15 ms·

Buy payphones and retire

476 points by cratermoon 2y ago

anonzzzies 2y ago
Why would I want to retire? I am old and most my friends are boring or died after they retired. Sounds like hell on earth. I like working, it is my hobby and life.
- Swizec 2y ago
  > Why would I want to retire? /../ I like working, it is my hobby and life. So you can work on things because you want to not because you have to. At least that's my plan. Not quite there yet.
  - iwontberude 2y ago
    Makers, programmers, hackers always have to work by definition, the question is whether you also want to. That can be done anywhere, it's all a state of mind. Most of the answers to the problems of the world are inside of there.
  - TheRealPomax 2y ago
    Note that there are loads of things that you can't keep working on after you retire. If your company had you in a position where you ran really interesting projects, all of those are the company's projects, not yours. You got to work on them because you worked there, and once you retire you can't just keep working on them, you can't even do the same work on your own because your contract made that pretty clear: now you're committing IP theft. So you retire, and by law you're no longer allowed to do the thing you love. It's not a good deal.
    - dleink 2y ago
      The things I love are broader than "IP controlled by my company." I can see that if the thing you love is massive financial institutions or defense contracting or something?
      - bongodongobob 2y ago
        Maybe he's a helicopter mechanic or a million other things you can't just do at home.
        brewdad 2y ago
        Go buy 40 acres in the desert and live your dream.
        dustyventure 2y ago
        If a very expensive hobby is a lot of work are you working or retired?
        bongodongobob 2y ago
        Unless it comes with a fleet of helicopters to play with, I don't see how that's helpful.
        dleink 2y ago
        Most of the things I love aren't done at home. I already noted there are passions that can't be performed individually.
      - TheRealPomax 2y ago
        Or, you know, you're a specialist who worked their way into a career at anything that produces hardware. Philips, Samsung, heaven forbid you work for a larger corporation, how many of those people can there possibly be, right?
        dleink 2y ago
        You have won. Yes, if the thing you love specifically requires the collection of capital then of course, you will have difficulty finding that outside a corporation. I suspect with analysis this is not the case for the majority of folks. Hardware is a funny example though, because I feel it's easier than ever to get some interesting hardware stuff going.
    - Rumudiez 2y ago
      You can be "retired" (don't _need_ to work) and still have a dayjob. My father-in-law does this and works 2 days a week so he doesn't get bored and has a little more spending money, all because he likes his profession but not because he has to work for a living anymore
    - pc86 2y ago
      It's pretty cool that you have such detailed knowledge into everyone's personal circumstances that you know they all have employment contracts and what the details of those contracts are. Most people reading this right now are in the US, and the vast majority of US employees at at-will, which means no contract at all. Even for those with contracts, it's a pretty big leap to get to "IP theft" with anything anyone could reasonably work on in retirement.
      - TheRealPomax 2y ago
        What made you read that comment and go "they're talking about everyone" instead of "oh, yeah, those people also exist, blanket statements don't make sense in this context"?
- asveikau 2y ago
  This article isn't about retirement; the reference to retirement is the line the scammer is using to hook people. The scammer is telling the mark they will generate lots of money from passive income (from payphone calls), and won't need to work. It is actually an article about Ponzi schemes.
  - hinkley 2y ago
    Ponzi schemes are pure financial instruments. If a product is involved it’s called an MLM.
    - asveikau 2y ago
      I'd say that is a bit like splitting hairs, but the article does question the extent to which actual payphones and calls were actually involved..
      - hinkley 2y ago
        Ponzi schemes are illegal. MLMs are legalized Ponzi schemes. The outcomes are similar but one has a veneer of legitimacy that makes it more dangerous for some people.
        asveikau 2y ago
        It's instructive not to argue the finer points without acknowledging what TFA says about the operators of the scheme breaking the law: > In 2006, Charles Edwards was convicted of 83 counts of wire fraud and sentenced to thirteen years in prison. Then another company: > By 2009, more than a dozen people had been convicted of fraud in relation to Prometheus.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        popcalc 2y ago
        MLMs are pyramid schemes, not ponzis. For example bitcoin is a (somewhat decentralized, but centralized among major mining companies) pyramid scheme while Tether is a Ponzi. Both pyramid schemes and Ponzis are illegal. MLMs are illegal in many places. In the US they were successfully able to lobby their way into carving out a legal niche in the 80s. They are also the reason supplement safety is so loosely regulated in the US.
- jabroni_salad 2y ago
  Do you already have financial independence? Not being able to understand why retiring would be desirable sounds like an incredibly privileged opinion.
- forinti 2y ago
  You might not want to retire, but your body (or mind) might have other ideas.
- mock-possum 2y ago
  I think the deal is when you retire you no longer have to work. You can spend your time doing whatever you want. If you don’t feel like working today, you don’t have to. If something comes up last minute, you can change your mind. If you want to move to something new and more interesting, you can.
  - anonzzzies 2y ago
    Well, if that is the definition, then i'm retired for almost 25 years now (I sold my first company at 25). But yeah, I saw retiring more as the people I know who retired in the traditional sense; 'now finally we can travel!' and that turns out to be a rather boring and unfulfilling lifestyle. the old (70+) people that are happy and not dead, all work fulltime in their own companies. From my barkeeper (he is 75) to the owner of a 100m euro/year company that makes roofs who is 90 and goes to the factory every day.
- IshKebab 2y ago
  Don't humblebrag.
Scoundreller 2y ago
> And what income is more passive than vending machine coin revenue? Automated vending has had a bit of a renaissance, with social media influencers buying old machines and turning them into a business. Iunno, where I grew up, vending machines were controlled by the mob. Up to mob hits in the HQ’s parking lot. Makes me wonder if pay phones are the same after the telco offloaded them.
- asveikau 2y ago
  I would imagine that's even more attractive to them in the old days, when they dealt in coins and bills. A modern vending machine probably mostly gets credit card transactions, which are traceable.
  - adamc 2y ago
    Yeah, same thought. Their attractiveness for laundering money may be diminishing.
  - stult 2y ago
    It's easier to launder money with services than goods anyway because you don't need to dispose of excess merchandise to make the books balance. Like if you want to claim to have sold 10000 cans of soda despite only selling 1000, you need to buy 10000 cans of soda or even the most superficial review of your accounts will reveal the scheme. The ideal laundering mechanism is a service with a high ratio of price to variable cost, like car washes or laundromats, because then it's easier to overstate income without needing to jump through hoops to overstate the matching costs. These days, it's almost trivial to launder via wash trades with the proliferation of online services with effectively zero marginal costs. e.g., setting up a freelancer account and a separate business account on some platform like Upwork and then hiring yourself. So I'd be surprised to see anyone laundering via sale of goods unless they are deeply incompetent or it's an opportunistic scheme of some sort (i.e., they are exploiting a unique opportunity that pops up).
    - VirusNewbie 2y ago
      >These days, it's almost trivial to launder via wash trades with the proliferation of online services with effectively zero marginal costs. like an MS Paint drawing of a monkey, but on the blockchain.
lencastre 2y ago
What’s triangular shaped, 3D, and rhymes with Eeramid Scheme.
- hyperhopper 2y ago
  Not a Pyramid scheme, that's for sure because that's a concept, which means it's not 3D.
  - ndarray 2y ago
    The world is 3D and instances of pyramid schemes exist in the world, making them 3D.
    - hyperhopper 2y ago
      By your logic your comment is red, since it's written in words and words can be read.
      - ndarray 2y ago
        No... it's not that the world "can be" 3D, it's that the world entirely IS 3D. You could say that my comments is 3D and you'd be right, in many ways, since storage mediums as well as pixels are technically 3D.
- nsbshssh 2y ago
  Pyramids and get rich quick courses beat Ponzis in that you can blame the sucker. "You didn't work hard enough, what can I say?"
thefourthchime 2y ago
[flagged]
- pc86 2y ago
  Imagine viewing reading what is at most ~2 pages of text as an "investment."
- 101008 2y ago
  I didn't but I thought of that after reading one paragraph and noticing it was going to take some time to get to the point.
- buildsjets 2y ago
  ChatGPT says: "The speaker wonders if others use ChatGPT to get summaries of lengthy texts to determine if they're worth reading." Nope, just you bucko.
- phyalow 2y ago
  Was very tempted too, but preempted that by evaluating that the effort of opening an extra browser tab -> navigation -> model selection (select 01-mini probably) -> then back/forth copy- paste, was mitigated by a very quick skim read/jump to the end.
- tombert 2y ago
  I use the Kagi Universal Summarizer fairly often, which I believe uses GPT. It's generally useful enough.
- warner25 2y ago
  This author is a very good and entertaining writer. You're really missing out if you don't take the time to read every word. Make yourself a drink, find a nice place to sit, and enjoy. I was introduced to his work through an HN post last year. I was hooked by that first piece, and I've often gone back to his archive whenever I've had the time to read something long-form for leisure.
- add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
  If I'm not interested in reading something fully I can get the main idea of it from skimming much faster than I could by getting an AI summary. And without the uncertainty that the AI got something about the summary wrong.
Hackbraten 2y ago
> Ah, but people with turnkey, profitable businesses don't tend to sell them. > Something is up. Who would have thought?
jbaczuk 2y ago
I had a viceral "oh no, did I just install a virus" feeling when I visited that website, haha. I guess those memories die hard.
- warner25 2y ago
  I wanted to share one of his pieces with a friend, so I sent the URL in a text message, and my friend (a network technician) responded with "Uh, is that link safe?" The title of the piece was "Free Public WiFi" which makes it look even more suspicious, haha... https://computer.rip/2023-07-29-Free-Public-WiFi.html https://computer.rip/2023-07-29-Free-Public-WiFi.html
syndicatedjelly 2y ago
That tiled background is from this gem of a video, starting at 4:50 https://youtu.be/tc4ROCJYbm0?si=Q2OpRvvjebTPrV-p&t=290 https://youtu.be/tc4ROCJYbm0?si=Q2OpRvvjebTPrV-p&t=290
- nsbshssh 2y ago
  That is a gem!
btilly 2y ago
Ah. Passive income. It can indeed work out for you, but it is the fact that it can work out that makes it so tempting for scammers. Warren Buffett claims that the best business that he was ever in was installing pinball machines in barber shops, then splitting the revenue with the barbers. See https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/19/warren-buffett-bought-a-25-pinball-machine-in-1946-and-made-money.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/19/warren-buffett-bought-a-25-p... for verification.
- bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
  He was obviously joking > As Buffett told Gates in the Omaha candy shop: “It was the best business I was ever in. I peaked very early in my business career.”
- cies 2y ago
  Buffett lies. He had much better investments. I likes to tell us all stories. The big-finance reality is much more inside-tradingish than he wants us all to believe.
  - wsatb 2y ago
    Best doesn’t need to mean best investment. Best could simply mean what he enjoyed most. He likely thinks fondly of a simpler time.
    - cies 2y ago
      Like i said, he likes to tell us stories.
  - Der_Einzige 2y ago
    For just a tiny example of the "big-finance reality is much more inside-tradingish", see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_network Expert networks are an example of a side-gig which would compete with traditional "passive income" stuff for talanted tech folks.
  - btilly 2y ago
cryptozeus 2y ago
Slight off topic self rant: I tried this (dropshipping etc), went against all the good wisdom and rules of creating honest and passionate business. Failed miserably. Funny how brain works, I knew in 3 months that this is not honest, it feels spammy but then orders were coming in so I convinced myself that half the amazon products are doing the same thing. There is market for it then why should I not do this. This nagging voice in my head never went away and I paid for this later on. This matters when you have to work through night to get the marketing campaign out or you have double down the investment for certain product during holiday sale. Dealing with daily email of customers or tracking lost orders. I eventually lost energy and any sort of desire to grow my business. I was not making the kind of money I was promised by the field of dropshipping without adding way more money in spamy marketing and I had not passion to sell the product I Was selling. Certain folks who seems to be making 1m rev per year are also pivoting through spammy products every month and just dumping 100s and 1000s of dollars in facebook ads. It is more of a spammy marketing game then implementing any sort of creative or intellectual skillset. If anyone is thinking of doing this then I would encourage or first figure out how attached you are to money and the work you are doing. I was pulled into this because I thought I am smarter than rest and I can crack this because of my skills in technology and design so I dont to pay anyone to setup website, taxes, marketing etc however I missed out on how much soulless you have to be to run such a business. I dont mean soulless as a bad thing here, if you are robot or a you can setup a bot to do this then by all means try it but I just could not. This had a double impact on my life. Not only I failed to make money, wasted time but I also hate myself of even getting stuck into this. Lost my confidence and self respect which probably was unfounded anyway. Only thing I can tell myself is that hopefully this lifted some sort of delusion I had about myself and I learn and become better at life through this.
- eastbound 2y ago
  Sorry for you losing your confidence over this. To be frank, the idea itself of creating a company is spammy. I created my company, but I knew the market from inside (it wasn’t a public company so it wasn’t insider trading, but clearly I had unfair advantage at start). I’ve witnessed many people on the same market as I was, trying to find something to sell, and failing at it. Everyone here is told that they can do it and the good idea will arrive as they work, well, that is spam. Truth is there are enough businesses in the world. It’s not exactly just luck. It’s also accurately knowing when you have a chance. I’ve also witnessed a dozen startups succeed in my area, to the point of about $50m revenue, so I could also have succeeded better. But really, it wasn’t your skills or your confidence. It’s that you didn’t have a good edge at start, maybe your only flaw is not judging against your initial idea, early enough, and waiting for the next opportunity in your professional life. But your implementation skills are visibly excellent, so if you don’t feel like restarting on your own, go help someone and help him scale. You’ll be excellent at it.
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
When I was a kid, we stole a payphone. Those bastards are tough. We whacked on it for an hour, with a 15-lb sledgehammer. When it finally broke open, it yielded about $1.50.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  I once had a storage unit, and lost the key to the padlock. The manager said no problem, and we went to the unit. He pulled out a battery operated angle grinder, and cut through the hasp in a few seconds.
  - warner25 2y ago
    This reminds me of storing equipment and supplies at the platoon level in the Army. The Army owns a huge number of shipping containers, like they're pervasive on any Army base, just part of the landscape. Basically every platoon keeps most of its stuff in these containers instead of proper buildings (minus weapons and ammunition, unless deployed somewhere, and then the shipping containers become arms rooms too). It also just makes it easier to deploy all the stuff, because it's already loaded up to go. Anyway, they're all "secured" with padlocks. Because of personnel turnover and poor bookkeeping, the right keys always seemed to be missing, so every platoon also had a set of bolt cutters. The padlocks were constantly being chopped off whenever people needed to look for things, conduct an inventory, etc. and then replaced with new padlocks. Taking a step back, it was crazy and didn't instill much confidence.
    - alexjm 2y ago
      I saw one city park where they took this one step farther. They had a small wooden structure (I think the cover to a water valve, from years ago when they used to set up an ice skating rink). The open it so rarely they don't even padlock it - they just bend open an S shaped link of chain, put that where the lock would go, and bend it shut. When someone needs to access it, they cut the one link of chain with a pair of bolt cutters, and then put on a new one.
    - le-mark 2y ago
damir 2y ago
[flagged]
andrewla 2y ago
The concept of "passive income" is almost a scissor concept. Or maybe only if you couple it with the categorical imperitive. On the one hand, it's so obviously true that it would be great to have passive income. Draw the salary you're drawing now, with some growth, and not have to work. On the other hand, if everyone had access to this capability then society and civilization would grind to a halt. People make things; if people don't make things, then we don't eat, we don't drink. If the goal is to have a system where everyone can have passive income, then achieving that goal is the end of the world. The categorical imperative roughly says that something is moral only if its universal adoption would benefit society. So there is a break there. The idea of passive income is isomorphic to rent seeking, which we generally agree is a bad thing.
- notatoad 2y ago
  "passive income", in it's original iteration, wasn't the idea that you could make money by doing nothing. The idea was that you made something or did something that you were uniquely able to make or do, and then the result of your labour would make money for you while you put in minimal continued effort. the version of passive income where you don't do anything productive at all, ever, and just put up some initial capital in exchange for even more money back, is always a scam. some people might come out ahead sometimes, but more people will lose than win.
  - andai 2y ago
    >just put up some initial capital in exchange for even more money back Isn't that how index funds work?
    - sam1r 2y ago
      Well, not many index funds succeed, in that same proportionate rate.
    - markus_zhang 2y ago
      People believe in index funds because of multi-decades of globalization and (in general) cheaper money, which has been less and less true since 10 years ago. Even if you bought some during the 90s, you still need a tremendous belief in yourself and the market to hold them for 30 years. It's not that easy. I know many people put the fund into a retirement fund, but 1) is every body consistently doing that for 30 years? and 2) what if the market sucks when you retire? I still think that's not a bad idea, maybe one of the best for lay persons.
highcountess 2y ago
[flagged]
vaidhy 2y ago
I think we are use passive income to mean different things. One of the meanings I tend to use it is capital preservation. I have worked and created savings for $x. What can do so that I do not lose that money and make it work for me? Index funds, 4% withdrawal rate, becoming a landlord are all some kind of answer to that question. Another meaning is something like "get rich quick" schemes. There is a overlap between the previous one and this, but here the focus is on outsized return and not preservation. A third one that people tend to associate with the term is about going from almost nothing to a large something - either by "working" the system, people etc or through generous social net. The difference is your starting point between this and the previous one. The second kind of thing targets people with money while this targets a much younger crowd. After reading through the article, it seems like the author mixes up 1 and 2..
PaulHoule 2y ago
I was a coin phone phreaker in the late 1980s as a teen. I had a notebook with phone numbers for hundreds of coin phones and was particularly a fan of COCOTs because most of them were poorly designed and you could make free calls using tactics like: hit the switchhook quickly ten times and complete a call by talking to the operator. (I practiced and was good at that)
bitwize 2y ago
...Don't ask! https://youtube.com/watch?v=ITfQGEASYvU https://youtube.com/watch?v=ITfQGEASYvU
eigenvalue 2y ago
You should basically always be very suspicious when someone is trying to sell you a way to earn very attractive returns without a lot of risk or without time and effort intensive management. There is a lot of capital out there in the world looking for a return. If the returns really were so attractive on a risk-adjusted basis, and you could deploy a fair amount of capital without building a large organization and incurring a bunch of fixed operating expenses, why wouldn't someone who is a proven successful operator in that field just raise more capital themselves and keep more of the profits? Even when the propositions look plausible on the surface, there is usually some hidden gotcha that prevents it from being scalable. For example, the economics only work if you can find a really good location that meets a bunch of requirements, and there simply aren't that many of those "good" locations left. Or it turns out that it requires very intensive management to deal with broken equipment, theft, vandalism, etc.
jonatron 2y ago
In London, we had I-Plus Kiosks, a long forgotten waste of money. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3058209.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3058209.stm (2003) and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1691434.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1691434.stm (2001) . IIRC, the council thought it'd be a good use of taxpayer's money.
Zanni 2y ago
I worked as a telephone operator a couple of summers and pay phones were a pain in the ass. The protocol for a long-distance call (and this was back when long distance was expensive, up to to a couple of dollars/minute), you'd collect for three minutes up front and refund if they went under. If the call went longer, the caller was expected to stay on the line and pay the balance, which could be considerable. Often they just bailed. There was one exchange near a military base where we'd have to handle lengthy long-distance calls from lovesick/homesick recruits, and so many of them bailed out at the end of call that we took to breaking in every three minutes to collect more coins. Worst part of the job.
whatusername 2y ago
Fun thing with payphones - at least in Australia -- Telstra is investing in upgrading them (at least the ones in the cities). They aren't very useful as phones - but they are incredibly well situated billboards that you can plaster ads on top of. https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/first-came-the-giant-advertising-screens-now-it-s-plus-size-payphones-20221205-p5c3ox.html https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/first-came-the-giant-adv...
- emmelaich 2y ago
  They also provide wifi -- https://fon.com/ https://fon.com/ marketed as Telstra Air.
snarfy 2y ago
In the mid 90's I knew a guy with a few soda machines. I recall him saying he would buy soda from Costco and made about 8-10k/yr from each machine. The machines were about 2k each. I think he had 4 machines for about 40k/yr passive revenue.
- sWW26 2y ago
  How did the soda get from Costco to the machines, how was the cash collected? Might be low effort but don't think you can call it passive revenue.
TruffleLabs 2y ago
Vending machines are not passive! They need repair, management of the money, if they sell goods then they need restocking (and that restock needs to be purchased), and you have to negotiate for location location location. And if coins are involved there is work to collect the coins and get them to the bank. Lastly, running a vending machines company requires regular involvement to make sure everything is running.
- slumberlust 2y ago
  Same can be said of any type of 'passive' income. In general, I take passive to imply you get out more than you put in. It's the ratio of time invested to time physically working.
  - nuancebydefault 2y ago
    Hmm then everybody who is able to set aside some money, has a passive income. How lucky i am!
    - avree 2y ago
      Yes, that is why it's called "passive investing", because it creates a "passive income".
- mhuffman 2y ago
  This is still passive. This is similar to owning 10 apartment buildings. You have to hire managers to deal with all the day-to-day, but there is still money left over. You just have to make sure that they aren't stealing from you. Similar to a lot of investments, which I would also consider passive income. Even with stocks, you can't just sleep or you could end up in a bad way, but you are also not putting in 8 to 12 (or more sometimes) hours of work a day like a small business.
  - cman1444 2y ago
    Clearly it's a spectrum with one side being low intensity/low return, and the other being high intensity/high return. The only question is to ask yourself where you want to be on that spectrum.
onetokeoverthe 2y ago
Place the vending machines/pay phones inside other locations...train stations, etc.
LoveMortuus 2y ago
I already know of dividends, but besides that and interest, I don't really know of many others. Would love to hear some ideas for passive income that you have encountered and have experienced.

476 points by cratermoon 2y ago

Why would I want to retire? I am old and most my friends are boring or died after they retired. Sounds like hell on earth. I like working, it is my hobby and life.

Swizec 2y ago
> Why would I want to retire? /../ I like working, it is my hobby and life. So you can work on things because you want to not because you have to. At least that's my plan. Not quite there yet.
- iwontberude 2y ago
  Makers, programmers, hackers always have to work by definition, the question is whether you also want to. That can be done anywhere, it's all a state of mind. Most of the answers to the problems of the world are inside of there.
- TheRealPomax 2y ago
  Note that there are loads of things that you can't keep working on after you retire. If your company had you in a position where you ran really interesting projects, all of those are the company's projects, not yours. You got to work on them because you worked there, and once you retire you can't just keep working on them, you can't even do the same work on your own because your contract made that pretty clear: now you're committing IP theft. So you retire, and by law you're no longer allowed to do the thing you love. It's not a good deal.
  - dleink 2y ago
    The things I love are broader than "IP controlled by my company." I can see that if the thing you love is massive financial institutions or defense contracting or something?
    - bongodongobob 2y ago
      Maybe he's a helicopter mechanic or a million other things you can't just do at home.
      - brewdad 2y ago
        Go buy 40 acres in the desert and live your dream.
        dustyventure 2y ago
        If a very expensive hobby is a lot of work are you working or retired?
        bongodongobob 2y ago
        Unless it comes with a fleet of helicopters to play with, I don't see how that's helpful.
      - dleink 2y ago
        Most of the things I love aren't done at home. I already noted there are passions that can't be performed individually.
    - TheRealPomax 2y ago
      Or, you know, you're a specialist who worked their way into a career at anything that produces hardware. Philips, Samsung, heaven forbid you work for a larger corporation, how many of those people can there possibly be, right?
      - dleink 2y ago
        You have won. Yes, if the thing you love specifically requires the collection of capital then of course, you will have difficulty finding that outside a corporation. I suspect with analysis this is not the case for the majority of folks. Hardware is a funny example though, because I feel it's easier than ever to get some interesting hardware stuff going.
  - Rumudiez 2y ago
    You can be "retired" (don't _need_ to work) and still have a dayjob. My father-in-law does this and works 2 days a week so he doesn't get bored and has a little more spending money, all because he likes his profession but not because he has to work for a living anymore
  - pc86 2y ago
    It's pretty cool that you have such detailed knowledge into everyone's personal circumstances that you know they all have employment contracts and what the details of those contracts are. Most people reading this right now are in the US, and the vast majority of US employees at at-will, which means no contract at all. Even for those with contracts, it's a pretty big leap to get to "IP theft" with anything anyone could reasonably work on in retirement.
    - TheRealPomax 2y ago
      What made you read that comment and go "they're talking about everyone" instead of "oh, yeah, those people also exist, blanket statements don't make sense in this context"?
asveikau 2y ago
This article isn't about retirement; the reference to retirement is the line the scammer is using to hook people. The scammer is telling the mark they will generate lots of money from passive income (from payphone calls), and won't need to work. It is actually an article about Ponzi schemes.
- hinkley 2y ago
  Ponzi schemes are pure financial instruments. If a product is involved it’s called an MLM.
  - asveikau 2y ago
    I'd say that is a bit like splitting hairs, but the article does question the extent to which actual payphones and calls were actually involved..
    - hinkley 2y ago
      Ponzi schemes are illegal. MLMs are legalized Ponzi schemes. The outcomes are similar but one has a veneer of legitimacy that makes it more dangerous for some people.
      - asveikau 2y ago
        It's instructive not to argue the finer points without acknowledging what TFA says about the operators of the scheme breaking the law: > In 2006, Charles Edwards was convicted of 83 counts of wire fraud and sentenced to thirteen years in prison. Then another company: > By 2009, more than a dozen people had been convicted of fraud in relation to Prometheus.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - popcalc 2y ago
        MLMs are pyramid schemes, not ponzis. For example bitcoin is a (somewhat decentralized, but centralized among major mining companies) pyramid scheme while Tether is a Ponzi. Both pyramid schemes and Ponzis are illegal. MLMs are illegal in many places. In the US they were successfully able to lobby their way into carving out a legal niche in the 80s. They are also the reason supplement safety is so loosely regulated in the US.
jabroni_salad 2y ago
Do you already have financial independence? Not being able to understand why retiring would be desirable sounds like an incredibly privileged opinion.
forinti 2y ago
You might not want to retire, but your body (or mind) might have other ideas.
mock-possum 2y ago
I think the deal is when you retire you no longer have to work. You can spend your time doing whatever you want. If you don’t feel like working today, you don’t have to. If something comes up last minute, you can change your mind. If you want to move to something new and more interesting, you can.
- anonzzzies 2y ago
  Well, if that is the definition, then i'm retired for almost 25 years now (I sold my first company at 25). But yeah, I saw retiring more as the people I know who retired in the traditional sense; 'now finally we can travel!' and that turns out to be a rather boring and unfulfilling lifestyle. the old (70+) people that are happy and not dead, all work fulltime in their own companies. From my barkeeper (he is 75) to the owner of a 100m euro/year company that makes roofs who is 90 and goes to the factory every day.
IshKebab 2y ago
Don't humblebrag.

Scoundreller 2y ago

> And what income is more passive than vending machine coin revenue? Automated vending has had a bit of a renaissance, with social media influencers buying old machines and turning them into a business. Iunno, where I grew up, vending machines were controlled by the mob. Up to mob hits in the HQ’s parking lot. Makes me wonder if pay phones are the same after the telco offloaded them.

asveikau 2y ago
I would imagine that's even more attractive to them in the old days, when they dealt in coins and bills. A modern vending machine probably mostly gets credit card transactions, which are traceable.
- adamc 2y ago
  Yeah, same thought. Their attractiveness for laundering money may be diminishing.
- stult 2y ago
  It's easier to launder money with services than goods anyway because you don't need to dispose of excess merchandise to make the books balance. Like if you want to claim to have sold 10000 cans of soda despite only selling 1000, you need to buy 10000 cans of soda or even the most superficial review of your accounts will reveal the scheme. The ideal laundering mechanism is a service with a high ratio of price to variable cost, like car washes or laundromats, because then it's easier to overstate income without needing to jump through hoops to overstate the matching costs. These days, it's almost trivial to launder via wash trades with the proliferation of online services with effectively zero marginal costs. e.g., setting up a freelancer account and a separate business account on some platform like Upwork and then hiring yourself. So I'd be surprised to see anyone laundering via sale of goods unless they are deeply incompetent or it's an opportunistic scheme of some sort (i.e., they are exploiting a unique opportunity that pops up).
  - VirusNewbie 2y ago
    >These days, it's almost trivial to launder via wash trades with the proliferation of online services with effectively zero marginal costs. like an MS Paint drawing of a monkey, but on the blockchain.

lencastre 2y ago

What’s triangular shaped, 3D, and rhymes with Eeramid Scheme.

hyperhopper 2y ago
Not a Pyramid scheme, that's for sure because that's a concept, which means it's not 3D.
- ndarray 2y ago
  The world is 3D and instances of pyramid schemes exist in the world, making them 3D.
  - hyperhopper 2y ago
    By your logic your comment is red, since it's written in words and words can be read.
    - ndarray 2y ago
      No... it's not that the world "can be" 3D, it's that the world entirely IS 3D. You could say that my comments is 3D and you'd be right, in many ways, since storage mediums as well as pixels are technically 3D.
nsbshssh 2y ago
Pyramids and get rich quick courses beat Ponzis in that you can blame the sucker. "You didn't work hard enough, what can I say?"

thefourthchime 2y ago

[flagged]

pc86 2y ago
Imagine viewing reading what is at most ~2 pages of text as an "investment."
101008 2y ago
I didn't but I thought of that after reading one paragraph and noticing it was going to take some time to get to the point.
buildsjets 2y ago
ChatGPT says: "The speaker wonders if others use ChatGPT to get summaries of lengthy texts to determine if they're worth reading." Nope, just you bucko.
phyalow 2y ago
Was very tempted too, but preempted that by evaluating that the effort of opening an extra browser tab -> navigation -> model selection (select 01-mini probably) -> then back/forth copy- paste, was mitigated by a very quick skim read/jump to the end.
tombert 2y ago
I use the Kagi Universal Summarizer fairly often, which I believe uses GPT. It's generally useful enough.
warner25 2y ago
This author is a very good and entertaining writer. You're really missing out if you don't take the time to read every word. Make yourself a drink, find a nice place to sit, and enjoy. I was introduced to his work through an HN post last year. I was hooked by that first piece, and I've often gone back to his archive whenever I've had the time to read something long-form for leisure.
add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
If I'm not interested in reading something fully I can get the main idea of it from skimming much faster than I could by getting an AI summary. And without the uncertainty that the AI got something about the summary wrong.

Hackbraten 2y ago

> Ah, but people with turnkey, profitable businesses don't tend to sell them. > Something is up. Who would have thought?

jbaczuk 2y ago

I had a viceral "oh no, did I just install a virus" feeling when I visited that website, haha. I guess those memories die hard.

warner25 2y ago
I wanted to share one of his pieces with a friend, so I sent the URL in a text message, and my friend (a network technician) responded with "Uh, is that link safe?" The title of the piece was "Free Public WiFi" which makes it look even more suspicious, haha... https://computer.rip/2023-07-29-Free-Public-WiFi.html https://computer.rip/2023-07-29-Free-Public-WiFi.html

syndicatedjelly 2y ago

That tiled background is from this gem of a video, starting at 4:50 https://youtu.be/tc4ROCJYbm0?si=Q2OpRvvjebTPrV-p&t=290 https://youtu.be/tc4ROCJYbm0?si=Q2OpRvvjebTPrV-p&t=290

nsbshssh 2y ago
That is a gem!

btilly 2y ago

Ah. Passive income. It can indeed work out for you, but it is the fact that it can work out that makes it so tempting for scammers. Warren Buffett claims that the best business that he was ever in was installing pinball machines in barber shops, then splitting the revenue with the barbers. See https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/19/warren-buffett-bought-a-25-pinball-machine-in-1946-and-made-money.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/19/warren-buffett-bought-a-25-p... for verification.

bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
He was obviously joking > As Buffett told Gates in the Omaha candy shop: “It was the best business I was ever in. I peaked very early in my business career.”
cies 2y ago
Buffett lies. He had much better investments. I likes to tell us all stories. The big-finance reality is much more inside-tradingish than he wants us all to believe.
- wsatb 2y ago
  Best doesn’t need to mean best investment. Best could simply mean what he enjoyed most. He likely thinks fondly of a simpler time.
  - cies 2y ago
    Like i said, he likes to tell us stories.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  For just a tiny example of the "big-finance reality is much more inside-tradingish", see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_network Expert networks are an example of a side-gig which would compete with traditional "passive income" stuff for talanted tech folks.
- btilly 2y ago

cryptozeus 2y ago

Slight off topic self rant: I tried this (dropshipping etc), went against all the good wisdom and rules of creating honest and passionate business. Failed miserably. Funny how brain works, I knew in 3 months that this is not honest, it feels spammy but then orders were coming in so I convinced myself that half the amazon products are doing the same thing. There is market for it then why should I not do this. This nagging voice in my head never went away and I paid for this later on. This matters when you have to work through night to get the marketing campaign out or you have double down the investment for certain product during holiday sale. Dealing with daily email of customers or tracking lost orders. I eventually lost energy and any sort of desire to grow my business. I was not making the kind of money I was promised by the field of dropshipping without adding way more money in spamy marketing and I had not passion to sell the product I Was selling. Certain folks who seems to be making 1m rev per year are also pivoting through spammy products every month and just dumping 100s and 1000s of dollars in facebook ads. It is more of a spammy marketing game then implementing any sort of creative or intellectual skillset. If anyone is thinking of doing this then I would encourage or first figure out how attached you are to money and the work you are doing. I was pulled into this because I thought I am smarter than rest and I can crack this because of my skills in technology and design so I dont to pay anyone to setup website, taxes, marketing etc however I missed out on how much soulless you have to be to run such a business. I dont mean soulless as a bad thing here, if you are robot or a you can setup a bot to do this then by all means try it but I just could not. This had a double impact on my life. Not only I failed to make money, wasted time but I also hate myself of even getting stuck into this. Lost my confidence and self respect which probably was unfounded anyway. Only thing I can tell myself is that hopefully this lifted some sort of delusion I had about myself and I learn and become better at life through this.

eastbound 2y ago
Sorry for you losing your confidence over this. To be frank, the idea itself of creating a company is spammy. I created my company, but I knew the market from inside (it wasn’t a public company so it wasn’t insider trading, but clearly I had unfair advantage at start). I’ve witnessed many people on the same market as I was, trying to find something to sell, and failing at it. Everyone here is told that they can do it and the good idea will arrive as they work, well, that is spam. Truth is there are enough businesses in the world. It’s not exactly just luck. It’s also accurately knowing when you have a chance. I’ve also witnessed a dozen startups succeed in my area, to the point of about $50m revenue, so I could also have succeeded better. But really, it wasn’t your skills or your confidence. It’s that you didn’t have a good edge at start, maybe your only flaw is not judging against your initial idea, early enough, and waiting for the next opportunity in your professional life. But your implementation skills are visibly excellent, so if you don’t feel like restarting on your own, go help someone and help him scale. You’ll be excellent at it.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

When I was a kid, we stole a payphone. Those bastards are tough. We whacked on it for an hour, with a 15-lb sledgehammer. When it finally broke open, it yielded about $1.50.

WalterBright 2y ago
I once had a storage unit, and lost the key to the padlock. The manager said no problem, and we went to the unit. He pulled out a battery operated angle grinder, and cut through the hasp in a few seconds.
- warner25 2y ago
  This reminds me of storing equipment and supplies at the platoon level in the Army. The Army owns a huge number of shipping containers, like they're pervasive on any Army base, just part of the landscape. Basically every platoon keeps most of its stuff in these containers instead of proper buildings (minus weapons and ammunition, unless deployed somewhere, and then the shipping containers become arms rooms too). It also just makes it easier to deploy all the stuff, because it's already loaded up to go. Anyway, they're all "secured" with padlocks. Because of personnel turnover and poor bookkeeping, the right keys always seemed to be missing, so every platoon also had a set of bolt cutters. The padlocks were constantly being chopped off whenever people needed to look for things, conduct an inventory, etc. and then replaced with new padlocks. Taking a step back, it was crazy and didn't instill much confidence.
  - alexjm 2y ago
    I saw one city park where they took this one step farther. They had a small wooden structure (I think the cover to a water valve, from years ago when they used to set up an ice skating rink). The open it so rarely they don't even padlock it - they just bend open an S shaped link of chain, put that where the lock would go, and bend it shut. When someone needs to access it, they cut the one link of chain with a pair of bolt cutters, and then put on a new one.
  - le-mark 2y ago

damir 2y ago

[flagged]

andrewla 2y ago

The concept of "passive income" is almost a scissor concept. Or maybe only if you couple it with the categorical imperitive. On the one hand, it's so obviously true that it would be great to have passive income. Draw the salary you're drawing now, with some growth, and not have to work. On the other hand, if everyone had access to this capability then society and civilization would grind to a halt. People make things; if people don't make things, then we don't eat, we don't drink. If the goal is to have a system where everyone can have passive income, then achieving that goal is the end of the world. The categorical imperative roughly says that something is moral only if its universal adoption would benefit society. So there is a break there. The idea of passive income is isomorphic to rent seeking, which we generally agree is a bad thing.

notatoad 2y ago
"passive income", in it's original iteration, wasn't the idea that you could make money by doing nothing. The idea was that you made something or did something that you were uniquely able to make or do, and then the result of your labour would make money for you while you put in minimal continued effort. the version of passive income where you don't do anything productive at all, ever, and just put up some initial capital in exchange for even more money back, is always a scam. some people might come out ahead sometimes, but more people will lose than win.
- andai 2y ago
  >just put up some initial capital in exchange for even more money back Isn't that how index funds work?
  - sam1r 2y ago
    Well, not many index funds succeed, in that same proportionate rate.
  - markus_zhang 2y ago
    People believe in index funds because of multi-decades of globalization and (in general) cheaper money, which has been less and less true since 10 years ago. Even if you bought some during the 90s, you still need a tremendous belief in yourself and the market to hold them for 30 years. It's not that easy. I know many people put the fund into a retirement fund, but 1) is every body consistently doing that for 30 years? and 2) what if the market sucks when you retire? I still think that's not a bad idea, maybe one of the best for lay persons.

highcountess 2y ago

[flagged]

vaidhy 2y ago

I think we are use passive income to mean different things. One of the meanings I tend to use it is capital preservation. I have worked and created savings for $x. What can do so that I do not lose that money and make it work for me? Index funds, 4% withdrawal rate, becoming a landlord are all some kind of answer to that question. Another meaning is something like "get rich quick" schemes. There is a overlap between the previous one and this, but here the focus is on outsized return and not preservation. A third one that people tend to associate with the term is about going from almost nothing to a large something - either by "working" the system, people etc or through generous social net. The difference is your starting point between this and the previous one. The second kind of thing targets people with money while this targets a much younger crowd. After reading through the article, it seems like the author mixes up 1 and 2..

PaulHoule 2y ago

I was a coin phone phreaker in the late 1980s as a teen. I had a notebook with phone numbers for hundreds of coin phones and was particularly a fan of COCOTs because most of them were poorly designed and you could make free calls using tactics like: hit the switchhook quickly ten times and complete a call by talking to the operator. (I practiced and was good at that)

bitwize 2y ago

...Don't ask! https://youtube.com/watch?v=ITfQGEASYvU https://youtube.com/watch?v=ITfQGEASYvU

eigenvalue 2y ago

You should basically always be very suspicious when someone is trying to sell you a way to earn very attractive returns without a lot of risk or without time and effort intensive management. There is a lot of capital out there in the world looking for a return. If the returns really were so attractive on a risk-adjusted basis, and you could deploy a fair amount of capital without building a large organization and incurring a bunch of fixed operating expenses, why wouldn't someone who is a proven successful operator in that field just raise more capital themselves and keep more of the profits? Even when the propositions look plausible on the surface, there is usually some hidden gotcha that prevents it from being scalable. For example, the economics only work if you can find a really good location that meets a bunch of requirements, and there simply aren't that many of those "good" locations left. Or it turns out that it requires very intensive management to deal with broken equipment, theft, vandalism, etc.

jonatron 2y ago

In London, we had I-Plus Kiosks, a long forgotten waste of money. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3058209.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3058209.stm (2003) and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1691434.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1691434.stm (2001) . IIRC, the council thought it'd be a good use of taxpayer's money.

Zanni 2y ago

I worked as a telephone operator a couple of summers and pay phones were a pain in the ass. The protocol for a long-distance call (and this was back when long distance was expensive, up to to a couple of dollars/minute), you'd collect for three minutes up front and refund if they went under. If the call went longer, the caller was expected to stay on the line and pay the balance, which could be considerable. Often they just bailed. There was one exchange near a military base where we'd have to handle lengthy long-distance calls from lovesick/homesick recruits, and so many of them bailed out at the end of call that we took to breaking in every three minutes to collect more coins. Worst part of the job.

whatusername 2y ago

Fun thing with payphones - at least in Australia -- Telstra is investing in upgrading them (at least the ones in the cities). They aren't very useful as phones - but they are incredibly well situated billboards that you can plaster ads on top of. https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/first-came-the-giant-advertising-screens-now-it-s-plus-size-payphones-20221205-p5c3ox.html https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/first-came-the-giant-adv...

emmelaich 2y ago
They also provide wifi -- https://fon.com/ https://fon.com/ marketed as Telstra Air.

snarfy 2y ago

In the mid 90's I knew a guy with a few soda machines. I recall him saying he would buy soda from Costco and made about 8-10k/yr from each machine. The machines were about 2k each. I think he had 4 machines for about 40k/yr passive revenue.

sWW26 2y ago
How did the soda get from Costco to the machines, how was the cash collected? Might be low effort but don't think you can call it passive revenue.

TruffleLabs 2y ago

Vending machines are not passive! They need repair, management of the money, if they sell goods then they need restocking (and that restock needs to be purchased), and you have to negotiate for location location location. And if coins are involved there is work to collect the coins and get them to the bank. Lastly, running a vending machines company requires regular involvement to make sure everything is running.

slumberlust 2y ago
Same can be said of any type of 'passive' income. In general, I take passive to imply you get out more than you put in. It's the ratio of time invested to time physically working.
- nuancebydefault 2y ago
  Hmm then everybody who is able to set aside some money, has a passive income. How lucky i am!
  - avree 2y ago
    Yes, that is why it's called "passive investing", because it creates a "passive income".
mhuffman 2y ago
This is still passive. This is similar to owning 10 apartment buildings. You have to hire managers to deal with all the day-to-day, but there is still money left over. You just have to make sure that they aren't stealing from you. Similar to a lot of investments, which I would also consider passive income. Even with stocks, you can't just sleep or you could end up in a bad way, but you are also not putting in 8 to 12 (or more sometimes) hours of work a day like a small business.
- cman1444 2y ago
  Clearly it's a spectrum with one side being low intensity/low return, and the other being high intensity/high return. The only question is to ask yourself where you want to be on that spectrum.

onetokeoverthe 2y ago

Place the vending machines/pay phones inside other locations...train stations, etc.

LoveMortuus 2y ago

I already know of dividends, but besides that and interest, I don't really know of many others. Would love to hear some ideas for passive income that you have encountered and have experienced.