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Comment by pram | Hacker News Reader

I looked into doing this in the 2010s and it’s really an enormous pain in the ass to scale. A lot of the turnkey options were pretty much scams too. Machines that vended DVDs were popular back then.

You have to find the hot spots, negotiate for the space, deal with any vandalism, reload the machines, respond to problems. Not what many would consider “passive”

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> You have to find the hot spots, negotiate for the space, deal with any vandalism, reload the machines, respond to problems. Not what many would consider “passive”

I’ve spent a lot of time in various solopreneur, micropreneur, and indie hacker communities. One thing you have to understand is that for a large majority of people (we’re talking 90%+), the alternative to not-quite-passive income, isn’t a cushy software engineering job or even a job in tech. It’s working grueling hours under the heel of some asshole manager or owner jerking you around 12 hours per day while you sweat your ass off in unpleasant conditions.

All the hassle you described sounds like a beach vacation compared to stacking boxes in a warehouse or cooking brunch in some greasy restaurant or bar.

I used to mentor an ex head chef who got into software engineering through a bootcamp and the stories she would tell … wow. She said that just being able to take a bathroom break whenever felt like a luxurious perk.

> It’s working grueling hours under the heel of some asshole manager or owner jerking you around 12 hours per day while you sweat your ass off in unpleasant conditions.

Sounds about the same as a tech lead or SRE job minus the sweating in a warehouse.

Hey, in this industry we desperately need to replace the lazy boomers who don't hustle anymore and want to spend half their work from home day picking up their kids from soccer practice. Anyone willing to pivot into a tech job is welcome in my book just maybe not in much beyond a junior dev position.

I'd prefer they take those bootcamp skills and apply them to front office work like talking to clients and gathering requirements or sales. A little bit of tech knowledge can go a very long way and we sorely need that in traditionally non-technical roles. I don't get the obsession over coding for a living when the salary isn't that different elsewhere in the office. I've never met a bootcamp person who really wanted to code. Incentives are better aligned with other work and leaning on what they learned in bootcamp.

When machines were cash only you could theoretically avoid taxes on some of the income, something that might have offset some of the hassles. With credit cards and electronic payment that’s not really possible.

When machines were cash only, there was a big box of cash sitting unguarded on a lonely corner at 3am...

I've drilled out the lock on an old Coke machine my dad bought at an auction.

It's not a fast, discreet, or easy process.

That's why you drag it somewhere you can do it in peace.

That’s why it is so rare for people to drag vending machines somewhere to do it in peace.

They are big and bulky and heavy and all that work for, what, $80? Junkies aren’t usually that coordinated to pull this off.

$80 is a good payday for a junkie. I've seen junkies steal manhole covers for a couple bucks of scrap metal.

Stealing manhole covers is quite easy compared to hauling off a vending machine and drilling out the cash box.

$80 sitting easy is great for a junkie. But requiring multiple steps and special equipment may as well be a voyage to the moon.

For proper criminals who can plan and procure equipment, $80 probably isn’t enticing.

As a teenager (back in the gold age of arcade) i used to work as a helper on an arcade, vending machines and jukeboxes repair shop. I’ll tell you none of those machines are easy to drag arround!

Tubular locks are fast, discreet, and easy to pick. You need a specialized tool, but when you do opening the lock is almost as easy as just using the key.

And that's assuming your vending machine isn't using some standard key you can just outright buy on ebay.

On cheaper tubular locks, that specialized tool is a pen cap.

That’s true of 70-80% of tubular locks, but there are higher quality tubular locks that are designed with the standard tubular impressioning tool in mind, and on which it does not work.

I guess the Gold Vending Machine in Dubai is not for you then :)

[https://whatson.ae/2023/08/the-uaes-wildest-vending-machines...]

The only kind of vending machine low maintenance enough that I think it can count as passive is digital vending machines that only take electronic payment, e.g. a Bitcoin ATM. There's no physical goods to restock so once it's in place, you're hopefully good for a long time. But as you point out, even getting the location, the machine, and then installing it, is enough work to potentially not fully count as passive.

And those are heavily regulated in US -- moreso than just an average bank ATM from what I understand.

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