I wrote about The Art of Using Stacker News before, but the past few months have been lots of changes and improvements, much appreciated for all the great work from @k00b @ekzyis @kr and more.
I was lucky enough to stump upon SN around 2022 and have been witnessing how far it has come and is still growing. And I think the main reason why I'm so addicted to SN is that not only can I interact with smart and humble plebs who actually take the time to read and give feedback, but also being appreciated and rewarded with sats, something that the fiat world failed to deliver!
And here is a piece of updates and some tips and tricks that I've learned and things should pay attention to.

⚑️ Some Main Changes Since Last Post

1. Sharing Photos

No longer need to use extra tools like in the past, you can directly upload within SN now. But one thing to keep in mind is to always remove metadata on the photo you share. Ideally, delay sharing - once you left the places, then you are okay to share. And never don't disclose where or which city you live in because Google Lens is quite powerful these days.
How to upload
Simply click this small icon, but if it exceeds the free upload limit of 10MB, then you will need to pay some extra sats for it.
And SN's photo sharing still doesn't come with a nice layout yet, in order to make it cost-effective and makes it more organized and beautiful, one hack I've found is to upload the photos somewhere first, like I would upload them to my blog, then I take a screenshot from there and upload that instead, a sample post here: I uploaded 3 main photos instead of 17! And not to mention the images add beauty to my post instead of messing everything up.

2. Sending LN Message as DM

This is one of my favorite hidden features: you can send messages to anyone once you have their LN address - no more asking others for ways to contact, and no permission is needed!
How to send DM in SN
a. go to wallet
b. withdraw
c. choose the lightning address and input the receiver's LN address
d. input the sat amount, which can be as little as 1 sat
e. write some thoughtful comments
Send and done. (You can send messages to SN users from other LN wallets too.)

3. Starting your Own Territory

Territory launched around December 2022, and yes, anyone can start their own territory, but one thing to keep in mind is that making one is easy, but keeping it running and fun is HRAD - it takes real work.
Cost: monthly is 100k sats, yearly 1M sats or one-time 3M sats.
Better do the math to see if it's worth it, but one thing for sure is that you don't need to own any territory to create good content, you can just write them. I guess the better strategy is to keep focusing on writing good content first, at least having some POW in SN, then it's easier to build something after you have earned some trust and attention.
How to create
Go to the dropdown menu and scroll to the end, click create, input details, and choose payment, and you are good to go.
And fun fact: @saloon is the best territory out there, no CEOs, no mods, the real Wild West.

4. Autowithdrawals

This is a brand new feature:
As SN toward a half-custodial wallet, you can configure autowithdrawals to a lightning address.
Go to wallet - attach wallets - input your LN address.
But of course you can still do it manually because using an LN invoice is more private than using an LN address.

5. Crossposting to Nostr

Crossposting is quite handy for creators, but do remember that you CAN'T DELETE anything in Nostr. Personally, I don't use this crossposting; I rather send a link in Nostr and from links that I can control, not only can I edit my content anytime I want, but I keep the freedom to trash the links if I feel like it.
But for those who would like to use it, go to setting - enable crosspost to Nostr, and done.
NIP 5 Verification Supported
You can use your SN LN address as NIP-5 verification in Nostr too.
How to verify NIP-05
Simply go to setting - Nostr - NIP-5 - put your Nostr public key into the pubkey section, then go back to Nostr and put your SN LN address into the NIP-5 area, done.

Other Fun

  • MeMe Monday is where stackers share their best memes to win 25k sats.
  • Tech Tuesday is where stackers share their favorite tech tools or projects.
  • Wednesday is when stackers share what they are working on this week.
  • Thursday is where stackers dig back into what happened in history during this day or TBC.
  • Fun Fact Friday is where the best Fun Fact gets 10k sats.
  • Stacker News Live is where @k00b and @car go over the top 5 posts and interesting ones each Friday (4 pm Texas time, zap steam here )
  • Weekend Book recommendation is where stackers share the books they are reading lately, with many good gems.
The last but BEST one is @saloon, it opens every day, 24 /7/ 365, and with much fun.

πŸ‘οΈ Things Pay Attention to

The internet is an amazing place to share and connect, but you also need to take some precautions to protect yourself. And one of the most important things I learned about privacy is not about hiding everything, it's about choosing what to share in public.
Some Good Practices
  • Never use your real name, better use a nym.
  • Never share too much personal information.
  • Ideally, never share your specific location.
  • On data leaking / tracking
SN uses plausible to track data, and there's quite a lot of information there. If you spend some time looking at the data, you can pretty much tell which user is in which location or at least which VPN location they are using, and then you would see what browser they use or on a laptop or phone, what articles they have read or which pages spent the most time in. But hey, this is all the info that you are leaking, relax! ( happy to know if there is anything that I missed. )
Solution
You should always use a VPN and change your IP address from time to time , the USA or the UK are good options since more stackers are from these two places, or you can simply use Tor; However, using Tor is so slow, a better solution I've found is using one account to post and reply, and using an anon account or log out to read and search.
And whenever you feel like sharing your SN account-related photos, it's better to hide or edit the wallet balance or even cover the user name, and avoid leaking specific browsers and time.
  • Self-destructing items
I learned an interesting way of living in SN: delete everything and live in the present with no history, which is quite freeing. Or for whatever reason you would like to minimize your traces, you can either do it manually or make the most with the delete bot, just @ delete in 24 hours or 1 minute, or any time frame you'd like.
Actually, this is one of the reasons why I'm more active in SN over Nostr because I have the freedom to DELETE: a) certain things, after they served their purpose are good to go. b) willing to let go or destroy could lead to better creation.
  • Sharing as anon
Anyone can share as anon, but the posting fee would be slightly more, and it varies from territory to territory.
  • Hiding everything and joining underground
This is one of the details where you can see how thoughtful team @sn is, for those who would like to maintain a low profile, simply go to setting - privacy - choose these
β˜‘οΈ hide me from the top stacker
β˜‘οΈ hide my cowboy hat
Once they are enabled, no one can even tell if you are being active or not.
After setting the healthy ground, then we can focus on giving and receiving value while having fun SNing.

πŸ› οΈ How to Navigate the Noise?

One interesting thing I've noticed is that as SN grows, it doesn't necessarily mean having more quality content but more noise, sadly, or maybe it takes time to filter things out, but here are some of the tricks I've found to minimize the noise:

1. Muting low-quality Accounts and Territories

You are free to mute all the bots or low-quality accounts that you don't want to read from and even mute territories.
How to Mute Accounts
Go to anyone's bio, click the ... icon, then choose mute.
How to Mute Territories
Go to any territories page, and click mute.
One tip for avoiding FOMO of any territory is just to subscribe to the founder to see their POW first, because the founder usually does most of the work especially in the beginning to inspire others, if the founder doesn't do much, you can expect what the territory will be like.
Downzaping
If you don't like certain things, you can down-zap them, and then these content would end up being in the outlawed area.
If an item gets flagged by stackers with enough combined trust, it is outlawed and hidden from view for stackers on Tenderfoot mode. If you wish to see this flagged content without any modifications, you can enable Wild West mode in your settings.
How to Downzap
Click ... icon in any posts or comments and choose down zap, the zaps will go to the reward pool.
One more hack: if you also enjoy in the wild and often check recent posts, you can mute many things in one go if you see someone post something you dislike; click the ... icon in the post: downzap + mute the stacker + mute the territory.

2. Subscribing to Interesting Stackers

You can choose to subscribe to posts or comments from any stackers, I only subscribe to posts, because subscribing to comments can be overwhelming, it's better to go to their pages to read from time to time.
How to Subscribe
Go to any stacker's page that you find interesting, click the ... icon, and subscribe to their posts or comments.
Or if you see some good posts and you would like to follow any updates, click the ... icon and subscribe, I normally bookmark the really good post and subscribe at the same time.

3. Going to Top Posts/Comments/Stackers

If you don't have much time to hang around SN and don't want to miss all the good stuff, you can simply go to these three links daily to read all the best stuff from previous days.
Or wait for the weekly Saturday newsletter from @k00b if you really don't have much time, the subscribe link is here, or you can enable it from your setting.

4. Making the Best of Searching

You don't need to keep waiting for the next hot posts to learn something new, there are actually many old posts with great knowledge to dig!
How to search
Simply hit the search on top, I usually search for keywords, or if I want to search for things from someone or myself, then I would add nym: stacker's nym.
Search results can be filtered by the following: most recent /most comments / most sats.
One more hack is you can use any eternal search engine to search things inside SN, just use : xxx site:stacker.news
Sums up of my Strategy
Basically I focus on what I am interested in, minimize the noise or things that I don't even care about with muting, and pay extra attention to interesting brains and content by subscribing and bookmarking, making space for what matters instead of chasing the current thing.

πŸ€” FAQs

Why Zapping Others?

Sats are so precious, so why zap others? Isn't it better to hodl?
1. To earn trust
Every stacker has a global trust score. Rewards use these global trust scores which factor in the PoV of everyone.
Ranking of posts/comments use local trust scores when they're available, ie you're logged in and have a significant affinity for another stacker's zap taste as indicated by your zapping.
Basically, local trust affects what we see in SN with gently personalized feeds, and if you log out, you might see different ranked content, and that is with global trust score which influencing the Zap rewards.
Tips: the high-trusted stackers process more power in voting, thus making the content they like more visible.
2. To earn rewards
As we all know, there is a daily reward from the SN pool, so during the zappers reward day, it rewards stackers who zapped one or more of the top 33% of posts and comments from the previous day.
  • zappers of top posts get 1/4 rewards
  • zappers of top comments get 1/4 rewards
3. To build relationships
If you zap others, others would zap you too; it's almost like sharing food, you pay one time, and friends pay the next round, so each got to enjoy more food:) Sharing is caring!
4. To vote for good content and show appreciation for creators.
Not gonna lie, it takes TIME to write good and original content! and the fact of just zapping few sats and getting to read a great piece of content instead of needing to deal with all the paywalls and subscriptions like in the fiat world is like a steal, but creators definitely need some support!
Zapping others has mutual benefits! and generally, the more you zap, the more you stack.

How to Stack More?

The simple formula is create + zap = stack:
  • As a stacker
stacks = 90% * sats from posts and comments that you created + daily rewards
  • As a stacker and territory founder
stacks = 90% * sats from posts and comments that you created + daily rewards + 50% * 10% of your own territory revenue.
Bacailly keeps creating quality content and zapping the good ones, but If you have time and would like to LEVEL UP the fun, you should learn how the ranking and reward system works too.

πŸ€“ Bonus - The Art of Stacking

I hope you found this post useful, and if you would love to learn more, I've also put together The Art of Stacking - who says you can only stack sats in SN?
I share this guide not for you to game SN but to help you understand how it works and how you would get rewarded by doing the WORK, and the least discussed part - learn to stack the unseen.
Feel free to come by ~Agora to stack it!
Part of me is curious to find out how it feels to sell things in SN, so I need to create a learning opportunity, and nothing helps me to learn better than actually doing it. πŸ‘€ I would definitely share what I've learned and what tools I used after this experiment, and much appreciate your support:)
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guys, the only way to bring @DarthCoin back is to make GREAT post!
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Lets Go!
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121 sats \ 10 replies \ @anon 18 Jan
Self-destructing items
I learned an interesting way of living in SN: delete everything and live in the present with no history, which is quite freeing. Or for whatever reason you would like to minimize your traces, you can either do it manually or make the most with the delete bot, just @ delete in 24 hours or 1 minute, or any time frame you'd like. Actually, this is one of the reasons why I'm more active in SN over Nostr because I have the freedom to DELETE: a) certain things, after they served their purpose are good to go. b) willing to let go or destroy could lead to better creation.
be wary of anyone who expresses their dislike for this feature. there are likely spooks among the users here, or behave like spooks. yes, I'm talking about you bob @kepford among others
there are also others who behave like suits who likely believe that deleting content looses "value" for SN. sorry @kr, the users are the value
finally some have gotten the idea of scrapping the site and analyzing it for whatever purposes, so just be aware that even your delete might not protect you, so next time @kepford asks you about your favorite conspiracy theories, think twice before engaging with him/her/it
I would add the same on the topic of governments, 3d printing of things or anything else which a lazy fed agent might want to use against you in the future should you be unfortunate enough to exist in their jurisdiction. same would go for selling/buying of items of all kinds publicly on here, do not think silk road saga cannot repeat itself again should the time come.
be aware freaks, this is not kindergarden, you are swimming in open waters of the internet, and the internet has memory
finally there have been doxxing attempts on here in the recent past. so be aware that there are unhinged individuals on here, maybe sometimes with financial resources or know how and can be malicious if provoked
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Good troll @anon. Circle is complete for me now. Went from being called a conspiracy unhinged nut to a likely spook/fed.
But you have some good advice. Be aware. But anon, you are supposed to take the red pill. Not the whole bottle. Do what you need to do.
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I guess I trolled myself by not catching the intended meaning.
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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @anon 18 Jan
Went from being called a conspiracy unhinged nut to a likely spook/fed.
Good for you bob.
there are likely spooks among the users here, or behave like spooks.
Learn to read and/or keep taking your pills too, and remember you are likely more exposed online than @anon is. so maybe focus on your own opsec rather than dishing out pill advice
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All good @anon. I seem to have misunderstood on the first read.
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122 sats \ 1 reply \ @kepford 18 Jan
All good. I've been called a troll. I have been known to do it. This may not be one but if it were it would be a good one. There are anon/nyms on this site that know me personally. That's the funny thing about this comment.
I'm flattered my little rant about scrolling and seeing a bunch of "deleted" triggered the "he's a spook" reaction. I'm glad this feature exists. I have just noticed a pattern over the years of people going off the deep end. Be careful, do what you believe you need to do. We all have our own threat models and boundaries. We can all share our opinions.
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We can all share our opinions.
Sincere opinions shared with sincere intent != trolling "opinions"
I have just noticed a pattern over the years of people going off the deep end.
Good to keep in mind since one has absolutely no idea who one is dealing with in augmented reality like domains as this one. The experience is virtual, the emotions elicited can be quite real and lead to real world consequences. Can be additionally potentially more precarious since the world now has kyc free sound money as a tool for action.
Be careful
Wise advice for all especially those who do not have their opsec in place and are operating with an identity related to their real world identity.
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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @kepford 18 Jan
My two sats on the feds/spooks on SN. I seriously doubt there are any. I could be way off but my guess is that like any web site like this the NSA is just scraping it all up.
As far as conspiracy theories and sharing some you believe... this is pretty much zero threat to the state. I actually think they love all the crazy stuff we come up with. The more the better. It distracts people from the stuff they do in broad daylight. Just that should be enough for people to hate the state.
Most people should also be concerned about individuals targeting them and employers being pressured to fire people. We've seen a ton of this over the past 10 years. We plebs need to stick together.
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As far as conspiracy theories and sharing some you believe... this is pretty much zero threat to the state. I actually think they love all the crazy stuff we come up with. The more the better. It distracts people from the stuff they do in broad daylight. Just that should be enough for people to hate the state. Most people should also be concerned about individuals targeting them and employers being pressured to fire people. We've seen a ton of this over the past 10 years. We plebs need to stick together.
These two points seem incongruent to me. Conspiracy theories might be well and good and benign in peacetime, but in "wartime", they get your fired, for the set of what encompasses a conspiracy theory increases, and then you get fired for what you wrote online in response to a post. We've seen this take place in the world relatively recently. Are we living in "peacetime" now?
This is not about living in fear, this is about being aware of what's going on around you should you wish to walk a path not completely in sync with the normie path of existence, whatever that can be classified as these days.
We plebs need to stick together.
What does this even mean to be honest? It is like a call to action of some kind, almost a like a political slogan.
Who are you "pleb" to be saying this, and why would I stick together with you?
If something goes sour, all your virtual friends will disappear. There is no real "community" in the virtual/online world unless it has been anchored to real life in some way. If you want plebs that will stick together go and form some in real life relationships with humans who may assist you with whatever should the time come.
Hope this is helpful to someone out there to consider. Adversarial thinking and opsec is important for those that want to be sovereign.
Unsolicited advice for anyone who spends a lot of time on SN, try losing your cowboy hat and see what that does for your mental health, you may find it rather freeing. Social media and these augmented realities are helpful tools yet they can elicit a real life emotional response and eat your life force. Taking a break can be good for your life every now and then.
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I think you are pointing into wrong direction. I do not consider @kepford a troll or a spook. I read many of his posts and comments here and didn't saw any suspicious "activity".
Indeed are many other real spooks and trolls on SN. Pointing only @kepford and ignoring the others is making you suspicious...
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another fun photo-sharing hack that I noticed today : if you upload the photos ( get the links ) but post them another day, you won't got charged extra sats. πŸ€”
is this the way? @ekzyis
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Yes, it's limited to 10MB per day before we charge fees but I wanted to look into increasing that limit since we have more data about "normal usage" now (as you probably haven't forgotten haha).
Your post reminded me. You even remind me about things without wanting to remind me about them :)
But you might have indeed found a hole in that logic. But we did it this way on purpose for UX reasons. We don't want to charge fees immediately on upload, only when you actually post it.
We delete unpaid images after 24 hours.
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there we go! the cheat code : limited to 10MB per day
We delete unpaid images after 24 hours.
oh, not sure would it affect the images in this post? I uploaded some of them few days before to just make sure things are organized. πŸ‘€ but how do you know which one are paid which ones are not?
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When you posted them and they still show up, we won't delete them ever
but how do you know which one are paid which ones are not?
When you post something, we parse all links and check for links from m.stacker.news. Any link from there will be marked as paid.
With "paid images" I mean any image you uploaded using our file upload and you posted. The price can also be 0 sats :)
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Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist. 🎨
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10 sats \ 3 replies \ @ek 18 Jan
But don't bite the hand that is feeding you like a dog πŸ˜‚
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where is your z2z today? 🦊
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It's a bit shy today. Your post made it nervous because of your PoW.
The links to any photos work also but watch for search link images as they are aggregate and temporal.
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you mean the links within SN? I haven't found such issues. πŸ‘€
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Not within Stacker.
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Great post! I had been planning one in my head on why to zap big and zap often (and, as @ekzyis reminds me, zap early), but you nailed it. Also, you may have helped me finally get nostr cross posting setup correctly.

Zapping is Win-Win-Win

  • You win via greater rewards
  • The creator wins via the zap
  • Stacker News wins by increasing the signal for readers and incentives for creators
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few!
and zapping the GOOD stuff EARLY is the hack to earn trust!
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earn trust and bigger rewards (I think)
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yes!
Every stacker has a global trust score. Rewards use these global trust scores which factor in the PoV of everyone; Ranking of posts/comments use local trust scores when they're available, ie you're logged in and have a significant affinity for another stacker's zap taste as indicated by your zapping.
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Ok, this PoW is awesome @Natalia!
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FYI the plausible link is 404ing for me
Great post!!
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10 sats \ 5 replies \ @anon 18 Jan
this is a fantastic idea and long overdue too much privacy leaking there
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Is plausible analytics being removed, or just the link to the dashboard which is no longer working? According to the PR, it's the latter
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I think it's being set in private mode, not for public view. πŸ€”
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damn! and I doubt internet wayback machine has cached versions.
I'd be curious to see what data I was leaking
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it's indeed available. πŸ‘€
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 18 Jan
this
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Maybe this is an issue to bring to @k00b's attention, since the same link is in the footer on each page.
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yes, I talked to @ekzyis during our ~security live training in the saloon the other day:)
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😎 cool
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121 sats \ 0 replies \ @dd6800 18 Jan
Love your posts. Thank you.
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Great write up, thanks.
I'm looking forward to when searching, on Stacker.news directly, returns results that are as good as a google search with the SITE keyword. Unfortunately, a google search is superior right now.
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indeed, much to be improved in searching!
cc @sn
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And fun fact: @saloon is the best territory out there, no CEOs, no mods, the real Wild West.
True dat. Awesome post (as always)
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thanks!
less is more, but the down side of that is I can't post too often, trying my best to make one weekly.
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121 sats \ 1 reply \ @0fje0 18 Jan
Great post.
Small correction?
Territory launched around December 2022
Wasn't it 2023?
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oh yes - sorry, I forgot it's 2024 now πŸ˜‚
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Definitely a top post
Thank you for taking the time to explain all of this invaluable information
Excellent Excellent Excellent πŸ‘ πŸ‘Œ πŸ‘ πŸ˜€ πŸ™Œ πŸ˜„ πŸ‘ πŸ‘Œ
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happy to help:)
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Great writeup as always.
To add to the Search section, as of yesterday using " " were enabled to search for exact phrases.
"exact phrase" - demand results contain exact phrase
Super useful.
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cool hack, let me try!
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Great post, thanks for sharing!
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215 sats \ 0 replies \ @brave 18 Jan
It's great, you went out talking about ht events that happens on SN
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110 sats \ 1 reply \ @Car 18 Jan
This is amazing @Natalia! πŸ“šBookmarked it!
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waiting for SNL πŸ€“βœŒπŸ½
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An interesting question here is how many territories would never have existed had they not been 'free' on things like web 1.0.
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and one more interesting question is how many territories would be left in six months. πŸ‘€
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110 sats \ 2 replies \ @OT 18 Jan
So much I didn't know!
Thanks!
How about quoting? Or the red highlight text?
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quoting is use >
red highlight text is use ``
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43 sats \ 0 replies \ @OT 18 Jan
Nice!
Thanks again
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Very good summary.
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Never knew that we could cross-post our content here to Nostr! I learn something new from you every week xP

How to Stack More?

Everything is correct. I would add that the daily rewards can come for posting and commenting OR for zapping. How SN chooses is random as we can see in the source of all truth.
const sum = Number(sumDecimal) const heads = Math.random() < 0.5 // if this category is selected, double its proportion // if it isn't select, zero its proportion const itemRewardMult = heads ? 0 : 2.0 const upvoteRewardMult = heads ? 2.0 : 0

a suggestion for SN (funny)

// untested code { item.ncomments < 3 ? 'early comments get more zaps' : item.ncomments < 6 ? 'comments are heating up, don't stay out in cold' : item.ncomments < 9 ? 'comments are hot, don't burn yourself' : item.ncomments < 12 ? 'it's likely that someone has already thought the same as you, consider reading the comments before writing your own' : item.ncomments < 15 ? 'list of comments is already long, add one more' : 'fractions of a penny for your thoughts?') }
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yes! extract from my stacking guide:)
There are two types of reward days being randomized, and the rewards are available only if you happen to be the 33% of comments/posts or the top 33% of upvoters.
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well done ... of course the guide will be more complete
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yes, need to create an opportunity to test things!
and the first thing I've learned is how to verify LN payment:)
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Nicely done! πŸ‘πŸ‘
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Nice! The DM trick is cool. Gonna check out your first post now.
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my fav hidden feature!
it works great to surprise others too, e.g., sending a nice msg to someone you care:)
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I'd read darthCoin talking about DMs, but I thought it was a joke. Turns out it wasn't! This is a hidden gem, but we have to be careful because whoever processes the transaction should be able to read the message. Can they?
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team @sn can read all the DMs here, but you can def use other LN wallets!
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @anon 18 Jan
keep in mind others can try to impersonate others using this method, do no trust your DMs by default
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indeed, one more hack is do not even leave your name there and let the other person guess who you are - it's kinda of a way of verifying.
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just @ delete in 24 hours
That would have been funny if you accidentally triggered the bot :)
Going to read your post in more details hopefully soon. Need to write my own post first lol
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That would have been funny if you accidentally triggered the bot :)
nah, safe - not showing in blue:)
I could had use wormhole as file sharing πŸ˜‚ I have many next fun boiling. πŸ§ͺ
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Thank you for this guide.
It has given me invaluable insight into how to use SN
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What a post. Very impressive
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Awesome thanks Natalia. πŸ’ŽπŸ™
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nym 18 Apr
Great guide! I love sending a DM message via LN payment!
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stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.
stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.
stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.
stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.
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