throwaway74567's comments

I see Java/Kotlin as a secret weapon for startups. Too often I read about startups that struggle with immature libraries, smaller eco systems and reinventing basic functionality. Problems that they would not have if they chose a mature technology.

These blog posts mentions a company that has to write their own database library, auth services or other basic functionality. Sometimes they fix so many issues with the core language that they become close partners with the core developers of the programming language. I can't help wonder if the competition also reads the post and just smiles before they go back to actually solving a business problem. To me it's a symptom of choosing the wrong stack, even though working on non-business related problems may be more rewarding to the individual.

That's a good approach if the worker is connected to the database.

If an external process is responsible for marking a job as done, you could add a timestamp column that will act as a timeout. The column will be updated before the job is given to the worker.

SELECT ... WHERE ts > NOW()

UPDATE ... SET ts = NOW() + INTERVAL '1 HOUR'

You can get dedup with some queues, like SQS

I don't see any dishonesty here. They are in fact covering the fee out of the 5%. That means they are taking less than what "reasonable" persons think in your opinion.

The text may be imprecise, but it's a long way from dishonesty. In my opinion dishonesty requires a motive, and I don't see it here. If the 5% did not include fees, it would perhaps be different.

Please take more time to read the context. If you read the post that I replied to instead of jumping to conclusions, you will find that you are incorrect

$25 refers to the 5% fee of the total amount ($500) that the site takes. I said that more than half of that fee is used to pay Stripe.

I think your approach is reasonable. There will always be comments from people who think everything should be "free" without considering costs.

In a perfect world, Stripe and the credit card companies could waive the fees for donations, but that is not the case.

Someone has to actually cover those fees.

My guess is that more than half of that $25 goes to the payment provider (Stripe etc.). Maybe more.

The remaining ~$10 will go to thaks.dev to cover operational costs, administration and other expenses.

I don't expect them to work for free. If you think it's unfair, contact the developers directly to see if you can wire them money (to avoid PayPal fees). If it's too much work, you can pay services like thanks.dev that does the work for you.