I don't think any of them decided to do it for reasons of being practical. The entire reasoning behind it was that it was 'cool'. A pretty good reason, if you ask me...
I would have attached the wires under the box and used a stiff paper to hold up the box a tiny amount, then when the button is pressed, so is the box, the stiff paper collapses and connects the wires, then the phone can do its thing. No need for capacitors, resistors or soldering.
+1 for the hack, but the other solution was to tell your lacky, ...err...I mean personal assistant, to push a button on Mark's phone at the same time as Mark rang the bell. We live in a age where we can execute all amazing technical solutions to non-problems. Now was that truly epic? Waiting for the pop to see...
It's cool because in a small but poignant way it represents how Zuck was able to build his company w/o kissing Wall street's ass. So many CEO's tactics are driven by quarterly earnings. By keeping his hoodie on and not flying out to New York to ring the bell, Zuck kinda saying fu off to all that.
If that blue Nasdaq button embodies short term, profit driven thinking, it's neat that the engineers were able to hack it and bend it toward their will. It's a poetic hack.
Oh wow, Facebook is so cool! These are real hackers. A button that posts to your Facebook timeline? I thought this technology was at least a decade out.
True, but always good to see it being overloaded with the positive meaning in the mainstream media. I don't think any other highly visible company has done more to reclaim that word in the minds of the general public than FB. Kudos to them for that.
Traditionally, with an IPO that's become as popular as this one, you have a representative from the company being listed ring the bell on the trading floor of the exchange they're listing on.
However, NASDAQ lacks a proper trading floor, as they're all electronic, so they have companies deliver a live feed of said representative ringing the opening bell from the company HQ.
Would it be legal for facebook to spam everyone's time line with ads that essentially say: "Get an e-trade account today and buy a piece of facebook! For the first time ever you can own part of facebook! Click here"
I am not saying this would be a good thing (a bunch of uniformed investors speculating and boosting the price), however I am curious would it be legal?
I've never seen a legit advertisement for a stock, so that should tell you something. If it's legal, there'd be so much disclosure required it would not look like an ad.
No - Facebook is not a broker-dealer and do cannot market securities. Further, there are other disclosures that must be fulfilled before retail investors can be marketed to. This is only taking US residents into account.
"A couple of hours later, we had built our hack. The finished product wasn’t exactly the prettiest thing, but hacks aren’t supposed to be. They’re just supposed to work."
I can't say I agree 100%. Sometimes when you have time left over at the end of the hack, it doesn't hurt to go back and clean it up.
I would have found the reverse creative as well--something similar to the release of portal 2. Have some actions on facebook by many people lower a robotic arm to press the button.
1) Doing something that can't be done by hand, OR
2) Replacing repetitive manual work, this saving time in the long run
IMO there's nothing "cool" about a hack that will only be used once and could be replaced by Mark (or anyone standing nearby) pre-typing the message and then posting the status to Facebook seconds after he pushes the Nasdaq button.
You could also argue that it might have been an opportunity for the engineers to learn something, but IMO you could think of more worthwhile hacks to learn from.
"In fact, hack has only one meaning, an extremely subtle and profound one which defies articulation."
"Hacking might be characterized as `an appropriate application of ingenuity'. Whether the result is a quick-and-dirty patchwork job or a carefully crafted work of art, you have to admire the cleverness that went into it."
So it has nothing to do with automation, perfecting your craft, saving time, making money, impressing Paul Graham, "hacking education" (?), putting in tremendous amounts of work, being irreverent, growing a neckbeard, or linking up a button to a cell phone.
It boils down to somebody else saying "are you fucking kidding me?" and you get to say: "no."
> It boils down to somebody else saying "are you fucking kidding me?" and you get to say: "no."
Yeah, the "are you fucking kidding me?" comes from the fact that you did something awesome, i.e. something can't be done trivially by some far simpler means. So I'm not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me :)
The only "are you fucking kidding me?" that this hack evokes is "you spent all that time and talent to do /that/?".
I don't understand why most comments here are so jaded. This is just a fun simple hack pulled off by a creative engineer, nobody claims that it was groundbreaking or even necessary. Personally, I think it's good that they have a culture that encourages things like that.
Definitely agree. Some of the comments are positively ludicrous. This post would have hundreds of points if it were Kickstarter or a company that "hackers" like.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 100 ms ] threadIf that blue Nasdaq button embodies short term, profit driven thinking, it's neat that the engineers were able to hack it and bend it toward their will. It's a poetic hack.
It's not a 'poetic hack', it's just neat.
Why? Just ceremony, like a ribbon-cutting?
Scientists, pleasingly, said "No".
(http://press.web.cern.ch/press/pressreleases/Releases2007/PR...) etc etc.
However, NASDAQ lacks a proper trading floor, as they're all electronic, so they have companies deliver a live feed of said representative ringing the opening bell from the company HQ.
I have to respect Zuckerberg for not wasting the flight to NYC to do this sort of thing.
http://cl.ly/0N3L34461V1z130f2W1e
Would it be legal for facebook to spam everyone's time line with ads that essentially say: "Get an e-trade account today and buy a piece of facebook! For the first time ever you can own part of facebook! Click here"
I am not saying this would be a good thing (a bunch of uniformed investors speculating and boosting the price), however I am curious would it be legal?
I can't say I agree 100%. Sometimes when you have time left over at the end of the hack, it doesn't hurt to go back and clean it up.
1) Doing something that can't be done by hand, OR 2) Replacing repetitive manual work, this saving time in the long run
IMO there's nothing "cool" about a hack that will only be used once and could be replaced by Mark (or anyone standing nearby) pre-typing the message and then posting the status to Facebook seconds after he pushes the Nasdaq button.
You could also argue that it might have been an opportunity for the engineers to learn something, but IMO you could think of more worthwhile hacks to learn from.
"In fact, hack has only one meaning, an extremely subtle and profound one which defies articulation."
"Hacking might be characterized as `an appropriate application of ingenuity'. Whether the result is a quick-and-dirty patchwork job or a carefully crafted work of art, you have to admire the cleverness that went into it."
So it has nothing to do with automation, perfecting your craft, saving time, making money, impressing Paul Graham, "hacking education" (?), putting in tremendous amounts of work, being irreverent, growing a neckbeard, or linking up a button to a cell phone.
It boils down to somebody else saying "are you fucking kidding me?" and you get to say: "no."
Yeah, the "are you fucking kidding me?" comes from the fact that you did something awesome, i.e. something can't be done trivially by some far simpler means. So I'm not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me :)
The only "are you fucking kidding me?" that this hack evokes is "you spent all that time and talent to do /that/?".
I assume you're similarly annoyed by any Rube Goldberg machine?