The Programmer Who Turned Down $10 Billion
Jason Citron knows all too well what it means to fail. He has done it many times, spectacularly, losing serious money. That was before he created Discord, the next-generation social network that long ago outgrew the world of gaming and became a convenient and secure means of communication, free of many of the flaws of traditional platforms. But how did the programmer come to turn down an offer of… 10 billion dollars from Microsoft?! What failures did Jason go through before reaching his enormous success? What are the most important things he has to tell us, and the key lessons of his fascinating story?
102Digital Stories Turns Two! Which Articles Did You Read the Most?
Digital Stories turns two today! Which of the 219 pieces published over that time were read the most? Topics well worth not missing, that much is certain… My heartfelt thanks to every one of: – More than 6,800 followers of Digital Stories on Facebook; – More than 3,600 followers on LinkedIn; – More than 500 people who subscribed to the mailing list; – More than 190,000 readers who visited the site. Over these two years the project: – Twice won the Technology and Innovation category of the most hotly contested journalism competition, the Web Report awards, and once the competition organized by the Bulgarian Association of Information Technologies. – Ran regular rubrics in Manager magazine and on bTV's business news. It was featured on bTV, BNT 1, BNT 2, Bulgarian National Radio, Darik Radio, BTA, Dir.bg, the magazines InGlobo and Osem, and many other media; – Most important of all! It drew attention to a range of topics that grow more important and pressing with every passing day. Thank you! Every read and every share matters!
103Krasi, Running Toward Himself
By the time he turned 30, he had piled on quite a few pounds and was sliding down the slippery slope of alcohol, cigarettes, even drugs… He decided it was time to change. He stepped timidly into the nearest gym. Then he started running. Not to run away, but to keep running, ever forward… and inward, toward himself. He hasn't stopped to this day. He has finished dozens of marathons and ultramarathons and logged more miles than some of us put on our cars. He has run across the Sahara in temperatures that could melt a chip. And beyond the Arctic Circle, where the inhuman cold can snap off the finger that reaches for your phone. Krasimir Georgiev is here, and he keeps running toward himself and for the sake of others. Soon he faces an even harder task—to spend weeks alone with himself, in front of all of us, with nowhere to run. To remind us who we are, where we are headed and what truly matters in our lives…
104BAIT Award Goes to Digital Stories!
Digital Stories has won the journalism category of the annual awards organized by BAIT, the Bulgarian Association of Information Technologies! The prizes, presented for the 12th time under the patronage of President Rumen Radev, are a leading accolade in the IT world. For two years running, the site and its creator Georgi Karamanev won the technology prize of the Web Report awards, judged by leading journalists; now comes the prize from the association with the deepest traditions in the information technology sector. Where technology meets the humanities, the human, the emotional—where journalism meets programming—that is where Digital Stories lives, and that is why the prize means so much.
105Dwarf Fortress: Life as a Game
Did you know there is a computer game that resembles… 50.04 percent of… real life? Dwarf Fortress has a huge number of devoted fans, has earned cult status over its 20 years, has been admitted to a museum of games and inspired the creators of Minecraft. For two whole decades it was developed voluntarily, on donations alone, by two dreamer brothers who gave everything to their adventure. Until that same adventure… quite unexpectedly turned them into millionaires. The story of Dwarf Fortress is as strange as the game itself…
106Yasaburo Hachiya and a Love Beyond Time
Life is a writer without equal, able to dream up plots beyond the reach of even the most gifted pen. Such is the odyssey of Yasaburo Hachiya, one of the most beautiful and powerful love stories I have ever heard. For 37 years the Russian Klavdia Novikova and the Japanese Yasaburo Hachiya lived together in a little village with the cheerful name of Progress on the banks of the Amur, dreaming of dying on the same day, on the same pillow. The samurai had even made two coffins of oak boards, lacquered, dried and assembled in the attic… But the story was not fated to unfold according to plan.
107Tristan Harris: The Knight of Honest Technology
“The closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience”—that is how Tristan Harris is known. His name made headlines with the notorious film The Social Dilemma, which drew plenty of attention but never led to much real change. His work embodies everything that is “broken” in today’s online life: the manipulative practices that have become a threat to our future as a species. Tristan Harris is not only the most recognizable champion of a free and democratic internet. Not only a thorough researcher who draws attention to the ways we are manipulated. He is also the man who warned a decade ago that the path technology was taking would lead us into a world of mammoth companies more powerful than the largest states. Into a time when we can no longer hold our attention while reading. Into filter bubbles that grotesquely distort the way we get our information. Does he think we can reverse these trends? Can the internet become a free place without monopolies, where information is delivered democratically, with respect for the personal data and views of every user… What are his ideas for the future of the web?
108MrBeast: What If… I Gave You $1 Million?
You’re sitting at work when suddenly… an unremarkable young man with a scruffy little beard walks up and asks: “Would you quit your job if I gave you $100,000 for it right now?” How would you react? Would you say yes? Would you like an island of your own? Or your very own Lamborghini? Just like that, as a gift, no strings attached? Nothing is impossible online, and sometimes meaning is born on the edge of provocation. Mr. Beast—MrBeast—is a fascinating influencer who has gathered more than a hundred million subscribers by simply… giving the money away! He stages a surreal candid camera that isn’t even hidden. He piles up advertising money only to hand it out spectacularly, sometimes with a provocative challenge, sometimes… just because. Is this madness?!
109“Programs, Programs and More Programs!”: The Computer Future as Seen from 1988
In the 1988 book Klyuchat kam badeshteto (The Key to the Future), Ivan Ivanov and Metodi Stamenov gathered the era's visions of the computer world. Looking at today from that vantage point is more than impressive: what did the authors get right, what have we achieved, where have we failed, and are there moments when, 34 years later, we sound just as optimistically ignorant about what technology can do? And who came up with the title's idea, so fashionable today in career choices?
110Lex Fridman, the Cool Scientist
A slightly dry young man in a thin tie and an impeccable suit sits behind the microphone, and across from him, one after another, come Musk, Zuckerberg, Kanye West, Vitalik Buterin, Noam Chomsky, Jaron Lanier and leading scientists from the world of artificial intelligence. Lex Fridman has been one of the most popular podcasters of recent months, even though by profession he is a scientist, an artificial intelligence researcher and a lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Born and raised in Moscow, of Jewish-Ukrainian descent, today he says he is American and speaks English without an accent. That does not stop him from blaming his new homeland for all the wars it wages around the world, just as he blames the old one. Lex is more than an interesting bird because of his successes. Here is what else is worth learning from his very curious story.
111Christopher Buxton: All Is Love
His first memory is of boundless darkness; the morning greets him with the smell of roasting peppers. Before long he will fall in love with the country he has landed in, and then truly and forever with the woman of his life, and a magical story will be born between cultures and eras. He taught Petya Dubarova, was the first to translate many Bulgarian classics into English, and dared to take on even the maddeningly untranslatable novel Summit—and he still translates Bulgarian poetry, votes in our elections and gets worked up by our passions, because reason ends where true love begins…
112Gamebooks: The Phenomenon That Taught a Generation to Read
Gamebooks are a purely Bulgarian cultural phenomenon, and there is a lot to learn from them. They show how the wild early years of the “transition” had not only mutri, the thick-necked gangsters of the era, but also a peculiar, meaningful literature that woke a love of books in an entire generation. If this story is familiar to you, it is worth learning how it continues today: one of the beloved authors, a knight of the gamebook, is fighting to give the phenomenon a new life. If you have never heard of it… then it is time, because this is something rarely talked about, and it was one of a kind. We go back to tell the story of the phenomenon and its six great authors, then turn to what the beloved writers do today, and finally look ahead to the gamebooks that will soon return in full force.
113Santa Claus on the Kaval
What does it mean to be an eccentric today? Can fate smile on you when you swim against the current and the stereotypes? This digital story is about two people separated by several generations and united by their love of Bulgaria and its folklore: one eccentric who left a corporate career to devote himself to his beloved art tells us about the last years of another, a man who held dozens of characters inside him—musician, instrument maker, sage, priest and… even Santa Claus. Bogdan Darev directed the film Kaval Park, where for almost two hours he presents the surreal figure of Alexander Eppler, an American of Russian descent and a Bulgarian at heart.
114So You Want to Be a Programmer?
Is programming for you, and is it worth trying, how late is too late, which language should you pick, and how do you land that first job? I decided to become a programmer at 33, after years in another profession, and here I have gathered everything I wish someone had told me back then.
115Guy Fawkes, the Face of Anonymous
You have seen this face many times. It is the great symbol of the 21st century. It comes from deep within Britain’s past, yet it would never have become the archetype we know today without a pure accident that came from art. Who was this Guy Fawkes? How did a mythical figure from Britain’s distant past come back to life to carry so much symbolism? How did his name become a word used every day in English? And is he really someone who deserves to be held up as an example?
116Podkrepi.bg: Can We Work Miracles Together?
What happens when 1,000 volunteers, most of them from the world of information technology, roll up their sleeves to build something that could change our society? I’ll let you in on it: the result of this experiment is positive, and it lays the foundations of a platform that can literally save lives. This digital story is meaningful, and it shows that when different people join forces, backed by a dose of typical Bulgarian stubbornness, they can work real miracles.
117Stefan: Finding the Way Back to Life in a Škoda
It is 2005, and Stefan Ivanov is just 18, bursting with energy, a national track-and-field champion. He finishes his training for the day, climbs onto the back of a friend's motorcycle for a ride… and wakes up 17 days later in intensive care. The days have simply vanished; what's more, the hard fight is only just beginning. One of those fights no one would ever imagine having to wage, or wish to. The kind where you have to face yourself even more than the pain. Yes, we humans are weak and we need help, especially when we find ourselves before an unknown enemy, and without being sure even of ourselves. Sometimes that helper turns out to be the act of making something: creativity, art…
118Takor Kyurdyan: The Artist of Archetypes
A remarkable master spends years searching for his own way to leave his gaze on photographic paper, and in the end he finds it: he coats his nude heroines in emulsion and “prints” them directly onto the paper. His unconventional approach and his photographic paintings, which become known as “archetypes,” own their era, and then seem to vanish, just as archetypes do. Today you will find almost nothing about him on the endless internet. Takor Kyurdyan died a quarter of a century ago, at only 51, and now his singular works are being reborn, dug out of time's memory by a young historian. It is time for a black-and-white digital story that brings together the fates of three men in a friendship beyond time.
119Slavs of the World, Smile!
The page Squatting Slavs in Tracksuits is one of the most delightfully funny things you can inflict on yourself online, a place where anyone with ties to the Balkans, Eastern Europe or the Slavic world cannot help but smile. Who is behind it, and why do 1990s gangsters, doting “babushkas,” reverence for Adidas and wacky low-budget fixes to everyday problems turn into viral memes? And how on earth do you explain all this to someone from the West?
120Strazha: Young People Standing Guard Over Democracy
Strazha.bg is a meaningful venture by young people unburdened by prejudice. In just a year the platform has drawn serious interest and keeps offering more and more possibilities—reminders that politics is not just the people on television, but all of us. Thanks to the project, we can see what the person we ourselves sent (or plan to send) to the National Assembly, Bulgaria's parliament, said and how they voted at any moment. We can check whether they keep their word and deserve our trust. We can search a vast database of payments made by every state institution over the past 16 years. “Democracy is not just a slogan!” reads the motto of this venture. Not only its existence, but also how effectively it works depends on all of us. And now we have a valuable weapon with which anyone can put it into practice. We meet the platform's creator, Blagoslav Mihaylov, to talk about the meaning of democracy and the way young people see it, and to look for what we need to build a meaningful and competent political class.
