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Not only that but lwn is one of the main sites that gets submitted to HN all year round (not daily, but maybe nearish to daily). So the audience here on HN has
by giancarlostoro 2mo ago
Not only that but lwn is one of the main sites that gets submitted to HN all year round (not daily, but maybe nearish to daily). So the audience here on HN has been exposed to it over the years. I'm not sure what more they could do to get new subscribers, I certainly hope they figure that out or how to get new ways to earn revenue without having to go the ad route.
https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=lwn.net https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=lwn.net
- blks 2mo agoI’m occasional lwn reader and I had no idea there are subscriptions there!
- giancarlostoro 2mo agoThey lock down new articles for about a week I think, so subscribers get the first one, though if you're a subscriber I think they let you SHARE the article with others, so here on HN sometimes a brand new article will be shared by a subscriber with a code so anyone without a subscription can see it.
- rdpintqogeogsaa 2mo agoThat's the thing though. You can get all the value from LWN through here. Even if it wasn't for them tolerating subscriber links being posted on HN, the week-long delay isn't nearly enough an incentive to actually subscribe, rationally speaking.
- roryirvine 2mo agoI think the generosity and straightforwardness are a big part of the attraction for many subscribers. They've always respected their readers and I hope that continues to pay off.
- excitedrustle 2mo agoAgree. I don't read it every week, but I greatly appreciate the quality (both of the technical content and the lack of advertising/sensationalism/clickbait) when I do read an article. Happy to pay to support this style of tech reporting and journalism.
- giancarlostoro 2mo agoEasy to say until they have to eventually make the hard decision to shut down.
- tonyarkles 2mo agoRationally-speaking, maybe not. I’ve been a long-time subscriber. When I first subscribed, my day-to-day involved embedded Linux and getting the “breaking news” was pretty valuable. These days I still do that somewhat but I’m stuck on a crusty vendor kernel and anything I read about a kernel newer than 5.15 is going to land on my desk in approximately 2028… but I still subscribe, mostly with a patronage mindset: I don’t acutely get value from the subscription every week, but I think it’s a community service and I’m happy to pitch in a few bucks to keep it alive.
- kokada 2mo agoSame as me. I started subscribing LWN when I was a Linux enthusiast from my early college days, because the content was so good and interesting. Nowadays I barely read it but I still keep my subscription alive, just because I think the content is worth it.
- WD-42 2mo agoWouldn’t rationally speaking you’d want to support them to keep them around? Or did you mean selfishly speaking?
- GuinansEyebrows 2mo agonot saying parent feels this way but the target class of this website often does not separate the two. we're still sloughing off the goofballery of objectivism, i guess.
- kjs3 2mo agowe're still sloughing off the goofballery of objectivism Are we though? I certainly don't sense the volume of FYIGM entitlement decreasing.
- wonnage 2mo agoThey literally fearmonger for a permanent underclass, it’s definitely not decreasing
- chrisweekly 2mo ago(FYIGM = F* You, I Got Mine)
- GuinansEyebrows 2mo agobased on other replies to the parent, at least some folks feel differently :) but generally i'm not very optimistic about it.
- freedomben 2mo agoWell for me, at least, it's those features that make me a subscriber. If not for those I wouldn't do it
- classified 2mo agoRationally speaking, if you're getting value from it, you should be interested in its continued existence and therefore subscribe.
- teiferer 2mo agoSelfishly speaking is the word you were looking for.
- roughly 2mo agoThis is why nobody likes economists.
- Sharlin 2mo agoTBF, economists, if any group, would understand the freerider problem and what it leads to if there are too many of them.
- roughly 2mo agoYou’d think, but in practice their entire policy prescription seems to come down to “well if they didn’t want me to have it, they should’ve bolted it down, this is really an incentives problem, if you look at it.”
- kjs3 2mo agoThis is pretty close to "I shall stand under this tree during the storm to stay dry, and if this tree starts to drip on me I'll just run over to that other tree and stay dry there" thinking. If LWN goes away, that value leaves HN too. Rationally speaking.
- gpvos 2mo agoRational thinking includes thinking about the long term.