Hacker News: jweatherby

New comment by jweatherby in "AI is going to kill app subscriptions"

jweatherby — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 17:48:21 +0000

The trick with this wave of fast apps will be getting others to use the things that are built. Sure you can build something for yourself quickly enough, but you'll likely need the rest of your team onboard, which comes with a slew of other problems and complexities.

New comment by jweatherby in "AI doesn’t reduce work, it intensifies it"

jweatherby — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 02:32:56 +0000

Same. It's freed up hours to spend with the kids. Time is scarce

New comment by jweatherby in "How I estimate work"

jweatherby — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 02:45:05 +0000

In my experience that's where story points come in. "This comparable project took this number of story points, therefore should be similar, resulting in a comparable amount of time." The usage of story points help to adjust for complexity.

The story points are that data point in the past used to indicate the future.

New comment by jweatherby in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)"

jweatherby — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 04:37:59 +0000

I mentioned this a few months ago, but have made progress since - I'm working on an alternative to subscriptions for online publications. Instead of subscribing to entire publications / blogs, publishers would register their publication on this network and configure thresholds and pricing. Add a bit of code to the site and a paywall will show up, allowing readers to pay for individual articles. The prices would be minimal, amounting to less than a dollar in most cases. i.e. reading articles using micro-transactions

I know it's been tried before, but I thought I'd attack it with a few different angles - web based, no chrome extension, thresholds to help verify the article is worth it, extensive use of an aggregator to help with discovery and validation.

You can see the work in progress here: https://paperwall.io

New comment by jweatherby in "Few Americans pay for news when they encounter paywalls"

jweatherby — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 12:54:31 +0000

Hey, this is relevant to what I'm working on - I'm building an alternative to subscriptions for online publications. Instead of subscribing to entire publications / blogs, publishers would register their site on this network and configure thresholds and pricing. Add a bit of code to the publication and a paywall will show up, allowing configuration per article and allowing readers to pay for individual articles. The prices would be minimal, amounting to less than a dollar in most cases. i.e. reading articles using micro-transactions.

I know it's been tried before, as has been mentioned in this thread, but I thought I'd attack it with a few different angles - web based, no chrome extension, and thresholds to help verify the article is worth it.

Check it out here - https://paperwall.io

Especially considering the nature of this thread, I'd love feedback and what you'd like to see out of a solution like this.

New comment by jweatherby in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (March 2025)"

jweatherby — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 12:12:02 +0000

Very much WIP: I'm working on an alternative to subscriptions for online publications. Instead of subscribing to entire publications / blogs, publishers would register their publication on this network and configure thresholds and pricing. Add a bit of code to the site and a paywall will show up, allowing readers to pay for individual articles. The prices would be minimal, amounting to less than a dollar in most cases. i.e. reading articles using micro-transactions

I know it's been tried before, but I thought I'd attack it with a few different angles - web based, no chrome extension, and thresholds to help verify the article is worth it.

You can see the proof-of-concept here: https://paperwall.io/

New comment by jweatherby in "In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work"

jweatherby — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 04:03:34 +0000

The better the marketing, the easier the sales.

New comment by jweatherby in "The slow death of the hands-on engineering manager"

jweatherby — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 12:41:27 +0000

Better than rolling out an AI to hopefully find the docs you're looking for, it would be better to create an actual framework for the docs. This would remove uncertainty about where docs live and improve discoverability to peruse as needed.

AI and search is only as helpful as the content provided, and most applicable to those already familiar with the existing domain.

New comment by jweatherby in "Tailwind CSS vs. Pico CSS (2022)"

jweatherby — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 23:52:24 +0000

If you change the base css variables, you can configure that default spacing and the corresponding ratios stay reasonable. This is how I use picocss for my high density UIs.

The docs are decent enough to configure this.

New comment by jweatherby in "Betula – federated bookmarking software for the independent web"

jweatherby — Sun, 09 Jun 2024 18:26:31 +0000

See my comment above, but maybe this tool, https://showboard.ca, that does most of what you're looking for. Except the address bar auto-complete, that would be next level.

New comment by jweatherby in "Betula – federated bookmarking software for the independent web"

jweatherby — Sun, 09 Jun 2024 18:02:34 +0000

I built a tool, https://showboard.ca, that does most of what you're looking for.

It helps visualize and organize bookmarks into boards, which you can then share with others. It also scrapes the contents of the links, which is then searchable.

You can see an example of it in action here:

- https://showboard.ca/boards/67-engineering-leadership

- https://showboard.ca/boards/15-recipes

Maybe this can help?

New comment by jweatherby in "Where I'm at on the whole CSS-Tricks thing"

jweatherby — Sun, 03 Mar 2024 22:25:46 +0000

I see quite a few lamenting about the lost content and their bookmarks pointing to dead links. I built a bookmarking tool (https://showboard.ca), that allows you to store and organize that readable content (similar to pocket, instapaper, etc); meaning if those articles go dark, you won't lose their contents.

New comment by jweatherby in "If you could only have one programming book on bookshelf what would it be?"

jweatherby — Sat, 11 Nov 2023 12:29:43 +0000

Clean Architecture by Bob Martin. It lays it out how to think abstractly in a systematic way and when to worry about what when designing a codebase. It applies at the micro and the macro level. However, I'd only recommend it after a few years of experience.

New comment by jweatherby in "Ask HN: What would you use to build a mostly CRUD back end today?"

jweatherby — Mon, 18 Sep 2023 00:46:50 +0000

If a UI is needed: sveltekit, Prisma, trpc

One app, no need for an API, typesafety baked in at the DB and API layer, client-side interactivity, and server side authentication is easy to work in.

New comment by jweatherby in "Habits of top engineers"

jweatherby — Sat, 16 Sep 2023 12:16:47 +0000

Agreed. Early on, I would enjoy solving a problem with regex, but really, that's a code smell and a red flag beyond basic validation.

New comment by jweatherby in "Writing about what you learn pushes you to understand topics better"

jweatherby — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 17:04:01 +0000

Where is the best place you've found to receive this feedback?

New comment by jweatherby in "Ask HN: What are you working on this year?"

jweatherby — Tue, 03 Jan 2023 04:05:23 +0000

I'm building an attendance management app - https://tendee.co

I had a few itches to scratch:

- one off events now that fewer people are on facebook;

- planning in advance for subs in team sports;

- some work events have max capacity, so building out a wait-list

It's been a good way to play around and learn some tech I've been meaning to get around to, like NextJS and PrismaDB, but I kinda regret not giving Remix a shot.

New comment by jweatherby in "We’re in a golden age of board games"

jweatherby — Sun, 25 Dec 2022 15:15:47 +0000

I just discovered Santorini recently - great 2 player game with lots of replay value, if the mechanics click for you. Otherwise, my gotos are Carcassonne, Century (golem edition for great art) and the classics like backgammon and cribbage.

New comment by jweatherby in "Pinboard vs. Raindrop"

jweatherby — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 12:18:46 +0000

No, the sharing aspect is internal to the app, so each "board" can have as many users as you like. Neat idea though, I'll have to look into that.

New comment by jweatherby in "Pinboard vs. Raindrop"

jweatherby — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 05:21:34 +0000

I built a little hybrid bookmarking/notetaking app - https://www.showboard.ca/ It's not built for bulk usage like you're describing, but makes it easy enough to scrape, modify, share and search. Let me know if this is of interest (it has a python backend ;)