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We are a nonprofit and are in the process of switching all of our hosting over to Coolify. It's been great. We've moved 13 apps over to it so far.


I think he just found a random engineer from Google on LinkedIn and is pretending to be him.


I am a paying user of Google Workspace, and also run a charity that is a user of Google Workspace with thousands of accounts. The account they were trying to phish was a paid Google Workspace email.


Yes, definitely. We consider anyone ages 13-18 a “high schooler”.


Founder here. Donations are the vast majority of Hack Club's revenue and make it possible and free for teenagers. Donate here: https://hackclub.com/philanthropy/

We also make a very small amount of revenue through the fiscal sponsorship program the other commenter mentioned: https://hackclub.com/fiscal-sponsorship/


We are doing a fundraiser for him to get a laptop here: https://hcb.hackclub.com/donations/start/oxy2dev-laptop

Transparent ledger of donations: https://hcb.hackclub.com/oxy2dev-laptop/transactions

We need about $500 more USD to get him an M1 MacBook Air (they are more expensive in Bangladesh, where he is based).

GitHub thread with details: https://github.com/OXY2DEV/markview.nvim/issues/218. Here is a Reddit comment from the author showing this is the official fundraiser: https://old.reddit.com/r/neovim/comments/1h7vhmg/bro_been_de...


From my spoiled western perspective it seems surprisingly difficult to either just send him the money or have a laptop delivered to him. I wouldnt have guessed that upfront...


He doesn’t want one sent to him because he believes customs will hold it until bribed.


We shipped 10,000 packages of free hardware and other prizes to teenagers this summer as part of https://hackclub.com/arcade/. In total we shipped to 119 countries.

India and Bangladesh caused by far the most issues with customs. Packages got held up, and they often tried to charge duties of up to 70%. His concern is definitely real.

The best option is to buy an item within the country using a US card, or to buy an item using a local card and get reimbursed via PayPal from a US bank account.


Customs theft is basically the norm there, it’s very frustrating.


Seems like an easy problem to solve the criminals are at a fixed address and are in documented possession of the items.


Assuming already poignantly corrupt authorities have any reasons to police themselves, they also have a billion ways to stall, cover and act innocent "Oh noes, we've been so overwhelmed, I swear I was just about to approve this, woe is me", and it will probably be true (The first part at least), they just take advantage of it

Also there's no clear chain of custody for stuff or incentive to have it, "Lost somewhere in customs" is about as precise as you usually get at the best of times


In terms of 3rd world corruption, this one is easy to solve. But the fact that it isn't solved is what makes it a 3rd world country. You put pressure on the low level corruption so it moves higher up the chain. In well functioning capitalized countries, the corruption happens at the corporate banking level. You can't have a well functioning economy without the smooth movement of goods and services.


i think we are supposed to call them developing nations these days.


Which isn't uncommon in places with high corruption, I remember the horror stories trying to order a high value item accross the border (Different country similar situation)


Welcome to dealing with a 3rd world country, this is expected.

Source: Am from 3rd world country.


If it would be less trouble (because of customs and other external factors), and assuming it can help, maybe a phone keyboard can also be considered? An OTG cable plus a normal USB keyboard might also be a solution if portability is not a requirement.


Why a MacBook, out of curiosity?


I had a talk with him and it seemed like the best fit. In the end, MacBooks are the best use of money when in comes to laptop. Battery life is crucial due to frequent blackouts.

I'd have preferred something from new Intel ones but I couldn't find anything available there.


Not sure I agree. They are built to last, yes, but would be a pain to get fixed if they break down. If it were me, I'd have preferred something like a Thinkpad.


That's 50/50, having lived in a poor and non tech heavy part of the world, at least Apple models are relatively few and high value, so shops pay special attention on keeping stock of what's reasonable and first party may be an option if you go to an affluent part of the country

On the contrary, usual recommendations, like business grade retired fleets were a lot more uncommon, because "business" work laptops on the area were just consumer grade whatever was cheap at the moment

The weird ocasions you saw stuff like Thinkpads or similar, they commanded a premium because the techies WANTED them


you're the best Zach


Hiring engineers in Burlington, Vermont who want to build the future of education.

Recent projects include https://highseas.hackclub.com, https://hackclub.com/arcade, https://hackpad.hackclub.com, and a cross-continent train hackathon: https://youtube.com/watch?v=hiG3fYq3xUU

Roles are multidisciplinary and combine coding, product, program design, and direct mentorship of teenagers.

Email me at zach@hackclub.com with your background if interested.


I had this happen with Verizon, I insisted on a receipt, which they handwrote for me. Then they told me I never returned the device and charged me!

Couldn't get through to anyone, no replies. I refused to pay. They sent it to debt collection, no matter how many times I sent the picture of the receipt they refused to take it.

Took me 2 years to get it off my credit report, including sending multiple letters via certified mail. Caused my credit to go down by 100 until it finally disappeared and went back to normal.

They. Are. The. Worst.


This sounds like a case where consulting a lawyer might actually be useful…


It could be, but you're not going to get into a situation where you recover attorney's fees.

So you're in a position where you can either handle it yourself and grind it out, or you can pay a lawyer an indeterminate amount to fix it-- probably just enough for a letter, but that may not even do the trick.

Suing in small claims is an option, though. You might recover something, and you'll certainly cause Verizon to incur expenses.


He might also enjoy https://highseas.hackclub.com, where thousands of high schoolers and middle schoolers are spending their winters making projects.

For each hour they "make", they earn "Doubloons" which they can spend on things they need for more projects - like soldering irons, Raspberry Pis, Framework Laptops, and more.

There are about 900 teenagers coding each day and working on different projects. He might be inspired by some of the things they're working on, like this personality quiz (https://personalityquiz.kittycat.hackclub.app/) and this overly aggressive cat-themed study timer (https://study.sticks.gay/).

One good beginner activity could be making his own homepage, which he'll earn a boba tea for: https://boba.hackclub.com


If he likes video games, we’re hosting a big game jam for middle and high schoolers next weekend.

It’s free and nonprofit. There are 60 locations. Maybe one is near you?

https://counterspell.hackclub.com/


hi, I waited for this thread to die down and reach the second page before I posted this because I love this topic and didn't want it derailed with a sensitive issue. I didn't realize this was restricted to school age kids and wanted to sign up as I needed some motivation to start on a game. But I reached the pronoun combobox and was legitimately confused!

I used to have a passion for UX and read books like "Don't make me think" and here I was stumbling with this silly field and didn't complete the form. Instead I was googling about pronouns to see if I should select "he/him", "he/him/his", or "He/Him". I didn't even notice there was an "any" and "other" value until I started writing this comment!

Hope you don't mind the question. This is a serious Q as I'm responsible for the UX of a public facing application and might at some point be required to add this field to our pages. I find it odd and kind of against UX best practices to make the field required. And presenting so many similar options "made me think" which used to be considered a bad practice because it's an obstacle to users completing a form. I now realize the target audience is school age kids. Do they automatically know what to select? I'm a xennial that somehow went into some time freeze spending every second of the day raising two kids with little time for social media. So please excuse my ignorance.


There’s no “correct” pronouns for you — just choose the ones you like.


I know there's no correct answer. But I legit wanted to understand what my answer actually means and why we are presenting seemingly duplicate options. I tried googling "capital he him pronoun" and all the references were about god. From a UX point of view, we tried to eliminate non essential questions like "choose 3 items that interest you" from forms years ago. There's also no correct answer for that but some users drop off sign ups when they're forced to answer too my fields. And that's kind of what happened to me here. Sorry if this seems silly or nitpicky!


Letter case in pronouns is sometimes used in BDSM context to emphasize dominance (or lack thereof).


Hah I saw that reference in my search results but eliminated it as a possibility because the target app is for middle schoolers. But if that's the accepted underlying cultural meaning of why someone would select that now people reading my comments above might understand why I felt the need to Google this. Choosing an option is signaling something and in this case it might imply I'm into BDSM.


I don't think there is any real difference between the three options you had to choose between.


I would just say to implement it as an optional field or make "I don't know" the first in the list


HackClub is very, very cool. My son just got a envelope from you a couple days ago, Zach. Keep up the good work, and see if you can slip in a couple extra of your extremely cool stickers for me next time. :-) (Currently rocking Hack to the Future on my laptop)


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