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You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality
91–100 of 108 posts
Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a reasonable barometer for a lot of news is: will this be important or relevant in 1 month? If the answer is "no", then it's probably more entertainment than anything else. However if I were to try and steelman the opposition for your position, I'd probably explore the argument that you could be living a very privileged life which might be part of the reason for why you're able to ignore the news. For certain…
> However if I were to try and steelman the opposition for your position, I'd probably explore the argument that you could be living a very privileged life which might be part of the reason for why you're able to ignore the news. Well, the other issue is that people pay too much attention to national news and waaaay to little attention to local news. That fracking site that just opened up next to your farm should pro…
Yes! And you can do a lot more about those local issues. The small-scale but impactful to _you_ actions are a more satisfying way to exercise democracy and a good way to build that muscle.
Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Blogger siderea has talked about this a lot in relation to patreon, and the challenges for any platform wanting to replace it. EDIT: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1824441.html and https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1371510.html Apparently it comes down to how card processing fees work, as long as there's a constant fixed cost per payment (whether or not there is also a percentage fee), "microtransactions" become unecono…
> EDIT2: and yes, we've already tried blockchain for that too. We've not already tried blockchain for this. The rails are there, just a small matter of implementation. Everyone's too busy building shovel factories and not enough people are mining for gold to make a web3 micropayments product. I can, right now, buy $5 of solana on Coinbase, give you $0.05, with an inconsequential fee of $0.001 or so using Solana, and…
I've always thought (wished?) this was a killer app for crypto currency. I would love to have a pool of news "coins", that get auto spent on articles I choose to read. As the OP stated, I'd prefer to pay for content, but I dont have an infinite pool of $9.99-a-months..
Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality
#94Most 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...
One can also disable Javascript for individual sites ("site settings"). Or use a client that does not implement cookies, localStorage or Javascript, like the original www browsers. I have been using these for decades. In the relatively rare case I have to use a popular, graphical browser distributed by an entity that collects users' data to support online ad services, on a network I do not control, I use Javascript s…
Which browser(s) do you mean/use. I turn off js on chrome as well.
Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality
#95Most 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…
Bundle subscriptions would make a lot of sense. I'd pay $10/month to access "the news". I'm not going to pay $10/month to access 1% of the news. At the same time, $10/month is more money than the $0/month the news sites are getting from me right now.
This is particularly infuriating when multiple newspapers belong to the same group, and yet they maintain individual subscriptions. I can't see many people subscribing to more than 1-2 of them. They could easily make an "overall" subscription that provides a lot better value and likely get a lot more customers. But no, they'd rather try to squeeze more money per person out of a much smaller group...
Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Blogger siderea has talked about this a lot in relation to patreon, and the challenges for any platform wanting to replace it. EDIT: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1824441.html and https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1371510.html Apparently it comes down to how card processing fees work, as long as there's a constant fixed cost per payment (whether or not there is also a percentage fee), "microtransactions" become unecono…
> EDIT2: and yes, we've already tried blockchain for that too. We've not already tried blockchain for this. The rails are there, just a small matter of implementation. Everyone's too busy building shovel factories and not enough people are mining for gold to make a web3 micropayments product. I can, right now, buy $5 of solana on Coinbase, give you $0.05, with an inconsequential fee of $0.001 or so using Solana, and…
What would you say are the main barriers to adopting a solution like this more widely?
More technical points I can think of: how fast do transactions get confirmed (If they have to wait 5 min to read a news article most people will go somewhere else)? If this becomes more popular, what stops processing fees from going up (I think this is a problem for BTC).
Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality
#97Its 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…
It is a hard problem to solve for sure. But its definitely possible.
Like why not lay the smack down to all the illegal shit exposed by the panama papers, and put the money toward real investigative journalism outfits? Oh right because there are no consequences, and if there were they would never put the money in the right place.
Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality
#98monetizing the web is something i don't bother thinking about getting solved. but how the parties go about the situation is always entertaining.
we are a technically skilled bunch and find ways around it. but is there a scope to inject advertizing into the "content" (i.e. the article) in a similar way youtube is experimenting with video (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40660464)?
Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It’s like cheap Canadian cellphone or internet plans - you have to wait until a news org offers a deal, then sign up for it. Managed to get cheap NYT and WSJ subs from it. You have to cancel when the price goes up and then accept the offer at cancellation to keep your low price for one more year, forever. Honestly, if my local library offered more online news subscriptions, I would much prefer that. How we ended up i…
I feel very lucky that my local library has 'libby' an ebook reader that also has magazines and some papers - all for free. It is pretty nice to read a couple of magazines in the evening, as an alternative to 'just one more social media app...'
Re: You've Read Your Last Free Article, Such Is the Nature of Mortality
#100The public libraries in the USA that I'm familiar with have thousands of periodicals accessible on Libby. That's one way to slightly fund the authors of the essays and other features in those magazines.
I posted it elsewhere - but libby is also available in some parts of the UK - I feel so lucky to have it, really good selection of content on there..
In fact I need to dig out my ancient ipad and see if it will run on there still. One more reason to put my phone down.