Alibaba Engineers Fired for Mooncake Hacking (wsj.com)

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.

Comments

Please explain why I should care

[drinkypoo]

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.

four engineers tried to rig the distribution system of the e-commerce giant's mooncake selloff

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 it's just the same shitstorm of slashvertisements and no editing. That's still enough to keep me coming around, but I'm now never going to believe any bullshit about improvements.