There appear to be some inaccuracies, or at least motivated misinterpretations in this article. In the second paragraph she claims that her invitation to speak at the Internet Archive was cancelled because of the llama.cpp incident, but reading the actual text of the email it seems the bigger issue is the content of the neoreactionary statements she made in 2014-2015? In fact, nowhere in the text of the article itself does she address them, which seems to me to be the elephant in the room.
I feel like it is a very great privilege to be able to post this to Hacker News, soliciting donations. I was out of work for the longest time (thankfully, I finally found some). I too have disadvantages, I have a few mental disorders which make living not the easiest and the world is not made for people who are different in any way. I've contributed to HN in the past, have plenty of stuff on Github but I do not have the access to be able to ask people to pay my way. I realize that my output is a fraction of Justine's but there are very few people who can post a blog post soliciting donations on the top of such a major site. It just feels very, very personal, and it is.
I realize that it takes great courage to do what Justine does, the world is not fair to trans people or many other groups. I want her to be safe and happy. I have however, observed Justine make some pretty careless remarks about homeless people or you can Google her views on slavery or various political individuals and they're not great. They are views that hurt people. I've noticed in past threads these are brought up but she does not address them, which strikes me as lacking the courage that she usually has.
Justine, can you clarify some of the views you've had over the years so that people who donate to you feel like they are not supporting somebody who might not hold the same views for other groups of people that are in danger?
> I've noticed in past threads these are brought up but she does not address them, which strikes me as lacking the courage that she usually has.
The reason is a massive ego problem they refuse to address. Reading this difficult to follow rant also reveals they no clue what it means to be humble.
This post resonates with my situation very much, although I have not made even a tiny fraction of the contributions this person has. I think if a person like this is struggling to find work, but the donkeys who code my government's dysfunctional websites are all fully employed, it suggests the software industry is in very big trouble.
That being said, and speaking from my own experience, one can develop ego problems if they've been undervalued by society. You can start viewing other people as lesser than you for not understanding your situation. I managed to escape those toxic thought patterns by practising empathy as a deliberate activity, and forcing myself to give love and grace to others until it felt natural.
> I think if a person like this is struggling to find work, but the donkeys who code my government's dysfunctional websites are all fully employed, it suggests the software industry is in very big trouble.
I don’t think so. I think what happens is that people believe in meritocracy or karma or universal justice. Generally, one cannot rely on that. You make one mistake and then another and you are out, no matter how much goodness you have done. It’s a hard pill to swallow. It’s absurd, but we must keep pushing the rock and be happy (or else the alternative is s…)
Somewhat similar to you, I also got the sense that this was a pointed response/positioning to some controversy. Not because I have any clue whats going on (I dont), but just cuz it pattern-matched with the style/tone of a PR statement.
>Wiz also makes security tools, except they don't just prevent unwanted software from running, but they use their visibility to quantify the impact of open source projects, and then publish aggregate reports. The State of AI in the Cloud 2025 said that llamafile was being used by a third of organizations, which made it more productionized than ollama, llama.cpp, TensorFlow, and even the Anthropic SDK. It'd be great if people used empirical analysis of whose software is being used when distributing resources.
@Jart have you considered setting up a twitch account? I feel like people would donate if you were teaching them how to code like you do
It's very interesting to see a post asking for donation do this well on HN. I really doubt I would be able to do the same, and my systems work isn't too shabby either..
> when I saw someone complain about what he thought the title should be, I just used his idea instead of my own. This upset the moderator so much when he saw that I was optimizing my writing style based on feedback from his site
I was unaware the blog copied my title change until seeing this on HN and I have no emotional reaction to it. I've replaced over a hundred clickbait titles and it's not an emotionally evocative chore. Anyone can read my contemporaneous explanation at https://lobste.rs/c/hjlmw1 to see my reasoning and judge for themself how upset I sound.
Yarvin believes in a world where the upper class (monarchy) runs everything. It's a pretty controversial take to support them from somebody who themselves has faced discrimination. I think Justine might be out of touch with people who aren't well off.
She seems to do some trolling (but it isn't obvious because she won't address) it where she even made statements which seemed like they were in support of slavery back in 2012. She's brilliant but controversial and I'm sure being trans doesn't help with people rejecting her for no reason either.
Some of the reactions to this are slightly unfair because it looks like Justine (who I'm not familiar with) supported Moldbug in 2014. It was only in around 2020 when Yarvin sold out, did a 180 in his views, and became a Trumpist; in the early 2010s, he would write long posts about how populism inevitably leads to fascism, any entity who wants power cannot ever be trusted with it, etc. His political views back then were far weirder than what people probably think - e.g. he thought a dictator needs to be simultaneously secure and yet overseen by a board of directors with power to replace the dictator, using some galaxy-brained setup I don't really understand.
Hence, recommending Curtis Yarvin in 2014 is rather eyebrow-raising but a very different thing from recommending him now.
It comes down to a rare combination of skillz and lulz. Each ingredient is tolerable in isolation, but when combined, the resulting mixture is deadly to the weak of heart.
There are plenty of places to write systems code for a decent paycheck that aren't based in silicon valley or have a top20 web presence, and justine is definitely skilled enough to hold down one of those jobs.
Is the ask here to donate and support the desired lifestyle of traveling, owning a home in SF, and writing open source projects for fun and profit?
> Right now my only source of income is the $15k/year I got by being one of the top 300 GitHub users globally. That puts me in the 99.9997th percentile of open source developers (based off GitHub's 100 million monthly active user count). What it means is that I'm uniquely able to convert your money into the largest amount of value for society. I want to start by using the money to buy myself a home in San Francisco, in a neighborhood where I can feel safe, so that I can have a bed, set up a real office, entertain guests, and take photographs. I want to travel around the world and experience the cosmopolitan lifestyle my project is named after, using only private aviation, so that I won't be molested or risk being detained each time I fly. I want to hire an elite team that can help me accomplish my social and technical goals, such as adding native support for my file format to every operating system.
The bit about "using only private aviation" and "hir[ing] an elite team" sound satirical at first, but then the next sentence sounds earnest, so I can't tell?
I looked up this person on wikipedia, so the "I want to live a cosmopolitan life and fly private" seems like something someone who was involved with occupy wall street would say sardonically, but I am not sure?
Regardless, this person's technical work seems incredible and I really hope we can find a way to support people who work independently and aren't obsessed with capturing the value they create in the US.
This seems like a social justice position conflated with a call to donations to remedy some personal mistakes? Is the accusation here that two separate state tax authorities are conspiring against this person?
Similarly blessed that I am too stupid to comprehend this post.
This person compares themselves to Prometheus and is begging for cash? What? Why is this not flagged?
There appear to be some inaccuracies, or at least motivated misinterpretations in this article. In the second paragraph she claims that her invitation to speak at the Internet Archive was cancelled because of the llama.cpp incident, but reading the actual text of the email it seems the bigger issue is the content of the neoreactionary statements she made in 2014-2015? In fact, nowhere in the text of the article itself does she address them, which seems to me to be the elephant in the room.
I feel like it is a very great privilege to be able to post this to Hacker News, soliciting donations. I was out of work for the longest time (thankfully, I finally found some). I too have disadvantages, I have a few mental disorders which make living not the easiest and the world is not made for people who are different in any way. I've contributed to HN in the past, have plenty of stuff on Github but I do not have the access to be able to ask people to pay my way. I realize that my output is a fraction of Justine's but there are very few people who can post a blog post soliciting donations on the top of such a major site. It just feels very, very personal, and it is.
I realize that it takes great courage to do what Justine does, the world is not fair to trans people or many other groups. I want her to be safe and happy. I have however, observed Justine make some pretty careless remarks about homeless people or you can Google her views on slavery or various political individuals and they're not great. They are views that hurt people. I've noticed in past threads these are brought up but she does not address them, which strikes me as lacking the courage that she usually has.
Justine, can you clarify some of the views you've had over the years so that people who donate to you feel like they are not supporting somebody who might not hold the same views for other groups of people that are in danger?
For example,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46890435
That overall thread has a few relevant discussions, that comment thread cites:
https://thebaffler.com/latest/mouthbreathing-machiavellis
How can I support somebody who thinks a guy who doesn't give a shit about me not having a job (and worse) is somebody worth cheering on?
Thank you.
> I've noticed in past threads these are brought up but she does not address them, which strikes me as lacking the courage that she usually has.
The reason is a massive ego problem they refuse to address. Reading this difficult to follow rant also reveals they no clue what it means to be humble.
This post resonates with my situation very much, although I have not made even a tiny fraction of the contributions this person has. I think if a person like this is struggling to find work, but the donkeys who code my government's dysfunctional websites are all fully employed, it suggests the software industry is in very big trouble.
That being said, and speaking from my own experience, one can develop ego problems if they've been undervalued by society. You can start viewing other people as lesser than you for not understanding your situation. I managed to escape those toxic thought patterns by practising empathy as a deliberate activity, and forcing myself to give love and grace to others until it felt natural.
> I think if a person like this is struggling to find work, but the donkeys who code my government's dysfunctional websites are all fully employed, it suggests the software industry is in very big trouble.
I don’t think so. I think what happens is that people believe in meritocracy or karma or universal justice. Generally, one cannot rely on that. You make one mistake and then another and you are out, no matter how much goodness you have done. It’s a hard pill to swallow. It’s absurd, but we must keep pushing the rock and be happy (or else the alternative is s…)
Reading this feels like stepping into two different conversations already in progress.
If you know whats going on, could you link to em?
Somewhat similar to you, I also got the sense that this was a pointed response/positioning to some controversy. Not because I have any clue whats going on (I dont), but just cuz it pattern-matched with the style/tone of a PR statement.
>Wiz also makes security tools, except they don't just prevent unwanted software from running, but they use their visibility to quantify the impact of open source projects, and then publish aggregate reports. The State of AI in the Cloud 2025 said that llamafile was being used by a third of organizations, which made it more productionized than ollama, llama.cpp, TensorFlow, and even the Anthropic SDK. It'd be great if people used empirical analysis of whose software is being used when distributing resources.
@Jart have you considered setting up a twitch account? I feel like people would donate if you were teaching them how to code like you do
It's very interesting to see a post asking for donation do this well on HN. I really doubt I would be able to do the same, and my systems work isn't too shabby either..
> when I saw someone complain about what he thought the title should be, I just used his idea instead of my own. This upset the moderator so much when he saw that I was optimizing my writing style based on feedback from his site
I was unaware the blog copied my title change until seeing this on HN and I have no emotional reaction to it. I've replaced over a hundred clickbait titles and it's not an emotionally evocative chore. Anyone can read my contemporaneous explanation at https://lobste.rs/c/hjlmw1 to see my reasoning and judge for themself how upset I sound.
Sorry you're going through that, that sounds rough.
I have to ask the other side: why is this person so controversial?
The only thing I'm aware of: she posted a very weird petition to appoint Eric Shmidt as "CEO of America" (https://9to5google.com/2014/03/20/occupy-wall-street-co-foun...) and told people to read Curtis Yarvin, in 2014.
EDIT: lobste.rs context: https://lobste.rs/c/hjlmw1
There are a lot of examples in this thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46889008
eg:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46890435
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46892447
Yarvin believes in a world where the upper class (monarchy) runs everything. It's a pretty controversial take to support them from somebody who themselves has faced discrimination. I think Justine might be out of touch with people who aren't well off.
She seems to do some trolling (but it isn't obvious because she won't address) it where she even made statements which seemed like they were in support of slavery back in 2012. She's brilliant but controversial and I'm sure being trans doesn't help with people rejecting her for no reason either.
Some of the reactions to this are slightly unfair because it looks like Justine (who I'm not familiar with) supported Moldbug in 2014. It was only in around 2020 when Yarvin sold out, did a 180 in his views, and became a Trumpist; in the early 2010s, he would write long posts about how populism inevitably leads to fascism, any entity who wants power cannot ever be trusted with it, etc. His political views back then were far weirder than what people probably think - e.g. he thought a dictator needs to be simultaneously secure and yet overseen by a board of directors with power to replace the dictator, using some galaxy-brained setup I don't really understand.
Hence, recommending Curtis Yarvin in 2014 is rather eyebrow-raising but a very different thing from recommending him now.
There's plenty of reading material about her controversies:
https://unherd.com/2019/02/techs-dark-overlords/?edition=us
https://www.yahoo.com/news/rogue-occupy-wall-street-account-...
https://web.archive.org/web/20140802022307/http://valleywag....
Then there's her interview with Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes: https://youtu.be/LXVWLA5eKO0?si=V37wz5NicRd0r_wD
It comes down to a rare combination of skillz and lulz. Each ingredient is tolerable in isolation, but when combined, the resulting mixture is deadly to the weak of heart.
There are plenty of places to write systems code for a decent paycheck that aren't based in silicon valley or have a top20 web presence, and justine is definitely skilled enough to hold down one of those jobs.
Is the ask here to donate and support the desired lifestyle of traveling, owning a home in SF, and writing open source projects for fun and profit?
> Right now my only source of income is the $15k/year I got by being one of the top 300 GitHub users globally. That puts me in the 99.9997th percentile of open source developers (based off GitHub's 100 million monthly active user count). What it means is that I'm uniquely able to convert your money into the largest amount of value for society. I want to start by using the money to buy myself a home in San Francisco, in a neighborhood where I can feel safe, so that I can have a bed, set up a real office, entertain guests, and take photographs. I want to travel around the world and experience the cosmopolitan lifestyle my project is named after, using only private aviation, so that I won't be molested or risk being detained each time I fly. I want to hire an elite team that can help me accomplish my social and technical goals, such as adding native support for my file format to every operating system.
The bit about "using only private aviation" and "hir[ing] an elite team" sound satirical at first, but then the next sentence sounds earnest, so I can't tell?
I looked up this person on wikipedia, so the "I want to live a cosmopolitan life and fly private" seems like something someone who was involved with occupy wall street would say sardonically, but I am not sure?
Regardless, this person's technical work seems incredible and I really hope we can find a way to support people who work independently and aren't obsessed with capturing the value they create in the US.
This seems like a social justice position conflated with a call to donations to remedy some personal mistakes? Is the accusation here that two separate state tax authorities are conspiring against this person?
Overall I also thought the post is mostly confusing?
Similarly blessed that I am too stupid to comprehend this post. This person compares themselves to Prometheus and is begging for cash? What? Why is this not flagged?