I am sorry that I cannot elaborate more on that for now(4am) but the cooling effects of light are known for quite some time already. Please check laser cooling as a keyphrase.
Okay, maybe we should wait until we're certain. I'd always assumed that life as a travelling philantropist doesn't exactly lead to a decent sum of money. I thought it'd be cool unanticipated thank-you coming at a shitty time for him though.
rms received the MacArthur Genius grant at some point, which comes with a decent sum of money.
Now before some might get the wrong idea (that it would be easy to be an rms if financial worries were taken care of), rms had a job teaching before he got the award and was already doing these speeches.
As an aside, in my opinion it makes his dedication even more admirable. It would be easy for him to decide that he's done enough for Free Software, gets himself a nice seaside property to retire on and tend to his RSI, instead of speaking around the world, getting mocked and willfully misrepresented in the press, and apparently get his stuff stolen.
But he doesn't, because his work is important. He's quite the character, warts and all, but he does have character.
Last I heard (and I'm no authority on the subject), HN uses a sorting algorithm that incorporates many variables, including the age of the post, number of upvotes, reputation of the commenter, etc.
You seem to be interpreting the comment as suggesting that there is no point in the endeavor. It can equally be read as simply offering another perspective or showing what might be expected.
