4 ms·

These amounts are so trivial, it's almost not worth applying. They need to increase by about 20x to start being worth it.

wongarsu 4y ago
If they are trivial to you that probably just means you aren't in the target group. $200 is nothing to a full-time software engineer, but for a student $200 might be much more than they are willing (or able) to spend on a hobby project.
- freemint 4y ago
  Exactly.
pizza 4y ago
…getting you back to square zero, where tightly-scoped micro projects never get investment. I mean if one of these tiny things is actually a killer idea, it’ll make a big enough splash to get a couple orders of magnitude more funding, anyway, right?
- ModernMech 4y ago
  I think the point is that you’re not going to get any killer ideas from this. More power if they do, but the people working in the “make a better computer” space have been doing so deliberately for years, spending much more than $500 in the process. Maybe you get a better computer by sprinkling $500 checks around to random devs in the developing world, but it’s not likely to work as a legitimate strategy to improve computing. If you really want to do that, take this entire fund and invest it in one of the many future of computing projects out there already well under way.
mkl95 4y ago
$500 mean little to me, [senior software engineer from a rich country], but it's higher than the average salary in many places.
patrec 4y ago
The upper end looks to be about the average monthly developer salary of a poor country with many highly educated programmers (such as Belarus). There will also be a pool with talented individuals who are not yet on an average monthly developer salary, and if either your individual project or the scheme as a whole is somewhat successful there will also be a CV benefit in having been sponsored. And of course many developers all over the world would jump at an opportunity to get a month's funding to work on their pet project and keep the IP.
karamanolev 4y ago
I'd guess the places where this is relevant will have plenty of rich-enough people who can self-fund. If if they can't, then the amount is definitely not trivial. $200 that you don't have is still $200 you don't have.

wongarsu 4y ago

If they are trivial to you that probably just means you aren't in the target group. $200 is nothing to a full-time software engineer, but for a student $200 might be much more than they are willing (or able) to spend on a hobby project.

freemint 4y ago
Exactly.

pizza 4y ago

…getting you back to square zero, where tightly-scoped micro projects never get investment. I mean if one of these tiny things is actually a killer idea, it’ll make a big enough splash to get a couple orders of magnitude more funding, anyway, right?

ModernMech 4y ago
I think the point is that you’re not going to get any killer ideas from this. More power if they do, but the people working in the “make a better computer” space have been doing so deliberately for years, spending much more than $500 in the process. Maybe you get a better computer by sprinkling $500 checks around to random devs in the developing world, but it’s not likely to work as a legitimate strategy to improve computing. If you really want to do that, take this entire fund and invest it in one of the many future of computing projects out there already well under way.

mkl95 4y ago

$500 mean little to me, [senior software engineer from a rich country], but it's higher than the average salary in many places.

patrec 4y ago

The upper end looks to be about the average monthly developer salary of a poor country with many highly educated programmers (such as Belarus). There will also be a pool with talented individuals who are not yet on an average monthly developer salary, and if either your individual project or the scheme as a whole is somewhat successful there will also be a CV benefit in having been sponsored. And of course many developers all over the world would jump at an opportunity to get a month's funding to work on their pet project and keep the IP.

karamanolev 4y ago

I'd guess the places where this is relevant will have plenty of rich-enough people who can self-fund. If if they can't, then the amount is definitely not trivial. $200 that you don't have is still $200 you don't have.