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When I spoke with him, some time had passed since this incident, but the memory of the service’s omnipresent notification ping remained strong. “I hear that sound, it gives me the shivers,” he said.

Maybe Slack itself isn't the problem, but the bloody notifications are.

When they upgraded us to Windows 10 at work, one of the first things I did was figure out how to disable notifications, because the constant pop-ups about incoming email was driving me nuts. When we later started using Slack, I never found it as frustrating as this writer, maybe exactly because I don't get notifications, and don't notice I have unread messages until the next time I check my tray icons.

And if you have Slack installed on your phone, here's how to disable notifications for specific apps on Android and on iOS. You may want to do this for other apps as well.

Here's hoping 2021 turns out better for you than 2020 did!

5% happens to be the same fee Flattr takes, so you're now making that the industry standard I guess. (Though their payment provider takes another 5%, and they also take a $3 fee for each withdrawal.)

The main problem I think is scale. If you have a hundred paying users, you'll need the 50% split to cover your expenses. If you get a million paying users, 5% will let you swim in cash. A lower fee should accelerate growth (in theory).

Hey by the way, I have a questions about Apple's slice of the pie: Will it be possible to pay for Readup without doing it through Apple? I don't own any Apple gadgets to run your apps on, so I'd rather give that slice of the pie to you guys.

• Den stora lärdomen är att reagera tillräckligt tidigt och drastiskt när kurvan börjar peka uppåt, säger Van Gucht.

Considering incubation time, the ideal time to react would be before curve starts pointing upwards. Which is of course easier said than done. I think much could be gained from monitoring the situation in neighbouring countries. If the curve starts pointing upwards in Sweden, Norway, Estonia, or the Northwestern Federal District of Russia, that's the right time to impose stricter restrictions in Finland.

Some non-neighbouring countries might be worth watching closely as well. Here in Norway we got a lot of second-wave infections from Polish guest workers, arriving by plane.

I just realised that both this and the previous Norwegian article I posted require subscriptions to get past the paywall... That reduces the amount of Readers who can enjoy them even more. I'll try to avoid paywalled Norwegian articles for now, until there's a large enough user base that others might enjoy them too.

I warned you! Here's my first non-English-language scouting. About rural Norwegian tax politics no less.

The northern municipality Bø has been struggling with a declining population and worsening economy for decades, and it's gotten a lot of media attention here in Norway after they decided to cut taxes in an attempt to attract rich people. It's been somewhat successful, so far attracting 7 new wealthy citizens (the most famous being Bjørn Dæhlie, winner of 12 olympic medals and 17 world championship medals in cross-country skiing) who have all bought homes in Bø and officially moved there.

This article provides images of the 7 homes, comments from those of the owners the journalists were able to get in touch with (none of them were home when the writers knocked on the doors), and a brief interview with the mayor.

That interview includes the following nugget:

The state has abandoned us. Therefore we have to focus on private citizens instead.

Which makes me very tempted to try to get in touch with the mayor and remind him that his own conservative party has controlled the government for 7 years now! The state abandoning rural municipalities is exactly what he's been fighting for his entire political career.

The article also mentions the risk of this setting off a tax-policy race to the bottom, with municipalities around Norway under-bidding each other in an attempt to attract the ever-more-freeloading upper class.

This was an enlightening read. I do sometimes try to "cheat", when I've read an article on my phone (which is not an iPhone, and thus no Readup app yet) and want to post it on Readup afterwards.

While we're on the topic of things that add complexity: Have you given much thought to how to handle articles and comments in other languages than English?

I'm curious what other Readupers (Is that what we call ourselves? Readers?) think about this. Is he on to something? Or is he grossly oversimplifying human history?

Personally I think the article could have used more examples of societies that have collapsed due to an overpopulation of elites. A few are mentioned in the article, but not enough to convince me.