Subscription Hell

> Payday loans are extreme case because it’s the last option for a poor person.

This is a false dilemma. There are many options before succumbing to a payday loan. Depending on where you live, there are a myriad of housing assistance, energy assistance, medical bills assistance, and food assistance programs on the city, county, state, and federal levels. Heck, even bankruptcy can be better in some situations. It really does depend on the situation.

The other problem here is availability of information. Everyone is 100% aware of payday loans and the temporary relief it can provide you (advertising), not everyone is aware of the upwards of 20+ programs someone in need can participate in, and it can be exhausting to apply and follow up on everything. Again, the reason the payday loan industry is so successful is they are preying on human nature to take the quick and easy way, but to say they are some sort of last option is not true at all.

I've been lucky enough to never have to actually develop ODF software for integration with Libre Office / MS Office, but from I've read, the specifications were half-heartedly published, and it is now basically a game where developers have to figure out all the exceptions to the interfaces that are within Office. Some work-around that might have worked yesterday might not work after an update of Office (which happens every few weeks).

Again, the cynical part of me assumes that MS employs full-time staff to ensure that Libre Office, Google Docs, and other apps that work with MS Office will never be even 95% compatible.

And from my experience, even simple spreadsheets and formatted Word docs don't display properly when opened in Google Docs or Libre Office, and large, complex business docs with macros and esoteric formatting don't have a chance.

There are a few developers in every place I've worked who use Libre Office because they're on Linux or refuse to pay for Office. And you can tell when they collaborate on a doc with MS Office users because it renders poorly when they send it back. It doesn't bother me, but I've seen how folks in management, marketing, etc. consider it unprofessional and assume the developer is just lazy or can't use Office well.

The one silver lining is that Linux users can use Office 365 online for less complex docs; it's not a full replacement for offline versions, but it's a better alternative than Libre for those of us who believe it better to be compatible with others even at the cost of a 365 subscription.

The problem with individual access purchase is that (usually) I don't know if an article was worth reading until I have read it. Not every issue of The Atlantic or the New Yorker attracts my attention but enough go them do so so I have a subscription.

I think very carefully about adding subscriptions because, honestly, I feel like the burden of a subscription it pretty high. Having to set it up, remember what card it is on, update it when the card expires, remember to cancel it before it auto-renews if I'm not using it...

I wish there was some way I could pay in a central place to support good journalism, across multiple sites, but there just isn't one.

For entertainment I use Patreon, which seems to be doing a good job with the Youtube channels I like, particularly the ones that seem to get demonitized. One place and I can choose where my money goes. Though they did freak everyone out a few months ago with a change to their policies, they rolled that back after the outrage.

I wonder if Steem will help with this. I haven't tried that Steem-powered decentralized Youtube competitor yet, but it sounds fascinating.

Libraries can only help with printed paid content. Electronic content can be licensed to only be viewable by one individual.