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As someone who grew up poor, but is now not poor, this is what I want for my kids. Taking on projects that they find interesting and challenging, and sharing it with the world.

I will be very sad if my kids end up doing nothing with their lives or spend it online making negative comments all day.

It requires a lot of exploration and guidance thus I'm super interested in how his childhood looks like. I myself wasted tons of time when I was young, ended up with a mediocre job and struggling with building a hobby. I have a 16 month boy and definitely wants him walk a different route.

Richness is a factor to enable this but the differentiator is will. A lot of rich kids waste their time with BS... This one worked hard and showed will to do something. Let us appreciate this.

Not that long ago the vast majority of scientific progress originated from rich men doing it in their free time. Does it really matter that they published their results for bragging rights instead of a need to fulfill some goofy academic pipeline requirements? Because those that think that money is the only thing standing between them and meaningful achievement... well, no amount of money will change that for them.

I was with you at first but then...

> Because those that think that money is the only thing standing between them and meaningful achievement... well, no amount of money will change that for them

What? Why couldn't they just be right? You yourself just said:

> Not that long ago the vast majority of scientific progress originated from rich men doing it in their free time

Is a person still not allowed to understand the fact that if they had more money they could accomplish more things?

I think what he is arguing is that someone with a negative attitude ("he can only do that because he's rich!") won't accomplish anything even if they were granted unlimited funding because they are focused on coming up with excuses instead of thinking about what they can do. There are plenty of poor people in third-world countries who have far less than the original commentator (who presumably lives in the first world) who have built very impressive things, especially considering the resources they have available. It is an attitude problem, not a financial one.

Put more bluntly than I was willing, but pretty much. I think this would be the case for the majority of the envious complaints, and the remainder would be a laughably unrealistic over-estimation of the power of money. As in: it doesn't suddenly make you smarter, more industrious, or gift you the ability to perform complex project management involving large organizations.

You're assuming someone isn't smart or industrious just because they grew up poor.

I think it's a self-serving assumption.

But you're just assuming, or rather making up, the "fact" that any person saying that didn't accomplish anything and that this is a problem.

Poor people do accomplish things!

I worded it exactly as intended when I said "meaningful achievement" instead of "wildest dream". If the scope of your ambition is to push the envelope in astrophysics, you probably already have enough resources at your disposal - and if you don't, a very sophisticated radio astronomy setup is easily within the reach of most individuals and certainly a handful of friends. But if your ambition is very specifically to build a radio telescope on the dark side of the moon... well yeah, that would take a lot of money that you don't have and never will. But even if somebody gifted the amount to you, that radio telescope still isn't getting built - because it was never something that could be achieved at the individual scale in the first place. So the money wasn't the showstopper. Same story with chip fabrication. If somebody is whining about their inability to execute their dream design due to lack of resources - dropping a $500M EUV stepper on them won't fix their problem.

> If the scope of your ambition is to push the envelope in astrophysics, you probably already have enough resources at your disposal

That's pretty ridiculous. It takes a lot of excess financial capacity for a human to even develop such an ambition in the first place.

Even if you have that level of privilege, you have to compete for educational resources and social support against people who may have much more privilege than that.

Nobody here is denying his skill and motivation.

His videos are an excellent educational resource that everyone can access easily. He's following that style (e.g. Applied Science) that is valuable for others wanting to learning how to build technologies without all of the fake complexity and grandstanding/secrecy that can sometimes accompany it. Nothing wrong with that!

"One of Zeloof’s best finds was a broken electron microscope that cost $250,000 in the early ’90s; he bought it for $1,000 and repaired it."

A thousand dollars is an achievable amount of money for a smart kid in a poor family. I have had good friends from really poor families in Europe make more from bug bounty programs. If that's you're trying imply.

> If that's you're trying imply.

That's just one piece of equipment, though. Plus it's one of the cheaper parts and let's not mention the fact that this "spare garage" is bigger than many apartments in other parts of the world...

So it's not insignificant at all. If you live in a rented apartment (e.g. about 60% of all Swiss people), not even money will make up for the fact that you simply cannot do something like that because there's just no space.

It's many things that have to come together to make this possible - "will" or "talent" alone just doesn't cut it.

Yeah, no denying other factors but repairing that electron microscope is no walk in the park and it prob enables others to do it even cheaper given the walkthrough style tutorial. I'm just replying to a pretty flippant characterisation (see top comment) and not ignorant about other issues relating to circumstances and location like you mention.

No, It's not.

I was a poor kid and didn't get financial support from my parents in young adulthood/college. I couldn't even fathom spending $1,000 on non-essential expenses during college. I was living entirely on student loans and minimum wage summer jobs - When that's your life you can't think about anything but pure survival. It's an entirely different mindset that I have now as a financially secure person.

If I got a $1,000 windfall during college it would go straight to bills/food. It would be entirely unfathomable to spend it on anything else. $1,000 is more than my monthly income during my college years.

Sorry. Posters here don’t understand. Why didn’t you have FAANG internships? Why didn’t you have an incredible scholarship that overpaid you and allowed you to spend $2000+/month on non-essential expenses cause everything else was covered. Not relatable! Not relatable! Does not compute!

People here are incredibly out of touch. $1000 for a poor college kid is a huge amount of fucking money. I had a full ride, monthly stipend, and jobs. Yet $1000 would’ve crushed me in many of my years in college and definitely wouldn’t have been something I would just splurge on for one month. It’s also only $1000 to purchase, doesn’t include transport, doesn’t include repairs, and doesn’t include all the additional work to get it running.

Peak HN out of touchness running in this thread.

Not really. We all know poor people couldn't really do it, just as they couldn't do expensive sports and other expensive but still usual hobbies, for example.

But this guy is not the only upper middle class person in the world - he's from a country with the largest, richest middle class of all countries; and so discussing the money here is IMHO the more out of touch thing - there is more people in the US with enough money for this stunt than there is poor people.

Can't we just celebrate the incredible achievement that literally not a single other not-poor kid was able to do (compare to the number of semi-pro hockey players - hockey is notoriously expensive)?

> We all know poor people couldn't really do it, just as they couldn't do expensive sports and other expensive but still usual hobbies, for example.

That's empirically not true and IMO kinda offensive. The example I brought up in my comment above is very real. Not all parents have overview what their kids do and have. When you've got food and housing, that provides the ability to spend that $600 bug bounty on "expensive hobbies" what you want. Not an electron microscope because your flat is 430 sq ft for four people, but a sleeper PC build, absolutely.

If you think your average American family can do this for their 22 year old, you’re out of touch.

Yeah I think most Americans could (not talking about averages here). It's roughly the same money as 1 year at an university, or a year of car lease payments, or a nice family vacation. Maybe two, but no more.

Anyone who rides a new-ish motorbike demonstrably has enough money to spare. Are motorbikes that unusual? Are second cars unusual? I don't think so. (and don't even look at how much people spend on cigarettes)

It's likely people wouldn't recognize the value and would buy the car or sports equipment instead and I'm not saying most people have the money on top of these other unnecessary expenses - but people prioritizing second cars/motorbikes/etc instead of their genius children are outside the scope of this discussion because they could, they just don't.

Damn dude - you really are out of touch. You should really step outside your comfort zone and talk to more people!

If you noticed anything about national trends - you'd know that motorcycles are basically dying and that things like sport cars are almost gone for good. MOST American families don't own an extra car.

You're also ignoring the real estate costs that are associated with what this guy had. Man, seriously - reevaluate. Read about what people are struggling with these days. Parents aren't paying that tuition out of their pocket - the kids are paying it with student loans.

Damn dude - let's look at some data.

This feat of ingenuity requires cca $25k - but distributed over 5 years. How many family households in the US could pay $5k/year?

3/4 of all US family households have income over $50k, more than 1/2 have income over $85k, more than 1/3 have income over $125k and more than 1/8 have income over $200k.[1]

$85k is enough to be comfortable and have $5k for the genius child even if you live in the Bay Area. $50k is enough for this outside major cities.

[1] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p...

I find it funny that you all really believe this story line.

It amazes me how easy it is to manipulate the masses. Like Elon Musk is the poor South African "inventor".

I am having problems believing a rich kid (must be because huge cellar in New Jersey) find a very expensive and crucial equipment and fixes it for a few dollars (1000).

Without this story line, it all wouldn't be fascinating.

I have problems when people post sensational stories about people like him. It makes poor people look stupid.

Just link to his youtube or where he publishes his findings or whatever, but stop spreading sensational news. Main info is: he is so young and he achieved so much. Look at you random 22 year old: What did you do?

$1300 is my monthly income as software engineer with 9 years of experience(in a third world country).

> During college

And living alone? If you're under the same roof as your parents you don't have such expenses.

Even more so if you're underage.

> A thousand dollars is an achievable amount of money for a smart kid in a poor family

This is a by-the-book example of privilege.

And even if a poor "kid" has the combination of ability and luck to obtain $1K most poor people would spend such money on basic needs like food, clothing and house repairs than a hobby. And that would be the most reasonable choice.

> This is a by-the-book example of privilege.

Yes the privilege of living in a 430 sq ft apartment with your sibling and parent, with the family making approximately $12k a year in total. LOL

What if you couldn't fix it?

It wouldn't be smart to risk $1000 on a broken piece of equipment unless you had a lot more money to spare.

True. Though I suspect the lack of garage would be more likely.

I more meant the sum of money in general, I said it based on a very real experience.

Such find is niche, it doesn't happen outside of the US. I imagine it only happens in pockets of the US (say near a prominent university)

Surely there are worse things to do than making educational YouTube videos while living of the blood of the proletariat?

If you don‘t have anything to say on topic, then just…don‘t say anything

Your definition of "anything" appears to encompass only "positive" things.

Is being rich a “negative” thing now?

It’s just a completely worthless observation, take the pointless virtue signaling somewhere else.

My comment was merely a semantic point, really boring actually. I don't really understand your frame to comprehend how your originated your first sentence. As far as i can understand you appear to have misinterpreted my reply. With that in mind i suppose your "observation" is completely worthless as well.

“Oh look another Rich Kid.” is what I called worthless. I’m sure the commenter certainly intended for it to be a negative thing, but that doesn’t really survive any closer scrutiny.

It’s as meaningful as stating that water is wet. Obvious, goes without saying.

No, anything of value. The thing that makes HN different from any other craphole like reddit is that the comment section in the link is as valuable (if not even more) than the link itself. This is possible when commenters willingly omit any flamebait, dismissive crap (like the comment above), etc.

Sure but doing all that at such a young age is so impressive

Yeah better than those spend most of their money and time on "cool" stuff, like clubbing, travelling, hiking, biking, etc., which = I don't know what to do but I just don't want to work.

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