I am one. I work roughly ~70 hours a week (if you count research and studying), but I can go months (or longer) without needing to touch the passive side of things (or work at all, if I so choose). Usually I am studying to push the bounds of what is available to the consumers (ML, NLP, OCR, etc), studying interesting business models, or just generally improving my craft. Not all of us are lazy, and I have a feeling the approach mentioned in that article won't stand the test of time.

In short, passive hackers who are bootstrapped and make a tidy some exist all over. I know several. However, it typically isn't treated as a "vacation" but rather having the flexibility to breathe and do things right.