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Ask HN: Ways to generate income when you're at home without pay?

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Re: Ask HN: Ways to generate income when you're at home without pay?

#281

Post by droptablemain »

soared wrote: post #142
xeromal wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard times can make hard people. You don't know what someone is capable of until they're backed against a wall. I was a computer repair man until my parent's divorce and the 2008 market collapse which forced me into a CS degree.

Computer repair -> computer science. Call center -> building machines from scratch based on a medium post. Sure it’s possible but I don’t think the suggestion really makes sense. You can be blind to the fact that hn is in the 1% of intellect/ability, but it should be obvious that effectively no one can honestly take that suggestion. Unemployed, low on cash, and then in a low-skill industry it doesn’t make sense to ri…

I'm pretty sure the people down-voting you to Hell don't know a single working-class person working a dead-end job for peanuts.

Re: Ask HN: Ways to generate income when you're at home without pay?

#282

Post by econcon »

nineteen999 wrote: post #274
quickthrower2 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2 weeks time: There is a shortage of Extruders because of the people making 3D printing filament at home. So I've been creating Extruders and selling them. :-)

You're all good until somebody starts selling a pre-packaged Extruder factory.

There are companies who sell packaged extruder:

https://www.noztek.com/product/noztek-xcalibur/

The 13k listed machine produces 2kg per hour.

Extruder are heavy and low demand item, even cost of shipping will double the price of the machine which I've made.

Re: Ask HN: Ways to generate income when you're at home without pay?

#283

Post by ciceryadam »

cosmodisk wrote: post #257
fred_is_fred wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're surely right. In a world with 20% unemployment you'd probably get a job in 27 seconds, and if you don't you are just lazy right!!?? Was your reply sarcasm?

There was no sarcasm. All I meant was that sometimes knocking on a few doors could yield better results than just sending CVs around. I did quickly find a job 10 years ago but it doesn't mean that in current situation it'd be the same.

While a good idea in general, I don't know how many doors would open up right now after knocking. Coronacrisis and social distancing make this approach harder than ever, most offices are working remotely, and most service industry places are closed.

Re: Ask HN: Ways to generate income when you're at home without pay?

#284

Post by itsmeamario »

terrycody wrote: post #255

hey some options for your friend: 1)if he has hardcore skills like programming, or any techy-related, try upwork.com and find a niche for himself, but a new comer will have a difficult time to get sales first, you need start with a very low price rate, get some orders then raise your hourly rate. 2)he can also choose Fiverr.com, one can provide many services there, typically $5 per case, small cash. 3)start a youtube…

I tried upwork 4 different times with no luck. It doesn't matter how low I offered my job for or how many offers I sent. It's almost impossible to get started there as a developer.

Re: Ask HN: Ways to generate income when you're at home without pay?

#285

Post by elcritch »

nitrogen wrote: post #228
AxiomaticSpace wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of a laser gauge, you could try using a camera hooked up with some edge detection software and use that to estimate the width. It probably wouldn't be as accurate, but it would definitely be cheaper.

You'd be looking at very subtle variations in the color of single pixels, so you might as well just use a single optical sensor and light source into a single high res adc, using intensity to measure thickness. At some point dust in the air will be a limiting factor.

For high accuracy, the brightness is really more the limiting factor, as most of the edge finding/binarization algorithms use a intensity factor for cutoff. I used camera measurement for small pieces of tissue samples in biomechanical measurement (~1mm x 5mm). We had a small window in our lab, and cloudy days would distort measurements. I solved it mostly by going to a SLDR camera from a handheld and a backdrop with a type of luminance chart. Much more accurate than calipers for soft squishy (and wet) samples. See [1] Figure 2E (pg 22), you can average out small variations pretty readily.

1: https://pdf.sciencedirectassets.com/274145/1-s2.0-S175161611...

Though your idea of a light source and adc could work well if you put it in a darkened enclosure. It’d probably require a bit more hardware design or tuning but the software / microcontroller side would b simpler. A RPi PiCam with a macro lens would work well too, but the reverse with less hardware tweaking and more software.

Re: Ask HN: Ways to generate income when you're at home without pay?

#286

Post by RhysU »

gumby wrote: post #254
RhysU wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the implication and why is it socially corrosive?

The implication is that one's worth comes from one's job, with the corollary that one's role in society is that of "worker" and "consumer", or if not simply just "consumer" then worthless. It is socially corrosive because it is removes any concept of social relationship from the calculus of social worth. And you see this in the discussion of "opening up the economy" as though that is the #1 parameter of existence. Ce…

> It is socially corrosive because it is removes any concept of social relationship from the calculus of social worth.

I don't see how that follows from "What do you do?" because one could answer:

A) I volunteer at... B) I take care of... C) I love... D) etc.

Re: Ask HN: Ways to generate income when you're at home without pay?

#288

Post by rmoriz »

MiroF wrote: post #86
rmoriz wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? According to the videos, they outperform delivery drivers bound to cars. Sure, with a car you can easily work in rain, cold, long distance deliveries. But usually it does not pay out to commit full time or to a specific, expensive vehicle. If one does plan to deliver (bulky) non time-critical items , payment drops significantly (almost no tips, fixed fee for each parcel).

Are most uber eats drivers buying cars in order to drive uber? That was not my understanding.

They wear it down and they need to "make it up on volume" (they don't).

As I wrote earlier, payment is not linear. It depends on the region, day and time. One can make a lot of money in 1-2 hours on some evening, but also sit idle for another 8 hrs in a parked car waiting for another order. (to my knowledge, one has to be booked into the uber eats app all the time and broadcasting the current location. So one is encouraged to still hunt/stay next to interesting restaurants, usually big chain stores like Mc Donalds, Starbucks. IMHO it's not a plausible add-on business for regular Uber/taxi drivers or other gig economy jobs like harvesting electric scooters)

Let's say one can make 40$ in 1 hour but 50$ in 9 hours.

The one profitable hour is probably within the evening rush hour, lot of traffic, down-town, short distances. 0 parking lots.

The other 8 hours are past midnight, in the morning or between noon and evening. Longer distances (=>less drivers, less orders => bigger coverage => no surge pricing).

Overhead costs stay the same.

Re: Ask HN: Ways to generate income when you're at home without pay?

#289

Post by tlapinsk »

minhazm423 wrote: post #268
tlapinsk wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. That's all I've been doing while furloughed and it's actually given me a lot of time to dive deep into things I didn't previously have the time for (AWS CSA Associate studying via Linux Academy and a Coursera Product Management course). As long as your basic necessities are covered (food, shelter, etc.), this is a great way to go.

Whats your current career and how do you expect the cert and the coursera course to help?

Currently a PM (although furloughed unfortunately), so the Coursera course has helped me have greater breadth/understanding and so many more tools to bring back to the office if/when business picks up. If my role is cut, I'll jump into the PM job search more actively and have been preparing for that possibility too.

In my previous role I was a Software Engineer, and made some great contacts that have some DevOps consulting opportunities. I'd like to take on some of this work and the AWS CSA Associate cert will definitely help. I'm about halfway through Linux Academy training and it has already been invaluable for my overall systems architecture and design thinking.

If you have any other thoughts/advice/questions, happy to chat more! Contact info is in my bio

TLDR: Currently a furloughed PM (Coursera) and have some cloud consulting opportunities (AWS CSA Associate cert)

Re: Ask HN: Ways to generate income when you're at home without pay?

#290

Post by terrycody »

itsmeamario wrote: post #284
terrycody wrote: post #255

hey some options for your friend: 1)if he has hardcore skills like programming, or any techy-related, try upwork.com and find a niche for himself, but a new comer will have a difficult time to get sales first, you need start with a very low price rate, get some orders then raise your hourly rate. 2)he can also choose Fiverr.com, one can provide many services there, typically $5 per case, small cash. 3)start a youtube…

I tried upwork 4 different times with no luck. It doesn't matter how low I offered my job for or how many offers I sent. It's almost impossible to get started there as a developer.

You are right somehow, there are highly severely competitions as this is the best known freelancing platform in the world, but totally worth it, just gradually build your portfolio, you will get sales sooner or later.

There are a lot people make good money on the platform for side cash.

Meanwhile, you can browser producthut, indiehackers, for some quick ideas for your own products, SaaS, websites, etc.

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