Team member here. Coded this in four days on a roadtrip... We're excited to hear the HN community's feedback on this iteration, and the overall concept of raising bounties which are released to charity.
We're also really excited to shower at some point.
Software Engineer at SpaceX here. Exits like WhatsApp not only cost more than space exploration, but also make recruiting much more difficult for many companies.
Our best engineers are very entrepreneurial. They don't hesitate to tackle massive challenges, often without even being asked. When a large exit occurs, it's an unfortunate siren call: "you could be making billions, writing way less complicated code."
Why am I taking a salary somewhere when some guy just made billions in four years? Did he have to worry about loss of human life if his code failed?
I make my own internal siren shut up by being a complete space geek, but rockets are not always as intriguing to prime candidates in the recruiting pipeline.
It's time for a reality check.
How many people actually exit with this level of success? Why is enabling our species to be interplanetary often a harder sell than the prospect of trading years of your life for a small chance that you might exit with a few billion dollars?
Greed. It's terrifying how much it prevails in our startup culture.
The size of one's exit is far less important than the impact of one's technology on the world.
Hack things that make the world better (or other worlds). If riches come as a result, great, but our startup culture's emphasis on valuation over innovation is, in my opinion, our achilles' heel.
(My views are completely personal opinions and do not reflect the views of the company. I love our startup culture and am proud to be a part of it, but I'm convinced that when I look back I will clearly view the code I've written here to be way more important for humanity's progress than the code I've written for entrepreneurs' selfish attempts at billion dollar exits)
To anyone with doubts about going on-record about your support for Edward Snowden: This is precisely why you MUST sign it. Your nervousness in expressing an opinion different from your government's will only compound if a true surveillance state matures.
Let's stand up quickly for this hero before it's too late.
Your nervousness is NOTHING compared to what he felt while deciding whether or not to release this. Share his burden.
Wow - any idea on why this disappeared from the front page? It's only received more votes since my last refresh here... perhaps YC is moderating to mute drama from HN? Not a bad idea really... HN != lynchmob
Are you sure? I'd presume their API cluster is hosted independently from their public website... unless Anonymous did their research and knows their API hostnames.
This is exactly the kind of situation where people discover their well-laid plans were faulty. NewsBlur learned this recently. And it's hard to test it out beforehand if you don't already have the traffic to test it with.
Odds are, this is just hundreds/thousands of new people trying the API out after this incident. DDoS by your own prospective customers.
+1. I'd love to see more grace in our industry. This is an overreaction on all fronts. People make mistakes. Let's rewind & keep hacking cool stuff together instead of DDoSing each other.
