Facebook snags Geohot

http://www.slashgear.com/facebook-snags-hacker-geohot-26161426/

by deltriggah • 15 years ago

64 43 15 years ago

slashgear.com

iamdave2• 15 years ago

Become a saint to nerds after taking on a company that wont let you do what you want with products you've paid for

...

ends up at a company that in no human decipherable terms owns your social identity.

...

Who woulda thunk

edit: I think it's worth mentioning, I'm not decrying either he or facebook for their acquisition of talent, it's just an unexpected maneuver. Kind of like a physicist suddenly leaving his craft for the pulpit. Perfectly fine if he wants to do that...just sort of an "oh, that was unexpected".

getsat• 15 years ago

Everyone has a price, dude.

iamdave2• 15 years ago

Oh not disagreeing with you one bit, there.

sylvinus2• 15 years ago

On top of that Geohot may have some past or future legal bills to pay ;-)

sylvinus2• 15 years ago

Facebook has tons of bright developers that other bright developers like to be around, and even if they're not all primarily motivated by the potential value of their options, it does create a self-sustaining black hole...

cpeterso• 15 years ago

Not unlike Google.

lhnz2• 15 years ago

I don't think it's fair to discuss any perceived moral problem around this. Facebook pays well and you get to work with some very smart people on a far-reaching product. That's a good job.

redthrowaway5• 15 years ago

How does paying well and being full of nerds obviate a moral dilemma? If working for facebook is morally wrong (feel free to argue on this one), then neither of those conditions changes things. It can be both a smart move for geohot, as well as an immoral one.

Again, I'm not saying that working for facebook is bad. I'm saying that it's rightness or wrongness is not determined by how well they pay or how many geeks they employ.

flocial2• 15 years ago

You have to give Facebook credit for actively recruiting talent. Probably overpaying and distorting the labor market in SV even more than usual. Surprised Apple wouldn't try to hire him.

redthrowaway5• 15 years ago

Apple certainly would have been the logical fit. Their response to his work suggested begrudging admiration more than Sony's outright hostility.

rowaway• 15 years ago

yeah he should live like richard stallman to preserve his saintly purity. /sarcasm.

dude is a great hacker. facebook is one of the greatest places to be a great hacker.

a perfect place? no. but what place is?

DrCatbox2• 15 years ago

Google? Two, three years ago google was the place where all the great hackers worked at. Suddenly they are like, meh, you know...

Samsung?

Jach• 15 years ago

I don't have a facebook account, they don't own me. I surrender instead to other forces. ;P

What's with the anti-Facebook sentiment? It's worse than anti-Microsoft sentiments. Facebook does lots of cool stuff, a lot of it open source.

Game_Ender• 15 years ago

I think people resent how Facebook is trying to become the web, in similar way to how AOL did (remember when some companies advertised AOL keywords). They are doing this on top of a platform that is closed, and is mostly a black box for your data. That doesn't mean they don't produce some cool open source technologies, it just means they use them on massive closed source platform.

mikemaccana4• 15 years ago

1. You can import your data into Facebook. You can't export - all you get is Facebook UUIDs back.

2. Privacy options are made deliberately difficult as Facebook (as they've stated before) want you to share as much as you can. Setting anything to 'me only' is buried under a custom setting you have to repeat for everything you don't want shared.

mycroftiv• 15 years ago

Zuckerberg broke into the emails of journalists he thought could damage him back in the college days, and he called his users "dumb fucks" for trusting him. The way Zuckerberg is idolized for his success and even held up as a role model(!) when it was achieved through unethical means is symptomatic of a lot of my least favorite things about society. The fact that the essential character of Facebook is trying to leverage people's social connections for the purpose of marketing is highly distasteful to me as well.

deltriggah• 15 years ago

confused

flocial2• 15 years ago

Guess he gotta pay legal bills. But wasn't he an intern at Google doing maps? Dude's super talented.

orijing• 15 years ago

He sits in front of me. I'm surprised the news didn't leak out sooner. He's a cool dude. I don't see any of the perceived threats hinted in the comments.

jevinskie• 15 years ago

Can you shed any light on what is role at Facebook is? My guess would be that he has been tasked with improving security.

timmins• 15 years ago

If I had to guess... I bet he's playing a significant role in their mobile strategy. Maybe related, a story broke last week with MG that they want to deploy a platform, via the browser.

Project Spartan - http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/15/facebook-project-spartan

jkincaid• 15 years ago

In case you haven't seen it, here's an awesome story on how FB hired Chris Putnam: http://www.quora.com/How-did-Chris-Putnam-get-hired-at-Faceb...

He hacked Facebook in 2005 and they hired him. From what I've heard he was one of their most invaluable engineers.

marshray3• 15 years ago

Lol!

AIUI, Geohot is basically forbidden from working with anything Sony.

So to the extent he becomes an essential part of the security team at Facebook, I guess Sony just lawsuited their way out of deep partnership opportunities with the biggest social media platform to date.

MatthewPhillips2• 15 years ago

Facebook would pass over business deals to serve a grudge of one of their low level employees?

marshray3• 15 years ago

No, I qualified it with "to the extent he becomes an essential part of the security team", and no, it's not a "grudge" it's a condition of out-of-court settlement as I understand it.

Yes, the comment was a little over-the-top.

But think NDAs. That kind of thing can definitely complicate business deals.

unkoman• 15 years ago

I'd love to get my hands on all of that private info too.

Facebook snags Geohot

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