Item — HN Reader

The main reason why anyone would want you to use their App is your likely inability to block ads (unless you block them at network level, that is). Sure, logging your behavior while using the App is a nice to have component as well, but the best way to serve ads and make sure they are seen by majority of users, is by having the user not use a browser.

I'm working on 20-things.com, my alternative to reddit, still in the making. I use it as a personal public bookmarking service, posting things I find interesting/worth sharing. This does not scale well since large userbase have large operating costs, so my plan is rather simple: keep it small and closed, periodically opening it up for new users as others leave.

But how will it make money? It won't, and that's ok.

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> large userbase have large operating costs

You can scale a single sqlite db to millions of users without too much trouble. The "large operating costs" meme primarily arose due to the atrociously large costs big cloud providers will make you pay for moderate traffic. It's not helped by the cargo cult of scalability, which strongly pushes you to use something shardable when in all but the most extraordinary cases the dumbest solution will keep working long beyond what's expected.

This is pretty neat looking. I am really digging the UI.

Would you ever consider making this open-source? It would be a great addition to the Awesome-Selfhosted list. [1]

[1] https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted

Thank you, that means a lot! :)

I plan to publish the source code with step by step instructions on how to build and host your own instance. Publishing the source will require some cleanup/preparation, I'll get to it as soon as possible. I never really thought that someone would even want to look at the source xD

It's nothing fancy, really, and every library used is noted on the about page[1], as well as third party services such as the one used to transmit SMS for account verification.

[1] https://20-things.com/about