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Daniel stressed the fact that he never actually received the MacBook Air and he seems to be under the impression that opinions will sway in his favor once peopl

Daniel stressed the fact that he never actually received the MacBook Air and he seems to be under the impression that opinions will sway in his favor once people realize this. I don't think he realizes that just because he never received the payout doesn't excuse him from asking for it in the first place (whether he was joking or not). Despite all of that, I don't think this kid is going to be too impacted by all of this in the long run. Life goes on. Someone will accuse Mahalo of more SEO trickery and all of this will be a thing of the past. I think the bigger story here is that he gets to have late night IM sessions with Woz. I'm jealous!

petercooper 17y ago
To be fair though.. in June 2009 I was brought in as the Events and Business Development Intern. So I wasn’t hired as a writing intern. I started writing for TechCrunch by accident, actually. And it’s an interesting story. I was up at 2 AM and none of the other writers were up and a story broke about the iPhone 3GS Jailbreak and no one else was up and it was a breaking story, so I took a huge risk and I hit the publish button. This guy is a risk taker. That includes good risks like the above, but also stupid risks like trying to roll some payola. Most risk takers who go on to become big successes make some stupid and unethical ones.. If Daniel can learn from this and restrict his "stupid"/reputation-breaking risks to his youth, he could go far with his can-do, proactive attitude. Even with this little payola scheme, he's still contributing a lot more to the world than the average 17 year old kid eating junk food and playing Xbox all weekend.
- frou_dh 17y ago
  He was eating junk food and poring over the MacBook Air tech specs.