
Ask HN: What would you work on, if money was of no concern? - swalsh
I'm sure plenty of you work on projects with no motivation for financial returns, but suppose you could quit your job right now, and work on any project full time.  What would it be?  Why?
======
zdw
I'd go after fixing the software deployment and packaging issue. Actually
getting software on systems is still a PITA.

There's a huge gap between dev and ops here - I'm thinking that building tools
that allows a developer to make an ops ready deployable package as easy as
pushing to source control would be the ideal. Then tools, that work against
source control and can generate packages off any revision/flavor would be
great for both continuous testing and eventual distribution.

We've been stuck in the "download the tarball and compile it" mindset for far
too long.

~~~
wink
Yes, exactly, and most of all - something non-language-specific.

------
MrFoof
>"Suppose you could quit your job right now, and work on any project full
time."

Well, I just did the former though I can't really justify the latter. :)
However, I mostly quit because my work was again taking over my personal life,
so the intention now is the find something a bit more humdrum than yet another
poorly managed startup so I have the energy at the end of the day to work on
the side project.

Similar to Ivan, games. I want to make a Dwarf Fortress-like game for iPad,
with a top-down 2.5D perspective, sprite graphics in a cel-shaded style, and
culled down to the core elements I find to be most entertaining (with
influences from other games I enjoy). It's a game I want to play, but I'm
probably the only person on the planet willing to make it. However I'd also
like to raise Dwarf Fortresses's visibility through my work, and get it some
additional exposure to ensure DF development can continue. I've also a few
concepts for iPhone games that scratch some other itches of mine, but the iPad
game I at least have written a basic rendering and pathfinding engine already.

However I need to line up other work for the time being (should only take a
few weeks). I'm a perfectionist that prefers the "when it's done" release
cycle.

~~~
pradn
I'd like to create a sprite-based 2D rpg, also heavily influenced by Dwarf
Fortress, where terrain, cities, forests, rivers, people, monsters, quests,
dialogue, groups, and stories are all generated procedurally. Push a button
and an interesting game comes out. That'd be cool.

~~~
MrFoof
Well, Dwarf Fortress's scope is... impossible to match. I struggle to think of
any game with even similar complexity. Making a Dwarf Fortress clone would
take many years, however culling down the feature set (and the depth of each
features) to the actual "fun bits" at least makes it _possible_. So it's not
even cutting the breadth of features, but also their depth. No need for
complex climate or economy simulations, etc. No need for insane
descriptiveness of objects (save for artifacts). It's a lot of complexity that
reduces its appeal to a lot of folks (though caters very well to a specific
targeted audience). Dwarf Fortress with a touch interface and cute graphics
won't magically broaden it's appeal -- the core game needs to be streamlined
and no longer be daunting to newcomers.

For example, no massive world at worldgen with full history and legends. Most
people don't want to deal with complexity, they just want an embark site to
start in and get to work on. It takes a lot of time to create those things
that the majority of folks would never notice or appreciate.

There's a lot of satisfaction with gathering/growing food, building basic
shops and homes, defending against threats, creating a trade industry, and a
bit of dungeoneering. However one of Dwarf Fortress's strength is it presents
a lot of competing interests -- where you need to weigh building defenses with
industry, etc. Plus the occasional "oh shit" moment where the game attempts to
stomp on your sand castle.

~~~
gwern
From reading about DF, and especially the NYT profile of DF and the creators,
I get the strong impression that DF is very much being done the hard way, even
ignoring the C++ aspects, and one could cut down the complexity tremendously
with good abstractions and things like DSLs.

(Think the Viewpoints OS strategy - with good enough abstractions and DSLs,
you can do an OS or languages in very small sourcebases; I'm still in awe of
their TCP/IP strategy - parsing the RFC illustrations!
[http://www.moserware.com/2008/04/towards-moores-law-
software...](http://www.moserware.com/2008/04/towards-moores-law-software-
part-3-of-3.html) )

That would be a project worth doing.

------
Morendil
Reminds me a little of Dick Hamming's two questions:

1\. What are the most important problems in your field?

2\. Why aren't you working on them?

(See <http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html>)

~~~
bartonfink
Of course, that hinges on the assumption that "your field" is what you're
currently working in. For most people, it isn't and will never be.

~~~
a_a_r_o_n
A similar question then:

1\. What are the most important problems in your life.

2\. Why aren't you working on them?

------
vjk2005
"What would it be? " \- Open source Federated P2P socnet.

"Why?" \- Software can be as closed as it wants 'cause we can always drop it
for another option anytime we want since the data is still under our control,
but imprisoning our digital lives into these walled gardens put up by "for-
profit, maximize-shareholder-value-at-all-costs, turn-user-into-product,
shove-ads-into-the-user's-stream-and-if-possible-download-a-few-into-their-
throats-as-well" companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google, is a recipe for
disaster as our data, our friends, our relationships, our entire digital
lives, go out of our control in realtime. The situation is really, really bad
and to make things worse, the people currently working on this problem are so
geeky, so out of touch with the common man's mentality that their technically
smart solutions will never ever go mainstream. I'm very passionate about
improving the situation and I desire to make social, at minimum, a federated
system like email so migration can get a little bit easier when better
alternatives pop up down the line or if the user feels the service provider is
starting to get a tad too "evil" for his taste.

------
ivanbernat
Games. More specifically: 3rd person RPG games for the iPad. Games are the
reason I started programming, but somehow ended up being a web developer.

~~~
rkalla
I specifically see "games" a lot from developers and I always wonder if they
have all 5 or 6 talents necessary to pull it off.

I think _most_ developers are interested in the engine development (a known
quantity) but when it comes to the art assets (3D models, animations,
textures, level design) that seems like a giant unknown to me.

I would enjoy working on a rendering engine, but if I had to model characters
and animate them, I think I'd release the game 6 weeks before my 97th
birthday.

If you have talent in all the required spots to do this, I'd agree with the
other poster... so 2 or 3 proof of concepts in the app store to hone your
skills.

    
    
      1. Game 1, simple terrain traversal game. Get used to open-world rendering.
      2. Game 2, character-focused game with stats. Get used to modeling and animation.
      3. <some more stuff>
      4. Game 4, Skyrim for iOS
    

Step #3 is critical; don't skip that :)

~~~
ivanbernat
Between coding OpenGL and jumping into web dev, I spent 2 years professionally
working as a 3D artist. As a kid I worked a lot on video and audio editing,
and as a front-end developer I've mastered Photoshop. I have the talent but
need the money safety net before leaving everything behind and pursuing a
"crazy" idea like this.

~~~
rkalla
Keep in mind I don't know your situation or what idea for a game you have in
your head, but are you coming at this from too much of a black-or-white angle?

No you can't create Skyrim iOS edition in your free time, but you could create
something much much sillier and simpler right?

Get the ball rolling, the creative juices flowing and a few apps in the
respective app stores before quitting and going full-force?

I realize there isn't anything prophetical here; if you are an all-or-nothing
type, then that will just be a much harder decision to make and I am hoping
you get a chance to make it at some point.

------
jacobolus
I’d hire a team of 8–10 sharp developers and write a better Photoshop. There’s
quite a bit of low hanging fruit in terms of (a) improved image processing
that can be done on modern computers that wasn’t possible when Photoshop’s
core features were designed 20 years ago, and (b) much more sophisticated,
flexible, and intuitive user interfaces. The needs of those photographers who
deeply care about bending images to their will have been sadly neglected by
the whole industry for 15 years, with most of the recent improvements (e.g. in
Lightroom, Aperture) coming on the workflow side, for photographers who need
to worry about organizing tens of thousands of photos rather than getting any
particular one just right.

~~~
a_a_r_o_n
"There’s quite a bit of low hanging fruit in terms of (a) improved image
processing that can be done on modern computers that wasn’t possible when
Photoshop’s core features were designed 20 years ago,"

That's an interesting area of thought. What things today are the way they are,
merely because things were the way they were when the canonical instance was
produced?

~~~
jacobolus
> _What things today are the way they are, merely because things were the way
> they were when the canonical instance was produced?_

Almost everything we interact with is completely path-dependent: our
mathematical notation and the organization of our mathematical abstractions,
our weights and measures, our language, our cultural institutions, &c.

Or when you get down to it, everything about our bodies and ecosystems.

~~~
a_a_r_o_n
Yes, agreed. "Connections" was an extremely interesting discussion of exactly
that.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_%28TV_series%29>

However, at some point conditions may emerge that allow you to leave the
trodden path, which I think is where you're looking now. These are not our
dad's computers.

------
mdolon
I've had two non-profit ideas I've wanted to work on for a couple of years now
but haven't had the opportunity to because of financial obligations:

\- Kickstarter for scholarships

\- A cheaper, more effective means of transportation for third world countries
(essentially creating a better bicycle)

~~~
sopooneo
I expect you will have a very hard time outdoing the bicycle.

~~~
ivanbernat
Give it better tires and suspension for dirt roads and you've got a winner!

~~~
sopooneo
Suspension is properly handled by using the right tires. Anything else adds
significantly to weight and cost, and detracts from durability and pedaling
efficiency. Also, the existing infrastructure for parts and manufacture has to
be considered. I agree that it's a great goal, but those machines have been
evolving for a long time.

------
micheljansen
At the risk of sounding cheesy, I would work on something that helps soothe or
at least mitigate the destructive effects humanity has on the planet,
ecosystems etc. This could be anything from renewable energy, self-sustaining
houses, solar powered cars, arcologies, biodegradable or fully recyclable
materials and so on. It's a far cry from the web stuff I am working on now. I
would definitely need to acquire some new skills first (which would not be an
issue if I don't need to worry about money).

Also, education. Things like Khan academy are amazing, but not yet accessible
to everyone in the world. Thinking about that, working on internet access for
all seems like a pretty noble cause too.

~~~
a_a_r_o_n
There is nothing cheesy about your list.

------
specialist
Open government.

Being very political and very active, during my personal time, I'm working on
tools that I need to be more effective.

Sunlight Foundation's stuff is a fair start. There are some other initiatives.

The day job is just for healthcare and rent. It's a huge distraction.

------
bullcity
This idea is sort of wild, but auto-generated scripted media. Auto-machinima?
I think in the perhaps distant future, even if your favorite tv show is no
longer being produced, you will be able to input a script and some source
material and have the result be a decently rendered creation that looks and
feels like the TV show you're used to.

Imagine downloading a script with very detailed stage and setting direction. A
piece of software would exist that would take as input the script and as much
source material as you have (seasons of a tv show or a movie) and create the
setting, model the characters, synthesize the voices and output the finished
product.

I think a lot of the tech to get started with this exists in the fields of
game development, video editing, machinima, voice synthesis, etc. If money
were no issue, I would work on putting it together. It would probably just be
a toy for years before it could generate something watchable, but would be
lots of fun.

------
czcar
Education and Health.

I love electric cars and rocket ships. But my god there are some big ass
problems I want to solve for my future children...

------
Mz
I kind of hate this type question. I feel like I have been working on my top
priority "full time" (every minute of every day) for over a decade and cannot
for the life of me figure out a) how to monetize it when money is a huge
personal obstacle and b) how to effectively spread the word.

I and my oldest son have a dread disease and are basically well at this point
when that is supposed to be impossible. Is the public curious? No. It is
incredulous -- as in "you are a teller of tall tales".

Having said that, I did recently quit my job and moved a thousand miles to
live on the beach and support myself doing freelance work. When the income is
a little less dicey I may try to finally pursue my dream of creating a web
comic or similar entertainment. That might actually pay. I very much need the
money and I am extremely burned out on getting kicked in the teeth for trying
to help people.

------
pinaceae
I'd write a novel, fiction. If I fail midway, I'd write a non-fiction book
about a historic event.

Writing soothes me.

------
DasIch
I'd learn AI, machine learning, natural language processing, compilers,
interpreters, drawing, playing guitar/violin/piano, snowboarding, martial
arts, socializing better and effortless, programming/natural languages and
whatever else I can come up with.

I'd love to come up with answers to questions others have not yet answered and
discover questions no-one else has discovered, yet.

I'd also like to travel the world and get to know as much people as possible.

However I fear that even with unlimited amounts of money the real problem I
will face is time which is why I hate procrastinating and even more the fact
that I can't seem to stop it.

~~~
bmh100
I'm extremely interested in machine learning and AI as well. Could you email
me to discuss more?

------
Wistar
Inexpensive robotic aerial platforms for film-making and the attendant
software that controls the platform as well as the various aspects of post-
production, such as match-moving, involving footage shot from same.

~~~
mixmax
I'm currently leading a small project where something like that would be
extremely handy.

Copenhagen Suborbitals (copenhagensuborbitals.com) is doing five testlaunches
of rockets this summer from the baltic sea. My job is to get live video from
the launch to the Internet. There are several interesting problems in this,
one is getting good footage of the launch and preparations.

The rockets will launch from a specially built self propelled vessel that
sails from Copenhagen to The launch site aacompanied by a navy vessel that
will act as support and crew ship. On launch the navy vessel will be around
one mile from the launch platform, so getting good footage of the launch and
preparations will be difficult.

I've thought that aerial remote robotics with cameras would be a good way of
getting some really great shots. It's not easy though; you're operating over
water, with one mile to the support vessel, and you'll need to steer the
remotes via the Internet since there won't be available space for an operator
on the navy ship (there will be a reasonable good internet connection
available from the support ship)so you need remotes that can be operated over
the Internet and send footage back.

If this sounds interesting, or if you have any ideas let me know, either here
or by email. My mail is in my profile.

~~~
Wistar
I just tried to find a link but have failed but, a few months ago, there was a
video showing a camera-equipped quadcopter that autonomously tracked a water-
skier. Not only was the flight path dictated by the course of the water-skier
but the camera oriented continuously to frame the water-skier using a radio-
beacon on the water-skier. The guy who built the rig had a tutorial site
showing how he built the beacon and receiver.

Beyond that, I haven't much insight into how such a platform would be built
but, figuring that out is what the no-worries-about-money time would be spent.

------
lsiu
I will work on the Global Villege construction set.
[http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Constructio...](http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Construction_Set)

------
tokenadult
This would take more money than just quit-my-job money, but it I had the
money, I would ask around for suggestions (here on HN and in other places) on
how to build a new crowdsourced general encyclopedia that would provide a
competitive nudge to Wikipedia. (I'd probably try to hire away some of the
existing Wikipedia team, depending on what kind of noncompete agreements they
are subject to, and would look to bring in a new kind of staff for overall
direction of the project.) I was an editor in a few earlier workplaces, so I'm
interested in the challenge of how to manage a mostly-volunteer, world-facing
general encyclopedia project. Wikipedia sets an amazingly high standard for a
project that started out so haphazardly, but here on HN and elsewhere I've
seen criticisms of Wikipedia that get me thinking about how to do a similar
project better. Of course, different readers define "better" in different
ways, and the first challenge would be figuring out what intentional
differences from Wikipedia would help a competing project be successful over
the long term. The reason I would do this is to enjoy the result of thousands
of new, well written articles on a variety of subjects, a resource my children
and grandchildren and people all over the world could use for decades to come.
The reason I would ask other people for advice on the project is that it would
be interesting to hear how to improve upon something that is already free.

~~~
neilk
Speaking as someone who worked for the Wikimedia Foundation: _noncompete
agreements?_ That just doesn't exist in our culture, as far as I know. But
your idea seems to overestimate the staff's importance when it comes to
writing the encyclopedia.

The community does all the content and most of the policy decisions, by
themselves. The staff is there for things like ops, fundraising, legal,
bugfixes, research, PR, and projects that require a longer-term vision.

Ian Baker aka Raindrift recently did a cool project to expose how things
_really_ work on Wikipedia. People usually underestimate the process.

<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Raindrift/Workflows>

For example, here's the diagram for Articles:

<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Article_lifecycle.svg>

------
adnam
Something to rival Facebook that puts more control into the hands of users.
The "wordpress"/blogging phenomenon came shortly after low-cost hosting. Now
VPSs are where web hosts were 10 years ago.

~~~
nooneelse
Seems like most people probably wouldn't need more than something like a
TonidoPlug to serve content to people on their friend list and, complementing
that, to pull content from their friends' TonidoPlugs to make a nice looking
news feed. A dirt simple to use, one time $100 box that puts you on the new
social network the users control would be nice.

------
szcukg
Porn...it's got too commercialized and needs some fresh perspective

------
yogsototh
Nice question, some answer are pretty sad though. Particularly the one of
binarymax ("PhD in Computer Science"). Money shouldn't be an issue to learn.

If I have a lot of time (not only money). I would certainly work in Artificial
Intelligence or Artificial Life. I believe this is where I would be the most
efficient in discovering something useful for the rest of the Humanity.

Sadly, even with a PhD in Machine Learning, I lose most of time resolving
trivial issues or making trivial softwares.

------
mef
Technology to enhance democracy through easier organization and participation.

~~~
ulvund
It is possible here in Denmark. There is a very safe and unique ID for
everyone, the kicker is that it costs $0.60 per user/year to utilize.

------
fasteddie31003
An ambitious machine learning project that I was not sure would work out in
the end. I think with a lot of machine learning projects it's the journey of
discovering trends in data which is the most interesting. However, it's only
after you start the project and learn what the actual challenges are that you
know if the solution is even possible, much less accurate.

------
Whitespace
I would continue to do what I already do on the side: teaching my girlfriend
how to do qa/support/product/design/engineering while working on our side
project (dynamic documentation). She gets to learn some marketable skills and
understand what my job is like, and I get to spend more time with her.

------
meanderingleaf
Personally, I would work on creating a school/open location that trains
students to make fun things with code... games, simulations, or anything else
that draws people in. I want it to be a place that is interesting so it may
spark that fire that leads them to a life of programming.

------
traxtech
I would build my own computer. I'm reading 'The Elements of Computing Systems"
and I started the exercices : it's really rewarding. Then I'll build a REAL
computer with a VHDL programmable chip. Then I'll design my own VM, my own
compiler..

------
Morendil
Help the greatest possible number of other people do that exact same thing.

(It's very tempting to reply with more multiple answers, in the form of a
goal-subgoal tree. So for instance nodes in that tree might be "Help people
think more effectively about their life situations", which in turn is
connected to "Help people acquire better critical thinking skills", which,
given my life history, has the greatest leverage when connected with the node
"Help people become smarter about software development". But this kind of tree
is dynamic; as you acquire new skills in the pursuit of intermediate nodes you
often reprioritize nodes of the same level.)

------
mynegation
Probably most interesting Ask HN discussion I have ever seen.

I would work on new algorithms and application of high-performance computing
to genetic sequencing, protein folding and, in general, modeling biological
processes.

------
olalonde
Strong AI has always fascinated me so I'd probably do some research in the
field (would likely take a few years of catching up before I can significantly
contribute to the field though).

------
binarymax
PhD in computer science.

~~~
rkalla
Out of curiosity, why? The prestige (completely legit answer) or are there
topics you want to cover in depth that the PhD program will provide?

If so, which topics do you want to deep-dive on?

~~~
olalonde
My thoughts as well, doing a PhD strikes me as a mean rather than an end.

~~~
bbgm
I did a PhD (not in CS) because I wanted to understand a set of scientific
problems in depth, do the research, understand setting up experiments,
monitoring them, etc. There are other ways, but it takes 2-3 years of semi-
structured work to wrap your head around some of these aspects. At the same
time, it helps to understand what you like/don't like and try out new
methodologies and areas of research.

Not the only way to get there, but a very fun one.

------
dkarl
First, my idealistic and self-indulgent project, and second, the project that
would assure me I was actually providing value to the world.

1\. My self-indulgent dream: an IDE built around text editor integration.
Think Eclipse, but constructed as an exoskeleton that Emacs and Vim could slip
into and become real IDEs.

Of course _my_ priorities would come to the fore. The core would be written in
a concise but statically typed language, plugins could be written in the same
language or in a clean, concise scripting language. It would be trivial to run
code from within the editor. And it would be nice if one day it generalized
into an application framework like Eclipse.

2\. My actually socially productive work: interactive educational software. I
would construct interactive software specialized for very small units of
learning. An app to teach French verb conjugations, an app to teach the
concept of electron valence, an app students could use to interact with a
writing coach, an app to teach basic programming, and so on. I would try to
implement what had been learned from studies about learning, and it would be
awesome if I could provide a research platform for education research.

In the end, I hope that the software work on teaching individual subjects
would generalize to a set of templates for interactive learning that would let
people construct reasonably effective interactive learning tools for many
different subjects, with a reasonable investment of effort. Just as a software
engineer would look at a problem and construct a solution out of well-known
systems, an educator could look at the material and skills they want to teach
in a class and construct an interactive course from different parts: spaced
repetition to teach certain information, an interactive coaching module and a
drill module for medium-complexity skills involving several steps, a
submit/teacher review/revision module for writing tasks, and a portfolio
module for the semester project. Those are the kinds of general modules that
come to mind now, but the aim of constructing completely ad hoc software for a
variety of subjects would be to discover novel design patterns for interactive
learning.

Custom modules created by teachers, researchers, and hackers could be
trivially published, for free or for sale, and incorporated into course-
specific modules or explored by self-guiding students. Utopia! (Whew.)

P.S. If I had to show ads to cover support and operations costs, I would only
show them to adults, and I would let people pay to turn them off. (Nobody
should have to feel guilty for running AdBlock, so I think it's important to
let AdBlock users pay extra to turn off the ads they would see.)

~~~
Whitespace
I've been working on a variant of the latter idea on and off for about 4 years
now. We got some funding (through an NSF grant) but I couldn't maintain full-
time development on it. I'm presently working on a project that sprang up
after I identified problems in the original design.

I'd love to hear more about your ideas; ping me @gmail if you want to chat.

~~~
dkarl
Ah, but this is if money doesn't matter :-) My job is very challenging, and
after eight hours at work, I can't sling code anymore, much less tackle an
entirely different set of technologies than I use at work. Also, I don't think
I could do justice to the idea without being face-to-face with teachers and
students, which would be a full time commitment. I can't put myself in a
position where I'll end up disappointing either my employer or a classroom
full of kids.

My current job pays well, though, and I plan on retiring at least fifteen
years before I'm too old to program, so the "money doesn't matter anymore"
scenario is a realistic one. I have a feeling that whenever I retire,
educational software will still feel like the right thing to work on.

~~~
sopooneo
Bless you a thousand times for realizing that interaction with real teachers
and students is necessary for the creation of educational software.

------
bartonfink
I'd teach high school Latin.

~~~
ScottBurson
Teacher: "Decline _agricola_."

Student: "No, thank you."

~~~
bartonfink
Bene factum.

------
julsonl
Robots. Program their navigation and computer vision capabilities. Develop a
base station with some fancy augmented reality overlays.

~~~
nooneelse
That is similar to my more radical answer, moon-bots. A small army of tele-
operated digging and construction oriented robots sent on a cheap trajectory
to the moon. We have the technology to start construction on a colony. At
least, I think we do.

------
kevinherron
Something for the cycling/racing industry.

Event registration, chip timing software, live/historical race results. The
whole package. Right now the pieces exist but they're usually separate pieces
and they look and function like 90's software.

I'd try and bring modern look, feel, and technology to these areas.

Strava is a great example of bringing modern web to the cycling/running world
if you ask me.

------
abhaga
Build a better "Distributed Proofreader" system for Gutenberg like crowd-
sourced book digitization projects which can use real-time feedback to reduce
the human effort required for the task. I hope that this will make it easier
to build PG like repositories for more countries and for more languages. Even
those where good OCRs are not available.

------
seunosewa
How could an entrepreneur possibly answer this question?? You've already quit
your job and work on a "project" full time.

~~~
michael_miller
"What I'm working on now."

------
joshguthrie
Space exploration and Mars terraforming.

~~~
Kilimanjaro
How about moon terraforming? Just a couple of days for an out of this world
getaway.

------
ig1
Something educationy, like khan academy.

------
attheodo
I'd paint all day and play the blues on my Les Paul! A really creative and
joyful way of spending time.

------
ScottBurson
The problem of applying machine learning techniques to search problems (I mean
"search" in the traditional AI sense that includes theorem proving and
planning, not in the Google sense). To me this is the most exciting area of AI
research, and it's still very much wide open.

~~~
dlo
Scott, my jaw is dropping -- I am super interested in this too! Let's follow
up on this soon.

------
trbecker
I would keep doing what I already do. I care deeply for the organization I
work for, and I have many friends there. But I would engage only in what seems
fun and meaningful, and avoid all things that I don't care about. Hey, I seems
so fun I would do it for free :)

------
darklajid
I'm probably cheating myself here, because what I want to do should be
possible right now. If 'money was no concern' I'd finally lose all arguments
against

.. learning system level C (embedded kernel/driver stuff)

.. commit full-time on open-source projects that I love

I know, I know.. I should just start!

~~~
rkalla
What I have found helps me get over these "I know what I SHOULD do..." humps?
If I pick up a book or find a good source of information on the subject and
start reading it, I find that it lowers the barrier to entry for me just
enough and starts filling my head with enough good ideas that I _have_ to move
forward.

You might pick up a good Kernel beginners book (do you know C? If not, start
there.) and just start reading it... thumb through it... start seeing some of
the API calls and comitting them to memory so the next time you see them you
think "Oh yea, I remember that from Chapter 1..."

Don't worry about coding, which IDE to use, which build system to use,
installing Ubuntu on your laptop or moving in with Linus... just get that book
and start reading before you go to bed at night.

It'll either break down the barrier to entry for you, or make you realize it
isn't what you thought and you can focus on something else.

Absolute worse case scenario? You learn a few cool tricks and put the book on
your shelf to collect dust. No biggie.

Might I suggest starting here? <http://goo.gl/YBoJ0>

~~~
yabai
Great advice.

------
jdefr89
Low-level UNIX system utilities, Exploits/RevEngineering/VXing and a homebrew
CPU!

------
davidw
Open source projects, stuff that's fun and creative. I had a great time with
Hecl ( <http://www.hecl.org> ) for instance, but don't have a lot of time for
it these days.

------
BurritoAlPastor
I'd get my PhD in anthropology.

(Another "PhD" response begged the question of "to what end" - in my case,
artifact preservation and restoration museum work would be the ultimate dream
job. It's totally impractical, though.)

------
4midori
I'd start a foundation that funds research on medical 'open secrets'--
treatments that show great potential but can't be patented and hence do not
get funding consistent with that potential.

------
Pent
The advancement of artificial intelligence, not sure where to start, but I
guess that's the point of this. If I had no concerns about money I would
devote most of my free time to it.

------
yuvadam
Without thinking twice, I would commit myself to working on projects that
tackle the main sociopolitical issues that humanity faces today and will face
in the long-term future.

~~~
a_a_r_o_n
You probably want to be Secretary of State.

------
INTPenis
Contribute to open source projects. I think they're making a huge difference
in the world and deserve more than just a few dollars from my account each
month.

------
thibaut_barrere
I would definitely still work on my coming SAAS product (see profile) because
I know it will make a better life for other freelancers and SBO.

------
7952
I would make videos that fused extreme sports with special effects. Think
Downhill Mountain Biker vs Dire wolf. Or Snow Boarder vs Dragon.

------
atacrawl
I'd go back to school and get a BFA in Graphic Design and an MS in Human-
Computer Interaction. (I have a BSBA in Information Systems.)

------
recurser
Algorithmically-generated music. I think you could get some interesting
results applying markov chains etc to music generation.

------
jchrisa
I did this and ended up working on CouchDB. Turned out that following my
passion eventually led to a job (as a cofounder).

------
bbgm
Work full time on data platforms for science

------
aDemoUzer
Even if I could quit my job, I would not.

------
a_a_r_o_n
How could you possibly do that is as interesting a question.

You want something. How do you make it happen?

------
ahalan
Nuclear propulsion, what else

------
scorpion032
Most expensive very fancy restaurant in the heart of Manhattan.

If only money was of no concern!

------
ta12121
Beethoven's Appassionata

------
Kilimanjaro
Out of my field:

1\. A new political system

2\. Fight corruption

3\. Fight poverty

4\. Education

5\. Medicine

In my field:

1\. New internet

2\. New programming language

3\. Open books

4\. Open encyclopedias by field

5\. No intellectual property, patents, or licenses

------
leif
learning math

------
mansolo
Protecting animals from animal cruelty. Especially elephants,that are
brutalized while alive for their tusks. The cruelty is beyond shocking.

Anyway, I would try and stop that, via a non profit organization.

~~~
frtizo
World population of elephants: ~700000 Number of humans without access to
clean drinking water: ~800000000

~~~
tfitzgerald
You should work on helping those without access to clean drinking water
instead of wasting your time criticizing what someone else would like to do.

