tomjohnneill

7 ms·

31.
What Goodreads could have been(notfunatparties.substack.com)
93 points by tomjohnneill 6y ago|35 comments
32.
by tomjohnneill 6y ago
In hindsight, you're right. And obviously I didn't. However at the time, it was the uncertainty as a result of never having done something like this that made me worried.
33.
by tomjohnneill 6y ago
For what it's worth (and I know this is getting extremely meta), but as it stands this writeup has had 21,963 visitors from Hacker News. (205 comments as I write this).
34.
by tomjohnneill 6y ago
The point is that NextJS does create a static site. And Vercel can be just a static CDN, as it was for this.
35.
by tomjohnneill 6y ago
Damn I wish you hadn't posted. Ah well.
36.
by tomjohnneill 6y ago
Ha. I came on here to post it myself this time. Turns out I was beaten to it.
37.
by tomjohnneill 6y ago
So I did in the end apply to Google AdSense just to find out. Turns out the site didn't get approved because it didn't have enough content on it. So I think you would be hard pushed to monetise it quickly by going down the normal
38.
by tomjohnneill 6y ago
I only put simple analytics on the site the day after it was at the top of Hacker News (unfortunately)
39.
by tomjohnneill 6y ago
That was a very stressful decision at 4:30am, so glad it was the right call.
40.
by tomjohnneill 6y ago
Having just had a site that went to the top of Hacker News and got a very sudden spike of traffic, I'd highly recommend Vercel. It's super quick to set up, and you can have a mix of static/dynamic content on the same site.
41.
by tomjohnneill 6y ago
I could, though it would be summarised in about one sentence: "NextJS and Vercel make everything stupidly easy."
42.
by tomjohnneill 6y ago
I actually have no idea. It was just a bit of fun so I haven't got any logs/analytics set up at all.
43.
by tomjohnneill 6y ago
Site author here, I guess this is why the New York Times API keeps hitting rate limits.
44.
by tomjohnneill 6y ago
He wasn't a billionaire when he started SpaceX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#:~:text=In%20October... .
45.
by tomjohnneill 6y ago
Something I found fascinating about learning Chinese while living in China was knowing exactly what a character meant (because it was written on signs etc.), but having absolutely no idea how it was pronounced.
46.
Show HN: Quizlime, run your own real-time collaborative quizzes(quizlime.com)
2 points by tomjohnneill 6y ago|0 comments
47.
by tomjohnneill 7y ago
I remember reading an article back in 2011, a puff piece about IBM in the Economist for the company's 100th birthday: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2011/06/09/1100100-and-co... It's pretty
48.
by tomjohnneill 7y ago
For what it's worth (and this was in 2018), I tried to buy a SIM in Changsha, and was told that I had to go to a specific China Unicom shop - apparently only one of them was allowed to register foreigners' details.
49.
by tomjohnneill 7y ago
I thought that would be the case. I tried it in French and I understood the app much better. Though one other thing, it didn't seem that clear how to add words to flashcards. I later figured out that it automatically adds them when you
50.
by tomjohnneill 7y ago
Just tried it out. Seems like a nice idea and can see how it might be useful. However, for the Android version in Chinese, it's very difficult to get the translations of the words - it defaults to translating entire lines. Also, when y
51.
by tomjohnneill 8y ago
For hosting a Firebase app, with the hosting rewrites (like: https://firebase.google.com/docs/hosting/cloud-run ), what regions is this available in? Is it just us-central?
52.
by tomjohnneill 8y ago
In the UK at least, there's also quite a few people working on 'reinventing the union' (e.g.: https://www.organise.org.uk/ [1]). There's definitely an element to which old-school unions aren't parti
53.
by tomjohnneill 8y ago
I definitely want to believe this is a good measure of the impact of moving to a four day week. However, I wonder if this is an example of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect . Maybe people are being more pro
54.
by tomjohnneill 8y ago
I don't have a link, but pretty sure it was Zoho
55.
by tomjohnneill 8y ago
The merchant where you use your card will eventually pay all the fees. In the first instance, the merchant signs a contract with a 'payments acquirer' which specifies the fee they will pay on all different types of transactions (e
56.
by tomjohnneill 8y ago
That's not quite true. The interchange fee is the portion of the fee that goes direct to the banks. The payment processing market is a bit more complicated: When you make a transaction: 1) Your bank charges Visa/Mastercard an inte
57.
by tomjohnneill 8y ago
It's a bit weird that the author acknowledges the difference between UK regions and London, promptly ignores that, then continues to adjust the US figures by the different PPP figures by state. It definitely makes the whole thing a lot
58.
by tomjohnneill 8y ago
This is really cool. Is there any way you can add the option to turn the CSS into React inline styles?
59.
by tomjohnneill 8y ago
This is a really good point. My life living in London would be hugely more expensive if I had to buy a car to get around - not to mention a lot worse since cycling is so much better for me and everyone else.
60.
by tomjohnneill 8y ago
You can use this to your advantage and always win hide and seek by climbing up a tree

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