

Unfurlough.us – Freelance gigs for furloughed employees - dotmike
http://unfurlough.us

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dyslexicmonkey
Too bad that government workers will not be allowed to find a freelance gig in
the time that they are/will be furloughed. They need to get prior approval so
that there's no conflict of interest. And since their supervisors are also
furloughed, they wouldn't even be able to get said approval.

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dragonwriter
It appears that federal employees are not generally restricted from outside
employment, and only need a waiver to engage in certain official acts which
would affect the financial interest of an outside employer or entity with
which they are in employment negotiations.

[http://www.justice.gov/jmd/ethics/generalf.htm](http://www.justice.gov/jmd/ethics/generalf.htm)

~~~
specto
Depends if they have clearance, if they do they must get approval first.

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dragonwriter
Yeah, the "generally" in my post was not decorative: there are certainly all
kinds of special conditions where more than the rules applicable to federal
employees in general apply, and security clearances certainly come with their
own special rules.

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PaulHoule
Wow, this is the first constructive thing anybody has down about the
government shutdown. Thanks!

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Romoku
I had an idea while listening to NPR the other day, but I don't know about its
viability.

The NPR discussion was about the CDC having reduced capabilities to identify
outbreaks of foodborne illness (since doctors have to send it sample data for
analysis by experts). Then it occurred to me that maybe a sort of social
mobile application might be able to help identify outbreaks.

The app would prompt the user for their symptoms, what they have eaten over
the past several days (vegetables, meats, condiments, etc), and their relative
location (locations services, postal code, or something) and the data is
submitted anonymously.

The the database would have a public API for the data so developers could try
to identify correlations and useful information (IIRC much like a game some
developers made for identifying DNA mutations).

I don't really have the ambition to put in the research to see whether
something like this is viable or not. There are obvious issues with this
design since there's no way to identify molecular information until the
iBloodTester is invented.

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PaulHoule
Google has shown that people run flu-related queries when they are affected by
flu symptoms so that is a good method for tracking flu outbreaks in time and
space.

I'd be a little afraid of volunteer science in this case because I think you
might attract a population of hypochondriacs. (At my food co-op it seems 50%
of people think they are allergic to wheat and rather than eating rice or
beans or skipping the carbs, they buy triple-priced gluten free "breads")

I think something like this would be prone to witch hunts like the guys on
Reddit who were looking for boston bombing suspects.

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josh_fyi
Brilliant!

I'm curious to know: How did you ramp up your marketing so fast to get
employers and developers to the site on short notice?

(Other than posting to HN, of course!)

~~~
dotmike
josh_fyi-

We partnered with @1776dc who started a Google spreadsheet to pull together
the information. They had about 30 or so gigs and freelancers and we imported
it to our site.

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tocomment
Somewhat relatedly how does unemployment insurance work for the furloughed?
Can they collect it? If they get back pay later do they have to return the
unemployment payments? Could they actually come out ahead?

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kevinconroy
"Are federal workers eligible for unemployment benefits? Yes. Federal
employees who are laid off, including those furloughed this week, are eligible
to receive unemployment benefits. In general, for workers to be eligible they
must have lost their job through no fault of their own, not quit or have been
fired, and must have been employed long enough to meet state qualifications.

If Congress votes to reimburse federal employees, will they have to repay
their unemployment benefits? Most likely, yes. States say they’ll attempt to
recoup benefits paid to federal employees if the workers receive back pay once
they’re back on the job. (Congress will decide that when it ends the
shutdown.) States would notify workers that they owe the money back. Officials
in several states said that if workers don’t voluntarily repay, the state
would garnish wages, tax refunds and deny future unemployment benefits to
recoup the money."

Source: [http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/10/03/what-furloughed-
wo...](http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/10/03/what-furloughed-workers-need-
to-know-about-filing-for-unemployment-benefits/)

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eksith
What a wonderful way to make lemonade! Thank you for doing this. I hope the
site can withstand the onslaught of visitors as I'm sure they'll get more than
their fair share at the moment.

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imdsm
Looks like it couldn't.

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dotmike
The site is back up. Check it out at
[http://unfurlough.us](http://unfurlough.us)

Also did some write up on the background if you're interested:
[http://www.blencorp.com/blog/2013/10/unfurlough-us-
freelance...](http://www.blencorp.com/blog/2013/10/unfurlough-us-freelance-
gigs-furloughed-employees/)

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BWStearns
This is really cool of OP to do. Given how shitty the terms of furlough are
I'm really pretty proud of DC (used to live there) doing some cool stuff to
help out the folks who were furloughed. Between Unfurlough and the heavy
food/drink discounts ([http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dc-businesses-offer-
helping-h...](http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dc-businesses-offer-helping-hand-
federal-employees-amid/story?id=20436552)) I hope that furlough doesn't
completely suck.

~~~
eigenvector
Hyundai is also deferring loan payments for furloughed employees. Good
marketing too, it's the main reason I looked at and ended up purchasing a
Hyundai this week.

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dc_ploy
It seems to be down for me at the moment. But cool concept.

~~~
dotmike
dc_ploy-

the site is back up.. check it again.

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mpg33
"Furloughed" sounds like a word used in 1820.

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kmfrk
So does "filibustered". We could definitely do without the use of the two in
politics. :)

"Furloughed" is actually older than 1820, if you go here
([https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3Afurloug...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3Afurlough))
and click the drop-down box to see its history.

~~~
fennecfoxen
Hey now. Filibusters are an important check of the minority party on the
majority's power. If they were utterly abolished, you should expect to see far
more extreme legislative actions far more often than we have before. :)

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adandy
Where I work(ed) at the USGS most of us doing the tech work are actually
contractors who are now basically on unpaid leave. Is this site yet another
thing us contractors are excluded from?

Also I can't confirm if this is true or not but more senior federal employees
have told me that in the past they have received back pay but us contractors
are at a loss.

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dotmike
Glad you liked it. Share it with your circle too. Someone might be looking
this type of info

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Raphmedia
Might want to change that Drupal favico.

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dotmike
Good catch. We've updated it. Thanks for the heads up

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Raphmedia
You might want to clear Drupal's cache too. I'm still seeing it, on a
different computer too.

At that point, it's probably Drupal's cache. Or perhaps your theme is
overriding the favico that is linked or put in your root folder.

~~~
dotmike
It's most likey the varnish cache playing trick. Please try it and let me know
if you're seeing the Drupal favicon.

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Raphmedia
It's showing all right now!

Drupal can be a b*tch with its cache sometimes.

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tzakrajs
What if we could find a way to crowd-source things to help all of humanity. :P

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kv85s
i guess it's a better name than GS-11 clock-watchers?

