Philanthropy For Hackers 27
An anonymous reader writes: Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster and the first president of Facebook, was part of a generation of geeks who rode the dot-com boom to financial success. Over the past two decades, that population has dramatically increased, and former hackers are carving out spots as leaders of industry. In the Wall Street Journal, Parker has posted advice for how the hacker elite can approach philanthropy. He points out that they're already bringing a level of strategy and efficacy to charity work that hasn't been seen before. "These budding philanthropists want metrics and analytic tools comparable to the dashboards, like Mixpanel, that power their software products. They want to interact directly with the scientists, field workers and academics whose ideas power the philanthropic world but who have traditionally been hidden away in a backroom somewhere, shielded from their beneficiaries by so-called development officers." One thing he advises is keeping away from large charity organizations, which largely exist to keep themselves going. He also suggests getting actively involved with the political process, even if such organizations are often distasteful.
Large charities (Score:5, Insightful)
In general, I think the point about large charities being mostly about sustaining themselves is correct. However, they have connections that can often make them the only (albeit imperfect) organizations that can mobilize relief after major disasters. Further, some specific large charities provide unique services that smaller organizations, however well run, cannot replicate. An example is the Red Cross and their monitoring of prisoners of war. I also greatly respect one or two large charities. Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) does tremendous work, such as fighting the ebola outbreak for months before the WHO did anything effective.. Generalizations can have limited validity, but must not be taken too far
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Then there are charities which do things worldwide and have naturally high overheads. Orbis International, aka "flying eye hospital" is one of them. Basically they fly a donated DC-10 (from FedEx, I believe, one of their old planes and they remain one of their biggest sponsors) to poor parts of the world, and treat all manner of diseases that affect eyesight, for free.
Flying a DC-10 isn't cheap, and operating one isn't either. But they do it because this lets them have a controlled operating room and recove
Curious (Score:1)
Hackers or hacks?
How many of those "success" stories exist because they had the brilliance to do something right again and again, instead of just once, then "ride the wave" of that early success?
Bill Gates, as much as I hate the guy and his legacy, did something right with Microsoft not just a few times, but for decades. Same for Steve Jobs and Google's founders.
Facebook? Other than the fact that it's very popular it brings very little innovation, they don't have any other products, nothing outside their co
Re: Curious (Score:2)
Facebook is doing what those others do which is buying up other people's good ideas and building on them such as Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus Rift. In fact Gates' first big win was with someone else's product.
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hey, Facebook researchers are doing some serious hard-core work in the fields of computer vision (=how to track you) and applied psychology (=how to get you to want to be tracked and click on ads). they just hired Yann LeCun ffs, who basically invented convolutional neural networks as we currently know them, and he seems at least as happy and productive there as he was at NYU.
of course, this has little to do with Marky Mark Z., who seems to have just been in the right place at the right time with the right
Relevant to you? (Score:1)
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How about just giving away you skills and ideas now for free. The measure of your real worth is not you wealth and egoistic philanthropy (which is often more destructive than constructive). The measure of your real worth is who you think you see in the mirror. Who gives a tiddly crap about how main stream media with it's wealth worship ideology treats you now, a billion years, hell just a hundred thousands years, forward or back it is all totally meaningless, only you own perception of what you have freely
President of Facefark? (Score:1)
"Hackers share certain values: an antiestablishment bias, a belief in radical transparency, a nose for sniffing out vulnerabilities in systems..."
Calling BS
an interesting similar article (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.theatlantic.com/bus... [theatlantic.com]
Start by getting the GOVERNMENT out of it (Score:1)
Start by getting the government out of philanthropy and other benevolence. They suck at it, but insist on spending tax-dollars on it anyway.
But be careful — if you find something, that seems useful, the government may decide to impose it on everyone (at gun-point, which is how government does everything.)
Of course, the Statists [theatlantic.com] would lament:
but don't f
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Madison was wrong. Other founding fathers such as Hamilton understood the General Welfare provision very broadly. Anyway we don't need taxes; fund the government at zero cost through the Fed. Banks make use of the Fed's financing powers, let the government direct the Fed to finance a basic income. Indexation of all incomes hedges against any potential unexpected inflation by keeping purchasing power from decreasing.
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Well, he was "only" the guy, who was writing down the items [americaslibrary.gov], as they were discussed during the convention. Surely, he had some insights. Maybe, you — in the 21st century — know more about the intent of those ancient legislators [wikipedia.org], but you aren't sharing... You just flatly say "wrong" — like a good little tyrant you secretly wish to be... Sigh, as they say, Statists gonna state.
Some
Re: Start by getting the GOVERNMENT out of it (Score:1)
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It is not "sacred" because it was not handed down to us by a Deity. It is sacred in that every four years the incoming President repeats the same solemn oath to defend it.
Whatever "sacred" means to you, it is the law of the land. But it can be amended. For example, when we still believed in limited government, one that could not just order people around willy-nilly for The Greater Good, the prohibition of alcohol was done as a constitutional amendment (the 18th — less th [history.com]