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SimianLogic2on How not to migrate an email domain

Average ~$3500/mo, but that can go up and down depending on organic traffic, competition (who's running ads), and world events (2-3x'd for a month or two during peak Covid lockdown). It was running ~$1-1.5k for a good chunk of the time when I was building out my own newsletter system, and I wasn't super eager to throw 30-50% of my revenue at something off-the-shelf.

SimianLogic2on How not to migrate an email domain

Not exactly.

These emails all go to users who have signed up for an account. Traffic is weird right now (domain migration in progress), but I was getting ~250-350 user signups a day.

I send a monthly newsletter to users who have been recently active, a welcome sequence of 2 or 3 emails depending on where you sign up, and have an abandoned cart sequence of 3 emails (here's the link to your video / your preview will expire soon / your preview has expired).

Both of those channels (newsletter / automated sequences) have opt-outs, but the automated ones see pretty good engagement. The max number of automated emails is in the 5/6 range before unsubscribes, so it only takes ~3-4 emails per user to get up to 1k/day -- especially when you toss in another 100 or so for normal password resets, receipts, order emails, etc.

SimianLogic2on How not to migrate an email domain

Agreed!

I don't know why they don't just keep a master list of every bounced email across every domain (or maybe that's what their paid verification product is and I just haven't looked at it closely enough?) and let me set a flag when sending an email to reject anything they know is going to bounce.

SimianLogic2on Why Doesn't Software Show Up in Productivity?

Are you a game developer?

(brb writing a new engine)

SimianLogic2on Tesla valve

Haha, cash isn't the limiting factor -- it's the hours of disappearing into the workshop to leave her with childcare duties. I just need to wait for the kids to get a bit older and I can make it a team activity.

SimianLogic2on Tesla valve

I tried to carve one of these in styrofoam just to show it to the kids after reading about it a year or so ago, but the material was too soft/porous. It's on my project TODO list if I can ever talk the wife into letting me buy a 3d printer or glowforge.

SimianLogic2on The historical accuracy of medieval city-builder video games

I learned most of what I know about the Three Kingdoms era from playing hundreds (thousands?) of hours of Dynasty Warriors. I later read Romance of the Three Kingdoms and the game was pretty close!

(Holy shit I had a lot of free time before I had kids.)

SimianLogic2on Cloudflare's inaccessible browser contradicts the company's mission

We usually quote 50-100% increase for agency web dev stuff (mostly marketing sites) and I'd say we've underestimated a few times. For basic html layouts it's not too bad but the minute you move away from something that looks like Craigslist or Wikipedia stuff starts to get hard. We've used 3rd party consultants to do reviews and every reviewer picks out different problems on the same exact site. I've implemented consultant recommendations line for line only to have that code flagged by a different reviewer at the same company as non-compliant.

SimianLogic2on Handwriting is better than typing when learning a new language, study finds

I learn by taking notes. I have notebooks full of notes... but I don't ever actually refer back to them. Just the act of writing things down helps me remember things.

SimianLogic2on Ask HN: Have you found a good desk chair?

I have the Ikea sit-stand desk, but I find it hard to stand during deep focus work. I rotate between a tall cushy stool and standing when the desk is up. When the desk is down I rotate between a standard office chair I got when a former company shut down and a kneeling chair (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W4YFQTK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_...).

The kneeling chairs mimics my natural sitting posture in the office chair and the stool, but it's brutal on my shins after an hour or two. Sitting like that (which I do anyway) is also quite bad for my hamstrings, which are super short.

I don't really get back pain so much as hamstring and hip pain, but using a resistance band to do a few stretches a day helps a lot.

SimianLogic2on Google can't pass its own page speed test

My site's not huge and mobile ads were only ~$150/mo. I might revisit it later, but for now I'm willing to take the path of least resistance.

SimianLogic2on Google can't pass its own page speed test

A) This level of vitriol directed at internet strangers is not super healthy. I hope you find something that helps you chill out a bit.

B) I didn't say they did, but not every product needs to be concerned with the rest of the world. Websites in English targeted at a US market and charging US Dollars for their products probably don't care much about the average mobile processor speed in India (anecdotal source: me).

I would guess that most SaaS businesses are primarily accessed on desktop computers during the work week, but I bet they're now collectively spending millions-if-not-billions of dollars in dev time to make their landing pages load faster on Indian mobile phones for users who are unlikely to ever visit or become customers.

(I pick on India because my site gets a lot of Indian traffic, but feel free to swap in the developing nation of your choice.)

SimianLogic2on Google can't pass its own page speed test

The desktop performance targets are easy to hit, but mobile tests for Lighthouse are rough: "Simulated Fast 3G" network throttling and a 4x CPU slowdown.

I don't know anyone in the US who is still on 3G and modern CPUs are not 4x slower than their desktop counterparts.

SimianLogic2on Google can't pass its own page speed test

I've been doing a lot of this work over the last month and LCP has been the hardest metric to move by far. I ended up dropping AdSense on mobile entirely from my site, which was ironically the biggest factor in performance degradation across a number of the stats they track.

SimianLogic2on Microsoft has turned the Surface Duo into a handheld Xbox

Update: I played a run on Slay the Spire with the new controls and I actually prefer it to the paired XBox controller. I think this is a pretty great update for any turn-based game (todo: check out Monster Train and Nowhere Prophet).

SimianLogic2on Microsoft has turned the Surface Duo into a handheld Xbox

The only good experience I've had with it so far is Slay the Spire (mysteriously missing on Android). I play it full-screen with a gap in the middle -- I wish there was an OS or app-level setting to let me choose whether I want the screen to be slightly smaller with pixel perfect gaps or have a random chunk missing from the middle of every full-screen experience.

I pair an XBox controller, but I don't tend to travel with it (I just keep one on my coffee table). It would be pretty sweet to have a switch-style dock that let me put my TV in "big screen mode" and just let me navigate the whole phone with the controller. More like an XBox Phone than a Windows Phone at that point.

SimianLogic2on Roku Warns YouTube TV Customers That Service Could Go Dark

Seconded. Roku started out as the "we partner with everyone" streaming device and all this "we're a platform now" bullshit is such a consumer betrayal. I think I've bought 4 or 5 over the years since we cut cable. I'm not interested in Roku streaming services. I don't care if they get a cut of ad revenue of the app I use on my own hardware.

I do care that I couldn't get HBO for a year. The Amazon stick is pretty trash, but I'm pretty happy with the Chromecast. I've got one more to switch over and all our Rokus can go to e-waste.

SimianLogic2on CutiePi – A Raspberry Pi 4 tablet

Because there's nothing I love more than fiddling with obtuse settings menus just to have to do it again in couple of hours. This would maybe be acceptable if there was a charm/quick toggle like they do with Do Not Disturb, but I'd rather print it or write it than change the settings and then remember to change them back later.

SimianLogic2on CutiePi – A Raspberry Pi 4 tablet

Seconded. I looked into this at the start of the Pandemic -- there are a few crap ones on Amazon. I couldn't get them to work with my phone. I'd love to just have a set of web bookmarks and be able to load those or send it a URL from my device or even a page out of Notion.

My main use case: when I'm following a recipe, my devices go to sleep in a minute or two and it's a huge pain in the ass to wake it up and type in passwords while covered in sauce or flour or raw meat or whatever. I've started printing (or writing) recipes on blank paper just so I can move them around the kitchen and not worry about things going to sleep on me.

The press would eat it up with snark (Silicon Valley invents recipe cards. ha ha ha ha ha so clever!), but I don't want a rolodex full of cardboard that I have to stick in a drawer somewhere and sort/manage.

SimianLogic2on Vertical farming does not save space

I think I'm following your build. It seems like Kratky requires a lot more space up-front than an aeroponic system that you refill over time, but it's good to know that I can get even lazier if I clean out some space in the garage.

SimianLogic2on Vertical farming does not save space

https://twitter.com/SimianLogic/status/1361768051276992514

Kind of free? There was nothing in that space before.

SimianLogic2on Vertical farming does not save space

I'm just using a 9-plant Aerogarden Bounty right now (think it was ~$175 on Black Friday). My wife says I can upgrade to an indoor Tower Garden or Lettucegrow if I do 3-4 cycles on this thing without getting bored.

I also built six 4ftx4ft raised (dirt) beds in our back yard a few years back. I plant fairly densely (usually using 1x1 squares for most things, 2x2 for tomatoes) and I'm thinking about trying one of the tower gardens as a replacement for a single 4x4 bed this growing season. It's been a minute since I ran the numbers, but I think you can plant 20-25 plants on one tower vs maybe 4-16 in a single bed and theoretically not have to weed/water as much (but then you get pump maintenance/ph balance/feeding/cleaning instead).

SimianLogic2on Vertical farming does not save space

This article is more about indoor farming than vertical farming (is it even vertical if there's only one row?). I grow lettuce indoors. It serves as a nice houseplant and fresh source of salad greens for lunch. It's fairly new, so the cost isn't that much different than just buying lettuce. Once I start building my own "pods" instead of buying the brand-name pods, though, I expect it'll be a bit cheaper than buying 4 bags of lettuce every week (although it doesn't produce enough to fully replace buying greens).

Mine produced ~4 bags over 6 weeks for an energy cost of ~$5 and a negligible amount of water. I think I can get the per-plant cost down to ~$0.50 once I start using my own seeds, so around $10 over 6 weeks to replace 4 bags of salad at around $3 each... a grand savings of $2. We're moving around 4 bags of greens a week between 2 adults, so I'd need to 6x that to replace all the greens we're eating, which gets the savings up to ~$2/week.

The cost savings is negligible -- I do it because it's neat and I like having a houseplant I can eat. It's also MUCH easier for a residential system to offset its energy usage than a commercial setup (I have way more square footage on my roof than I would ever "grow" inside my house).

The calorie argument is more compelling, but how many thousands of years did it take for people to get wheat so calorically dense? I think it's going to take time to develop nutrient-rich crops specifically tailored for indoor farming.

SimianLogic2on PSD is not my favourite file format (2009)

I have deep sympathy for this, after having done a ton of work with the SWF format and the (even more poorly documented) AEPX format.

SimianLogic2on HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash

I said much the same in another comment -- my kids (5 & 8) play a bunch of browser games, but eventually they'll have their own phones and steam accounts (and credit cards) and stop playing free stuff in the browser.

SimianLogic2on HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash

I think the point you're missing is that Flash supported an entire ecosystem. Because it was easy to distribute the files (and steal them from other portals), there were tons of game portals out there competing for traffic. This competition created incentives to do special deals (add my logo and a link for $2k before you launch). I released several games sponsored by Kongregate which went viral and got distributed to thousands of portals. Higher-tier portals would reach out and purchase a site-locked version without their competitor's branding for an additional $300-$1k depending on if they had their own API for high scores and such. Because there were SO many portals, it wasn't as winner-take-all as the modern mobile marketplaces.

I could easily recreate my games in javascript today (or swift. or C#/unity. or whatever) from an "is this possible" point of view, but I think it's much harder to make money today. You could argue that's more due to the competition level and number of creators than Flash, but I think the siloed app stores are awful for the long tail and smaller developers.

That ramp-up of competition kind of happened even before Flash was dead-dead, though--the big portals existed in a time before Facebook games (which suck now but were amazing for awhile) and mobile games. It's wild now to see my kids (5 & 8) play a lot of online games on modern much-shittier-than-Kongregate-and-Newgrounds portals, but there's basically a short time period between "old enough to play games" and "old enough for their own phone or steam account" that they're in right now, and I suspect that audience isn't big enough to support the kind of innovation we saw before Facebook games (which were also made with Flash, for the most part!).

SimianLogic2on How I generated incomes as a web developer without working as a freelancer

The author seems to enjoy his structure, but organizing my day into 30-minute chunks would drive me insane. I have a hard time getting anything done if I have a meeting on my calendar that I know is going to stop me in 2 hours.

SimianLogic2on Available for preorder today, Surface Duo

At $600-$800 I think I'd give it a go--basically an iPad Mini (a form factor which I love) that folds up when not in use. I'm surprised they didn't show more gaming applications. I think you could use half the screen as a controller and the other half to play the games and that would be an upgrade over most current touch controls.

SimianLogic2on Kongregate closed to new games, shutting down forums and chat

My son, alone? Nope. But I'm still getting royalty checks, so someone other than 8-12 year olds are playing. The world is a big place, and not everyone has an iPhone. Are fewer people playing than back in 2008? Yes. Is it enough to be viable? No way to know. I would say that Kongregate made some big bets over the last few years that didn't pay off (mobile, publishing, Kartridge). That doesn't make them bad bets, they just didn't work out.

I think it's very likely they could make enough money from their remaining brand and html5 games to pay for a couple of full-time bodies to keep the lights on. The company has changed hands a few times the last few years and the founders have moved on, so I would think it has more to do with the current owners bailing on Kartridge and winding the business down than the pure economics of the site itself.

SimianLogic2on Kongregate closed to new games, shutting down forums and chat

I mean, yes? That's the point I was making?

I see a lot of other people piling on to also rebut this bit, which is what I was specifically targeting:

> These days, every one of Kongregate's users has a smartphone with free games more accessible and convenient than the old browser gaming model.