kahawe

Martha, regardless whether this is or isn't a con, I honestly think the only right thing to do would be to take that money and invest it in a local, honest and well-run charity to help the people starving and going blind and dying because they are lacking even the most basic vital medical care - not far from where you are.

Because I have no idea how you justify asking people for donations for a nice NYC trip when you could actually pick up all the skills for your "cause" right from where you are over the internet and for free - while people are dying right where you live. Do your high-up-the-Maslow-hierarchy needs take precedence over them starving? And if they do, it is yet another small drop in the ocean of tears that unfortunately left big parts of Africa in the desolate state they currently are in.

I know this isn't an easy decision because hey, everybody wants to go to NYC like that, and I am sure you are going to say with all that knowledge you can make Africa a little better then in the future. Well, you can do that now and you can pick up all those skills for free without going anywhere and you could be making Africa a little better right this very moment while learning how to make things even better in the future. Be a hero like that. Or you take your own slightly egoistic dreams over the needs of others and you would just be another proverbial "brick in the wall". Others see you doing that, they are going to ask themselves why they should do anything for others when they can just further their own personal needs under the blanket of "charitable" actions.

If anything, you should never have asked for money but asked the hacker community to help you out with skills and knowledge or e.g. (used) hardware donations. That would have gotten you much more towards your proclaimed "goal" and with more ethical integrity.

I am sorry, I HAVE to ask out of personal curiosity and to play devil's advocate...

What tells me "Martha" even exists and that she was admitted to hackerschool and will actually go to NYC with the money she just begged for? Even the twitter and github accounts could be part of an elaborate scam. Plus she asked for around $4000, by now has raised quite a bit more. Will that surplus be donated to further her "cause" (if there even is one) and support other girls to join her? Or is that just going to be nice pocket change?

To further satisfy my own curiosity, why is donating to her more "ok" and others asking for money are just "beggars"? Or would you donate to some random e.g. white guy who would ask for a couple of thousands for a nice trip like that? Would you consider donating to a person who is in a stable living condition but simply could not afford a trip to NYC or Berkeley? Or do you have to be third world and implied broke to apply for that? Which I don't think she is, by the way.

Also, why is "women in IT" a cause that even needs supporting? How would the world be better off with more women in IT - when actually nothing is really keeping most girls from getting into IT, unless there are local equal-rights shortcomings to keep girls out of ALL education; in my own experience, for whatever reason, most of the women I have met do not want to and actually say they hate all that technical stuff. The ones that did want to start programming, they worked hard at it and picked the right university; unfortunately many of those who did simply failed the programming exams or other technical courses. The remaining rest who wanted to be in IT and made the cut, they are doing just fine... it's just a small percentage and I do not think this is the case because anyone is actively keeping girls "out" - and I doubt things are going to somehow be "better" if only there were more girls in IT.

And aren't there local institutions to help people like her to further her education? I am quite sure there have got to be, even in Africa. Even for nice trips like that.

So, at the end of the day all I see so far is, you are supporting a romantic story and at first glance, that is tugging too many heart strings so it naturally sets off my "scam" alert. Please do prove me wrong! I am honestly curious.

Finally, most importantly, even if all she said is true: There are people simply dying not too far away, I think 5000 or the surplus 1000 could buy a good amount of actually very cheap but vital medicine to keep locals from dying under horrible conditions, to give them back their eye sight and keep their babies from starving.

So all the doubts aside, let's cut to the chase: WHY should I or anyone finance a nice NYC trip for Martha while that is going on and she can very well pick up ALL the necessary skills right where she is, over the internet, for free? Just like pretty much all "hackers" did.

Why does she ask for money instead of asking the community to support her with knowledge and skills?

More often than not, I am wondering just how much complexity one could spare themselves from if they would just use tomcat and postgres/mysql/some-nosql instead of a full-blown oracle-enterprise DB and a serious-business "application server" - both of which said applications are using maybe 10% the features of and basically never any of the really cool features that make them so expensive in licensing.

I know this will not be the most popular opinion to voice but you know what? I call major first world problems.

By now women (thankfully!) have the right to vote, to study, to pick and divorce their partners as THEY see fit, they are allowed to drive, to drink, to be artists, to be engineers, scientists, to be anything they want, there are extremely influential political and economic positions held by very capable women. Now, I am NOT saying we are perfect and women should just stop complaining - but I AM going to say let's just be happy for a moment we made it this far because there are still quite a lot of countries in this world where all the aforementioned are denied to women and splitting hairs on comparatively petty subjects like the stereotypically non-tech "grrrls" seems like a waste of everyone's time and effort. Better focus on subjects that actually matter instead of wasting it on over-compensating and über-political-correctness.

I may not be working in the most hip and trendy kind of places so YMMV, in my own experience the IT industry I have seen so far definitely IS predominantly male to the point having 1/3 female colleagues would seem like the maximum I (n)ever (even) encountered. In the university where I studied they were trying hard to attract female students, we started with maybe 1/3 or so female; then came the programming lessons and unfortunately those mainly got rid of most of the girls. At the end, there were just a couple of girls left who finished their degree. IT is not for everybody and there are a lot of guys who just cannot do it either, why is it such an atrocity to say the same about girls? Nobody would cry murder if the article was explaining it to "my little brother".

I like this story because it does not end with some explicit or implied "and then I hit it big time (as a reward for my love)" as if loving what you do and sticking with it is some sort of super-secret method for guaranteed success. OP made it work for him in the present and enriched his life by doing so, it seems it even paid off later too. Great! His "win" was right there. There are a lot of ways to be successful and loving what you do can certainly help but it won't give you much of an edge on folks who are "just" doing an outstanding job for the money. The most perfectly and enthusiastic and welcoming bar can go belly-up for no reason but people's taste suddenly changed or the financial crisis hits hard and nobody has money to go out anymore.

If you are radically doing what you love for the love of doing it and you laugh about money, good for you. But don't blindly hope or subconsciously count on some miracle future success just because you loved your work so much. The people who completely bombed doing what they love(d) hardly ever share their crushing stories.

You cannot control all the things that can greatly influence your success and loving what you do won't shield you against it either. Keep that in mind. Get something out of it now, always get some sort of return for yourself and NOW, if that is "just" money and you consciously made that decision then that is ok. If it means really good connections and a technological playground you love playing/working in, then that is also ok. If it is a great opportunity to learn and grow it into a career even if the pay is horrible, well that is ok too. There are industries where this is pretty-much the norm and if you ever want to be anybody in those industries, you got to pay your dues. Luckily in IT, you are mostly shielded from that and can always expect at least not half bad compensation, given you can sit in a comfy and cool office and hit a few keys and get the chance to do 99% of your clicks over if you screwed up.

This has for a long time been my only explanation for twitter. All the hash-tag and "centralized communication is awesome" came later. Twitter started out when blogs were popular and people were doing this "externalizing" on their freshly-setup blogs regardless of how little they had to say. The problem was you still needed a computer to access your blogger-or-whatever account since there were hardly any smartphones and even worse, you actually needed to write a little bit even when you just wanted to show off because most successful blogs back then were not one-liners with a pretty picture because all the "cool" kids were writing long entries so you had to too.

Enter twitter. They were the first ones to offer text-message (SMS) to website publishing for free and internationally. This was huge, even for me who giggles at "web 2.0" to this day. This is why it's 140 chars only and this was the main reason it ever got people's attention in the first place, now "everyone" could easily publish all that vital information about their pet's last bowl movement at any given time of the day from everywhere. And even more importantly, they could do all that showing-off in a much more efficient and easy way since it was only 140 characters so they did not have to bother with coming up with some "lorem ipsum" like entry to accompany their showing off. It was being able to show-off without feeling guilty about not writing a long blog entry. Reaping all that sweet peer-approval with hardly any of the work you needed before. twitter quite literally enabled this conspicuous showing-off and made it en vogue. Since all the "cool" kids were showing how great their lives are, so you had to too, right?

And now for something completely (or slightly) different. One of my real-life friends does that showing-off on fb in an even cheaper way that I haven't seen anyone else doing so far and I just find it even more ridiculous and it has become a pet peeve of mine. Without failure the last 30 to 50 posts he made were pictures of some sort of object of more or less conspicuous consumption and as text he would just write the one or two words describing what is on the picture - and then, to somehow add depth and give it more "meaning" without anything actually being there except showing off and to make it look "smarter", he would add a smiley. That's it. So imagine posts like:

"whiskey :-)"

"enchiladas :-)"

"sunset :-)"

"<insert expensive watch> :-)"

"someotherexpensivecrap :-)"

One of these days, the internet curmudgeon in me is going to call him out on it and properly ridicule him for it!

Doh, now that you point that out... I misunderstood it. Thank you.

>If you really want to earn you need to be in the top 3-4 in the company. Best to be a founder. Very few people can do this. It’s a rare skill. Be realistic about your skills, background and ideas.

As an addendum to this: be realistic what this means in terms of work-life balance or whatever you want to call it. Any executive position that lets you EARN will not only take up large chunks of your life but it will basically become your life. You will have to be available almost 24/7, you will be having phone conferences on the weekends, you will be checking your smartphone constantly, getting ready for meetings, you will be going through tons of paper, you will be having a LOT of unpleasant conversations with all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons. And you will have to put up with the particular kind of people these positions of power typically attract. And remember, the further at the top, the lonelier it gets and especially in large organizations you will have to protect yourself from all sorts of politics and other shenanigans. There is a reason burn-out, heart attack and psychological issues are so extremely prevalent amongst managers.

So before you do make that decision to EARN, you should talk to friends or other people in similar positions and get a feel for what their whole life is like - then decide if that's for you. Money is one thing but what is that nice little place in an exotic country worth when you die from a heart attack at age 50 or 60?

(source: my best friend's partner holds an executive position for an S&P500 company; another friend took over the successful family business)

> A reboot of the infected system would wipe the binary completely and...

Why in the heavens would you reboot obviously badly administrated machines quite literally half across the globe if you otherwise took every initiative to not harm the target machines and keep your foot print as small as possible? (lowest possible priority, watchdog) Killing the process and removing the files should have been more than enough and you just don't know what a reboot could do to these systems; regardless of how much the admins of those machines are to blame.

> I know people who claim that eating a mainly paleo diet makes them feel better.

Well, there are people who claim fasting makes them feel better, too. Or living on allegedly nothing but sun light.

I am not sure this is very good proof since e.g. not eating for a couple of days makes you feel good because it's your body trying to make you more active to gather food... so, as logical as some correlations might sound it seems flimsy to me. The best way is probably to go by blood and medical exams, to see if you actually are healthier.

Reading about any type of nutrition research has become beyond frustrating to me.

There are constantly new results doing away with old truisms only to have those results, in turn, questioned and overturned by other studies and then there are basically opposing theories being found as valid, too. To make matters worse, there is an overwhelming abundance of less-than-scientific literature following the latest "fad" scientific results, plugging some diet "silver bullets" and to top it off, most "professionals" in that area are nothing but gym rats that payed lots of money for some training on a specific diet fad and then that is the only thing they will in turn plug to their customers. And the actual professionals, as in doctors, well mostly they appear to not be up-to-date with the latest-and-greatest "proven" theories so I always feel like I am missing out some of the good stuff that the latest fads are promising me.

All I wanted was a REALLY, actually healthy diet. Do I eat mostly wholemeal bread and rice as is common where I am from? Paleo and Atkins tells me this is literally poisoning and destroying my body and THE worst thing I could do next to shooting myself in the stomach. So only lots of fat, meat and vegetables? But "everyone knows" lots of meat is bad and one should only eat meat maybe twice a week, says the official generals statement here. Of course there are the different shades of vegetarians and vegans who all have discovered the one truth and the ONLY ethically correct way of living and they have the studies to back them up on the "healthy" side but e.g. the legumes they are eating are supposed to be literally poison according to the paleo crowd... yet beans are healthy, says another group, also backed by studies. Oh and fish, we all should eat more fish right? Yet we keep hearing how polluted the oceans are and how fish are full of mercury and probably nuclear waste from dumping it into the north sea. And I could go on and on and on....

For practically each diet recommendation or "fad" backed by studies you can easily find at least one opposite or contradicting study and at least two other, even more "true" and new diet fads.

Ultimately, this means I have no idea what I should actually, really really be eating and it leads me to the conclusion that: diet and health are the educated masses' modern equivalent to religion. Everyone is following their one true savior and will launch into borderline religious flame wars against the "infidels" of the other fads and theories.

Yet actually definitive answers seem to be missing.

And I am sorry if this seems like an incoherent rant, somehow it is, but I assure you with all the best intentions. Maybe it is just the tech inside me that wants a clear and definitive answer.

Breaking news: people do immoral shit. Regardless of where or when.

I have been saying this for a long time... what we are really seeing in "web 2.0" is actually average folks catching up to what geeks have been doing for a long time, it's only on a much larger scale now but almost all you see nowadays has already been there and done before.

I think the idea that you can just look at that one, oh-so-great management idea at Valve and then just apply it at your own startup or company is just more wrong than it might be right. All these places somehow grew into what they are doing now and there maybe were smart people making the "right" decisions along the way or it was simply nobody frakking up along the way and since money is still rolling in, everything is great. And what is working for them might be terrible at your place, no matter how romantically "right" it sounds. Maybe what you call Apple's "Stalinism" just worked because Steve was who he was - so all those suits now reading up on him and getting management ideas now because Apple is successful, that's probably a very bad idea because the topic is too complex and you are too likely to fail by just copying an idea without everything else that went into it at the place you are copying from.

I honestly wish nothing Eric wrote would ever be linked on HN again. He had his hey-days, he grabbed enough asses at conventions and harassed enough unsuspecting girls and we should just never mention him again. This is not the 90s anymore and I just hope stuff that barely applied in the 90s is more than historic and dated by now and "geeks" and "hackers" are a TON more diverse than that by now.

When it comes down to it, he is a politician, a lobbyist and while these roles are arguably not without use I would rather not have someone like that lay down the law what I as a "hacker" should and should not do or how I am supposed to be more like him.

You know, all these allegedly deep and smart "worldly wisdoms" that people who "made it" like to share in hind-sight do not show you the countless other people who said something similar and did not make it or lived by totally different priorities and still made it. Taking the initiative and not being crippled in your actions by fear is generally not a bad suggestion but there is so much more that goes into becoming so successful and a lot of that really is out of your hands at the end of the day, whether you like that or not. Attributing it to one mindset or quote is really oversimplifying things, no matter how good it can feel to read something like that.

And non-Dutch Caucasians, for that matter.

Just because certain expressions might still be used today and might not be on the fore-front of racism awareness does not make them any less racist.

But you are right, the article had it wrong:

> Originally the phrase 'Dutch courage' referred to the courage that results from indulgence in Dutch gin (jenever), but 'Dutch courage' can also refer to the gin itself. [...] Because of the effects of Dutch gin English soldiers fighting in the Dutch Republic in the 17th century apparently called the drink "Dutch Courage".

So it never actually referred to the people.

It is just baffling to me how they were able to pull that off for 40 years and raise infant kids as well with practically no experience or training and no way out, after they had to leave so suddenly - when in comparison, Christopher McCandless (alex supertramp) barely made it four months with arguably better equipment, shelter and under overall better weather conditions. And considerably VERY nearby ways out.

That is interesting - when I was working abroad and only spoke my second language, English, almost exclusively every day for a good three months... it did feel strange and unfamiliar to go back to my native tongue of German at first once I was back in Austria. I haven't forgotten anything, I just initially had to make a more conscious effort especially since some things are a lot easier and more "fluent" to say in English somehow.

I keep clicking on "1 star" reviews but it doesn't show me anything!!! ;-)

It never ceases to amaze me how schmitz is doing the EXACT same thing for at least 2 decades now. He did exactly this on BBS, had other people upload to him and offer it up for download; then he ratted everyone he knew and worked with out to the police. Rinse and repeat with megaupload, let's see what kind of deal he will be going for in the end; and now there is "mega", let's see where this will go.

You are welcome.

>Would you say that this ability confers an immunity to therapy?

I assume you are talking about me basically over-analyzing myself and it not helping me? The curious thing really is, I think ultimately I am just doing what most depressed people are doing, digging myself in further. When before trying therapy, I felt depressed and always sort-of out of place and "wrong", now I have no shortage of "proof" how broken I am, even by design/bringing up. When before, my issues were more in the here and now, it sort of spiraled into "everything has been wrong from the very start because those are the conditions I grew up under and missed out on this,this,this etc....". A more "sophisticated" kind of very toxic thinking and turning in circles,in cycles, if you will. If this ultimately works for or against therapy or bettering oneself, I cannot say. So far I think it has had some things easier, understanding connections or correlations; and some things harder, like this toxic thinking. But instead of that I might be circling over something else if I wasn't over-analyzing.

I think the confronting part does help because you become more aware of what's going on, otherwise you are almost at the mercy of whatever pattern you are following. The biggest "wow" or almost relief was reading about other people with similar thoughts and problems. Of course I wouldn't have doubted there are others out there before - but reading about it and in detail, how someone else says things you have felt or thought 100% the same, was an interesting and calming experience. Like FINALLY someone gets it.

I used to work with Sun for quite some time; I can say without failure every single Sun tech I came across was pretty damn cool, knew what they were doing and was hooked up in the Sun-universe enough so they could provide excellent pointers and ultimately that translated into happy customers. On top of that a lot of their enterprise-y software wasn't half bad to begin with, it was just always terrible getting good documentation and information as an "outsider" oh and there were a couple of years when you could just forget the sorry excuse they passed off as "support". But there was always the possibility of going "black-ops", just de-compiling and providing your own fix and although this is far from great, things just worked and everyone was happy. Sun's suits didn't really matter from our point of view anway, they did no harm, stood in nobody's way, shook hands and invited folks to dinner when appropriate. Fair enough, you cannot really ask for more, anymore and it would literally be paradise, so I was happy with that. Even-though I never got that project manager I was basically paying for...

Enter big red. Talking to brain-washed zombies cannot feel very different from talking to Oracle's sales drones and customer relation dummies. You were talking about "A", they would start trying to sell you pricey-addon for the database when you weren't even talking databases in the first place. Whoever was a useful tech contact inside Sun before now turned into a walled-off zombie as well and I guess I was lucky they didn't just slap a price tag on picking-up the phone or simply answering an email. And to top it off I had to suffer one of their pre-sales dummies loudly telling an oh-so-ridiculous story how, can you imagine, bigcorpA was running tomcat(!) in their production environment! And not the abomination from hell that Oracle gets away with charging huge amounts of money for!! Well can you imagine that!!!

Another case of too-big-to-fail and nobody ever got fired for buying Oracle, hm?

Some of the most admired people are severely depressed and suicidal, people you would consider to be "contributing" and outstanding members of society. I must say, I don't think you have any clue what you are talking about and your "evolutionary" theory is just abominable and the relocation theory is childish. These feelings follow you wherever you go, relocating might temporarily give momentum but without proper help it is useless if we are talking suicide and severe depression.

I never found comfort in "all this pain is an illusion" but Pearl Jam's "Present Tense" lyrics have something simplistic, true and healing about them that honestly make me wonder how they could have written it. Especially the part leading to "you're the only one who can't forgive yourself".

And Tool "Reflection", especially "And as I pull my head out I am without one doubt, Don't want to be down here feeding my narcissism, I must crucify the ego before it's far too late" which is of course a bit long to have it tattoo'ed but the idea, how narcissistic it actually is what you are doing... and how you must crucify this ego, this part of you, to find your true self and find peace.

>Would that make a difference?

Let's assume you are a very avid programmer and love nothing more than coding and to you it is the most natural thing in the world, then let's assume someone comes along and tells you your view is just warped, corrupted and you have no idea what you are talking about. However clumsy that analogy is, how would you feel in that situation? Would your first, intuitive gut reaction be "You know, they might be right...I should have become a doctor or a lawyer and that's what I am going to do right now!"? Chances are you would feel affronted, offended and ultimately like the person does not understand you and has no idea what they are talking about. Completely regardless of whether they might be on to something and a different career choice might be "better", mind you. We only observe what your reaction would be to someone basically trampling on your view of the world.

From my point of view and self-observations, when you are severely depressed or suicidal, that is your view of the world and suffering from it, you have a hundred million reasons and scenarios played out in your head just why you are absolutely right to feel the way you do, why you deserve to be miserable and why you have no business being here anymore or why your only escape is to leave. The very fact that it has become so ingrained in you and you cannot just "flip a switch" and think and feel differently, that is the very thing that makes it depression and suicidal thoughts, that you CANNOT just magically escape because you are a world champion in convincing yourself why you are right to feel the way you do. Now along comes someone and tells you "You are just imagining that, people react very positive towards you, you are such a nice person! Your view is just warped, you are making it harder on yourself...". Now, how would that make you feel?

For me, it feels like my issues were not appreciated and the other person just does not understand the extent of my torment, they cannot relate, they don't understand anyway... see, nobody understands. At the same time, I know how egotistical and self-centered and warped that view is; I have a strange analytical way of looking at myself, it surprises even counselors. Yet, I could not change a single thing. Either I am watching, armchair analyzing myself like a lab rat or I am "in character" and suffering. Anyone telling me my view is "warped" usually ends up causing a huge quarrel because no matter how much I try to make them understand, of course they counter every point I throw at them to "fix me" and that soon leads to anger and feeling even worse because CLEARLY nobody understands me! Of course this is just my point of view, mind you.

What CAN you do or say? I think stop trying to convince them they are wrong; stop trying to "flip a switch", no matter how much you try with the very best intentions and your deepest love, you won't find a switch or the right combination of logic reasoning to just "snap the person out of it". I know this must be terrible to hear if you watch someone you love suffer like that, I am sorry. I can honestly not think of a better thing to do... don't push them in any direction or look for switches to flip, also don't belittle it like "you'll get better!" or "nah it can't be that bad!". I think just give them emotional support, hug, hold, let them cry, share honest(!) compassion... above anything, don't try to fix but be there and show them support in that way. Don't give them up, keep inviting them out or offering to come over even after they have said "no" or made up some excuse the last 5 times. Also, don't take some offensive words they say or tantrums they throw too serious. Generally try to not judge a depressed person too quickly, even if they are acting like major assholes... it's just more a passive-aggressive desperate cry for help, feel mercy for them, like for a wounded animal snarling.

Last and most importantly, speaking out of my own experience and I know this will not sound like a popular suggestion but I think it is vital: be selfish enough to not give too much of yourself! You can only get very emotionally invested and involved in a depressed person for so long before it can strongly affect you and seriously spin you out of control when their emotional abyss starts to sound all too logical and convincing and all of a sudden you find yourself staring down the same hole. Be wary of that, you have every right to, don't feel bad about protecting yourself - much like fire fighters won't blindly risk their own life. Never think that it is your role to "fix them"! Your role, if anything, is to just support however much you see fit and are able to safely give - it is a professional's role to provide them with ways of healing and "fixing" and they have their own ways of coping with it. I know for myself, when I see it in a person, I intentionally wall-off and protect myself because I know, I am in no safe position to take on more emotional baggage. It took me a LONG time to realize this and do this to protect myself. I know this sounds incredibly selfish but I know why I am doing this and I think everyone involved with a suicidal person should think about this too. Get them professional help.

Small things that seem to do wonders for me: taking a walk, go have a few beers with good friends and cleaning up my place. You can help with that and I think it does wonders, considering how little it is that you are actually doing. I think it is the thought of making something better with your own hands that can create quite a positive pull. And there is no shortage of little exercises your counselor can suggest or asks you to do. Seemingly silly things like writing down a few good qualities about yourself, things you are good at.

The point is, no matter what you read or hear on the web or anywhere else... shouldn't you always be asking yourself how much you let it affect you? The illusion that the web is that one place to figure out more "truth" than in person, well those times are looong gone - see grassroot advertising and fake forum posts paid for by companies and all that.

Every time you give either time and/or money, you absolutely always could possibly get scammed so the only way you can deal with this is asking yourself if you for yourself and your own sake care and want to do something or if you will just quietly follow whatever story is being told and not let it mess with you.

If what you say is true and some forum posts could indeed "do lots of damage" then it is all the more necessary that people wake up and understand that they shouldn't just blindly trust people on the web, just as much as they don't blindly trust strangers on the street.

Set everything to private, don't let your profile show up publicly and don't add anyone from work - problem solved?

But this only delays the inevitable and you cannot stretch this game on forever either.