[HN Gopher] Belief of Aliens Derailed This Internet Pioneer's Ca...
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       Belief of Aliens Derailed This Internet Pioneer's Career. Now He's
       Facing Prison
        
       Author : helsinkiandrew
       Score  : 24 points
       Date   : 2025-02-08 18:28 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
        
       | helsinkiandrew wrote:
       | Free to view:
       | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-02-05/aliens-de...
        
         | throwaway81523 wrote:
         | Only gives a couple paragraphs.
        
           | zafka wrote:
           | I was able to read the whole article from the link provided.
           | (I did click the accept terms button) - Luckily I do not plan
           | to have more children-
        
         | monetus wrote:
         | https://archive.ph/ot5Ml
        
       | andrewfromx wrote:
       | wow this reminds me a lot of
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sekret_Machines:_Book_1_%E2%80...
       | The Blink182 guy tom delonge made with a fiction author. The book
       | is fiction but the preface seems to say "hint hint nothing here
       | is fiction."
        
       | throwaway81523 wrote:
       | "Joseph Firmage helped create today's digital economy. These
       | days, he's being sued by antigravity-machine investors and
       | claiming to be hounded by a Jamaican wire-fraud gang, with a guy
       | pretending to be Steven Mnuchin along for the ride."
        
       | RestartKernel wrote:
       | > Firmage rose to fame after founding a software company from his
       | bedroom in Salt Lake City when he was a teenager, later selling
       | it for $24 million to Novell and founding the digital design
       | company USWeb in 1995.
       | 
       | https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/02/29/joe-fi...
       | 
       | > USWeb's business model focused on acquisitions of small,
       | independent web design firms and their client bases, with the
       | company's public stock as payment; in all, it bought more than
       | three dozen other companies
       | 
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USWeb
       | 
       | The article is paywalled, but the "pioneer" moniker seems to stem
       | from this business model?
        
       | metalman wrote:
       | WoW! this is a realy realy valuable information. there are people
       | who have money and lawyers who will invest in anti gravity and
       | THEN sue you.....righty then it seems reasonable to try to
       | monitize absolutely anything that fits within the known laws of
       | the universe, as long as you get your lawyers, and
       | accountant/astrophysisist/banker* to sign off on it. and
       | blithering on about aliens and antigravity isn't a liability good
       | to know, good to know!
       | 
       | *same persons seem to work in those collected fields
        
       | ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
       | These stories used to be so cool to read because they were so
       | different from reality. But now reality is stranger than fiction.
        
       | erulabs wrote:
       | Mental health is a real killer. It's so sad when people who
       | clearly have passion and (initially) wealth and apparently a
       | stomach for risk and hard work just can't bring themselves to be
       | honest.
       | 
       | The market wants triviality from us. It wants web design
       | companies and domain name squatters (his ventures that apparently
       | made returns). The brilliant art or game changing technology is
       | what our _souls_ desire but man, don't chase the ideal and
       | abandon the pragmatic. And certainly don't lie to yourself to get
       | there. A joke: the market wants Loom, not Boom.
       | 
       | This is a good article to read if you have a good life but only
       | did moderately well in tech. I beat myself up daily for not
       | having made more money doing simple obvious stuff, but at least
       | I'm not a delusional liar.
        
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       (page generated 2025-02-08 23:01 UTC)