And again you're linking to your site. Maybe try pasting the few relevant sentences instead of constantly pushing your content in almost every comment. That's what people find annoying. Maybe link to other people's stuff more, or just write what you think here on HN.
If someone wants to read your blog, they will, they know it exists, and some people even submit your new articles here. There's no need to do what you're doing. Every day you're irritating more people with this behavior, and eventually the substance won't matter to them anymore, so you're acting against your own interests.
Unless you want people to develop the same kind of ad blindness mechanism, where they automatically skip anything that looks like self promotion. Some people will just see a comment by simonw and do the same.
A lot of people have told you this in many threads, but it seems you still don’t get it.
I think you're misreading what the "normalization" problem actually is and why my comment got a lot of upvotes.
You're not pushing against an arbitrary taboo where people dislike self links in principle. People already accept self links on HN when they're occasional and clearly relevant. What people are reacting to is the pattern when "my answer is a link to my site" becomes your default state, it stops reading like helpful reference and starts reading like your distribution strategy.
And that's why "I'm determined to normalize it" probably won't work because you can't normalize your way out of other people's experience of friction. If your behavior reliably adds a speed bump to reading threads forcing people to context switch/click out and wonder if they're being marketed to then the community will develop a shortcut I mentioned in my previous comment which basically is : this is self promo so just ignore.
If your goal is genuinely to share useful ideas, you're better off meeting people where they are: put the relevant 2-6 sentences directly in the comment, and then add something like "I wrote more about it on my blog" or whatever and if anyone is interested they will scroll through your blog (you have it in your profile so anyone can find it with one click) or ask for a link.
Otherwise you're not "normalizing" anything, you're training readers to stop paying attention to you. And I assure you once that happens, it's hard to undo, because people won't relitigate your intent every time. They'll just scroll.
It's a process that's already started, but you can still reverse it.
No, I'm determined to normalize it. I would like a LOT more people to have personal websites where they write at length about things, and then share links to what they have already written where it is relevant to the conversation.
I'm actively pushing back against the "don't promote your site, don't link to it, restate your content in the comments instead" thing.
I am willing to take on risk to my personal reputation and credibility in support of my goal here.
There might be a bit of growth-hacking resistance here, and maybe some StackOverflow culture as well. Neither should be leveled at you, IMHO. I've followed and admired your work since Datasette launched, and I think you're exhibiting remarkably good judgment in how you discuss topics with links to deeper discussion, and it's in keeping with a long tradition of good practices for the web. Thanks for working to normalize the practice.
Well, that's your choice. You can do whatever you want with your reputation, but you can't change human nature and that's essentially what you're trying to do. People don't want HN to turn into another LinkedIn style feed full of AI slop, spam and self promotion. That's exactly what your attempt to "normalize" this behavior would encourage (and I'm confident it won't catch on, sorry).
If everyone starts dropping their "relevant content" in the comments, most of it won't be relevant, and a lot of it will be spam. People don't have time to sift through hundreds of links in the comments and tens of thousands of words when the whole point of HN is that discussion and curation work in the opposite direction.
If your content is good, someone else will submit it as a story. Your blog is probably already read by thousands of people from HN, if they think a particular post belongs in the discussion in some comment, they'll link it. That's why other popular HN users who blog don't constantly promote or link their own content here, unlike you. They know that you don't need to do it yourself, and doing it repeatedly sends the wrong signal (which is obvious and plenty of socially aware people have already pointed out to you in multiple threads).
Trying to normalize that kind of self promoting is like normalizing an annoying mosquito buzz, most people simply don't want it and no amount of "normalizing" will change that.
This is simonw though. I look forward to his thoughts on a topic and would find it annoying if he was forced to summarize his research in a HN thread and then not link to it.
The difference between LinkedIn slop and good content is not the presence or absence of a link to one’s own writing, but the substance and quality of the writing.
If simonw followed these rules you want him to follow, he would be forced to make obscure references to a blog post that I would then need to Google or hope that his blog post surfaces on HN in the next few days. It seems terribly inefficient.
I agree with you that self-promotion is off-putting, and when people post their competing project on a Show HN post, I don’t click those links. But it’s not because they are linking to something they wrote. It’s because they are engaged in “self-promotion”, usually in an attempt to ride someone else’s coattails or directly compete.
If simonw plugged datasette every chance he got, I’d be rolling my eyes too, but linking to his related experiments and demos isn’t that.
Correlation is not causation. At the same time, the industrial and technological revolutions happened, which are the main drivers of the "greatest timeline".
"Research and development (R&D) funding of China reached 3.6 trillion yuan ($496 billion) in 2024, with an 8.3% increase year-on-year, the South China Morning Post reported on Friday.
Investments in basic research increased by 10.5% from 2023 to 249.7 billion yuan ($34.46 billion) in 2024, or 6.91% of the total R&D spending."
Private companies in China also do a lot of basic research, here is a quote from the Huawei founder:
---
Q: How do you view basic research?
A: When our country possesses certain economic strength, we should emphasize theory, especially basic research. Basic research doesn't just take 5-10 years—it generally takes 10, 20 years or longer. Without basic research, you plant no roots. And without roots, even trees with lush leaves fall at the first wind. Buying foreign products is expensive because their prices include their investment in basic research. So whether China engages in basic research or not, we still have to pay—the question is whether we choose to pay our own people to do this basic research.
We spend roughly 180RMB billion a year on R&D; about 60 billion goes to basic research with no KPIs, while around 120 billion is product‑oriented and is assessed.
ASML owns the company that builds the light source. They acquired it, it's a US company, which is why US export controls apply, that's all. If needed, they could replicate the subsidiary in the EU.
This is too far from correct for any correction to be anything but a full restatement of the facts. Moving the tech over requires US approval. Listen, the Dutch are not going to risk it. Even if they were, ASML would not risk it because all of their customers wouldn't buy anything from a company that's on the EAR Entity List (which is where they'd end up if they tried this without the US allowing it) without US approval. I don't get why people are saying this stuff. It's like saying "Oh yeah, so you divide by zero and then multiply both sides and ta-da". Like, the whole statement is nonsensical.
To enable the whole thing to work you'd need the US to have shrunk to the equivalent of Canada in influence. I'm not saying that's impossible, but in that scenario, the Dutch might well be trying to keep Russians out of Amsterdam and the Turks out of Germany rather than trying to pull an IP heist on the Americans.
You can buy an e-book on Kindle and Amazon still controls what you do with it, right? ASML's ownership of Cymer is like that, except it's the US instead of Amazon.
Specifically control is related to the Foreign Direct Product Rule, where in which the US claims jurisdiction over any foreign product containing 25% or more of US-origins (Cymer, etc)
Also interesting huge project: China is building a $116 billion dam which, according to Bloomberg, is expected to generate 70 GW, just to compare: UK whole capacity (de-rated) is around 70 GW.
The current largest hydroelectric dam in the world is the Three Gorges Dam in China. It can generate 22.5GW (40% more power than the dam in 2nd place, which is also Chinese).
Since Jan 2024, China has on average constructed 23GW of new solar power every month. So China has effectively been adding a "world's largest dam" worth of solar power, every single month for the last 24 months.
I would like to remind you that HK was a British colony for more than 100 years, and there was no democracy or freedom then. They only allowed the first partly free elections two years before they gave it back to China, in 1995. And not because they suddenly wanted freedom and democracy for HK, but because it would be harder for China and better for their own interests. Hypocrisy all the way.
That's kind of misleading. HK had a lot of civil freedoms (rule of law, independent judiciary, freedom of speech). China explicitly blocked earlier democratization. The vote only managed to get through after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown made HK panic.
> No freedoms are ever unlimited, so that's not an interesting point.
Of course no freedoms are unlimited, so I'm not sure why are you reading this literally?
> The question is, were they useful?
Are we talking about the same thing? I'm talking about the lack of freedom under British rule, and you ask if it was useful for HKers? While there are a lot of people in HK who are not happy about what China is doing now, there is almost no one who would take British rule over that. I actually talked with people about it in person when I was in HK.
I've heard of loads of people who would prefer British rule over Chinese rule. The reasons are obvious: free press, free speech, fair trials. These things have gone far, far backwards under China.
And it's super easy to do. I had my own ASN and my own IPv4 and IPv6 address space, you basically just write whatever you want into RIPE Database objects (or ARIN, APNIC etc.) Today your IP space can be in one country, and tomorrow in a different one.
This is oversimplified view of the world and China.
China being powerful is not something new, it was the world's largest economy for 18 of the past 20 centuries (with exceptions being parts of the 19th and 20th centuries, when Western Europe and then the US surged ahead after the industrial revolution).
> is politically stable only as long as it continues to suppress free speech and free trade.
Your analysis is through the lens of Western culture. The definition and understanding of freedom and harmony are entirely different in China. I was in China and experienced this myself, so this is firsthand experience, not something I picked up from blogs or news.
In the Chinese context, freedom is defined collectively so freedom from chaos, poverty, foreign domination etc, whereas here in the West it's individual liberty. Harmony and social stability are seen as more valuable than political pluralism, so authoritarian governance is culturally framed as legitimate. You know that 100 million Chinese travel abroad every year and all of them come back to China? Chinese leaders and citizens still remember periods of fragmentation and civil war.
There is a widespread belief that adopting a Western adversarial political model could reintroduce instability and weaken national unity so something China cannot risk given its size and diversity (you know how many ethnicities there are in China?)
This is their natural state. China has a long history of centralized, bureaucratic governance (over 2k years since the Qin Dynasty), where stability and order are prioritized.
That's a funny meta comment, where are you from? Are you consuming a lot of US based content? I ask because I mainly see Americans here writing about the "CCP" based on what they regularly hear from government officials and certain news outlets. It's rarely framed as "China" it's usually "the Chinese Communist Party" emphasizing "Communist" because that word carries negative connotations in the US given its history and in the EU. But maybe framing is similar in your country.
So just to clarify, I'm from the EU, and I'm not paid for anything I write here. Maybe your world model is influenced by propaganda? The world isn't black and white.
I also encourage people to read more about the history and culture of other countries, especially the ones they have strong opinions about, which they often haven't formed themselves (In my experience, this is often lacking in US education, people learn a lot about US history, but not as much about the rest of the world).
Reading more philosophy can also broaden your perspective. In particular, I recommend learning about Singapore, its history, Lee Kuan Yew, and why many highly educated people there willingly accept restrictions on individual freedom. If you understand that, you can then start reading about China, its culture, and its history.
Yeah. I have also been to China myself, and have first hand experience walking around Hong Kong with people who later found themselves in jail, or riding the subway getting bombarded with saturation level jingoistic propaganda urging attack against the capitalist aggressors, or getting a tour of Beijing from a friend who worked as a photojournalist and found himself followed by the security services and had to leave and seek asylum with his family.
The silent majority is silent, yes. Those who try to do something get pushed out, or worse. It's the double-edged sword of immigration. But the Chinese people love freedom like the rest of us - you don't need to go far to disprove your entire narrative, Taiwan and Singapore are right there.
Then you've had a very different experience than I have. If you don't mind me asking, where exactly were you in mainland China, and for how long?
Hong Kong isn't representative of China. I've been there and honestly, it felt like a post colonial UK dump. Going directly from Shenzhen to Hong Kong felt like going from a first world country to a third world one, but I digress.
I also talked with Hong Kongers (this year), and they told me a different story, one that isn't so black and white as the worldview you're projecting onto others.
> or getting a tour of Beijing from a friend who worked as a photojournalist and found himself followed by the security services and had to leave and seek asylum with his family.
That's another interesting anecdote. I actually know a photo blogger and a local journalist from China, neither of them is being followed by the security services, and neither has sought asylum anywhere. What was so unique about your friend?
> But the Chinese people love freedom like the rest of us - you don't need to go far to disprove your entire narrative, Taiwan and Singapore are right there.
You know Singapore isn't exactly a "free" country either, right? And Singaporeans are generally fine with that and accept the trade off. So who's disproving whose narrative here?
Different cultures have different systems and trade offs, different value systems and philosophies of life. But some people seem not to understand that and view everything through the lens of their own values, convincing themselves there's only one "right" way to live and that everything else is evil. The Holy Crusades had similar vibes.
If someone wants to read your blog, they will, they know it exists, and some people even submit your new articles here. There's no need to do what you're doing. Every day you're irritating more people with this behavior, and eventually the substance won't matter to them anymore, so you're acting against your own interests.
Unless you want people to develop the same kind of ad blindness mechanism, where they automatically skip anything that looks like self promotion. Some people will just see a comment by simonw and do the same.
A lot of people have told you this in many threads, but it seems you still don’t get it.
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