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Facebook's Novi wallet hits trouble as two top engineers depart
- astraloverflow 5y agoIs this the libra digital currency project? How many more rebrandings are we gonna get?
- nothrowaways 5y agoI guess this is the wallet for the currency (i.e. where you out Libra)
- 1f60c 5y agoYes, Novi (née Calibra) is a Diem (née Libra) wallet.
- bedobi 5y agoMaybe they should partner with RobinHood :P
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- anonporridge 5y agoNow there's a coalition I can trust to secure my financial life!
- kortilla 5y agoIf two engineers leaving means that much trouble for a company the size of Facebook, the project was already in trouble.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sp332 5y agoIt's not trouble for the company. It's trouble for the project.
- yaacov 5y agoMythical man month
- rhizome 5y agoKey-person risk
- themodelplumber 5y agoCoastline paradox
- TeMPOraL 5y agoReverse bus-factor polymerase.
- rlt 5y ago“Big companies should act more like startups!” “Wait no, big companies should have redundant employees!”
- BobbyJo 5y ago"Acting like a startup" means being hyper focused on a single use case with capital efficiency in mind. Proving, or disproving, the value of that use case. Then, based on information gathered in that process, repeat the cycle. It's about being efficient in the conversion of capital to value, not about how many people you put on the project.
- Ozzie_osman 5y agoIt's probably more the signal than anything else. They sound like really talented engineers, but presumably Facebook has a lot of other really talented engineers. It's the signal of "top engineers are willing to walk away" being a proxy for bigger problems.
- derac 5y agoPeople aren't interchangable parts. They have specializations and deep domain knowledge.
- _9rq6 5y agoHow do two engineers affect an entire company project?
- programmarchy 5y agoCrypto talent is scarce, for one. And the intersection of crypto developers who would work at Facebook is vanishingly small.
- HarryHirsch 5y agoIt's supposed to be the technology of the future that everyone uses. It's not supposed to be like direct methods in crystallography, which are understood by a dozen people, of which half are over 50 years old.
- seibelj 5y agoRight but a bunch of nobodies on HN actively disparage the entire sector for whatever reason, which requires a pretty deep knowledge that the average REST slinger doesn’t possess, so the market is tight for competent devs let alone top-tier.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nucleogenesis 5y ago> for whatever reason Gimme a break
- bostonsre 5y agoYea, it's disparaged constantly for no good reason and if you know about crypto you are a God and everyone else is shit.
- knownjorbist 5y agoCould be somewhere in-between. There are very intelligent people focusing on the crypto, defi, decentralization and "metaverse" space. It's colloquially referred to as web3, but after "Web 2.0" people here have skepticism of such a term. Why would they be spending their time on this? Are they all just, as another poster said, "ideologically delusional and/or pathologically greedy"?
- eganist 5y agoHeck of a promotion for both, too. CTO and CISO of a16z's crypto efforts. I almost wonder if FB might litigate to stop the move.
- refulgentis 5y agoCan't. One famous argument about why SV was special is that its because California judges utterly despise non-competes and non-competes-alike. I believe they're at least, in some form, unenforcable.
- atatatat 5y agoIn those States, they're illegal.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y agoWhat about non-competes where the employer actually does pays-up to the former employer to prevent key people joining the competition, aka “gardening leave”? Common in fin, I hear - Normal severance in the US is a bit of a joke…
- vmception 5y agoWhich is why fin is in New York and New England
- eganist 5y ago> Can't > One famous argument about why SV was special is that its because California judges utterly despise non-competes and non-competes-alike. I believe they're at least, in some form, unenforcable. They absolutely can; it just doesn't have to involve non-competes. It wouldn't surprise me if they trump up an accusation of IP theft, or more effectively, if they happen to hit the lottery and find an audit trail suggesting exfiltration of data prior to the departure. I'm not saying they did this, but I am saying it wouldn't surprise me if Facebook tried to build a case around it, if only to slow a16z down a bit while Facebook recovers.
- armchairhacker 5y agoThe only thing I trust more than crypto is crypto backed by Facebook
- asdfman123 5y agoIt's like money, but decentralized. And controlled by Facebook. They'll have some sort of committee to help them pay lip service to social justice, and then promptly ignore their advice.
- bostonsre 5y agos/And controlled by Facebook/And controlled by Mark Zuckerberg/g
- mgkimsal 5y ago"decentralized" meaning ... your crypto may go through facebook.co.uk, or facebook.fr, or instagram.co.jp or facebook.com.au, instead of being centralized at facebook.com. much better security for peace of mind. ;)
- reedjosh 5y agoBut also probably not very decentralized.
- dang 5y agoPlease don't post unsubstantive comments to HN. Also, note the site guidelines that say "Don't be snarky." and "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28846699 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28846699.
- themodelplumber 5y ago"One problem is that right now we can only retain evil crypto developers, due to our new platform stance which is pro-evil," said Eris Jùmen, head of media abuse at Facebook. "These two were clearly non-evil developers, and frankly we are looking forward to returning to alignment with our core values of insularity, dark patterns, and subjective ethics."
- asdfman123 5y agoMark Zuckerberg responded with multiple assertions that "Facebook truly means well" and "cares about you as a user."
- goldenkey 5y agoHe then whispered into Mr. Bigglesworth's ear: 'Those Dumb F***' as he dived back into his data-powered virtual reality where he is King, and far richer than Lord Bezos.
- genidoi 5y ago"Facebook is committed to fostering an open and inclusive community, and that begins at our workspace. This is why we have a zero-tolerance policy for backbones, ethics or any other resemblence of a conscience. We truly live and breathe the utopia-building bullshit that is riddled in our media releases, and depend upon the talented engineers who readily prostitute their minds for the cause." added Mira Pedersen, VP of Human Relegations
- vmception 5y ago"Earlier today," continues Pratiti Raychoudhury, Vice President, Head of Research "We provided Congress with the two full research decks that were the primary focus of the Wall Street Journal’s mischaracterization of internal Instagram research into teenagers and well-being." .... "Our internal research is part of our effort to minimize the bad on our platforms and maximize the good."
- 5y ago
- sbuccini 5y agoRiyaz is an incredible engineer. I never worked with him directly in undergrad but his reputation certainly preceded him -- which is saying something, because there were a LOT of insanely talented engineers walking around Soda Hall (I, of course, was not one of them). I got to know Riyaz more after we graduated and was impressed not just by his technical chops but also by how humble and grounded he is. I can't think of a better pick to serve as CTO, a role which requires not just technical acumen and mental agility, but also the ability to work with a wide variety of stakeholders. I've always been bearish on crypto/blockchain but seeing Riyaz make the jump is making me think twice. A16Z made a great hire here.
- DantesKite 5y agoTell me about it. Some of those students were absurdly talented. I've never met a higher density of talented individuals in my life.
- anonporridge 5y agoDon't let the loud moon boys who take all the attention in the crypto space deceive you. There's a ton of serious and incredible work going on that rarely gets the spotlight. Plenty of scams and irrationality too of course.
- mannymanman 5y agoCould you give some examples of the incredible work you mention? I think Solana is pretty cool, and am looking to learn more about the space.
- xrd 5y agoRead about Level 2 solutions like zk snarks. It's really fascinating stuff. I enjoy the podcast called "Zero Knowledge." The last one with Professor Alessandro Chiesa is really great, but that's not the best one for beginners for sure.
- nl 5y agoAlogrand has some pretty nice tech. It feels like a v2 - instead of being held together with tape and fencing wire it's a well engineered properly thought out solution. Things like their on-chain language not being Turing complete so they can scale it better than the Ethereum disaster.
- vmception 5y agoFacebook is just getting scammed because they're the old senile pensioner excited that anyone is talking to them about how to stay hip.
- JumpCrisscross 5y agoThe rank arrogance and stupidity of this project has me halfway convinced it’s a red herring.
- bluecalm 5y agoSad to hear. A currency/wallet backed by a major tech company devoid of usual fatal flaws of crypto (PoW distributed blockchain, inflexible supply, slow, irreversible etc) would be most welcome. I mean my private data is already passed around when I use Visa/MasterCard. I am already raped by forced conversion fees when using PayPal (basically additional 3% penalty for anyone not based in USA). The customer support and merchant protection is already non-existent with those options and security can only be described as a complete joke (the whole "carding industry" merchants are forced to pay for due to biased charge back process). I trust Facebook to get those things much better. I think their track record on privacy is way better as well. I hope they can keep the project running and compete with dinosaurs of today payment processing/credit card industry.
- hetspookjee 5y agoHow is Facebook’s privacy in even the broadest sense better then those of Mastercard and visa. They run experiments on entire groups, this list is longer than I can possible fit in this post. The biggest fear you can have for Mastercard and Visa is that they accidentally give away your private data for free to the world instead of selling it off to some data aggregators.
- pkpioneer 5y agoFacebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testifies before the Senate: https://pkpioneer.blogspot.com/2021/10/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen.html https://pkpioneer.blogspot.com/2021/10/facebook-whistleblowe...
- jchonphoenix 5y agoLooks like neither one was higher than L6 at Facebook. It's a loss but nothing the company will cry over and it'll barely impact anything
- otabdeveloper4 5y ago> hires 50000 developers > only two of them actually do any work