> You question the sincerity of his apology, then tell him to hire a PR firm.
So? The wording of his apology leaves doubt about its sincerity, which (in addition to the whole ordeal to begin with) lets me believe he would greatly profit from training and advice on matters of communication.
I don't understand what you're trying to imply. That 'PR' automatically seems insincere somehow? Well, better a safely worded statement written by PR than a crude comment that lets your ego shine through, doesn't really remedy the situation and worsens it?
uh, yes? I think that is a pretty reasonable statement. I am not wise on the ways of PR firms but my expectation is that it would involve a lot of some one else using your voice to smooth feathers while you went and were absent for a while. I'm just not seeing a world where hiring a PR firm results in better more sincere apologies. That would make a frankly incredible article though.
PR firms are generally experienced with how to communicate well in public.
The vast majority of people just don't have any experience with public communications. Most people write shit that does not get read by anyone, especially as they develop their skills.
When a person without these skills attempts to communicate matters that require a certain amount of care, they are bound to fuck up. Now, does this mean that they're actually a "bad" person? Maybe. Should they learn how to communicate in ways that don't inflame the situation, but calm it down? Absolutely. Irrespective of what their character or intentions are, being able to communicate effectively is absolutely crucial.
In this case though, my personal opinion is that this person is just a huge jerk. He seems to have raised a lot of money, seen someone do a legitimately better job than what his firm (which raised a lot of money) did, had conflicting feelings, and just wanted to seemingly quash this little person with his new found power. Regardless, a PR firm would have at least been someone he could practice his message with, get feedback on it, maybe that process itself would make him reconsider his actions.
ok, you still haven't addressed how hiring a PR firm interacts with sincerity, especially given how it is literally hiring some one to decide what your messaging is. i don't see the step where only people who just need a little help expressing themselves hire PR firms.
And importantly (arguably, more importantly), how it interacts with perception of sincerity. I don't know about other people, but to me, if PR is involved, I treat every word as manipulation, unless there's a strong reason to believe otherwise. Maybe there are PR firms that enforce 100% honesty in communication, but if they are, it doesn't seem to be a common occurrence.
And doubly so given the context. Amjad may be a CEO, and the apology is public on HN, but this is still mostly a personal conflict - it would be weird to involve a PR company in a personal dispute.
The problem isn't that the apology doesn't sound sincere. The problem (but really, the saving grace that leaves room for redemption) is that he doesn't have enough writing skill to conceal his underlying, actual insincerity. Hiring a PR firm would just make things worse - they would just teach him to lie better about his level of sincerity. PR firms don't make money by fixing your character...they make money by hiding your character / by helping you sound credible when you say whatever they advise you to say to protect your business interest, regardless of whether it's true or whether you believe it. Once a PR firm enters the scene almost no one can escape being compromised and corrupted beyond full redemption
Incidentally, I have no opinion on whether he should apologize or who's more in the right. I just think it would be beautiful to see a person in his position be completely honest, disinterested, and forthright
It just seems like addressing the symptom, rather than the cause - that you shouldn't instantly whip out your big $20m legal stick to threaten someone.
Using a PR firm might result in him just having some nice sounding text, instead of understanding the error of his ways and fixing it.
Whatsapp is worried the Indian market.
They've gone as far as taking out full page ads in Indian newspapers to try to convince people "nothing to see here!"
Holochain is a distributed version control system for the development of social applications / protocols. Imagine if Uber or Airbnb were just protocols, able to be used without the company in the middle - in a fully peer to peer context. You could evolve and improve the rules together with others peers, and start playing new economic and social ‘games’ without any central authority being able to block you from experimenting/doing so.
Holochain’s novelty lies in its use of DHT’s to create, store and retrieve data. Like Git source chains, it then uses cryptography to guarantee data integrity in this distributed application context. You’re basically agreeing in advance on which functions to use. Instead of using proprietary functions that are kept secret behind a firewall or limited through an API, Holochain allows you to create and use apps that directly enforce and verify open rules in a 100% distributed peer to peer way. To the best of my knowledge this sort of system hasn’t been seen or invented before.
“Holochain maintains data integrity without the need for global consensus. It uses an agent-centric approach, combining ideas from BitTorrent and Git, along with cryptographic signatures, peer validation, and gossip.
An overview:
- hApps have validation rules.
- Agents have their own local, tamper-resistant hash-chains recording their actions, built upon hApp rules.
- Each hash-chain entry is cryptographically signed (multi-party actions, like transactions, are mutually countersigned).
- Data is shared to random peers who validate it.
- Validators gossip to share good data, warn against bad data, and blacklist bad actors.“
The post office isn't really similar to the DMV or NASA. While it's not a private entity, it's supposed to be run like a corporation, in some ways similar to Amtrak. USPS is okay I guess, but Amtrak sure does suck.
