dietervds

Very late to the party, but I needed to give Banished a shoutout here, since it hasn't been mentioned before. The music alone is enough to get me to relax.

Thanks :-)

I have a bunch of news websites bookmarked over the years that I scour through every week. And once and a while I pick something up through social media or friends and colleagues.

Marketing: I tried. I did some cross-promotion with other newsletters, some paid marketing, but that was ages ago. I don't take to marketing well so it tends to fall by the wayside ^^

Thanks! If it helps, I ended up using Curated for hosting and email infrastructure. Been meaning to self-host something for ages but until then I'm happy to use them.

I write a newsletter on cybersecurity every week. Usually a summary of interesting articles and a list of known breaches and software issues.

It's been going for seven years now I think? It makes about 25k in sponsorships each year, although it could be more if I actually got myself to sell a bit more.

Either way, it's been a great way for me to keep learning. Nothing beats having to summarize a thing to thousands of people to make sure you really understand it :-)

https://securitynewsletter.co

Eufy has been a pretty great experience for me. Except for the fact that they recently used their notifications (normally used for camera/motion events) to push a marketing message[1], which really ticked me off. Hence my interest in these threads now :-)

[1]https://twitter.com/dietervds/status/1707473093445230803

Thanks! Through sponsorships, there's two slots per issue.

Im a bit late to the party, but outside of work I spend most of my professional time on a curated newsletter for infosec news: https://securitynewsletter.co/.

Two years running, just crossed 5700 subscribers. MRR between $600 and $1000. Most successful thing I ever started and still love doing it. Kinda scary to have an “audience” of that size :)

That’s amazing! Can I subscribe somewhere to stay informed on the project?

One rather general suggestion I have is to pick a company to work for that does some of the requested points. It doesn’t have to be non-profit or volunteer work only.

A few years ago I joined a company called Sunfunder [1]. They (we) provide financing to solar energy companies in Africa and SE Asia. Lack of financing is a major blocking factor there to get clean energy out.

I can honestly say I’ve never been more happy in my life than now, knowing that my entire workweek is contributing to something good.

[1] http://www.sunfunder.com

That's great feedback! I might add a 500 and 1000 threshold too. Thanks!

Hi guys,

I made this thing because, well, I wanted it and couldn't find an existing service :-) Any feedback or questions welcome.

Sharing this in case it helps anyone.

My wife suffered from CFS for over 10 years. In the final stage she could hardely walk anymore because of the muscle pain, and was on 26 pills per day.

We spent years on trying all kinds of stuff and seeing all kinds of doctors. What 'cured' her in the end was us figuring out for ourselves that what was diagnosed as CFS was actually closer to insuline resistance.

After some experimentation we went on a ketosis diet. Three months later she felt fine, her blood work was perfect, almost no more pills. Six months later she was off the pills, and even able to get pregnant (wasn't possible before because of the pills).

Now we're a happy healthy family :-)

Maybe this helps someone who is in a similar boat.

Weekly security news: https://securitynewsletter.co/ (Disclaimer: I started it)

Thanks for the feedback!

You are right, the filter of what makes news is something that I'm calibrating as I write more issues and learn more. I generally try and share only educational articles, like you said. In the case of Ashley Madison I found it to be an interesting story about accountability for lack of security.

But sometimes I'll just share something because it, well, made the news, and got a lot of attention that week, as I feel that's what many subscribers want. Or just something funny.

I do try to stay away from politics, privacy-only news (one can start a separate newsletter on that), and non-actionable news about a small exploit that was found and patched, that helps no one who reads it.

Thanks for the link. I wouldn't necessarily call them similar though. One is a handy list of RSS feeds, the other a newsletter that summarizes selected articles. Still though, bookmarked :-)

Thanks!

I love curated newsletters as a primary source of information, but I couldn't find one about security news that I enjoyed, so I created this one. It's inspired heavily by newsletters like Saas Weekly, Devops Weekly and Cron.weekly.

A bit over 300 subscribers so far, 3 months in. Open rates have been consistent around 60-70%. From all the projects I've done, I'm enjoying this one the most by far. The newsletter is sent with the service Curated, which I'm very pleased with.

Let me know what you guys think, I'd appreciate any feedback.

Disclaimer: this is a self-post. I started this newsletter a few weeks ago, because I had a hard time finding existing ones that I liked. I thought I'd share it here for those interested. Feedback welcome.

I've recently made a Zapier 'zap' that sends me a daily digest of @newsyc100 by e-mail. I realised that that account was the biggest reason I was still scrolling through my Twitter feed all the time. Ever since I've only checked Twitter once every few days, when I explicitly wanted to.

In the case of Facebook I found that just removing it from my bookmarks bar helped loads. Prevents me from just clicking on it half-dazed and starting to scroll.

Apologies for my very late comment. I'm hoping it still might help someone.

I had the exact same question a few years ago. Not really knowing where to look I ended up going to AngelList to search through the job openings with the tag 'cleantech'.

That's how I ended up at Sunfunder (http://sunfunder.com/). We finance renewable energy in Africa, India and other places that can definitely use a clean alternative to either kerosine/diesel or no electricity at all.

Honestly, I can no longer imagine not working somewhere where I don't contribute to the cause (although I wouldn't mind working in healthcare of something similar impactful either). It makes such a difference in my personal well being.

It might be worth noting that wanting to contribute with our software skillset means you will quite likely find a job where you support others of your team, instead of building the main product yourself. There are of course many exceptions, but most companies I found that were contributing to the cause were not software-first companies.

For me this was a welcome change, and I find it much more gratifying to use my skills to make internal processes work smoother and to support my colleagues than to be making the flagship product in a software-focused company. Your focus shifts from high-tech knowledge building to trying and figure out how to support the business, preferably with the most simple tech solution you can come up with. It might not be for everyone, but I personally love it.

Besides Angellist I imagine you can find some inspiration on Idealist.org. It might even be worth browsing through the "Who's Hiring" thread on HN for any companies in the 'contributing space'.

I also have a personal list of bookmarks I keep with companies that might be worth working for, impact wise. Feel free to e-mail me and I'll send them through.

If you're from Belgium or Netherlands I actually made a site myself for job openings specific in renewables/health care/other impactful stuff, http://joppo.org/. It's so obviously a work in progress that it's embarrassing to share it, but it might be useful to fellow BE/NL peeps.

Feel free to contact me any time if I can help out.

I'm doing the same for Belgium actually, and possibly The Netherlands, in time. (http://afspraakherinnering.be)

It's in it's early stages. I'm waiting to e-mail Patrick when I can say "Thanks to you I now have >500€ MRR" :-)

I sent you an e-mail to talk about it some more and share experiences! Always great to learn of similar endeavours.