This is not some kid who made a false claim, leaving the doubt lingering etc..
This is the case of a mistaken IP address - something cleanly and resolutely exonerating.
His 'reputation' matters to people in his immediate circle, and people are reasonable: they can be informed of the error - and frankly are probably sympathetic to him - not suspicious.
Imagine if this happened to a co-worker of yours. 'In Jail' over a bad IP address. Would you think 'oh, maybe he did it?' - or - would you think - 'OMG, I feel bad for that guy'.
I understand your statement would be valid in a foggy 'he said she said' situation, but this is not that at all.
I'm very sympathetic to this guy. I understand how hard it might be to be accused of something.
That said - I don't feel this is a case for outrage.
Surely, most of his colleagues will be well informed of the mistake.
He received basically $100 000 in compensation. That's a lot of money.
Given the clarity of his exhoneration - i.e. this was not something that 'went to court' or there wasn't some kind of 'Michael Jackson style payoff' to keep someone quiet - and that it was an obvious police error - I think that any circumstances around is guilt should be relatively clear.
He is not a public figure - his personal reputation that 'matters' is limited to his colleagues, friends, family and the people he helps at work. That's a manageable thing from a PR perspective.
His $100 000 in 'compensation' can surely be enough to pay for some lifestyle helpers.
The notion that it was too much for him to go back to work, I think is a stretch. There should be no lingering doubt.
This is a sad story, I feel for him, but it's not one of the scary stories we here about that need serious redressing and law changes etc..
As far as his pursual of the police action - it's clear that this boiled down to a single digit in an IP address. That's it. Innocuous error = consequence. There is no 'evil secret police' or 'malign intent'.
The fact the he feels he needs to pursue this is really only going to keep him in problem zone.
What kind of closure can he expect? That police will change their operating procedures to make sure they 'write down stuff correctly'? Surely there's tons of data that's passed around in an investigation and this is liable to happen.
I guess this is newsworthy, but I think context is required here.
No - these contracts are usually enforceable. But even if parts of them are not - it doesn't matter because the IP risk is just too high.
You're making a video game 'on the side' while working at a gaming company?
Then you want to 'raise money' - now the VC's say 'hey, you made this while you were at XYZ, weren't there contractual issues' - you say 'oh, it's not enforceable'. The VC says uh, no thanks, not looking forward to having all of our property owned by the company.
"eastern european state to see lots of ethnically pure, yet miserable populations."
True - but you also have nearly 70 years of ruthless, totalitarian oppression. What the Soviets did was leave people very cynical. It's changing though. Remains to be seen I guess.
" its sort of like saying lets take poison so that if we get sick we can stop taking poison and feel better."
No. The analogy is - right now, with low rates, we are doing red bull and meth to 'stay awake' and we need to return to normal so that in a crunch, we can do a little more meth. Right now, we're dying from too much meth :)
This seems to be breaking the YC 'golden rule' which I think is 'do something useful'.
AI is an approach, it's not a solution.
I think AI is going to make it's way into 'everything' but rather incrementally.
I'm weary that there will be a lot of 'pure AI' type companies around.
Surely, there'll be a few that are 'AI focused' ... but it's all so techie and not so much 'market' or 'solution' oriented it leaves me a little skeptical.
AirBnB, Stripe, Zenefits, Instacart, Docker, Mixpanel - all big YC companies focusing on solutions - I can barely see how AI would apply to any of them, other than maybe some incremental improvements on things like 'fraud detection' or what not. Ok, maybe some marketing conversion.
No doubt YC is making a good call here because they want to reap the rewards of all the resulting M&A activity, which I think will be a boon ...
" complain instead that "cities like Munich, Frankfurt or Hamburg" do not do enough to prevent rent price hikes."
Rent is undeniably a function of the market.
Setting rent prices is like fixing bread, milk egg and gasoline prices.
Of course, at the margins, in specific cases, some things can be done.
Surely things like limiting how much rent can be raised in a year, maintaining renters rights etc. - or even zoning to make sure that there are types of housing that will facilitate different types of people ...
But there isn't really a huge problem. Even in Frankfurt and Munich there are tons of low-cost places - just not right downtown. Tons of decent flats around town.
"Your taxes do not fund "this" exactly. It's not like Berlin govt will let people live in those places for free, just at an affordable price point. "
It's a costly subsidization, taxpayers are definitely subsidizing it.
'Gentrification' and 'higher rents' are not necessarily the same thing.
Berlin is becoming more prosperous - that's a good thing, it's what we all want.
But it means there's going to be a shifting of neighbourhoods here and there.
Particularly, the most accessible properties will be in most demand.
I don't think Berlin has the same problem as the Valley with vastly disproportionate incomes, or Toronto with massive influence of foreign dollars and large numbers of newcomers + low interest rates.
I stayed in Berlin for a while, and I can assure you there are tons of fairly inexpensive places to live - they just aren't in the most choice neighbourhoods.
If there were truly a dirth of affordable places in the area, then there might be cause for concern ...
His comment was an unsubstantiated attack on the journalist who wrote that piece.
That piece is by no means a 'puff piece' - it's just a normal bit of journalism, and it's actually reasonably good.
Making statements like 'oh, they paid them for that piece' is derogatory and crude, and unless there's some obvious reason or merit to the argument, it need not be said.
It's not flammable. And properly processed, even a leakage in the containment wouldn't necessarily be disastrous, i.e. requires cleanup, but no like chernobyl problems.
I wish we would put more research into this.
Imagine if we could make nuclear waste relatively benign? It would revolutionize the entire world.
Yes - sometimes people refer to people who are attractive as 'drop dead hot' or 'bombshells' or '10's.
These are colloquial terms for how we sometimes refer to attractiveness.
Your insinuation that this is 'sexist' is completely wrong.
And even if I did refer to gender, it would be fine.
Crude, maybe, but sexist. No.
"Does the HN community condones this and at the same time rally against sexual harassment at statups?"
Referring to some unidentified people as 'drop dead hot' is not remotely harassing, and your indication that this should somehow be screened is wrong, and problematic. I'll suggest that your position might be the impetus for why so many people are weary, or skeptical of some movements concerning 'sexism in the valley'.
And FYI in no way did I imply that somehow immigrants cannot be 'hot'. I'm indicating that in some places 'menial jobs' are done by otherwise 'high social status' individuals because of the social dynamic. In most places, you don't find attractive people working at McDonalds - because they will work in retail, in funner, better environments consistent with their sense of identity. Or bartending/waitressing where their attractiveness yields significantly better outcomes in tipping - and frankly - even in ordering (attractive staff make people spend more).
Though migrants can definitely be 'hot' - individuals who are undocumented are generally 'very low social status' and are almost excluded from most of the social context.
It's not a moral statement - being 'low social status' does not imply lower human worth - it's an observation of a social system.
All animals are social, and develop social hierarchy - it's a fundamental dynamic of nature.
I would urge caution in the assumption that 'being able to build a product' is the same thing as selling it.
Moreover, there are tons of little nuances and specific things that go into making a 'great product for the niche' and that knowledge is domain specific and can take a lot of time to learn.
This is without even considering the fact this person, having worked in the industry can probably speak with a lot of credibility on the issue to customers, and hone in on specific deficiencies, likely has a long contact list of potential clients buyers and a strong network - these things are valuable.
Learning all of the skills necessary, even at a minimum level of competency, would take quite a long time, and I also don't think everyone is suited to development.
To boot - in a 'small scale op' devs usually do a lot of the product, interface design, aesthetic design etc. - which is definitely a competency that too many people write off as 'not a thing'. It's definitely a thing. :)
This is not some kid who made a false claim, leaving the doubt lingering etc..
This is the case of a mistaken IP address - something cleanly and resolutely exonerating.
His 'reputation' matters to people in his immediate circle, and people are reasonable: they can be informed of the error - and frankly are probably sympathetic to him - not suspicious.
Imagine if this happened to a co-worker of yours. 'In Jail' over a bad IP address. Would you think 'oh, maybe he did it?' - or - would you think - 'OMG, I feel bad for that guy'.
I understand your statement would be valid in a foggy 'he said she said' situation, but this is not that at all.