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John McAfee AMA
- paradisechris 11y agoWow really enjoying the level of effort put into these responses
- jug 11y agoEverything got much better and more exhaustive than I expected.
- nathanvanfleet 11y agoPossibly drug fuelled..
- _RPM 11y agoRegardless if that's true or not, how is that relevant?
- slowmotiony 11y agoRelax, it was funny.
- godgod 11y agopossibly? Shakes magic 8 ball. Without a doubt.
- dr_zoidberg 11y agoWhat I liked the most is that they took the time to reply more than the top-level question -- many AMAs I've seen* just answer the top level question and move on to something else. * disclaimer: I don't read so many AMAs, just the ones I find interesting.
- raverbashing 11y agoSeveral AMAs lately have been a PR exercise (like showing up on a talk show)
- dr_zoidberg 11y agoYou mean like Woody Harrelson's RAMPART? :P Well, this one did feel a bit different, certainly more involved than others. By the way, how could one buy a beer to this man? With something he said in the AMA I solved something that had bugged me for a long time.
- jessriedel 11y agoI don't think there's a clean line between for-fun celebrity AMAs and PR exercises. They blend smoothly into each other, and the real division is just whether it trips your personal "authenticity" alarm.
- nickysielicki 11y agoThere's an easy well to tell, just look in the OP and see if they're plugging something. John McAfee is not. Woody Harrelson was.
- jessriedel 11y agoEveryone is plugging something all the time. Just because they're plugging their general popularity rather than a particular movie does not make something unassailably authentic.
- Yhippa 11y agoI get the feeling from a few of them that the subjects of the AMA don't want to be there and that they're almost forced to do it by their PR. I'm used to the AMAs of old where the subjects really got into it.
- nnq 11y agoThis is a gem of wisdom: pair-programming between devs and hackers will allow for instant security feed-back [...] It will be the only possible way to develop ironclad software. Starting with the system architects, there need to be arcdhitectural hackers - all the way through the coding process. ...and reading the other stuff too, he seems to still be knowing what he's talking about!
- butwhy 11y agoYes he is very good at explaining good practice, such as precise instructions on removing software: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKgf5PaBzyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKgf5PaBzyg
- daddykotex 11y agoWhat the hell hahahaha
- Someone1234 11y agoThe dude is very likeable and I don't care about him doing illegal drugs (I'm no moralist). That being said, the accusations that he killed his next door neighbor in Belize and then fled the country are disconcerting... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McAfee#Legal_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McAfee#Legal_issues
- speeder 11y agoAs someone that lives in a third world country, I think that everything John said about the case (that it was about people wanting bribes) is true. Also he said people hit him with a baseball bat after putting a helmet on his head, I know even other techniques (a cop friend told me one of the things his corrupt colleagues do is hit people with soap bars inside towels, it also hurts a lot without leaving bruises if you know what you are doing).
- rainer_muell 11y ago
- mentos 11y agoIt was wild to follow John McAfee a few years back when he was on the run in Beliz. His podcast with Joe Rogan at the time was pretty entertaining and so I'm not surprised to see they are looking to make a movie (not sure if this was mentioned in the AMA, still making my way through it) Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski To Script John McAfee Film For Warner Bros http://deadline.com/2013/07/scott-alexander-larry-karaszewski-to-script-john-mcafee-film-for-warner-bros-551655/ http://deadline.com/2013/07/scott-alexander-larry-karaszewsk...
- orthoganol 11y agoWhen asked what someone can do to be successful in software: > That;s a tough one. get out of the box no1. REALLY out of the box. Abandon every social norm, esp those closest to you. Then look at the world with objective eyes. Look what is the thing to do? Every entrepreneur I know (I know Steve Jobs, and he was out of the box) went out of the box. If you can't go work for someone else. Yeah the older I get the more it becomes clear that there's inherent conflict between following social norms (developing a cushy social life) and achieving something big. Like with being a startup founder I think almost all have to go through intense anti-social periods, admittedly I judge founders as being average or worse if they don't seem to have some anti social or obsessive streak to them. Kobe is a cool example too, a guy who had a relatively bizarre social life for an NBA player, with a manic obsession about work and improvement. I think he even said "Friends come and go, but banners stay forever." Extreme, but hits on a deeper truth about what all it takes to make it big.
- nadam 11y agoBeing at the right place at the right time is also important, if not more important. There are lots of people thinking out of the box everywhere in the world but financial success in software is extremely concentrated at certain geographical locations and time ranges. (Maybe living in a small Eastern European country I feel this more than people living in let's say the Valley.) TL/DR: out of the box, but in the appropriate (time,location) range
- AndrewKemendo 11y agoPart of being outside the box is determining what it is the right time for. So for example, 2015 is obviously not the right time to make it big on asteroid mining, but understanding the value, logistics etc... for it could lead you to determine what kind of events would make it the right time. Certainly not a science to this though.
- Certified 11y agoSpeak for yourself. I am currently putting 110% into asteroid mining
- ousta 11y agothis is the best AMA ever from the most fascinating crazy man in the IT world.
- jmkni 11y agoI thought this was good: > OT, but do anyone know exactly what went wrong with McAfee after the founder left the company? > It grew, it got big, like every company. When I started, there were 4 of us. Generating $10M/yr, we could have lived happily for our lives on that. VCs came and offered to make it bigger, we had to grow, we didn't have sales, marketing, etc. I gave it away, unless you were a government, corporation, etc. Once I went public, I had 1000 bosses, investors, FTC, SEC, all my time in meetings and interviews. I hired a programmer/day for over a year! I used to spend time taking apart viruses, not I was an accountant. Once a company gets big, it becomes slow, and cannot survive in its current form. Nice cautionary tail there about ruining something good by trying to go too big
- derrickdirge 11y agoGoing public is often the turning point where a 'Good Company' starts to become a 'Bad Company'. It becomes no longer good enough to make a good product.
- yuhong 11y agoI didn't think it was that simple in case of McAfee or for that matter in most cases however.
- godgod 11y agoToo big to fail does not apply here. Interesting challenges that a company faces as it grows.