The idea here is that people (like me or you) can create something neat like this, and others can remix it, change it and publish their own version. This is that all in action and it worked great. I wrote a blog about it (the blog is dogfooding, it's just an app hosted on quickish that uses the built in db lib).
For the HN version of this flip board I use their firebase api via the built in quickish server functions that make use of the fact that the front-end can get realtime updates (now that you mention firebase) from cloud function db updates. Of course that's over-kill but I wanted to show something fun. You can remix and host your own version for free, just need a google oauth login that's it.
OG flip board I built (Portland Based - Current Weather): https://popflame.quickish.space/flipboard-preview
Blog post that dives a tiny bit deeper: https://popflame.quickish.space/blog/hacker-news-on-a-split-...
There are a lot of cells used for rank and vote count. If you used A-Z for rank and dropped the vote count you’d be able to see 50% more title, which is a lot. Vote count could be an optional overlay shown at the end of the title in the last 3 seconds of each frame. Or just drop it altogether.
Unless your host is limiting number of requests, indiscriminately.
It's cool though.