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Joined 3 months ago
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Cake day: March 31st, 2025

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  • really good article with a couple surprises in there.

    "some people speculated that, because of the political pressure against it, its release must have been an act of resistance by someone within the IRS. But the open sourcing of the program was always part of the plan, and was required by a law called the SHARE IT Act. It happened “fully above board, which is honestly more of a feat!,” Given told 404 Media. “This has been in the works since last year.”

    Vinton told 404 Media in a phone call that the open sourcing of Direct File “is just good government.”

    “All code paid for by taxpayer dollars should be open source, available for comment, for feedback, for people to build on and for people in other agencies to replicate. It saves everyone money and it is our [taxpayers’] IP,” she said. “This is just good government and should absolutely be the standard that government technologists are held to.”"



  • for sure! I love talking about this stuff.

    if you join an online platform with in-place curriculum, then they assign you to classes so the students are already there.

    I didn’t want a schedule, so i made myself available to casually chat with ESL learners on an app called palfish.

    enough people called me up for me to make a few hundred a month, which is all I needed to travel. dorms are $100 a month in SE Asia, food is 1 to $4 a portion in all of asia, and I was backpacking half the time anyway.

    when I landed in a country, I bought the unlimited data-only plan, clicked the “online” button, and then people called me up whenever they wanted to practice their english with me.

    that online work was partially to offset using my savings, but i had already taught in person for ~7 years.

    with each month of in-person teaching affording me ~3 months of living expenses, i had enough savings to travel for a couple decades by the time i started traveling full-time.

    quick note: there’s no competition for ESL students at the teacher level. there are way too many ESL students and not nearly enough English teachers to fulfill the demand. it’s not even close.


  • both.

    I taught in person in China at first, and then after I started traveling full-time I taught online because all you need is a smartphone.

    and no, the market is not at all saturated, it is wide open. there are literally thousands of jobs available right now across dozens of countries and online.

    if you have any interest in traveling, or you need money, and are a native or fluent English speaker, teaching English is such a great deal.

    I’m happy to answer any other questions you have.