Hacker News: eappleby

New comment by eappleby in "Never buy a .online domain"

eappleby — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 18:57:57 +0000

Right. Sounds more like a registrar problem than a TLD problem. They should change the article title to "Never buy a domain from Radix"

New comment by eappleby in "Never buy a .online domain"

eappleby — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 13:57:23 +0000

Unfortunate story. It wasn't clear to me that the .online TLD led to Google blacklisting the site. Why did you think that was connected?

New comment by eappleby in "Poll: How often do you bathe?"

eappleby — Tue, 20 May 2025 13:38:49 +0000

Surprised to so many people showering more than once per day. For people that do that, is that due to morning showers coupled with post-activity shower?

New comment by eappleby in "Gumroad's Interestingly Timed "Open-Source" Play"

eappleby — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 23:49:43 +0000

I believe Gumroad uses Stripe to process payments, so I'd guess this entire validation process is coming from Stripe. When the CEO paid you via Zelle, he probably just wanted to help you out with the hope that you would continue using Gumroad and have a positive experience with the company. I wouldn't look at any of this as a negative reflection of the company. (I've personally never used Gumroad, so this opinion is only based on your comment and my experience with Stripe)

New comment by eappleby in "Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business"

eappleby — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 23:16:07 +0000

I'm on year 13 of running businesses of one (I built an audience development platform and an educational/fundraising platform, plus a handful of smaller ones). On the plus side, I'd say that it has been pretty easy to maintain margins and keep cost under control. It's also easy to stay under the radar of larger competitors. On the downside, I think acquisitions would have been easier if I had a team in place and higher revenue, even with lower operating margins. Last year, my revenue fell a bit and I've considered looking for a more traditional job, but it has been harder than I expected because I believe my experience may not fit a traditional job description. Still, if you can swing it, I would very much recommend it, but good to consider the downsides as well.

New comment by eappleby in "GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house"

eappleby — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 23:34:58 +0000

GM stock up 2.5% since the announcement, so it doesn't look like investors attributed that much of GM's future value to Cruise (or that shutting down the robotaxi development was already assumed)

New comment by eappleby in "Tip pressure might work in the moment, but customers are less likely to return"

eappleby — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 21:01:56 +0000

I spoke with a restaurant owner who explained to me the purpose of the "service fees" that may look like tips, but don't actually go to the waiters. The reason they do that is that some restaurants want to pay their non-wait staff more, without also needing to increase the pay for their wait staff. Since the "service fees" aren't included when calculating the tips, this allows restaurants to direct those extra funds exactly where they need without unnecessarily inflating the overall cost of the meal.

I 100% agree that tips should be abolished and consumers should pay a clear and fixed price for goods and services, but if you accept that that is not an option, then "service fees" actually make sense. That being said, I can understand the ire that they may cause the wait staff, since many consumers may think those "service fees" are tips, and as a result, may not receive anything for their work. No great solutions here

New comment by eappleby in "Ask HN: Founders, what was the major sourcing channel for your first 100 users?"

eappleby — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 19:42:54 +0000

First 5-10 clients was emails to friends of friends.

Next 50-100 was cold emails.

After that, mostly word-of-mouth.

Target audience was publishers (audience development/growth)

New comment by eappleby in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (August 2024)"

eappleby — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 20:51:54 +0000

I’m building a platform that helps elementary and middle schools raise money. Students answer as many math problems as they can over a week or two and ask friends and family to support them by making a donation to their school. The math problems are dynamite created and generally follow the math curriculum that most schools follow. https://www.forourschool.org

New comment by eappleby in "Ask HN: If you can't find a job(in tech), why not create one"

eappleby — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 15:27:18 +0000

You don't need employees to start a company

New comment by eappleby in "Show HN: I built a math website the internet loved, I'm back with more features"

eappleby — Wed, 15 May 2024 15:30:13 +0000

I love it! I also built a math focused website. Schools can use it to host Math-A-Thons, which is a type of fundraiser where students answer math problems online and solicit donations to support their school. I made all the math problems available to play for free outside of the platform, as well as guides that help the students answer the problems:

https://www.forourschool.org/math-games https://www.forourschool.org/math-guides

Yay Math!!

New comment by eappleby in "Heat pumps slash emissions even if powered by a dirty grid"

eappleby — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 22:11:06 +0000

Most manufacturers offer 10 year warranties

https://comfortmonster.com/knowledge-center/guide-hvac-warra...

New comment by eappleby in "How have you found purpose in your life?"

eappleby — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 18:23:03 +0000

Congrats on sobriety and sharing some of your struggles. I remember when I first had the desire to build a business, I probably spent a month going in circles thinking about all the different problems I was going to need to solve and tools/languages I was going to need to learn. I never really made any progress, so I decided to focus on just the name of the business and then buy the URL. It might have been premature since the business wasn't figured out (I ended up changing it later), but having a name, at least let me mentally move forward with the product and design.

I haven't spent much time thinking about my purpose in life, but I think I would approach it in a similar way. Take small steps (e.g. talk to someone new about what they love in life, rediscover an old hobby) and trust that the steps will build over time into your ultimate goal.

New comment by eappleby in "California's war on plastic bag use seems to have backfired"

eappleby — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 16:23:08 +0000

Would this problem be solved if there were bins in front of supermarkets where people could drop off their extra bags and other people could grab them if they needed them? I get that the stores may not like it because they sell the bags, but if they were onboard, would there be any reason why it wouldn't work?

New comment by eappleby in "The failure of self-checkout technology"

eappleby — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 00:01:24 +0000

Not at my CVS. They have one checkout clerk, and if there are more than 3 people standing in line, it can take 10+ minutes to checkout. With self-checkout, I'm in and out in 30 seconds. Presumably, they'd add more checkout clerks if they remove the self-checkout, but I wouldn't count on it

New comment by eappleby in "Arena Group fires CEO in wake of Sports Illustrated AI articles scandal"

eappleby — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 12:27:34 +0000

Article was probably written by AI

New comment by eappleby in "Bumble bees drop to shake off Asian hornets"

eappleby — Sat, 21 Oct 2023 02:20:14 +0000

"Watch A ‘Murder Hornet’ Destroy An Entire Honeybee Hive" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gAVlh-7WZM&ab_channel=VICEN...

New comment by eappleby in "X confuses the masses by removing all details from links"

eappleby — Sun, 08 Oct 2023 22:45:12 +0000

I don't think the driving force of this change is either aesthetics or gov't policy. I think Musk is trying to maximizing Twitter's time on site and if you remove the headlines (and add 5 second delays on link redirects), it decreases the click-through rate on the links. Musk knows that if he outlaws all non-paid links, it would result in an uproar from media companies and users, so he is making the experience as bad as possible so people choose to stop linking out on their own.

New comment by eappleby in "X confuses the masses by removing all details from links"

eappleby — Sun, 08 Oct 2023 22:31:18 +0000

I'd be surprised if that happens in any meaningful scale. Twitter just doesn't justify that type of investment anymore.

New comment by eappleby in "Ask HN: Tips for Solopreneur?"

eappleby — Tue, 26 Sep 2023 19:10:17 +0000

Since other people are mentioning the red flags working with business critical 1-person businesses, I thought I would share a small story. When I was first starting out, I connected with Huffington Post who were very excited about using PubExchange since they were manually managing most of their traffic partnerships. For many sites, traffic partnerships can be a large source of referrals, but HuffPo took it to another level. They partnered with everybody and would link out from their homepage, so they could send a very significant amount of traffic. After a few meetings (I don't think infosec got involved), they decided to integrate PubExchange throughout all their verticals. We met in person, so they were fully aware that it was just me, but they were/are a very nimble company so they were ok moving forward. Unfortunately, because they were implementing it so quickly and using it in different ways than had been used before, the first night they implemented it, it broke, and unfortunately, it also broke all links (internal and external) across HuffPo. They took down the code, and called me that night. I fixed the issues right then (I think it took me 10 minutes) and the next day they added everything back. Never had any issues again and worked with them for many years after that.