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Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy?

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471–480 of 587 posts

Re: Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy?

#471
https://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti-textboo...

Stopped making money for me a long time ago. I don't have a computer to update the tutorial sadly, since my macbook crashed, screen flickering after 1.5yrs. But I love the project.

I also have a youtube channel which gives me sheer joy.

Re: Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy?

#472

I like to create small tools that are optimized for me and my families use case. For example we used Google Keep for shopping lists, but I found it too bloaty and slow. So I created bös.se (it got SSR and websockets, wohooo!) http://xn--bs-fka.se/test-note It's fun to just care about your own needs when developing. For me it becomes work when I get feature requests that I don't like myself, but I implement them to ap…

Do you really use those 2700 lines of CSS code? Just asking, as I usually trim all the extra code, and use the one I actually need, in all my single page apps.

Ain't nobody got time for that!

Do you have time to share any of your experience with the tools / process that enables you to get this done in a reasonable timeframe? I'm specifcally interested in how these have changed over time - how have changes to tools / process helped get this done faster?

Re: Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy?

#473
post #283

I'm hoarding profile data diffs from a well known social network. Been crawling every single user for the past 2 years and saving the changes. Had to stop doing it last month, after storage costs became too much.

Can you share any of the techniques you use to avoid being blocked for scraping?

Interesting to hear that storage was too expensive. I'm sure you could find personal sponsors here who would help with funding in exchange for access to the data - even with a 'no commercial use' type of restriction!

Re: Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy?

#474
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In pastery's FAQ it says > Everything goes over an encrypted TLS connection, so nobody other than the intended recipient can see what you're pasting. It should say "nobody other than the intended recipient and the developers of this website".

I have changed the wording to be more accurate, thanks!

Not sure if that would be useful but you could use similar approach to recently posted https://send.firefox.com/ that encrypts content before sending it to server using key that is in # param and is never send to server by browser.

Re: Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy?

#476
Been working on https://www.findyourtennis.com since 2011. Amateur tennis league/tournament management. 3 leagues have been using it recurrently for 3 years here in Montreal. The managers, volunteers, save dozens of hours every season.

Started off as a 'find a tennis partner' forum however getting traction was difficult. Chicken and egg problem. Slowly migrating to solving problems of league and tournament management. Will drop the forum one day. Long transition to do part time.

Now working on a mobile version with cordova. Testing it on the league I am managing. Saves us a lot of time since it automates lots of tasks and avoids the use of Excel.

I don't expect to make money. Market is small and problem is tough to solve. UX intensive. However fun to do on spare time.

My objective is to launch on the app store in 2018. Then I hope lots of leagues around tue world will use to simplify their lives.

Re: Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy?

#477

Twicsy (Twitter picture search) still gets around 1.5 million visitors per month, but nets no money. But I wouldn't call it sheer joy though, maybe sheer stubbornness? http://twicsy.com

Looks cool though! ;-) What are the costs associated with that if you don't mind me asking?

Servers are about $1200 per month. (I have about 12tb of SSD on 5 servers). Then there are some misc costs (business costs) that are maybe $200/month.

Re: Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy?

#478

I run/develop/manage a private MMOARPG game server for a dead game called Hellgate: London that we call London 2038. You can see more about it here http://london2038.com Not only do I not make money on the project, it actually costs me money! :) I have seemingly undying motivation to work on it, knock out bugs, release patches, catch cheaters, etc. The community being so active and excited helps keep me going. I prob…

That was an awesome game! Great work maintaining this

Re: Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy?

#479
Film nerd, want to trace inspiration between different works. Some find it useful, but I haven't bothered monetizing it in any way.

Currently reworking the scoring algorithm, will probably replace the awful UI at some point too.

http://www.cinetrii.com

Re: Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy?

#480
post #382

I just saw this thread, and honestly it is probably too late to get noticed by many, but I'm attempting to 'unsuck the web' with my project[0] by pinning "sticky" website elements where they belong - i.e. the website header shouldn't steal your screen real estate and scroll down the page with you. My project/uBO filter list removes the "annoying" elements noted above as well as other "features" of websites (e.g. soci…

This is great. I wonder though, how much could you achieve just by creating 1 blanket rule: change every instance on a page of "position: fixed" to "position: absolute" - layout and nav should be more or less the same, across the board, but nothing will follow you down the page! Kryptonite would be sticky footers , but if you're on a site that uses those you should just close the tab anyway. :)

This could mess up a lot of modals pretty badly.
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