Writing a competitive BZip2 encoder in Ada from scratch in a few days – part 2 (gautiersblog.blogspot.com)

MySpace founder (pushed out after sale), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Anderson, "If you knew me before Myspace, you'd probably thought I'd have been a scholar teaching philosophy in a university my whole life. If you met me before college, you'd probably have thought I'd be a musician for my entire life ... I like change.

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spacedcowboy · 1h ago

Whereas I am not trying to take anything away from Woz (I’ve never met that Steve, but by all accounts he’s a really nice guy), I can’t help but feel that his personality and the ethos he espouses have been made a lot more possible by the fact that he had a lot of disposable income…

geodel · 52m ago

Of course. And he mentioned as such having multiple houses and USD 10M in accounts. There is no gotcha here.

vdupras · 1h ago

Of course, it goes without saying. But on the other side, not many people would have what it take to not let that kind of wealth go to their head. This désinvolture has to be praised.

tchalla · 1h ago

“Money isn’t everything in life but before you say that make sure you have enough money”

bsimpson · 40m ago

"They say money can't buy happiness. It buys a Sea-Doo. You ever seen a sad person on a Sea-Doo?"

- Daniel Tosh

tchalla · 14m ago

I don’t know Daniel Tosh or what Sea-Doo. Can you explain this quote to me in like plain English where I don’t have to search something?

unclad5968 · 9m ago

Daniel tosh is a comedian and a sea-doo is a brand of jet ski. A jet ski is like a water motorcycle.

orthoxerox · 9m ago

Also called an aquabike or a jetski.

underlipton · 1h ago

I do wonder if the relative ease he might have had with his craft early on contributed, too. He doesn't strike me as someone who's ever really struggled to learn or produce, just met a steady stream of interesting, surmountable challenges (and was blessed to be able to eschew anything that would have been troublesome). Such a combination of prodigious talent and a keen awareness of where it ends probably makes for a pretty happy existence.

paulpauper · 1h ago

but he also had to live with having sold apple stock far too soon. Not that he cares that much .

antithesizer · 1h ago

"While" not "whereas"

gazpachotron · 1h ago

I've been to a lecture he gave, and Q&A session. I was left with no doubt that his ethos of joy and honesty predate his wealth and are entirely independent of it.

pengaru · 1h ago

> I've been to a lecture he gave, and Q&A session. I was left with no doubt that his ethos of joy and honesty predate his wealth and are entirely independent of it.

Don't most young people start life this way?

It's the influences of time spent in the rat race and a society fighting for scraps that beats it out of us.

I find those who struck it rich early and still turned out assholes more noteworthy.

chaps · 50m ago

Noteworthy in what way, exactly?

pengaru · 31m ago

> Noteworthy in what way, exactly?

Being kind to others costs something, the wealthy can inherently afford it.

When they're still assholes it seems dysfunctional to me, like these folks are actively aspiring to be jerks.

What a strange path to choose, when you have so many options at your disposal.

achenet · 53m ago

I started life in a family where money was often an issue, and it did give me some issues with it, which my chill dev job has actually helped me get over (I feel rich, so I'm generous).

So sometimes it's the opposite, you start out needy and the 'rat race' actually brings you to a more abundant world-view :)

seydor · 1h ago

not a lot of people dispose it

perihelions · 1h ago

Additional comments here,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44903803 ("Steve Wozniak: Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about happiness (slashdot.org)"—593 comments)

algo_lover · 1h ago

The only thing I feel is 2nd hand regret for Woz. What if he didn't cash out? What would his net worth be today?

I am so caught up in the rat race, that I can't even understand what Woz want's to say, or what makes him happy. I only feel sad for him.

But if you think about it, I actually feel sad for myself. If I were in Woz's position with ~$20m or so and had missed the Apple cash cow (assuming $500m at the very least), how would I react? Would I live my entire life with regret and remorse? Would I be bitter?

Huge props to Woz for figuring out what makes him happy and doing exactly that.

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1970-01-01 · 1h ago

>I earn money from my labor and pay something like 55% combined tax on it. I am the happiest person ever.

Those juxtaposed sentences do not compute for the vast majority of ultrawealthy engineers/CEOs/upperclass/1%. It certainly proves that after a fuzzy but real number of dollars, there exists a point where you simply have a superfluous amount of money.

Zigurd · 23m ago

That attitude about paying taxes is an actually effective altruism.

sswaner · 1h ago

And perhaps a sense of civic duty: Those tax rates were created (hopefully) by elected representatives.

Zigurd · 28m ago

Seems much happier than Peter Thiel on less than 1% of Theil's money. Is it the money or the neoreactionaryism?

paulpauper · 1h ago

It kidna sucks having accomplished so much very early in life and then being "now what?" It's like he was never able to relive that glory of Apple, not that he necessarily wanted to. But it's like, 'what do you do to fill the time?'

dcrazy · 17m ago

I don’t think he was chasing glory, but he did a bunch of stuff post-Apple. In addition to the things mentioned in the book passage Gruber quoted, he funded the Us festival because he loves music.

martinpw · 21m ago

Probably feels a lot better than the opposite of spending your whole life hoping to achieve something and never feeling you quite did - always becoming and never being.

achenet · 50m ago

Do things you love with people you love.

If you have kids, go be with them. Travel, see the world.

Philanthropy.

Start another business if you feel the urge. Meet people. Get into the arts (the founder of my present company, OVH, used his fortune to buy a bunch of guitars and become a performing musician, Ken Block used his DC money to get into car racing)...

A creative soul like Woz will always find something worth doing :)

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