Facebook's seized files published by MPs - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-46456695 <comment> Trill-I-Am Here is a direct link to the files themselves:

[https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons- committees/cultu...](https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons- committees/culture-media-and-sport/Note-by-Chair-and-selected-documents- ordered-from-Six4Three.pdf)

<comment><USER2> Really interesting stuff in there.

> Facebook email 24 January 2013

> Justin Osofsky – 'Twitter launched Vine today which lets you shoot multiple > short video segments to make one single, 6-second video. As part of their > NUX, you can find friends via FB. Unless anyone raises objections, we will > shut down their friends API access today. We've prepared reactive PR, and I > will let Jana know our decision.

> MZ – 'Yup, go for it.'

<comment><USER3> Nothing says evil more than preparing reactive PR to bury your competitors. And the nonchalant way his response sends chills down my spine. These people will suffocate innovation just to win.

<comment><USER4> > These people will suffocate innovation just to win.

I don't like Zuck, but come on, you just described every CEO in America, that when they have a choice they will do this.

<comment><USER5> I don't agree that Elon Musk is like this (quite the reverse) and I'm sure there are many other CEOs who aren't too.

Let's not normalise sociopathology, even given its prevalence amongst business executives.

<comment><USER6> I'm no Musk fan but he opened up all the Tesla patents so other manufacturers can use their intellectual property.

Maybe he had ulterior motives... Don't know. But opening up patents is certainly the opposite of squashing innovation.

<comment><USER5> Yes, that was my point. That Musk actively encourages other companies to share in his companies' innovations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I worked at Facebook for 5 years on Workplace and Internal Tools. I am typically very critical of the company nowadays, but even so find the discussion here difficult to digest.

People are complex. They are more complex than an action, or even a group of actions. To take a person and alias them into being "good" or "bad" based on an action or a series of actions is to explicitly _dehumanize_ them for the sake of making the world simpler. It is a poor model, and in a Dale-Carnegie- way it leads to poor outcomes, as you close the dialog with that person that allows you to change opinions and outcomes. It is the same with groups or companies: some parts of groups do good from some vantage point, some do bad.

I found myself inspired by a lot of what Facebook did. I loved working inside Infrastructure there, I was amazed by what people were innovating on every day. Projects like charitable causes have raised a lot for charity. I've seen the Are you Safe feature reduce so much stress during disasters. I keep meaningful dialogs going with friends I don't get to see often on FB and Instagram. It makes me really happy to see my friends thriving.

One of Napoleon's great gifts was in compartmentalizing pieces of his life. His tumultuous and frankly soul-crushing personal life (which affected him deeply) with Josephine never got in the way of his military victories. I wonder if that's a good model, up-to-a-point for people and groups. With people, by compartmentalizing some unsavory perspective someone has, you have the ability to change it later on through discussion.

... in groups: if everyone good leaves organizations because they're "bad," well, those organizations will just be filled with the worst of us soon enough.

<comment><USER8> > People are complex. They are more complex than an action, or even a group of > actions. To take a person and alias them into being "good" or "bad" based on > an action or a series of actions is to explicitly dehumanize them for the > sake of making the world simpler.

Correct. But we're not talking about people here, we're talking about a corporate entity as a whole. It's a bit more complex than a person. It has an incentive model and a set of norms (culture) which enables people to do good/bad based on the situation to maximize their personal gains (whichever those are - personal, material, spiritual, you name it).

If this consistently enables people to do what is perceived externally as unethical, we have a problem.

Nice spin on it, but Facebook is still a bad actor (despite what you say). I held this opinion since the beginning, before all the leaks and all the scandals but nobody believed me. Very smart people were incentivized to join using the entourage (come work with other smart people) and money, then slightly brain-washed in a cult-like manner (us vs them, wartimes, etc..). This enabled them to ignore blatant unethical behavior. I've seen all of these first-hand and it's bad. Bad bad bad.

<comment><USER9> > Nice spin on it, but Facebook is still a bad actor (despite what you say).

This needs to be a conclusion, not a premise. I do not have a firm belief about whether or not this is true, but I keep seeing people list bad things about FB and draw a straight line to "thus it is evil". Ideally, we would list the good/bad it does and assign weights to these points to determine if it is net harmful.

I want to be convinced, HN, but when I read comments like the ones in this thread (FB has no positive value whatsoever for its users, FB sells users' data), it makes it hard for me to appraise.

<comment><USER10> > This needs to be a conclusion, not a premise.

What makes you think it's a premise and not a conclusion?

> Ideally, we would list the good/bad it does and assign weights to these > points to determine if it is net harmful.

I have 11 years of data points and experiences about FB, I'm not going to enumerate all of them whenever there is another. I'll just say "typically fucking Facebook".

At this point, I don't even feel obligated to remember it all -- I can trust myself enough. We do that with "evil" people in our lives, too. We don't remember every dirty detail. We remember that there were a bunch of things, and that overall, we had it at some point. I save the conclusion and the checksums and that's enough.

If you think I'm operating on a premise, instead of having come to a conclusion, how is that not you operating on a premise?

> I want to be convinced

Maybe, maybe not. What you are _doing_ is delegitimizing even the conclusions others arrived at, by simply calling all of that mere premises. You saw a bunch of posts that struck you as knee-jerk, so all of it is knee-jerk.

You have to form your own opinion either way, that burden is not on others. Do you also expect anyone who says anything positive to give some kind of thorough, 1000-page assessment of all the benefits and cons? No, of course not. Same goes for criticism.

I for one don't _care_ about the "evilness" of people I never met. For me the harm done through ignorance or fear or "evil" (which is just another form of weakness really) or not caring enough is the same harm.

<comment><USER11> > At this point, I don't even feel obligated to remember it all -- I can trust > myself enough. We do that with "evil" people in our lives, too. We don't > remember every dirty detail. We remember that there were a bunch of things, > and that overall, we had it at some point. I save the conclusion and the > checksums and that's enough.

> If you think I'm operating on a premise, instead of having come to a > conclusion, how is that not you operating on a premise?

A mental conclusion can be a discussion premise. It doesn't invalidate your conclusion to say it should be a conclusion not a premise, because you're asserting a premise in a discussion which you are not (yet) supporting.

Also consider that you have seen eleven years of data points and experiences from the point of view of a small subset of users; there could perhaps be an equivalent cache of positive datapoints which tend to be significantly less interesting to report on.

Thus, supporting your point with concrete examples is how you contribute to a discussion, because then you and any adversaries can challenge you on the merits of your argument.

That's what the conclusion/premise separation is about.

<comment><USER10> > Also consider that you have seen eleven years of data points and experiences > from the point of view of a small subset of users; there could perhaps be an > equivalent cache of positive datapoints which tend to be significantly less > interesting to report on.

You know what a thief can be like? 99.99% of the time, they don't steal. They sleep, they brush their teeth, they do all sorts of stuff, and every 2 weeks they take all the savings from an elderly woman.

How often you do need to see someone doing that to consider them a thief? Would you _really_ care about any positive stories after seeing what you saw?

> That's what the conclusion/premise separation is about.

You can't speak for that other person. Let them respond for themselves.

<comment><USER11> > You can't speak for that other person. Let them respond for themselves.

Sounds like you're more interested in competing with someone than talking about ideas.

> Would you really care about any positive stories after seeing what you saw?

...yes? Of course? I don't automatically dehumanize that hypothetical person for their deeds, whether I approve or not, or believe there should be consequences. Like, doesn't Facebook collaborate with law enforcement in tracking down predators and scammers and the like? It's not as simple as "bad. go away."

You should remember enough to make a proper argument, dude. A solid conclusion needs solid support.

<comment><USER10> > Sounds like you're more interested in competing with someone than talking > about ideas.

No, I want to talk about the idea they expressed, not what you read into it. I can only do that with them.

> ...yes? Of course? I don't automatically dehumanize

Who's talking about dehumanizing? How is considering someone a thief dehumanizing?

edit2: Facebook is a company. It can't be dehumanized, it's not a person in the first place. People in it are responsible for what they do. Someone who fought shitty decision and then left is different than someone who, say, hires a firm to smear critics. That goes without saying as far as I'm concerned. But my thief example refers to Facebook, you see? Just because apparently my argument isn't easy to follow for everyone, doesn't mean it doesn't stand.

So, where is the dehumanization? Who is being dehumanized when someone comes to the conclusion that FB is on the whole "bad"? Because we're not appreciating all the good, supposedly? When someone is a thief, or a murderer, or a company is, then all their fantastic properties they may have is interesting for their personal friends. But not to the police, judges, or wider society. They _know_ that the person has probably a lot of reasons for how they became that way, and nice sides to them, but they already have their own friends, it's simply completely out of scope of the subject at hand, unless it's directly related to the "crime".

> Like, doesn't Facebook collaborate with law enforcement in tracking down > predators and scammers and the like?

Yes, and that thief who sometimes robs elderly women who then freeze to death outside, also has child, and he's very great with that child, and he's singing in a choir, and all sorts of great things. But you don't judge a meal by the freshest ingredients, but by the most spoiled. You judge a person by their worst deeds, and likewise a company. Again, we're talking about judgement with a capital justice here, not being friends, thinking we're better, or thinking they're evil and we're good, or _any_ of that.

> You should remember enough to make a proper argument, dude.

I think my argument is just fine, and it even seems to get to you a little.

edit: And what post of mine are you even referring to? Where did I make an argument without examples? I was responding to someone else complaining that everyone who thinks Facebook is "evil" (let's just say bad) is operating on a premise. I was responding to that general point, I'm not decebalus1, who in turn didn't have "Facebook is evil" as their main point either.

Their main point, if you would follow the guidelines, hasn't been addressed by _anyone_. Their main point is the first two paragraphs, the rest is bonus. How come you are trying to teach how to "make a proper argument, dude", but didn't notice that?

Oh, and clicking buttons instead of reasoning kinda gives away who is interested in discussion, and who is interested in dehumanization and censorship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sometimes, even amidst the Brexit madness, I love our Parliament. Publishing and seizing documents like this is a move that proves politicians have the spine to look after people's interests. Time to get serious, act on this, and break up Facebook forever.

<comment><USER13> Seizing documents for a valid inquiry is one thing.

But does that follow that publishing them is OK too?

From the outside, it looks like these politicians are frustrated that a foreign CEO ignored their demand to appear before them (because he has no legal obligation to do so), and have decided to retaliate by releasing embarrassing private internal documents obtained during an investigation in the hopes that Facebook will be politically and financially damaged.

I get that people hate Facebook, but does that justify any level of bad behavior as long as it harms them?

<comment><USER14> All Parliamentary committees publish online, whether evidence is written or oral.

You can ask for an exception for part of your evidence, if you fully explain why, which the committee considers. The usual reasons for discretion apply. It's almost unheard of for some evidence not to be published at all, though it has happened. 1980s I think was the last case.

No idea what dusty precedent or procedures apply when someone refuses to attend or documents are seized. That doesn't happen much.

Maybe no one asked. Maybe this _is_ the redacted for sensitivity version as we have no idea the amount seized in the first place. I think we'd have to wait for the report to know.

<comment><USER13> Excellent, thank you for an actual response that isn't "haha, screw Facebook, who cares!"

If this is just part of the normal investigative procedure rather than a gross abuse of authority, then so be it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here's Zuckerberg's response in which he "shares some more context around the decisions we made": [https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10105559172610321](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10105559172610321)

Quick textual analysis: in a pithy 623-word statement, Zuck manages to mention "shady", "sketchy" or "abusive apps" no less than 7 times. 8 times, if you include the time he mentioned Cambridge Analytica without using a sketchy adjective.

Notice the spin as Facebook the White Knight protecting the public from the evils of sketchy apps. Unclear how this will play out given public losing trust in Facebook itself.

[Reference]

1\. "some developers built shady apps that abused people's data"

2\. "to prevent abusive apps"

3\. "a lot of sketchy apps -- like the quiz app that sold data to Cambridge Analytica"

4\. "Some of the developers whose sketchy apps were kicked off our platform sued us"

5\. "we were focusing on preventing abusive apps"

6\. "mentioned above that we blocked a lot of sketchy apps"

7\. "We've focused on preventing abusive apps for years"

8\. "this was the change required to prevent the situation with Cambridge Analytica"

<comment><USER16> can you attach the text for people that have black listed all FB IPs ?

<comment><USER15> How about this?

[https://web.archive.org/web/20181205191905/https://www.faceb...](https://web.archive.org/web/20181205191905/https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10105559172610321)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Facebook used data provided by the Israeli analytics firm Onavo to determine > which other mobile apps were being downloaded and used by the public. It > then used this knowledge to decide which apps to acquire or otherwise treat > as a threat

> there was evidence that Facebook's refusal to share data with some apps > caused them to fail

Stuff like this should trigger the EU Commissioner for Competition to withdraw the authorization that "allowed" FB to acquire Whatsapp and should force a split between the two entities. A fine (no matter how big) will be seen by FB and its investors just as "cost of doing business". Facebook in its current form needs to be split up back again.

<comment><USER18> I have no particular love for FB or what they've done with data, but these I don't understand why either of those points is particularly controversial or even unusual.

> Facebook used data provided by the Israeli analytics firm Onavo to determine > which other mobile apps were being downloaded and used by the public. It > then used this knowledge to decide which apps to acquire or otherwise treat > as a threat

Checking out your competition is pretty standard among all businesses, as is buying out the ones you can't beat.

> there was evidence that Facebook's refusal to share data with some apps > caused them to fail

Sharing or not sharing data with another app is likewise not an unusual decision. FB is not a public utility - they can not work with other apps for any reason, or no reason at all. And this is a particularly ironic thing to point out, considering that the main thrust is complaining that they _did_ share data with other apps. So it's bad if they do share data, but also bad if they don't?

<comment><USER19> > Sharing or not sharing data with another app is likewise not an unusual > decision. FB is not a public utility - they can not work with other apps for > any reason, or no reason at all. And this is a particularly ironic thing to > point out, considering that the main thrust is complaining that they _did_ > share data with other apps. So it's bad if they do share data, but also bad > if they don't?

To me, this would be Facebook taking advantage of their stronghold on the market to continue to dominate the market.

Let's remember this is not Facebook's data, this is their users' data. It should be up to the User who they can share their data with, but they weren't given the choice to use their data with an app because Facebook decided they didn't like the way the other business competes with them in some aspect or how they aren't making money out of the third party app. An example is Facebook won't grant Influencer Marketing Companies access to their API even though the user (The Influencer) wants them to have the data so they can get paid based on the views, shares, comments, and likes of the posts they've been contracted for. User has a legit desire to share that data to the point where they will take screenshots, GDPR deletions, etc to fulfil the need for that data to be shared. Facebook's reason for not allowing them access is simple, they don't make any money out of the deal.

So if they refuse to allow you to share your data with people you want to share it with, that is bad. Sharing your data with companies you don't want to share with is also bad.

<comment><USER20> > Let's remember this is not Facebook's data, this is their users' data.

No, it's not - short of a change in law it is Facebook's data. Facebook collected, maintained , and analyzed the data. It's their data, the fact that their users allowed Facebook to collect it does not change that fact.

GDPR allows users to view the data Facebook collected about them. If users want manually request their data from Facebook and provide it to competing apps they can. But this is the user's prerogative, not Facebook's.

<comment><USER21> >> this is their users' data

> No, it's not - short of a change in law it is Facebook's data.

Er, actually it is. Under GDPR, and under previous data protection rules that lacked meaningful enforcement, users own their data. Companies at most get to "borrow" and/or keep it safe for them.

Alas, this fundamental fact seems to not have quite made it everywhere yet..

[https://digitalguardian.com/blog/tackling-gdpr- challenge-1-e...](https://digitalguardian.com/blog/tackling-gdpr- challenge-1-eu-residents-are-new-data-owner)

<comment><USER22> Does anyone have an explanation as to why parent is downvoted? Is the information they presented incorrect?

<comment><USER23> Possible reason: It is actually intentionally avoided to use the concept of "ownership", since those advocating for "data ownership" generally mean things like "if people own their data, that means they can give it to companies and then that company can do what it wants with the data, since it is its property", which is more or less the opposite of what the goal of this privacy regulation is. The term is used sometimes in more general material, but it is problematic framing. People have rights to their data and how it is used, but they don't derive from ownership.

<comment><USER21> So in that particular sense, it is even _stronger_ than ownership, at least in terms of preventing facebook from ever becoming the owner. (Not in the sense of having all of the rights usually associated with ownership, which include selling)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Just to underline the obvious point the lawmaker is making, perhaps if Zuckerberg would show up to hearings that lawmakers invite him to, then he would be able to provide the context that Facebook says is missing.

<comment><USER13> Translation: if you turn down our "invitation", we'll misuse our legal power to seize your internal documents and then publish them to embarrass you.

Accurate?

To be clear, I'm not saying that they can't seize and investigate or even punish if the law was broken. That's the job of government. But this just seems like a petty attempt to embarrass. However, I'm American and haven't been following the story closely, so I may be missing context.

<comment><USER25> > I'm American [...] I may be missing context.

You are missing context: look up "Parliamentary Privilege" and "Parliamentary Sovereignty" which do not have US equivalents. The "invitation" was effectively a subpoena.

<comment><USER26> Didn't the fact that is not a UK citizen also basically safe him from being dragged to Parliament by the police?

Im pretty sure, if you are an UK citizen and they summon you, they will eventually just grab you and put yourself in front of Parliament.

<comment><USER27> No, since the person who's documents were seized was in the UK on a trip. Except for special cases where immunity is granted, physical presence in a country means that one is subject to the laws and jurisdiction of the country. In this case, the UK Parliament had the authority to compel the production of the documents in question, by threat of imprisonment if necessary.

A question for any legal scholars out there: the seizure of the documents would be contempt of court in the US, could it not? The person who was threatened with arrest has the defense of duress, so could the US court charge the MPs who ordered the seizure? I don't think the UK would extradite, but if the MPs were to visit the US without immunity, could they be arrested for violating US law (even though their actions are apparently within their rights under UK law)?

<comment><USER13> Again, the seizure isn't the problem, the public disclosure is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > "As you know all the growth team is planning on shipping a permissions > update on Android at the end of this month. They are going to include the > 'read call log' permission... This is a pretty high-risk thing to do from a > PR perspective but it appears that the growth team will charge ahead and do > it."

Meanwhile, at the Growth Team™ office: "I think implanting these chips into our customer's brain is high risk, but we're going to charge ahead anyway".

<comment><USER29> "Truth serum in the water supply? Don't mind if I do!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> [https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons- committees/cultu...](https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons- committees/culture-media-and-sport/Note-by-Chair-and-selected-documents- ordered-from-Six4Three.pdf)

Exhibit 79 – linking data access spending on advertising at Facebook

Email from Konstantinos Papamiltidas [FB] to Ime Archibong [FB]

18 September 2013 – 10.06am From email about slides prepared for talk to DevOps at 11am on 19 September 2013

'Key points: 1/ Find out what other apps like Refresh are out that we don't want to share data with and figure out if they spend on NEKO. Communicate in one-go to all apps that don't spend that those permission will be revoked. Communicate to the rest that they need to spend on NEKO $250k a year to maintain access to the data.'

</comment><comment><USER31> I think Facebook is terrible. So I don't use it. I have a choice.

These same MPs would likely howl in fury if their secret communications were stolen and published by an entity like Wikileaks (for example). Be careful what you wish for.

Of course the difference here is that one is "legal".

<comment><USER32> Let them howl. When they've been involved in shady stuff that's against the public interest, I will have no sympathy for them, just as I don't when FB is the "victim". I am glad they didn't decide to sit on it because of any fears about "I don't want this happening to me, so I won't snitch".

By the way, these emails were not obtained via hacking/phishing, so the Wikileaks comparison doesn't make any sense.

<comment><USER33> How many of these MPs show up in Panama/Paradise Papers?

This was a valid question. When talking about them getting and publishing the FB files etc.. and asking if they would want their dirty laundry aired - asking if they show up in those releases is both relevant and obvious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> [https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons- committees/cultu...](https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons- committees/culture-media-and-sport/Note-by-Chair-and-selected-documents- ordered-from-Six4Three.pdf)

Exhibit 170 – Mark Zuckerberg discussing linking data to revenue

Mark Zuckerberg email – dated 7 October 2012

'I've been thinking about platform business model a lot this weekend…if we make it so devs can generate revenue for us in different ways, then it makes it more acceptable for us to charge them quite a bit more for using platform. The basic idea is that any other revenue you generate for us earns you a credit towards whatever fees you own us for using plaform. For most developers this would probably cover cost completely. So instead of every paying us directly, they'd just use our payments or ads products. A basic model could be:

Login with Facebook is always free Pushing content to Facebook is always free Reading anything, including friends, costs a lot of money. Perhaps on the order of $0.10/user each year.

For the money that you owe, you can cover it in any of the following ways:

Buys ads from us in neko or another system Run our ads in your app or website (canvas apps already do this) Use our payments Sell your items in our Karma store.

Or if the revenue we get from those doesn't add up to more that the fees you owe us, then you just pay us the fee directly.'

<comment><USER13> Seems pretty reasonable to me? Especially in the context of tossing ideas around.

Note that I don't read this as "let's get devs on board and then yank the rug out from under them later". Rather, it seems like they're trying to find a way to make it win/win, where devs can either pay for the platform directly, or use it for free if they can do so with a business model that helps Facebook make money elsewhere.

<comment><USER10> > _devs can generate revenue for us in different ways, then it makes it more > acceptable for us to charge them quite a bit more_

Generate revenue _for_ us, _so_ we can charge them _quite a bit more_.

> _The basic idea is that any other revenue you generate for us earns you a > credit towards whatever fees you own us for using plaform. For most > developers this would probably cover cost completely._

So devs can get credit (they can't convert to money I guess?), and Facebook gets more money. That's just win/win if you don't consider the audience FB "generates revenue" from, and then it also would depend on how much you would care to save, say $10 while generating $50 for FB, or saving $10 to generate $500, and what those figures would be.

Money isn't "made", it's always shifted around. Value can be generated, not money. So making money for Facebook means taking it from somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Hell yeah.

I have been involved with companies that have wanted to do things with Facebook non-personal data (eg. pages) and could never get anybody to talk. Some of these were little companies in the "flyover" states, one of these was pretty good sized in L.A.

When you see them playing favorites you see another thing that S.V. will struggle with for years.

One reason NYC is so important for finance is that people go have lunch and trade insider information without leaving a paper trail.

In the same way S.V. companies circle jerk each other giving each other special privileges, staging fake acquisitions so sons of investment bankers can make it look like they were successful startup founders, etc. Sometimes they even get a stooge to come in from a place like Saudi Arabia or Japan to buy them out so they can tell the people who put money in their fund that they made money. Those folks will lose a lot of their A.U.M. but they probably get paid off in some other way.

S.V. doesn't have any problems that wouldn't be solved by opening offices in the flyover states. But there are two things about those people.

They don't listen They won't listen

</comment><comment><USER35> Facebook has released a statement[1] that accuses Six4Three of "cherrypicked" document dump, that is mostly just denials with no supporting evidence. If only they hadn't undermined their own trustworthiness by, a few weeks ago, denying that senior executives were culpable in their relationship with Definers and then doing a news dump right before a major US holiday admitting that they had lied in their first response, then people might believe their unsupported assertions.

[1]: [https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/12/response-to- six4three-d...](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/12/response-to-six4three- documents/)

</comment><comment><USER36> I worked for a company that was bought by blackberry and then split up. A large portion of our developers and engineers went to Facebook in Ireland and Seattle/California.

This is my personal experience, so I don't know how widespread this is, but I suspect its common.

I stayed friendly with many ex-coworkers on Facebook for awhile, and saw some attitudes move towards a harsh alt-leftist view and some went extremely violent. Anti-Isreal statements started popping up and some Jewish facebook engineers started to self-censor and talk in personal messages instead of posting, commenting to me if I was also seeing this attitude in posts.

Could just be how divided facebook made people, amplifying echo-chambers and enforcing views that "their side" is correct, but many of my old co-workers show a large political divide and a few just are wildly hardcore political in very violent tones. How this bleeds into their job, only time will tell.

I finally had to make facebook just for family and close friends and removed the app from my phone, and only use it in a web browser. I'm guilty of enjoying a good meme or political cartoon, but things are definitely more divided now. I would not doubt the documents reflect more political views seeping into their products.

</comment><comment><USER37> The documents[0] contain market research done by Onavo[1]. This data may have been bought from them, and if so it was probably bought under a non-disclose agreement, as is typical for those arrangements (the reasoning being that Onavo can't sell the data more than once if it is released publicly). This could pose a problem for Facebook if Onavo decides that another release like this is likely to happen again. I'd be interested if anyone can weigh in on what the think the liability situation will be here.

[0][https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons- committees/cultu...](https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons- committees/culture-media-and-sport/Note-by-Chair-and-selected-documents- ordered-from-Six4Three.pdf)

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo)

<comment><USER38> The bigger problem is that, as I understand it, all of these documents were obtained from someone suing Facebook who had access to them as part of a lawsuit against Facebook under a court order that required them to be kept confidential.

<comment><USER39> That makes me wonder if a confidentiality agreement should ever include sharing that information with the government? Maybe NDAs from publicly traded companies should always exempt sharing with elected officials?

<comment><USER40> Speech and debate clause.

<comment><USER41> That protects the members of parliament, not their sources.

<comment><USER40> Ah. Act of state doctrine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Facebook's response: Response to Six4Three Documents - [https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/12/response-to- six4three-d...](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/12/response-to-six4three- documents/) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18611492](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18611492)

</comment><comment><USER43> Whoever is still investing in Facebook are complicit in aiding criminal activity, e.g. aiding unfair competition.

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm very interested in what will be in these documents. Twitter is hyped about them

<comment><USER45> as mentioned somewhere else in this thread, here is the direct link: [https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons- committees/cultu...](https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons- committees/culture-media-and-sport/Note-by-Chair-and-selected-documents- ordered-from-Six4Three.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Keep in mind this is all punishment by tptb for Facebook execs getting out of line and thinking they had a seat at the table. Not enough dues paid yet.

</comment><comment><USER47> Good for them, thank you!

The sooner facebook is controlled and broken up into pieces, the better. They are a massive net negative on civilization.

Do you work at Facebook? Shame on you.

<comment><USER48> Yes, I do work at Facebook. I'm not going to get into some protracted argument about whether that makes me a bad person, or already was, but I'd like to give you something to think about.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that we can neatly divide tech workers into good and bad. Likewise for companies. All categories are non-empty, and certain to remain so. What's the optimal assignment of workers to companies? Is it never beneficial for a good person to work at a bad company, perhaps making it less bad? Is it never harmful for a bad person to work at a good company, perhaps making it less good? Is it better to have all of the bad people concentrated at a few companies, or distributed throughout the industry?

Once you start thinking about it, I think you'll see that the Manichaean "entirely and immutably good or entirely and immutably bad" model just isn't very useful. Maybe we should talk about good vs. bad behaviors instead of demonizing (or for that matter idolizing) people - especially large groups of people in aggregate.

<comment><USER49> I don't work at FB and wouldn't (nor do I even have an account), but even I can recognize that to many the benefits of FB outweigh the negatives. In a tech-centric board such as this one coupled with media/government-driven narratives to the contrary, it can appear to be obvious that there are way more negatives than positives, the world would be better w/out FB, and you should quit. But in a non-tech-environment the view is sometimes the complete opposite, and people just can't fathom why people _want_ to use FB (as opposed to them being "forced" due to network effects and lack of alternatives).

This is a microcosm of our political environment where when one subjectively determines the weight of harm, they attempt to objectively apply it to others. Sure, FB does immoral things. But why can't we simply recognize that people disagree about whether harm exists, whether value exists, and what weights are applied to each? As you say, this is not clear good vs bad, this is some good vs some bad and at what levels.

<comment><USER13> _This is a microcosm of our political environment where when one subjectively determines the weight of harm, they attempt to objectively apply it to others. Sure, FB does immoral things. But why can 't we simply recognize that people disagree about whether harm exists, whether value exists, and what weights are applied to each?_

This is a really important point. Political movements often attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by a differing value system, but that doesn't rile up your base like proclaiming the other side is evil.

I should remember this myself :)

<comment><USER50> > Political movements often attribute to malice that which is adequately > explained by a differing value system

Evil is only meaningful in the context of a value system.

Malice is will for things which are evil.

Valuing something positively is willing for it to transpire.

Valuing something negatively is seeing it as evil.

Valuing something positively that others value negatively is, therefore, exactly malice in the context of the others' value system (it's not wrongly attributed to malice.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> What does MP stand for?

<comment><USER52> Member of Parliament.

<comment><USER51> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> > "But the facts are clear: we've never sold people's data."

What

<comment><USER54> It's 100% true. They never sold people's data. They sold _access to people 's data_.

Slimy, corporate lawyerese 101.

<comment><USER10> Wow, that seems crazy even for lawyerese.. I mean, if I have an "all you can eat" restaurant, do I sell food, or do I just sell access to food? What about a buffet where a person can fill their plate once, but can pick among many things?

<comment><USER55> Not really. It's like buying a space on the wall to advertise inside the all you can eat restaurant.

The restaurant isn't telling you who goes into the restaurant. They're just selling you access to those people through that ad.

\-----

The other problem, the Cambridge Analytica problem, is a bit different.

It's like saying that the restaurant requires you to tell them your name and other personal information in order to eat at the restaurant. Maybe it's to send flyers or deals, doesn't matter.

The problem happens when the restaurant also asks for your _friends_ personal information, and you give it to them without asking your friends.

That's basically what Facebook is under fire about. Allowing your friends to very easily give your information out without you knowing.

<comment><USER10> I think "giving information about friends" is kind of a stretch. _Facebook_ has that information. Clicking something so Facebook does something with it isn't quite the same as, say, entering all that info into a text field. Maybe it is legally, but morally, from a commen sense perspective, FB gives the info out. Allowing API access is giving info. We all know how servers work. You can't "take" something, it always gets sent.

<comment><USER55> That's why I said "very easily". I'm not saying it's necessarily the friend's fault, but the trigger is one of your friends clicking "Accept" on one of these apps.

I'm also just clarifying what happened, because people don't seem to understand how any of it works. "Facebook sells your data" is very far from reality, and yet the reality can be considered just as bad.

<comment><USER10> > "Facebook sells your data" is very far from reality, and yet the reality can > be considered just as bad.

Yeah, but those are the cases where it's especially important to not mix things up, so thanks for elaborating!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Holy cow, I feel very lucky I dont have facebook now :O

</comment><comment><USER57> It's terrifying that people want to use the government to regulate a free website that nobody even has to use and which has not actually caused anyone harm.

GDPR tyrants: get a life and stop using Facebook. Seriously.

<comment><USER58> > which has not actually caused anyone harm.

This is not a statement you can just throw out there.

For example

[https://www.wired.com/story/how-facebooks-rise-fueled- chaos-...](https://www.wired.com/story/how-facebooks-rise-fueled-chaos-and- confusion-in-myanmar/)

<comment><USER57> Again. Hyperbole. We're adults here. Who are you trying to convince with that crap?

No, Facebook is a website. They aren't involved in genocide. They aren't why Trump is president.

<comment><USER59> By that logic, any website that hosts cp isn't involved. Any website where you can buy slaves isn't complicit.

<comment><USER60> That means that any site that allows two people to communicate can be complicit -- be it forums, discussion boards or chat/messages. Criminals can easily adopt code words, or encrypt their plaintext communications in ways that a website would be unable to police. How about email? Are email providers also required to detect all criminal activity occurring in their emails?

Ultimately it's a massive burden placed on companies if they are required to read and sort through all communication occurring on their platform and it also necessarily removes any and all privacy from every communication platform. Do we do the same thing for cell phone manufacturers or telecom providers? What about monitors that display the messages or keyboards that let people type the messages soliciting illegal activity?

<comment><USER58> I think it's worth considering just how much influence Facebook has that many of the other entities you mentioned do not. I also think it's worth considering possible solutions to problems that Facebook may or may not be the direct cause of before jumping directly to "Welp! Slippery slope, cant do anything about it i guess!".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> So, FB gave some companies preferential access after removing it for devs, they surreptitiously collected phone data after given permission to, used cross-business analytics for M&A or competition info, was choosy and chatty about who got what data and its value.

I agree there are clear immoralities at play, especially with collecting phone call info, but not sure that it is worthy of a government inquiry of such size. Much of this is standard business and worthy of being decried as other immoral business acts might. Would we expect such an inquiry for any other company or are there politics at play? I feel the Cambridge Analytica issue is more which hunt than a real-harm-exacted issue. How would one quantify the harm? Is this vengeance for Brexit, Trump, and/or Zuck no-show?

All I've learned is to be cautious when having email conversations on sensitive subjects (no paper trail) and to be cautious when flying execs to the UK and to be cautious having any real business there for fear of having confidential information raided and published. Obviously it's not standard practice but, as with other government-imposed internet tactics of late, as a business owner it just marks an increase on my "riskometer" that I use to evaluate where to do business.

<comment><USER61> WRT doing business in the UK.

You need to understand that this is a _highly_ unusual situation.

Part of the UK Parliamentary system is that there are "Select Committees"on MPs, whose job is to review and hold to account the performance of government bodies and departments. They may also review areas of national interest within their remit, and invite witnesses to give evidence to them.

For example, there have been significant problems with a rail timetable change recently, and the Transport Select Committee invited the heads of various rail companies to give evidence. You don't not turn up - an invitation from a select committee to give evidence has the same sort of weight as a court summons to give evidence.

So Zuck was invited to give evidence to the Digital Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee (DCMS), investigating the impact of Fake News on politics. Twice (at least). Both times he sent a minion.

DCMS then set up a Grand Committee hearing, with parliamentarians from a bunch of other countries (Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Ireland, Latvia, Singapore and UK), and invited Zuck. Again, no show.

So basically, since Zuck gave a whole bunch of governments the finger, the Uk government used its powers to collect relevant evidence.

I would suggest that unless you are a) the CEO of a Unicorn, or b) Currently suing a Unicorn and c) that Unicorn is giving the finger to a government

You need have no fear of doing business in the UK

<comment><USER62> > an invitation from a select committee to give evidence has the same sort of > weight as a court summons to give evidence

It doesn't!

As you say yourself, one is a summons, the other is nothing more than an invitation to attend.

<comment><USER14> I think you'll find under the British constitution, and according to Erskine May, the definitive guide to Parliamentary practice, that it does.

"any act or omission which obstructs or impedes either House of Parliament in the performance of its functions, or which obstructs or impedes any Member or officer of such House in the discharge of his duty, or which has a tendency, directly or indirectly, to produce such results, may be treated as a contempt even though there is no precedent of the offence"

The government itself was found in contempt of Parliament over Brexit just this week. As the linked article notes, applies just as much to refusing to appear before a Parliamentary committee.

[https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/houses/commons/news/100...](https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/houses/commons/news/100317/explained- what-happens-if-government-found-contempt-parliament)

<comment><USER62> I think the consensus is that those powers are inoperable

[https://www.consoc.org.uk/wp- content/uploads/2012/06/Select-...](https://www.consoc.org.uk/wp- content/uploads/2012/06/Select-Committees-and-Coercive-Powers-Clarity-or- Confusion.pdf)

[https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.theweek.co.uk/93679/can- mps...](https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.theweek.co.uk/93679/can-mps-force- people-to-testify%3famp)

<comment><USER14> It's unclear. Trouble is none of the powers seem to have been necessary in about a century, so it probably needs exploring in court.

Or formalising powers in some new legislation, which will eventually result if people start to treat committee summons as optional. This is probably well overdue. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Thx for link. Everytime i read the word 'whitelist', i think, havn't they caught up with the times, thats racist, whitelist. Why does white suggest good?

<comment><USER64> "White" as symbolizing purity or goodness and "black" for contamination or evil is used by a wide variety of cultures around the world, only a minority of which happens to consist primarily of people with un-melanined skin. If you think "whitelist" and "blacklist" is racist, just wait until you find out about Yin and Yang.

<comment><USER65> We're changing instances of whitelist and blacklist to "allowlist" and "blocklist" similar to the conversion of master and slave to "primary" and "replica".

Edit: it's interesting that I'm being downvoted. What a weird world this is.

<comment><USER66> > We're changing instances of whitelist and blacklist to "allowlist" and > "blocklist" similar to the conversion of master and slave to "primary" and > "replica".

Are you going to change the whole dictionary as well? blackout? blackhole? dark energy? dark matter? dark side of the moon? and what not? Might as well deem the whole english language offensive since its the language of slavers?

Maybe you should focus on real problem instead of slacktivism Silicon Valley style? And I say that as an African descent: The great majority of us don't care about master/slave dichotomy in a source code. Stop being offended on our behalf, there are real problems in the real world that needs fixing and this is not one of them.

<comment><USER65> Changing these takes next to zero effort. "Blacklist" and "whitelist" are more confusing to new engineers than "allowlist" and "blocklist", since the latter terms speak for themselves.

Language changes over time. These are just words. I don't understand why we have to hold onto them like they're our precious children. If we can be more inclusive with the labels we choose, that's a good thing.

<comment><USER66> > If we can be more inclusive with the labels we choose, that's a good thing.

You are claiming these words are "not inclusive" at first place, which is purely a matter of ideology, not semantics. Words have different meaning in different contexts. If you can't understand that, off course you will find everything "offensive".

Starting with the word "inclusive" itself which basically is newspeak at that point. You are right, language changes over time, and it's being manipulated by people like you to steer controversy and division, to deem this or that racist, sexist because you willfully ignore context for pure political goals. There is nothing confusing about "blacklist" or "whitelist". anybody can look up these words in a dictionary, if your "engineers" are incapable of doing that, maybe you should hire better ones. "allowlist" on the other hand is a useless neologism only driven by the need to effectively control the language to force your ideology on others, under threat of being deemed "not inclusive".

This is a political stunt, nothing more, you are asserting control over others, in the name of "inclusiveness" which is rather exclusive as a matter of fact...

<comment><USER67> > You are claiming these words are "not inclusive" at first place, which is > purely a matter of ideology, not semantics. Words have different meaning in > different contexts. If you can't understand that, off course you will find > everything "offensive".

But "blacklist" could be seen in a negative light in at least some circumstances whereas that's not possible for "blocklist" in any circumstance. So why not use it? What's the harm?

> There is nothing confusing about "blacklist" or "whitelist". anybody can > look up these words in a dictionary, if your "engineers" are incapable of > doing that, maybe you should hire better ones.

You're misunderstanding their point. They are not saying "whitelist" is too confusing, just that "allowlist" is equally as good and in some cases maybe even slightly better.

> you are asserting control over others

Just because someone is criticizing something you've done doesn't mean they are "asserting control" over you.

<comment><USER66> Well, who decides what is deemed "not inclusive" now? you?

> So why not use it? What's the harm?

The harm is you likes with your intimidation and harassment tactics on social media trying to force your morals and political beliefs on everyone else in every possible circle and the insane finger pointing at those who refuse to fall in line because they don't agree with your ideology.

Antirez, author of redis has something to say about it, given the pressure he was victim of under the threat of being "casted out" of the open source community since the verbiage of his project was deemed "non inclusive". And he is not the only victim. You've gone too far.

> You're misunderstanding their point. They are not saying "whitelist" is too > confusing, just that "allowlist" is equally as good and in some cases maybe > even slightly better.

A word already exists for this, "whitelist" and it has nothing to do with race. You chose to make it about race, because you subscribe to a specific political framework, not out of "good intentions". You chose to deem it "problematic", because it's just another political battle for you and any victory is good to take. This is madness. Do you want me to list the groups across history that used the exact same dirty tactics? Although I'd rather not.

edit: there is an obvious sophistry in the act of complaining about racism yet furthering racist "idioms" by claiming a word that has "black" in it is automatically associated with race, or the idea of "slave" is automatically referring to European slave trade thus it hurts the feelings of people of African descent. This rejection of semantics and context itself is not "language evolution", it's straight out language hijacking. Now of course, you're free to believe in whatever you want, but we are passed that fact, we are now in an era where people who don't subscribe to that same ideology are harassed, intimidated and coerced into submission.

<comment><USER67> I don't know why you're strawmanning me into being responsible for every act of suppression by a person who claimed to be acting for social justice. I am not deeming anything any which way. I am just saying that there are obvious conceivable negative interpretations of the terms "whitelist" and "blacklist" that don't exist with the terms "allowlist" and "blocklist". And the work required to change the language that you use in this case is very small, so it's worth considering. That's it, that's the entirety of the argument here. Nobody is demanding suppression of anyone's ideas.

<comment><USER66> > I don't know why you're strawmanning me into being responsible for every act > of suppression by a person who claimed to be acting for social justice

You are the one claiming "no harm done". I proved you wrong. Otherwise I would have absolutely no interest in that issue.

<comment><USER67> You gave some examples of how social justice overreach can be used as a guise to suppress people. Which is not really what I asked. I asked what the harm would be of you adopting the more sensitive language in your own usage. I didn't ask what the harm would be of you becoming a crusader against anything that could be perceived in a racial way.

<comment><USER66> > I asked what the harm would be of you adopting the more sensitive language > in your own usage.

"sensitive"

sensitive according to whom? what morals? what ideology? I'm not hurting my own feeling as a black man every time I use "blacklist" or "slave" in a specific context that is even explained in a dictionary, why are you trying to force your political beliefs (because that's what it is) on me? why are you constantly patronizing me? that I indeed find it offensive. I'm not going to change the canonical definition of the words I use to please you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Formal Language Recognition with the Java Type Checker (2016) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2016/6104/ <comment><USER2> A related result is that java generics are Turing complete [1]. As a result you can write programs which will loop the type checker! I was at the popl presentation where the author showed this result. He gave a demo where he defined a Turing program and a tape, and then let the type checker give the answer (halting with 1 will succeed type checking, halting with 0 will give a type error). This was a lot of fun.

[1] [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.05274.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.05274.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Beautiful!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship? - <AUTHOR> With all the benefits at a corporate job I still want nothing more than to be out on my own and start my own SaaS business.<p>Has anyone left a great corporate job for entrepreneuriship and regretted it? <comment><USER2> I have said this before in other topics when someone is getting fed up with their job and want to try their hand at making a company. Get the business started, running, profitable and automated (with humans, bots, or scripts) and then quit. Do not remove your major source of income which also happens to be your major source of investment and start the clock that runs until your bank account empties and you need to look for work again. It is not a good idea to kill your company's lifeblood.

The added pressure and energy drain from working on your own machinations while working a full time job pales in comparison to the added pressure and energy drain from working against the clock. In my case it became a source of depression and a constant demotivator when I realized I was running into roadblocks. You cannot foresee all of the difficulties you will run into, you cannot rely on stories of other entrepreneurs doing so. They are half truths and tell only the triumphant side of it, ignoring the failures of the hundreds or thousands of others who's companies made it only to the paper stage then died with a whimper, much less being in the spotlight of the medium and techcrunch and online news articles and forums. You're hearing about certain entrepreneurs solely because they're outliers, not the norm - they're a good narrative.

Keep your job. Make the product. Make connections. _Get Customers_. Then make the company. Not the other way around. If you're the one in a million already has the connections and skills to make it happen then more power to you but statistically speaking, you probably don't. You should acquire those qualities with gusto but also with prudence.

Good luck.

<comment><USER3> This. Yeah, I made that mistake. On one hand, working on building a company full-time was the best time of my career. But it failed, and I lost a lot of money in the process. And going back to the corporate world was... demoralizing.

(As an aside, I think the biggest problem I had was lack of a committed co- founder. I had help and support, but it's not the same. Later, I tried pushing again with potential co-founders, but they got distracted and lacked commitment when I really needed them.)

edit: I do plan to get back to it soon. I'm taking a forced six month hiatus to reset that concludes in July, and I'm kind of chomping at the bit for it. But only while doing my dayjob too! Not going to leave that again until I have paying customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a dev.

I did this a few years ago, started my own company.

I failed for two reasons:

1\. I wasn't experienced enough as a developer IN THIS TECHNOLOGY to hit the ground running.

When you are self-employed, time = money. You don't have time to learn the technology, figure out your business, and write the code. You have to hit the ground running and burning time on ramping up is extremely expensive.

2\. I lacked the discipline required to maintain myself while working extremely hard at my start-up.

Additionally, I didn't take good enough care of myself. I was ignorant about how to be productive. I was working all of my waking hours, martyring myself for my start-up and then getting up the next day and doing it over again.

Here's a tip: This is bad and leads to failure if you aren't careful with your time, food, and sanity management. A lot of people like to glorify this behavior but really, excellence is a 24-hour job.

Working out, eating well, getting a good night's sleep, and then coming into work the next day with clear-eyes beats running yourself ragged with panicked late-night programming sessions every time. ( Although, some people like to work at night and that is totally fine, we all have our own form of productivity. )

My point is really more about taking care of yourself and BEING DISCIPLINED. Unless you are wealthy, you do not have time ( remember, time=money ) to make mistakes. Discipline is your buffer between your degrading sanity and your ability to make good decisions.

<comment><USER5> Developing this cadence takes deliberate effort. Same for remote working when you are a few hours ahead of the main team. Remember to pack it up when you are done for the day !

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I left my "real job" for entrepreneurship about 8 years ago (at age 23) and haven't looked back. I've run several small companies since then, with a game server host[1] being the most recent.

I'm pretty happy with how it's gone and I have no regrets over leaving. I was happy and well-treated in the real job, but nothing beats the freedom to work on what I want, when I want, using whichever technologies I want.

The biggest downsides for me:

1\. Fewer opportunities to meet and collaborate with other nerds. I love working independently, but "argue with smart people" is a great way to refine your ideas. I wish I had more of that.

2\. Fewer opportunities to learn from larger companies. Many companies have internal technologies, tools, processes, shell scripts, etc. that are truly inspired. Former employees get to take these ideas (though not the code itself) with them when they leave, to apply to future jobs or to their own startups. The more time you spend in the corporate world, the more of these tools you accumulate in your own tool belt.

[1] [https://indiehackers.com/businesses/arkservers- io](https://indiehackers.com/businesses/arkservers-io)

<comment><USER7> This is great advice. Did you work on your first business part-time while working your last "real job"? I feel like I'm in a similar boat and I'm not sure what to do next. I'm 24 and I work for a great company with really smart people whom over the past two years I've learned from quite a bit, I've always wanted to start a business though, actually in college I did just that to earn money. I created an app development business targeting Windows Phone and was able to build a pretty sizable passive income stream which kept me satisfied throughout college. I'm now debating finding a new job but really what I'd love to do is go back to entrepreneurship, yet on the other side I know how valuable learning from people in the industry actually is.

Any advice?

<comment><USER6> I started my first business while I was in college, and kept it going on the side while working the real job. After a year at the real job, I decided to leave and focus on the business.

What happened to your company from college-- did you shut it down? Sell it? Did it die on its own?

I don't think anyone can tell you whether it's the right time for you. Neither decision is permanent, though: If you do leave and it doesn't go well, it shouldn't be hard to go back to your old job or find a new one. "I took a year off, started a business, learned a lot, failed, and now I want a job" should go over well with most employers. If you don't leave, you can spend the next year learning more from your employer while tinkering with your idea on the side -- and then leave next year.

As you age, you'll tend to accumulate obligations. Marriage, kids, mortgage, elderly parents/relatives that need care, medical problems of your own -- things like this will make it harder and more risky to quit your job later in life. So if you're going to do it, your 20s are a great time.

<comment><USER7> I appreciate the reply,

My business kind of evaporated given the ever decreasing market share of Windows Phone. I was able to carve out a pretty nice little niche where I created small apps for Windows Phone in even smaller targeted niche markets where there was usually almost no competition. (I built Workout apps targeting specific exercises, I built small little games that were popular on iPhone and Android but never got ported to Windows Phone, alarm clock apps, I created a piano app that did really well, things like that) given the sparse selection of apps on Windows Phone most of my apps did pretty well with no marketing whatsoever.

I tried to pivot to iPhone and Android and saw a bit of success on Android but the business model didn't really translate to those platforms given the oversaturation of the app store, I saw my revenues dwindle down consistently and by the time I landed my first job two years ago my passive income had dropped to about 500 dollars a month, it's now completely gone, nobody uses Windows Phone anymore.

I am working on a much bigger app now targeting iPhone and Android, but the app market is tough to penetrate. I guess the only path for me going forward is to either stick with my current job that I know well and put in more work on the app, or look for a new job where I can learn more and earn a bit more but my responsibilities will most likely increase and I'll be forced to learn a new tech stack which can take a toll and could affect my ability to work on the app in off hours, I've been working on the app for about five months now and I really don't want to lose my momentum.

Anyway sorry for the rant lol, that's my predicament. I agree I could always go back to the workforce if anything goes awry but I'm not even at that decision yet, it's more a question of how do I allocate my time properly until I become profitable enough to make that decision, and how long do I put off moving my life forward given the uncertainty of the app market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've hacked away on projects over nights and weekends, hoping that one of them would be my ticket to a self-led lifestyle, but with no success. Then I landed a contracting client, and quit my job to commit fully to the client. I took the chance! Six months later, I was fairly burnt out on working alone with this client. In retrospect, I wish I had kept the client and tried to grow the business, even if reality wasn't as rosy as I had hoped.

Since then I've tried to find more clients and not had much success, after taking a job and then quitting again. Looks like I may end up back in the corporate world soon enough.

So- no regrets from this attempt to find freedom, even though it's leading me back to where I started. I will say it's become clear to me that our socioeconomic system is not set up to support people becoming more free... quite the opposite.

Maybe if you try to make a SaaS business into something that requires VC-style scaling, it could backfire and cause regret, as you're committed to something that becomes more all-encompassing and lasts many years.

</comment><comment><USER9> What's wrong with working the corporate world, and moonlighting your SaaS business? If it ends up taking off, then quit. I don't understand why it has to be either or. I run multiple side gigs, while keeping the safe corporate job, for now.

<comment><USER10> If your side-project is at all related to your day job, this most likely runs afoul of your employment agreement and IP considerations. Typically, your employer claims ownership of all IP you generate that pertains to your work or its business. For example, if you work at Google, I think it's essentially impossible to simultaneously work on any other side project that you wish to commercialize that will not be owned by Google.

<comment><USER9> Baloney, unless you're using corporate resources to get it done, they don't own work you do outside of working hours. No judge would ever uphold that. There are tons of Google / Facebook / whatever employees that build software outside of work.

<comment><USER11> That's not my understanding.

At least in California AFAIK the law says exactly what the poster above said which is that the company owns work related their area of business even outside work hours and not on company equipment.

I always think of it this way. You're at dinner (ie, off company time). While a dinner you think of a solution for something at work. Do you own that solution? Can you charge the company $$$$$ to sell them this solution you came up with outside company hours?

If yes then there's an incentive for you to never think on company time. If no then it seems pretty clear there's a spectrum from clearly related to the company's area of business to absolutely not related to the company's area of business. If you work at Facebook and on the side you design a new IoT coffee maker that's probably on the unrelated side. If you work at Facebook and on the side make a new social networking site probably on the absolutely related side.

If you want to be safe rather than wait for a court to decide get it in writing. At least when I was at Google they offered that service. You could bring them the idea and they'd tell you if it was related or not and if not give you a signed contract saying they officially had no interest in your outside project.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Heck no I don't regret it.

Just over three years ago I left my cushy job at Facebook to start a company. It took a year and a half of grinding to make our first dollar. Now we're ramen profitable and still growing strong. [1]

The reason it took so long is because I was an inexperienced founder. I could build the product, but stuff like getting customers, pricing our product, writing a landing page... These are not things that software engineers at big companies have to worry about. It took years for me to pick up these skills, and I'm still learning loads.

And I'm so glad I learned them because now if I started all over again, it'd take a fraction of the time to build something successful.

Now, different people are different. If you really love solving technical problems and don't really care about sales/marketing/business, being a founder might not be right for you. If you have a low risk profile, or care a lot about work/life balance and comfort, big companies can be great for that.

[1]: [https://canny.io](https://canny.io)

<comment><USER13> > I could build the product, but stuff like getting customers, pricing our > product, writing a landing page...

It would be extremely interesting to read what lessons you learned on this road :-)

<comment><USER12> Ask and you shall receive!

[https://canny.io/blog/saas-startup-ramen- profitability/](https://canny.io/blog/saas-startup-ramen-profitability/)

[https://canny.io/blog/lessons-learned-bootstrapping- saas/](https://canny.io/blog/lessons-learned-bootstrapping-saas/)

<comment><USER13> Oh, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I greatly regretted leaving a finance job early in my career to work in an early stage start-up.

The start-up workplace culture was worse, work life balance was worse, the loud open-plan office was unhealthy, distracting and frustrating to work in.

Even on a generous expected value basis, favoring only high valuation exits or IPOs, and even as a super early stage employee, the compensation was way worse at the start-up compared with a stable high salary, bonus, retirement plan, and benefits.

To be clear, that is even if you assume away a lot of the risk for bad outcomes at the start-up and favor high valuation possibilities. Even still, the equity is manipulated by founders and investors and is so drastically unlikely to work out in a favorable way for employees.

</comment><comment><USER15> If you want to hear a "yes, go for it" then yes, go for it.

If you are still open to suggestions, lets play out that scenario where you quit your job and start a business. Then you would: 1) Make an overall vision for your business. 2) Translate it to several phases. 3) Translate each phase into tasks. 4) Start working on tasks. If a task is too big, break it down to subtasks. 5) Incrementally start finishing tasks.

Now, can you do the above devoting an hour or so each day to it while being in your corporate job?

<comment><USER16> (skipping over legal and tech arguments for a moment)

Sadly, if your business is in software, then your corporate employer will own your IP, and the answer becomes "No".

<comment><USER17> Not a chance. If someone wants to hire me, they do not own my work outside of business hours. It's the new serfdom.

<comment><USER16> The fact is, lots of software devs, aside from you, are employed by the large tech companies, and depending on the state, the courts side with the company.

I wish we could all collectively refuse employment, but once you get the offer, not everyone has the luxury of saying "no, I'll go with a much lower salary at a smaller company".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> You won't regret it if you go to entrepreneurship and ship.

The problem is not about entrepreneurship but in not planning for failure and having backup plans.

John Carmack: "There is wisdom that only comes from complete product cycles -- no amount of job hopping can provide it." [1]

From personal experience, I can say go for it not because you hate corporate, but because you want an end to end experience, then come back to an even better role, better pay cheque corporate job, if the gig fails but you have shipped and have good landing zone on failure (some months with expenses in bank mainly). HTH.

[1] [https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/761986843319660548?...](https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/761986843319660548?lang=en)

<comment><USER19> Nothing worse than shipping and having absolutely no sales.

<comment><USER20> Not true. Not shipping at all is much worse. Shipping and having no sales is how every business starts. The next step is learning WHY. Talk to people, iterate, and repeat. That's business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Having a paycheck and being an entrepreneur is not an either/or proposition. There are things in the middle.

You can find a well-financed co-founder and get a commitment for a paycheck for a fixed length of time (1-2 years). You will probably receive less equity in this situation, but you can still get enough equity to feel like a true co- founder along with enough of a paycheck to not be stressed about making ends meet.

</comment><comment><USER22> In August I quit my cushy (cushy!) day job to go full time on my startup, fully bootstrapped, living on my savings account.

I discovered what panic attacks were, and made it to February a few months ago before getting a less cushy day job. Although I had the financial runway to go longer, I didn't have the mental fortitude to keep it up with a wife and three kids I have to provide for.

We're still continuing nights and weekends at a much slower pace, but at a much more sustainable pace. The biggest challenge is keeping a moonlighting team motivated. My decision to fully vest my cofounders up front is paying off with this approach. I suspect it will be another 6-12 months before we go live at this point.

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't regret. I left my day job in late 2016 and started to do this startup thing. I'm still very happy.

I've seen people who left day job to start companies and became very unhappy very quickly (within 6 months). The key thing is to have the right motivation and to manage expectation.

If the primary reason to start your own company is to look good in front of your other fancy friends, then you'd better not do that in the first place. Doing startup is roller coaster. You won't look good in front of others all the time. Actually, for a long period of time (many months ~ many years), you may look pretty bad, in terms of product metrics, income, company reputation...

Some of my friends asked me whether they should start a company, I typically suggest them to answer these questions first:

* Have you made over $10k on your own? Not from your day job salary. Not from public stock market. Making money needs practice. You start a company to make money. You'd better have some experience of making money first.

* What's your longest project? Have you worked on anything for multiple years? Grit & patience need practice. Building a successful company takes multiple years, even decades. Be prepared.

* When was the last time you were insulted by others? If you grew up in a very comfortable environment (rich family, great schools -- because your parents went to those great schools too, great companies, ...), probably you already get used to compliment for your entire life. Now you are going to face very very diverse set of people who don't know your family background or don't recognize your family name, if you start a company. If you are the kind of people that are easy to be upset, you'd better stay in the friendly corporate.

* What happened when you broke up with your ex or your friends? People relationship is complex. You'll experience a lot of bad people relationship if you start your own company -- breaking up with cofounders, firing employees, fighting evil investors, fighting con man, fighting bad reporters, dealing with malicious users, dealing with competitors (sometimes in person)... All kinds of drama. You'd better practice this kind of things before starting your own company.

<comment><USER24> Nice points m8.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I started a SaaS business, which is now my full-time gig -- I would say don't leave a job until you have something producing a ramen-noodle level salary for you. When I was able to pay myself $2,000/month it was enough to live on for my situation at the time. I was working 80 hour weeks in my underwear, scrambling to answer support requests, fix bugs, and move the codebase forward. If I had to do that while also trying to find product-market fit and worrying about running out of money, I might have broken down.

No regrets with my decision now. Once my business slowed down (read: I automated much of it), I actually went back and spent two years at a startup + 1 year contracting to bring in some extra money and get new experiences. The extra cash was certainly nice, I used it to setup a nice start on retirement and buy a house. Ultimately, though, my hatred of corporate politics and building wealth for the capital class without equity of my own led me to re- focus on my SaaS app. I've been enjoying the freedom and challenges ever since.

</comment><comment><USER26> I went back and forth between corporations and startups. The money and hours are way better when working for a corporation; especially if you manage to get a contract position with a high day rate.

But I've realized with time that I'm just not built for the corporate world so it's not even an option for me anymore. After 6 months working for a corporation, I feel like shit and I have to quit for my own mental health.

After working for startups for a while and taking risks all the time, I'm no longer the same kind of person as the typical corporate office worker and it's hard for me to fit in such environment.

If I didn't have better options, I would probably do contract job hopping from one corporation to another every 6 months... I did that for a while and it gave me a certain feeling of control over my life which made me feel kind of like a one-person startup.

</comment><comment><USER27> How about the other way around ? Leaving entrepreneurship in order to take a corporate job and not looking back ?!... a bit of history: just around college ( 1996-1997 ) with the internet boom in brazil, i took my first consultant clients, since then worked with several "fintech" ( wasn't called that by then, but that is what those companies were/are... ) and tried to grow my company ( software consultancy and tailored code ). But being a tech entrepreneur below the equator line is not for mere mortals ( crony capitalism everywhere, labor and tax laws very fluid and incomprehensible by most professionals, terrible and costly infrastructure... ) so, last year i gave up. Took a corporate job writing code on a multinational corporation ( gargantuan enough to have access to the juicy contracts, contacts and clients ) and now i have a paycheck every month, in exchange for just 8 hours a day of my life. Before, it were 14 to 16 hours a day, plus weekends, no payed vacation, no time left for my family, and most months ( after payroll and taxes ) there were no money left for me...

<comment><USER19> I've seen people pre-exit startups. Be one of the founders, take a corporate job as soon as the initial vesting is complete and the business has solid traction

You're basically gambling that the other founders won't scuttle the startup just to spite you. This way, you get to enjoy the possible lottery winnings from the startup eventually making it big, while simultaneously having the safety and comfort of a corporate job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Not leaving a corporate job, but slowly transitioning from freelancing to working on my SAAS business ([https://www.scraperapi.com](https://www.scraperapi.com)) full time. I'll throw out the suggestion that maybe you should seek a bit of freelance work on the side so you can have some level of income while you work on your business. Even if it's just 5-10 hours a week, if you can get $100/hr from someone for that you can cover a large portion/all of your living costs if you live frugally. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER29> I did this. Left a cushy corp job a few years ago, then worked on my own startup for 3 years. While we had some small funding, we could only pay ourselves very little salary (almost below livable standards for bay area, cutting into savings a little monthly), and in the end it had to shut down after 3 years. Went back to regular job (non-corp, an early-mid stage startup) after that.

I think the _only_ factor that I have regrets about was financially. Not so much about having to cut into savings because I had good enough cushions anyway, but just realizing that I could've had 3 more years of high pay and stocks and padding the investment account with more money, and putting myself 3 more years away from retirement (or maybe more considering compound etc).

Other than that, entrepreneurship was an awesome experience that I wouldn't trade for anything else really.

</comment><comment><USER30> I quit my job to work full time on something I've been wanting to do since I was like 12. It's been like two years now, mich longer than expected, but there was a lot of shit I had to plow through, the project is more researchy than I thought. I don't regret it whatsoever, what I regret is stressing myself over launching ASAP in the first nine months of this thing, which really caused me to burn out. I would never take time off cause I thought I was wasting money, but it's impossible to do that in the long run. If you want to play a game, play it, you'll return back to your project soon enough.

Here's my project, it's not launched yet but check it out [https://www.ngrid.io](https://www.ngrid.io)

</comment><comment><USER31> No. It was a mission to secure cash flow at first, but I'm very happy with my MRR which is services based.

The looming regret I felt coming on in my great corporate job would've been not leaving. Having close to no control over your schedule except for PTO is no way to live.

</comment><comment><USER32> No regrets but there are a couple of things that made the decision easy for me.

1\. I started by switching to contracting, I had a good reputation in my niche and plenty of contacts. Mostly it was lots of fairly short contracts which allowed me to develop my own product in the inevitable quite periods between jobs. I did this for two years before I quite contracting.

2\. I wasn't a very good employee, it wasn't until some time after I left the corporate world that I really understood that it didn't suit me.

3\. I'm a saver, it would have been much harder to do if I lived from pay check to pay check.

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm barely making it but that for me is better in every way than my life as an employee. Corporate products were always disappointments, the teams rarely stayed functional for long, there was zero security, and the money simply wasn't worth the cost of not being able to even try out my dreams in the real world.

</comment><comment><USER34> Contemplating this decision myself. Would love to hear others thoughts!

<comment><USER35> Money turns into time tokens. Therefore reducing your cost of living = more time.

It's a different way of thinking and I like it. The comfort & security that comes from a steady paycheck can go in an instant. Don't let that false security keep you stuck in the rat race. Nobody wants to pay for you if they don't have to.

I went to someone else's startup to escape corporate then success turned it quite corporate as well. The process left me burnt. Now I contract and it's not all roses, but I would never go back to the office life.

Corporate was unhealthy for me in mind body and spirit. You get lumpy, you drink more, you eat garbage, you sleep worse, potential back & cardiac problems down the road and most importantly sex dies.

fwiw, my father was an alimony ridden fine artist and my step father was a senior partner at a big 4 accounting firm. My dad was a really happy, well read and interesting guy. My stepdad's life is textbook american dream perfection and it's a very sad and bland one.

<comment><USER36> and where did he get the money to pay the alimony?

<comment><USER35> He was the head of the art & architecture department at a women's college. Hence the alimony.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Asynchronous ruby framework for websockets, eventsource and streaming - <AUTHOR> http://cramp.in

<comment><AUTHOR> Cramp is a fully asynchronous web framework that's very good at dealing with thousands of open connections. It supports WebSockets (latest protocol) and Server-sent Events out of the box. Optionally, supports using Ruby 1.9 fibers to prevent spaghetti evented code - which means seamless Active Record integration.

<comment><USER2> How does it compare to node.js? When is cramp a good fit compared to node.js and vice versa?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a great fit when you need to use your existing Ruby code. Active Record models for example. It works very good alongside async sinatra as well.

All said, it all boils down to your personal choice of languages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Goliath has a websockets branch and also supports eventsource and streaming pretty easily. If it's something you need, definitely look into Goliath as well.

[http://www.igvita.com/2011/08/26/server-sent-event- notificat...](http://www.igvita.com/2011/08/26/server-sent-event- notifications-with-html5/) <https://github.com/postrank- labs/goliath/tree/websockets>

<comment><AUTHOR> Personally, I think Cramp's interface is a lot better than Goliath when it comes to streaming, because everything is streaming in Cramp. YMMV. [https://github.com/lifo/cramp/blob/master/examples/sse/serve...](https://github.com/lifo/cramp/blob/master/examples/sse/server.ru) in case you want to compare. Also, goliath websockets branch looks outdated.

FWIW, I do like Goliath. More async solutions in Ruby the better!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> HN meta point here. This link was posted 18 days ago too, but with a forward slash at the end: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2874982> (nonetheless it gets an upvote again for being cool). Potential fix/update for news.arc on this issue or just a useful trick to let slide? :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha! I didn't realize about '/'. I asked in #startups about giving my old thread a bump but no one responded. So I tried making a new post and it worked!

<comment><USER4> It's unfortunate but there should be better ways for people to repost URLs over time like this one. This seems an appropriate repost in any case considering the first didn't get its due props. It's the links that do crazy well and then somehow get reposted days later that are really annoying ;-)

I didn't know about the / approach but have used the "?" suffix "trick" a couple of times over the years when submitting things that other people put boring/inappropriate titles on that didn't catch on. I believe # will also work since AJAXified URLs need to be supported.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1\. Does this work with Rails?

2\. Generally, the "Hello World" for a real-time framework is a simple chat application.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. It can work within the same Rails process if you're using async Rails.

2\. <http://cramp.in/examples> two chat apps there. But I don't have a live demo running.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would _really_ love to see some perf comparisons vs C# or Java.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to see it too! However, I do think the comparisons should be about the ability handle the number of open connections seamlessly and not req/sec. And relevant memory/cpu usages.

<comment><USER7> Agreed - do you have any anecdotal evidence of how it performs comparatively to say, Erlang or node?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This looks cool, but I wish it were <http://socket.io> compatible</comment>


Too much cola zaps muscle power - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8056028.stm

<comment><USER2> They don't seem to differentiate colas from other sodas. A surprise to me, since I seem to recall hearing the high phosphorous content of colas can compete with some other mineral absorption (calcium, was it?) ...maybe compete with potassium?

Personally, I've felt better about my physical stamina when I surrender to my crave for a "fizzling" drink by going to some diet lemon-lime (no caffeine or sugar) rather than a "cola" (whether caffeinated or sugared). YMMV

</comment><comment><USER3> The caffeine hypothesis may be contradicted by the experiences reported here: [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/health/nutrition/26best.ht...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/health/nutrition/26best.html)

I'm disappointed that the BBC article doesn't specify how to find Dr. Elisaf's study; I suspect he's far more detailed. The work appears only to warn that muscle weakness is more likely with large amounts of "cola" -- I presume Dr. Elisaf give some quantification of "large". They're suspicious of fructose, sucrose, and caffeine; a commentator here has already identified a fourth possible culprit. It could be specific amounts of any of those, of other ingredients (perhaps least likely, the Kola nut? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_nut>), or of some combination of them. "Further research needed" is the only practical message I get from the BBC article.</comment>


113-year-old coronavirus survivor: The elderly are the forgotten ones of society - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/16/worlds-oldest-coronavirus-survivor-the-elderly-are-the-forgotten-ones-of-society <comment><USER2> I don't know, something inside me cringes when someone who is able to live all the way to 113 is waving their finger calling for a revolution to treat the elderly better, when the average young person growing up today will be lucky to even live to 70 without some kind of debt forcing them to slave away until the day they kill themselves from depression and loneliness in a rotting society or die from a curable/preventable illness without affordable healthcare.

And it's not like I have no sympathy for the elderly as a young person. I just can't hear these complaints over the cries of all the young people with no hope, no future, who have no power to change a damn thing. If anything, the fact that these people are able to live past 100 says something positive about our world today, rather than that they've been forgotten or neglected in some way.

Anyone want to tell me I'm wrong? Am I the asshole here?

</comment><comment><USER3> In the US, it is considered normal for ~100,000 people to die each week. So, the 100,000 coronavirus deaths we have had so far, spread over 10 weeks, have increased numbers less than 10%. Less, because an unknown but probably non- negligible fraction of those would have died from other cause in those ten weeks, because of the age-linked risk. (Traffic deaths from extreme reckless driving are _way_ up despite, or maybe because of, half the traffic evaporating.)

I wonder if this experience will make us more conscious of the much larger number of unnecessarily early deaths we have all the time, and maybe motivate doing something about them.

<comment><USER4> The "they were going to die soon anyway" meme is a massively incorrect misconception.

Expected years of life lost for Covid victims is over a _decade_ [1]. Plenty of those that die had comorbidities, but they are often chronic conditions, not "die this month" conditions. The thing to remember is that the expected lifespan for an older person is a decade more or less, because they have already reached an old age e.g. 50% of 70 year olds are expected to live to 85[2].

[1] [https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75](https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75)

[2] [https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html](https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html)</comment></comment>