Thanks for your honest words. They seem to be timeless in terms of web time scales. (Coming from your website, I did not check the publication date and had the notion of reading a seven or more year old article :-)
When your publishing shows up in my RSS reader, I go read it on the Substack site. My intention is the sends you a little dopamine contribution in the form of a metrics increment.
I don't think they track RSS "impressions". If you click on a link from RSS, it obviously gets counted, but they don't have a separate category for RSS and don't tag RSS URLs in any special way.
Realistically, though, it's a small number. For a typical post that doesn't end up on HN or other high-traffic website, 90% of traffic is attributable to other channels...
You’re absolutely right. But “tech” authors are more likely to attract larger number of RSS followers and it’s pretty much invisible to you.
Substack has excellent RSS feeds (kudos to them) and this is probably only 2nd or 3rd post I have clicked, even though I’ve been following since the beginning.
The issue with perverse incentives is an indicator of the economic calculation problem as defined by Mises in the 1930s with his works that are now aggregated into a book called "Socialism". He does a thorough structural analysis of all forms of socialism, defining 4 problems that Socialism would need to solve to be viable, that remain unsolved today.
The perverse incentives wouldn't be available if there was no profit to be made, and normal markets have such a low profit margin (with each additional node), that they can't sustain the amount being paid out in general. The money has to come from somewhere.
If you follow the money, all the way back, eventually you get to a SIFI bank or the Fed that created that money from nothing (fractional reserve, but no longer fractional or reserve a/o 2020), and loaned it to their rich friends (indirectly). Zombie companies.
The problem with inflationary economies are that over time they become increasingly chaotic, until they hit boundary conditions that force collapse. The data you get from inflationary economies also lags leading you into a hysteresis problem where you can't react fast enough to change course.
Its pretty clear that until the economics straightens itself out, that things will become progressively more chaotic and distorted over time until it collapses on itself.
Also, in reaching those boundary conditions, the social contract inevitably gets violated, and if society in general doesn't follow and respect the social contract, there won't be any incentive to help others out or volunteer anything to them.
The massive amount of evil people that were raised in these environments, will ensure ever increasing costs on any volunteer until there is nothing left, coercively.
Objectively,
Evil people are after all people who have willfully blinded themselves to the consequences of their evil actions and continue doing so until stopped.
Evil actions are any action that does not promote long-term beneficial growth of self or others.
Let's try (again) to make the Internet more romantic and less cynical.
You can still access the knowledge for free (ISP fee aside). There are people on the Internet who share their knowledge for free (I try to do this myself, although I could probably do more). This is how it all started in BBS, early www and usenet, ZINs, open source, free tool sharing, forums and all kinds of communities. People decide to contribute content to the web for something other than money – whether it's idealism or exhibitionism. Well, to be honest, there was a time when there was no money on the Internet, or there was very little of it, so it was easier to make a decision, but the argument remains. In any case, easily accessible, free content was the fuel for the development of the Internet at all levels of the evolutionary ladder, from people to corporations. For us, ordinary mortals, free information provided a low barrier to entry into any topic (see your recent article about strange topics on the Internet).
Please write more, share your knowledge for free. This rapidly changes our fate, from consumers of culture to producers. We become artists of sorts. It sounds crazy, but it's true. Ignore everything else, it's manageable. Otherwise, you'll be just another blogger who shares their unique and great guide or tool for a small fee. Nobody will buy it. Sales is governed by different laws than science. We don't need salespeople, we have plenty of them everywhere. We need evangelists of ideas and freedom.
Michał, I have been following your activity for probably over 20 years. Thank you for posting content online for free. Please continue.
wow, my comment turned into a rant in favor of publishing free content online. I'm not writing this because I'm trying to convince you or your readers, but I think, well, I need to rant in favor of publishing free content online. Oh, the irony.
I like that your posts reflect your eclectic set of hobbies and interests, it makes it more genuine and interesting to me, but that's probably not the way to earn a large following. I rarely subscribe to YouTube channel with a wide mix of topics, for example.
I just realized, than I have been following you loosely for more than 15 years, since I discussed some security issues around MS Office and some guy said "You should read, what lcamtuf has to say about it". And then I found your 'pof' program to read metadata from the MS Word. Something like that. And I'm happy that you don't post too often, however there are usually a lot of interesting points in your posts. And it's easy for me to omit your posts about electronics which is not in my interests.
I feel I'm the old fashioned Internet user (from the Usenet times), so I publish about my interests and don't really care if anybody wants to read it. I do it for my own money, keep it open to the wide Internet, and don't mean to put any more effort to SEO. It is basically a test for me, if I can make my interests in order, in the form of the webpage. If anybody wants to find my scribbles, one can do it. Howgh.
I doubt you posted this to get warm fuzzy feedback, but I've been loosely following you since the guerilla guide to CNC days and I appreciate your work and all the random topics.
I also find myself liking substack as a platform quite a bit more than any of the other social media.
I think I can explain why we get more subscribers without posting anything:
From an audience point of view, it's easy for me to subscribe to people who rarely post because it will result in few notifications. I can make a decision later, when I get their next post. I do this all the time on YouTube for musicians when I happened to like one song. Maybe they'll post something good someday?
Contrast with a high-traffic feed. There is always new content whenever you feel like visiting, so why subscribe and get a lot of notifications that you don't need? The only reason I'd do that is if I don't want to miss a post. Similarly for Mastodon and BlueSky; I'm making a decision on whether I want this person to overwhelm my feed with new posts.
A more conservative metric for feeds would only include people who had read X posts and are still around.
Thanks for your honest words. They seem to be timeless in terms of web time scales. (Coming from your website, I did not check the publication date and had the notion of reading a seven or more year old article :-)
Nice one, thanks.
When your publishing shows up in my RSS reader, I go read it on the Substack site. My intention is the sends you a little dopamine contribution in the form of a metrics increment.
Does substack give you the number of people reading you via RSS?
I don't think they track RSS "impressions". If you click on a link from RSS, it obviously gets counted, but they don't have a separate category for RSS and don't tag RSS URLs in any special way.
Realistically, though, it's a small number. For a typical post that doesn't end up on HN or other high-traffic website, 90% of traffic is attributable to other channels...
You’re absolutely right. But “tech” authors are more likely to attract larger number of RSS followers and it’s pretty much invisible to you.
Substack has excellent RSS feeds (kudos to them) and this is probably only 2nd or 3rd post I have clicked, even though I’ve been following since the beginning.
The issue with perverse incentives is an indicator of the economic calculation problem as defined by Mises in the 1930s with his works that are now aggregated into a book called "Socialism". He does a thorough structural analysis of all forms of socialism, defining 4 problems that Socialism would need to solve to be viable, that remain unsolved today.
The perverse incentives wouldn't be available if there was no profit to be made, and normal markets have such a low profit margin (with each additional node), that they can't sustain the amount being paid out in general. The money has to come from somewhere.
If you follow the money, all the way back, eventually you get to a SIFI bank or the Fed that created that money from nothing (fractional reserve, but no longer fractional or reserve a/o 2020), and loaned it to their rich friends (indirectly). Zombie companies.
The problem with inflationary economies are that over time they become increasingly chaotic, until they hit boundary conditions that force collapse. The data you get from inflationary economies also lags leading you into a hysteresis problem where you can't react fast enough to change course.
Its pretty clear that until the economics straightens itself out, that things will become progressively more chaotic and distorted over time until it collapses on itself.
Also, in reaching those boundary conditions, the social contract inevitably gets violated, and if society in general doesn't follow and respect the social contract, there won't be any incentive to help others out or volunteer anything to them.
The massive amount of evil people that were raised in these environments, will ensure ever increasing costs on any volunteer until there is nothing left, coercively.
Objectively,
Evil people are after all people who have willfully blinded themselves to the consequences of their evil actions and continue doing so until stopped.
Evil actions are any action that does not promote long-term beneficial growth of self or others.
So it goes.
I feel you
Let's try (again) to make the Internet more romantic and less cynical.
You can still access the knowledge for free (ISP fee aside). There are people on the Internet who share their knowledge for free (I try to do this myself, although I could probably do more). This is how it all started in BBS, early www and usenet, ZINs, open source, free tool sharing, forums and all kinds of communities. People decide to contribute content to the web for something other than money – whether it's idealism or exhibitionism. Well, to be honest, there was a time when there was no money on the Internet, or there was very little of it, so it was easier to make a decision, but the argument remains. In any case, easily accessible, free content was the fuel for the development of the Internet at all levels of the evolutionary ladder, from people to corporations. For us, ordinary mortals, free information provided a low barrier to entry into any topic (see your recent article about strange topics on the Internet).
Please write more, share your knowledge for free. This rapidly changes our fate, from consumers of culture to producers. We become artists of sorts. It sounds crazy, but it's true. Ignore everything else, it's manageable. Otherwise, you'll be just another blogger who shares their unique and great guide or tool for a small fee. Nobody will buy it. Sales is governed by different laws than science. We don't need salespeople, we have plenty of them everywhere. We need evangelists of ideas and freedom.
Michał, I have been following your activity for probably over 20 years. Thank you for posting content online for free. Please continue.
wow, my comment turned into a rant in favor of publishing free content online. I'm not writing this because I'm trying to convince you or your readers, but I think, well, I need to rant in favor of publishing free content online. Oh, the irony.
I like that your posts reflect your eclectic set of hobbies and interests, it makes it more genuine and interesting to me, but that's probably not the way to earn a large following. I rarely subscribe to YouTube channel with a wide mix of topics, for example.
I just realized, than I have been following you loosely for more than 15 years, since I discussed some security issues around MS Office and some guy said "You should read, what lcamtuf has to say about it". And then I found your 'pof' program to read metadata from the MS Word. Something like that. And I'm happy that you don't post too often, however there are usually a lot of interesting points in your posts. And it's easy for me to omit your posts about electronics which is not in my interests.
I feel I'm the old fashioned Internet user (from the Usenet times), so I publish about my interests and don't really care if anybody wants to read it. I do it for my own money, keep it open to the wide Internet, and don't mean to put any more effort to SEO. It is basically a test for me, if I can make my interests in order, in the form of the webpage. If anybody wants to find my scribbles, one can do it. Howgh.
Yeah, informatics, information science, computation- these are all better names than computer science.
I doubt you posted this to get warm fuzzy feedback, but I've been loosely following you since the guerilla guide to CNC days and I appreciate your work and all the random topics.
I also find myself liking substack as a platform quite a bit more than any of the other social media.
I thought I was subsciring to the porn guy
I think I can explain why we get more subscribers without posting anything:
From an audience point of view, it's easy for me to subscribe to people who rarely post because it will result in few notifications. I can make a decision later, when I get their next post. I do this all the time on YouTube for musicians when I happened to like one song. Maybe they'll post something good someday?
Contrast with a high-traffic feed. There is always new content whenever you feel like visiting, so why subscribe and get a lot of notifications that you don't need? The only reason I'd do that is if I don't want to miss a post. Similarly for Mastodon and BlueSky; I'm making a decision on whether I want this person to overwhelm my feed with new posts.
A more conservative metric for feeds would only include people who had read X posts and are still around.