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Substack Notes Launched
121–130 of 789 posts
Re: Substack Notes Launched
#122Does anyone know what software they use to make these short demo videos? I see them in lots of app landing pages and I'm curious how to make them.
On macOS, you can use Quicktime which lets you also select a geometric region within the screen. Then, you can edit, crop and so forth in iMovie. Finally, you can use ffmpeg to convert to gif.
The following command works well:
ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf "fps=10" -loop 0 out.gif
To be clear, the loop 0 will make the gif infinitely loop. By setting a number n, it will set the gif to loop n times.
Re: Substack Notes Launched
#123Does anyone know what software they use to make these short demo videos? I see them in lots of app landing pages and I'm curious how to make them.
Gif makes sense as an output format but your question may be what software to use to capture & edit the screen activity.
Even with all the other options, my favorite is still ScreenFlow. It has a lot of editing features… basically uMovie for screen recordings.
Re: Substack Notes Launched
#124Substack is an "absolute free speech" app. They have gotten away with it so far because nobody could see the highly offensive content unless they actively sought after it and subscribed. However now that Substack is becoming more like a conventional social media platform they will have a harder time being an "absolute free speech" app.
It's a good thing, I think. "Absolute free speech" is most often championed by people who want to build society around pure logic rather than empirical evidence. The slippery slope bogeyman they gesture to is laughably dated in a time when misinformation and misdirection are so much easier.
Re: Substack Notes Launched
#125Does anyone know what software they use to make these short demo videos? I see them in lots of app landing pages and I'm curious how to make them.
On macOS, you can use Quicktime which lets you also select a geometric region within the screen. Then, you can edit, crop and so forth in iMovie. Finally, you can use ffmpeg to convert to gif. The following command works well: ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vf "fps=10" -loop 0 out.gif To be clear, the loop 0 will make the gif infinitely loop. By setting a number n, it will set the gif to loop n times.
Thanks, it seems like Quicktime + iMovie is what I was looking for.
Re: Substack Notes Launched
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or maybe people want him to fail for the same reason they want someone like Martin Shkreli or Kanye West to fail: because he's bad for society.
Really? It's hard to imagine him doing anything at this point that would offset the good he's done for society. He upset and tore down the military-industrial complex launch monopoly saving the collective US tax payers billions through starting SpaceX (and could soon revolutionize access to space for the average person within the next decade). (Also note that without SpaceX, we'd still be paying money to Russia to se…
This feels like some kind of the opposite of the sunk costs fallacy. Like a “past gains” fallacy.
None of those good things magically disappear if Elon fails in his Twitter purchase or changes. Those past gains have already happened.
If your argument was forward looking it would make more sense to me (if he fails with this Twitter program, he won’t be able to deliver Starship which would be bad because XYZ; or it would impact his ability to continue Tesla forward because ABC). I don’t know that I agree with the forward looking argument, but it seems more sound to me than the backward looking argument.
Re: Substack Notes Launched
#127Re: Substack Notes Launched
#128I love that it looks identical to Twitter but is orange. I love that it's going to enrage Elon. He's going to realize that he paid 44 billion for something that's going to lose users to Substack's side project.
Even if that were true, what would you gain from that? If it makes you feel better that Elon Musk (or anyone else) failed at something, you may want to re-evaluate your life's loss function.
> If it makes you feel better that Elon Musk (or anyone else) failed at something, you may want to re-evaluate your life's loss function.
Unfortunately I haven't reached that level of enlightenment yet.
I root for Elon to fail in the same ways I root for Donald Trump to fail. He's destructive, self-serving, thinks he's above the law, and hasn't faced real consequences for his actions.
I'm rooting for him to fail because he constantly lies, about big and small things. An example: He claimed Substack is downloading Twitter user data to power their competitor. There's no evidence of this. He said this before backtracking because he knew he was looking bad.
I'm rooting for him to fail so folks, like the ones in this very comment chain, can come back to reality and see that he's a flawed human like the rest of us and stop the blind worship.
In this specific case, I'm rooting for him to fail because he's proven over and over he's unfit to lead Twitter and make it a better product.
Re: Substack Notes Launched
#129Substack has been adding a lot of random features lately and it makes me worry that they will lose focus on the email newsletter aspect of their platform, which is what I like about it.
There's a few reasons I'm skeptical. For one they have an equally spotty reputation for arbitrary editorial policy while claiming to be completely agnostic. And secondly there have been a few stories about their distressed fiscal situation. They spent a load of VC money from the zero interest era on prominent writers. Far more than they'd bring in as revenue in the hopes they'd juice the brand. Classic strategy of selling dollars for 75 cents to get traction. Only they'd paid disproportionate amounts to some controversial writers which is, in essence, an editorial policy that speaks in dollars. They've also punished critics.
My general belief is that we won't get a better Twitter from VC world. I also have zero confidence in the Fediverse because it has no business strategy.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/17/23309877/substack-forever...
Re: Substack Notes Launched
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
They raised a ton of money on a high valuation, spent 25mil to make 1 mil last year and are now scrambling to raise a new crowd sourced round because they don't want to get wiped out in a down round. This notes thing looks like an attempt to pivot to an advertising based business model and I'm guessing they think they have "influencers" on their platform to bring in a decent audience.
> They raised a ton of money on a high valuation, spent 25mil to make 1 mil last year and are now scrambling to raise a new crowd sourced round because they don't want to get wiped out in a down round. Sorry to get off-topic, but is there a read/book to understand funding, VCs, etc., from a holistic POV. I totally didn't expect that consequence of having to raise a crowd sourced round due to initial high valuation.
I don't have a resource for you (and will probably read whatever you get linked), but one intuitive way to think about it is that VCs/investors (and most of the startup ecosystem) are generally focused on "growth", not "performance".
You can be a stable, profitable, money-making machine with 90+% margins and amazing reviews, but unless you're doubling something (users, engagement, profits, etc) every single year, you go to the back of the potential-investment line.
A high initial valuation might be great for performance relative to other companies (or whatever reasonable metric you want to insert here), but it also makes it way more difficult to show "growth" YOY compared to a lower initial valuation.