Live data from Hacker News

You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

mcsweeneys.net

1–10 of 108 posts

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#2
Most sites use simple cookies or a localStorage entry to limit how many articles you can read in a month. You can bypass this with a private tab or by disabling JavaScript with uBlock Origin:

* https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/open-in-temp-container/

* https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-...

* https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium...

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#3
> You’ll have to say to them gently, softly, “To be honest, I have no fucking clue. I was out of free articles.”

You can't copyright facts and journalism belongs to the people not to the institutions that are capable of publishing editorials at scale.

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#4

Most sites use simple cookies or a localStorage entry to limit how many articles you can read in a month. You can bypass this with a private tab or by disabling JavaScript with uBlock Origin: * https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/open-in-temp-container/ * https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-... * https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-medium...

I mean, yeah? This entirely misses the point of the article. In fact, it couldn't have been a worse shot.

I don't know enough about the economics of this stuff, but I'm willing to pay for good online writing. I have a national paper subscription, two magazines and a handful of substacks I subscribe to.

But this feel like a price point issue for me. Why is everything $9.99/month (close to $15/month CAD)? Where are all the $2.50 or $5.00 subs? I feel like we anchor to $10 because it's a nice easy number, but the average person just can't afford very many of these, and no single subscription is good enough. So we sustain our desire to not pay for anything.

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#5
When I ask older family members where they were or how they reacted when some important event happened, they usually say something like, busy with real life. Being glued to the news is a modern phenomenon, it’s not the required state of being

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#6

When I ask older family members where they were or how they reacted when some important event happened, they usually say something like, busy with real life. Being glued to the news is a modern phenomenon, it’s not the required state of being

I stopped watching and reading the news, in general. I have some friends who balked at the idea when I mentioned it. They'd say, "Oh, but how do you keep up on important news?"

I don't.

My life is better for letting it go. If something is genuinely important, and I really need to know - I always end up finding out somehow.

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#8
Its so wild to me that the business models of newspapers and journalism in general just dont translate well to the web. Like I get that people expect content online to be free and the alternative sources of information are freely available but its just so tragic. There are so few journalists who do investigative journalism in countries that are smaller because the ad revenue just isnt there.

For example, there are a few youtubers who do a great job but their appeal is global - or at least the entire english speaking population. The scope of focus is “interesting conspiracies that are true” or “some product everyone wants”. Not a serious investigation into the misallocated funds in the local county.

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#9

> You’ll have to say to them gently, softly, “To be honest, I have no fucking clue. I was out of free articles.” You can't copyright facts and journalism belongs to the people not to the institutions that are capable of publishing editorials at scale.

Quality journalism, and, even more importantly, free journalism (as in neutral or unbiased), costs money. I think a subscription is a very low effort compared to the kind of risks and hard work top reporters go through.

Another angle: prose and code describe facts using slightly different languages, but would you say that code (or institutions capable of publishing code at scale) shouldn't exist or that they should "belong to people" (what does that mean anyway?)

Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality

#10

Its so wild to me that the business models of newspapers and journalism in general just dont translate well to the web. Like I get that people expect content online to be free and the alternative sources of information are freely available but its just so tragic. There are so few journalists who do investigative journalism in countries that are smaller because the ad revenue just isnt there. For example, there are a…

(1) The web offers a plethora of choices, and one subscription doesn't cover that. Like, pre-internet if you wanted National Geographic-type info, you could only get that with a hard copy of National Geographic.

(2) People psychologically struggle with paying for something non tangible.

Post reply on HN