Paul Thrasher

Another way would be to use a stream/timeline like the Twitter API uses. It works similari to the date method but doesn't have 2 items with the same date. With this you don't request page=2, you request the first set with a certain count and it gives you the sinceid and maxid. To get the next page you request a certain count starting at the cursor (max_id). It doesn't let you sort or jump to the end so it is still a pain to get your whole tweet history. Read more: https://dev.twitter.com/docs/working-with-timelines

Part of the reason might be similar to why you never get a response to an email sent to more than two people. The rising tide of technology has lifted all industries and there is, in fact, many people working with tech to make the world better. So even though there's not enough people working on the problem, perhaps it makes us feel better knowing that someone's working on it and we're more okay with not doing it ourselves. A lot of these random start-ups can actually help people, they're just mostly inaccessible to the general public because they don't know about it until it hits the mass market. Otherwise, there are people out there using all this junk we create to do some good.

I completely agree that no one wants the pay cut when everyone else is jumping from company to company trying to maximise their earnings and experience. You feel like if you take a few years to work on something that actually matters, you're effectively taken your self out of the game and screw over your future. Plus, living in SF can make you feel poor even with a six-figure salary, so everyone here is constantly striving for more.

Personally, I've always wanted to start an after-school computer lab and tutoring space. I have no excuse for not already starting that instead of working on my random stupid web-app ideas at night.

These are really just excuses though, so thanks for the reminder. There are true opportunities out there, so it's not just taking one for the team. A follow up post with a few concrete, practical examples of where we can help would be awesome. I think that things like working for Kiva or Charitywater, working with that Obama tech dream-team, or helping a local non-profit, are very doable when brought to people's attention. We've known as far back as Socrates that personal knowledge creates personal responsibility. :)