[HN Gopher] How many lines of code is Candy Japan? (2016)
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       How many lines of code is Candy Japan? (2016)
        
       Author : EndXA
       Score  : 75 points
       Date   : 2021-04-02 15:12 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.candyjapan.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.candyjapan.com)
        
       | thih9 wrote:
       | Previous discussion:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12611721 (2016)
        
       | bengalister wrote:
       | This reminds me of a competitor "candysan.com". It is owned by a
       | Japanese woman and her French husband who happens to be a
       | youtuber. And the website is currently down because the servers
       | burnt with the OVH Strasburg datacenter.
       | 
       | He made some non-technical videos talking about it. Apparently
       | there was no backup and was considering moving part of the site
       | to Shopify (stripe is used for payment).
       | 
       | The youtube channels are Ici Japon Corp. and icijapon but it is
       | only in French.
        
         | bserge wrote:
         | Damn, not even a local copy? How so?
        
       | azhenley wrote:
       | 8341 lines total.
        
       | tpmx wrote:
       | "Because of the coronavirus situation, Candy Japan is currently
       | on pause."
        
         | sithadmin wrote:
         | Same story for many businesses shipping from Japan at the
         | moment. Japan Post has shut down most of the usual avenues for
         | shipping overseas from Japan, leaving only cost prohibitive
         | international courier and freight forwarding options available.
        
           | tpmx wrote:
           | Because of misplaced fears of fomite-based covid-19 infection
           | vectors?
        
             | robjan wrote:
             | Because there are no flights for airmail to travel on. We
             | have the same problem in HK since the border is almost
             | completely closed. We can only send mail by ship to most
             | destinations unless it's couriered.
        
               | tpmx wrote:
               | I had assumed commercial flight operators would have
               | MacGyvered passenger aircraft to handle things like this
               | by now, to get some kind of revenue stream. I guess the
               | economics didn't work out.
               | 
               | Edit: This is also nicely illustrated by Fedex stock
               | almost tripling in value since the beginning of the
               | pandemic.
        
               | Hamuko wrote:
               | I believe there are some passenger airplanes with seats
               | taken out for cargo but I have no idea how widespread
               | that is or how much of the regular cargo traffic it can
               | actually replace.
               | 
               | https://www.aircargonews.net/freighters-world/how-
               | coronaviru...
        
               | pm215 wrote:
               | One specific postage option I noticed Japan Post had
               | cancelled was the "surface air lift" which is a kind of
               | middle-option between airmail (fast, expensive) and
               | seamail (very slow, cheap). My assumption is that this
               | was partly because if there's less capacity on planes
               | then you might as well use it all for expensive airmail
               | rather than cheaper SAL. But I've not investigated
               | whether this is really true.
               | 
               | I think more generally trying to jury-rig cargo on a
               | passenger plane isn't economic -- IIRC early last year
               | some companies did a bit of it when passenger air travel
               | was essentially zero, but they've all stopped now because
               | (a) the cost effective way to fly cargo is to use cargo
               | planes and (b) air passenger travel picked up a little
               | again.
        
         | Hamuko wrote:
         | Global shipping is all sorts of fucked right now.
        
           | toomuchtodo wrote:
           | Sent cards to friends in Australia from US east coast, was
           | told they'd be there in 3 weeks if I was lucky.
        
         | bemmu wrote:
         | Candy Japan guy here. Japan Post announced that there will be
         | price increases, which seemed to more than double the shipping
         | cost. Even if I could ship (haven't checked lately if they
         | opened yet or not), the service would need to change. Probably
         | going from twice a month to once a month while still costing
         | the same, so not sure how attractive that would be to
         | subscribers.
         | 
         | While the site was down I started working on some other
         | projects which are looking promising, so I'm dragging my feet a
         | little bit about restarting it (I already refunded everyone's
         | candy balances in case I never restart). Since I spent 10 years
         | curating candy I also got a little bit tired towards the end to
         | be honest.
         | 
         | I should probably make some use of the organic traffic it's
         | getting though. I've actually had more traffic from Google
         | after I could no longer ship. Thinking of selling one-time
         | boxes on the site instead of subscriptions, as I could then
         | spend the time I used to spend on curation on new projects
         | instead.
        
           | kernelbugs wrote:
           | Have you considered setting up a distributor/forwarder in the
           | US? The only relatively fast services I know of operating
           | from Japan to the US right now (DHL + FedEx Priority Intl)
           | are expensive for sure, but the prices become more
           | economically feasible at larger parcel sizes and weights.
           | Shipping one large batch to the US and then splitting
           | packages there might be an option. (Japan Post Seamail is
           | also an option (as the only available offering right now from
           | JP), but currently takes 2-3 months to arrive).
           | 
           | I import a good number of items from Japan as a small
           | business. Happy to chat more about the little context I have
           | about both JP->US shipping and US domestic.
        
           | tpmx wrote:
           | > Japan Post announced that there will be price increases,
           | which seemed to more than double the shipping cost.
           | 
           | That seems sort of fair, given the situation.
           | 
           | I'm curious - do you think Japan Post subsidized foreign
           | package shipment fees (before the pandemic)?
           | 
           | It's dramatically more expensive to ship stuff from Sweden to
           | Japan, than in the opposite direction, as an example.
        
             | kernelbugs wrote:
             | I think the JP to US prices increased specifically, and
             | more than any other price increases Japan post might have
             | made. Japan Post removed the US from an existing shipping
             | zone and marked it as its own shipping zone with higher
             | prices. I have a statement from a US shipping provider
             | (PirateShip) about the increase of outgoing USPS shipping
             | prices that likely also explains the increase of incoming
             | international mail as well:
             | 
             | > In late 2019, the US government threatened to pull out of
             | the "Universal Postal Union," which is the international
             | treaty that sets what postal services pay each other to
             | trade mail & packages. This started a negotiation where the
             | USA required the ability to "self-declare" the shipping
             | rates it would charge other countries, instead of them
             | being set by the treaty. This resulted in other countries
             | "self-declaring" rates, too... all of which made
             | international shipping through USPS way more expensive than
             | it already was.
        
           | sixothree wrote:
           | One time boxes sounds good to me. Being able to send someone
           | a nice little present would be great.
           | 
           | There's a lot of anxiety for me surrounding monthly boxes.
        
           | troutwine wrote:
           | FWIW I don't want candy twice a month but I would be
           | interested in something that came every six months or yearly.
           | Twice a month just seems like a _lot_ of candy.
        
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       (page generated 2021-04-02 23:01 UTC)