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Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#641

Post by stillblue »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #398

I'm a musician. Long term. 43 years old, been playing forever. Don't care if I get any success at it. Not a hobby. Makes money sometimes. I play professionally. For money. On stage. If you play for your entire life, you can get really good at a ton of things. I played pedal steel at a rehearsal for my country band tonight. I played piano at a rehearsal for my hot club jazz band on Monday. I played upright bass at a r…

I'm 31 and just started learning music a year ago. Ever since I started this is probably the only thing I actually enjoy doing everyday. Is it possible to get to a level of proficiency at this point in life where you get to play good enough you can start getting paid for it?

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#642

Post by maxencecornet »

joegibbs wrote: post #143

I've been making a proper survival strategy game. I made a few games before but they were only about a week's worth of work each, so I don't count them as "proper". This time I wanted to make a full-on project with professionally-done models, art, music etc. It's a reverse of the 4X formula - rather than starting as a small country and becoming a vast empire over the course of the game you start off heading a vast em…

What is the tech stack behind a strategy game like this ?

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#643

Post by bambax »

olek wrote: post #636
bambax wrote: post #624

I wrote a book about a historical figure, a (very) bad guy during WWII in France. The main character did actually exist but the book is a work of fiction, it's a first-person narrative. Self-published on Amazon this year. It was one of the five finalists of the French Amazon Storyteller contest. It currently has a rating of 4.3 with 90 reviews. It makes very little money but it's exciting to have people read your boo…

Can you share the link? Would love to find out more :-)

Sure, here it is: https://www.amazon.fr/dp/295155933X/

(It's in French though ;-)

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#645

Post by megapolitics »

sgb_QQ wrote: post #516

https://savingtool.co.uk It's specific to a UK audience but I made a tool that, at least in my mind, is better than the existing tax calculators for UK workers, and goes a bit further with letting the user forecast potential wealth building, using a very popular approach (index funds using ISA wrappers).

This looks very useful, I'm looking forward to playing around with it. Do you have any plans to add support for Plan 4 (Scottish) student loan repayments?

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#646

Post by byecancer21 »

byecancer21 wrote: post #583
bladegash wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you believe it is your position to give any official ultimatums just to meet your own perceived sense of Justice? The way your are speaking about this is to right your own feelings of injustice, not anyone else’s, yet you do it under the auspices of doing what’s best for everyone else. Do they get a say in this as well?

You interpret this as an ultimatum, I see offering them a way out as being nice. At the same time one has to assert seeing through obvious b-s. What is appropriate gets decided by lawmakers not judges. Once judges willfully violate the code they have stepped outside their assigned role. This quickly became more of a political problem than a legal one, and what is right is ultimately for voters to decide. Whether I am…

To clarify, the "way out" was simply a new filing for an interim order based on the novel fact that a potentially lethal complication had just occurred in connection with the case. I substantiated this with medical and research evidence.

This was a very simple thing for her to grant, and in my view she was required to do so based on constitutional principles.

I would more likely than not have let the previous incident slide. Why she did not take this opportunity I have no idea.

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#648

Post by didizaja »

I made a Firefox web extension [0] that makes it relatively easy to extract and download references from Wikipedia pages. I call it Wikiref.

I made it to scratch my own itch mostly, as I’d often visit Wikipedia pages and find myself wanting to save multiple references (text and links included), but didn’t want to manually copy + paste all the little details.

EDIT: I think at one point, when I was close to releasing the initial version, I really _did_ care about whether or not it “succeeded” (as judged by how many people used it), and I tried to write the code/docs to make the project as easy to use as possible. But then I realized it’s a bit niche, and I was just happy with the fact I made it. There are still multiple improvements to make, but I’m currently focused on a different project.

[0]: https://github.com/zaataylor/wikiref

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#649

Post by tomtomtomtomtom »

I built tomsplanner.com in 2007/2008 without really knowing if there was a need for it. It was just something I would have liked to have in my project manager days.

My wife thought it was an excellent idea. I wasn't convinced. But I really liked the challenge of building it. It took me two and a half years and I reasoned that if it would fail as a business at least I would have had some really fun years. I supported the thing by occasionally doing some freelance work and living frugally.

After launching it in 2009, it turned out lots of people liked it. Now 14 years later, it's still a very viable business.

So to all you stubborn and freewheeling people out there, go get them! It's great!

Today, in a way, my motivation is still the same. I should focus all my attention on marketing, SEO, and promotion. That's where more growth, money, and 'success' are to be found, but I just want go over the top with the quality of product and customer support. Financially probably not the wisest course but "I (still) don't care".

Re: Ask HN: What is your “I don't care if this succeeds” project?

#650

Post by arrow7000 »

atemerev wrote: post #647

I am building a computational simulation of a nuclear weapon explosion. I learned _a lot_ since I started, and the success here is somewhat ill-defined, so I am enjoying the process.

Don't you need a supercomputer to do this with any accuracy?
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