Show HN: Hide Telegram stickers in web client - <AUTHOR> https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/hide-telegram-stickers/ <comment><AUTHOR> A Firefox (+57) extension to troll my Telegram contacts when they use those ugly stickers.

Stickers (i.e. PNG images) in chats are replaced with some HTML code.

I ain't no javascript developer, so it's bad code.

But it was fun learning something new.

[https://gitlab.com/apiraino/hide-telegram- stickers](https://gitlab.com/apiraino/hide-telegram-stickers)

Help me improve it!</comment>


Show HN: SatoshiVPN – Create a private VPN server, no user registration required - <AUTHOR> https://satoshivpn.com/ <comment><USER2> Please can you contact me via twitter DM? I am the main developer of BTCPay Server.

We are looking for a way for people to easily setup BTCPay Server at home while having a fixed public IP.

I wanted to use SSH reverse tunneling, but this is not easy to setup, and most VPS can't focus on such specific service.

Your price range would be awesome for our users.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the concept. Have you considered supporting payments in faster, transactionally cheaper cryptocurrencies?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I did consider other cryptocurrencies but ended up sticking with Bitcoin to keep things simple.

Which particular cryptocurrency would you recommend for faster and cheaper transactions?

<comment><USER3> Probably Ethereum or a stablecoin on top of the Ethereum blockchain. This would also open the door to supporting in-page transactions with Metamask, which might make a smoother experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did not know about Metamask. Thank you for the suggestion!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


PilOS – A Stand-Alone Operating System - <AUTHOR> http://picolisp.com/wiki/?PilOS <comment><USER3> Oddly enough I've been looking for a REPL that I can stick on a microcontroller. MicroPython is a candidate, and in fact I have one of the boards from the original Kickstarter. I looked into PicoLisp but see that it doesn't support floating point numbers. In fact I don't even know if floating point is "supposed" to be part of Lisp at all, and have read some comments to the effect that it might be frowned on by some. But my intended use would really benefit from it.

I tried adding floating point support to a small Lisp or Scheme interpreter (can't remember which one), and quickly got lost, as I'm not a great programmer.

This definitely looks cool, and I will play around with it. Maybe it's nostalgia, but I grew up with computers that booted into the BASIC prompt, so it brings back the fun of exploring computers for me.

<comment><USER4> Interesting. Which microcontrollers are you considering? I didn't know about MicroPython but it's kind of blowing my mind; I mean, it feels weird to dynamically allocate anything in a microcontroller.

<comment><USER3> MicroPython was originally written for an ARM chip. Since then it's been ported to a number of other systems. What I do know is that it requires a fairly "big" micro. I have a particular interest in PIC chips, but would be happy with any version where I could compile and load the program on a circuit that I'm capable of building myself.

I have tried downloading and compiling large C programs in the past, and it's one of those things where if it works, great, but if the basic "make" comes back with an error for some reason, then I'm kinda lost. My experience with C programming has tended to be with programs numbering no more than a few hundred lines, that all fit in one file and didn't need any kind of "interesting" build process.

Wow, talk about a weird set of customer requirements. ;-)

These micro's have a fair amount of RAM, and the C compilers support memory management, e.g., basics such as malloc() and free(). I suppose somebody could even implement garbage collection.

<comment><USER5> In case you aren't aware of them, eLua [1] or PIC32Lua [2] may fit your needs.

      1. http://www.eluaproject.net/overview/status
      2. https://github.com/FMMT666/PIC32Lua

<comment><USER6> Also picobit for scheme goodness: [https://github.com/stamourv/picobit](https://github.com/stamourv/picobit)

Doesn't support full numeric tower (no floats), but does implement 'unbound precision integers'. See §5.1 of this paper: [http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~feeley/papers/StAmourFeeleyIFL0...](http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~feeley/papers/StAmourFeeleyIFL09.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Check out OSkit [1]. It was designed for people experimenting in OS's who might not want to reimplement all the low-level crap like memory management. It's been used in high-level language OS's from LISP to ML.

[1] [http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/](http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/)

<comment><USER8> Do you know how this deals with drivers? Those seem to be the main impediment to making any useful new OS.

<comment><USER9> You can use the NetBSD drivers for other operating systems pretty easily - <USER2> [http://rumpkernel.org/](http://rumpkernel.org/) \- you can get filesystems, IP stack, network card drivers, etc. Several new OSs are using them.

<comment><USER8> Thanks, that site was really interesting! I hadn't heard of rump kernels before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm filled with joy to see that PicoLisp runs on OpenWRT. I would love to see PilOS itself running on a wireless router, if only to be able to brag: "My router runs Lisp!" :-)

<comment><USER11> Might want to implement networking for PilOS first, before putting it on your router ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have yet to understand the Lisp craze, no matter how many blog articles I read about it's beauty.

Although I will admit Lisp machines were pretty neat.

<comment><USER4> Some of Lisp appreciation is like appreciating the Pixies: it's hard to see what's so amazing about it when so many of its good points have been expropriated by later projects. It's easy to see what's so powerful about Lisp when your only comparison is C, but it's not 1998 anymore, and most new code is written in high-level garbage collected languages.

The rest of Lisp you appreciate by learning to appreciate real macros.

<comment><USER13> I've read a few books about lisp tininess, beauty etc. I don't know it was late 70s research bias or not. But it seems that no matter how many lisp genes are picked up by other language. Its symbolic/recursive nature can't be matched, and everything else is secondary.

<comment><USER14> It's the syntax. The elementary nature of s-expressions makes it fairly trivial to mangle them freely, and define all kinds of clever tree structures and so on, all in an easy and consistent way. It also means you never have to remember much symbolic weirdness, you just have to remember (operator atom atoms ...), and that's it.

I think only the functional languages like Haskell and F# come close to the same expressiveness, just from very different angles; auto-currying and lazy evaluation save a lot of boilerplate, and the former is tricky to do in Lisp for precisely one of the reasons it's so flexible (easy variable arguments).

<comment><USER13> It's a little more than syntax to me, even though it's part of it. Maybe a ~rapprochement between syntax semantics evaluation of recursive domains/categories. The fact that the construction of data through sexps belongs to that same philosophy as valuation between any domains. That the same recursive idea permeates through the whole system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I thought about having a shell that is lisp based for Linux, as a way of forcing myself to use lisp more often, since I'm on and off with it. Though running things like apt-get and such would be interesting (sudo (apt-get (install racket chromium-browser))) or so

<comment><USER16> One of the (many) lisp-like shells is Scsh ([http://scsh.net/](http://scsh.net/)), which incidentally also has the best acknowledgments page by an open source project: [http://scsh.net/docu/html/man.html](http://scsh.net/docu/html/man.html)

Though I believe your example would just be written as

      (sudo apt-get install racket chromium-browser)

<comment><USER17> It would be great to have Scsh as an installable package for the major Linux distributions? For example, on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS it exists but is not installable, says something about "unresolvable dependencies". Don't know about other distributions.

Then, there was an effort to port Scsh to the GNU Scheme, but the work was lost or abandoned somehow if I understood it correctly.

For people spending a lot of time on with Unix shell(s), a great Lisp/Scheme shell might have been the entering point. But somehow the great work that has been done at the beginning cannot be brought to masses.

It's a pitty.

<comment><USER18> 14.10+ checking in here, it's very much installable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Good work but the name is rather unfortunate; it is just too much like piles.

<comment><USER20> I first read the name as "Pile of %&!#". Definitely consider a rename. It looks like a fascinating project, and the use of Lisp/Prolog is really interesting.</comment></comment>


Investors getting return on Capital prior to exit? - <AUTHOR> Hi all,<p>I am negotiating with some investors who are expecting to invest $1M. They want a return of their capital contribution of $1M through distributions within 3 years and they also want the negotiated equity. Upon reflection this seems extremely non-standard to me. Would love someone else's thoughts. <comment><USER2> I've seen similar before. It's legal. They are welcome to propose anything that's legal. You're welcome to not accept their terms.

It really comes down to how much leverage you have. Do you have other investors?

If their equity percentage is low, then you could almost think of it as a loan with interest paid in equity. If it's high, you might think their terms are not reasonable.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> As others have said, this deal is not standard.If you have other options go for them. If you want to stay at the table here is a counter for 1M investment negotiated equity 3 yr term every time they get a distribution, their equity goes down by a similar % such that at the end of three years they dont have any equity.

or just negotiate a better deal.

</comment><comment><USER4> While there's absolutely nothing wrong with that offer, for startups, it's as non-standard as you think. They're looking for a different type of investment than your company would provide.

For other readers who have revenue and want a hybrid of debt and equity, look at Indie.vc and Lighter Capital.

</comment><comment><USER5> It sounds like they have confused themselves into thinking that they are providing you a loan.

</comment><comment><USER6> Tell them you're not looking for a payday loan, then stop talking to them and look for real investors.

<comment><USER7> Sure, as if it was that simple. He probably has no other alternatives, which is why he wound up with these terms.

<comment><AUTHOR> No deal at all is always better than a terrible one. We walked away today.</comment></comment></comment>


Pulmonary Vascular Endothelialitis, Thrombosis, and Angiogenesis in Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2015432 <comment><AUTHOR> Also at: [https://elemental.medium.com/coronavirus-may-be-a-blood- vess...](https://elemental.medium.com/coronavirus-may-be-a-blood-vessel- disease-which-explains-everything-2c4032481ab2)

Briefly, previous SARS viruses reproduced in the lungs, impairing respiration, but Covid-19 reproduces in the cells lining blood vessels, impairing circulation.</comment>


Box.com becomes HIPAA compliant and partners with healthcare startups - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/25/with-hipaa-compliance-cloud-storage-platform-box-makes-a-big-push-into-healthcare-invests-in-drchrono/

<comment><USER2> This is really cool! Go drchrono!</comment>


Lilly Wachowski confirms 'Matrix' series is a transgender allegory - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/lilly-wachowski-confirms-matrix-series-transgender-allegory-n1235927 <comment><USER2> Wait, Switch was a man in the real world and a woman in the matrix? That's awesome. From the Matrix wiki:

> In the original script of the Matrix film, Switch changed genders upon > entering the Matrix, which coined their name, Switch. In the real world, > Switch would be male, and in the Matrix, Switch would be female - a very > clever and critical point of the 'residual self-image' idea. When the > actress, Belinda McClory auditioned for the role, she was going for only > half the role - Switch's Matrix form.

> Warner Brothers made the decision to cut this and give Switch one form for > both environments.

> Switch's presentation is deliberately androgynous to pay homage to her > original concept.

I love the Matrix (and the Animatrix stories) because of neat ideas like this.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't really get the sense of this from the movie. The movie is straight up Gnosticism in a cyberpunk form, in the sense it appeared in during history. Kind of an offshoot of Christianity. You even get the main villain being the demiurge with Neo as the Gnostic Christ who frees us from the evil God's reign through his death. there's a lot of gnostic concepts, such as the world being an illusion that is only revealed through secret knowledge, and the need to awaken people to reality.

I kind of feel this is more Lily's transition coloring her past. If it were about trans even if the studio were against it, you'd see a lot more body fluidity or the focus would be a lot different.

<comment><USER4> Neither of the Wachowskis had transitioned when they made the Matrix. Many trans people don't go through life before transition knowing they're trans. They have an omnipresent feeling that something is deeply wrong, but they can't put it into words. Much like Neo at the beginning of the Matrix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One theory is that the red pill is a reference to premarin, the most common estrogen prescribed for HRT in the 90s.

<comment><USER5> I thought it was Docusate Sodium[1] a stool softener, laxative. Getting the matrix bull shit out and whatnot.

[1][https://www.drugs.com/imprints/scu1-18739.html](https://www.drugs.com/imprints/scu1-18739.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> No it isn't. Perhaps it was intended to be and perhaps there was an allegorical meaning in earlier drafts, but the films are in fact perfectly straightforward.

<comment><USER7> Why insist on such a shallow reading?

<comment><USER6> Because it's a shallow movie.

<comment><USER7> So incurious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Imagine writing and directing a trans allegory in 1999— when the studio thinks a character portrayed as male in the real world and female in the Matrix is crossing the line— and then rapidly:

• having your whole franchise met with critical acclaim and commercial success

• sparking philosophical conversations among people who might've never had them otherwise

• having a bunch of MRAs led covertly by a Republican politician co-opt your shit anonymously on the Internet, misdirecting frustrated people for decades toward misogyny and damaging countless lives*

• building up an enormously anticipated film trilogy and video game franchise with tons of media attention

• inspiring a devoted fan base to look deeper and deeper for different varieties of symbolism throughout the canon

...all the while carrying this underlying message, unbeknownst to almost every trend-surfing professor, every armchair philosopher, every idiot misogynist, every news reporter, film critic and fan. It's flown over so many inflated heads, because it was subtle out of necessity, and we were too blind to see.

Shameless cranial plug: try and maybe fork my Matrix code! [https://github.com/Rezmason/matrix](https://github.com/Rezmason/matrix)

* not blaming the Matrix for this, that's a whole other conversation

</comment><comment><USER9> Gotta hand it to the Wachowskis, they've really put dedication into the Matrix mythos. 20 years later and long since it's end they're STILL commited to making it stupider.

If you actually watch the video. It's all about a bunch of general themes and tropes featured in most works of fiction that can be easily twisted to whatever the interpreter desires. In this case, it's their after the fact transition.

"It speaks to trans people because transformation in the sci-fi genre is just about imagination and worldbuilding and seemingly impossible things become possible"

"It was sci-fi and fantasy because we're trans"

"Being trans gave us ideas that hadn't been done before on film"

"We incorporated multiple genres because we're trans"

If you think I'm being unfair, that's literally all the context given. The actual explainations of the supposed themes last for like 30 seconds combined and the the rest of the video is completely unrelated word salad. The most concrete evidence of ANY potential transgender themes is switch and it's glossed over in about 5 seconds. WTF?

We've reached "Rugrats is actually Angelica's coma dream" levels of fan theory at this point. Hats off to them.

<comment><USER4> The movie is about Thomas Anderson, who lives a secret life as Neo by night. He feels there is something deeply wrong with his experience, but he doesn't know why. He endlessly searches the internet, looking for other people with the same feelings.

He is interrogated by agents, who silence him and reject his chosen identity as Neo. He is then freed by a group of (pretty queer dressing) rebels, who offer him the truth in the form of a red pill (oddly enough, Premarin is also a red pill).

Neo is reborn, and undergoes extensive medical treatments. But he still has the port in his neck reminding him of his old life. As time goes on, his residual self image changes. Even still, he has self doubt about his identity.

When he goes back into the matrix, he is consistently deadnamed by the agents. The movie ends with Neo asserting his true identity, killing Agent Smith, and pledging to free the rest of humanity.

Yep, there's nothing there that could possibly be a trans allegory.

<comment><USER9> I stand by my "universal themes that are easy to project on" argument (Feelings of not fitting in, being silenced by THE MAN (Conspiracies were popular in the 90's), Agents and peers calling you by your legal name instead of your online username, rising up against the enemy and proving them wrong) but I feel there are some specific points not addressed by this

The ragtag band of rebels Neo joins are all dressed in black trenchcoats and leather because it was fashionable at the time. (See: Blade, The Crow, The X-Files, Sin City, Hackers etc.) This would be like saying that the rebels in Half Life 2 were LGBT coded because they all wore denim. (And oddly enough all identify with the lambda symbol)

Premarin comes in multiple colours including BLUE, green, yellow and white. Medicine is colour coded by design. It's statistically unremarkable that a brand of oestrogen happened to have a red OR blue variation.

Neo does indeed go through complicated surgery. His surgery is to make him look identical to how he looked previously except he now has a cooler haircut, shades and wears more leather.

Also, none of this is even vaguely referenced in the article or video. That's not me knocking you @rhinoceraptor. That's me knocking whoever wrote the OP article.</comment></comment></comment>


Ten Years of Worthless Side Projects - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@LastZactionHero/ten-years-of-worthless-side-projects-f44aa9edb028 <comment><USER3> This resonates strongly with me.

Let me offer a possible coping mechanism: realize that you are an artist. You are a true hacker.

For people like us, having ideas and making them real is the purpose of life. Since the 90s, there has been an immense pressure on our community put everything we do in get-rich-quick terms, which as been super destructive the psyches of many hackers. Be mindful of this, then cast it aside.

No matter what, keep having ideas and making them real.

Don't just take my word for it, ask Alan Watts: [https://soundcloud.com/jeffreysource/above-beyond-ft-alan- wa...](https://soundcloud.com/jeffreysource/above-beyond-ft-alan-watts)

<comment><USER4> None of the apps or services are even close to art. (Including state of the art.) This is the main problem of small projects that aren't cutting edge. To know if you are cutting edge somewhere, run an experiment if your work cannot be undercut in a week by a small team of low wage country workers or programmers.

(Even many startups fail this litmus test.)

Hacking is fun, but life as a starving programmer is not.

There is a vast difference between getting reasonable money and negative money. Bigger than between making reasonable living wage and being filthy rich in fact.

<comment><USER5> How do you define art? I've always liked Scott McCloud's definition from Understanding Comics: "Art, as I see it, is any human activity which doesn't grow out of either of our species' two basic instincts: survival and reproduction."

In my view, anyone who dedicates their free time to creating is an artist.

<comment><USER6> Consider the question of why humans evolved to make art in the first place, and you'll probably conclude that it was sexual selection. In other words, artists get laid. Though it may be that artists get respect in general, which improves chances of survival in a social species like ours. So I respectfully disagree with Mr. McCloud's definition.

<comment><USER7> Why reduce all activity to such simplistic motivations? Maybe art is a spandrel. Maybe artists don't get laid any more often than non-artists. Maybe human beings do lots of things that have little to do with passing their genetic material on, because we've acquired motivations that aren't simply reducible to survival or sex. Maybe some of us realized that making art was enjoyable, regardless of whatever reason it arose in the species a couple million years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Build a better mousetrap, and you'll learn how to build a better mousetrap. You need to market it (or partner with someone who will) if you want to make money.

1\. Get some kind of market validation before you build. Get commitments from paying customers (or even pre-payment), or directly see them paying for a near-identical offering, and have a competitive advantage to deliver it more cheaply.

2\. Do an inventory exercise of why these projects have failed. Doing a quick run-through, it looks like you didn't do marketing or user research for any of these projects. If making a side business still excites you, make sure you do these steps before going to build any future side business.

3\. I know nothing about landscaping, but as an outsider, Bloom looks a promising product. Go talk to customers!

3\. If the marketing side of things doesn't interest you, but you still want to make side money, reach out to me, my email is <hn username> at gmail. My background is pure engineering, but I have friends who are looking for technical co-founders and have ideas that I could use more technical talent on.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've had more than 10 projects, but also at least 3 big hits.

I sense your problem is that you love building stuff, but you are not fascinated or obsessed by business.

This is why you reliably build really cool and clever things but never make any serious money. Unless you are truly interested in money and business this is unlikely to change except by luck.

Find someone like me, or several someone's like me to hang out with, and to brainstorm business concepts, business model variations, marketing spins, brandname ideas...

Build your business muscle, or remain an employee forever.

<comment><USER10> Do you blog about the marketing you did? What are the 3 big hits?

<comment><USER11> Patio11 has a pretty extensive blog about marketing software and a bunch of other stuff : [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11)

<comment><USER10> That is not andriesm :), i know patio11 from HN ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What're your goals? Thinking about what you _really_ want out of side projects may help. It gets the blood pumping to think about building a project that is finally the one that makes you millions, but creating a highly profitable business is a very different set of skills to building the technical side of a side project.

I'm in a similar boat, you are doing FAR better than I ever have (many "plans that come to naught, or half a page of scribbled lines" over here), but lately I've not been too disappointed.

I stopped caring if I failed to complete a project once my initial burst of interest disappeared - usually as I'd learned what I wanted to learn and my curiosity was best directed elsewhere rather than slogging on with a project I'd lost interest in (plenty of those you can get paid for, this is supposed to be hobby time!)

The new skills I learn for fun have led onto new jobs, better ability to function at my day job, friendships, collaborations, a fun summer at ITP Camp in New York, etc.

<comment><USER13> I agree. If your goals are to make money on your side project, you'll have to invest time into sales, bd, or the marketing aspects of these projects rather than purely the technical aspects.

I don't think they are worthless, you learned a lot, but it sounds like you also wish to have monetary benefits from them, so I would suggest rounding out your skill set.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Perhaps I can give you some perspective from... the future. I've been doing what you're doing for about 20 years now, and have worked on (mainly with one other partner) probably 100 things? Some were full blown companies, some were just fun side projects, some were apps that made pretty good money, etc. Perhaps some things I've realized recently will be useful to you:

* It took us around 6-8 years before we made any money at all on anything we did. The thing that ended up making money wasn't even a sure thing, it just happened to work out. For a good part of those 6-8 years we thought we sucked because things never quite worked out. It turned out we were learning a bunch of stuff that turned out to be very useful for a whole new thing that came along (phone apps).

* Making money wasn't the most important thing for me in these projects, but once we started making money we could quit our jobs and do our own stuff full time. That turned out to be super important, and is the most important part of making money on your projects probably.

* Making technology and making a business are two pretty different things, and it's pretty rare that someone is really into both of them. That's probably ok! There are a bunch of businesses that naturally develop out of good technology, so you can probably just work on things that make sense given your strengths.

* Jumping around and doing lots of different things is one of my traits as well, and for a while I thought it was a big weakness. It can be. Sometimes an idea needs a few years of consistent effort to see results. Other times though, you were right to give up as it wasn't going anywhere. For me, what helped was to think of what I'm working on as the collection of ALL of the projects that I've done. Then I am making progress no matter which ones fail. Then jumping around doesn't feel as bad. That all being said, there are boring and discouraging times in every project and it can be important that you see things through beyond where you're simply interested intellectually.

I'm sure there are a bunch more things that might be helpful that I can't quite think of now, I'll add them as I think of them.

Bottom line, what you can do is surprisingly rare (it just doesn't feel that way on HN). It's ok to take some time to develop these skills, one of which is filtering ideas to work on. If you spend enough years working at it then you might even end up an overnight success :)

<comment><USER15> > For me, what helped was to think of what I'm working on as the collection of > ALL of the projects that I've done.

A project portfolio

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > The exact opposite of the above. Spend my free time exploring things that > really interest me without worrying about selling it or career application.

This is probably what you should actually do.

<comment><USER17> I thought that was the whole point of side projects.

<comment><USER18> If you equate side project with hobby, yes. If you equate side project with entrepreneurship, then no. For a lot of people, I think it's somewhere in the middle.

<comment><USER16> Perhaps the problem is a lot of people don't decide and then don't do well at either. As the proverb goes, a fox who chases two hares catches neither.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Stop Thinking about Money

That has been my approach all the time. For me, the problem is quite the opposite though. I tend to build things that go viral and become potential cash cows. I have no interest in that though and as soon as something gets popular I abandon it.

Sounds crazy but when my pet project becomes serious business I get cold feet and can't even touch it. The creative choices all of a sudden seems really crucial and I start procrastinate. I just want to experiment and build stuff without pressure.

<comment><USER20> Just curious, how do you get your projects viral? I'll be honest to admit, I've worked on side projects before that I've deliberately attempted to manufacture virality (build viral mechanisms off simple games, etc.), but it seems hard. When the simple game with viral hooks is done, I post it up on reddit or HN or PH or whatever, and it never takes off. I know the obvious conclusion is "the game/project sucks", just curious if I'm missing anything else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "In many ways, I'm an just an obsessive builder, and like to busy myself learning new things and making cool projects."

In which case, I'd say he accomplished his goals! These sound like great projects.

Unfortunately actually building a product is only one part of building a successful business.

I wonder how often this guy talks to customers? Learns their needs? Pain points? Did he ask _anyone_ if they would pay for a new Javascript game engine (for example) before he wrote one?

If he didn't, then he shouldn't be surprised that he doesn't understand how his products fit into the market and into his potential customers' lives. And if he doesn't understand any of that, then making money will be next to impossible.

</comment><comment><USER22> I remember stumbling across [http://www.plantwithbloom.com/](http://www.plantwithbloom.com/) in the past and thinking it was amazing. Consider this at least a small thank-you for your efforts!

<comment><USER23> Thanks! Bloom is my latest endeavor, and one that I don't think belongs on the scrap heap yet.

I'm just not sure how to market it. I was going down a path of appealing to data-nerds with yards, focusing on the data techniques used to make decisions.

I've also experimented with using a physics ending to design beds, but haven't got it tweaked right: [http://www.plantwithbloom.com/physics.html](http://www.plantwithbloom.com/physics.html)

(pretty fun if you want to see some plants get wrecked)

The value seems too low as it to get people purchase it. I'm considering partnering with nurseries, but the build out to use their inventories would be ambitious.

<comment><USER22> I just checked out that link you posted. The idea seems like it could introduce a certain "naturalness" to the gardens by resisting the temptation to exactly plant in rows. "Organic" planting plans! [https://ibb.co/nfnQh5](https://ibb.co/nfnQh5) (screenshot of one that I found particularly interesting).

<comment><USER23> Yeah, gravity seemed like a good way to do circle packing with different sizes. Also would be a way to place neatly in irregularly shaped (non- rectangular) beds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Instead of calling them worthless, enjoy that your side projects have no deadlines! Say no to deadlines!

Having side projects is a luxury of true joy. I notice this all the time when life(tm) tries to push side projects aside.

I love my side projects.

</comment><comment><USER25> It sounds like you want to build a successful business, but end up building another coding project. I think that this is very common withs devs and the vision involved in each (business vs project) is incredibly different.

For one, a good business does not have to be innovative, it just has to be something you can sell. You might be able to make the most innovative AI to do X, but if it is not useful to anyone, it won't matter how innovative it is.

It's fantastic for a coding project, just not for a business.

I think the big difference is doing the non-technical part well (sales, marketing, branding, networking) and having the vision for what your business should look like.

Personally, I like to read IndieHackers to see what others have done well. A lot of it tends to be overcoming technical challenges and then business side work. Seems like you can handle the technical challenges!

<comment><USER4> The 3D printer repair one seemed like a straightforward small business. However it is a very small or local market - hobbyists tend to know how to fix them on their own and big businesses get support plans from manufacturers. Not impossible though.

The bloom app could be either improved or even pivoted. Quite promising, but unless it becomes a real business or is really the best of is class it can easily be cloned and undercut.

The "smart" watch of this kind litters the Kickstarter for example... and it is too nerdy to scale.

Others are random hacks. :)

<comment><USER23> Rentals (not repairs), to be clear, but man were they heavy to ship. I did have a few rentals to bigger companies (Google, Samsung), sometimes it's easier for them to rent.

Yeah, most of them are random hacks. I don't mean to imply they were all intended to be businesses, though some were. More just meaning I have a lack of direction and haven't produced much of real value, despite thinking I was. After ten years, you realize the code and time spent starts to pile up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I like your product ideas so I can see why you thought they had merit. But burn this into your mind "the product is only the start." Marketing is what most new company spend their time doing. Look at any new company and you'll see that their marketing budget is by far larger than any other part of their business. If you are lucky you might have a viral marketing episode but after that marketing spending is what keeps the business going. So in essence there's a cost for every customer you get. So, Sale price - (Marketing+ product costs) = profit. It better be positive to stay alive as a business. Marketing also helps you refine your product to meet customer needs.

Also, to start, a product must meet your customer's needs not yours. I love programming but I can tell you 99% of the people out there don't. If I want a successful product it's much easier to hit the 99% rather than the 1%. It's a numbers game. Also you have to tell customers why your product is great and how it's going to make their lives better - real or not.

The media has conditioned most of us to think that all you need is a good idea to be successful but they never tell you about the hard work it took to get to be successful. A product is not a business. A business is so much more. As a business owner you have to deal with, marketing, taxes, payroll, hr, leases, unhappy employees (because they rather do anything than work one more day) and on and on. Your goal is to make the business profitable enough to have those chores done by someone else so you can focus on what you like or at least get someone to finance you to do it. Read "The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber." It's old but the wisdom it provides is timeless. All startup wannabes' need to read it.

Given that you can come up with good ideas and produce a working prototype you might want to patent and licence your product. There you only need to figure out who might want to license it and work towards selling the idea to them. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER27> The amount of side projects you've gotten off the ground is really impressive!

Something that's been invaluable to me has been coming up with a goal hierarchy -- an idea taken from Angela Duckworth's Grit. It's helped me focus where I direct my energy both professionally and personally. Maybe it could help you decide what to do next, and show you how your projects thus far tie together.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm now up to 20 years of - I don't say side projects - but real attempts to build something people want.

Still trying...... it hurts.

But theoretically you only need one to succeed, right?

One day I hope Andrew Warner from Mixergy will want to interview me about "my success" and I'll have a tale that will amaze him of how hard I tried for how long before finding "the one".

</comment><comment><USER29> Doing side projects because you think it will make you money is probably the worst way to do it. Or at least have almost no expectations of making money.

You do side projects because it's interesting to you and you want to learn. And maybe you can leverage what you learn into getting a job doing something that really interests you. Chances are much greater that you will make a lot more money getting a better job through a side project than you will from the side project itself.

<comment> UK-AL By that logic side projects should just be stripped down to their novel bits to learn from and that's it.

Otherwise you'll just be writing non-novel web code over and over and not learn anything from that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I would suggest thinking harder about making money, not less. I think these projects represent a half measure between _really_ trying to make money, and having fun. Real, profitable side projects cum businesses are usually much more boring. You may enjoy a talk I gave at Dropbox about how to start a side business without quitting your day job: [https://youtu.be/J8UwcyYT3z0](https://youtu.be/J8UwcyYT3z0)

<comment><USER31> Great talk, enjoyed it. Maybe because it's exactly what I wanted to hear. Hopefully it's a good idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> There's a certain disconnect in that the author seems to require and at least want validation in terms of business success while selling himself as a 'true artist' interested only in making things.

Here's something unintuitive for engineers about successful entrepreneurs, they're usually not very curious. Seeing the world in black and white rather than in color creates tunnel vision and focus. However many engineers in the bay area don't see themselves as engineers in the traditional sense of the word but some new combination of hacker-artist-technologist-elite. It's unintuitive because many bay-area engineer feel undervalued and that this mythos is bolstered by the success of people they actively look down on.

So many engineers think that they are special snowflakes via: "I'm so smart and curious, I get bored so easily b/c I learn so fast. I need to constantly be learning and creating." They fall into the trap of valuing breadth over depth (as depth has diminishing returns to time-spent) that they ironically never become an expert in anything to a point where their expertise is truly unique.

It takes a certain amount of focus and thus lack of curiosity to practice one kick a millions times vs a million different kicks. The expertise often comes at the cost of an uninteresting and single-direction life. Wether this is better or worse than sampling all the pre-packaged things (things like TED talks are the hedonistic equivalent of sex/drugs/food) that life has to offer is up to the individual.

In the Bay, the jack-of-all-trades think of themselves as master-of-all-trades while following to the letter online-recipes for success and wondering why they aren't a michelin start restaurant. Specialization puts you in a sparse enough zone where your thoughts can actually be unique.

* A curious life with specialization is possible though if the specialization is abstract enough. Specialization can also be built by following your true voice of curiosity rather than having it be influenced by social and monetary pressures. You can say that many youtuber for example followed their true voice, learning some video editing, learning to be humorous to make up for lack of academic success, and managed to be lucky b/c youtube was created. Most people stamp out their inner voice because 99% of the time, you'll end up specialization in something that can't create value that is directly linked to USD. Teaching is one example where the payoffs are so far down the road that they are inadequately compensated for what they do. (I'm ignoring the the majority of US teachers who are often losers on power trips)

<comment> FLUX-YOU >They fall into the trap of valuing breadth over depth (as depth has diminishing returns to time-spent) that they ironically never become an expert in anything to a point where their expertise is truly unique.

Go look at some hilariously long job requirements and tell me there is not an economical reason for breadth-over-depth engineers.

Following a specialization is risky. Going after unique expertise is risky (it probably isn't unique anyway, just rare). These are true for tech because everything moves so quickly. You don't hear about the people that tried to specialize and failed to do so. You hear a bit more about people who specialized but the company/committee responsible for the tech decides to deprecate it.

<comment><USER33> It's also a slightly condescending and forced narrative when the pieces are examined.

Pursuing depth in knowledge isn't synonymous with a lack of curiosity just by definition.

People should probably also consider taking a break from quoting Fight Club and attacking people for "thinking they are special snowflakes" when making generalizations. It is not an argument that contributes much to a discussion and seeks to strip people of dignity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I like what you got started on Caffeine. But how long would you say you spent on that? If it was more than 1 month, than that might be the start of your problem.

If that came together quickly, why did it stop? I need a tool to help me quit caffine. If this had a daily tracker, with little questions designed to assess my withdrawl and alert fullness, I would love to give you $5 a month for 2-3 months while I used your tool to help me gradually get off caffeine.

<comment><USER35> I made a similar tracker, let me know what you think, and what additional features you think would be helpful for someone that is interested in lowering their caffeine consumption like yourself.

[https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/cucuso/caffeine- tracker/i...](https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/cucuso/caffeine- tracker/index.html)

<comment><USER34> I love yours as well. I drink an embarrassing amount currently. 2-3 coffee drinks and 4-5 sodas throughout the day.

I'm terrified that if I cut anything, my productiveness will suffer. I didn't even realize how much these drinks were overlapping before seeing these trackers, which is a good first step.

The number 1 thing I would like would be some type text message question I received every couple hours throughout the day. The question would just ask how sleepy I am. I would respond with a 1-5 based on how awake I am.

Then my alert fullness could be charted along with the caffeine in my body to see if they are even matching up. The app could then suggest which drink I could cut out, and suffer the least.

<comment><USER35> Thank you so much! I really appreciate the feedback. That sounds like a great idea I will work on that functionality the coming days and keep you posted. I did that yesterday from reading your post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> "Building the correct product" is a good way to put it. If you want a shot at a building a business, a good strategy is to make something people want, a la YC.

If you do that, "marketing" is just telling people who have a certain problem that you can help them.

For a lot of products, basic documentation is excellent marketing. What is this? What does it do? Who is it for? Why is it better than XYZ?

</comment><comment><USER37> All I can say is "winners never quit, quitters never win but those who never win and never quit are idiots" I've also put over 10 years into side projects with practically no success. Makes me think that maybe I would have been better off socializing or something than rather than wasting my time on shit ppl don't want.

</comment><comment><USER38> In over 30 years of being a software developer, I think I have probably created more than a thousand apps that have been used in the 'real world', from tiny command line utilities to major ERP systems.

About a hundred or so have been used in businesses to make money and improve efficiency, and while I earned money writing those systems, it was a tiny fraction of what the actual value of those systems could have been.

(One example: I wrote a charter booking system for a local bus company back in the early 2000's. Total billings was about $10K. The owner of the company came to me after 10 years of using my system to thank me and say that my software helped to improve his $1M turnover company by around 10% with booking efficiency. That is $100K/year for 10 years = $1M productivity improvement for $10K!)

I have had a couple of apps that could have gone BIG - One was in the early 90's when I wrote an app to build and organise armies for Warhammer 40,000. I released it on a couple of WH40K forums and got a TON of great feedback, but the app had a few Games Workshop copyrighted images in it, so they rightfully sent me a 'cease and desist' letter that was actually quite nice and recommended I remove the copyrighted elements only.

I decided that I would just can the whole project. Bear in mind this was the first app I knew of to automate the army building, tracking points and printing character sheets out. There are a ton of them that have come out since then which are great, but I always wonder 'what could have been' and if my pride was just some form of self-sabotage?

Anyhow - looks like the OP has got his perspective right - focusing on life and his new born son. I find that now I am older, doing stuff like spending time with family or playing my guitar is far more attractive than coding. I don't regret the time I spent on 'dead' projects though... Everything is simply a learning experience.

<comment><USER39> >That is $100K/year for 10 years = $1M productivity improvement for $10K!

There are two parts of the equation here: [His business] + [Your software] = [Value]. Your software alone, meaning when it is not in use by his business, is not worth $1M over 10 years. It is worth $0. His business is what gave your code value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> You should try to publish some code for a change, as open source. You can keep improving your skills but without having to worry about making money (thats what your job is for) and getting help/input from the community

<comment> rkuykendall-com > getting help/input from the community

I don't think this is any more likely than a financial success. I have 24 github repos for side projects, and have only had one issue created.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Others have said build a better mousetrap, but that isn't your problem.

You just need to solve somebodies problem. It could even be yours. The one that stood out to me was identifying which pet is at your door. It sounds like that was a problem (probably pretty minor...?) that you wanted to solve yourself. Show people how you solved it, and others might comment on it and say, "That's really cool! Can you make me one?", or offer some new feature idea that would make them say it's really cool. Boom! First customer. Hell, don't even tell them you made it, see if they ask you where you got it! Basically find a need or want from somebody else for something you find fun. People like cool things.

An example of something to probably not do again would be the Boulder tubing thing. Was it a problem you or others had? The flow rate can be visualized by looking at Boulder creek, which runs through much of Boulder, and by going outside... which it's almost always nice anyway ;) So I don't see how it would solve any problem you had even.

</comment><comment><USER42> Building a business is a lot more work than hacking on some fun ideas. There is significant risk, often little chance of a payoff, and it consumes everything in your life. IMHO there's nothing wrong with working for other people from time to time and being apart of a community of engineers. That being said, I have had the privilege of helping build a few startups and it involves a number of people. So if you are truly interested in building a successful startup, you need to do with with other people.

As an aside, these sound like awesome projects and it sounds like you accomplished your goals of creating and learning from new experiences! I wouldn't call them worthless but rather adventures! That 3D printed watch is neat, I've been trying to come across a new kind of PC for the year 2020 and beyond which acts as a hub. There are all sorts of exciting stuff on the horizon that you can continue to explore like WiGig and beyond. Don't give up!

</comment><comment><USER43> As many have said, there's nothing wrong with cash-less side projects. I wouldn't call them "worthless". You have learned valuable skills and you have kept your mind malleable enough to learn new skills. That's invaluable as a software/hardware developer.

I really enjoy following [https://www.indiehackers.com/](https://www.indiehackers.com/) for inspiration and ideas about money-making side projects.

If your goal is to make money, then you have to look at the value your product provides. What is valuable? Could be entertainment or attention (your average consumer application). Or you could build a product that saves time and solves business problems.

I would argue that consumer apps and products are tougher to compete in. Business problems? Those will never go away. And businesses are almost always willing to spend a $1 if it saves them $2 or more.

</comment><comment><USER44> I got married and had a child. That solved the problem for me!

</comment><comment><USER45> Good on you for doing so many side projects. I barely get started on mine. Give up/stop way too quickly.

</comment><comment><USER46> I think I would give this advice to just about anyone who is trying to follow their interests and build a career at the same time:

It just sounds like you enjoy learning. That is great, but it sounds like you also want a career.

If you want to find similar happiness in a career as you do with learning you'll need to decide to enjoy making things that are valuable to others. It may be that you already enjoy this; otherwise you'll have to train yourself to be happy when others find your work valuable. If you can do that you shouldn't have much trouble building a career given the skills you already have. Learning to work with other people will dramatically increase the number of potentially valuable things you can create so you should also pursue that (as you've already surmised).

</comment><comment><USER47> I can relate to this. I'm in my 8th year and $0 so far. I only did 3 projects though. All based on open source work. My first took 3 years. Second one took 1 year and I spun it off into my current one which I've been working on for almost 4 years.

Things have started to look up recently. For years it looked like everything was going against me: Competitors kept coming up with products that got tons of attention and were shaking things up towards a different path. But now I feel that something changed and some opportunities are appearing all at once

<comment><USER26> Just a quick note: competition should not deter you but empower you. Any successful product will bring competition. Your job is to make sure your product is better and sell better than your competition. Giving up is not an option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> What Mizza said: "Realize that you are an artist." What perfect, elegant statement. And so very true!

I'm a professional artist and have been earning 50-100% of my living through my art for about 20 years. I sold a publishing company I co-founded about 5 years ago and was so burned out, bitter, and over the art world that I went through a devastating creative slump that took 3.5 years to dig my way out of.

It was the first time in my life I didn't create art in some form daily. I was convinced my creative talents were either atrophied or dead when business idea after business idea either failed or were abandoned.

I was fortunate, however, to have the ability to take several years off and just tinker. Once the burden/responsibility of creating solely for monetary gain was lifted, everything changed.

I would say, "Let me build this idiotic thing I'm thinking about today!" The sillier the idea, the more I welcomed it because, after all, I'm not an artist anymore and my career is over.

Just the process of saying "f-it" and trying damn near anything has turbo- charged my creativity. So much so, that I feel the way I did when I was a child.

When you completely relax, get your mind out of your own rear end, and just try neat - albeit meaningless - crap, amazing things can happen.

The point is not the failed side project! The point is all the beneficial things you learned/solved for/figured out to make something cool. They stay with you and will benefit you in ways you can never, ever expect.

Recently, I decided I wanted a vertical clothesline. Stupid, right? Something nobody would ever buy. (Oh well.) I have a very shady back yard and wanted the ability to move my clothes to whichever point in my yard had the most sunlight given the time of day. Just the process of figuring out how to get an entire load of laundry quickly onto this contraption and then have it fold down into nothing when not in use was an intense creative exercise...especially because I have no engineering background.

I could go on and on about how side projects with no hope of monetary gain saved my grits.

(Love this community...finally something on which I can offer "expert" advice. ;) )

</comment><comment><USER49> I would say don't be too hard on yourself. It's difficult to find something you're passionate about and have it practically used by many people.

The best thing you could do is actually work on side projects related to your paid work. Come up with an idea, prototype it, demo it and convince your boss/peers that it's something beneficial for you or the company. Many obvious examples where a lot of successful applications first came up as someone's side project at work.

</comment><comment><USER50> I think that i'm only as good as i'm right now because i do things like side projects. Or i'm good because i'm someone who is doing side projects, whatever :)

</comment><comment><USER51> I think the payout for these activities is the honing of your skill set.

Some of those projects still have potential (Zookeeper) to earn some ROI.

I would, instead of giving up on all of these, pick one that you think has the most promise, and develop it until you have a solid prototype.

Your market fit doesn't always come immediately, it may take you years of focus and stress.

What Mizza says is very true as well, you are an artist. So I think you should build your masterpiece.

<comment><USER4> Some people's masterpieces are a colossal waste of time. Not everyone can make a hit even if they are doing the exact same thing.

Also quite a few masterpieces were just buried or hidden away. And even more masterpieces are work of easy more than a single person really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Side projects are better compared with other investments in your skills, such as taking classes.

If you "need" them to go somewhere, you need to start on a commercial path. Arguably, models like the App Store (while certainly flawed in many respects) do provide at least an _option_ for hacking a project into a viable product without necessarily needing a full startup and investors, etc.

</comment><comment><USER53> >Marketing: The worst. I'm bad at it and it just does not interest me. Building the correct product and learning to sell it is a clear area for me to improve.

Why improve? There are lots of people out there with marketing skills looking for side gigs. Find a co-founder that is willing to do the marketing, customer acquisition side.

<comment><USER54> Any recommendations on where to find people like this? I have the same issue as the GP.

<comment><USER55> I'd look around for startup-networking meetups in your area. I've been to Seattle Startup Drinks on a number of occasions, and there are plenty of more "business-side" people that show up looking exactly for us--I didn't even have any interesting ideas to share, but when they heard I was a dev, I was instantly one of the most popular people there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Ask yourself what your motives are. Did you post to fish for compliments? Are you depressed/overworked and want sb to advise you changing your life? You know best. Ask yourself what makes you happy. How do you feel about what you do? If you love it, just keep pursuing and others will also do and spend on it.

</comment><comment><USER57> You may think those are worthless but it proves that you can ship products. I struggle with shipping also.

</comment><comment><USER58> I am almost in the same boat. I kind of feel, that I did not make it big considering the amount of time i spend. If it worked on freelancing, I would have made more. But i still think, perseverance would pay. We may be down but not out !

</comment><comment><USER59> A few of the projects could benefit from aggressive marketing tactics such as email campaigns and cold calls.

On the other hand, why pursue customers when you could be programming an android game?

This seems to be the general tone of this article.

</comment><comment><USER60> This is very familiar. There's nothing we can do except keep trying. Most of the time you don't even make any mistakes to learn from, you're just not one of the lucky ones.

</comment><comment><USER61> Hey Zach, I'm in a similar boat to you, although less prolific. I read your post as saying "I'm trying to figure out what to do next", and this is some food for thought in that regard. Personally, moving forward I intend to do what you call a "project deep dive", but from a slightly different angle.

There was another highly upvoted post on HN last week titled "Things I've Learned from Reading IndieHackers" [0]. The article itself had a lot of interesting advice, distilled from interviews with people who had taken side projects and turned them into profitable businesses.

In the comments, soneca had some insightful additions [1]. And we are increasingly in an attention-driven economy [2]. But while attention is being widely harvested through exploiting addictive tendencies [3], that does not motivate me. Reading Hooked [4] was interesting, but also terrifying.

For me, bringing this together means my course of action is as follows: Build an audience around content which enriches the lives of people. Way easier said than done. And some may write it off as hopelessly naive.

But while Facebook and friends scour the dopamine landscape for user attention, building an audience around long-term content that challenges and enriches the lives of people seems wonderfully contrarian to me. And it's in that contrarian tenet that I find solace. Take the slow and the long road, and you can build a sustainable source of value.

In the grand scheme of things, spending a few years of my life creating short interactive games which explore philosophy and society is the path that makes the most sense to me. Like I said, food for thought in your journey forward.

[0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14803468](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14803468)

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14803468#unv_14804395](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14803468#unv_14804395)

[2]: [https://medium.com/the-mission/the-enemy-in-our- feeds-e86511...](https://medium.com/the-mission/the-enemy-in-our- feeds-e86511488de)

[3]: [http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html)

[4]: [https://www.amazon.ca/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming- Product...](https://www.amazon.ca/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Products- ebook/dp/B00P8B75Z4)

</comment><comment><USER62> I tried to look at each of your ideas to see if they solve any of my problems - they don't. If they, I did be happy to use them and provide more feedback.

<comment><USER62> typo corrections: if they did, I be happy ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> The titles and purpose for these side projects are hilarious! I bet the author learned a lot though. Perhaps it's not a total waste...

</comment><comment><USER64> If you learned something, it wasn't worthless.

<comment><USER16> Well, sure, but if you're not enjoying it, slogging through tons of side projects isn't the best use of your limited time on this Earth.

<comment><USER65> When every side project is wildly different and requires learning considerable new skills, there's clearly something else going on besides unenjoyable work just to bootstrap a business.

<comment><USER16> Maybe. I'm just responding to what seem to be the OP's own sentiments that he's wasted a decade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> He should do something with crypto that's novel/tongue-in-cheek enough for people to want to send him money

</comment><comment><USER67> interesting - I'm also a hacker (CTO-type) between gigs and looking to collaborate on technical projects. Hit my profile and connect on linkedin.

I'm pretty good at marketing and making small-medium money, happy to either do it or teach-to-fish...

<comment><USER68> can I ping you? I do like to learn marketing and how to fish and possible collaboration too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> hmm. bloom seems to really amazing, everbody with a garden might want to use.would be cool if this works in europe also...

</comment><comment><USER70> > Find collaborators

take a look at The Recurse Center

www.recurse.com

</comment><comment><USER71> I share the same affliction haha

</comment><comment><USER72> do you want to make money or do you want to hack?

you need to answer that for yourself.

<comment><USER68> why can't he do both?

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> As he says, he previously had a number of priorities - learning new things, making cool projects, as well as trying to make money. If he's unsatisfied with monetary returns, he has to put more focus on making money. Because even if he decides to prioritize that right now, it still will probably take some time.

He throws out some ideas of how to solve this problem

> Find Collaborators

If I was him I would not look for people that I would call collaborators at this point. What would be helpful is talking to people working in the same space. If he is building a Javascript application, he should talk to other people who are building their own Javascript application. They'll teach you things, you'll teach them things, you can bounce ideas off each other. Start on that level. Then at some point in the future you both might want to collaborate on something.

Also, not that it would help in making money in the short term, but you might want to look at active, cool FLOSS (open source) projects that are out there. See what bugs people are reporting, and see if you can patch them and send a pull request. Perhaps you are a FLOSS user and notice a bug yourself which you can try to patch. This helps you learn how to collaborate with people outside of work.

> Project Deep Dive

This makes the most sense of all the ones he says. He did a 3d printer, a Javascript application, an Android app, a smartwatch etc. Focus on one project. Or at least one field - build up expertise writing Javascript applications, or designing smartwatches etc. Expertise in an area will help you - especially in a new or fairly new field.

> Marketing

Marketing will bring in users to your product even as you're polishing off the rough edges. Depending on what it is it's not hard - either be really clever and get some free users, or pay a few cents for each user who clicks an ad and comes to your website and downloads your app. Improve your product responding to consumer demand.

Once closing thought is to have two side project tracks going - a money- focused one, and one not focused on money. Spend a few weeks/months on a project that will try to make money. Also plan ahead - if the project is a Javascript application, decide that if it fails you will build another Javascript application as your next money-making project attempt, and will reuse code/knowledge from your first attempt in the second one. Then - <USER2> release version 1, fixing bugs, making improvements etc., if it is not going anywhere or you feel a lull - go to track two, learn something new and do a cool project on it. Every few weeks you can shift between the money-making project track, and the learning/fun track. The one difference is you can abandon projects on the fun track as soon as they stop being fun, whereas the money you tend to work and work on something until you decide that your MVP is dead and you must pivot.

</comment><comment><USER74> > Marketing: The worst. I'm bad at it and it just does not interest me.

This resonates with me, and I am sure a whole lot of other engineers working on side projects out here.

What's the solution? How do you find a "Marketing" person on a side-hustle budget? Without any network.

Like OP, I know my side-projects need to be marketed, but I also don't enjoy cold emailing or cold-calling and would really leave it to an expert in that domain, as long as I can pay him/her by output and not on a full-time salary or a contractor rate...

<comment><USER75> I enjoy marketing for fun ( I work at an ad agency) and always feel I could contribute to open source / people's side projects, but there is never an opportunity. No one ever lists the need for a marketer, and reaching out generally goes unanswered.

There are marketers out there who want to contribute, but just don't see opportunities.

<comment><USER76> The few marketers we reached out to asked us "What is your budget?", and then instantly dropped off when we told them our budget wasn't anywhere near the "$10000+" dollars per month they were used to.

I mean, what the hell? We're searching for someone to help with something that doesn't even have visitors, much less customers, yet. What are they expecting?

<comment><USER75> Sounds like big agency or freelance guys. If their 30%+ cut isn't $3k or more, its not worth the work.

Those people were looking for leads, just like a freelance developer would. But I do not know where you find freelance marketers who want to help build something, not to add a client to their portfolio.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> I never really tried to build a side project of any real substance. Sometimes I wrote libraries or other things to better understand a language I was learning, or something like that.

I like to cook, I think the physicality of it is satisfying after dealing with computers all day. And as time goes on, the problems that get solved with code seem more and more frivolous. Though I guess you could argue I should try to change that instead of posting about it.

</comment><comment><USER65> > _I've learned a lot, but what's the point without application?_

An entertaining hobby? People who do archery for a hobby don't bemoan that they've spent another Saturday shooting arrows at targets without making a cent, and that their club dues are just wasted.

</comment><comment><USER78> For me ambitious side project require lot more money, time and focus which I could never afford while working at some company. That's was my primary motivation behind starting my own company. Don't shy away from business opportunities.

<comment><USER68> How did you learn and how did you handle sales & marketing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> > LocalFavorite: A location-based tweet favoriting application. Made $10/mo > until it was shut down by Twitter.

Curious. Why did Twitter shut it down? Was it from the updates to their API Usage TOS? Or something else?</comment>


Verizon warns enterprise cloud users of 48-hour shutdown - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/article/2865802/verizon-warns-enterprise-cloud-users-of-48-hour-shutdown.html

<comment><USER2> This is truly unbelievable. It immediately puts their uptime to a maximum of less than 99.5% for a year that's only now a week in.

Certainly, they don't seem to understand their customers.

</comment><comment><USER3> They might as well shut it down for 48 days. Or maybe forever.</comment>


John Furrier: Why Matt Cutts is Wrong on the FTC - <AUTHOR> http://siliconangle.net/ver2/2009/10/08/why-matt-cutts-is-wrong-on-the-ftc-rules/

<comment><USER2> I like Matt so I'm not dissing him - I'm just saying that paid search was a new trend in 99-02 and if regulation was in place then I think that that offering would not have scaled to the success that it has provided to marketers today. Now like then we are stuck with a poor monetization solution AdSense and CPM display ads. They flat out don't work.

A new solution is need and that innovation will come from startups and tech developers. IMHO

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the genesis of that new model will emerge from sponsorship.

The biggest growth area in my personal income from my online activities (aside from the day job) has been the amount of money I've been getting from sponsored tweets.

It's not a perfect model, but I've already doubled the amount of money I've got this month from last month, with no significant jumps in my personal influence.

Activity stream advertising that benefits the publisher, not solely the owner of the social network, could be where we focus next.

Of course, the FTC isn't exactly making that easy with these guidelines (i.e. what qualifies as "conspicuous disclosure" in a tweet?).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> John: "Can you imagine if the fed regulated CPC in the early days with disclosure statements?"</comment>


Social Video Sharing Glasses - <AUTHOR> http://www.indiegogo.com/socialvideoglasses?a=886168

<comment><AUTHOR> Streaming MJPEG to an iPad: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPNXXXZqB9c>

The glasses that ship will of course be more aggressively miniaturized than the prototype seen in that demo video.

<comment><USER2> Do you have images / 3D renderings of the current design? Would be a good thing to add to the indiegogo page.

Apart from that... thumbs up, great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> 3D renderings appear at timestamp 1:55 of the video:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP- quJ8nuis&t=1m55s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP-quJ8nuis&t=1m55s)

Thanks! Please support us by ordering a pair! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just curious -- why did you go with IndieGoGo instead of KickStarter? KickStarter has a much greater visibility on the web than IndieGoGo (based off a comparison using Google Trends[1]).

Are you opposed to their funding model or something else about them? Did they reject your project application, and if so, why?

[1] [http://trends.google.com/websites?q=kickstarter.com%2C+indie...](http://trends.google.com/websites?q=kickstarter.com%2C+indiegogo.com&geo=all&date=ytd&sort=0)

<comment><AUTHOR> After ZionEyez embarrased Kickstarter by raising over $300k but then dropping off the face of the earth (still haven't shipped, over 6 months late, and ignoring their customers' emails), Kickstarter now hates video glasses.

Indiegogo is much more friendly to computer eyewear -- we've met their CEO, and they love our product and our stellar team: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4263569>

<comment><USER3> Well, you'd better ship in a timely fashion, or you'll sour IndieGoGo on video glasses, and they'll be no crowd-funding sites left for that sort of project. No pressure! =)

<comment><AUTHOR> Will do! :) Thanks for the support and I hope you decide to order your pair and develop awesome apps!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How will these work if I already wear glasses?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great question!

Your prescription lenses fit behind the electrochromic lenses. -- The prescription lenses go in an inner groove, whereas the electrochromic ones are mounted flush to the front face.

You can get dirt-cheap lenses at <http://zennioptical.com> , and you or any optometrist can insert them.</comment></comment>


A Solution to Compression Oracles on the Web - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/a-solution-to-compression-oracles-on-the-web/ <comment><USER2> Selective compression does seem like a pretty optimal approach.

> We found that in most cases a secret within a webpage can be described in > terms of a classical regular expression.

Not sure I'd want to rely on a regex that identifies the right chunk most of the time..... that sounds fragile, easy to accidentally break with a routine update of the page. Explicitly tagging the secret portion seems like a more robust approach.

</comment><comment><USER3> I though for BREACH to work, the user input have to echo on the page, together with the secret. So that when they repeat, the compression size reduce.

If we didn't echo any user input data to the page, then we aren't affected by BREACH, right?

</comment><comment><USER4> TL;DR — avoid compressing secrets.

The PoC is an Nginx module which identifies potentially secret parts of the response using a regular expression matcher, and avoids adding these to the compression dictionary.</comment>


RegEx Crossword - Sudoku-like Regular Expression Puzzles - <AUTHOR> http://www.regexcrossword.com/

<comment><USER2> Neat little game. One suggestion I have though: if the puzzle doesn't validate, signal the lines that don't validate properly.

<comment><USER3> Agree. Also, the check mark indicating validation is broken on iOS

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tried to solve these with regular expressions. Now I have two crosswords.

<comment><USER5> I struggle with regular expressions, now I have many cross words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fun game. Only thing I can suggest is a way to rotate the puzzle so we don't have to crane our necks / rotate monitors.

<comment><USER7> True. You read my mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cool project... I always like the gratification of fake awards, but I'm not sure that yours are actually working... After completing the tutorial, I was informed that I had earned the "baby steps" badge... When going into my achievements however, it still has the `.unearned` class on that badge.

</comment><comment><USER9> Here's a really enjoyable regex crossword from, as I recall, the MIT Mystery Hunt:

[http://www.coinheist.com/rubik/a_regular_crossword/grid.pdf](http://www.coinheist.com/rubik/a_regular_crossword/grid.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER10> The regex-genex SMT constraint solver ( previously covered in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2579783](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2579783) ), as demonstrated by @LeventErkok ( [https://gist.github.com/LeventErkok/4942496](https://gist.github.com/LeventErkok/4942496) ), is pretty good at solving this kind of puzzles. :-)

</comment><comment><USER11> Wow, this is great. I'm shocked that I am finally enjoying something related to regular expressions.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is awesome!</comment>