Did they try to ask for donation? Linux Journal has a huge reader base most of who probably grew up in the 90s and early 2000s. Most of these readers are now probably working professionals and earning well enough to donate a small amount to Linux Journal on a monthly or yearly basis to keep this journal running.
Patreon has three membership plans for creators, none of which are actually 10%. :) The basic one is 5%, the "pro" one is 8%, and the "premium" one is 12%, which is targeted more at companies/teams than individuals. (It comes with a dedicated account manager and I believe some kind of shipping/fulfillment system for physical merchandise.) Their payment processing fees are also actually lower than what you'd pay Stripe directly for pledges of $3 and under.
Patreon isn't problem-free, but I think they get dinged a little too hard by folks sometimes. It's not very easy to find a competitor that offers comparable value-added services at significantly lower cost.
What I said, rephrased for clarity: It used to be 5% for all features. That's what the 8% plan is now. The new and current 5% plan is the stripped down version.
What you said, by my understanding: the 8% plan contains what used to be the only option [standard, by my phrasing] at 5%.
I don't see any disagreement unless you were referring to the discounts given to existing creators. I'm talking about the new creator rates.
Online payment system is typical platform business where network effect dominates.
There are multiple competitors for Patreon, but they can't get off the ground because they don't have the users because they don't have the creators because they don't have the users.... You can build much better platform and it's just crickets in the sales because operating costs on smaller userbase are higher. Small competitor might force Patreon to reduce prices a little until they can kill the competition, but it's hard to have stable competitors.
Businesses that already have massive number of customer subscriptions and brand recognition could enter the market.
One example would be DarkCookie with "SummerTime saga", a "dating sim" at around $50,000 US.
Or another example at 769 patrons and $2,287 per month: "Porn Empire is a simulation/management with light RPG elements where you play as an amateur porn producer.
Start small, shoot amateur porn and as you progress, you earn more money, buy better equipment, pick up better girls and train them"
If people really cared they would have signed up. But the proof is in the pudding. What people really care about is totally different from what they say publicly. What they really care about, apparently, if you follow the money, is interactive cartoon porn.
I wonder if Patreon would consider diverting a small amount of the porn money to worthy causes like Linux Journal.
I beg to differ. There's just more competition, and the bar for entering is lower. And so you get a lot of chaff. But there are serious journalists with high standards and integrity out there that thrive on the donation model, such as Timcast. Now there's a guy who actually meets up where it happens! Add to this that often it's not needed to send someone out, because you can always read some random guy's twitter. We don't exactly have less access to news or reporting. The problem is the filtering. But I'm not sad for it. Not one bit! Because it has revealed to us just how things were filtered in the past by the big giants. Not so anymore.
Other than that, you have to remember that there's been a pretty painful phase of adaptation with new and emergent technology. This means a lot of the old bastions have fallen, or are trying to figure out how to cope with the new media reality. Either way tabloids will always sell more than real news, sadly. They also did during the heyday of serious broadsheets, and there's not really any indication that it's going to change in the near future. There are some noble efforts to fight the fake news agenda, that tries to pick apart the rabble of the tabloids, such as Snopes -- until you realise that they're also extremely biased. So in the end, you're left with thinking for yourself, which can be both a blessing and a curse. Probably more of the latter if you believe in UFO's and crystal healing...
I support Timcast because of how refreshing and real his journalism is. I actually had him in mind as an example of a real journalist when I posted the above comment. But it's still going to be an upwards battle, there's a few good ones like Tim, but not nearly enough to replace what we used to call the journalism industry, most of which has turned to mush in past decades.
I am afraid it was mush long before I was born even. That internet platforms could beat it isn't a praise of the platforms but an utter indictment of their quality - if they had it they could survive regardless of medium.
I have a hunch that internet platforms are making the media show it's true colours by revealing how shoddy it is in comparison. The amount of constant smear attacks against new media personalities and big tech to mind. Not that I dislike criticism of big tech, but notice how it wasn't a problem for them until YouTubers (political or not) really started affecting their bottom line as less people go to the news for "entertainment".
Also, say what you want about PewDiePie, but he was able to go toe-to-toe with The Wall Street Journal and win (at least in terms of views and reputation). This just shows how much they've lost control.
I'm not sure that nobody wants to pay. There are too many things to pay for. Suppose 50% of the sources of HN are paywalled with a monthly subscription. How many of them one person could be paying for? Not many I guess. With a per post subscription? More but we're not really there. Furthermore it's hard to ask for money before the customer sees the product. How many disappointments before the pay per article model fails?
The search engine and aggregator sites commoditized information, including technical one. That started killing news, online and paper.
I think FOSS has not sufficiently explored the donation model. I'd be keen to donate a decent amount of cash to get some fundamental improvements to Emacs, for example. Lots of developers are relatively well paid and use a lot of free tools.
I was a subscriber for 15 years. When they went digital it lost a lot of value for me. However when my subscription came up for renewal in June I realized I had not even read an issue in a few months.
I have travelled to India often but I don't understand Indian politics enough. So if someone here can help me with these questions, I'll appreciate it!
* What does it mean for Lakadh to not have a legislature? Does it mean that this province cannot have elected local leaders?
* Why are the prominent politicians under house arrest? What is their offence?
I only speak of what I know (which may not be correct)
* What does it mean for Lakadh to not have a legislature? Does it mean that this province cannot have elect local leaders?
> I think this means that they will not have legislative power in the government (aka similar to USVI or Puerto Rico in the US)
* Why are the prominent politicians under house arrest? What is their offence?
> I believe this is mostly to silence them to not agitate people. Also, these articles are widely misused and politicians amassed a lot of land since no outsiders can hold land in the area.
* Why were these two articles repealed?
> This is partly for political as well as some economical. Since no one can own a property or land in Jammy & Kashmir other than its residents, economy growth is much smaller in Kasmir than the rest of India and it helps boost Kasmir's economy. The political reason might be that the BJP government wants more power in the area.
> I think this means that they will not have legislative power in the government (aka similar to USVI or Puerto Rico in the US)
This is incorrect. Not having a legislature here means not having a state legislature. They will still have an elected representative in the national parliament, unlike Puerto Rico, or even Washington DC. Perhaps Washington DC would be the most apt comparison, as in the national government governing a province.
>What does it mean for Lakadh to not have a legislature? Does it mean that this province cannot have elected local leaders?
India has a few 'union territories' already. They send elected representatives to the Lok Sabha (the lower house / house of representatives equivalent). The new Ladakh UT, will also do the same.
> Why are the prominent politicians under house arrest? What is their offence?
They are prominent local leaders, and the center wants to avoid them from leading civil unrest.
> Why were these two articles repealed?
Any answer to this question is broad over simplification. I'll try to give my most un-biased opinion.
- The status quo was perceived as not working in resolving Kashmir's status since the last 70+ years. It didn't improve for India, Kashmiris or Pakistan who stake claim.
- It increases the leverage India has for any future solution of Kashmir.
- It would reduce the barriers of Kashmir's integration with rest of India.
> Does it mean that this province cannot have elected local leaders?
They will have no locally elected representatives in the local government. However they will still elect a Member of Parliament who will represent them in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of the Indian Parliament).
I'll try to answer your questions. I may be partially wrong on some points.
* India has multiple levels of government - village, district, state, centre. Now Ladakh will not have any state government as such. All the responsibilities will be handled by a Lt. Governor appointment by the center. It makes sense because Ladakh is very sparsely populated and the state legislature would have very few legislators to be effective. People would continue to vote in village, district, and central leaders.
* Since Article 370 and 35a were in place, nobody else (except people of the state) could buy land. Subsequently there is very little industialization, and investment. These leaders amassed lots of land and wealth. They would do anything to keep it, including fomenting violence. They were placed under house arrest to stop this.
1 - Yes it will work like other UTs.
2 - To avoid nuisance and violence. To avoid future offence. P.S. A precautionary measure to keep the state in peace.
3 - Because they kept this state departed from India. Now its one nation one constitution one flag.
There are both sided opionions but overall this decision is liked by Indians + Ladakhis no idea of kashmiris. Jammu people have liked this.
I don't want to create a new account to read an article? Is there any other option to read this article?
I know one could say that if I don't want to create an account like the website wants, then I have no right to read the article. Yes, I understand that. I respect the website's owners' right to enforce access to the article however they please and I am okay to not read the article if there is truly no other way to read it without creating an account.
I think all contracts should be written like this. If any clause of the legal code contradicts the summary for layman, then the summary for layman should take precedence during its interpretation in the court.
This practice is not unusual. Books often start with a preface or foreword. Very dense technical or research papers start with an abstract and introduction. But for some reason contracts do not follow this practice.
This does not look like the description of "10x engineer" at all. An "immature engineer"? Yes. But "10x engineer? No.
A true "10x engineer" would also care a great deal about documenting stuff, communicating that to the team, and be wise to ensure that a good technology system should not have a single point of failure (either technical or human). The fact this so-called 10x engineer made himself a single point of failure goes against the basic principles of engineering.
"I am surprised by extreme views on 10x engineers. They are great individual contributors. They may not be good with teamwork. So what? They can be phenomenal in the early stage of the product cycle.
Find the best in each & get the best out of them. That's what good managers do."
What is wrong with what he said? I admit some parts were kind of silly, like the "worn out keys", but the overall theme was that he was basically just describing a somewhat romanticized version of a "Commando" from Atwood's "Commandos, Infantry, and Police". This is reinforced by his reply saying "They can be phenomenal in the early stage of the product cycle."
The overall picture is of someone who is technically competent but "moves fast and breaks things". The person who coined that phrase perfectly embodies the upsides and downsides of this type of person: Zuckerberg quickly threw together a PHP app, is a gigantic jerk, and he is a billionaire because his product was phenomenally successful. Then other, kinder, gentler and more team-oriented people came later to make the product performant and legible. If the team-oriented people had been involved from the beginning you would have gotten Google Plus.
It stands to reason that such a person would be more likely, on balance, to be abrasive and dislike meetings. I guess the only problem I see with his formulation is that a "10x" engineer is implied to be better than other engineers. Atwood's "you need all kinds" formulation is better.
I completely disagree with this notion that there is this tension between being good at getting a project off the ground and being kind, gentle, and good at teamwork.
That’s what all this pushback over “10x engineers” is about. It’s not pushback against the notion that some people are really good at what they do. It’s against the notion that those people are necessarily asshole loners.
It’s a common broken syllogism that goes like, Zuck built Facebook into an empire with his bare hands, Zuck is an asshole, therefore Zuck was successful because he’s an asshole, therefore if we want to succeed we need to hire an asshole.
Alternately: our guy is an asshole but that’s ok because that’s what you get with a 10x engineer. We need that 10x so we need an asshole and therefore if you want them to stop being an asshole then you want this company to fail.
Alternately: there’s no excuse for being a jerk and people are tired of it being justified on the basis that it’s a necessary component of being great.
In my experience there is little correlation between programmer productivity as an individual and things like kindness and ability to work in a team. Plenty of geniuses are friendly people who work great with others. If you hire one of those for your early stage startup, you’ll not only do fine, but you’ll be in a much better position once you reach a point where you need a team.
If the premise is that being a nice, team-oriented person and being a good programmer are not mutually exclusive, then of course I agree. And "Zuck was successful because he's an asshole" is something that seems like an obvious fallacy but the more I thought about it, the more I realized it isn't really. "Zuck was successful solely because he's an asshole" would be.
A distinction should be drawn between a "good programmer" and "person good at startups and greenfield projects". I would maintain that the latter requires a certain amount of assholery.
Really good products are not made by committee, at least not in the beginning stages. Committees and large groups of people also tend to slow things down, a lot. You have to be willing to be opinionated and self-assured to maintain a cohesive vision of where you want to go, and that necessarily means pissing people off. Steve Jobs, Linus Torvalds, and possibly Elon Musk are other examples.
So while 10xers in terms of pure programming skill will not be enriched in assholes, the famous ones will generally be, because they got in on the ground floor. The ground floor is where it helps to be an asshole. Most of us here are not dealing with such situations though, so I would agree to the extent that for 99% of employers in 99% of situations, considering assholery to be a positive trait is very unwise.
You can be confident and self assured without being an asshole.
You mention Steve Jobs. What about Woz? Without Woz, Apple never would have gotten off the ground. I suspect most of us would agree that Woz is not only a 10x engineer, but probably a 100x. At least, he was in the early days of Apple, before the plane crash. And he’s a super nice fellow.
One thing being an asshole helps with is becoming famous. Everybody knows who Steve Jobs was. Approximately nobody outside the tech community knows about Woz. So naturally, if you go looking for examples, you’ll find lots of assholes. That doesn’t mean assholery correlates with (let alone causes) success.
Which websites do you still find using Flash? I ask because I am genuinely interested to know. I think it has been years since I came across a website that used Flash. I uninstalled Flash the day I found that YouTube does not require Flash anymore.
The swift-http-import README is great. Can you describe what do you see especially nice in the castellum README? Honest question because it looks like a regular README (which is not to say that a regular README can't be great) but I just want to know what you find good in the castellum README.
