noahth

When my wife and i decided to try this, we figured we had runway to live without dramatic changes to our standard of living for 3-4 years. The initial period we agreed on for the sabbatical was 6 months and we've extended that to 1 year. Of course, we are intentionally changing our budget and standard of living along the way. Most likely I will not go four years without working, but I may spend some time exploring other work options before I hang my shingle out for software projects again.

I worked for several years as an independent contractor; when my last big project ended several months ago, I decided to take a sabbatical for the climate. So far that has meant spending more time with my kids, learning to compost, building some new raised garden beds, mending some clothes that I previously would've replaced, reading more books, and various other little things. I plan to start volunteering soon with the local tool library, and there are tons of other things we'd like to do to reduce our budget and carbon footprint, when we can get to them.

I know not everyone can afford to "just take time off" but among those laid off from a tech company and browsing HN, surely some fraction of you could afford to do the same. You will still have a career to come back to if you spend a year turning your attention and energy to the climate crisis. BUT if you're under 40 or so (I'm 37), you may find that there is not a recognizable planet to come back to if you continue to focus on your career until the retirement age we were brought up to expect.

A very large fraction of DeFi supporters do not regard all of those as desirable progress.

better to let those who want to see the list decode it themselves, than potentially expose someone to language that could deeply upset them. It's decisions like this that help make spaces like this unwelcoming to marginalized people.

This sounds really cool, and I hope it goes well. We need to work every angle we can to address climate change, and test as many ideas as necessary to get there.

My issue with this post is the claim that you will be making the world's first carbon-neutral houses. I understand the need for strong exciting marketing language, but, surely you mean something like, first modern Western-style carbon-neutral houses.

In this example Charlie has failed to consider the metagame of "don't be a third wheel"

One big difference is that Matomo doesn’t support PostgreSQL and has said they don’t plan to.

Many have tried. There's a simple reason that you glance at but don't directly confront in your post. The "voting rings" you outline are actually a huge constituency, thanks to the outlandish concentration of wealth and resources in the hands of these few companies (I mean FAANG - YC has a huge and unique network but I don't suspsect it's anywhere close to the same scale in dollars or current employees). No site can keep out so many skilled and knowledgeable techies and expect to keep up the level of quality that HN provides. This is one of those cases where culture flows pretty clearly from material reality - you can't have a better site until the titans are dethroned and dismembered. So, if you want a better HN, don't build an HN clone! Build political power that will target monopolies, monopsonies, and anything "too big to fail" for levelling and redistribution.

  Location: Asheville, NC, US
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: Python, Django, Javascript, Celery, MySQL/PostgreSQL, Bash, SaltStack, PHP, CSS/HTML
  Résumé/CV: https://www.nthall.com/static/resume.pdf
  Email: [email protected]

I've been working for startups and small teams, distributed, for about a decade. My experience over that time has ranged from managing a customer support team, to data analysis and reporting, to planning and implementing large-scale code changes in complex projects. Most recently I've been a solo full-stack contractor for a number of years; I've started to miss getting to collaborate more deeply with a team, and the types of growth, impact, and achievements that are only possible when working as part of a larger group. I strive to be humble, patient, and generous in work and elsewhere. I would be most interested in hearing from co-ops, non-profits, B-corps or similarly oriented organizations. If you're working on adtech or blockchains, I'm not the right fit for you.