Ernie Smith

Divisive F.D.A. Vaccine Regulator Is Resigning

A well deserved departure right here. This guy's decision-making probably cost lives basically because of vibes. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/06/h...

I bet the AT Protocol could make this even simpler, by the way.

I guess my thought here is to point out that we talk a lot about how this stuff is super hard and unmanageable. This approach requires minimal code and could be put together by a junior coder in a weekend. You could do it on a static site.

And there is still room to make it cheaper.

Plus, if you don’t want to pay Ko-Fi a big cut if it takes off, you can pay $12/month and that’s all the cut they take.

Amazon is by far the cheapest email option, but you can also use something like Mailgun or Sendgrid if you want something not owned by Amazon.

That’s $5.60 in additional hosting, $10 for email, and 8% in fees. And you could cut it further: Listmonk (as well as its quite good competitor Keila) can be hosted on a mini PC, or hosted on the same server space somewhere. PikaPods is just a really easy way to get the functionality.

13.) And if the person ends their subscription, set up an exit script in Activepieces, with a goodbye email and a flow that moves them back to the free list. Same format as the hello email. Works essentially the same way.

No overthinking. That’s it.

12.) Create a login page that checks against your list—again, using a webhook that triggers an ActivePieces script that, if the email matches, sends a message to the user with a link to the page with the cookie.

10.) On your site, create a CSS type that hides content unless a certain class is loaded in the body tag.
11.) Create a small script that adds that script to the body tag only if it detects that cookie. (You could probably harden it if you really wanted, but it doesn’t have to be that strong.)

6.) Set up the script to add the user to a list or a segment of an existing list using Listmonk’s API.
7.) Set it so that you send a transactional email to that user.
8.) In the email, include a link to a page on your website
9.) On that page, load a cookie.

3.) Set up Activepieces, a Zapier alternative ($3.80/month on Pikapods)
4.) Sign up for a Ko-Fi account (5% service fee) and connect it to Stripe (2.7% + 5¢ fee) and/or PayPal (2.89% + 49¢ fee)
5.) Connect Listmonk and Ko-Fi together using a webhook on ActivePieces and a short script.

an envelope is flying through the air in a line style icon . Alt: an envelope is flying through the air in a line style icon .

A quick thought experiment to see if I can architect a simple, light-weight self-hosted paywall. think it can be done:

1.) Set up Amazon SES account (hardest part, honestly, but very doable—less than $10/month)
2.) Set up an open-source email sending tool (Listmonk, $1.80/month on Pikapods)

Write weird shit that's packed with details, get smart readers. That's how it works.

Grammarly is using our identities without permission Grammarly’s AI stole my boss’s identity.

If you can take inspiration from a journalist, you can offer that journalist royalties, I say.

www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

This doesn’t explain the first half (the explanation for it is obvious) but the second half is that Trump is clearly lying

It’s a weird cast-away line in this clip, which makes it all the more shocking he said it.

Nilay should interview the creator of LanguageTool instead. They could use the promotion.

Turned on a computer I haven't turned on in a while. Always love updating a super old version of Linux.

Company famous for lawyers puts lawyers to good use

More of this please

So the opposite of this

System76 is everything a legislator could want: An American company building cool stuff and supporting their community. That they have to respond to something like this is beyond abhorrent.

These people see computers and only think TikTok and Facebook.

Linux is exactly what they should be encouraging. Instead, they’re unwittingly trying to kill it for no good reason.

System76 on Age Verification Laws Liberty has costs, but it's worth it.

This is a really good statement from System76. The California law requiring age verification for using a computer is the dumbest law in the history of the universe and legislators need to actually talk to people on the front lines before they pass more laws like it

blog.system76.com/post/system7...

And people ask why I don’t trust a brand account that makes money off of prediction markets for my news coverage

Unfortunately, “Yo brother, legal team confirmed we can’t work with minors rn” is an instant classic

Keep Claude away from Elliott Smith’s second album at all costs

Do they make Wellbutrin for machines?

I mean if I was having to deal with everyone’s drama I’d get anxious too.

$599 is not bargain basement but it's enough to pull over people curious about Mac but not interested in the Mac Mini

Yeah that's kind of why I'm not too worried about the list price. At one point Amazon was selling the M4 Air at $799. I said the other day that this is going to be a natural Black Friday doorbuster.