A user who posted before the New Year regarding his financial situation is someone I quickly found myself aspiring to. I didn't have alot of work for him but he was more than helpful for my project. After I learned a bit more about his background, family situation and journey to getting where he is now, I felt compelled to try to help him more.
During one of our many conversations I casually mentioned how my funded startup is suffering from an influx of chargebacks and fraud purchases. I regret not mentioning it sooner because this it was a problem we have been struggling to solve and in no time at all he solved it. He helped us and showed us some of the "carder tricks and tips."
Unfortunately because we (startup) are bound by certain financial regulations we couldn't hire him full time because of mistakes he made as a kid. I know he is still looking for work. I urge anyone who has any kind of work to contact him, I know he could desperately use it still.
Post in question is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10813746 and here is his follow up for anyone who is curious. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10921576
cperciva was making a few "bold" statements and sanj replied "Did you win the Putnam?" to which cperciva replies, "Yes, I did." and later goes on to gloat a little bit saying, he considered his earlier score of 53 his most impressive considering he was 14 at the time.
A user called dbosson proceeds to calls him out on his gloating and talks about helping others. He replies with this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35120
The thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35015
It was one of the few times I've seen News.YC/HN delve into the usual internet forum banter and not being disappointed with it.
You might know of cperciva also as the creator of Tarsnap. He's very open about not being money-driven and the service continues to keep to its roots as a product only made for technologists. He's not concerned with developing the product for Enterprise, nor marketing. He's also someone who hasn't bent to external pressure to further develop his product for anyone else. Everyone else is business-minded, the likes of patio11 included, who are practically screaming for him to take advantage of his brand and following to build up a company.. But he just doesn't want to.
To me, he's someone who's truly gifted, not humble about it but doesn't gloat in such a way that you feel like he's going overboard. His claims are valid, he's matter-of-factly saying statements that are all true. Akin to McGregor, a UFC fighter who always seems to predict how he'll put the other fighter down in the interviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJeziuaShow
Sure there are an insane amount of people here I can admire and I follow incessantly because they're such valuable sources of knowledge. But cperciva especially I can respect, because he just doesn't seem to worry about whatever anyone else thinks or expects from him.
Just to set the record straight -- that wasn't gloating. That was me being annoyed with how people focus on the "Putnam fellow" bit to the exclusion of all else.
He gave a talk at WDS 2015 that includes some of the highlights from his book & blog: https://player.vimeo.com/video/134968996
This guy is a successful businessman, and provides so much value with so much of what he writes. For free. Go read his stuff, I dare you.
None of them comment here much these days. This is natural as HN has become a much, much larger and more mainstream site.
Interestingly, it's not like the shifts away from Slashdot and Reddit, where there's a new forum where people have moved to (except their own personal communities). If there's a place that has sucked up most of the conversation, it would be Twitter.
The conversations on Twitter are unfortunately not of the same fidelity as the ones on a traditional forum where you can actually compose full thoughts.
Perhaps it's better to say that Twitter has sucked up most of the attention of those same people.
Subtle distinction but huge difference imo because I can't go follow those same people on Twitter and expect the same type of conversation as they would have made on HN.
I suspect the cause and effect relationship runs the other way: Most likely, people are going to Twitter because HN does not have the same quality of atmosphere it had when I joined.