
Extramaze: Using Racket, PostgreSQL, AWS, but no ads or JavaScript (2018) - aeontech
https://www.greghendershott.com/2018/05/extramaze-llc-using-racket-postgresql-aws-but-no-ads-or-js.html
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_bxg1
It'd be cool to see a revival in niche, honest software. The thing about tech
conglomerates is while they do a bunch of things efficiently, they also do
most of those things _badly_. If a single person can build something that's
useful to herself and to those like her, it seems like it can be enough to
make a living.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/amazo...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/amazon-
made-online-commerce-bewildering/580660/)

~~~
rhacker
I think they do things both inefficiently and badly. They only get ahead
because of their sales teams.

~~~
_bxg1
I meant the implementation is efficient, not the user experience. Amazon sure
does benefit from consolidating all of its services into a single
infrastructure, and from being able to bootstrap a whole new "store" just by
adding a product category. It just lacks the ability to tune in to any
particular user segment's needs.

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armandososa
Wow. The author started Cakewalk all by himself in 1987. Now I'm feeling
really bad about pirating his software when I was 19. I'm very sorry Mr
Hendershott, these days I pay for all the software I use.

~~~
black-tea
Could you afford Cakewalk when you were 19? What damage did you do?

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tzs
Note that this was written in May 2018, and the author is probably in the US
in the state of Massachusetts. I'm guessing the location based on a statement
on the site that MA residents will be charged sales tax.

The next month, a major legal change took place for such sites when the
Supreme Court ruled that states can force out of state online vendors to
collect sales tax. At least half the states now have such requirements, and
most of the rest are in the process of getting it in place.

This made doing a "get paid directly by the end user" site a lot more
complicated, both legally and technically.

If you don't have sufficient sales into a state, you don't have to collect
tax, but unfortunately most states seem to be going with a threshold of 200
transactions a year __or __sales of $100k or $200k or some similar high
number.

That "or" is the killer. If you are selling items that individually are cheap
it is not hard to reach a state's "must collect and file" threshold by
transaction count even if you have very little income from the state. You
could easily lose all your profit and more in such a state to tax report
filing fees.

~~~
hippich
I am not a member of this organization (yet?) - but they are fighting (right
now mostly focus in CA in regards to Amazon's third party sellers) for
straightforward legislations around sales taxes -
[https://onlinemerchantsguild.org/](https://onlinemerchantsguild.org/)

~~~
Twirrim
There has been efforts for more than a decade to introduce a streamlined tax
system
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streamlined_Sales_Tax_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streamlined_Sales_Tax_Project)),
a framework that all states could adopt for their tax purposes. The intent was
to make it easy for states to tax as desired, while using a simple framework
that would make it easier for companies choosing to do inter-state business,
and easier for online companies to implement.

A number of the larger companies had expressed a willingness over the years of
implementing a sales tax, provided the states could clean up their tax codes
to make it straightforward. A number of the states have tax codes that are so
insanely complex for companies operating outside of the state that it becomes
a near nightmare to correctly turn in to a computer program, for example
Hawaii which doesn't have a sales tax but has a General Excise Tax.

Getting states to be willing to completely overhaul their tax system is an
extremely hard battle.

edit: added link to the SST Project wiki page.

~~~
tzs
In the decision allowing states to make out of state sellers collect tax, the
Supreme Court said that a state could only do so if it wasn't unduly
burdensome on interstate commerce.

They did not give precise rules for what qualified, but did mention that South
Dakota (the state involved in the case) was part of the SST project as being
an important factor in South Dakota's law not being burdensome.

The general opinion I've seen has been that if a state joins SST, sets
thresholds similar to South Dakota's, and does not make their law retroactive,
it will almost certainly pass muster.

My guess is that this will bring most of the states into SST. That gets them
safe tax collection right away. If they go it alone, they risk merchants
making the state prove in court first that their particular law is not
burdensome.

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mark_l_watson
Nice writeup, thanks! I saved the link in my 'cool Racket' list.

I am also using Racket for a side project (Racket for the top level and
'business logic' with some Python/Keras stuff wrapped as services). Racket is
very nice, and it is "weaning" me off of Common Lisp (which I have used
heavily since the 1980s). The Racket ecosystem just keeps getting better. (I
still love Common Lisp though)

~~~
equalunique
There have been some other exciting posts about Racket over the past few
days[0][1], so I feel confident that my decision to soon get started with
DrRacket is a good one.

Question for you: Do you use any services, tools, or methodology to organize
your bookmarks? Personally it's an interesting challenge for me because of the
myriad of devices, browsers, and platforms I use.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19027400](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19027400)
[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19043816](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19043816)
[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19044409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19044409)

~~~
aeontech
Yeah, this link was mentioned in the comments on Racket 7.2 announcement
thread and I thought it was interesting enough to deserve a submission.
Apparently HN agrees :D (this being my first submission to reach front page in
quite a while).

I keep coming back to Racket, thinking it would be awesome to learn it
properly and use it for a real project, then forgetting about it again due to
busyness with existing projects... it's quite a cursed circle.

------
Roboprog
I love how that platform puts SQL into s expressions, with all the
capabilities this implies.

Not that I’ve actually touched any Lisp since the 80s.

Back to work in Java / Hibernate hell...

~~~
outworlder
It is amazing how elegant s-expressions are. And just how much pain that could
have been avoided by using them. Markup languages, configuration files, you
name it. Sometimes there are advantages for alternate notations, but most are
quite niche.

Now, if just all the lisp dialects would stop bikeshedding...

------
IBCNU
Greg made CakeWalk, one of the first and best music programs of it's day.

~~~
MisterOctober
I bet more '90s-early 2000s demos were cut with Cakewalk than with Logic,
Performer, and ProTools combined. Absolutely classic software; I'm amazed that
it was put together by just one guy.

------
samteeeee
I run similar services covering the Vans shoes
([https://vaultexplorer.com/](https://vaultexplorer.com/)) and "parts to build
drones with" niches ([https://rotorratings.com/](https://rotorratings.com/)).
I run them on $5 Digital Ocean droplets.

~~~
throwaway427
What kind of revenue you make on that? More than just beer money?

~~~
samteeeee
Not enough for a single beer yet, but ive only just begun. Adding features for
paid users only soon.

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equalunique
>Markdown edited with GNU Emacs. Site built using Frog, the frozen blog
generator, and Twitter Bootstrap.

I was looking at Frog[0] yesterday and found myself in want of an example
website. Today I found one, thanks to OP. :)

[0]
[https://github.com/greghendershott/frog](https://github.com/greghendershott/frog)

~~~
jessaustin
It looks like it's the same person... also it does look very cool.

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toothbrush
I've recently started a blog with a similar ethos: static hosting (for now
it's on S3) with no Javascript or ads. However, i'd like to know who is
visiting / whether my various publicity stunts are successful. I could self-
host something like Piwik, but the maintenance headache and security/PII
responsibility doesn't appeal to me.

What would other ethical webmasters here do? Only use HTTP access logs?

EDIT: to be clear: i could also write a bunch of tooling myself to parse
access logs or report events to a backend, but that feels like a lot of work +
reinventing the wheel + maintenance/security scare.

~~~
y4mi
> _Only use HTTP access logs?_

what else do you need, honestly?

you could set a cookie on initial page load with a uuid and identify unique
users from that (you can log cookies with nginx/apache).

just push the resulting log to Loki [1] (as an example) and you're done.

[1] [https://grafana.com/loki](https://grafana.com/loki)

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tomcam
I would love to see as a sample a two week-old version of the deals so I could
understand what I am paying for.

~~~
vezycash
Article says registered users get deals that are at least a day old for free.
Registered users get faster deals and saved searches - i.e. alerts.

~~~
tomcam
I missed that, thanks.

A service like this could definitely be worth the money. I used to watch sales
at Musician's Friend and got things like harmonicas for $2, gig bags for $2,
and Fender Custom Shop picks 6 boxes for $24.

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pwaivers
Noooo. I was excited to look at the site, but it is not up:
[http://extramaze.com/](http://extramaze.com/)

~~~
ylesaout
The article points to the actual website
[https://deals.extramaze.com/](https://deals.extramaze.com/)

