Alibaba Engineers Fired for Mooncake Hacking (wsj.com) 85
On the eve of Mid-Autumn Festival, some people will go to great lengths to get mooncakes, the traditional gift for family, friends and colleagues. At Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., four engineers tried to rig the distribution system of the e-commerce giant's mooncake selloff -- and were fired for their effort (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternate source), reports WSJ. From the report: Alibaba confirmed it fired the four this week, after they hacked into the internal website that allows employees to purchase the company's signature mooncakes, with an orange fluffy Alibaba mascot inside. The Hangzhou-based company allocates one free box to each employee for the holiday, and sells extras on the site at cost -- 59 yuan (about $9) for a box of four.
What the hell are mooncakes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Would it have killed them to put a picture of a mooncake in the article? Am I the only one who doesn't know what the hell they are talking about?
Re:What the hell are mooncakes? (Score:5, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
to be fair, I had no clue either.
-nb
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
to be fair, I had no clue either.
-nb
So on a place where people say that this is a US based site (and suck up any lack of pandering to you foreign, socialist idiots who can't understand why the US uses its own set of units) Slashdot posts a story about something that is culturally limited to a non-American country and then doesn't provide any context!
Yeah .. get off my lawn.
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Show me on the doll where the reference to an artifact of Chinese culture hurt you.
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I knew about them and have eaten one, and I'm California born and have never been to China. They're sold in the US, and Chinese nationals and Americans with Chinese ancestry will share them with coworkers and friends.
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And some that are mostly fruit. The ones with oranges (mandarins of course) are really excellent. They also have some with spiced pork, eggs and pretty much anything ... you could ... probably .... not .... imagine. yeah, well, pickled vegetables are an acquired taste anyway, but the fruit ones are really my favorite.
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Re:What the hell are mooncakes? (Score:5, Informative)
A mooncake is a pastry consisting of a crust and a filling. The filling can be sweetened red beans, lotus paste, nuts, etc. They are pretty good. They are eaten during the harvest moon festival, with is tonight.
They are not at all "hard to get". You can buy them on any corner bakery in China. Also they are easy to make using molds you can buy on eBay or Amazon, and they taste WAY better fresh from the oven instead of the sodium-benzoate laden crap you buy on-line.
Pro-tip: The hard part is getting them out of the mold, and they slide out of the plastic molds way easier than the wooden molds. I use this one [amazon.com].
Disclaimer: My wife is Chinese.
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so basically (Score:1)
You are a culture appropriator
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You are a culture appropriator
Culture appropriation is nonsense. As a Chinese I welcome everyone to try our things.
Re:so basically (Score:5, Informative)
I'm British, my culture is to appropriate other cultures.
We appear to be at an impasse.
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Why should your opinion matter more than that of an ABC who feels that cultural appropriation is distasteful?
My kids are ABCs, and they know far less about Chinese culture than I do. I am a white guy, but I actually lived in China and they haven't. Besides, the culture in Dongbei is about as different from the culture in Xizang as Norwegian culture is different from Greek culture.
It is your right to hold such an opinion, but it's my right to disagree with you.
... and it is my right to ignore your opinion.
Cultural tourists should leave my culture alone unless they can treat it with the same respect they would give to their own cultural institutions.
Nobody respects American culture ... and that doesn't offend me at all.
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They're not unheard of in the US - I got a box at Costco last year, just to try them out and because the box looked cool. I brought it into work and the consensus was that it's Chinese fruitcake - something everyone has to buy and give, but that no one really likes.
I guess back in the day it was actually a good gift to get because it seems like about the most calorie dense food you can get. To a peasant farmer that's going to be manna, but for modern affluent folks, it's just too rich.
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something everyone has to buy and give, but that no one really likes
I don't know many people who like fruitcakes, but amongst my Chinese friends there is certainly a lot of disappointment if they can't get "moon cakes" around the appropriate time of year.
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Though that doesn't actually mean that they LIKE it (for the taste, that is)... Maybe they're nostalgic for it.
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Most asian supermarkets and tea shops sell them. The taiwanese tea chain Ten Ren has shops here in the US. Their tea flavored cakes are very good
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Am I the only one who doesn't know what the hell they are talking about?
I think Michael Jackson used to eat them.
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I found it interesting and entertaining.
It peaked my interest enough to look up "Moon Cake."
I now know another thing I didn't know before.
I liked this one.
Same here! Interesting kind of food. Some variants look pretty tasty. Don't know about the bean filling, tho...
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If it's like mochi, the red bean comes out pretty sweet, and not too weird, even for an American palate. Not any weirder than rice pudding or bread pudding, really.
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Slashdot is now 85% people whining about having to open a tab and search for expository boilerplate.
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here is one rolled up nicely https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploa... [vox-cdn.com]
mooncakes are moonbats bait (Score:3)
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Asia is like America: It's ok if companies do it, but don't you DARE to do it yourself.
*sniff* Those commies learned capitalism so fast... they're almost better at it by now than us.
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*gasp*
Not only have they learned Capitalism but also colonialism, practically at the same time!
Mooncakes Are Serious Business (Score:2, Funny)
Mooncakes are serious business in Asian culture. Don't fuck with the mooncakes!
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but (Score:2)
Please explain why I should care (Score:2, Interesting)
This story is a classic example of a bad submission, and there is absolutely no way in hell that it worked its way out here to the front page from the firehose without some kind of manipulation.
Not only are we left to wonder what a mooncake is, which is not so bad really as we can look it up, but we're left to wonder why we should care about Alibaba's annual mooncake sale which we've never heard of before. Not lin
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And you're still the same old cancerous alcoholic as always.
So far, not cancerous; I even quit smoking. And also not alcoholic; that was my father. I am biologically unable to be a good alcoholic because I throw up long before I forget my problems, black out, etc. You, however, are still a coward — and a cancer.
Man Bites Dog (Score:2)
When Chinese hackers breech American military and corporate security to steal priceless information and technology, it's a tragedy. When Chinese hackers breech Chinese security to steal cheap snacks, it's news.
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Not only are we left to wonder what a mooncake is, which is not so bad really as we can look it up, but we're left to wonder why we should care about Alibaba's annual mooncake sale which we've never heard of before. Not linking mooncake to WP is dumb, but not linking "annual mooncake sale" to a page which explains what it is to us is just goddamned stupid.
I thought Slashdot was going to be different now... better. But...
Nope. Whinier commenters these days. In the old days, a whiny commenter would have whined and then posted links to all the things in question in disgust to get those precious mod points.
For once I knew what the article was about (Score:2)
By the way, most mooncakes aren't very delicious, at least not according to my white boy America
I mean, c'mon (Score:2)
how hard is it to bake a cake?!
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This probably explains why American companies are outsourcing to China. "For the price of one American employee, we could get FOUR Chinese ones!"
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No no no.. Alibaba hacked the website "with an orange fluffy Alibaba mascot inside."
Hacking websites is an interesting use of a mooncake, I'd say!
Not hacking (Score:2)
Reading other accounts of the story (I expected better from you, WSJ!), the server was not hacked. Instead there was a buy button on a web page, and these engineers wrote javascript in a web browser to click the button for them. I'm not clear on the exact technical details (the articles and posts did not detail them), but it sounds like you could keep clicking the buy button via javascript to get lots of orders.
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Wow, that does make the firing even more ridiculous then. No wonder they immediately got job offers from other companies.
It's crazy how all these big sites are regurgitating this story with the sensational headline and not one bothers to do a basic fact check. All they need to do to have someone who knows Chinese translate the social media posts.
While no one was looking (Score:2)
While no one was looking, 4 Chinese engineers stole 400 cakes. That's as many as 40 tens, and that's terrible.
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There are not 400 cakes. The 400 cakes are a lie.
The assumption (Score:1)