Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Back To My Roots

al3x.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–29 of 29 posts

Re: Back To My Roots

#21

Post by mattdeboard »

coops wrote: post #11
cjoh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did the best we could, and tried to help on it as much as the law would allow. And still do. But one cannot simply volunteer to help the government do things, as the federal advisory committee act prohibits government from accepting free advice or work (you can infer why). Not sure what you mean about fundraising though, as we don't raise money (we have received a grant for our operations from the Knight Foundatio…

You must not have tried very hard. http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/31/oracle-red-hat-and-google-e... People are still flying out there to help with healthcare.gov, all the time.

Those big companies used their government contacts to land some big government contracts. The government reached out to industry as a PR move, throwing money at whoever promised they could fix the problem as soon as possible. There's no altruism here.

Re: Back To My Roots

#22

Post by coops »

mattdeboard wrote: post #21
coops wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must not have tried very hard. http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/31/oracle-red-hat-and-google-e... People are still flying out there to help with healthcare.gov, all the time.

Those big companies used their government contacts to land some big government contracts. The government reached out to industry as a PR move, throwing money at whoever promised they could fix the problem as soon as possible. There's no altruism here.

sorry, no, you're all wrong. those employees are all taking unpaid leave to come work on healthcare.gov.

Re: Back To My Roots

#24

Post by yummyfajitas »

ForHackernews wrote: post #2

Whenever I read things like this, my immediate reaction is "How do these people have so much money to travel around the world doing nothing-in-particular for two years?" Are there just a lot of really rich people out there? Or am I over-cautious and they're operating without a safety net?

I'm travelling India right now. For now I'm in reasonably nice hotels (if you go too downmarket you get no wifi). My living costs are less than half what I'd pay for an apt in NY, London or SF.

All I did was work as a developer and live below my means.

Re: Back To My Roots

#25

Post by aethr »

badman_ting wrote: post #12

Kudos to him, I would have gone back to school and lived the life of the spoiled rich brat I always wished for.

I just connected the dots and realised that I went to high school with al3x in the DC area. I never realised the programmer I knew in high school went on to work with twitter, et all. What a brilliant surprise!

Anyway, really glad to see he's doing so well, especially after reading his blog entry a few months ago about his personal troubles. It's refreshing to see a fellow human being making great use of their time and fortune to the betterment of others. Good luck in the new role, al3x.

Re: Back To My Roots

#26

Post by raving-richard »

I don't believe in the government. Unfortunately it believes in me. Well done on being almost as free as a person can be in this unfree society. But please don't help the biggest source of unfreedom there is. Instead, use your time to help make others free if you want a suggestion as to what to do.

Easy to use crypto for one.

Re: Back To My Roots

#27

Post by kelnos »

ForHackernews wrote: post #2

Whenever I read things like this, my immediate reaction is "How do these people have so much money to travel around the world doing nothing-in-particular for two years?" Are there just a lot of really rich people out there? Or am I over-cautious and they're operating without a safety net?

Depending on where you travel, your expenses can end up being less than when you lived at the last place you called home.

Being rich isn't necessary. Living below your means is a great way to build a cushion for emergencies... or for when you burn out and need an extended vacation. The only people who really have an excuse to be unable to do that are people making less than the poverty line. Anything more than that, and you can save.

Of course in this case the author is rich, having been able to cash out his early Twitter stock after their IPO, but being rich isn't the only path.

Re: Back To My Roots

#28

Post by cjoh »

tw268 wrote: post #17
peter_l_downs wrote: post #15

Really interesting — I think the question of "How can I help make government better?" is not asked enough. My guess is that there is a large number of very smart people who would love to write code to improve the government; I know that when I'm looking for a new gig I'll be reaching out.

Minority set-asides wouldn't be my answer. It seems the government needs the best contractors it can get. You'll notice that private companies never do that stuff because they suffer if they don't get results.

Minority set-asides aren't our exclusive purpose. We want to reform the procurement process to make it more competitive and honest. Part of that is making it so that a woman doesn't have to write an essay explaining that she's a woman before she gets granted woman owned business status by the SBA.

But another part of it is advocating for the RFP-IT Act, which would make it a lot easier for small businesses to sell to the federal government: http://blog.dobt.co/2014/01/27/Reform-Federal-Procurement-fo...

And another is piloting our software, Screendoor.io, which is based on the project we ran successfully in the White House, RFP-EZ: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/05/15/rfp-ez-delivers-sa...

Re: Back To My Roots

#29

Post by michaelochurch »

ForHackernews wrote: post #2

Whenever I read things like this, my immediate reaction is "How do these people have so much money to travel around the world doing nothing-in-particular for two years?" Are there just a lot of really rich people out there? Or am I over-cautious and they're operating without a safety net?

Are there just a lot of really rich people out there? Or am I over-cautious and they're operating without a safety net?

The Internet also has a lot of 25-year-olds dying of stomach cancer.

The likelihood that an individual person will have that happen is very low, but those 1-in-10,000 events are magnified by reporting bias (in favor of the unusual) when you're on the Internet.

Couple this with the positive reporting bias of social media, and it looks like there are even more very rich people than there are.

However, the answer is that there are still a fair number of rich people out there. Self-made tech rich people are extremely rare-- you're about as likely to win the startup lottery, if you weren't born into VC connections that take you directly to founderdom, as you are to win the lottery-- but there are plenty of people making money the old-fashioned way: inheriting it.

Post reply on HN