
Ask HN: If your economic necessities were taken care of, what would you work on? - uptown
Maybe you&#x27;re already doing it, and income isn&#x27;t part of the equation, but where would you focus your time and energy if you could work on anything?
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malux85
My passive income streams take care of the necessities, this is what happened
to me:

\- I took 1 month off. Seriously. No computers, just reading, playing games
and swimming. I needed a break.

\- I spent 3 months leaning Deep Learning from the fundamentals - learning
without an urgency of time meant I could do things like: I couldn't remember
the chain rule in calculus, so I could just stop my lessons there and go and
spend 3-4 hours learning that, then resume lessons - this ability to stop and
research as required was immensely powerful to getting a deep understanding.

I have spent the last 6 months building SignalBox - a Deep learning platform.
I now have 15 large customers, and I'm scaling up -- I cant keep up to be
honest, but automation is helping me scale this out a lot.

I am now focusing more on computational chemistry and molecular exploration
with Deep Learning.

I really think Universal Basic Income is a good thing, because although a
large part of the population _could_ piss it away, I am by no means unique,
and there must be hundreds of thousands, or even millions of other "me"s out
there that would benefit from having the necessities paid for so that they
could just produce great work.

~~~
subrat_rout
Absolutely a meaningful way of living a life. Forget about hundred of
thousands, even few thousand radical thinker can change the world in a
significant way thus reducing poverty, diseases and social inequalities.

1\. As a ex-biologist and ex-scientist I wonder how the deep learning can be
used to leverage that can put direct dent into certain fields such as drug
discovery for genetic diseases and cancer thus saving many lives.

2\. How it can be used to collect social data in a larger scale from different
social networking sites and analyzed to predict criminal behaviors and prevent
future criminal actions.

3\. On natural disasters and climate related warning etc.

4\. Searching for extraterrestrial lives.

5\. And the most thrilling impact on mankind will be using AI and deep
learning, can we preserve the entire neuronal network mappings of a human
brain and able to simulate its thought process and mental action after he/she
is gone?

------
jasonkester
I've been past this point for about a year now, living on the profits of my
business stuff, all of which is ticking away well enough that I can get away
with a 10 minute or less "work day" most days.

As others here have predicted, I spend a lot of time outdoors (having moved to
France specifically for the rock climbing) and building tree forts in the back
garden for the kids. Pretty much any day can be a day off, so if the sun is
shining you probably won't find me at the computer.

I also find I still work quite a bit (which translates to a few days a week
for me). Partly because I realize that products come and go, and that these
ones will eventually plateau then fade away, so I'd better have another one in
the pipeline to replace them when that happens.

But partly because it's fun. This has been my hobby since I was a kid, and
it's only an accident that somebody decided that we should start paying
computer programmers hundreds of thousands of dollars back in the 90s. Had
that not happened, I'd be an Engineer who programmed in his spare time. I used
to spend most of each year traveling, and I'd find that the thing that brought
me back to the "world" was never money, but the need to use my brain again.

I bet that even if this next thing [1] takes off and leaves me idle again,
I'll probably find another fun project to work on.

[1] [https://unwaffle.com/](https://unwaffle.com/)

------
thisisdallas
I would say goodbye to web development and start working on a sustainable
farm. I started gardening this year and it's the most enjoyable thing I have
done in a very long time. being able to do that on a larger scale seems quite
wonderful.

------
judahmeek
I'd create a platform that used crowd sourcing to map concept & procedural
masteries to higher level masteries and to occupations.

Then I'd use this platform to disrupt higher education and hiring/job seeking
systems.

~~~
brd
I've had the same pet project rattling around in my head since ~2007. It makes
me sad that someone hasn't stepped in and done the work to make it a reality
yet.

~~~
judahmeek
There would be a lot of luck involved in a project like this. If you can't get
it to go viral, you can't source the crowd; if you can't source the crowd, you
can't get the content you need; etc...

I'm not actually sure how to get over the "no content" moat, to be honest.
Maybe build the basic framework and then market it as a stackoverflow
alternative at first? This would, of course, involve mapping more than just
conceptual and procedural masteries. I was thinking of including versioned
systems as well (since versioning is the one thing that stackoverflow sucks
at).

------
awareBrah
I'd spend my days on outdoor activities. Hiking mountain biking. Skiing. Just
getting some rays and fresh crisp air. I'd spend my nights on making a real
change in the world. I don't know how but I'd try to use my skills in business
and software to find ways to build software for those areas that desperately
need it, but aren't a target customer of any modern startups.

------
chatmasta
I want to build an automated hydroponic marijuana farm in Colorado that's
powered as much as possible by renewable energy.

~~~
squozzer
I was going to say, "work on my joint-rolling technique," but your plan wins
hands-down!

------
rcarmo
I'd leave the tech industry and write.

Oh, you mean _in_ the tech industry? I'd probably spend a fair amount of time
working on space tech and real time software. There are untold lessons in
reliability, efficiency and know-how that I'd like to at least glimpse before
I'm gone - I've had enough of the mess that the Web has become in any of those
regards.

~~~
uptown
Nope - Doesn't need to be the tech industry.

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usgroup
Hmmmm.

1\. Self-fund a PhD in something worth a damn.

2\. Work harder on developing family.

3\. Write a fiction.

4\. Wonder about (figuratively) with no aim in particular.

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PerfectElement
\- drop web development and learn low level programming and hardware.

\- spend more time volunteering in animal sanctuaries.

\- never read another business book or listen to a business podcast again.

\- never think about marketing, SEO, CAC, conversion rates again.

\- spend more time cooking.

------
threesixandnine
I will work on Varroa-free-treatment-free large scale beekeeping.

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olivercreashe
Prostitutes and cocaine

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cauterized
Personal development. Relationships with friends and family. Arts (painting,
writing). Exploring my world.

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Jtsummers
Spend a year or so learning woodworking, specifically furniture making. Then
spend a couple years building the home I really want on some land in the
mountains, specific location TBD.

Then travel the world with my girlfriend, eventually our family.

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nonameface
I would work more on my aquaponics and recirculating aquaculture in temperate
weather environments.

I'm fascinated with farm-tech. I went into tech because there isn't money in
farming. My passion is farming. A fusion of the two is my ideal job.

------
mrfusion
I don't seem capable of self motivation do I'd probably just watch the office
on Netflix.

(I've had free time to do amazing things several times and I e always blown it
by lack of motivation.)

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kasey_junk
In tech? I want to write a stats server that handles latency histograms based
on drHistogram.

Also, my deadlift, left hook & bike endurance. Wouldn't mind a few multi-week
self supported bike rides thrown in there.

------
jackgolding
Fitness, I lived a 5 minute commute to work last year and I spent over an hour
a day in the gym. My body and mind thanked me for it but unfortunately old
habits die hard.

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Cymen
I would build a 9.9-10.5 meter sailing catamaran using a design from Richard
Woods and then take off sailing with my family for a decade or so.

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pklausler
I would reconstruct the Haskell Prelude (the language's built-in library of
foundational types, classes, and functions) from scratch.

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eastindex
Travel Asia, find a place to settle down somewhere up in the Himalayas. Teach
kids computing. Write more.

------
joshux
Become an independent scholar.

Travel and meet top researchers I admire and learn from them.

Solve real human problems.

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Matachines
Read a lot, study history, and program whatever I wish existed when possible.

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afarrell
Raising children, hands down.

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happy-go-lucky
I would keep learning and exploring math until I drop dead.

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wnkrshm
Study art & animation

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meira
Double it

