parth

changelog:

• this will be a short one but i updated the underlying engine to handle blacklisted custom referral codes better. there are cases sometimes where organising programs utilize ?ref= to track utm sources unrelated to pyramid scheme and i can’t let pyramid scheme users abuse that!
• we sunset the aces campaign as aces shutdown, completed the construct experiment and have sunsetted hc:tg too. we’re now fully focused on flavortown & sleepover! like the good old days of v2

changelog:

• i added user demographics to the admin dashboard. it’s always interesting to see <18 v >18 numbers!
• (push pending) flavortown re-theming and repairing typos/small bits of inaccurate information in places. also upselling videos more. short form content is beautiful and everyone should advertise HC programs using short form videos!
• some critical & hidden bugs and fixes. some people received shard adjustments (i made about 40% of these but had 60% pending. till now i was just doing them in case the users in question ordered something. for backstory there was a dupe reward glitch where referrals/posters would reward double the shards very very early on in the program. i’ve now adjusted everyone who had this issue back then)
• reset leaderboard and rewarded the old people! also kinda automated this, finally, lol. i was just scared
• image attached: 10,419 total posters ever generated. this is mostly thanks to @ deployor and the rest of the thanks go to everyone who’s made bulk poster groups.

changelog:

• fixed an open proxy issue (thanks to Deployor for reporting this!). random dead code i forgot to get rid of:(
• there was a recent issue in the sync job that caused a regression. new referrals where the same user (email) joined two or more of the participating programs wouldn’t sync properly- only the first one would and the other referrals would be in limbo. fixed this since!

shipped flavortime @ flavortown.hackclub.com/kitchen!

changelog:

• internal changes in order to present flavortime on the pyramid dashboard as well
• this is because flavortime supports flavortown referral links as well through pyramid scheme
• also dealing with and implementing fixes for a hard issue; right now pyramid scheme syncs referral codes by having participating programs send data to an airtable base. pyramid scheme has no control over what gets synced to the table so it’s actually hard for me to expunge someone’s referral code. the best thing i can do is blacklist said referral
• also refining the system for dealing with referral codes where the user switches to a different custom code– we don’t want anyone to just be able to take over that old referral code and inherit the corresponding referral codes
• i’m also thinking of implementing ai.hackclub.com moderation endpoints for filtering the custom referral codes better. people have put in some.. suspicious codes.. to say that least!
• also as you can see we now have a banner on the flavortown website for both projects, flavortime and pyramid scheme!
• we also made an announcement in hctg-bulletin about the hctg program
• hopefully next i’ll try to get pyramid scheme onto hackclub.com!!

much to talk about! (pictured: pyramid.hackclub.com/c/hctg)

changelog:

• overhauled the admin panel a lot! there is more granular control over the orders system and i have better search tools for myself so i can do order reviews faster. we also got access to HCB’s v4 API so that i can possibly automate fulfillment to an extent!
• sped up posters download a lot. so it turns out that i should probably not do file delivery through rails (it is not very fast lol). i moved the entire poster generation and qr code affixing system to my python microservice which uses the YOLOv8 ML model for QR code detection and posters now download way faster
• we shipped the Hack Club: The Game campaign with a really nice theme! and the Aces campaign is also secretly back. go check it out!
• since the last announcement the Sleepover campaign has also been launched and has been doing well! Reem is offering special prizes for meeting certain thresholds & for being the top Sleepover referrer- if you want more details on this, feel free to message me on Slack @parth!

this is one.. big devlog. (pictured: the letter cover sent out to clubs)

recent changelog:

• overhauled bulk poster creation menu heavily. it’s a lot more intuitive to use now! less labels, less buttons, better text, better contrast
• i shipped video creation as a third way to earn shards!! you can now create a nice video about the program of your liking & get 1-10 shards for it! plus a bonus of upto 20 shards if your video goes viral
• for some reason, about half the website was using filled icons. not only are filled lucide icons bad but i was using them inconsistently too! played around with the css a bit and finally fixed it
• in the admin panel, i added metrics to compare Pyramid Scheme V3 (current generation) with V2 metrics (run by @zrl!). now unfortunately you do need the database URL for V2 as I’m not allowed to make that data open source, lol.
• i also shipped a ref system for pyramid scheme itself. this was because @msw kindly designed a promotional letter series for Pyramid Scheme being sent out to Hack Clubs around the world! now i can track where people are signing up from the most:)
• finally, in addition to flavortown, i shipped construct. i’ve also built out the pyramid scheme programs for aces and sleepover, both of which are pending full launch!
• some misc. changes and bug fixes!