alex_studer (u/alex_studer)

alex_studer commented on Launch HN: Roame (YC S23) – Flight search engine for your credit card points · Posted by u/zman0225

alex_studer · 2 years ago

This seems like a cool idea! Some random feedback from using the website:

* I'm not really sure I understood what SkyView is? It seems like you need to enable that to book round-trip flights, and you have to pay for it? But then there's also SkyView Lite?? And that's free but needs an account? Is there no way to book round-trip without paying?

* Maybe ask people what cards they have on the homepage? I found it confusing that it suggested flights with points programs I didn't have, and didn't realize you could filter it at first.

* I don't think I fully understood the difference between this and just using my credit card's travel portal to book flights. Is it that you can compare multiple rewards programs at once? Or the idea that you can earn more value per point by transferring them? Maybe it would be good to clarify that on the homepage, because right now it just feels like a generic "book with points" search engine?

* Is there a way to allow discovering deals in any destination? (So rather than choosing a fixed destination, let it be open to any destination, and then plan a trip somewhere where you can get a good deal on a flight, if that makes sense?)

* On mobile, the filter popup is blocked by the "Log In/Sign Up" buttons on the bottom of the screen. Also on the homepage, the "Create an account" notification appears on top of the expanded hamburger.

alex_studer commented on Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store in the European Union apple.com/newsroom/2024/0... · Posted by u/colinhb

alex_studer · 2 years ago

There is also this requirement though:

> In order to establish adequate financial means to guarantee support for developers and customers, marketplace developers must provide Apple a stand-by letter of credit from an A-rated (or equivalent by S&P, Fitch, or Moody’s) financial Institution of €1,000,000 prior to receiving the entitlement. It will need to be auto-renewed on a yearly basis.

Source: https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-app-marketpl...

It doesn't seem like the fee waiver removes this requirement.

And it seems like the cost for a standby letter of credit is roughly 1-10% of its value per year? So effectively it costs €10,000 to €100,000 per year just to have an alternate marketplace, separate from the core technology fee....

alex_studer · 2 years ago

Also!! From the full terms at https://developer.apple.com/contact/request/download/alterna... :

> If the Core Technology Fee does not apply to Your Applications under this Section 4.4, any Alternative App Marketplace (EU) You distribute may only distribute Applications from You or another developer registered with the Apple Developer Program and not subject to the Core Technology Fee under this Section 4.4.

So a hypothetical F-Droid for iOS would need all its apps to be from registered developers with fee waivers. (And individuals are not eligible for the waiver, so it could only contain apps from other non-profit organizations.)

alex_studer commented on Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store in the European Union apple.com/newsroom/2024/0... · Posted by u/colinhb

kaba0 · 2 years ago

Non-profits are exempted, so an fdroid alternative becomes possible, which is the only alt store I (and probably anyone) care about. This is a win.

alex_studer · 2 years ago

There is also this requirement though:

> In order to establish adequate financial means to guarantee support for developers and customers, marketplace developers must provide Apple a stand-by letter of credit from an A-rated (or equivalent by S&P, Fitch, or Moody’s) financial Institution of €1,000,000 prior to receiving the entitlement. It will need to be auto-renewed on a yearly basis.

Source: https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-app-marketpl...

It doesn't seem like the fee waiver removes this requirement.

And it seems like the cost for a standby letter of credit is roughly 1-10% of its value per year? So effectively it costs €10,000 to €100,000 per year just to have an alternate marketplace, separate from the core technology fee....

alex_studer commented on Go Statement Considered Harmful (2018) vorpus.org/blog/notes-on-... · Posted by u/celeritascelery

kodah · 5 years ago

https://goplay.tools/snippet/am2vcq5JYFr

This is an example I made. Can you show how that would change to cause the problem you're describing?

alex_studer · 5 years ago

It looks like maybe the goroutine in that example doesn't actually get a chance to run before the program stops. If the main function lasts longer, then you'll see the effect of the panic. See https://goplay.tools/snippet/8SFlFkZ2P0y

Also, see the Go spec: https://golang.org/ref/spec#Handling_panics

> Next, any deferred functions run by F's caller are run, and so on up to any deferred by the top-level function in the executing goroutine. At that point, the program is terminated and the error condition is reported, including the value of the argument to panic.

It looks like, assuming it makes it to the top of the current goroutine, then it should be killing the whole program.

alex_studer commented on Gmail is a huge source of spam drewdevault.com/2021/02/2... · Posted by u/caution

kureikain · 5 years ago

It does but only for IPv4. If you have those:

- reverse ip. origin ip -> dns -> resolve to ip

- SPF

- DKIM

- DMARC

- Make sure ip are not on DNSBL

- Message ID

- Try to connect to gmail mx server using TLS

Then you have very low chance to get in spam unless you are sending spam and get blacklist. Time to time an gmail mx server will reject you, rate limiting, just try again with another and you will be ok.

Source: I run https://hanami.run and have to deal with this a lot due to nature of an email forwarding service that people usually use as one-off email (anything@domain.com for their one-off service) so it attract a lot of spam which I have to filter and make sure it won't go to gmail/microsft

I would say gmail is the best among big provide: Microsoft/Apple(iclouds) are garbage mail server where they just blindly trust DNSBL and block you no matter what. Gmail was way better.

However, if you use IPv6, it's a bit harder to avoid being flag as spam. It's really random and I don't know why yet and I contacted them and now "Waiting for 2 weeks to get a response"

alex_studer · 5 years ago

Out of curiosity, where do you send the emails from? (Are the IP addresses from AWS/some other large provider? Or something else?) I've heard that the IP address block has something to do with getting marked as spam.

I've checked everything on that list and it's all good, and I'm sending from IPv4. The really frustrating thing is that Google's own Postmaster Tools [0] doesn't want to tell me anything without "a sizable daily volume of email traffic (up to the order of hundreds)".

If it doesn't have to do with the origin IP's neighborhood, my only other guess is that I don't have enough email volume, which seems like a catch-22...

[0] https://gmail.com/postmaster/

alex_studer commented on Gmail is a huge source of spam drewdevault.com/2021/02/2... · Posted by u/caution

looperhacks · 5 years ago

Weird, for my server spam assassin tells me my dkim signature is invalid but the dkim check in the next category says that it's valid.

alex_studer · 5 years ago

Same here!

alex_studer commented on Gmail is a huge source of spam drewdevault.com/2021/02/2... · Posted by u/caution

ddevault · 5 years ago

Copying my reply to HN:

Some feedback: you should add a PTR record (reverse DNS) for studer.dev and mail.studer.dev.

I also noted that your DMARC record has p=quarantine, which depending on the details of your outgoing setup, may cause your emails to be placed in the spam folder if DMARC fails for any reason. I generally advise against using DMARC with any policy other than `v=DMARC1; p=none` or else you're liable to run into issues, it's not a very good standard.

Otherwise, your configuration looks good to me. Also try https://www.mail-tester.com to see what they think.

alex_studer · 5 years ago

In case anyone is curious: I checked and the PTR record for my mail server (168.62.161.121 -> mail.studer.dev) is valid. mail-tester.com also gives me a 9.9/10, but I just tried sending an email to a Gmail account and it went straight to spam :(

I suspect it's probably a volume thing? As in I'm not sending enough email for Gmail to make any judgements about my mail server, since I'm only an individual. Of course there's not really a great way to resolve that...

alex_studer commented on Gmail is a huge source of spam drewdevault.com/2021/02/2... · Posted by u/caution

ddevault · 5 years ago

Send me an email: sir@cmpwn.com

I'll see if I notice any configuration issues and report back to this thread.

alex_studer · 5 years ago

Done, thanks!

alex_studer commented on Gmail is a huge source of spam drewdevault.com/2021/02/2... · Posted by u/caution

alex_studer · 5 years ago

Maybe slightly unrelated to the main topic, but:

> If you’re worried about mail deliverability issues, don’t be — it’s more or less a myth in $CURRENTYEAR. If you set up DKIM properly and unlist your IP address from the DNSBLs (a simple process), then your mails will get through.

Does this match most people's experience? Or is he just talking about the deliverability of smaller providers like Migadu? I run my own mail server and can never send emails to people on Gmail/Microsoft 365/etc unless it's in reply to an email that I received.

I've checked DKIM and the DNSBLs, and everything seems correct...is it just a matter of not having enough volume for email providers to trust me?