35 pointsby bookofjoean hour ago11 comments
  • imthatstevea few seconds ago
    I really hate how heavily these comments get moderated. In my opinion if a site moderates user comments this heavily then the site should lose section 230 protections and be considered a publisher and be held responsible for any comments that you choose not to moderate. If the site functions as an editor but it tries to present that editorialized section as user opinions then the entire site may as well be astroturffed, your better off going to wikipedia to see what "regular people" think
  • zero_shiftan hour ago
    I only recently realised why the org is called AutoMATTic
    • rpozarickij21 minutes ago
      A fun fact about another well known company - Foxconn. Apparently the founder Terry Gou came up with this name by joining words "fox" and "conn". Fox is an animal he liked and "conn" refers to connectors (which is what the company specialized in in its early days).
    • Hamuko8 minutes ago
      Did you know that Adidas was founded by Adolf "Adi" Dassler?
  • delichonan hour ago
    Corporate coup survivors: Matt Mullenweg, Sam Altman, Bruce Wayne, Tony Stark. They should form a club.
    • larodi37 minutes ago
      an esoteric club perhaps, given half of these folks are imaginary?
    • moralestapia32 minutes ago
      Hey, what a great joke, tipping my hat towards you, sir.

      I also find many real-life situations come to reflect stuff that happened on my favorite movies and stories and I sure also quote them every chance I have.

      My wife hates that but her boyfriend likes it, we found common ground there, only thing is he's more a DC-guy if you know what I mean (I think Marvel has a much richer multiverse, but anyway).

      I don't want to derail the conversation obviously, just wanted to let you know ignore the naysayers (I see a few detractor comments on this thread already) and let us true fans enjoy our lore!

      • hijjerl922 minutes ago
        Good day, fellow M'arvel enjoyer! I like both DC and Marvel but my girlfriend (FtM) has a very high IQ so is only able to enjoy Marvel. She even got me the Tony Stark Funko to add to my collection!
      • bookofjoe16 minutes ago
        >My wife hates that but her boyfriend likes it

        ?

      • redsocksfan4512 minutes ago
        [dead]
    • redsocksfan4543 minutes ago
      [dead]
    • cindyllman hour ago
      [dead]
    • fwipan hour ago
      The "rich white men for little boys to worship" club?
      • 97615742447712 minutes ago
        What a brave rebel you are
      • hijjerl930 minutes ago
        [flagged]
        • phoghed20 minutes ago
          Sam Altman is filling out some government form, what’s he picking on the race/ethnicity question:

          * American Indian or Alaska Native

          * Asian

          * Black or African American

          * Hispanic or Latino

          * Middle Eastern or North African

          * Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander

          * White

          • hijjerl916 minutes ago
            Same thing an Aboriginal Australian selects, I guess
        • flossly26 minutes ago
          I dont care for Sam Altman's color. But, c'mon, how's he not white?

          I learned Duck-typing from Ruby: if it talks like a duck, walks like a duck and swims like a duck -- it's a duck.

          Applying this to Sam: he's white.

          • imthatsteve12 minutes ago
            The idea is that jews arent white, even though they look white, they dont consider themselves white except for when it benefits them. White people dont own the world, jews do.

            All those communists in the democratic party keep blaming rich white people for all the class warfare issues while there actually arent that many rich white people and there are even less that get involved in politics most of the rich white people are actually rich jews and jews dont consider themselves white.

            Jews will help other jews but they dont care about helping anyone else and there isnt anything wrong with that but if your going to stereotype and blame a group of people for their collective actions then you should at least get the group identification correct. If you want to vote based on identity politics then you should understand the different identities and how they actually politically organize. Because right now the actual people with wealth and power have one color of poor people fighting another color of poor people while thinking they are fighting against the rich and the system when that actually is the system, the system is designed to make the poor people fight each other and leave the wealthy alone. Confusing jews and whites is just a part of that system to keep poor people divided and easily conquerable.

          • hijjerl918 minutes ago
            That's legitimately offensive.

            Jews are not White. They might occasionally present as such when it is socially or politically convenient (eg. "Diversity is our greatest strength, fellow goyim!") but they are not us. They don't want to be tossed in the same bucket as us, and we don't want them anywhere near us. Stop conflating the two.

            • pavo-etc15 minutes ago
              People can be multiple things.
        • thesekikes24 minutes ago
          [flagged]
    • SenHengan hour ago
      I would enjoy seeing Matt and Sam beating criminals to a pulp with their bare hands.
  • largbae13 minutes ago
    I only see the headlines of this drama. All it tells me is to stay far away from any dependency on this company.
  • plucan hour ago
    Dupe/existing discussion from a day ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49660104
  • NSUserDefaults29 minutes ago
    So glad I just converted my site to Hugo.. happy to get away from this whole bunch of people.
  • generj19 minutes ago
    What a feckless board.
  • 29 minutes ago
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  • cebertan hour ago
    This sounds like a mistake and a part of Automatic. This is not a good look for the brand.
  • Grombobulousan hour ago
    That’s a weird thing to say about “coup attempts.”

    Funny that we picked democracy for our government but we just left corporations as little feudal kingdoms. It seems like quite the oversight.

    In the world of AI I imagine that Automattic’s core business model is in turmoil.

    • freedombenan hour ago
      > Funny that we picked democracy for our government but we just left corporations as little feudal kingdoms.

      Ianal but I don't think the laws care about governing structure of corps. You can start a new corp and run it democratically all you want. There are co-ops and other interesting structures out there

    • Arntan hour ago
      Companies have a largely democratic component at the top, called the board. Voters (those who own the company) have representatives on the board. Some boards also have representatives from the employees, that varies.
      • kmeisthax12 minutes ago
        It's not one person, one vote, so it's not democracy. It's very explicitly plutocracy (rule by money) as the operating principle of voting power is one share, one vote.

        Except there's also a bunch of companies with special dual class share structures, where the founder gets way more voting power than everyone else and you can't even buy your way in. A lot of tech companies do this. This is, functionally speaking, an autocracy.

        If you want an actual corporate democracy you would need to assign voting rights to everyone working at the company, aka build a co-op. Co-ops are a great corporate structure in a lot of cases but you can't really raise capital that way because VCs all want on your cap table, so all the big companies wind up being plutocracies.

    • sva_an hour ago
      > Funny that we picked democracy for our government but we just left corporations as little feudal kingdoms.

      Doesn't this just boil down to planned vs free market economy? I think we've seen over an over again which one works and which one doesn't.

      • miyoji36 minutes ago
        > Doesn't this just boil down to planned vs free market economy?

        Not at all. Market vs planned economy is about how the economy is set up. Are there businesses that offer products that you can choose between? That's a market economy. You can have that with democratic governance of corporations. The workers can own the means of production and you can have a market economy.

        You don't need ownership by idiot dictators with money to have a market.

      • shigawirean hour ago
        Democracy in business would be worker co-ops or employee ownership schemes. It would still be fully market-based, not planned.
      • an hour ago
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      • jmullan hour ago
        Is that a settled question? China isn't exactly struggling right now.
        • edgyquant39 minutes ago
          China has succeeded so much by moving away from a planned economy when they were fully planned they were one of the poorest nations in the world. Most successful nations are mixed economies and yes, this is a settled question.
          • fwip28 minutes ago
            They were very poor before central planning, and the central planning is what got them from being very poor to relatively poor and economically powerful.
          • 32 minutes ago
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          • miyoji33 minutes ago
            Past performance is no indication of future success. It doesn't matter what's been successful in the past, these things can change. Communism was considered more successful than capitalism for a large chunk of the 20th century (because it was), then that changed and so did the narrative.

            None of this is settled, because it's a living system that changes over time. What may have been perfectly true in 1850 might not be remotely accurate in 2050.

            • Kuxe26 minutes ago
              > Communism was considered more successful than capitalism for a large chunk of the 20th century (because it was) According to whom?
        • sva_an hour ago
          If you look on Alibaba or AliExpress and see different companies competing and undercutting each others prices, I don't really see it as a planned economy.
          • throwup23817 minutes ago
            The CCP publishes their primary central planning mechanism for all to see. They just adopted the new 15th Five Year Plan in March [1].

            There’s a whole bureaucracy just to coordinate the implementation at the sector, provincial, and corporate level driven by the State Council, NDRC, and NPC. Governments at all levels are involved with coming up with their own implementation plans to execute on the Five Year Plan.

            You can trace decades of Chinese industrial development to those plans but the Chinese system is very different from the Soviet central planning mechanism, which is why I think you’re misinterpreting Alibaba’s price competition. The CCP explicitly allows non-state owned enterprises like Alibaba and the manufacturers on it to compete; that’s their whole point within the system, and they operate within the regulatory environment setup to promote the five year plan instead of quotas like the Soviet system. The resolution of the planning is different, but it’s very much there.

            [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15th_Five-Year_Plan

          • dghlsakjg19 minutes ago
            I think a better term might be a “steered economy”. You see fierce competition in some very specific and preordained market areas. Lithium batteries, solar panels, electric cars, industrial and autonomous robots, AI.

            Now go look at the 5 year plan from Beijing. Green technology, robotics, mature node chips, and AI are the focuses.

            In other words, it isn’t a mistake that China dominates in the industries that it does.

        • thaumasiotesan hour ago
          > China isn't exactly struggling right now.

          Have you asked people in China about this?

    • jasonvorhe37 minutes ago
      Who do you think pays for the political election campaign theater of all theses "democratic candidates" though?

      I often have to think of Bane putting his hand on the shoulder of that Ben Mendelsohn character in The Dark Knight Rises while asking if he feels in charge. Reminds me of living in a western democracy.

    • flossly23 minutes ago
      It's allowed to do a more democratic business in most countries, it's called a:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative

      There have been some govts that mandated this type of organization for part of their economy; we usually refer to that as communism.

      (no value judgement here, there are day's when I'm quite a commie myself)

    • tirpen44 minutes ago
      > Funny that we picked democracy for our government but we just left corporations as little feudal kingdoms. It seems like quite the oversight.

      Congratulations you have reinvented communism from first principles! And you are completely correct in your analysis.

      • noir_lord42 minutes ago
        Regulation of corporations and the internal/external harms they do isn't communism.

        That's a hilarious leap.

        • flossly21 minutes ago
          Actually you reply to a comment that makes a lot of sense.

          Look into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative

          And in Russian I believe such a company is called a "Soviet". They idea that the main part of the economy is run by this kind of organizations is one of the best parts of the USSR's attempt at communism.

          • noir_lord10 minutes ago
            Except A) he said none of that B) it's not actually relevant to what he did say.

            There is a vast range of ways you can regulate a corporation and only some of them qualify as communism.

            Germany has worker councils, it's still not communist.

            Several European countries have much stricter regulations on how companies behave that moves them from the absolute power fiefdom internal model, guess what, still not communism.

      • 97615742447710 minutes ago
        Maybe the next trial run of real communism won’t end with 145 million people dead.