Same, every time I end up on a substack post, it's from an external source. Maybe there is a network effect on substack that makes it easier to get these external links, but I doubt most actual readers are coming from inside the substack ecosystem.
> Same, every time I end up on a substack post, it's from an external source.
I think the parent was talking about having a substack, not reading things on Substack.
But I also think the direct network effects don't come from casuals (other than that they repost to social networks.) People who are paying for a substack will look at others because it doesn't involve another signup or separate bill, they can just add the subscription for a buck or two. Now they can tour the subscriber content, and they can drop it after a little while if it doesn't ultimately appeal to them with just a click or three.
For non-subscribers, a substack isn't any different from any other blog.
Maybe I'm an outlier, but I find that my main reason for discontinuing Ground News/Nebula/whatever is that I subscribe aspirationally and never actually make time to consume the content. One year I got my partner and I subscriptions to Masterclass and at the end of the year neither one of us had watched a single video.
Basically, I don't know anyone who is ever bored. Who the hell has time to click on and read random posts? The entire value of HN is that other smart people surface the top 1% of 1% of stuff I'd probably find interesting.
The notion of reading Substack posts just because I'm a subscriber seems like fantasy.
It's not a small number, and like you point out, this is human nature, so asking people to stop is pointless. If people always acted rationally and with empathy for others, everything would be much easier. There would have been no Covid pandemic, no global warming, no drunk driving, and so on.
Yet here we are, needing laws, cops, vaccines, and so on. Asking people to only have absolutely safe sex due to its external effects is about as useful as asking them to stop eating meat due to its external effects.
Apple already had giant margins before and could easily absorb memory price increases. The fact that they did not and instead decided to increase prices shows how confident they are that people will buy their hardware anyway.
Apple has long term contracts for every part that goes in the most complex supply chain on the planet. Do you think they call their suppliers every morning asking for 2 million chips?
Their price increases were a mixture of absorbing some of the increase and passing what they won't on us.
These numbers are so small that I'm doubly ashamed of all the corruption happening. If politicians at least sold out for fuck-you money, I'd understand, but no.
I haven't been to the US since Trump first got elected, but even before that, immigration agents often seemed oddly adversarial, whereas immigration agents in China just don't really seem to give a shit.
From what I read about them (never had the honour and pleasure of interacting with one) it seems for some time they have had too much power with almost zero accountability and consequences.
I used to love visiting the US. I have many friends there, and I really enjoy staying in places like Seattle and SF. But I haven't gone there since Trump 1.
That said, I think protecting your privacy is a good idea in general.
With self-hosting, it's possible to easily bootstrap a clean phone with all your data and passwords from scratch, without relying on any third-party cloud services. The only thing you need to bring across the border is your brain (which contains the most basic information on how to set up your password manager) and maybe some kind of 2FA generator. Your password manager then contains all the other information you need to get everything running.
I don't think it ever makes sense to transport actual data across borders if you care about governments gaining access to it.
I'm not sure what you're referring to, but what I basically do is self-host everything that stores relevant data: Vaultwarden, Immich, Notesnook, etc. I only know how to set up Bitwarden and my 2FA generator from scratch, so when I get a new phone, I install Bitwarden and the 2FA app and set them up.
Then everything else is documented inside Bitwarden. It's just a matter of installing the apps and logging in using the credentials stored in Bitwarden and a 2FA token generator.
There's no need for relying on any phone OS features.
This seems to describe a workflow with a small number of apps that store things remotely.
I want to back up my phone and restore it in one step, possibly to different hardware, and have it work like nothing ever happened. I can do that with a PC. I ought to be able to do that with a phone too.
I'll use Signal as my example of an app that's especially annoying to deal with in the border crossing scenario. I want to back up Signal and install it on a clean device without losing messages, changing my safety number, or verifying by SMS with a phone number I may not have access to at my destination. It's not possible, though I'll grant some of that is design choices made by Signal rather than the operating system.
I have to use its built-in backup function to keep my messages; if I just copy the data, it can't decrypt because the keys are in the old device's TPM. Even with the backup and password, I have to use SMS verification. Finally, the safety number seems to be tied to the keys in the old TPM, so I there's no way to do this without changing it and annoying my contacts (or teaching them to ignore safety number changes).
I think it's shameful that Moonshot isn't providing us with party kits like Microsoft did with the Windows 7 Launch Party kit. How am I supposed to properly celebrate this without fun Kimi-themed quizzes for my guests?
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