LWN is one of the, if not the single, highest signal tech publications around. I hope they're able to maintain a stable subscription service. Being user funded, and avoiding having to maintain allegiance to advertisers, is likely part of why their quality is so high.
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.
They 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.
That'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.
Rationally-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.
Same 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.
not 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.
Agree. 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.
This 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.
You’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.”
Super happy subscriber for years... One of those magazines that I open on a Sunday morning with a good cup of coffee and sleeping cats next to me before the family wakes up.
If you enjoy well-written technical content, please subscribe and support them. I hope they continue making the great articles.
LWN is one of the cornerstones of my very successful career.
Starting from the beginning, I have (at least) read through every story and every article, every week, since 1998. Especially in the beginning, there was a lot in each article I didn't understand. I would try to do some digging into those topics.
One way or another, just the weekly exposure to absolutely top notch technical writing was foundational to me.
When newer folk would ask me how to really get good with Linux, I would always point them to LWN.net.
I've been a subscriber since the beginning. That small investment is the least I can do given the incalculable value LWN has brought to me.
Sorry to be that guy, but... Please consider donating a significant amount to them, given that they have been a cornerstone of your very successful career.
I did something similar in the past, in relation to Ubuntu, and I never regretted it, even if that money would have been very useful if spent in other ways.
I know the editors visit these discussions: please, next time use a more descriptive title! I nearly had a fit when I saw that, really thought LWN is going down like it almost did 20 years ago.
Happy to pay the new price, even though I can only afford the cheapest tier.
> The LWN site has been improved in a number of ways, with features like articles in EPUB format,
This is the single biggest feature that makes me keep my subscription going. The convenience to read longer form offline on my ebook reader makes me wish all other long form content websites would have the same.
Do they offer a facility for automatically mailing the epub file to a specified e-mail address (I'm thinking the Amazon Kindle conversion e-mail) --- that might push me over into a subscription.
Not a PDF, the ePub --- each Amazon Kindle has associated with it an e-mail address, which when a file is e-mailed to it, will be automatically converted and loaded (once the sender is white-listed) --- that way, each new issue would just automagically appear.
People kept asking if they could pay for AnandTech, and they said “we'll think about it” for years until they shut down instead because it was financially unsustainable.
Depends on what you're looking for. In a previous life we subscribed to some semiconductor analysis pubs that we're insanely deep dives into the industry. But they weren't so much technical deep dives as stuff a industry sector trader wants to know. And AFAIK they were very, very expensive.
I'm there with you. I keep an eye out for IEEE pubs, and papers out of schools that have microelectronics specialist programs, and the occasional vendor pub that isn't marketing, but there doesn't seem to be a rollup site for curated deep dives.
Seems like only yesterday when they last increased their prices but it was, in fact, back in January 2022 - time flies!
I'll have been an LWN subscriber for 22 years as of next week, and am very happy to continue to be one. It's easily the most worthwhile subscription I currently have.
Speaking of high quality publications, I wish we could get AnandTech back :( On some older blogs, I still stumble on dead links, and very few of them are on internet archive..
I'm happy to see such a positive response from the HN crowd! I'm not affiliated with lwn I'm just a subscriber. It looks like a few people have subscribed/renewed from this. I hope that helps lwn keep producing excellent content for years to come. They truly put an outstanding effort into their articles. It's one of the few sites I vist daily (HN also being on that list).
Also thanks to the editors and mods updating the title so people don't have to change their underwear.
Also, if you have any sort of buying power: make sure you company pays for a group subscription, and maintains it over the years. I try do that here. Nudge your colleagues to use the subscription and send them the occasional article!
I think LWN is not just the best linux news site or the best tech news site, or the best new site. I think it's actually the best website. I just can't think of anything else that comes close in terms of quality of information.
If you have any professional connection at all to Linux then $11/mo is an absolute bargain!
If you want stuff to exist in the world, pay for it. Work is work, and expecting things to be free, or to never raise their prices, is a good way to ensure that they don't last.
This reminded me that I'd let my LWN subscription lapse after a credit card expired. Just renewed for a year and turned on automatic renewals (at least until the next credit card expiration).
I've been a long term subscriber. I don't read it every day, but more like a few times a week and there is always good stuff.
I highly recommend subscribing if you can. It's really one of the great ones and it's still oldshool style, not a lot of fluff, just nerds presenting nerdy news.
Tried making an account but seems to take quite a while (forever?) getting the corresponding email. I guess their server is taking a beating due to this article.
The server was fine, but we have a throttle that kicks in if we get a flood of new account creations at once to ward off spammers and scammers. We're keeping an eye on the queue now to ensure that these are waved through quickly. Sorry for the inconvenience.
> Since the 2022 price change, according to the undoubtedly reliable numbers from the US government, consumer-price inflation has added up to almost exactly 20%.
Enjoyed the sarcasm, but does anyone actually believe these numbers? Is there a more reliable metric that isn't affected by Goodhart's law and can be trusted?
> There are few things we like less than raising prices, which is why we have done it so rarely. It would be far better to keep LWN as inexpensive as possible and make it up in volume. Subscriber growth has stalled, though, in recent years, making that strategy unworkable for now. We are working on schemes to bring in more subscribers again, but that is a long-term process; getting there requires some short-term help.
I can see why they’d want to keep bumping prices occasionally (to keep up with inflation). Why do they need plans to increase subscriber growth, though, are they not currently profitable? It seems like they must have hit a steady-state by now.
If we can grow the number of subscribers, we don't need to raise prices for the ones that have supported us all this time; I would find that preferable. Besides, who doesn't want a broader reach?
Inflation means that hosting costs increase. On the site they also mention being under heavy scraper load which also isn’t free.
Then the writers probably also need compensation increase, at the very least to be a responsible employer so that the employees can deal with inflation.
Inflation happens regularly, normally, or when world leaders emit another chaos bomb, and they do not raise prices immediately causing a lower income/costs ratio. In order to keep up with that without raising the prices in between you need more income and that comes from more payers.
Also, as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, more scrapers. They're trying to keep things accessible without JavaScript, which mostly rules out the typical proof of work solutions like Anubis (which they're definitely aware of, as they had an article on it).
Kudos to them for their longevity, integrity, high quality journalism, and the ability to continue to self publish. Most other journalists are depending on publishing apps (e.g. Medium / YouTube/ Social Media /etc) that are volatile and heavily influence business.
I wish every journalism topic (politics, science reporting, arts , etc) had an equivalent independent trade publication.
I been self hosting many tools, one them an ebook manager called `kavita`, and downloading the epub format and consuming it via kavita would be interesting.
This is literally the first I've ever heard of LWN (in over 20 years of being a professional engineer) so clearly they could be doing better marketing.
Good. Increase the subscription prices against what the users think. There are no ads at all. But of course not everyone will agree and want it for free.
Many know they want it for free. If you don't pay at all then it will force LWN to begin to place ads on their newsletter to cover the costs.
There is no realistic in-between other than actually paying for your services.
Crab-bucket mentality aside, what they do is extremely important and hard to do.
I can't write an occasional blog post without wrestling with my ideas and words, and they constantly churn out this high quality material, without ever slowing down. They deserve what they earn.
OTOH, thanks for nudging me towards subscribing to LWN a bit more.
That's such a weird take away, you're comparing Mozilla which has a diverse set of employees, versus an organization whose sole purpose is to hire high quality technical writers, which is already pretty niche.
Yeah, I meant in a general sense - I doubt any LWN reader is not aware of ctrl-+. I think they'd be more concerned if the site became more heavily CSSified - because it would become harder to read with terminal-based browsers.
Wow $6 a month is really a lot for a tech site at least for someone from a lower income country in Europe. And that's only the cheapest tier
I think the issue there is that they're based in the US so they have expenses in that economy too, but it will lead to less foreign subscribers I think. There seems to be a lot of pricing disconnect between the US and Europe. Like when a vision pro is $3500... I've never even spent more than 2400 euro on a car in my life.
But I wish them luck. I don't know the site very well, I've only seen a few links from there here. I'm a big Linux user but I don't really follow specific sites except aggregators like this one.
LWN, probably about to discover people are paying high prices for all manner of things and will find that LWN is, sadly, a disposable entity to pay for.
You could also see if it's something your employer allows you to expense. It's still cheap enough that it's something most managers can just approve directly, depending on organizational structures.
I suspect everybody likely to do so has already done so. Anybody who thinks $6 a month is a lot of money will also think $5 a month is a lot of money for something that they can get for free by waiting a week.
5 to 6 dollars is not much in terms of a donation. In terms of a subscription, though...One thing is voluntary if you find value, the other is mandatory to get to the value unless you are willing to wait.
I think you're reinforcing my point. Both $5 and $6 a month are a lot of money to many people. LWN isn't "about to discover" this, they've likely already discovered this in their release + 1 week traffic over the years since they set the price at $5/month.
I did not use LWN ago, and am worried the future of it.
It outputs content and the users read the articles. I think the value of the model is not big.
The most important knowledge and experience is from your own practice, thinking, experiment, and reality.
If the price is too high, many users maybe think it is not worthy of the price, especially because there are many free and useful knowledge on Internet.
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