freemanindia

Make money exploiting natural and human resources while abstracting perceived harms away from stakeholders. At scale.

Electric unicycles win this category for fun, compact, motorized transportation, tho there's more of a learning curve than scooters or bikes.

There's overlap in travelers who work festivals in the summer, dpw at burningman and spend some of the winter in slab city.

There's also digital nomads doing vanlife there.

Much of the art has a distinct BRC vibe. The founder of East Jesus was a burner in the art car scene. Last winter there was a giant LED penis up at one of the camps, and spaceport 42 is a collection of 6 burned out trailer chassis planted vertically in the ground.

I think the article under estimates how many people live there in winter, and over estimates how many people are there during the summer.

During the winter some camp will host a gathering usually an open mic most days of the week. Hanging out around a camp fire listening to songs one time I commented to my neighbor how I've never heard so many songs about a place before. He said, 'no song writer comes to slab city and doesn't write a song about slab city.

Can you share a reference for this statement ?

"... a similarly impairing dose of cannabis results in 0.00001 ppm of the drug in breath."

At my codeschool (jaaga.in/study) last night we all hung out enjoying your videos. Thanks !

As someone who lives in India (no DST) but interacts frequently with people in the USA. I hate it. Maybe it was rational before mass globalization, but now that many of us interact regularly across time zones and national borders it complicates time, which should be sacrosanct.

The electric unicycle is the electric vehicle for the masses.

I've been doing this in India for the past 10 years. At this point I've basically set up my burningman camp on an organic farm on the edge of Bangalore. I run a code school where people learn web development online and encourage other techies to stop by and work on their projects for awhile. Cost of living including food and internet is about $100. Americans get great visas to India. Check us out http://jaaga.in

i live in a small village in rural india where I'd guess the average monthly income is less than $150. So, its a poor area, but not a destitute area. People generally have water, enough to eat, and the kids all go to school. They want cars and big houses like people in the west want faster cars and bigger houses. As a whole even for people doing labor the lifestyle isn't obviously bad. They work fewer hours, are in a more natural less poluted environment and are generally less stressed by life and work than their urban counter parts. There's a perceived lack of opportunity driving people into the cities. But its a similar drive that motivates people in the states to leave relatively nice styles in the midwest to move to Los Angeles or San Francisco to chase a dream even if it means working long hours in a restaurant and living in a crowded apartment.

One reason I think this theme resonates here is that software people are location independent in a way few other industries are. If you can work from anywhere being somewhere where your core living expenses are $200 makes sense. Siver's questions becomes real - what then ?

This isn't going to help the industry. The Internet is changing the way we learn and software development is at the edge of the trend. Software lends itself to this in part because its a meritocracy in which competence is easy to recognize independent of accredited degrees, and because the tools change so fast traditional institutions have trouble keeping up.

Its extremely unlikely regulation can do as good a job as the default market forces in identifying quality programs, and it will likely put a huge damper on people trying to do innovative things with technical education in the state.

disclaimer: I run a one year 'developer bootcamp' in rural india - http://jaaga.in/study

We're doing a 1 year program to help people become professional developers in Bangalore http://jaaga.in/study

I'll try to make it and have some grease pizza

I set up a donor advised fund (DAF) with the Silicon Valley Community Foundation when I sold my company in 2000. At that time they had the policy of selling all the donated shares immediately. It turned out to be one of the best things I did. Now I have more time available to look into how to give money in meaningful effective ways and I have a pot of money available for this thru the DAF where I don't have to be doing the math on whether or not I can 'afford' the donation. My post acquisition world has been much richer for the interactions I've had with people I respect that stemmed from this.

If the consequences were in line with his actions this logic would work, but life in prison is an extraordinarily oppressive response to this type of disobedience.

Further, using the legal system to extract a huge penalty before any jury has decided on guilt is the worst type of bullying by the big against the small.

Lastly, many of us relate to what Aaron is going through, and simple compassion compels us to help. Saying Aaron should "man up, take responsibility for his actions, and pay his own bills" belittles him and those of us who have chosen to support him.

got into philanthropy

went traveling

did massage school

set up a big art space in LA

tried to set up a media incubator in LA

made some large burningman structures

moved to india

worked in a startup as a coder again

did another incubator

set up another art space

...

I find that not being 'hungry' has reduced my tolerance for spending time on activities which don't seem important. This can make me an awkward partner in some situations because the pursuit of money is a very good unifier.

Getting clarity on what I feel is important has been a much longer and more rewarding process than I expected.

Charles Stross and Ian McDonald are my new favorite sci-fi authors. I just finished Accelerando by Stross which had lots of great ideas played out over the next several centuries. Cyberabad by McDonald is a collection of short stories that push at the fantastic edges of where tech could be going.

I'm also in central Bangalore (Richmond Town).

  Rent $400 - 2 bedroom shared between 4 people
  meals $100 
  electricity $50 
  internet $50 for two airtel 4mbps connections (I run a hacker space)
  tranport $50 - travel by rickshaw is cheap tho I just bought a nano (car) for $4500

so, if I were being frugal my burn rate would be about $300. As it turns out, I probably blow that much again on alcohol and fancy restaurants.

I dropped out of high school and went to jr. college. At that time (and probably still) California Community colleges had agreements with the UC system such that if you fulfilled your general ed requirements with a specific GPA you were guaranteed entrance as a junior transfer. For me this worked out great.

Thanks for the plug. iAccelerator is moving to Bangalore for this year's winter season.

I've been curious about alternative startup funding ideas for awhile. Selling rev share units thru Amazon in particular projects seems like it could be compelling for a variety of tech financing situations like building an iphone app, or a facebook game.

I'd love to hear advice on hiring a collection agency as well. My lawyer renegotiated terms several times with a guy who defaulted on a business loan I made him. Each time he agreed to a repayment schedule, but never paid anything. My lawyer went to court. The other guy never went, and after a few visits we got a judgement against him. Still there was nothing forcing him to pay. The lawyer went back to court and after more $ I all i was able to do was put a lien against any 'real' property in California he may someday purchase. The next step was to force him to court and audit his accounts 'under oath', but I lost my faith in the whole process.

will do

I'm running this program with CIIEindia.org the incubation center at IIMA. We invest 5 Lakh in the companies we work with and ask them to move to Ahmedabad for 5 months May 1 - Sept 30.

I've been using hiveminder.com for sometime. Its super easy to add tasks, delegate, tag, set due dates, etc. It also handles groups nicely, and its free.