asynchronous, so you can't guarantee that it happens in the expected order.

Me: Yes, I know, but the docs say that if you chain them as callbacks, you can ensure that they happen in a specific order <link>. Why isn't _that_ working?

Him: I don't know, no one does it that way. I think it's being overwritten.

<several other commenters point out why that can't be the case>

And I paid $800 for that expertise!

If you've signed up for the course, you can see it here:

[https://udacity- react.slack.com/messages/C5T90A6TS/convo/C5T...](https://udacity- react.slack.com/messages/C5T90A6TS/convo/C5T90A6TS-1507310007.000517/)

<comment><USER4> As much as I love Udacity lectures (see my pro-udacity rant above or below) some of the things they do don't scale.

They can take hours to perfect an explanation and examples and present it to you. That scales.

They cannot give quality feedback to 1000s of students.

I had a similar experience where they switched the sample data in one of the submissions, so the code would not work.

I don't blame the person for not catching that. Had they told me "this should work, but I don't know why it does not", I would have been fine.

Instead they made thing that they thought might work: Use an alternative notation for matrix multiplication which is different in "subtle ways" (it was identical), change the order of the inputs (the functions were commutative, but more importantly they should have known that), and some other nonsensical advice.

I would have respected them simply saying they don't know but actively bad advice is quite damaging.

<comment><USER3> It's majestically reasonable to expect experts to understand what they're teaching, doubly so when they are the literal face of the course.

That includes knowing how to use the single parameter on the most common React function.

<comment><USER4> Experts should of course.

But should the person who understands it best be the face? Or should the person who _presents_ it best be the face? The person who understands it best might design the content, or check that it is accurate. The person who is most gifted at intuitive graphics should design the visuals.

I don't think the fact that the face of course is not an expert is a big deal. I do think they should not be answering the advanced questions. However, with 1000s of questions coming in, I don't know how they should solve that issue. They need a quick way of knowing which is the hard question and which is the easy one. (Is that equivalent to the halting problem? I think it might be).

<comment><USER3> "Why isn't setState doing what the docs say it should" is not an advanced question, and if he's not prepared to answer basic questions, he shouldn't be "faking it until he makes it" and doing office hours and charging $800 for his expertise. Being able to answer my questions is what I'm paying for.

He didn't simply say "I don't know", he confidently faked it until he made it and claimed that he knew the answer, which was false and based on not knowing how a common parameter worked.

<comment><USER4> I agree with you.

Or rather, it seems you agree with me.

Or perhaps we agreed with each other all along but I am not sure why it sounds like you're disagreeing.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, I misread your comments; it seemed like you were saying it was unreasonable to expect the kind of answers I was asking for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I truly don't get how sites like udacity are able to sell thousands of amateurish introductions to various trends, when you can literally follow CS50 in all its incantations for free on edX.org.

Sure it won't give you a video guide of X popular framework intro- documentation pages, but it will actually teach you CS for free, and I'd argue, that if you can complete CS50x and CS50x Web, then you'll never need a site like udacity.

I guess FOMO sells though.

<comment><USER6> > _I'd argue, that if you can complete CS50x and CS50x Web, then you'll never > need a site like udacity._

Sure, but that's a tiny minority of people.

If you have the capacity to complete deep CS courses, you can buy a book for $12 and learn React or Angular or any technology you want.

Most people don't have this capacity.

> _I truly don't get how sites like udacity are able to sell thousands of > amateurish introductions to various trends_

1\. People read that some trend gets you jobs.

2\. People don't have the discipline or enough foundation to just buy the $12 book and learn trend by themselves.

3\. People find a course online that is really basic and thus doesn't tax their mental resources while convincing them they'll be able to get job later in the trend.

4\. People get job, or they don't (I bet they don't, since having low learning capacity isn't a good predictor for getting a job in an intellectual field), either way Udacity gets paid.

It's not a bad business model, but eventually it will collapse because customers routinely fail to obtain the key value proposition: tech skills or a job using them.

<comment><USER7> > Most people don't have this capacity.

Citation badly needed for the ridiculous assertion that most people don't have the "learning capacity" for "deep CS courses" (whatever that means). The fact that one can reliably teach programming to eight year olds, boot camp graduates can get jobs in the industry with high probability, and just about anyone in any other scientific field can fill a data science position suggests that CS is not such a rarified academic pursuit.

<comment><USER8> Teaching is actually very different than ability to self learn. I taught a class of 8-11 year old lower income but fairly motivated kids programming with Scratch over summer. Everyone did reasonably well but exactly 2 out of the 26 demonstrated the ability to push further and teach themselves more than what I taught in class by experimenting with the platform. This ability becomes much rarer the older you grow.

<comment> barry-cotter Of course the ability to push further and teach themselves is rare. It decreases monotonically with time spent in formal education as intrinsic motivation to learn is extinguished.

Intrinsic and extrinsic motivational orientations in the classroom: Age differences and academic correlates.

> Consistent with previous research, intrinsic motivation showed a significant > linear decrease from 3rd grade through 8th grade and proved positively > correlated with children's grades and standardized test scores

Enthusiastic students: A study of motivation in two alternatives to mandatory instruction

> The present study used Self-Determination Theory as a framework for > examining age-related changes in motivation for 57 students aged 7-17 years > in the context of two alternative educational environments: a home school > resource center and a democratically organized school. Students completed > the Academic Self-Regulation Questionnaire in order to assess their > intrinsic motivation and three types of extrinsic motivation. _In stark > contrast to the well-replicated negative correlation between age and > intrinsic motivation in traditional schools, there was no relationship > between age and any of the four motivation subscale scores in the present > study. Interpretations and implications of these findings are discussed._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > We will increase our investments in growth areas like enterprise and career > development

I'm surprised the shift has taken this long. Employers will spend massively more on employee development than employees will.

Employer: $2,000 for a 5 day class? No problem.

Employee out of pocket: $150 for 6 weeks? I wonder if I can just read some tutorials.

<comment><USER10> Enterprise certification programs are very often money grabs that companies fall for and employees get saddled with participating in. The last thing I am interested in is sitting through a "React Certified Developer" exam. I hope that is not where the industry is headed.

It is interesting though, I can imagine it's really hard to hire good talent for many hiring managers because it is difficult to spot who is good or bad. I am sure they wish there was some kind of standard measure like other industries have.

<comment><USER9> There's a lot more to professional development than certification bs. I've not done anything on Udacity, but I've spent my employer's money on Coursera before and it was well worth the time. I've also spent 10x the Coursera's price on a 5 day training that was good, too. There's good material out there, money ready to be spent on it, but the the current business model doesn't tap into it well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does getting a nanodegree from Udacity significantly improve ones hirability? For $600, it looks like one gets a shot at a nanodegree that has numerous soft deadlines, but with fixed, inflexible deadlines potentially piling up at the end of the course.

In my experience, having a mostly self paced class with no hard deadlines, then a stack of hard deadlines for projects at the very end results in stressed out students and a ton of poorly done work. Choose a model and stick to it, either its self paced with no defined end date, in which case people will learn at their own pace, or its a classic fixed format course, with a list of due dates published prior to the class even starting.

Edit: Additionally, the refund window seems much shorter than one sees at traditional colleges and there is still no accreditation for the nanodegrees Udacity lists. At accredited institutions, these types of workforce retraining programs have a bit more heft, and set you up to go straight into a decently paid job. It appears Udacity hasn't solved this problem.

<comment><USER12> Building a portfolio of open source work in conjunction with at-your-own-pace study is a great way to grow and showcase your abilities.

<comment><USER11> This portfolio is built by committing your classwork to git, I wouldn't say Udacity has this as a particular advantage. If I search for a course, usually the first couple results I'll get are git repos, regardless of the institution offering said course.

<comment><USER12> Right, building a portfolio isn't specific to any learning platform.

When I buy an online course or book, it is often reassuring for me that the course materials are available in an open source repository. This ensures that students can use the course materials in their personal projects, and increases the commonwealth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Udacity has been much better than my actual university for almost every topic I've went to them for. I'm sad to hear they're going through this.

On the topic, how does their security nanodegree look? It starts early 2019 and I've been seriously considering it.

<comment><USER14> > Udacity has been much better than my actual university for almost every > topic I've went to them for.

Which topics, in particular?

<comment><USER15> Andreas Zeller's "Software Debugging" course is excellent, although it's a topic that most universities wouldn't offer a full course on.

<comment><USER13> What did the course cover?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I paid for their self driving car class, very early. It was a mistake to do that.

Not because the class material or teaching was bad. On the contrary it was very good.

Rather because they did not let me access the materials after the class was over. They would not let me postpone completion of the class based on my schedule.

It was very much like a real course. I thought it would be more like a course that I could complete on my own schedule if I missed their schedule. I didn't want their certificate. I just wanted to learn the material.

After paying over $600 for the course, it really rubbed me the wrong way that they shut me out of the course lectures and materials. It would not have cost them anything to allow me to learn at my own pace. But they decided to go that way.

One of the points that was really annoying and borderline fraudulent is that their free courses don't operate like that. Those materials are available to you all the time. It's just the courses you pay for where your experience is worse. Go figure.

Anyway, $600 was a cheap way to learn the lesson not to buy a course from them again.

I really think there's a place for a good company to sell courses on emerging technology, and to charge premium prices. They just have to understand that most people need to be able to tackle the material in a self-paced manner. Some of us have jobs and families.

</comment><comment><USER17> Udacity essentially failed in reaching its base goal: becoming an university capable of issuing bachelors degrees, via the mooc teaching method.

No wonder it now needs "restructuring".

<comment><USER18> Coursera is going more in the way you describe: you can actually get a university degree from some institutions via Coursera and the degree says "Batchelor of XXX from well-known-university" (not "well-known-university online").

IMHO the big reason for the difference: Udacity original CEO: former professor (Thrun). Coursera original CEO: former president of Yale (Levin). This is not to imply one was smart and one was not; it just shows that the companies' implementations and objectives reflected the backgrounds of the respective CEOs. In the long run I haven't the faintest idea is better.

I do find the Udacity web site hard to follow, but I don't care at all about credentials/certification so might find the "nanodegree" idea more practical for my own purposes (compared to Coursera) if I wanted to take a class.

disclaimer: my gf works for Coursera, but honestly until she started there the only online teaching company I'd heard of was Khan. I learned all the info in the first two paragraphs from her.

<comment><USER19> Are US university presidents not required to be profs?

<comment><USER20> No. But it's common in part because the faculty tend not to respect those who aren't members of the club.

<comment><USER17> >the faculty tend not to respect those who aren't members of the club.

Classic faculty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This seems like a necessary reset, especially given their very high valuation. I personally enjoyed most of Udacity's Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree. The content was great and at the time I had a very supportive mentor (gutted they got rid of this feature). Moreover, they have managed to build a large community of current students and alumni who keep in touch even after the nanodegree is over.

I would suggest they reduce the number of courses they offer and improve quality. I tend to see them as a more "premium" MOOC but I do agree that quality of content is variable depending on course.

Another area they should naturally look at is training for employees in corporations. I really hope Sebastian Thrun can turn things around.

<comment><USER22> I completely agree with the quality arguments.

Everyone...let's be honest with ourselves and what we want from these moocs. I don't know about everyone else but what I want is high-quality courses that are online and basically free. Ads are okay and premium features are okay (like live tutoring or a human given lecture). When I say high-quality I want the content to be similar to what you would get from a Harvard, Stanford or other top university in the field in terms of the content. I want to learn the same topics. Don't water it down and make it simple. I want the real deal with the difficulty and all. Once that is accomplished..work on building tools that make these subjects easier to learn.

This is quite a hurdle to build but ultimately this is what we need. We need a free online university that teaches the same material you would learn from a top university. I don't like the watered down MOOCs that udacity, coursera and udemy offer.

<comment><USER23> _I don 't know about everyone else but what I want is high-quality courses that are online and basically free_

What you want then is EdX. Every course is backed by a real-world institution that people have heard of, and they are free to audit, pay only if you want the certificate and/or to support their nonprofit mission

<comment> barry-cotter There are occasional trash courses on EdX though. If I hadn't already started on LouvainX's MicroMaster's in International Law Amnesty International's course on the law of asylum and refugees would have turned me right off. The intellectual level of that course was round about middle school.

<comment><USER22> I've had the same issue! People say that EdX is so great and it is equivalent in course quality but it simply isn't. I haven't' seen that. All of the courses are heavily watered down...and I mean significantly watered down like you don't even learn 20% of what you learn from the traditional course in college.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Absolutely not surprise.

Unicorns like Udacity have extremely high valuation but are barely making any money.

Most of their spendings goes into Marketing and not actual R&D for education.

<comment><USER25> > Unicorns like Udacity

I thought that was an hyperbole. Then I checked on Wikipedia: "While not yet profitable as of February 2018, Udacity is valued at over $1B USD having raised $163M USD from noted investors".

<comment><USER26> Probably a good moment to remember that "unicorn" is an arbitrary label and valuations are entirely based on subjective speculation and extrapolations that may be entirely unrealistic.

It's never about how much money a company can make, it's only about how much someone might pay for that company. At the end of the day, a lot of startup investment is more like trading baseball cards than producing anything of actual value to consumers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Hopefully they make their classes focused more on teaching useful information than trying to make students feel good about completing projects that have the challenging portions already completed. I am going through the self-driving driving car nano degree and I do not see how this could do much to convince an employer you know anything

<comment><USER22> Yeah, that's what happens when you focus on buzz word trends. Self-driving car is a hip term right now but there is a ton of science, math and engineering that goes into it. For Udacity, which needs to impress investors, they need to focus on the money and that is by selling hyped up courses that make people think they're learning something. In reality, it is just the high-level overall of it with nothing significant. If they actually focused on the real science and engineering of self-driving cars then most would flunk of it very quickly...and no one would really want to go that route...unless you are a major geek of course that likes a challenge. The truth is the amount of those geeks that exist is very to the amount that would pay for the buzz word course. So of course udacity is going to focus on where the money is at.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Not surprised. I took one of their courses and found it to be incredibly shallow in comparison to actual college courses and edx. It's closer to those baby youtube tutorial video than anything that resembles a course.

Anyone notice the google trademark has been remove from their android course?

<comment><USER29> yeah, and in the course, you do get all those tutorial together. I never actually completed any course there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> What's the difference between Udacity and Udemy? Are they the same company?

Also, I'd love to hear about your favorite online courses. I took Andrew Ng's Machine Learning and Dan Boneh's Cryptography (both on Coursera) and they were excellent.

</comment><comment><USER31> Udacity's clean, curated, well designed approach lost to market based diverse mooc approach by others.</comment>


Stolen: "I just woke up to see a very large chunk of my bitcoin balance gone" - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/industry/2011/06/15/close-to-us500k-stolen-in-first-major-bitcoin-theft/

<comment><USER2> Previous reports:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2652900>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2654567></comment>


Richard Attenborough dies aged 90 - <AUTHOR> http://bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-28923074

<comment><USER2> For some of the younger people here, I highly recommend The Great Escape [1] if you're in a mood for a great WWII movie.

[1] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057115/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057115/)

<comment><USER3> Love that movie, one of those with an all-star cast that is actually good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought it was David Attenborough, the best nature program presenter there is. I'm relieved to see it isn't Sir David... this is sad nonetheless of course...

</comment><comment><USER5> Albert Einstein said of Mahatma Gandhi: "Generations to come, it may well be, will scarce believe that such a man as this one ever in flesh and blood walked upon this Earth."

When we were in school our class was taken to see the film "Gandhi". Our usually noisy class sat stunned throughout. Thanks to Attenborough the hope of Einstein came true.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not to be confused with his brother, the naturalist and broadcaster, David Attenborough. Took me a moment to grok that.

Still, a great has passed.

</comment><comment><USER7> how sad - he handed me my degree when I graduated. A friend of mine felt his beard on stage :)</comment>


Show HN: My Heroku client for iOS is now open source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aaronbrethorst/doppler-ios <comment><USER2> This is/was a great app!

I think it's one of the few (2, last I checked) that gives the user access to the heroku console, which can be really handy on the go.

Would love to have it fully operational again.</comment>


Adobe cancels all user accounts in Venezuela to comply with Trump order - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/10/adobe-cancels-all-user-accounts-in-venezuela-to-comply-with-trump-order/ <comment><USER2> This may not affect the majority of Adobe's customers (which I'd guess is outside Venezuela), but the takeaway for me is that anything you subscribe to is at the whims of someone else. You as a paying user have no control over it, leave alone any kind of ownership or licensing terms that would allow you to use it whenever, wherever (like with non-subscription software that you purchase, download and install). It's the same as DRM, just in a different form. Subscription doesn't necessarily mean the model adopted by Adobe and others, but it's becoming common to keep customers locked in. "You're a pirate and a thief until we can phone home and verify you're not" is the way customers are treated.

In this case, Adobe is also being dishonest. It will allow users to download their data till around the end of this month but will not offer refunds because the executive order means no dealings/interactions are allowed. How convenient an interpretation, Adobe! Shame!

Whenever you can, vote with your wallet for freedom, and let these subscription services know that you desire, and deserve, to be treated better.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you click on Ads? - <AUTHOR>

Personally I'm surprised how huge the Internet Advertisement industry is! <comment><USER2> I hate advertising with a fiery, livid passion, and want the advertising industry to die because all advertising tends towards the state of spam; it's about stealing precious seconds of your life to make you do something you don't want to do.

Yes, we will then need to find a new way to pay for content, and there may be less of it: but given the prevalence of content farms and SEO junk on the internet today, I think that would be a net win.

(Yes, my blog is currently getting north of 2500 spams a day and my original email account is flooded out by regular joe jobs of up to 60,000 spams a day. Why do you ask?)

</comment><comment><USER3> I never block ads.

I click ads if they're relevant to my interests.

An ad is much more likely to get a click if it's a plain text link, on a page that I like.

There are some exceptions - Unsolicited Bulk Email is never opened. It's deleted unread. (If it gets past the filters.)

I never click anything with sound, or flashing, or scrolling etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> I click on a couple per year perhaps. It's a rare occasion because I usually have adblock on.

</comment><comment><USER5> I never click an ad.

</comment><comment> kushagrawal</comment>


Show HN: We used 890M chess games to make an interactive opening graph - <AUTHOR> https://www.chessroots.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Using the Lichess Database containing every live Lichess game ever played, we created a website to visualize chess openings. Each move on the graph is colored by the average Lichess rating of a player who makes it, you can use the graph to visualize several games at once and find transpositions between games. Transpositions are particularly interesting on a graph as they can be hard to spot otherwise.

You can see data from players similar to you by filtering the graph by Elo or time control. If you are interested in really high rated games you can swap the database and see tournament games with >2000 Elo from the Kingbase dataset, or to go even higher you can view a dataset from chess engines playing each other. It can be surprising how different the graph looks in tournament games compared to even high rated Lichess games, to swap or filter the dataset click the graph button at the top of the screen.

If you want to see the opening from a specific game on the graph you can use the "Trace Game" feature, then you can paste a PGN in, or if you are a Lichess player you can grab games from your Lichess account. To find a position you are interested in you can click search and enter it into a chessboard.

<comment><USER3> When I first looked at the website, I thought that it looked like a nice student assignment or a weekend project. But seeing that you are already attempting to monetize this website and that you are treating this somewhat seriously, I have to tell you that your software is lightyears behind the chess opening modules of professional chess software such as ChessBase 15 or Chess Assistant 12.

[https://en.chessbase.com/post/announcing-grand- chessbase-15-...](https://en.chessbase.com/post/announcing-grand- chessbase-15-release)

[https://chessok.com/?page_id=19894](https://chessok.com/?page_id=19894)

<comment><USER4> This costs £2 per month, while ChessBase 15 costs anywhere from €119.90 to €469.90 and Chess Assistant costs €59.96.

<comment><USER5> I can't speak to Chess Assistant, but as a longtime Chessbase owner/user, it lets you:

* Search any database (proprietary or freely downloaded) for games matching positions (partial position matches too)

* Quiz yourself on openings; e.g. the actual memorization of the move orders, which I don't believe ChessRoots is showing

* Generate endless tactics problems to drill on

* Generate annotations for games; e.g. branching moves, variations, text comments etc.

* Graphical markup of positions, to show tactics like pins, skewers, forks, etc.

* ChessBase gives you a perpetual license. You can upgrade if you think new versions are worth it (they usually aren't). I happily used ChessBase 9 for several years before upgrading to 14.

It's really not a fair comparison. If ChessBase is Photoshop, ChessRoots as it is now is just a simple painting tool. This isn't to say that ChessRoots can't be something worth the price down the road, but for now this is not a great comparison.

Chess.com is also something that I've happily paid for for many years. For $99 a year, you get unlimited tactics training, engine analysis (with Stockfish), and a full license to what used to be called Chess Mentor, in addition to opening specific training.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The UI is not very clear. It's not obvious that you _must_ doubleclick a node to expand it. Also, the options in the first move is to wide and it doesn't enter in the screen.

Feature request: Can I permalink a node?

<comment><USER7> This might have been added since your comment, but for me it had a popup that told me to double click a node to expand it on first load.

<comment><USER8> If you need a popup to tell you how to use the most basic feature of your UI, that is a sign you need to rethink your UI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How is this different than a standard opening database? Chessgames.com has had this for probably at least 10 years-- [https://www.chessgames.com/perl/explorer](https://www.chessgames.com/perl/explorer) as do a bunch of other sites and software packages.

<comment><USER10> It's a toy compared to serious chess database software.

It looks like it only goes about 6 moves deep and often only considers the most popular moves. For example, after 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Be3, reaching one of the most popular positions in all chess, it only continues with 6...e5. Chessbase mobile shows 42k games for 6...e5 and 25k for 6...e6, as well as 17 other options, at least 3 of which are theoretically important. It also shows their statistical score and some stats about the strength of the players who chose each move. A couple of taps away are the full games and a computer analysis on my phone: on the desktop app I'd also have crowdsourced evaluations with up to three different engines at depths my phone would take all day to reach.

I see the warning to try it on tablet or desktop for the best experience, and maybe I'm missing some features I need to see later. But for now I don't think this even offers a cool visualization. I'd be interested to see a competitor here, but the state of the art (lichess, Chessbase, chessgames, chess24, Scid) is around 10 years ahead of this.

<comment><USER11> I don't think this is a toy and frankly, referring to the results of someone's hard work as 'a toy' is extremely disrespectful. Be kind.

<comment><USER12> My heart tells me that the vast majority of serious chess players are kind and genuine people (eg Jerry from ChessNetwork), but the amount of rank snobbery i actually observe severely limits my interest in learning more about the game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Think this dataset is heavily favored towards fast time controls, which gives the great lead on e4 over d4, as opposed to 365chess [https://www.365chess.com/opening.php](https://www.365chess.com/opening.php)

</comment><comment><USER14> This looks very interesting on first try, I'll take more of a look when I'm on a decent screen.

Can you at the moment, or would it be possible to show a position score calculation at each point? Obviously that is going to be time intensive if the scores are not already available in your source data, but it might be a useful addition as an option at any point. Explanatory comments also - <USER2> available - would be nice.

Excellent work, good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I like the idea of adding position evaluations. Perhaps we could do this with a precomputed pass over the dataset, or possibly do a shallow analysis in the browser using a js port of stockfish, though this is probably not the best option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It is not at all apparent that you have to purchase a subscription in order to see additional branches or go deeper.

Instead of a "\+ 21 Supporter Links" button that can not be clicked, how about a "Subscribe to see 21 other branches!" with a link to your Support Us page.

</comment><comment><USER16> If you follow the thickest lines, you get into the fried liver or 5... Na5 lines. Very suspicious.

This is DEFINITELY biased towards fast time controls and low ELO.

<comment><USER17> I am not suspicious :). I have taught my son to avoid the fried liver attack as black, but he has often walked into it and lost.

<comment><USER16> The fried liver was the first opening I ever studied while learning chess as a 8 year old. I had so much fun with it until someone pulled out 5... Na5 on me. Then I cried.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Awesome work! Is there a reason the isn't integrated into the Lichess opening explorer?

<comment><USER19> Lichess already has it inbuilt and in realtime. Just head into the analytics and then click on opening explorer.

<comment><USER18> Oh, I had not thought to look in the settings for the opening explorer until today. I knew it had the database of master's games, but didn't know you could explore games played on lichess and filter by rating. Learn something new all the time.

<comment><USER20> What's missing is restricting it to your own games only, like chess.com has for members. I think it'll come one day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Cool interface! What did you use to build it?

Does anyone know of any JavaScript based tools that let you explore graphs in a similar way?

</comment><comment><USER22> h3, e5, uh...

</comment><comment><USER23> What do I need to know in order to make something like this from scratch as a novice programmer?

Is understanding the HTML source code enough?

<comment><USER10> Far from it. You'll need to know, at a mininum, some Javascript and a database technology such as SQL. But it's good to start with being able to make a web page in HTML and figure out how to add new small features one at a time, learning new technologies as they come up.</comment></comment>


Array.prototype.flatten not Web-compatible because of old versions of MooTools - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tc39/proposal-flatMap/pull/56#issue-173327251 <comment><USER2> You'd think that this was an April Fool's joke. I hope that there are enough sensible members on the committee to reign in the emotional immaturity of their younger members.

</comment><comment><USER3> High level TL;DR:

A new JavaScript spec is proposing adding a flatten() method to Arrays. An old JavaScript library that some websites use however also uses a flatten() method on arrays, and browsers supporting the new spec would cause those old websites to break.</comment>


Judge says Kleiner Perkins should get $276K from Ellen Pao - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/judge-says-kleiner-perkins-should-get-276k-from-ellen-pao/ <comment><USER2> Hopefully this puts an end to this nonsense. Seems like she was passed up for promotion because she was not the best candidate, let's all move on. Honestly isn't she the CEO of reddit? It seems like she should be focusing her energy on that, and building value, instead of trying to extract money from KP.

<comment><USER3> It feels like the recent changes at Reddit regarding discrimination and such are a direct result of her losing this lawsuit. It's as if she never put down the pitchfork and simply started attacking a different venue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The main discussion of this story can be found here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9736171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9736171)

<comment><USER5> Why is this thread not showing up in the feed?

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure what you mean by the feed, but that post has been heavily flagged by users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm happy. We need to have less rot in our court systems. this should be a lesson to anyone that wants to waste the time of our courts with nonsense lawsuits.</comment>