If true my educated guess for the disease would be a form of leukemia, although in its acute form is unlikely that the affected are left well enough to travel.

Band together around two popular members of the community.

Have someone that has been around for few years but just has 100 of karma post a similar call for help and see how many upvotes will receive.

I have seen HN display generosity on occasion to perfect strangers and throwaway accounts.

Sure, but would that someone turn to HN in such a case? Still, I expect you'd be surprised, especially if the account is a few years old.

Hey but let's hope we won't have to find out, huh? :)

It always helps to know influential people, whether on HN, or elsewhere!

It's an interesting scenario and very likely, but I suppose FB engineers and shareholders are not too concerned about Facebook becoming a digital graveyard in 50 years because they will be dead themselves.

You're kidding, right? The FB engineers are probably mostly under 30 - you're assuming they'll die before they're 80?

Added in edit: Well, I guess from the downvote(s) that people do assume the FB engineers will die before they're 80.

Added in further edit: It's been suggested that my comment lowered the tone. If that's the case then I apologize, it wasn't intended to. It's been further pointed out that from 27 years of age onwards, the male life expectancy in the USA is indeed 50 years or less. So I was wrong anyway. I've learned something, for which I am not sorry. I was wrong, for which I am not sorry, because it afforded me the opportunity to learn. I may have lowered the tone, for which I am sorry.

If you are a 27 year old male in the U.S., your life expectancy is just under 50 years.

http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

Erm, sorry chap that's a period life table, not an expectancy table. It's remaining years, not total. If you scroll down eventually years remaining < age. Unless you count reincarnation no 80 year old is dying before their first birthday.

Assuming you mean the expected remaining life, then yes. And you must mean that, because the other "obvious" meaning makes no sense.

I think you have to sum the age and expectancy. Otherwise that table makes no sense.

Death probability is the lowest for 10 years old kids: 0.01% in that year.

I suspect FB engineers are going to live longer than average for US population, too, since they have higher income, education, etc.

It looks to me the idea may not be the best one and his success will not be easy to replicate (for those that are thinking to do the same in their cities), but the discussion the story generated is very interesting in two ways:

1)there are bits of localcasestudy's experience that can be used by other businesses irregardless of what sector they are

2)the moral of the story is that if you want to run your own business you can do it. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a tech startup looking to raise funds.

To complete the story of the tower when it was still a fort: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunsell_Forts

A further proof, if still necessary, that overnight success is just a myth.

That would be correct if a domain investor had hand-registered its entire portfolio, not if he buys and sell domains in the aftermarket.