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Pay It Forward

news.ycombinator.com

41–50 of 54 posts

Re: Pay It Forward

#43
I could really use one myself. My backups are spread between several 200GB hard drives, with a 1TB I could condense them all into one and pass on my smaller drives.

Re: Pay It Forward

#47
This is a great idea, it'd be nice if there was a formal mechanism on HN for putting stuff up for free. I'd only give something away for free to someone who had a decent presence on the site, but I've got lots of hardware laying around, sticks of excellent RAM, hard drives, etc that I'll never do anything with.

Re: Pay It Forward

#48

Unless someone has a better idea, I'll give them out in this fashion: 1) Anyone who requests one gets added to the list (I'll do this tomorrow afternoon). If it's not requested, I'll assume not, just because some people are leaving comments about "good idea" etc. 2) I'll put them in a spreadsheet and then use http://andrew.hedges.name/experiments/random/ to generate 3 random numbers and attempt to contact those peopl…

Ok, starting to enter all names and do the randomization. If I had 50 hard drives, I'd give you all one. Additionally, some people seem really in need of these hard drives. If you are, I certainly hope that you are one randomly picked. I can't take the time to try and evaluate who needs it most etc, but I hope that whether or not you are someone who receives one, that you still do a random act every once in a while.

Re: Pay It Forward

#49

I'm actually shopping for some much needed backup, but other comments here present greater needs and/or projects. So, put me down as simply grateful for the gesture; I'll leave mention of my own shopping just as an indication (additional data point) of how generally useful that gesture is. Cheers! P.S. I don't know just when my next random act of kindness will come along, but they've been known to happen. :-)

This is more generous than what I'm doing. I'm giving away something I don't have much of a use for and other people need. You're choosing to turn down something you need so someone more fortunate can have it. It's good to see people like you existing.

Re: Pay It Forward

#50

I'd like to be added, thanks! On a side note: this post has inspired me to donate all the stuff I don't need to the local thrift store tomorrow (mostly books/clothes).

Great idea! Also, make an inventory of what you're taking, and get a receipt. It's a tax deduction. It may not be much depending on what you're donating (T Shirts are $1-2 for example), but it's a little extra bonus for being nice.
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