What a colorful life: a jewish chess prodigy who becomes a notorious neo-nazi and email spammer, ruffles a lot of feathers as a con man, turns into a nomad and travels under the radar around North America, finally shot to death and found in a burning SUV.
There seems to be a specific rare phenotype for these tech high-risk takers (thinking of John McAfee also).
I think calling an email spammer a technologist, and a technological risk-taker, is a bit much - as is the comparison to McAfee. Maybe in temperament but nowhere close in ability or accomplishment. Hawke was just a con artist with some computer skills.
I mean, AirBnB got off to a similar start. Before they brought on the infamous spammer as a cofounder it was basically failing to gain any traction, and then he broke the craiglist TOS to scrape their listings.
Yes, there is more to the story, but I don't see how AirBnB could've ever become what it is today (even if it's doing poorly now because of covid and other factors) without some unethical "growth hacking."
In my experience, very few successful tech founders are what I would consider admirable people (obviously anecdotal and subjective). In addition to people like Zuckerberg, Silicon Valley attracts straight up con (wo)men like Adam Neumann and Elizabeth Holmes.
Again: bad people with modest tech skills (Hawke, the AirBnB founders) are not the same thing as bad people who are actual technologists (McAfee, Gates, Musk), or even bad people with modest tech skills who lead actual technology companies (Zuckerberg). In particular AirBnB is really not a tech company, it’s a rental company that uses fairly standard commercial/open source tech.
I think the comparison you are making, and asserting that this is a “phenotype” common in tech leaders, is baseless and silly.
More to that, good and bad isn't necessarily immutable. Bill Gates was seemingly as callous at his anti-trust depositions as Zuckerberg, but I believe he's redeemed himself in his philanthropic contributions that have had real outcomes in some of the poorest part of the world.
Blanket 'good' and 'bad' designations are often a little reductive for what are complicated human beings who do both 'good' and 'bad' things across their lifetimes.
I'm not sure I've received such a vitriolic reply, ever, on HN. You certainly are strongly persuaded that Bill Gates is evil. It's funny to think that in the 90s I really used to share your opinion with a similar zeal.
> While it’s true that Bill Gates’s philanthropic efforts have salvaged his moral reputation, it is not true that he deserves it.
When everyone has their own concept of what is moral, it can be hard do agree on 'moral desert'. But as I see it, he's poured money into eradicating polio, tuberculosis, malaria, and other diseases affecting poor nations. For polio in particular, this has culminated in total eradication for the entire South East Asian and African regions within the last decade.
The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation isn't perfect, and maybe has made a few missteps, and partnered with corporations of dubious nature, but overall it's money invested in improving the world that came from a place of generosity.
Actions with real positive outcomes for the world, and motivated by good intentions, ought to shift our prejudices, as much as bad intentions.
Musk is bad person because of the way he treats people who hurt his ego. Making up pedophilia accusations is not cool. Also, the way he treata his workers and attributes himself achievements of others.
Bill Gates, well, the way his imperium came to be was not allright. The war against competitors ans linux was too dirty and merits calling him bad person. And I dont even like linux much.
It is not just what you do when you have power and can play lord. It is also what you do to competitors and how you treat those who don't bow to you.
It’s a spectrum - Musk isn’t irredeemably terrible, but he’s shockingly callous about the well-being of his workers and, like Edison, despicably shameless about slapping his name on other people’s work. His recklessness on COVID is immoral, even if it stems from narcissism rather than an evil death cult.
Bill Gates isn’t a psychopath like McAfee - and more to the point, unlike McAfee, he is rational. Bill Gates is also one of the worst economic criminals in American history.
I think the logic is that there's not way to have money coming into your control that isn't theft. If that's true the biggest economic criminal is the one with the most money.
Many of the tactics of the era should sound very familiar, and many of the resulting social issues should also ring a bell.
I’m personally dreading what the next several decades will bring.
Edit: In case it isn’t clear, Gates is a lot like Andrew Carnegie or some of the other ruthless businessmen, some who later turned their wealth around and became great philanthropists.
Some of the robber barons were miserable to the end (Larry Ellisons of the day?)
I actually read the biographies of the 12 richest Americans in history a few years ago. The common thread across all these men - they never sold any part of their business. They bought out partners, bought out competitors, bought out suppliers. I wouldn’t call those activities evil. And I wouldn’t say any were miserable to the end.
I said “ruthless”, not “evil”. There is a difference.
Individuals like Jay Gould crossed the lines to get his way (attempted kidnapping? bribery?).
While others Russell Sage never gave his money for philanthropy (in his case, it was his second wife after he died).
Likewise, John Osgood’s life was all about trying to make more money before he croaked.
George Pullman, who controlled his own town and controlled the postal mail, prevented mail for his town from getting the through (it built up to rioting and striking).
In fact virtually all were against unionization, though they took different approaches to head it off. And it took the Federal government to trust bust and create a genuine middle class.
The details are what makes one scrupulous or not.
More disturbingly, many of their ideas and approaches will be familiar today.
I think that's a translation of a passage by Honoré de Balzac: "Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu’il a été proprement fait."
The French passage has a nice wit to it: "The secret of a great fortune without apparent origin is a forgotten crime, because it has been done properly."
Likely South America, as it's the abbreviation corporate directories use for offices in that region. South Africa would probably be ZA, which comes from the Dutch, Zuid-Afrika.
The truth is a lot of startups get started using unethical tactics.
A reason so many startups fail is because unethical methods fly over their head, they don’t even consider them. Meanwhile, competitors are juicing up their startups by using shady gray hat or black hat growth hacks. It’s like body building competitions where the serious competitors are all using steroids. If you’re just coming in all natural you will likely do poorly.
The reason black hat growth hacks work so well is because the marketing channels are not yet closed or saturated. A marketing channel is most effective when competitors are not yet using it, and since many startups are unwilling to do something unethical, there is a big window of opportunity available before it gets shut down or patched by some authority.
Frankly if you really want to build a successful tech startup you should get comfortable with the idea of doing the wrong thing first and then seeking redemption later when you’ve accumulated some wealth than to try and do the right thing from the beginning and die a pauper because someone else ate your lunch doing shady things or misrepresenting themselves. If you’re not willing to cast ethics aside to be successful then you obviously care more about being ethical than being successful, so don’t be surprised if you end up a failure.
The only time I would support going 100% legit is if you could guarantee every competitor would do the same, and I’m not aware of any scenario where that would be true.
Without ethics any "success" is forever tainted by fraud. Going legit is a lie the ethically bankrupt tell themselves to further justify their insatiable addiction.
By limiting yourself to just below your competitors depths you resign yourself to race to the darkest depths of depravity in a vain quest to aquire resources one lacks the ethics to use equitably dooming your victims, peers, and community to further victimizations.
That's not a rhetorical question. xwdv seems to have rejected moral purity as a driving principal or at the very least (being more charitable), has stated that people who wish to be successful should reject moral purity as a driving principal.
I don't quite understand the argument, since it seems to rest on something the OP has already cast aside.
I'm questioning their definition of success and what that "success" matters when they reach their goals without any ethical principles?
I'd like this person to elucidate why moral purity (not doing things like murder, assault, fraud, theft, etc) is antithetical to success and explain why people who practice this aren't universally a danger to the common (wo)man and organized society?
Their argument is essentially that not only is it okay to rob, embezzle, murder and lie to reach their goal, but that since you competition is you should either become a criminal or prepare for failure.
I'd rather not live in a world where people who survive this way are celebrated.
Whenever possible I choose not to give such companies my money. Obviously it's hard when virtually every major company in existence is unethical.
By redefining success to mean lots of money corporate standards are regressing and that's extremely concerning. This trend has cause caused immeasurableharm to society and most people are pretending like everything is fine.
Because it is fine. Even good things can come from unethical companies, such as well paying jobs for people to feed their families and amazing products and services that improve people’s lives.
No use in getting rattled by how the sausage gets made.
I don't understand why this comment is getting slagged. It's pretty well understood. Even well respected entrepreneurs like Richard Branson did shady stuff to get started. To the inevitable downvoters: yes, I'm time poor and too lazy to type it all out so you'll have to spend a few seconds Googling to find the stories. Boo-hoo for you.
I haven't downvoted it myself, but I imagine it's due to GP's tonality of "you should do illegal and unethical things" rather than "start ups doing illegal and unethical things is an unfortunately common practice".
> Even well respected entrepreneurs like Richard Branson did shady stuff to get started.
I'm not sure I'd consider Richard Branson well respected. There are a lot of people who dislike him here in the UK, precisely because of the shady stuff.
Respect and admiration are two different things. It would probably be wise to show respect in the presence of someone who won’t hesitate to cut your head off, if you care about staying alive. Doesn’t mean you have to like them.
Fear and respect are different. Respect and admiration are synonymous...
I fear my boss and Branson. Neither have, nor deserve, my respect.
Fear is a natural, powerful, and primitive human emotion. It involves a universal biochemical response as well as a high individual emotional response. Fear alerts us to the presence of danger or the threat of harm, whether that danger is physical or psychological.
Respect: feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.
Part of yc's interview question is "when have you 'hacked' or taken exploited the system to your advantage." I don't think it's about doing illegal stuff for the sake of it but more about taking advantage of opportunities creatively and doing what you can to survive since the probability of a startup succeeding is so low
McAffee apparently hyped a lot of crappy ICOs, causing people to lose millions. When you do that, odds are that you've other bad things and will do even worst things when things are tight.
It works, until you do it to the wrong guy. Some people can order a murder by pros just by wiping out a drug debt or a favor.
⁽¹⁾ Presence of Toxoplasma gondii infection in brain as a potential cause of risky behavior: a report of 102 autopsy cases. Samojłowicz, Twarowska-Małczyńska, Borowska-Solonynko et al. Eur J Clin Microbiol Infect Dis 38, 305–317 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10096-018-3427-z
20 or so years ago, back when I worked at farms, I read that people with Toxoplasma infections were overrepresented among those who were killed in traffic accidents[1][2].
[1]: this is a long time ago so my memory is a bit hazy, I cannot say for sure if it specified drivers or everybody who was killed in traffic accidents.
[2]: Of course correlation doesn't imply causation, and this wasn't a research report but rather an ordinary book.
The notion that T. gondii is the only behavior-altering parasitic organism out there is, of course, completely unsupported. It would be an "extraordinary claim" in its own right.
You kind of have to wonder what went so terribly wrong in childhood that led to this behavior. McAfee is clearly a brilliant but very disturbed person. What a sad waste of that talent and intellect.
That was a wild read, wow. I get the feeling that even apart from the drug stuff McAfee is brilliant but lacking any moral restraint or respect for societal order. I mean apart from the drug stuff all he made millions shilling junk ICOs in 2017 and brazenly declared he wasn’t filing taxes.
Sort of a catch-22 isn't it? Maybe those experimental drugs could make a man crazy, but he'd have to be crazy already to take those drugs in the first place.
It's also pretty clear that his problems caused him to leave the US, so his crazy drug experiments could not be the source of his initial problems, though they seem very related to his current problems.
Part of it are interesting in a genuine sense of the term, but the eccentric, drug abusing insanity is not. If he didn't have a lot of cash to burn from his business days he'd just be a crazy guy on a train screaming at people.
I hope this doesn't sound strange but I'm glad to finally get closure on this.
I remember the news article from 3 years ago that came out about this and there was speculation that this was just a random attack on a regular hiker. People started becoming paranoid that hikers and innocent people were being targeted on the side of the road.
I realize logically every life counts but there's something about random attacks that scare me so much more than people that commit crimes and start getting targeted.
It could be random, but a neo-nazi troll with his level of notoriety makes it more believable that someone followed and killed him.
Like if OJ Simpson turns up dead with a knife in his back, it’s possible that he was the unlucky victim of a random killer, but it’s more likely he was targeted.
It could also be both; not because someone recognized him, but still because of who he is (non-random). Maybe he was just said some neo-nazi shit to the wrong person.
They did found dogs or dog remains in the car? If they are dogs in the car will be more than one bullet to look for. If not, he could had been killed in another place and moved later.
Finding dog corpses or dogs hurt in a different place could signal the real crime scene.
I don't know about Canada (where the body was found), but in the US (where he was from) there is no registry of dental records. To identify someone from dental records they have to find that person's dentist(s) and ask for the records.
That works great when you've got a list of missing persons and a body that you think might be one of them, or when you've got a bunch of bodies such as from a plane crash and you know who they are but just need to sort them out to return to their families for burial.
But when you've just got a body with no idea who it was? Generally dental records won't be much use.
You might be able to get DNA from the pulp and use that to help identify the person, but the pulp can be damaged by fire.
There seems to be a specific rare phenotype for these tech high-risk takers (thinking of John McAfee also).