Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony • Hacker News Board

Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony

#401

Post by zuzululu » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 4:42 PM UTC

smithoc wrote: post #398

zuzululu wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

where is the fraud ? you are making outlandish accusations. how am I to blame you cant work remotely ? I dont even know if you work!

> Using AI, I've been able to land several interviews and work 3 jobs remotely currently without much effort Working 3 jobs is almost certainly defrauding the employers, your employment agreement likely forbids this due to IP ownership issues and expectations that you're, ya know, working for them when they're paying you and not secretly collecting a paycheck while working for a different company during the time they…

3 jobs done on 3 separate computers

Not paid hourly rate and we are about delivering milestones on time

Everyone is satisfied with the rate of PRs closed and fine with AI use

I'm still waiting to hear what part of this is fraud?

> Also, unclear if you're also fraudulently claiming experience you don't have by having AI write a resume tailored to the job posting rather than representing what you've actually done.

Where have I said to use AI to fabricate experience? Do you actually believe that will work and thats what people are doing before background checks ?

Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony

#402

Post by carlio » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 4:51 PM UTC

aquariusDue wrote: post #283

carlio wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's always been a general pushback on HN against turning threads into a series of quippy oneliners. It tends toward having a serious discussion about a topic, rather than farming low-effort humour for upvotes. I consider this a good thing, as there are plenty of other places where that is rewarded.

I agree though from my experience on HN people tend to upvote these funny quips instead of abstaining. Yet generally when I write something meaningful I get meaningful replies in return sans upvotes and I treasure those much more.

I still cling on to the quaint idea that "upvote" means "adds meaningfully and coherently to the discussion", while "downvote" means the opposite. So not "I agree with this" or "that made me chuckle" but rather "this enhances the conversation" - and especially if it's a well written argument I disagree with because that might make me learn or rethink my position. Humour in a well argued point is very welcome, of course.

Wish and reality aren't in alignment here but some places like HN or /r/AskHistorians are my refuges.

Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony

#403

Post by yesitcan » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 4:52 PM UTC

wallst07 wrote: post #302

yesitcan wrote: post #134

So this guy was buying fake MDMA and reselling it as actual MDMA? What a scum bag

No, try reading it again. "a legal "Research Chemical" with effects similar to MDMA (Methylone/bk-MDMA)" Someone that is quick to assume without reading could easily make this mistake.. there are my research chemicals that are not technically categorized and not MDMA. Read about Sasha to start https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Shulgin

Yes but if I’m buying MDMA, I don’t want to actually be consuming Methylone. Not sure why that’s hard to understand.

Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony

#404

Post by zuzululu » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 4:54 PM UTC

yurishimo wrote: post #293

zuzululu wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

where is the fraud ? you are making outlandish accusations. how am I to blame you cant work remotely ? I dont even know if you work!

I think the "fraud" they are likely referring to is working 3 jobs at the same time as a software developer. Do all of the jobs know you have 2 others in the same line of work? If you're a consultant and advertise as such, no big deal imo, but I do think there is something to be said if you can't be honest with all of your employers about what other work is on your plate. Programming is by definition technical work t…

No they don't know and if they did I would get fired obviously.

Thus 3 laptops and sometimes there are meetings which can overlap and that is always a challenge.

Yes nobody is complaining about the output and they are getting their money's worth.

I just think that as a modern day salaryman its silly to rely on one employer now or have any sort of loyalty.

It's okay to ** over the average working guy but not okay when they do anything to position themselves away from that arrangement.

Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony

#405

Post by _heimdall » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 5:06 PM UTC

ndcnncbf wrote: post #378

_heimdall wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have laws for theft and similar crimes. You don't need a government creating more rules preventing entire categories of choices from being made, especially if they already can't enforce the laws on the books.

[flagged]

I'm not advocating for the US legal/criminal system at all actually. The prior comment was pointing to crimes already being committed by people who make or made certain choices. My only point was that further regulation may not be a great solution when the activities being done are already illegal and going unenforced.

Personally I'd rather gut the legal system and drastically raise the bar by which people are locked up as punishment, but that's beside the point.

Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony

#406

Post by jbgt » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 5:07 PM UTC

stuartd wrote: post #171

lanewinfield wrote: post #12

Thank you for sharing your story! I wish you continued success and I also hope that one day someone will share with you about how YOUR story helped them do something similar, just like the article did for you. Also, Preston Thorpe (who Gavin mentions as inspiration) has an interesting story as well: https://pthorpe92.dev/intro/my-story/

Thank you for that link. I recommend reading to the very last line.

How nice is that!

Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony

#407

Post by red-iron-pine » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 5:24 PM UTC

hnlmorg wrote: post #369

lelanthran wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If alcohol was only discovered in 2026, there isn't a country in the world that would legalise it. It's legal only because it's been grandfathered in, from before legal systems were created.

That’s an impossible to prove opinion without changing the laws of physics. But there are some precedence we can refer to as a counterargument. 1. There have been plenty of other substances that have been banned which were legal and widely taken since before such laws existed. Demonstrating that governments are willing to control substances that were previously legal. 2. There have also been other drugs that have bee…

> 3. And your augment about alcohol specific actually did happen in some places. It is commonly referred to as "prohibition". And that decision never stuck.

sticks pretty well in muslim areas.

Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony

#408

Post by red-iron-pine » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 5:27 PM UTC

throwaway2037 wrote: post #296

dadpassthebeans wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Lost my passwd to my throwaway so i had to create another, sorry) Me? I have nothing to offer. My elementary aged kids will be in middle school soon and I am not looking forward to having to try and keep them on the straight and narrow. At home my parents afforded me a long leash and I rejected most of what my superiors at school/etc fed me. As soon I was able, I GTFO. Took many risks and things worked out okay for…

This is a good and balanced reply. My brother was much more rebellious than me when he was younger. Not as crazy as your first post, but crazy enough for our relatively conservative family. When he got married and had kids later, he is -- to my great surprise -- a very strict, conservative parent. He has his daughters on the straight and narrow path. Sometimes I wonder will they go crazy as soon as they got to uni (m…

> I saw more than a few crack during my first year of uni, living in dorms. You can probably find some books or blogs that people have written about their own journey as a parent, especially when they had a rocky start in life as an adult.

grew up around the military, ended up enlisting out of HS.

buncha my friends, all army/navy brats from outside of DC, all went off to college. easily 1/3 drank themselves stupid or otherwise went nuts.

off the leash they decided they'd rather be in a band and work part-time at the grocery store than keep going down the path they were forced. Most of them have since graduated and several are doing pretty well. Had to do that freedom thing, tho.

better choice than the one I made, too

Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony

#409

Post by klibertp » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 5:55 PM UTC

mothballed wrote: post #140

klibertp wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some US highways I'm sorry, but from a European perspective, this is the problem, not bikes. If your roads and driving culture encourage driving a tank for safety, that's a bit less than ideal. I commuted to work for 5 years on a moped. I never used a highway, almost never exceeded 50km/h, and had 2 accidents during that time; both resulted in just a few scratches and bruises. In another post, you said: "maybe spee…

I lack the commenting impulse control to say this in a politically correct way so my apologies for the outrage that will follow, but to put it crudely there is someone in my extended family who became a retard after falling off their bicycle at roughly walking speed and with a helmet on. It's rare but you can easily die just from walking and slipping on a banana peel. While you're right about slower generally being s…

I'm sorry for your relative, and of course you should always do things like driving (diving, cycling, sailing, climbing - or even cooking and cleaning) as if a tiny mistake could cost you everything: that's because it's actually true. These activities will never be risk-free; the best you can do is bring the risk down to a level comparable to that of alternatives (with "just don't do it" included in the set) and hope no unfortunate incidents occur to you.

It's still worth noting the relative probability: death or life-changing injury is basically what happens in every single accident when you're going 200km/h on a highway surrounded by (what could as well be) steel walls moving at the same speed; in my use case, when not exceeding 40-50 km/h and using roads where other users basically stand still most of the time, you need a pretty specific conditions and a lot of bad luck to even have an accident, much less die or become permanently disabled as a result of one. Still, not a zero probability, but the difference between 100% and 0.01% is kind of noticeable.

Re: Building from zero after addiction, prison, and a felony

#410

Post by retsibsi » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 6:09 PM UTC

carlio wrote: post #232

orthecreedence wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really great point, and shows a deep understanding of how consistently humorless HN users are! If you want, I can show several more examples of people knee-jerk downvoting things that are actually pretty funny.

There's always been a general pushback on HN against turning threads into a series of quippy oneliners. It tends toward having a serious discussion about a topic, rather than farming low-effort humour for upvotes. I consider this a good thing, as there are plenty of other places where that is rewarded.

Yeah it seems harmless in isolation, but I'm pretty sure that lacking a norm against it it is one of the ways you end up with Reddit. And because HN doesn't have an actual anti-humour rule, in the best case it lets the funnier and more creative stuff through while punishing the obvious one-liners and boilerplate jokes that everyone would be clamouring to make first on a Reddit thread. (I don't want to be rude, but the thing where someone writes stereotypical AI speak in an ironic context has been done a billion times and doesn't need to be done again, unless it comes with an interesting twist or unusually sharp execution.)