Now

It is still far too early to pop the champagne, but my stock account is undeniably in a better place than it was during the hardest months of June and July. I hope I can manage to make at least some profit in September.

For now, I have given up on applying for Apple Developer membership. The whole process is simply too strange; it keeps getting stuck at the most inexplicable stages. For the foreseeable future, I will probably release the programs I build as online web applications instead.

Given the increasingly difficult customs environment and stricter scrutiny of cross-border funds caused by the strained China–Japan relationship, I have also ended the cross-border proxy-buying venture I had been working on with friends. If I cannot find a new direction, I may simply have to return to China and get a regular job.

Developing several WeChat Mini Programs has actually been quite enjoyable, and they do have real use cases and a certain level of demand. The much harder question is how to monetize them. That is something I will need to think through carefully.