8 ms·

A group of Motherboard folks just spun up their own new independent outlet

288 points by ohjeez 3y ago

_zoltan_ 3y ago
I thought this is going to be about motherboard manufacturers...
starik36 3y ago
How are you being funded right now?
tamimio 3y ago
[flagged]
shortformblog 3y ago
I just want to personally vouch for Jason and company as being solid folks who do great work. I have freelanced for Motherboard for 7+ years and Jason and/or Emanuel worked with me on about 90 percent of my stories over that time, which included extremely weird things like a step-by-step for Hackintoshing a laptop that ended up far longer than any of us were expecting, and a deep dive into the backstory of NESticle. They are truly great at what they do, and I’m excited to see what comes of it now that they have their own plot on the open internet.
mgbmtl 3y ago
Congrats! I'm a fan and subscribed. Tech nitpick: I was a bit annoyed though that the green buttons to subscribe are then replaced by green buttons to "gift to a friend" or subscribe to newsletter. It's easy to add to uBlock, but it would be nice to not have annoyances that distract from reading. I really like the long form of articles.
treve 3y ago
I almost immediately closed the window because I thought it was 404ing and it was a dead link. Curious how much traffic they'll accidentally lose with this name. Coincidentally my company was called 'Bad Gateway', and there's a company near me called 200 OK so welcome to the club =)
- dpig_ 3y ago
  Yep I did the same.
spiderxxxx 3y ago
all caps on the headlines made me ignore them until I scrolled back up after reading. Web design is hard.
ColoursofOSINT 3y ago
I made a similar comment on the story about apple and right to repair. Although I think this is interesting and has potential, the trust and absolute statements in their reporting worries me greatly. As a journalist, your job is to inform and question. They don't seem to be questioning. In their apple article on apple support RTR, they write, "This is a landmark shift in policy from Apple." [1] It's not. They have played this game before; creating RTR "friendly" programs and then forcing signing of strict NDAs, and requirements that leave repair shops worse then they would without the program. [2-5] Also, "It means, effectively, that consumers have won". Wow, I have never heard that before, only for it to fail or be false. Remind you of the New York bill which was kneecapped at "last minute by Gov. Kathy Hochul"? [6] 1: https://www.404media.co/apple-endorses-california-right-to-repair-bill/ https://www.404media.co/apple-endorses-california-right-to-r... 2: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/18/we-are-losing-money-companies-in-apples-repair-program-say-they-cant-compete-with-tech-giant https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/18/we-are-lo... 3: https://www.howtogeek.com/894168/apples-self-repair-program-is-even-worse-now/ https://www.howtogeek.com/894168/apples-self-repair-program-... 4: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjdjnv/apples-independent-repair-program-is-invasive-to-shops-and-their-customers-contract-shows https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjdjnv/apples-independent-re... (ironically from vice, lol) 5: https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/28/apple_selfservice_slammed/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/28/apple_selfservice_sla... 6: https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7gdwb/new-yorks-right-to-repair-law-watered-down-by-big-tech-lobbyists?ref=404media.co https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7gdwb/new-yorks-right-to-re...
bendoidic 3y ago
Check out their 404 page...(Doom music kicks in)
askura 3y ago
All the best to them. I was involved with a few Vice projects in 2011-2014 and it was honestly leadership that let them down. They have great talent but it's not easy in this day and age to run any kind of content site. Hope they pull it off.
- nickthegreek 3y ago
  Good luck to them but $100/yr sub is the cheapest tier. oof!
  - jzb 3y ago
    If anybody has the magic formula for pricing, I'd be all ears. Yeah, $100 a year seems steep - but OTOH are twice as many people going to subscribe for $50? Five times as many for $20? (Or more...) I don't know what the answer / formula is, but I pay more than that per year for my LWN.net subscription and for a few other publications. Less than that for others, but I really don't know what the "right" level would be to maximize revenue so they're able to pay themselves a decent salary and keep the lights on.
  - googlryas 3y ago
    $100 sounds much worse than phrasing it as 27 cents a day. (cue cheesy music): "For just a quarter a day, you can save a struggling journalist from corporate overlords, submarine PR pieces, and human interest stories"
    - frumper 3y ago
      27 cents a day sounds worse to me. You typically can't pay for 1 day, so it's not really true.
  - selectodude 3y ago
    Means they need to average 4200 subscribers to pay themselves and run the place.
    - 3y ago
skilled 3y ago
The site is built with Ghost[0] and subscriptions are managed by Outpost[1]. Design is clean, loads fast, and articles are stacked, so I wish them luck. It's pretty ruthless out there, but a few good stories on HN front-page[2] should at least get this syndicated in all the best places. [0]: https://ghost.org/ https://ghost.org/ (they've also forgotten to change the default article:publisher URL which leads to Ghost's FB page) [1]: https://outpost.pub/ https://outpost.pub/ [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37222672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37222672
solardev 3y ago
Brave move. I hope they succeed. PS Does The Information still exist?
jabroni_salad 3y ago
I used to really like Motherboard, so I'm rooting for them. I haven't been totally happy with my tech newsfeed the past while but I'm clutching onto my Defector subscription for all that it's worth. I hope they can make this work similarly.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
- Humboldtsnee 3y ago
  What does that mean in this context?
theonlybutlet 3y ago
Wow, and they're off to a dramatic start. Actually had to close an article, was a bit much for me.
- phatfish 3y ago
  One of the 3 on AI porn? I get they need clicks but maybe drip feed them over a month or something.
kornhole 3y ago
I signed up as paying member. These are some of the good journalists who need encouragement to go independent. Hopefully now that they are free of billionaire benefactors, they will not need to weave in partisan attacks and other mandatory messages.
- pixxel 3y ago
  > These are some of the good journalists who need encouragement to go independent. Agreed. > Hopefully now that they are free of billionaire benefactors, they will not need to weave in partisan attacks and other mandatory messages. These types that are deceitful, immoral and tear society apart with their paymaster propaganda don’t deserve another position of trust.
  - kornhole 3y ago
    >These types that are deceitful, immoral and tear society apart with their paymaster propaganda don’t deserve another position of trust. You are fortunate if you have never needed to do anything against your principles because your job required it. I have worked for companies I am not proud of. I am giving them the benefit of the doubt and a chance to use their new found independence for good. If they fuck it up, I won't renew membership.
71a54xd 3y ago
This looks cool, but I wonder if this kind of tech journalism still really has an audience?
- jkoebler 3y ago
  We know that it has an audience because millions of people read our journalism at Motherboard every month. We are making a bet that a small fraction of those people will be willing to pay for accountability journalism and offbeat stuff that people care about (porn, for one, but lots other things) but that might make advertisers nervous. We are under no illusion that this will be easy but we are excited to give it a shot. The worst thing that can happen is that we tried our best on something we really believe in and enjoy doing, it doesn't work financially, and we ultimately have to go do something else. We are hopeful and optimistic that we CAN make it work, but already we are overwhelmed and thrilled with the response. It's only our second day but we're committed to becoming a vital publication for people who care about how tech impacts humans, and how humans impact tech. We understand we will need to prove this day in and day out for people to feel like they are getting their money's worth, or that their money is supporting a force for good in the world/the internet. But we really want to make that happen. Thanks for the kind words
  - ajdude 3y ago
    I wish you guys the best of luck. We seriously need more independent journalism that isn't stuck in a race to the bottom. I just subscribed.
josefresco 3y ago
$100/year to subscribe FYI
jkoebler 3y ago
Hey there, Jason from 404 Media here. We're humbled that someone posted this and just wanted to say I'll stick around for an hour or so before I have a few interviews for articles scheduled, if anyone has any questions/thoughts/feedback. We're very grateful for the support and thrilled to be here
- TradingPlaces 3y ago
  Right into my veins >Much has been written about the failing business model of new media. We have watched how new media companies fail, and it’s not because of a lack of audience, revenue, impact, or vital work. New media companies fail because of a growth-at-any-cost mentality, and venture capital investments made at absurd valuations. Most importantly, astronomical overhead costs make it impossible for journalists to out-earn the cost of expensive office space, the ever-changing whims of management, executives’ salaries, the cost of unnecessary enterprise software, and an endless parade of consultants brought in to figure out what’s wrong. >It doesn’t have to be this way, and at 404 Media, it will not. We propose a simple alternative: pay journalists to do journalism. Also, y u no Mastodon?
  - jkoebler 3y ago
    We're going to join Mastodon I promise. Honestly the reason we haven't joined Mastodon yet is because there have been a million little things to adjust/fix in the days leading up to launch to make sure the site didn't break, to edit the stories, get art done, backend business stuff as well. There are a lot of things we wanted to launch with that we haven't had time to do yet, which doesn't mean it's not a priority. As you can imagine we've had a few (very minor) urgent fires in the leadup to launch, so tbh our social media accounts across the board have taken a temporary backseat. Mastodon is high on our list and I'm sure we'll be there by the end of the week if not the end of the day. Thank you for your support!
    - TradingPlaces 3y ago
      [flagged]
doctorpangloss 3y ago
Based on the top Substack authors, there is an audience willing to pay $5/mo for low effort opinions based on other people's investigations. In a sense ProPublica won. Its mission is to do real investigative journalism and get as many people to hear about it as possible. They are winning when people take their X and repackage it into dumbed down Y. They coexist with the low effort Substack ecosystem. Even if zero people pay for 404 Media, who is going to be like, "oh man, these guys cracked open the Right to Repair story, I should hire them." That sounds like teeing yourself for content marketing at iFixit at worse, Microsoft at best. Why?
- jeffgreco 3y ago
  What?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
i_am_jl 3y ago
I was super confused while I was reading the story posted here yesterday regarding ID theft via credit reports; it's a quality piece but I couldn't stop asking myself "where the hell did 404 Media come from?" Excited to see where this goes.
- jkoebler 3y ago
  Thanks for reading! Lots more to come :)
dylan604 3y ago
100% off topic, but something that made me laugh. The caption under the image of the founders: "The founders of 404 Media. From left to right..." So as a question, is Joseph to the left of Samantha in that image? This image is perfect for training data for VAR offside decisions.
- jkoebler 3y ago
  We actually saw that our name has confused this AI news site: https://twitter.com/ShortFormErnie/status/1694037086750253482 https://twitter.com/ShortFormErnie/status/169403708675025348... So maybe the whole thing is a test for GAI and machine learning.
  - skilled 3y ago
    Hahaha that is gold.

288 points by ohjeez 3y ago

_zoltan_ 3y ago

I thought this is going to be about motherboard manufacturers...

starik36 3y ago

How are you being funded right now?

tamimio 3y ago

[flagged]

shortformblog 3y ago

I just want to personally vouch for Jason and company as being solid folks who do great work. I have freelanced for Motherboard for 7+ years and Jason and/or Emanuel worked with me on about 90 percent of my stories over that time, which included extremely weird things like a step-by-step for Hackintoshing a laptop that ended up far longer than any of us were expecting, and a deep dive into the backstory of NESticle. They are truly great at what they do, and I’m excited to see what comes of it now that they have their own plot on the open internet.

mgbmtl 3y ago

Congrats! I'm a fan and subscribed. Tech nitpick: I was a bit annoyed though that the green buttons to subscribe are then replaced by green buttons to "gift to a friend" or subscribe to newsletter. It's easy to add to uBlock, but it would be nice to not have annoyances that distract from reading. I really like the long form of articles.

treve 3y ago

I almost immediately closed the window because I thought it was 404ing and it was a dead link. Curious how much traffic they'll accidentally lose with this name. Coincidentally my company was called 'Bad Gateway', and there's a company near me called 200 OK so welcome to the club =)

dpig_ 3y ago
Yep I did the same.

spiderxxxx 3y ago

all caps on the headlines made me ignore them until I scrolled back up after reading. Web design is hard.

ColoursofOSINT 3y ago

I made a similar comment on the story about apple and right to repair. Although I think this is interesting and has potential, the trust and absolute statements in their reporting worries me greatly. As a journalist, your job is to inform and question. They don't seem to be questioning. In their apple article on apple support RTR, they write, "This is a landmark shift in policy from Apple." [1] It's not. They have played this game before; creating RTR "friendly" programs and then forcing signing of strict NDAs, and requirements that leave repair shops worse then they would without the program. [2-5] Also, "It means, effectively, that consumers have won". Wow, I have never heard that before, only for it to fail or be false. Remind you of the New York bill which was kneecapped at "last minute by Gov. Kathy Hochul"? [6] 1: https://www.404media.co/apple-endorses-california-right-to-repair-bill/ https://www.404media.co/apple-endorses-california-right-to-r... 2: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/18/we-are-losing-money-companies-in-apples-repair-program-say-they-cant-compete-with-tech-giant https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/18/we-are-lo... 3: https://www.howtogeek.com/894168/apples-self-repair-program-is-even-worse-now/ https://www.howtogeek.com/894168/apples-self-repair-program-... 4: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjdjnv/apples-independent-repair-program-is-invasive-to-shops-and-their-customers-contract-shows https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjdjnv/apples-independent-re... (ironically from vice, lol) 5: https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/28/apple_selfservice_slammed/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/28/apple_selfservice_sla... 6: https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7gdwb/new-yorks-right-to-repair-law-watered-down-by-big-tech-lobbyists?ref=404media.co https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7gdwb/new-yorks-right-to-re...

bendoidic 3y ago

Check out their 404 page...(Doom music kicks in)

askura 3y ago

All the best to them. I was involved with a few Vice projects in 2011-2014 and it was honestly leadership that let them down. They have great talent but it's not easy in this day and age to run any kind of content site. Hope they pull it off.

nickthegreek 3y ago
Good luck to them but $100/yr sub is the cheapest tier. oof!
- jzb 3y ago
  If anybody has the magic formula for pricing, I'd be all ears. Yeah, $100 a year seems steep - but OTOH are twice as many people going to subscribe for $50? Five times as many for $20? (Or more...) I don't know what the answer / formula is, but I pay more than that per year for my LWN.net subscription and for a few other publications. Less than that for others, but I really don't know what the "right" level would be to maximize revenue so they're able to pay themselves a decent salary and keep the lights on.
- googlryas 3y ago
  $100 sounds much worse than phrasing it as 27 cents a day. (cue cheesy music): "For just a quarter a day, you can save a struggling journalist from corporate overlords, submarine PR pieces, and human interest stories"
  - frumper 3y ago
    27 cents a day sounds worse to me. You typically can't pay for 1 day, so it's not really true.
- selectodude 3y ago
  Means they need to average 4200 subscribers to pay themselves and run the place.
  - 3y ago

skilled 3y ago

The site is built with Ghost[0] and subscriptions are managed by Outpost[1]. Design is clean, loads fast, and articles are stacked, so I wish them luck. It's pretty ruthless out there, but a few good stories on HN front-page[2] should at least get this syndicated in all the best places. [0]: https://ghost.org/ https://ghost.org/ (they've also forgotten to change the default article:publisher URL which leads to Ghost's FB page) [1]: https://outpost.pub/ https://outpost.pub/ [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37222672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37222672

solardev 3y ago

Brave move. I hope they succeed. PS Does The Information still exist?

jabroni_salad 3y ago

I used to really like Motherboard, so I'm rooting for them. I haven't been totally happy with my tech newsfeed the past while but I'm clutching onto my Defector subscription for all that it's worth. I hope they can make this work similarly.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Humboldtsnee 3y ago
What does that mean in this context?

theonlybutlet 3y ago

Wow, and they're off to a dramatic start. Actually had to close an article, was a bit much for me.

phatfish 3y ago
One of the 3 on AI porn? I get they need clicks but maybe drip feed them over a month or something.

kornhole 3y ago

I signed up as paying member. These are some of the good journalists who need encouragement to go independent. Hopefully now that they are free of billionaire benefactors, they will not need to weave in partisan attacks and other mandatory messages.

pixxel 3y ago
> These are some of the good journalists who need encouragement to go independent. Agreed. > Hopefully now that they are free of billionaire benefactors, they will not need to weave in partisan attacks and other mandatory messages. These types that are deceitful, immoral and tear society apart with their paymaster propaganda don’t deserve another position of trust.
- kornhole 3y ago
  >These types that are deceitful, immoral and tear society apart with their paymaster propaganda don’t deserve another position of trust. You are fortunate if you have never needed to do anything against your principles because your job required it. I have worked for companies I am not proud of. I am giving them the benefit of the doubt and a chance to use their new found independence for good. If they fuck it up, I won't renew membership.

71a54xd 3y ago

This looks cool, but I wonder if this kind of tech journalism still really has an audience?

jkoebler 3y ago
We know that it has an audience because millions of people read our journalism at Motherboard every month. We are making a bet that a small fraction of those people will be willing to pay for accountability journalism and offbeat stuff that people care about (porn, for one, but lots other things) but that might make advertisers nervous. We are under no illusion that this will be easy but we are excited to give it a shot. The worst thing that can happen is that we tried our best on something we really believe in and enjoy doing, it doesn't work financially, and we ultimately have to go do something else. We are hopeful and optimistic that we CAN make it work, but already we are overwhelmed and thrilled with the response. It's only our second day but we're committed to becoming a vital publication for people who care about how tech impacts humans, and how humans impact tech. We understand we will need to prove this day in and day out for people to feel like they are getting their money's worth, or that their money is supporting a force for good in the world/the internet. But we really want to make that happen. Thanks for the kind words
- ajdude 3y ago
  I wish you guys the best of luck. We seriously need more independent journalism that isn't stuck in a race to the bottom. I just subscribed.

josefresco 3y ago

$100/year to subscribe FYI

jkoebler 3y ago

Hey there, Jason from 404 Media here. We're humbled that someone posted this and just wanted to say I'll stick around for an hour or so before I have a few interviews for articles scheduled, if anyone has any questions/thoughts/feedback. We're very grateful for the support and thrilled to be here

TradingPlaces 3y ago
Right into my veins >Much has been written about the failing business model of new media. We have watched how new media companies fail, and it’s not because of a lack of audience, revenue, impact, or vital work. New media companies fail because of a growth-at-any-cost mentality, and venture capital investments made at absurd valuations. Most importantly, astronomical overhead costs make it impossible for journalists to out-earn the cost of expensive office space, the ever-changing whims of management, executives’ salaries, the cost of unnecessary enterprise software, and an endless parade of consultants brought in to figure out what’s wrong. >It doesn’t have to be this way, and at 404 Media, it will not. We propose a simple alternative: pay journalists to do journalism. Also, y u no Mastodon?
- jkoebler 3y ago
  We're going to join Mastodon I promise. Honestly the reason we haven't joined Mastodon yet is because there have been a million little things to adjust/fix in the days leading up to launch to make sure the site didn't break, to edit the stories, get art done, backend business stuff as well. There are a lot of things we wanted to launch with that we haven't had time to do yet, which doesn't mean it's not a priority. As you can imagine we've had a few (very minor) urgent fires in the leadup to launch, so tbh our social media accounts across the board have taken a temporary backseat. Mastodon is high on our list and I'm sure we'll be there by the end of the week if not the end of the day. Thank you for your support!
  - TradingPlaces 3y ago
    [flagged]

doctorpangloss 3y ago

Based on the top Substack authors, there is an audience willing to pay $5/mo for low effort opinions based on other people's investigations. In a sense ProPublica won. Its mission is to do real investigative journalism and get as many people to hear about it as possible. They are winning when people take their X and repackage it into dumbed down Y. They coexist with the low effort Substack ecosystem. Even if zero people pay for 404 Media, who is going to be like, "oh man, these guys cracked open the Right to Repair story, I should hire them." That sounds like teeing yourself for content marketing at iFixit at worse, Microsoft at best. Why?

jeffgreco 3y ago
What?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

i_am_jl 3y ago

I was super confused while I was reading the story posted here yesterday regarding ID theft via credit reports; it's a quality piece but I couldn't stop asking myself "where the hell did 404 Media come from?" Excited to see where this goes.

jkoebler 3y ago
Thanks for reading! Lots more to come :)

dylan604 3y ago

100% off topic, but something that made me laugh. The caption under the image of the founders: "The founders of 404 Media. From left to right..." So as a question, is Joseph to the left of Samantha in that image? This image is perfect for training data for VAR offside decisions.

jkoebler 3y ago
We actually saw that our name has confused this AI news site: https://twitter.com/ShortFormErnie/status/1694037086750253482 https://twitter.com/ShortFormErnie/status/169403708675025348... So maybe the whole thing is a test for GAI and machine learning.
- skilled 3y ago
  Hahaha that is gold.