Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start? - <AUTHOR> I work for a tech company. The fallacy is that I have so much information about day to day job in my head that I have lost all creative juice. I can code in python with some help but my skills are more towards management and backend data processing.
I want to build a side project. Especially, one that makes money. Even if it brings in $100, I feel that it will provide more satisfaction than my current job.
I don't have any frontend dev skills. Where should I start?
Should I outsource the website development part? I am 31. I am pretty sure learning FE development is not going to be useful anytime soon. With tech stacks, if you don't practise you tend to forget things eventually.
Can you provide some ideas on where to start? What are some simple things I can build by myself? Any ideas? <comment><USER2> This is going to sounds like crazy advice, but having worked on many side projects in my life the _last_ thing that's going to let you down is your skills. What you really need is time. Let's say it takes you 400 hours to build your project -- in those 400 hours, you will build up enough skills to get you started (not nearly enough to be good at it, but good enough).

So you need to work consistently 1-2 hours a day on your side project. It really doesn't matter _what_ you do. If you manage to get those 1-2 hours in, you will muddle through and accomplish something. If your goal is to make a side project and bring in a non-zero amount of money, this is achievable. Learn whatever you learn on that project and then do it again.

Personally, I would spend exactly $0 on your task because, like I said, the thing that will kill you in the end is likely to be time commitment. If you spend money, you will be out the money _and_ your time. So start with time and see where it takes you.

As others have said, no need to get fancy. Just build the simplest thing that will get you started, using the simplest tools you can find.

<comment><USER3> My biggest problem is in "no need to get fancy". Do not know how to overcome that urge to overengineer everything in the start and how to be satisfied with minimal working thing even if it looks like crap.

<comment><USER4> You don't have to feel satisfied. You're supposed to feel unsatisfied with an MVP. If you didn't, you wouldn't have the drive to build anything better.

For me, I use three other feelings to combat my high standards.

One is fear. In particular, fear that I'm building a bunch of stuff that won't work. It's the same fear that drives me to write automated tests, or at least to manually run something and see that it works. Except here the fear is that it might work for me but not for my audience.

Another is rigor. This part feels very sciencey to me. I'm trying to test the hypotheses that are implicit in the thing I'm making (and that I've hopefully at least tried to make explicit before I start coding). I want to test my hypotheses as early as possible, and when I don't I start to feel like I'm not being rigorous.

The third is joy in results. The early tests are only looking for one step forward. If that's all I'm looking for, it is really exciting to see that. And so I temporarily set aside my concerns about all the things I'm not testing for and celebrate the wins when I get 'em.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not sure if I should share this, as it is a trivial and obvious thing to do. Recently I created a ramen-profitable on google play with currently a couple of thousand users.

The idea is to look for apps that have low ratings, high downloads and lots of recent comments, then make them better. You can use synonyms and the same niche category to increase visibility on google play. This is where the money is.

<comment><USER6> > _Not sure if I should share this, as it is a trivial and obvious thing to > do..._

Probably worth linking here to Derek Sivers' post "Obvious To You, Amazing To Others": [https://sivers.org/obvious](https://sivers.org/obvious)

I've heard of your method before, but I first read it in Fast Company in a story called The Amazon Whisperer, and while it might seem obvious now, I thought it was amazing when I first read it: [https://www.fastcompany.com/3021229/chaim-pikarski-the- amazo...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3021229/chaim-pikarski-the-amazon- whisperer)

<comment><USER7> That article on FastCompany about the Amazon Whisperer is incredibly eye- opening. Thanks for linking

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's what I did: at work I needed something. (A git commit graph). But the one I found was #1. buggy, and #2. too expensive. It wasn't my money, but I just couldn't allow my company to pay that much.

So I made my own, and fixed the bug: [http://bit- booster.com/best.html](http://bit-booster.com/best.html)

And then I realized I needed a rebase button on the pull-request screen... and so it continues to evolve.

Here's the thing: I've always known I'm a good maintenance programmer. I've always preferred working on existing software instead of making new software from scratch. And writing add-ons for Bitbucket is basically just another form of maintenance programming: reading Bitbucket's code, noticing its flaws and shortcomings, and fixing them.

Also, I love git, and I love going very deep into git (e.g., [https://github.com/gsylvie/git-reverse.sh](https://github.com/gsylvie/git- reverse.sh)). So this is my dream job.

I've only made $7,000 USD after 1 year on this side project. But $1 of those dollars feels better than $10,000 from my day job.

<comment><USER9> I have the strong feeling that there isn't much money in software tooling.

Also, like it or not, any successful product will eventually be replaced by an open-source equivalent.

<comment><USER8> Yes, software tooling is not a huge market compared to say, JIRA. My add-on is 287th place for sales in the last 30 days ($2800). Most of the add-ons ahead of me are for JIRA or Confluence: [https://marketplace.atlassian.com/addons/top- selling](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/addons/top-selling)

Successful tooling often faces competition from open source. But I'm still using IntelliJ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think you should start something very very small and forget about the money part for now. For me, my most successful project ideas came from problems that I faced during my own site launches.

Since you don't have much knowledge of FE development, I would suggest you keep things Simple Stupid and try to do as much as possible with HTML and jQuery. I have created really complex websites using just PHP and jQuery (sites that have made me 6 figures over time), plus you will learn the real nitty-gritty like DOM manipulation, CSS tricks, etc - which you will need to use anyway at least a few times regardless of the shiny JS framework.

I would highly recommend at this time you don't get sucked into the React, Node, Vue, etc. You will only end up wasting months without nothing to show for it (but maybe I'm just too old school).

Whatever time you have left after that, use it to learn online marketing. Learn about list building, SEO, Copywriting, outreach and affiliate marketing. Because that's how you turn your technology into actual money.

<comment><USER11> Any resources you'd recommend for learning online marketing?

<comment><USER12> FWIW: If you're asking about marketing after you've built a product, you're doing things in the wrong order. That's why I've included Rob's _Start Small, Stay Small_ as one of core ideas is market validation. From a review: "not about coding but about [finding] a great niche, building a product that executes at a plateau and make it run automatically"

"The other resource I'd recommend is the one I'm releasing in ~3 weeks :)" [https://www.julian.com/learn/growth/intro](https://www.julian.com/learn/growth/intro) \-- julianshapiro | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14026863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14026863)

 _Secret Sauce: The Ultimate Growth Hacking Guide_ "the only actionable Internet marketing guide out there" (2017) $40 [https://www.secretsaucenow.com/](https://www.secretsaucenow.com/) \-- austenallred | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13807171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13807171)

 _Marketing for Developers_ "Don't build another software product no one uses. Discover what people will pay for before you start coding." (2015) $39 [https://gumroad.com/l/devmarketingbook](https://gumroad.com/l/devmarketingbook) \-- mijustin | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12034104](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12034104)

 _Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth_ "I started doing a series of interviews on my blog with successful founders about how they got traction" (2015, 2nd ed.) $15 [https://amzn.com/dp/B00TY3ZOMS](https://amzn.com/dp/B00TY3ZOMS) \-- epi0Bauqu / yegg | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10346268](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10346268)

 _Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer 's Guide to Launching a Startup_ "The book is approaching 11,000 copies sold to date, so it's obviously filled a need." (2010) $10 [https://amzn.com/dp/B003YH9MMI](https://amzn.com/dp/B003YH9MMI) \-- rwalling | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5361601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5361601)

These guys all use their own techniques so they love bundling additional stuff besides the ebooks.

<comment><USER13> Rob's book is a bit old at this point, but I'd heartily recommend it just the same.

<comment><USER12> Yes, it's easily worth the $10 before starting anything; the rest might pay off more once there's a product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here's my suggestion. Walk down the road to shops in your area (small, family run businesses) and ask if they have a business problem they think IT can solve.

You'd be surprised how little some of these businesses know. I have previously; \- Built a travel database in MS Access for a Travel Agent (long time ago) \- Ordered and setup ADSL connections and email for a water tank manufacturer and a furniture store \- Capture requirements, researched, ordered and installed an office (6 people) worth of IT kit for a not-for- profit (didn't charge them for this work). \- Designed and implemented a roster management system for an IT helpdesk for a university.

There are heaps of opportunities. Just have to know where to look.

<comment><USER15> This really is an excellent suggestion. I would add on to it to also talk with local governments as they are increasingly wanting to provide mobile digital services to citizens.

Onto this I will add a suggestion to consider volunteering your services. If you do an outstanding job as a volunteer, then when the organization gets some budget, you'll be first in line to do the work.

<comment><USER16> Don't offer to work for free. If a sizable organization really wants to have a problem solved (and they believe you can do it), they will try their best to find money for it. Just go to the next place / next problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I built Rocket League Replays[1], a website which analyses the replay files generated from matches played in Rocket League. I took my inspiration from GGTracker[2] which is essentially the same thing, but for StarCraft 2. I was looking through the replay files and noticed that there was some human readable content in them, so I wrote a parser[3] and built the site around it. Eventually I started a Patreon which allowed users to support the site in return for more advanced analysis. I get around $200/mo from that which covers the server costs etc, so I'm more than happy with that.

[1]: [https://www.rocketleaguereplays.com/replays/](https://www.rocketleaguereplays.com/replays/)

[2]: [http://ggtracker.com/landing_tour](http://ggtracker.com/landing_tour)

[3]: [http://danielsamuels.co.uk/words/2015/07/27/rocket-league- re...](http://danielsamuels.co.uk/words/2015/07/27/rocket-league-replays/)

<comment><USER18> Tell us more about your skills before starting the project and after starting the project. Were you basically a front end or back end guy before starting the project. What technolgies did you choose and why. How long did it take to complete. How many hours did you invest. Did you invest time consistently in smaller chunks or large chunks at one shot.

<comment><USER12> The details regarding time managment would be great.

However, I personally would be much more interested in any info on how he got the word out and attracted users. That's the part most developers are missing in the " _that makes money_ " portion of the equation.

<comment><USER17> Reddit and Twitter were big things for me, I announced the initial release on the Rocket League subreddit[1] and then announced updates whenever they were released[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. I automated daily posts to reddit and Twitter[9] for the "match of the day" (calculated based on a variety of factors). I engaged heavily in the community on Twitter, other fan sites and got my name out there. I gave away the extra (paid-for) features to the top teams to get them using it. I added support for features which users asked for.

One of the biggest sources of traffic for me now are the Rocket League analysis / training subreddits[10]. It's become _the_ location to upload your replays if you want to share them with other people. Making it easy to share (no account required) was a big part of this.

[1]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/comments/3et5yx/after_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/comments/3et5yx/after_a_weekend_of_picking_through_replay_files_i/)

[2]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/comments/4f3jq2/rocket...](https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/comments/4f3jq2/rocket_league_replays_adds_indepth_boost/)

[3]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/comments/4d1kpe/rocket...](https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/comments/4d1kpe/rocket_league_replays_adds_inbrowser_replay/)

[4]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/comments/4a9s44/rocket...](https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/comments/4a9s44/rocket_league_replays_updates_their_replay/)

[5]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/comments/44xp8j/rocket...](https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/comments/44xp8j/rocket_league_replays_adds_support_for_seasons/)

[6]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/comments/3yws8d/rocket...](https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/comments/3yws8d/rocket_league_replays_now_orders_by_player/)

[7]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/comments/3pra3u/rocket...](https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/comments/3pra3u/rocket_league_replays_now_features_profile_pages/)

[8]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/comments/3gtulm/rocket...](https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/comments/3gtulm/rocket_league_replays_version_2_has_been_released/)

[9]: [https://twitter.com/RLReplays](https://twitter.com/RLReplays)

[10]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeagueAnalysis/](https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeagueAnalysis/)

<comment><USER19> Wow, you've done a great job making this a useful product with meaningful value.

There's a user in the Heroes of the Storm (Blizzard moba, same engine as SC2) that did the same thing, except went the completely opposite route and riddled the site with predatory ads (the kinds that produce popunders and play audio on load). The paid option was to get rid of the ads. Most updates to the site lately seem to be to combat ad blockers instead of add new things.

The community went from being extremely open and excited about the site at the beginning to now begrudgingly having to use it since it has no competitor.

Props to you for engaging the community and keeping them on your side.

<comment><USER17> To be fair I do have ads as well, but it's just Adsense so there shouldn't be any of the bad stuff. Removing them comes with the Patreon membership too.

(Also, thanks!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My side projects always come from personal needs, in each case I built it to solve my own problem before turning it in to a full product (summaries below). If you are going in with the sole intention of making money then make sure you know that there is a need for what you want to make and that you can get your project in front of people.

You don't need to use the latest and greatest tech, in fact, I would urge you don't. For front end you can stick to simple JQuery interactions, bootstrap theme and you'll be fine, depending on the market sector you go for they may not even care about the design, so long as it's functional.

Summary of my project and where they came from:

[http://www.oneqstn.com](http://www.oneqstn.com), before launching our company's product I put the question "Where would you expect to buy the Radfan?" on the shop page and then 5 options. I expanded this on its own dedicated domain and 5 years later it's still ticking along. Very popular in the middle east for some reason.

[http://www.stockcontrollerapp.com](http://www.stockcontrollerapp.com), I manage in-house production of my company's hardware product and after moving from an Excel spreadsheet to a Python script I decided to make a stock management app for small factories. Has made my work life much easier and is more appropriate for me than Unleashed.

[http://www.taptimerapp.com](http://www.taptimerapp.com), I didn't like any of the timer apps that I had tried so made my own mainly for use in the gym. All the others had too small touch targets, hard to see at a distance/without glasses on, or stopped music playing when the timer finished so I made an app that addressed these.

<comment><USER20> Thanks to the person who highlighted a typo on taptimer.com and sent in the contact form about it - no email address supplied so I'm thanking them here.

<comment><USER21> Found another one: Gestures Galour -> Galore

<comment><USER20> Thanks, I should probably be embarrassed but it's great they've been found so ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If your goal is to make money, don't allow yourself to write a single line of code until you have talked to people not related to you (and not close friends with you), heard at least two of them independently describe facing the same business problem, and heard both of them say "yes, that would help!" (or better "yes, I would buy that!") in response to your proposed solution.

Finding a real business problem and a real solution is what matters. The tech is just an implementation detail you work out later.

<comment><USER23> On the other hand, I've had a lot of success showing people proofs of concept as a way to get the conversation going about various ideas I have. Sometimes people don't know what they want/need until they actually see a pre-alpha version in action.

<comment><USER24> Indeed. Most people don't know what is possible let alone what is easy / hard to develop.

The answer to everything in my previous workplace was "another excel sheet" when we had a proper Django application with relational integrity and data validation. Showing them that a few clicks on a web form was easier than what they were used to - copy pasting data from one web page, pasting it back into an excel, reformatting it and uploading it, followed by a ton of data validation errors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Baffled why nobody has mentioned [https://www.indiehackers.com/](https://www.indiehackers.com/) yet.

If you're looking for some inspiration from others who've built revenue- generating side projects and businesses, I'd start here.

</comment><comment><USER26> Start looking for people that complements your skills! I've just created a "HN Side Project Partner Search" google stylesheet for people seeking team mates or help building their side projects:

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fDNE2O862oLmlojAPDXd...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fDNE2O862oLmlojAPDXdfdTy7w6nZLiFlhDWbHoEzGk/edit?usp=sharing)

IMO building a team (2 or 3) is the best way to go...

Hopefully you'll find the idea useful (ideally this should be a website but I'm testing the waters with a simple stylesheet...)

<comment><USER27> Can I use the Google sheet to find partners for my open source project (no monetary benefit)?

<comment><USER26> Sure why not? just add a comment explaining all in the "additional info" column... ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I gave a talk at Dropbox literally about how to start a small business without quitting your day job. A lot of people have told me it was helpful. You can watch it here: [https://youtu.be/J8UwcyYT3z0](https://youtu.be/J8UwcyYT3z0).

A lot of my focus was boiling down what approaches could plausibly work and what pitfalls to avoid.

<comment><USER12> The "3 ways people usually fuck up" starting at 14:30 was great!

• Be boring

• Make money immediately

• Focus on distribution

\+ Charge vs. opportunity cost (not cost to provide service)

That last one is pretty unique and could probably benefit many here with some additional input from you. I've heard that it makes sense to charge based on value added, but not much about how starting a small business needs to compete with the founder's missed alternatives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Start to teach. Create a course in udemy on what you know (data processing or management). If creating a video course overwhelms you, create a text based course. I'm using softcover to do that. You can check here: [https://www.jjude.com/softcover-in-docker/](https://www.jjude.com/softcover- in-docker/)

Creating a course can get you the momentum. You can start there and branch out to other things.

<comment><USER30> This is great advice. Turn whatever you know right now into a learning opportunity for others. This is what we do at [http://teacherr.com](http://teacherr.com), we help others build an audience around their experience and monetize their following by selling information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think the easiest thing is build what you need. So that if it failed to make money, you still have the tool you want.

I build [https://noty.im](https://noty.im) that way, an monitoring tool that call me when my site is down.

Then I realized more thing is needed and I started to add more features and plan to publish launch soon.

I will say not to worry about scale and technical first. I learned it the hardway, Just get it out. No one will really care if it's broken or something doesn't owrk when you doesn't have lots of customer.

So to answer your questions:

1\. Can you provide some ideas on where to start? Pick a technology stack you familiar with. Apply to Microsft BizSpark to take advantage of $150/monthly credit. Learn FE, it isn't that hard.

2\. What are some simple things I can build by myself? Any idea?

I build `[https://kolor.ml`](https://kolor.ml`) in a sunday. It's very simple but I need it. So you can try to build some simple/small utility that helps people with their daily live such as: a tool to call people up in morning.

A tool to check if my site has expose some particular header such as `nginx`, `php version` etc and if found an old one or vulnerable one, alert.

Of course, lots of people already build those, but the point is just get started, along the way you will realize what you really want to build

</comment><comment><USER32> List down 25 products/services you consume regularly. For each, ask whether a better version could be done. Yes? Do it.

Here's one case: the local/popular site to search for used cars sucks. It is slow, hard to see/compare all options, silly reloads the page on each added filter, filled with outdated listings, flooded with ads, and pic slides take forever (all of this on my slow phone over a slow 3g which is how most visitors must be using it). Furthermore, car dealers (who post most listings) complain about service and price. So I built the proverbial mvp and put it in the hands of my marketing partner (you won't sell a line of code if you do not partner with a person/company dedicated to push your stuff) who's already working on a deal with the used car dealers association, pitching a novel business plan, hopefully making some passive income for both of us.

<comment><USER33> To me this sounds boring, it may turn into a profitable business but it's nothing innovative. If you limit yourself to what you currently use and try to incrementally improve it, new ideas will rarely come out of that unless you approach the problem from a radically different angle. Good ideas are underrated in this regard.

<comment><USER34> Stackoverflow definitly fit that description, I wouldn't call it uninovative. Incremental changes often make all the difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is what I believe to be the formula: 1\. Find a group of people who are interested in a subject. 2\. Find out what, related to that subject, they want to buy. 3\. Sell them that thing.

This is the approach I took with my book/videos at AngularOnRails.com, a "side project that makes money".

Another important thing is to surround yourself with people who have successfully done the thing you're trying to do.

I don't have much time right now but if you (or anybody) wants to talk about building side projects that make money, feel free to email me at email@example.com. I'm not an expert but I know a hell of a lot more than I did 9 years ago when I started.

<comment><USER4> Yes, 100% this. Too many programmers build something and then try to sell it. And worse, when they get close to trying to sell it, they get nervous and go add more features, because writing code makes them feel safe.

But the real risk isn't that an imagined product can't be built. It's that the imagined product won't be bought when you build it.

So please, everybody, do what jasonswett says and start with the audience and their need. Verify that people will buy the thing before you build it. Because, and I'm speaking from experience here, it zero fun to build something and then discover that nobody cares.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Oh man I know this feel. I have been programming for startups for years and I have always had lots of ideas but never the mental commitment to finish anything.

I'm proud to say that very recently I did manage to complete a side project that I intend to launch in a week or so. It is a social site based on an idea I got from watching Japanese dramas.

What helped in my case was that my idea was really simple to build. I too have zero frontend / web design ability, so I just paid a guy from Craigslist to fix it up. Being able to bootstrap a finished product with a relatively small amount of time / money helps you get in that "closer" mentality instead of just playing around and never finishing.

I'd also suggest not worrying about making money at first. Just try to make a cool product or service. Money is a stressful and distracting motivator I find. Once you have something of value to offer and get some feedback from potential users, then you think more about pricing and marketing.

So in short, start small, don't be afraid to outsource and trade money for time, and don't worry about making a profit right away. That worked for me at least.

</comment><comment><USER37> _What are some simple things I can build by myself?_

You're already successful at selling enterprise services to at least one company in management and backend data processing. Have you considered selling management and backend data processing advise, perhaps delivered in the form of a PDF or series of videos? This is stupendously valuable to tech companies if you meaningfully improve on what they have already and would allow you to sell to people who have expense accounts tied to, to steal a friend's phrase, the economic engine of the planet.

You don't need a commandingly high bar of programming sophistication to sell books. There exist services that can do all the heavy lifting for you. If you prefer knocking together a site to sell your own books, it is essentially an hour to get the minimum thing to charge money and ~2 days to get something which could plausibly be the kernel of an ongoing business.

<comment><USER38> > If you prefer knocking together a site to sell your own books, it is > essentially an hour to get the minimum thing to charge money and ~2 days to > get something which could plausibly be the kernel of an ongoing business.

But what about traffic? How do you get eyeballs to your book-selling microsite? Do you reach out to people who might be interested? Do you post on forums? Do you use paid advertising? I can guess it's a combination of various methods but the problem I have seen popping up often, at least with me, is reaching a meaningful conclusion.

If your landing page fails to gain meaningful traffic, what do you need to tweak? Your book pitch, the idea, or the marketing technique?

<comment><USER37> If it were me and I was coming at it from nothing I'd write, in order:

1) Minimal stake-in-the-Internet landing page. ("I'm writing a book on ActiveRecord optimization. I've worked for 3 years on AR optimization. For more details, [ ].")

2) ~3 blog posts about the topic at issue which each mention the forthcoming book and link to your landing page. Promote blog posts in the usual ways: tweet about them, send cold emails to folks whose audiences they are relevant to, post them in your usual community watering holes.

Checkpoint: if the blog posts go nowhere, don't write your book.

3) Write a minimalistic email drip campaign to send to folks who are on your list. Consider cross posting versions of the messages in it to your blog, depending on your appetite for doing this.

4) Write a proper landing page for your book.

5) Write your book.

6) Run a "launch sequence" for your book over 2~3 weeks prior to publishing your book.

7) Launch your book.

8) Get more serious about turning your book into a business via e.g. increasing acquisition, tuning the automated bookseller that is your email list, etc.

I've seen folks be really, really successful at this model on the strength of first books supported by hundreds of email subscribers and 3~5 blog posts. You do not need to be "Internet famous" to pull this off. (Anecdotally, most of my Internet buddies who do the meat-and-potatoes work here get $10k to $20k on the first book launch.)

<comment><USER39> To get "hundreds of emails" (let's say 500), with a ~1% conversion rate, you need 50,000 page views. How long to get to that point with just 3 blog post when you start from nothing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I researched startups on IndieHackers.com and wrote an article:

[https://hackernoon.com/indie-startups-the-ingredients-of- suc...](https://hackernoon.com/indie-startups-the-ingredients-of- success-74531fe3a019)

The summary, well, sums it up pretty well I think:

> Listen to your friends, coworkers, and clients. Find something painful they > mentioned that you also have first hand experience with, or that you've > needed at your job. Package it up so it's easy to use. Build an MVP, get > feedback, iterate. Charge more than you think you should. Listen to your > customers. Launch on ProductHunt. Market the hell out of it! Use Content > Marketing, reach out to communities, forums, friends, and businesses with > cold calls/emails. If you've built something great, word of mouth will do > its magic. You can do this in your spare time, and probably should.

</comment><comment><USER41> I used my food side project as a way to learn new skills. I am still in the process of working on version 2.

The simplest way to start is to take a framework or system that has most of the basic parts ready for you to use.

Since you already know python, try to learn something like django and use Bootstrap with a CDN for your front end stuff.

I would recommend reading some of the posts on indiehackers.com to get an idea of how those people got started with an idea and how they got their first customers. Some do not even have any tech skills and just used wordpress or found someone to help them with the site. There is also a podcast for this that just got started that is excellent. The founder of indiehackers was a YC alumn named Courtland, he is a cool guy.

I chose to solve a problem that I personally encountered. If you cannot think of something, try picking something that you know requires lots of manual effort for some people. Then use some scripts from the book Running Lean to try to work out exactly what the problem is for those people.

Another great resource is OppsDaily which I love reading first thing in the morning. Cory sends out a problem someone has in a particular industry that needs to be solved. The criteria is that they must be willing to pay for it if someone responds. In many cases they will say how much they are willing to pay.

</comment><comment><USER42> As someone with many failed side projects, I can tell you that having a goal of making money is usually a bad thing. Like many other people have said, you can learn the skills. The hardest part of building a side project is finding the time and staying motivated for more than a few months.

So, pick something _you_ will use and, if you enjoy building/using it, so will others. Obviously think about ways to monetize it, but money should be more of a side-effect than a motivation.

I'm currently working on [https://insomnia.rest](https://insomnia.rest), which makes around $800/mo right now. I started it as a side-project a couple years ago with no intention of making money. However, traffic grew organically and I eventually left my job to pursue it full-time.

In summary, find something you love to work on and let it consume you. If you do this, making $100/mo should come in no time. Have fun hacking!

<comment><USER43> I find the font colour/weight of "Available for free on Mac, Windows, and Linux" almost impossible to read. [http://imgur.com/a/AUVxr](http://imgur.com/a/AUVxr)

<comment><USER42> Oh my, that is awful. What OS are you running?

<comment><USER43> (Chrome 56.0.2924.87 (64-bit) / Ubuntu )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Side projects that also do some public good might be a good avenue for you to consider. I built Walkstarter [https://walkstarter.org](https://walkstarter.org) a free walkathon fundraising platform for public schools as a side project. The experience is fantastic. I continue to develop my skills, e-meet new people, and the platform is on track to raise a very satisfying $1 million for schools.

</comment><comment><USER45> If you want a stable tech stack that'll stay the same for the new few years then check out Clojure + Clojurescipt. I'm still doing the same since I started a few years ago.

Regarding FE dev: I also have a technical Background (EE) and I hated any CSS (HTML isn't so bad). Though, flexbox is a life changer. It's actually enjoyable and I can get stuff done without spending hours on simple layout issues.

<comment><USER46> Can you elaborate on your tech stack? Do you develop for mobile, web, or both?

<comment><USER45> Both. CLJS is actually super fast, even on mobile (I test on lower power devices such as MOTO G4). The SPA is also pretty small if you keep dependencies out so it loads ~2-3s on a phone. That's with a large SPA with about 100+ React components.

Stack:

\- It's CLJS with Datascript (huge DB), Rum and nothing else. That way I keep my js-file small (currently 170kb gzip'ed).

\- Server side it's Pedestal, Cassandra, Datomic.

The tooling has always been leiningen and that's stayed consistent. Libraries are still the same on the client side. cljs.core + closure library gives you 90% of what you'd ever need. I don't use a single NPM library (Except React). I don't follow the latest fads in js-land anymore. IMO it's an ideal stack that is fast, small, stable and has much more features than anything in JS world. I don't need the latest and greatest transpiler (ES6, 8, 1000 or whatnot) since I can just use a macro that does this for me. Figwheel is incredible and should warrant anybody in the JS world to consider switching just for that... Productivity is amazing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Pick someone else's niche making money, tweak it to make it your own, implement. Rinse, repeat until you achieve success.

<comment><USER48> Can't recall where I first heard it, but it was at least 25 years ago.

To be successful, find a successful person. Then do what they do.

<comment><USER49> The tough part is figuring out what's causal and what's just correlated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Where should I start?_ [...] _where to start?_

Building an audience + market validation before building a sideproject are the top starting priority for "a side project _that makes money_ ".

Start by building an audience (this can be as simple as interacting with professionals on Twitter and/or their own blogs, or even contributing here on HN!). I won't be able to determine what people want without asking people, and I will save a lot of wasted time by building something that I can guarantee people already want to pay for! For example: I intend to walk around my neighborhood with a survey to gauge interest in localized "technology disaster prevention" (aka initial setup of PC & phone backups with verification and increasingly annoying reminders) as a service. The first sideproject is the hardest because initially the audience is smallest but then can be re-used.

I hesitated to post this because most developers have an "if you build it, they will come" mentality (and a tendency to focus on technology/implementation details that they enjoy) that even I personally have a hard time overcoming myself. However, if the criteria is making money, building an audience is the right first step. Once the bare-minimum MVP functions, marketing makes all the difference on the " _that makes money_ " part (see my list of random books to buy elsewhere in this thread)... and there is no point over-engineering something I can't convince anyone to use!

I realize I'm going out on a limb a bit to say that market validation before each sideproject comes second... I know of one example of someone who has built an audience while publicly initiating sideprojects without thorough market validation (focusing on technology instead -- note that this determination is 100% my own armchair quarterbacking with the benefit of hindsight); this person's projects appear to be faltering because of poor market fit. However, it hasn't stopped many from buying into this person's brand / other projects, and that audience is now following the next project even though initially it appears to be trending toward the same mistake!

PS. As mentioned elsewhere I could shortcut market validation by tracking down commercial products (already being paid for) that are getting a lot of visibility and addressing issues raised in bad reviews; however even when going this route I will still benefit greatly by having an audience to market the replacement.

Edit: switched to first person to preach to myself to get off my butt and start doing something!

</comment><comment><USER50> I started a side project last year and it's been a fantastic experience. It's an opportunity to "scratch an itch" that the day job can't provide (which for me is doing whatever I want).

I had some frontend dev skills but didn't have the backend chops, so I hired someone on Upwork. I'm pretty busy at work so getting someone else involved is key (If I was by myself I'm not sure I would have stuck with it).

It's been a year and the app is doing about $3k/mo in revenue.

<comment><USER51> What's the app if you dont mind sharing. Or at least a vague idea of what it is

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Firstly as other have said build something you would use and that interests you. It doesn't have to make money if it adds value to you personally or professionally (technical knowledge and hard life lessons learnt). Secondly just ship it, personal projects can easily become obsessions, always needing one more thing. I did this and even though I hate parts of my apps design it is getting good feedback.

I recently had a quiet period in my freelance work so spent the time learning React Native amongst other things. I applied this to an idea I have had rattling around in my head for a point tracking app for people on Slimming World. I spent 4 weeks developing this and then shipped it to iOS. In under 2 weeks it has grown to almost 10,000 registered users, is number 4 in the UK Lifestyle Free Apps chart (ahead of Slimming World's own app) and has made enough ad revenue to cover the only costs I have had (App Store membership costs). It is never going to bring in big money but the lessons I have learnt are priceless.

<comment><USER24> There is some harsh reality in your quote when you say the 4th highest UK Lifestyle app only just covers costs with ad revenue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Listen to [http://sidehustleschool.com](http://sidehustleschool.com) \- it's a story every day about someone who did just this.

<comment><USER54> I immediately exit websites which want to notify me and ask for my e-mail after 1 seconds I spend on that site. Bad marketing.

<comment><USER55> Agreed. I never saw it thanks to NoScript.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> As someone who has done countless side projects (check them out here: [http://www.reza.codes](http://www.reza.codes)) I suggest taking out "making money" as a variable and focus on things that interest you or something that stems from a personal need.

The satisfaction you get from these side projects will come from being able to finish them as opposed to try and make money from them. When you try to take on a side project with the goal of making money, you'll end up sinking way too much time in marketing and reaching out to possible customers as opposed to building something (which I find to be more fun and rewarding).

And the time you spend on trying to get people to sign up or even try your product doesn't have the same returns in satisfaction as building it. (my opinion of course)

</comment><comment><USER57> Look at oppsdaily.com. The developer posted here a while back. While there's no archive, there are daily postings concerning software needs. Some of the needs are unrelated to software, but most are. Could give you some ideas. (I have no relationship with the site or maker).

</comment><comment><USER58> "The fallacy is that I have so much information about day to day job in my head that I have lost all creative juice."

I wonder if more programming is going to bring back those creative juices, perhaps you should think about doing something away from the keyboard instead?

</comment><comment><USER59> You can start with what you already know and then build over it, or diversify, with time. The easiest way to monetize your knowledge to create a blog and link it up with social media (twitter, FB, youtube etc).

For example, you can write about management and backend data processing (what you do at work). This way, you don't have to learn something new to start your side project (except maybe how to manage a blog). The blog can be monetized via Ad networks like Adsense and Amazon affiliate program etc. As you grow, you may take in direct advertisers, sponsored content etc.

</comment><comment><USER60> Spend a few days identifying problems people pay for, particularly easy problems that you can build yourself. The key is that the solution has to be fairly easy to build since you're not comfortable full-stack. Once you've chose a solution that already makes money solving a problem, build the same solution but position it for either a niche market or make a better product than competitors.

I would at minimum leverage bootstrap or semantic ui as your ui. Otherwise, hire someone to do the web interface for you.

<comment><USER60> My last advice is pursue traction in addition to building a product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Get some inspiration from indie hackers.com . I have been wanting to do something similar and there are tons of great advice and wisdom from solo developers building their own businesses.

</comment><comment><USER62> I dont think any advice is any use unless we know what you want.

First thing is you should decide why you're doing it. Is it to make money, or have fun, or enhance your current mgmt skills or to learn to code in a whole new area?

Only once you've decided that, then questions like "I don't have any frontend dev skills. Where should I start?" and "Should I outsource the website development part?" are possible to answer.

</comment><comment><USER63> Before you do anything, I would recommend that you clear state a goal. Do you want to learn a new language? Do you want $100 a month in revenue. Do you want learn a little SEO?

Recently, I started on project for the sole purpose of learning more about nodejs and then in the second phase angular 2.

So a few months later I have a process that extracts data from amazon api and looks for price decreases in products. I learned quite a bit about nodejs and even about mysql database structures. So it was a good learning exercise.

Although I have accomplished my objective, I want to make money. This is the problem... Now I have learned what I needed, unfortunately I have learn more about seo, twitter api and facebook api to get users to visit my 200k webpages and make some money. So the side work winds up becoming a challenge and sometimes a burden, to continue to figure out how to reach your goal.

But when you reach your goal of $100 a month, then you will want more... So basically it never ends.

[http://www.bestoftheinternets.com/Deals](http://www.bestoftheinternets.com/Deals)

</comment><comment><USER64> A simple way to make $100+/month is writing short books, articles, and giving away things like software and putting adsense ads on the site.

<comment><USER65> Do you have any experience with this?

<comment><USER64> Yes, feel free to email me at the address in my profile if I can help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Surprised this has not been mentioned yet: Make sure your current employer is cool with side projects and moonlighting. Very few companies I've worked for are OK with it, even if done completely with personal equipment/time. You don't want to build the next Facebook in your free time and get fired over it or have your current employer claim IP ownership of it.

<comment><USER67> Side projects are so important to me that I would absolutely never accept a job at a company that has an issue with it. We're talking about something that I spend a huge % of my brain energy on, and you're telling me I can only use that brain energy on _your_ thing? Pfft, get the f* out of here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I started holding talks for independent agency owners (www.agencyhackers.co.uk). It brings in about £200 a month, from an 'agency roundtable' that I run. That's not much obviously – it only just covers ConvertKit subscription and other SaaS software I need like Reply.io. But I think this is an audience I will be able to monetise with webinars, conferences etc.

</comment><comment><USER9> If thousands of engineers are looking for something to build that others will pay for (but can't find it), then that tells me there is something fundamentally wrong with the way the economy works. Shouldn't it be the other way around? People who have a certain need express it, and engineers just pick one and work on it.

<comment><USER69> Nope. This is the realm of questionably and marginally viable products. Most experienced engineers are already working 40+ hours a week at high paying jobs, so we're talking about a the scraps of their spare time, and even that often comes with strings attached(experimental tech stacks, glacial delivery pace, etc.) Maybe add some time from marginal engineers(students, self taught no experience, overseas contractors). That's the supply. Demand often has no clue about tech, particularly custom software development, and often a very modest budget both in terms of cash and risk tolerance. That leads to two attempted solutions. The first is ODesk, which often fails and discourages further attempts. The second is entrepreneurship...engineers trying to find a problem that is solvable and felt by several hundred affected people/companies who they can actually manage to contact and sell to. This is a sales/marketing problem that most of us tend to ignore or fail at, especially those of us doing side projects where a major goal is playing with interesting tech. There's plenty of money being made in both solutions, but it's not the easy money people tend to think it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> As a software engineer who has built a side project that more or less pays my Bay Area mortgage here is my advice:

Find an idea that plays to your strengths and build something with a friend/coworker who is a better frontend developer. A good partner is invaluable, and with this you can already see how.

Also, charge on day one imo.

</comment><comment><USER71> A little side project of mine is a chrome extension to be able to read (or write) summaries of articles on Hacker News.

It is in alpha stage right now, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts about it: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mnmn/kepcdifhbfjep...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mnmn/kepcdifhbfjepljddhhlheglckopcddn)

Screenshot of how it looks like: [https://github.com/simonebrunozzi/MNMN/blob/master/screensho...](https://github.com/simonebrunozzi/MNMN/blob/master/screenshot.png)

(note: the "+" button is only available for users that are "editors". If you try it out, your user doesn't have that enabled by default).

</comment><comment><USER72> I wrote up my experiences with successfully shipping a side project here: [https://medium.com/leaf-software/5-tips-for-actually- shippin...](https://medium.com/leaf-software/5-tips-for-actually-shipping-a- side-project-72080f7b8d5e)

</comment><comment><USER73> Can the below code be sold to raise money?

import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

url = "[http://www.python.org"](http://www.python.org") response = requests.get(url)

page = str(BeautifulSoup(response.content))

def getURL(page): """

        :param page: html of web page (here: Python home page)
        :return: urls in that page
        """
        start_link = page.find("a href")
        if start_link == -1:
            return None, 0
        start_quote = page.find('"', start_link)
        end_quote = page.find('"', start_quote + 1)
        url = page[start_quote + 1: end_quote]
        return url, end_quote

while True: url, n = getURL(page) page = page[n:] if url: print(url) else: break

</comment><comment><USER74> You can work with freelance companies [like [https://indiez.io/](https://indiez.io/)] This will mean that you can pair up with someone who has complementary skills + not worry about getting the projects yourself.

<comment><USER3> Freelance === passive income, kaboooom

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Find customers first. Then build what they want to buy.

</comment><comment><USER76> Instead of building an MVP and then trying to sell it, there are people who suggest: 1-Think of an idea. 2-Make a simple landing page with a mockup or something. 3-Try to sell the product. And by selling the product I mean actually selling it (so people actually transferring you money). If you can achieve a given amount of sells in a given amount of time (important: set concrete goals with concrete timing), then you have validated your product. 4-Build a first version of your product. 5-Iterate.

Very simple to say, very difficult to do (I've never tried, but I would probably fail). But I think there would be ways to systematically apply steps 1-3 until you find the right product to work on.

Any thoughts?

<comment><USER77> I think what you're describing would be referred to in court as fraud.

<comment><USER76> Really? Maybe the way I didn't write it didn't imply it, but I actually meant that you always had to make very clear that the product doesn't exist yet. You are selling the concept of something you are or you will be working on. If after a week you have managed to do only 1 sell, then return the money, say your product didn't receive enough interest, and try something else. However, if you manage to do 1 sell, you will probably manage to do more than 1. The first one is the difficult one.

If you achieve a decent amount of sales in a week, then build quickly the first version of your product.

<comment><USER77> > _I actually meant that you always had to make very clear that the product > doesn 't exist yet._

That wasn't clear to me. It looked like you were proposing the sale of a nonexistent product. If you're openly and clearly stating that it's basically a preorder, then sure, that's fine. That sounds like a tough sale, though.

<comment><USER76> I was proposing the sale of a nonexistent product, but making clear that it doesn't (already) exist and telling properly how it will look like. Also, this product should be feasible to do in, say, less than a month.

So, it's kind of a preorder, but a cancellable (by the seller, obviously by the customer too) one.

It's a very tough sale, but precisely for that is a way of discarding business/side projects ideas in a massive way. If you can sell it before it exists, it means that there are people VERY interested in such a product, so you are on the way to success.

Disclaimer: it's very easy to speak and very difficult to put in practice, and I have never tried.

<comment><USER78> It'd be easier to just use kickstarter for that.

<comment><USER76> Probably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Step 1: "Pay Me" button

You'll be amazed by how many ideas you never have to waste time building, if you put up a paywall and nobody pays.

<comment><USER64> Buffer has a good post on how they did this.

[https://blog.bufferapp.com/idea-to-paying-customers- in-7-wee...](https://blog.bufferapp.com/idea-to-paying-customers-in-7-weeks- how-we-did-it)

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> "Start Small, Stay Small: A Developers guide to launching a startup" by Rob Walling.

really got me thinking about best ways (ie most time efficient + value) to vet an idea before lifting a finger building.

</comment><comment><USER81> > What are some simple things I can build by myself? Any ideas?

How about an iOS/Android game with optional micro-transactions?

In game development you can indulge and improve as many different skills as you want; graphics, sound, music, mathematics, networking, AI, UX design, character design, writing, storytelling, difficulty balancing, teaching..

An indie game project will give the freedom to be as creative as you want, and you get to enjoy your own product, but of course you don't _have_ to arrive at a finished, marketable product to have fun building it.

</comment><comment><USER82> Lot of money is moving around but you need first take a look to other stuff and and activities rather than coding/refcatoring.

Try see other people activities and have a look how much they spend for basic services you could improve. If you suck at UX/UI, give some money to someone else who could do it for you

what matters is how fast you can release something, do not speed time in courses or fancy optimisations

Also do not focus on a side project alone, let create 3 or 4 project a year

</comment><comment><USER83> Before you get deeply into what you are going to sell, consider how you are going to market it. Marketing is a * * *! Successful marketing is harder than programming a product, much harder and more problematic. Just ask the folks trying to sell iOS apps when there are about 2 million apps on the market. Lining up a buyer for a custom product before you begin (as some here have suggested) sounds very attractive to me.

</comment><comment><USER84> Yup instead of starting a side project you should acquire some tezos blockchain token and build IOT project on top of it when the network launch

You dont need frontend skills

<comment><USER85> What does acquiring the token do for you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Check out [https://www.meetup.com/Code-for-San-Francisco-Civic-Hack- Nig...](https://www.meetup.com/Code-for-San-Francisco-Civic-Hack- Night/events/238669063/)

Find one similar in your region. If it does not exist, start one.

Coming up with an idea for a product that is useful and that people will pay for is more difficult than actually implementing one.

<comment><USER49> Ah yes, with a good idea, the rest is just "a simple matter of implementation."

<comment><USER87> Look at YCombinator startups, most fail to come up with a product that people will actually pay money for.

<comment><USER88> This proves that bad ideas exist, not that the idea is the most important or difficult part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Build something that helps you in your everyday job. This can increase your motivation to improve it and keep working on it regularly. When it starts being useful, try to find another user to get feedback and increase feature. Before considering putting it in the wild, try to find a couple of hackers to anticipate potential security issues ;-)

</comment><comment><USER90> You shouldn't start a side project for money but for something you like or believe in. Money will come after. (may be!)

</comment><comment><USER91> My advice to all startups is that you should spend as much time thinking about how you are going to find & acquire customers as you do on your product. The same goes for cash-flow businesses & side-projects.

One approach is to decide which customers you can find the easiest and then ask them about their problems. Start there.

</comment><comment><USER92> Build something that you yourself find useful (and that you can reasonably assume will be useful to other people too).

</comment><comment><USER93> Instead of focusing on what you need to build, focus on what you want to fix.

Firstly do you have any code, processes, methods or scripts you have created as part of your job that saves your team time or money? Could you re-package them for sale?

I don't think that tech is a good starting point because your solution might not need to be software.

</comment><comment><USER94> If you are weaker on the FE side from a project point of view keep your 'stack' really small, jQuery and Vue.js would get you a long way without really needing much front end knowledge, you can then gradually add in the other tools as you go (things like SASS/Less etc).

</comment><comment><USER95> Definitely build something you personally need. Try to see what you can do without building a product. For example, site for a service that could eventually become a product in the future, but allows you to validate early on and figure out a business model prior to touching any code.

</comment><comment><USER96> Try to look at what you do at your day-job from an outsider's perspective. What are some little things that to you seem trivial and obvious, but to an outsider would seem complex and foreign. There's opportunities there to package your knowledge into a tool or resource.

Example: i

</comment><comment><USER97> What about a side project that isn't heavily related with tech? Which are your passions or hobbies outside work? Maybe one of them can lead you to a niche market. You can also share your professional knowledge. Do you like teaching or writing?

</comment><comment><USER98> I built a side project which can sustain me now - basically I did everything myself. I was the opposite of you. Front End development is my strong suit but I learned anything else I needed to. I took my time and created something I wanted to see.

</comment><comment><USER99> Anytime you start focusing on monetization of a side project, it stops being a side project and more of a "startup". Your mindset has to change around it entirely. You now have to consider marketing, your audience, and legality.

</comment><comment><USER100> Another option might be looking into shopify's tutorials on drop shipping. [https://www.shopify.com/guides/dropshipping](https://www.shopify.com/guides/dropshipping)

</comment><comment><USER101> If you want to make money from your side project (or startup, or _whatever_ ) figure out how you're going to get customers before you do anything else. If you can't do that then you won't make a dime.

</comment><comment><USER102> Find something simple and can solve the problem of few. Use bootstrap if you are not good at UI. It's simple yet powerful.

Regarding monetization you can use AdSense, donation button or charge monthly based on type of your product.

</comment><comment><USER103> I recently came up with next problem, I did the ungly POC (proof of concept), but don't know how to properly advertise it to find to get responses (except for HN, reddit and a couple of same-type resources).

</comment><comment><USER104> First, you need to turn your attitude around and be a lot more positive.

With respect to a project I'll let you in on a secret: if your service does something valuable, it doesn't have to look pretty.

</comment><comment><USER105> Man my 2 cents is iterate in tiny tiny steps.

Whatever you do get it up there in an embarrassing state and keep making it better.

I wasted lots of time by wanting to do things right and so on.

</comment><comment><USER106> How about we all band together and make one big side projecg. Pile on as many of us as we can and just keep evoloving it

</comment><comment><USER107> It requires a little bit of frontend work, but I've had good luck with content websites based on public data sets.

</comment><comment><USER108> > I have so much information about day to day job in my head that I have lost > all creative juice

Although you ask great questions, this bit is what worries me. It doesn't feel good - it seems your job is taking too much energy from you. Have you thought about getting another, easier job?

<comment><USER109> Sounds like the issue isn't difficulty, but lack of inspiration. imho op should find a job they're more passionate about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER110> make games , html/mobile

</comment><comment><USER111> Great topic. We sound a lot alike. I work in a different sector, but I'm also now squarely in management and have been for a while, and my previous expertise was data engineering and infrastructure. Started with zero front end ability, and also not much Python either since I'm in the size of company and industry that still accomplishes most data work in SAS, and what it can't, Informatica and DataStage. Here's where I'm at, and so as to not bury the lede, I'm not making money yet but I found satisfaction in just spending some time each week on my projects -

1\. If you know python, you can probably make a pretty natural jump to Flask. I didn't know Python, but I could program in a handful of other languages, so I figured I'd pick it up as a useful tool anyway. You may like this tutorial:

[https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega- tutorial...](https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial- part-i-hello-world)

I'd say I really started learning when I got to the stage on authentication. The reason is that this tutorial implements OpenID, which isn't very common anymore, so I went off and implemented OAuth instead - heavily googling and scavenging, but ultimately having to piece together something that worked myself. I learned a lot that afternoon.

You could do this with any framework and there are tons of them. I chose Python and Flask over a Javascript-based framework because learning Python in parallel would be useful to me in data engineering, even though I don't write code for a living anymore.

2\. As others have said, time commitment is the biggest issue. Figure out what you can give this, and scope appropriately.

3\. I haven't done this because I'm too much of a completionist to pull the trigger, but get your MVP out there and build off of it. For me, I've decided I'm pretty happy just spending time on the project, even if no one else has seen it.

4\. Bootstrap is my friend, it can be yours too. I have never been a strong visual person. I like words on a page. I have no eye for what makes a good visual and what doesn't, which has been my biggest developmental item when I moved into an executive role last year. All that said, Bootstrap is awesome and makes it a lot easier to build good looking websites. I started off here and built out a static website for an idea I'd had, and am now circling back to build the things I want to be dynamic in Flask.

5\. There are a lot of choices out there. Unless you're developing bleeding edge, and I may get flamed for this, most of the choices really don't matter that much. I chose Python+Flask+Bootstrap because I liked each individually, it seemed like something I could work with, and NOT because I decided they were objectively better than Node, Angular, Express, React, or anything else that I haven't touched. I also sort of like that there isn't a new Python web framework each day, so diving into Flask seems like a more stable investment of my time. I'm sure there are drawbacks.

6\. When it all starts to come together, the real, revenue generating idea might be to address pain points in your day job. My sector is insurance. I know a lot about certain operational functions. Eventually, I could solve some of those and build a business around it, I tell myself. You probably have some specialized domain knowledge as well. Consider that.

Good luck, and have fun. Like I said, I'm happier just for having taken on the challenge. If I ever make a dollar, that'd be good too, but less important than I initially thought.

<comment><USER112> Zapraszam również na mój blog [https://sztukateriaelewacyjnablog.wordpress.com/](https://sztukateriaelewacyjnablog.wordpress.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> I've made a Windows GUI for a powerful command line open source application that was for Linux. It makes a few thousands dollars a month. It did take many years of part time programming along with user feedback to get to that stage though.

Desktop and Windows might seem like a dying market but that's what people use at work and those are the people who can pay for things.

<comment><USER114> Do you sell it through the Microsoft Store or somewhere else?

</comment></comment><comment><USER115> I guess you could focus on building a side project that doesn't need front end skills. Your aim is to get a bit of satisfaction and money and prove you can do something like this, right? Building something simple you can start on right now, starting from where you are right now.

Two ideas:

You could build some kind of email integration, or something delivered over, or using, email. The email processing itself would be mostly backend stuff, you could template the emails with Django or even Python triple quote strings.

Or you could build an API of some sort. The only front end really needed for an API company ( such as Stripe or whatever ), is documentation. You can write your docs on one of those doc hosting platforms ( readthedocs might be one? I don't know much about it now ).

For your side project, it's probably important to pick some things you like and start doing them, rather than trying to make certain up front which things are going to make money.

</comment><comment><USER116> Here is an angle on this:

The goal is to stick to something until completion.

Phsychologically this is easier if you are enjoying it.

So choose a project and a tech stack you can really get into.

Scratch your own itch so that even if no one else uses it or buys it are least you can.

Look at the non-financial upsides, so that if you make zero or little money you can still feel proud: For example - learning new skills that might help you get a raise, learning marketing so that your next project is more likely to be successful, etc.

A word of warning - once you have spent some time on a side project the shine will wear off and it will feel like a job - and you have to find ways to keep yourself motivated when you could literally just go an watch TV instead on your time off.

</comment><comment><USER117> My advise: don't focus so much on how to build it, focus on how to grow it... REALLY!

I've done so many complex projects that at the end I couldn't sell, that's frustrating... please hear me: figure out first how to sell it (or at least get good traffic to a crappy wordpress site), then build a very crappy version and then improve it over time.

I read recently this, and I think is gold: [https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/making-money-online-it- all...](https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/making-money-online-it-all-starts- with-you-not-methods-not-google-you.766510/)</comment>


Google's Deep-Web Crawl [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~lucja/Publications/I03.pdf <comment><USER2> cf. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=459719>

<comment><AUTHOR> _Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter._ </quote> <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

<comment><USER2> Aware of that and agreed, but it already made the front page and discussion started there. I said "cf" not "dup" on purpose.</comment></comment></comment>


The Death of the Interaction Paradigm - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@dosburg/the-death-of-the-interaction-paradigm-bdf4be01595d <comment><USER2> How exactly does it work? What is the typical user experience supposed to be in a use session?</comment>


Discovering How the Brain Works Through Computation - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.columbia.edu/press-releases/discovering-how-brain-works-through-computation <comment><USER2> Yesterday I watched a fascinating talk The Ghost in the Machine by AI researcher Josha Bach. He claims that computational math is enough to support the conscious thought, both in living things and simulated environments. The whole talk is densely packed with ideas and concepts (for example nice illustration of concepts behind back-propagation NNs at 19:20). Here [0] he lays out his current model for mind. I have no idea what to make of it, but the whole talk is incredibly lucid and contains zero fluff or BS (unlike linked article).

[0] [https://youtu.be/e3K5UxWRRuY?t=1702](https://youtu.be/e3K5UxWRRuY?t=1702)

</comment><comment><USER3> "For me, understanding the brain has always been a computational problem," says Papadimitriou, who became fascinated by the brain five years ago. "Because if it isn't, I don't know where to start."

Interesting - we do tend to approach problem sets via the lens that is readily available to us.

Slightly unrelated but I've always been fascinated by how useful it is to overlay two areas of interest and the insights that present themselves when you focus at the intersection. What's more it seems to work with disparate ideas as well as it does with adjacent ideas. I'm convinced it's a useful way to ideate/think of ideas for startups/businesses.

<comment><USER4> > we do tend to approach problem sets via the lens that is readily available > to us.

Is it possible to do otherwise? We use the most appropriate tool for a job, the one we're most familiar with. I can't see an alternative. Could be being short-sighted though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sometimes you look at the problem and realize that, first, you'll need to build new tools to analyze it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Quite interesting. Maass (senior author) has done some pioneering work on Liquid State Machines and Echo state networks (LSTMs/RNNs).

In this paper they define a formal system intended to model the computations underlying cognitive functions that is done via an "assembly", a set of excitatory neurons all belonging to the same brain area, and capable of near- simultaneous firing.

The main assumption in their model that I do not agree with is that of random synaptic wiring of the circuits. There is considerable research that argues that synaptic connectivity is not random but specific in several ways [0,1].

[0] Sporns O. (2011). The non-random brain: efficiency, economy, and complex dynamics. Front. Comput. Neurosci. 5:5 10.3389/fncom.2011.00005

[1] Motta et al. (2019) [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6469/eaay3134'](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6469/eaay3134')

</comment><comment><USER6> Paper: [https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2020/06/08/200189311...](https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2020/06/08/2001893117.full.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER7> > "So, we have finally articulated our theory about the nature of the "logic" > sought by Axel, and its supporting evidence," says Papadimitriou, who is > also a member of the Data Science Institute. "Now comes the hard part, will > neuroscientists take our theory seriously and try to find evidence that > something like it takes place in the brain, or that it does not?"

So don't get too excited yet.

<comment><USER8> Seems like instead of jumping to neuroscience and fMRI, they should implement the model and see whether it actually works on practical problems. All they have is a simulation which they say "fits the data," which I assume is neuroscience data.

Demonstrate a breakthrough in machine intelligence and neuroscientists will probably get interested.

<comment><USER9> Computational modelling is already something that's fairly widespread for trying to understand the brain. The only novel thing here might be how his model is designed.

<comment><USER8> Well yes, but it still seems relevant to just ask _does this work?_ If you implement it, does it produce some kind of intelligent behavior? If not then you've disproven the hypothesis, and if so then it might have practical benefit.

<comment><USER9> I mean, the whole point of implementing this would be to see what insights can be gained.

From the study:

> The basic operations of the Assembly Calculus as presented here—projection, > association, reciprocal projection, and merge—correspond to neural > population events which 1) are plausible, in the sense that they can be > reproduced in simulations and predicted by mathematical analysis, and 2) > provide parsimonious explanations of experimental results (for the merge and > reciprocal project operations, see the discussion of language below)

This was an initial study, and I'm sure they're going to continue putting out papers exploring the model and how it compares with experimental data. It's not like everybody's going to see this one study and say "He's right! We should all use this model!" It's more that as more evidence is provided, the model becomes more relevant and it might be considered by others to be useful.

<comment><USER8> By "experimental data" do you mean something like "this had a pattern of neural activity that looks like what we've observed in biology," or do you mean "we tried driving a self-driving car with this method and it worked really well." The latter is more what I'm talking about, whether it's robotics, image classification, game playing, etc.

<comment><USER9> You do realize you can't just jump straight into "Let's see if this thing can drive a car", right? There's years of research and development that's going to happen before anything like that. And it's not like they're designing this to get a car-driving AI. They're trying to find an accurate model of the brain. Maybe, if results are promising, this can be turned into something like that in 10-20 years, but I wouldn't count on it. Maybe sooner if it turns out to be particularly promising. Chances are this is going to radically evolve in different directions. They might hit dead-ends. They might make valuable insights about how some parts of the brain work, but can't generalize it or go from there to a general problem solving intelligence. There are all manner of problems, and I don't think you realize how complex the brain actually is when you're starting from first principles like this. They're at the level of simulating what individual neuron clusters do. That's like looking at electrons interacting and expecting to build a bridge by manipulating them individually.

<comment><USER8> I do realize, but I'm not saying let's try to jump right into general intelligence. Deep neural networks do all sorts of reasonably smart things right now, including all the things I mentioned. Seems to me we are at a point where we can test neural models to see whether they actually perform functions useful to an organism.

<comment><USER9> The first neural networks appeared in the 50s (with significant limitations), and proper research into them and appropriate funding first started in the 80s. NN's didn't become a thing overnight, and neither will this. I'm not sure why you're expecting this thing to be proven _now_. Science is slow. It takes time to build evidence and "prove" things and figure out how useful a model is.

<comment><USER8> Perceptrons were applied to image recognition tasks right from the beginning: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptron#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptron#History)

Applying them to real tasks revealed their capabilities and limitations, and when computers got better people took it from there.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


In few years renewable power may become a better economic option - <AUTHOR> https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/01/renewables-will-be-equal-or-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-by-2020-according-to-research <comment><USER2> They already are less expensive in areas that have the specific resource. For example, in windy parts of the world, wind is the least expensive. In sunny parts, solar is the least expensive. This is without subsidies.

With specific subsidies, the area where they are less expensive is even larger.

Of course, fossil fuels receive considerable direct and indirect subsidies, further complicating answering the question "what's least cost?"

<comment><USER3> _Of course, fossil fuels receive considerable direct and indirect subsidies_

This is the received wisdom of the clean energy movement, but every report I've read says otherwise. Oil and gas receive little if no operational subsidies in most countries and in fact are heavily taxed at every stage of exploitation. Even government investments in oil and gas typically return far better than the risk-free rate, which is remarkable for government.

Of course there are some terrible externalities that we don't price in...

<comment><USER4> I googled coal subsidy and this is the first result.

There's a lot of tax credits and subsidies. "Clean coal" for instance, or 3.4 billion for carbon sequestration (did that get past the lab yet?)

[https://www.taxpayer.net/energy-natural-resources/coal-a- lon...](https://www.taxpayer.net/energy-natural-resources/coal-a-long-history- of-subsidies/)

<comment><USER5> So even combining every possible subsidy given to the coal industry since 1950 they still only get a total of $72 billion of subsidies in present value. Given that coal's current contribution to GDP is ~$50 billion and the coal industry was larger in the past its pretty fair that the subsidies are completely insignificant and probably don't exceed 1% of the industry's economic value.

So subsidies for coal are incredibly small.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That'd be great but the word "storage" does not appear in this article. For wind/solar to truly be cheaper than fossil, the cost of storing enough energy to get through a few windless nights has to be included.

Backing up by natural gas doesn't count; natural gas is a fossil fuel and if you take methane into account it might even be worse than coal.

Hydro and geothermal don't need storage but they're also geographically limited. We can't expand them arbitrarily the way we could expand wind/solar. This also means using hydro to store energy from wind/solar can only go so far.

None of this matters in the near term, since we can certainly expand wind/solar a lot before we run into problems. But over the next several decades we need to replace fossil entirely.

<comment><USER7> _> natural gas is a fossil fuel and if you take methane into account it might even be worse than coal_

Huh? Natural gas only produces about half the CO2 per unit of energy that coal does.

<comment><USER8> The point is that natural gas (also known as methane) can leak out into the environment during production and distribution, and methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, 30X as bad per mass.

So if burning methane only produces half the CO2 per unit of energy, but just 2% of it leaks into the atmosphere at any point in the production/distribution pipeline, then it's actually worse.

<comment><USER9> Methane has a relatively short half-life in the atmosphere, only 8.6 years, which means that over the long term it's not that potent a GHG versus long- lived CO2 (about 100 years, but it's complicated). The radiative forcing alone doesn't tell the whole story.

<comment><USER6> Yes but it's not only direct forcing over the long term that matters. Push the planet hard enough in the short term, and we'll kick off positive feedbacks that take things several degrees further with no more help from us. The exact threshold is unknown but it's thought to be about two degrees C over preindustrial.

<comment><USER7> _> Push the planet hard enough in the short term, and we'll kick off positive feedbacks_

Which have never actually been observed. The whole "positive feedbacks" thing is based on computer models which have been falsified by the actual data.

<comment><USER6> No, it's based on extensive geological evidence. See Hansen's book for details.

Besides that, it's based on the fact that we're already seeing things like polar ice melt and emissions from permafrost.

<comment><USER7> _> No, it's based on extensive geological evidence._

We don't have accurate enough geological evidence to support the kinds of "positive feedback" claims that are being made. Hansen's book lays out a partisan case.

 _> we're already seeing things like polar ice melt and emissions from permafrost._

What were these things doing a thousand years ago? Five thousand years ago? Ten thousand years ago? We don't know. And that means we don't have the data to put what we're currently seeing in proper perspective. And nobody is claiming that we do: as I said, the claims of possible disaster based on positive feedback are based on models, not data. And the models have been falsified by the data.

<comment><USER6> I take it you've read his book then? Could you point out specifically what's wrong with his evidence?

It seemed pretty convincing to me, since there were multiple independent lines of evidence that all pointed to the same conclusion.

<comment><USER7> _> I take it you've read his book then?_

No, I've read scientific papers on the topic, his and others. I don't trust what is said in books on science for lay people; I've caught too many scientists misrepresenting the science when they write for lay people, because they know they can get away with it (and not just in climate science--I've caught physicists doing it about general relativity and basic QM, which are a lot more solidly nailed down by evidence and controlled experiments than climate science is).

<comment><USER6> Ok. Tell me something he gets wrong, and why it's wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I hope there is further work on renewable aviation fuels, as vehicle fuels in general will be a big source of demand for fossil energy extraction for quite a while, and especially for aviation applications.

"Renewable energy in transport" report by IEA (.PDF)

[https://www.iea.org/media/training/presentations/Day_2_Renew...](https://www.iea.org/media/training/presentations/Day_2_Renewables_5_Transport.pdf)

<comment><USER11> Ground transportation is a much larger component than aviation and has known solutions. If we got to 80-100% electric cars and trucks before converting one turbofan to <unknown alternative> it would still be major progress.

And in the worst case there are always biofuels or synthetic non-fossil liquid fuels, which are a lot more carbon neutral after you convert the energy that goes into their production away from fossil sources.

<comment><USER12> Right, now that ground transportation is close to being solved, we need to get creative with air travel. It's about 2% of global emissions and it's a much harder problem.

<comment><USER13> Hybrid electric jet engines are being developed, and have real potential to improve fuel economy. A substantial improvement in fuel economy could mean carrying less fuel, which in turn improves fuel economy.

But if you're talking about plug-in electric, the challenge is presumably battery weight versus fuel weight.

<comment><USER12> Yes, they'll still probably have to carry liquid fuel because nothing else has the energy density required. But maybe we can make this fuel from a carbon- neutral source instead of oil pumped out of the ground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _" The stone age did not end for a lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil."_ S. Yamani

<comment><USER15> The Energy Information Administration estimates that the US has 234*10^9 barrels of oil in reserves (unproven but technically recoverable). At today's rate of production that's about 64 years. S. Yamani's quote sounds very likely to come true.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves_in_the_United_Sta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER9> The volume of "technically recoverable" oil increases with price though, since a higher cost per bbl can justify more expensive extraction. Somewhere around $70-$100 bbl, shale oil becomes economical to extract, and the US and Canada have trillions of barrels worth of the stuff.

We're never going to run out of oil in the sense that oil will become unavailable, not in 64 years, and not in 640 years. Oil _will_ become more expensive, and eventually, price increases will diminish and eventually stop the use of oil as an energy source. It'll always be available for use as an industrial feedstock and for use in highly specialized situations.

<comment><USER16> The issue is 200+$ a barrel oil is mostly useless.

The world runs on _cheap_ oil, not just oil. And the supply of cheap oil is finite.

<comment><USER9> I don't agree that $200/bbl oil would be useless: there's plenty of room at that price point for aviation and industrial chemistry. But it doesn't matter, because there are trillions of barrels of unconventional oil available at between $80-$100/bbl. That's expensive, but not infeasibly so. Short-lived supply shocks notwithstanding, there's no reason oil should rise above that price for a good long time.

<comment><USER17> What hopefully will happen is that electricity from non-fossil fuels will become cheap enough and technology will become advanced enough that humans can create hydrocarbons from the air and water (CO2 and H2O) at a price that keeps those trillions of barrels in the ground. Or at least lets us stop burning them.

<comment><USER9> Sure. The simultaneous trends toward cheaper low-emission sources and more expensive fossil fuels will force a switch at some point. We'll also need negative emissions (i.e., atmospheric carbon removal) at some point too.

Now, will it be more expensive to keep drilling and remove the emissions than it will be to cook long-chain hydrocarbons? It's not clear. And it doesn't really matter, since either way you can hit a carbon target.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Then we can only hope people will continue to be greedy, and global warming should go extinct!

</comment><comment><USER19> Great if true, but color me skeptical.

Almost anytime there is a story like this, the fine print is that renewables are only "cheaper" because of government subsidies. Is that the case here?

Also, cheaper in some situations (e.g. hydro power for purchasers right next to a dam) does _not_ mean cheaper when scaled to a whole country. Is that the case here?

<comment><USER2> Globally, conventional fossil fuels receive greater subsidies (nominally, not $/MWh) than renewable power. Estimated to be up to $6 trillion when considering indirect subsidies [1] and $260 billion when only considering direct cash subsidies [2].

[1] [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X1...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X16304867) [2] [https://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2017/december/commentary-f...](https://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2017/december/commentary- fossil-fuel-consumption-subsidies-are-down-but-not-out.html)

<comment><USER20> Coal alone kills a million people a year worldwide. If we take the EPA's value of a statistical life of about $10 million, that's effectively $10 trillion in subsidies just for coal deaths.

We don't typically consider being allowed to pollute to be a subsidy, but we really should.

<comment><USER21> $10 million per person fails the sniff test

Global GDP per capita: $17,300 Global life expectancy: 72 72 * 17300 = $1,245,600 upper bound

<comment><USER20> Sure, that's the "if." Although even the monetary value of a life is probably more than just the economic contribution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That's a wonderful news but damn, that image by IRENA Renewable Cost Database it's awful.

<comment><USER23> My thoughts exactly. A repeating axis that goes "2010-2017-2010-2017"? It would be difficult to make it less intuitive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Unfortunately renewable energy economics has to fight against the way that human minds perform time discounting. A wind energy product may be more economically efficient over its lifetime, but a coal-firing plant costs less today, even if fuel costs will add up over time. So these encouraging numbers may not obviate the case for government action in encouraging the uptake of renewable energy.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is, on balance, great news. However, when it happens, nations like Saudi Arabia and Russia (that depend on oil revenue) will encounter a cataclysmic change in their situation. Are we actually ready for a world in which Saudi Arabia and Russia have cratering economies? It could get ugly.

<comment><USER25> I agree with this. But on the contrary, nations like Saudi could also go with the trend and opt in to using renewable energy such as solar as same goes to Russia. One must adapt to changes in order to allow balance. But yes, as we know, it will come with risk, much as been said, fossil fuel is also one of the things that deteriorate our environment and leave a mark. They either can have less the usage of fossil fuel or reserve it as for larger market such as aviation fuels or with in a large scale of industries and reduce as day to day usage basis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Subsidized renewables or at full cost?

<comment><USER27> Full cost. The investment firm Lazard puts out an annual report on the LCOE (levelized cost of electricity, e.g. subsidies removed), and this past year wind was cheaper than natural gas[1].

[1]: [https://www.lazard.com/media/450337/lazard-levelized-cost- of...](https://www.lazard.com/media/450337/lazard-levelized-cost-of-energy- version-110.pdf)

<comment><USER5> That is absolute nonsense. It excludes intermittency and integration costs. Just from skimming it almost every variable chosen is favorable to renewables and the worst possible case for fossil fuels.

The notion that solar is cheaper than coal as a peak power source in a developing nation like india with significantly higher costs of capital is laughable.

<comment><USER27> Hmmm, I feel like your sources of information are years out of date. Care to elaborate on your sources?

First, intermittency and integration costs are a huge straw man because they aren't a problem until you get well over 50% penetration of non-dispatchable generation (e.g. renewables)[1]. For the first 50% of the transition, solar or wind by themselves are way way cheaper[2], and by the time batteries are needed at scale, they will be cheap enough to make dispatchable renewables cost competitive[3].

Second, India is currently building way more solar than coal[4]. Also, they are expecting solar + storage to be cheaper than coal within 8 years[5]. So your assertions about India are way out of date.

I'm a bit worried why you still believe the renewable intermittency is a problem or why coal is cheaper. Your "laughable" confidence is likely to lead to you completely missing out on the profits from deploying renewables and storage. Oh well, I guess more money for me then.

[1]: [https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~smithv/docs/renewables_sgc_2013.p...](https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~smithv/docs/renewables_sgc_2013.pdf)

[2]: [https://about.bnef.com/blog/tumbling-costs-wind-solar- batter...](https://about.bnef.com/blog/tumbling-costs-wind-solar-batteries- squeezing-fossil-fuels/)

[3]: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-09/how- the-w...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-09/how-the-world-s- biggest-ev-market-delivered-a-lithium-superpower)

[4]: [https://cleantechnica.com/2018/08/13/62-of-capacity-added- in...](https://cleantechnica.com/2018/08/13/62-of-capacity-added- in-q2-2018-in-india-came-from-solar/)

[5]: [http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/02/23/coal-india- repor...](http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/02/23/coal-india-report-finds- renewables-will-substantially-decrease-coal-demand/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Well, that's great, surprising news.

</comment><comment><USER29> Nuclear is a better economic option already.

</comment><comment><USER30> The only thing that's going to fix global warming is making carbon based fuel prohibitively expensive through some kind of carbon tax.

Energy demand is fairly elastic and if energy is free or cheap, people will just use more of it, leaving us just where we started. See how bitcoin miners are abusing subsidized renewable energy for example.

<comment><USER9> I don't think we should worry about the total quantity of energy consumed. The wonderful thing about the market is that it finds its own level: once externalities are properly Incorporated into prices, the quantity produced and consumed (which must be idential at equilibrium) will settle at a level that priorities competing concerns appropriately. Who's to say that this equilibrium level is somehow wrong?

And what's wrong with miners using cheap electricity? The argument seems to go something like "that subsidy is meant for productive activity and Bitcoin mining isn't productive". Who's to say it isn't productive? The market things it is. What is the market getting wrong? What externality is it not incorporating?

<comment><USER30> It doesn't matter net if some people switch from fossil fuels to renewables, and then somebody else starts using the cheaper fossil fuels for some marginal economic activity that's now feasible with lower fuel costs.</comment></comment></comment>


Liveblog Data: Apple vs. Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/10/live-blog-data-apple-vs-microsoft/

<comment><USER2> those numbers are very impressive, though I wonder how it would compare to major announcements in other industries.

For gear-heads, I suspect the announcement of a new Ferrari draws many times more than the announcement of a new Ford. Even if the Ford is as capable or more so than the Ferrari.</comment>


Setting Up Sidekiq with Cron Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://ruthienachmany.github.io/blog/2013/08/10/sidekiq-redis-cron-jobs/

<comment><USER2> I wrote Gaspar for this purpose. It's basically a wrapper around rufus with some process control and redis locks per job so that you can run a schedule in any number of processes and it'll "just work". The nice thing about this setup is that it doesn't require booting the whole environment for each job, which means that frequent jobs are easy.

[https://github.com/mashable/gaspar](https://github.com/mashable/gaspar)</comment>