Comment by alister | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alister | Hacker News Reader

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> I am not actually concerned with financial success or growth. The nice thing about this project is I can just let it sit and I don’t need to maintain anything – leaving me time to move on to the next project.

You should pursue this product -- you have huge possibilities here.

You heard of a company called Security Dynamics? They invented the little token with ever-changing 6-digit numbers that you have to enter to login to your remote office computer. You probably know it today as the RSA SecurID[1]. They created a billion-dollar market and made the founders fabulously rich.

I know that there are other U2F products out there, but you can make yours unique, different in some way, or targeted to different market. Or just compete as an alternative to the larger companies making U2F keys (which are not really that large yet anyway).

Surely continuing this product is better than the "working in government" job you're seeking.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/RSA-Secu...

Thanks! I didn't know about Security Dynamics.

I think there's a lot of neat improvements you can make on 2FA products for different markets. But it's kind of at the point where if I wanted to continue working on a better 2FA token, I would have to get funding and do it full time. Although it's always tempting, I'm not sure I want to "cash out" of school and regular life just yet.

Also if I don't work in government I'd be in a lot of debt to pay back school. So that's an additional hurdle.

I think you're being very sensible about this. As the parent poster says, you need to have a distinguishing feature if you want to turn this into a product to compete with e.g. Yubikey. But as a resume/CV for getting you a job? It's fantastic. Bring it to interviews. Show it to people at trade shows. Get an embedded systems or electronics job. Profit.

Great work, Connor. I have spent considerable time thinking about the federal student loan forgiveness you're referring to. I'd love to share. Email me at mike at medcrypt dot co if you're interested.

Why is a comment offering help for someone else battling massive student loan debt getting down-voted?

Honestly, you probably got downvoted because federal student loan forgiveness (which I didn't see Conor mention anywhere) sounds an awful lot like like spam and off-topic. However, your email with 'crypt' in it seems that you're at least partly on topic and your addressing the OP by first name shows that at least you're not a bot (or perhaps a very smart bot) :) I upvoted you for the benefit of the doubt anyway.

Thanks. Definitely not a bot. Although if we are all living in a simulation, I guess my counsiousness could be resulting from a hacked CCTV cpu. Difficult to disprove.

Also, Connor mentioned in a comment that he needs to work for a government agency due to a student loan / grant situation. Should have responded there I guess.

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