5 ms·

I voted you back up. There's famine, there's lack of clean water and toilets, there's lack of potable water, etc, etc, etc... I'm a defender of "pure science"

I voted you back up. There's famine, there's lack of clean water and toilets, there's lack of potable water, etc, etc, etc... I'm a defender of "pure science", but there are better engineering projects to challenge yourself with.

walrus01 9y ago
okay, please donate 10% monthly from your salary to medecins sans frontiers and welthungerhilfe. oh wait, you don't do that, but as a typical HN commenter you probably own something at least as expensive as a macbook pro...
- jmadsen 9y ago
  wow, lot of wrong and irrelevant assumptions in that statement.
  - bpizzi 9y ago
    His reply was a bit too much indeed, but however I think it would still be great if you would be nice enough to state what you challenge yourself with. We'll be curious to see that it has something to do, even remotely, with famine and potable water (or other causes of the same sort).
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    Go on?
    - jmadsen 9y ago
      I gave regularly to kiva,org, charitywater.org & local causes. I do the occasional programming volunteer tasks when I have time & find a fit (usually small things like giving web site support to small local charities). On the side I'm trying to work more with #a11y & accessibility, as well as a lot of mentoring & teaching in programming Sorry, I'm not a billionaire with too much time on my hands. With two teenagers that's the best I can do right now.
  - Ensorceled 9y ago
    So we are still left with the question ... what are you doing that's more useful to society than clock guy?
- ekianjo 9y ago
  > okay, please donate 10% monthly from your salary to medecins sans frontiers and welthungerhilfe. Giving money to firemen does not tackle what causes fires.
sitharus 9y ago
I too would love those projects to be tackled. Unfortunately a clock engineer doesn’t make a good sanitation engineer. As much as we wish human ingenuity was interchangeable it isn’t. Also a lot of the countries with problems have political issues as well as sociatal ones which makes solving the problems hard.
jtmcmc 9y ago
It's funny because the point of the long now and the 10,000 year clock is to encourage long term thinking and planning which leads directly to thinking about these tough long term problems rather than the next election or next quarter.

walrus01 9y ago

okay, please donate 10% monthly from your salary to medecins sans frontiers and welthungerhilfe. oh wait, you don't do that, but as a typical HN commenter you probably own something at least as expensive as a macbook pro...

jmadsen 9y ago
wow, lot of wrong and irrelevant assumptions in that statement.
- bpizzi 9y ago
  His reply was a bit too much indeed, but however I think it would still be great if you would be nice enough to state what you challenge yourself with. We'll be curious to see that it has something to do, even remotely, with famine and potable water (or other causes of the same sort).
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  Go on?
  - jmadsen 9y ago
    I gave regularly to kiva,org, charitywater.org & local causes. I do the occasional programming volunteer tasks when I have time & find a fit (usually small things like giving web site support to small local charities). On the side I'm trying to work more with #a11y & accessibility, as well as a lot of mentoring & teaching in programming Sorry, I'm not a billionaire with too much time on my hands. With two teenagers that's the best I can do right now.
- Ensorceled 9y ago
  So we are still left with the question ... what are you doing that's more useful to society than clock guy?
ekianjo 9y ago
> okay, please donate 10% monthly from your salary to medecins sans frontiers and welthungerhilfe. Giving money to firemen does not tackle what causes fires.

sitharus 9y ago

I too would love those projects to be tackled. Unfortunately a clock engineer doesn’t make a good sanitation engineer. As much as we wish human ingenuity was interchangeable it isn’t. Also a lot of the countries with problems have political issues as well as sociatal ones which makes solving the problems hard.

jtmcmc 9y ago

It's funny because the point of the long now and the 10,000 year clock is to encourage long term thinking and planning which leads directly to thinking about these tough long term problems rather than the next election or next quarter.