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For those like me that are wondering what is going on, apparently some Silicon Valley executive died recently.

• wumbernang 11y ago
  Thanks. That's the tl;dr I needed. Coming from the UK, this made no sense whatsoever to me.
  • sambeau 11y ago
    His death made the front page of the BBC website.
    • wumbernang 11y ago
      AFAIK it didn't on bbc.co.uk. Perhaps bbc.com but I don't look at that. It's all about FIFA bribes and rollercoaster accidents.
      • jbrooksuk 11y ago
        Both of which are generally more "BBC newsworthy" for us UK residents. With that said, I don't do Football and was part of the Runaway Mine Train crash.
        • wumbernang 11y ago
          I went on that in the early 1990s when it opened. Hope you didn't get injured!
          • jbrooksuk 11y ago
            Just a little whiplash and broken glasses. I was one of the lucky ones. I've been on it once since that day to try and get over it, I spent the entire time shaking and holding on to my partner very tightly, heh. Thanks :)
            • wumbernang 11y ago
              Now that's the daredevil attitude I like to hear :)
      • sambeau 11y ago
        I'm British reading from the UK. He died weeks ago. However, it wouldn't take much reading to realise that a) this wasn't just some dude who died and b) this isn't just some wifey who is talking about her grief.
        • wumbernang 11y ago
          So everyone else who dies is just dude and wifey? Way to devalue 99.999% of the population. My wife was a palliative care nurse. She taught me that everyone is remarkable but when it comes to dying, for one person to be valued higher than another based on social standing, celebrity status or perceived societal worth. This is merely voyeurism.
        • sambeau 11y ago
          @wumbernang these are people who are a part of the larger community who built HN. When the US wakes up you will see that many of the people who come here know them personally (especially those who built and run HN). You might want to consider their feelings.
      • werid 11y ago
        He died a month ago, so I don't know why you are mentioning the headlines of the last few days. A quick google search reveals a bbc.co.uk news story about the death.
    • infinitone 11y ago
      So what? People die all the time, we don't need a post about it, let alone some religious spiel.
      • PhasmaFelis 11y ago
        When people think that any passage of any length that mentions religion, however briefly, is a "religious spiel," I find it just as baffling as folks who insist that anything anyone does must include a prayer.
      • sambeau 11y ago
        A little bit of research would uncover that, in the tech startup worldwide community, Dave Goldberg was one of the most loved entrepreneurs. The fact that he was Sheryl Sandberg's husband (and the very fact the he was proud to be described as such) is what put him on the front of the BBC. Hacker News is first-and-foremost a forum of that tech startup community. I'm not one, but many people who frequent here will have known and looked up to if not one then both of the people mentioned here. It might have been nice to have considered them before reacting like this to the death of their friend.
    • rbanffy 11y ago
      I made no connection when I briefly saw the news. Her post and the attitude of giving meaning to a senseless loss (isn't death always senseless?) is moving. There are many lessons she learned that are useful to us all. Everyone loses loved ones. From old age, from accidents, from completely unexpected events. In the end, all that matters is what we, the people who stay alive, do out of it.
  • cylinder 11y ago
    You don't have Google in the UK?
• PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  I'm a little surprised that this needed to be said. I wasn't aware of the event or any of the people involved, but the first five sentences made it clear that this is a piece by a woman whose husband has just died. It didn't really make me dig for it.
  • TeMPOraL 11y ago
    I think the GP was trying to preemptively answer the question "why is this on HN?". Usually when there is a story about someone's recent death here, it's either someone relevant to the community (e.g. death in the family of one of fellow HNers) or relevant to the technological world (e.g. famous computer scientists, physicists, etc.).
• swombat 11y ago
  A human being died and another human being went through grief and wrote a moving post about her journey. Do you really need to apply (what I'm sensing to be) pejorative labels to it? Death may not be your typical HN fare, but it is a subject that touches all of us eventually, so far with no exception. I am glad that she was willing to write this and share it. My life is richer for having read it.
  • yarou 11y ago
    I don't think the parent was trying to apply pejorative labels or there was any malicious intent behind their post. It was more along the lines of being unable to parse the title, IMO. It's also good practice to critically examine any written piece, regardless of whom it may come from. While you may derive aesthetic and ostensibly emotional value from it, not everybody may necessarily feel that way. In fact, my life wasn't changed or impacted in any profound sense after reading this. You should keep in mind that not everyone may think the same way as you, or even share the same reality.
    • swombat 11y ago
      > It's also good practice to critically examine any written piece, regardless of whom it may come from. While you may derive aesthetic and ostensibly emotional value from it, not everybody may necessarily feel that way. That's an interesting assertion, and itself worth examining critically. Is it generally good practice to critically examine any written piece? Possibly. Probably even. Is it always good practice? Perhaps even that is true. Is it always good practice to state the outcome of your critical examination in public? At this point, if your answer is still yes, we diverge. There's a time for stating your critical analysis, and a time for keeping it to yourself. Death is one of those topics where critical analysis is generally unwelcome. To use a slightly extreme but actually fairly relevant analogy, if someone very close to you died and you were mourning them at their funeral a few days later, and someone there presents you with some kind of critical theory of the chemical nature of grief, while it might appear to be some critical analysis of the present moment it would nevertheless be most unwelcome. Which brings me to your second point: > In fact, my life wasn't changed or impacted in any profound sense after reading this. You should keep in mind that not everyone may think the same way as you, or even share the same reality. There's nothing wrong with that, but I think you can tell fairly easily from the comments that other people were moved by this post. In some, it has brought up feelings of grief that they wished to share too. In effect, the original post by Sheryl Sandberg has made this thread a place of grief for many of the commenters here. They will have come to it from many places, both real and imagined. For me it is imagining how I would feel if my wife died, or how she might feel if I died. For others it is remembering the death of a loved one. Either way, what they express is real and deeply felt. I think this "promotes" this thread to a place of grief, and as a human being who respects other humans' right to such places, it is reasonable to keep your critical evaluations to yourself in such a place. There are other places to express your critical views of this. Yes, you have a right to express them here if you wish, but you should also be aware of the implicit request to let this space be what it is. I know this is the internet and so expecting people to respect other people's feelings is somewhat extraordinary here, but I guess I have a high opinion of humanity in general.
• slvn 11y ago
  who's the husband of facebook coo...