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Comment by rasengan | Hacker News Reader

If this happened in 2021 someone would be in prison or fired at best.

That said, this is a hilarious story and reminds me of the things people used to do in the early days of the internet in terms of trolling and such. Unfortunately, after groups like the GN*A and others successfully trolled the world several times, nation states figured it out and started trolling to actually control the narrative of the internet!

And here we are today.

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> If this happened in 2021 someone would be in prison or fired at best.

If that's the best case scenario, what's the worst? Firing squad?

This is a good example of how human language is ambiguous. You should read it as in the worst case in prison and in the best case fired.

Hah! That interpretation didn’t even occur to me, but yes that makes more sense.

No, we have tone and punctuation to disambiguate the two interpretations here. Parent commenter interpreted correctly. If the grandparent’s intention was otherwise, they should have used a comma.

It's a good example of how ambiguity can arise when humans use (or don't use) punctuation and other features of a language that's been evolving for centuries, to communicate across an instantaneous worldwide medium with little effort

Well said.

They didn't interpret it correctly, and there's no rule stating a comma is necessary that's universal in every style-guide.

They interpreted incorrectly per English grammar. We don’t know whether they interpreted correctly or incorrectly per the utterer’s intention, as the utterer has not clarified their intention.

This isn’t a question of style, but one of grammar.

Precisely.

It's not that simple. Commas are lawless.

Expelled.

terminated!

Prison? That seems over the top.

This would be a massive SEC violation at minimum.

A prison sentence would not be surprising at all.

The only reason they likely didn’t get it in 1995 even is that MS PR (the one this person derides as PR flacks) apparently successfully convinced the world that this wasn’t done by MS insiders.

How can a regular non-executive employee be guilty of a SEC violation, for something like this?

If I'm a Tesla employee and I make a fake image about a future Tesla airplane, is that a SEC violation?

You are attempting to manipulate the stock price, likely for personal gain.

It is difficult to prove intent, especially if the press release is absurd, released on April 1st, and you’re attempting to prove it wasn’t intended as a prank.

Having said that, I’m holding a bag of SO stock because I thought they really were going to start monetizing by charging for copy-paste. /s

Why do you think the SEC has to prove intent, or even that it being a prank, even if you prove that, protects you?

> When it comes to being charged with fraud, demonstrating that the defendant lacked the intent to commit a crime (i.e. that he or she acted in good faith) is a key defense because, in order to convict the defendant, the prosecutor needs to prove that he or she had fraudulent intent.

https://www.baezlawfirm.com/two-recent-cases-highlight-impor...

> U.S. Supreme Court Rules That Securities Fraud Suits Must Be Dismissed Unless Plaintiffs Plead Fact Establishing a "Cogent and Compelling Inference" of Fraudulent Intent

https://www.jonesday.com/en/insights/2007/07/us-supreme-cour...

The SEC does more than just fraud, which is what those links speak to.

https://www.sec.gov/news/speech/2014-spch033114mjw

"We, for example, often bring cases based on negligence, while most criminal statutes require intent or at least willful blindness. Some of our statutes are also strict liability, which do not require intent, recklessness, or negligence."

And if you look at those strict liability violations, it's stuff like filing required forms and reports by financial officers, not what we were talking about.

From the article.

“ We were busy arranging a graphic design of the box, putting easter egg jokes in the tech specs on the side, leveraging corporate partnerships, and prepping to make a run of several hundred boxes through one of Microsoft’s production printing systems. This was not only kind of expensive, but a commitment, a step that would in effect put an official stamp from Microsoft on the plan.”

I suspect that this is the reason the “PR flacks” didn’t just dismiss this as a joke gone wrong, but went beyond to insist (lie) that it was done by outsiders.

Non executives can very much be guilty of SEC violations.

If you make a fake image of a Tesla airplane, create branding for that fake Tesla image, and post it all over the official Tesla PR accounts, without immediately or at least in the fine print, explaining this is an Apr 1 joke, Tesla, and likely you, would be legally liable.

All those downvoting this really need to read their company’s employment manual.

An employee’s actions represents their employer’s actions. Not being an executive does not make your company any less liable and/or make you as an employee less liable for your actions as an employee (there is no question whether the actions discussed in this situation were considered to be in a personal capacity, since the author clearly states they leveraged Microsoft partnerships as well as Microsoft resources to pull this off).

If it was objectively clear that it was just a joke, it would probably qualify as protected speech under the First Amendment and thus be immune to SEC penalties.

No, it wouldn't be a "massive SEC violation" and yes, a prison sentence would be _very_ surprising. The SEC can't send someone to prison. They're a civil enforcement agency.

Well, no agency in the US can “send” someone to prison, outside the judicial system.

But the SEC can certainly start investigations and then take someone to court in conjunction with DAs the country over, and a possible result can be imprisonment.

Prison is where most Microsoft software was packaged back then: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/07/what-do-prisone...

Nice, I had forgotten that!

“Most Microsoft software” is not what that article says. It just says one of Microsoft’s contractors used them.

They might have gotten fired in 96 too. They certainly seemed afraid of that based on things in the story not to mention waiting 25 years to tell it.

what a strange way to obfuscate that GNAA acronym!

Associ*tion

You would also have been in prison in 1996 had you tried it at a larger and more "strict" company than Microsoft.

True that. The reason for this is simple. Stock price. Investors would wine around, price could move.

It is all about money today: serious business.

I think it's deeper - and more insidious - than that. People with no sense of humor, or even awareness of their lack of sense of humor, have clawed their way into positions of real power. They used to just run the parent-teacher council and try to get TV shows cancelled, but now they've moved on to control nearly every aspect of our lives. And their power is growing.

Having a sense of humour is dangerous when you need the approval of others because most sense of humour differ from the ones others have.

Do you think this is any different than any time throughout history? There have always been and always will be people without senses of humor in all walks of life.

I don't know about the rest of history, but this is the first point in my lifetime where they've been in control of so many aspects of day-to-day life.

This is pure nonsense. Look at any portrayal of large operations (satirical or biographical) in recorded history. The leadership of GM, Ford, IBM, the military, and any huge organization have always been portrayed as humorless.

> I don't know about the rest of history

Well, there you go.

Implementing CoCs...

Turns out Germany played the long con and has successfully taken over the world.

Maybe these people do have a sense of humour but your jokes just aren’t as funny as you think they are?

Fine, then don't laugh. Even mock me. Tell me not to quit my day job. I don't think somebody should lose their job/be banished from society because of a bad joke.

Yeah, someone with a sense of humor sees a bad/lame joke as something to riff on.

That's how dad jokes became a thing.

How about don't bother people with your lame humour in the first place if they don't explicitly ask for it?

Leave other people alone unless they opt-in. It's a basic part of a kind society.

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