[HN Gopher] A note for LWN subscribers
___________________________________________________________________
A note for LWN subscribers
Author : stevekemp
Score : 191 points
Date : 2022-01-20 13:47 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lwn.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (lwn.net)
| travisgriggs wrote:
| I like LWN. It is great. They do a bang up job. One of the few
| online offerings that provides a value-noise-ratio akin to some
| of the great publications of the 80's (Byte, etc). I was a
| subscriber in the past. That employer made it easy. My current
| one, it would be a hassle not worth it. I could easily pay for it
| myself just on professional betterment grounds. But the minute I
| did that, there's a number of "a few dollars here, a few dollars
| there" great value-for-money services that I should participate
| in, and I'd bankrupt myself chasing them all.
|
| I lament that micro payment pay as a go has never really caught
| on in the world of the internet. When I was a kid, you could get
| the paper delivered to your house daily. But you could also run
| down to a local box, put a quarter in, and get a one off that
| way. If you were going to do the newsbox run every day, the
| subscription paid off as a volume discount. On the flip side, it
| allowed you to participate in multiple papers at a casual rate
| easier. You could grab the (relatively expensive) WSJ when it
| looked really interesting.
| jbirer wrote:
| I don't see the point, other news sites are free.
| COGlory wrote:
| I wanted to use this thread to bring attention to lwnfeed (not my
| project).
|
| https://github.com/tulir/lwnfeed
|
| It is a docker (or standalone) web server that caches your
| credentials and logs into your LWN, pulls articles, and serves
| them back to you over RSS. I have my NextCloud News app setup to
| pull data from it, so I get the full, paid LWN releases in my RSS
| reader.
| synergy20 wrote:
| 10+ years subscriber here, will keep subscribing it no matter
| what, even though I read less kernel stuff these days.
| treebog wrote:
| Question, hopefully not too off topic: if I subscribe, can I get
| the weekly edition emailed to me like a newsletter? Or at least a
| notification when it's posted? I want to subscribe but doubt I'll
| actually remember to log in and read it every week.
| corbet wrote:
| You can sign up for a notification email when the weekly
| edition is posted, yes. We don't currently have an option to
| receive the whole thing in email, but that has been on the list
| for a while...
| treebog wrote:
| Ah, great. Thank you
| SEJeff wrote:
| Jonathan has been quietly battling cancer for some time[1] and is
| a literal treasure. I'm happy to continue paying for his health
| insurance and treatment while also furthering a really good
| community service. LWN is the only Linux news service that has
| the technical depth and breadth while also staying solvent.
|
| He's also really friendly in person and was willing to answer
| relatively stupid questions at a conference from random people
| that approach him to say hi (like me!)
|
| [1] https://lwn.net/Articles/594980/
| tentacleuno wrote:
| > LWN is the only Linux news service that has the technical
| depth and breadth while also staying solvent.
|
| Would you have any other publications to recommend?
|
| I personally read El Reg, ArsTechnica, Phoronix, TechRepublic,
| and a few others (including CNET). The last two are arguably of
| less journalistic quality, however I do very much like the
| ability to leave comments and participate in discussions.
| SEJeff wrote:
| lwn has no peers. Before I found it, and when I was earlier
| in my career, I spent about an hour every evening trying to
| read most of the relevant to me threads on LKML directly
| (seriously). I've paid for it for the kernel section alone,
| but the rest of the news is really good.
|
| phoronix is hit/miss. The methodology Michael uses for many
| of his clickbait benchmark stories is often absolute garbage.
| He does a relatively decent job covering the latest
| happenings in desktop linux tech, but overall the quality is
| all over the place and the clickbait + ads get really old. I
| once setup the phoronix test suite to build an automated
| performance regression test harness and was ummm
| underwhelmed. That was about 10 years or so ago mind you, so
| maybe it has improved since.
|
| The others you mention are all quite good. I'm a huge fan of
| just about anything sjvn writes (he posts a lot of zdnet,
| pcmag, etc). I'm also a fan of following the planet blogs for
| some of the bigger projects I care about (e.g.:
| https://planet.gnome.org/) but that's more raw source than
| actual aggregated news. Just depends on what you're into.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| I wish stories like this would inspire more techies to support
| universal health care in the US.
|
| People should not have to beg for more money for their services
| or goods because they end up with a disease.
|
| Everyone deserves health care, not just people who are visibly
| successful/popular.
| yhd8i3q7686i wrote:
| I live in a country that Americans would recognize as having
| 'universal health care', and while the US system is also bad,
| I would prefer it to the fragile and dysfunctional government
| monopoly that I'm used to. I would prefer a free market with
| mutual aid societies, but the corporatist system in the US at
| least lacks the single point of failure and complete
| unaccountability of a government monopoly.
| brnt wrote:
| > complete unaccountability of a government monopoly.
|
| That is a problem with the quality of your democracy, not
| with government monopolies. A corporate oligopoly is
| virtually identical to a nondemocratic governmental
| monopoly.
|
| The key thing you want is democratic control.
| yhd8i3q7686i wrote:
| Democracy is not a mechanism for accountability. No
| democracy can produce accountability, that's not what
| it's for. A company with competition has a degree of
| accountability because their customers can go elsewhere
| if they are mistreated. A citizen without a lot of money
| to spend on political campaigns have very little recourse
| when they are mistreated by the government. Even when the
| government breaks its own laws, there is almost nothing
| you can do between qualified, absolute, and sovereign
| immunity.
|
| The US and other governments have long histories of
| medical abuses. I would not want an organization that
| preforms unnecessary and intrusive surgical procedures
| without consent[0], falsely told people they have cancer
| in order to remove their reproductive organs[1],
| intentionally gave people syphilis, hepatitis, and other
| diseases[2], pretended to treat syphilis to see what
| happens when it's left untreated[3], etc. to be my only
| provider of health care. It frankly seems irrational to
| want an organization that can act with impunity and seem
| to abuse every function and responsibility it is given to
| be the sole provider of anything.
|
| [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/22/ice-
| gynecolo...
|
| [1]: https://www.insider.com/inside-forced-
| sterilizations-califor...
|
| [2]: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/ugly-
| past-u-s-hum...
| brnt wrote:
| > Democracy is not a mechanism for accountability.
|
| It is. It is a particularity of the Anglosaxon language
| space that propaganda that it isn't took root.
| tristan957 wrote:
| I think universal healthcare might be more popular than most
| people think. I would consider myself a conservative voter,
| but I can recognize the good of universal healthcare.
| Healthcare shouldn't be tied to jobs, and people shouldn't
| have to bankrupt themselves due to health issues.
|
| I think most discourse in the US is driven by vocal
| minorities that in no-way represent major sentiment in the
| rest of the population. It is quite unfortunate. I am not
| even sure what can change it.
|
| I will be taking my voting very seriously next election
| because frankly I am tired of this.
| SEJeff wrote:
| This is a nice breath of fresh air to hear. Unfortunately,
| it appears that the vocal minority you mention are
| basically conservative congressmen or their boosters.
| kodah wrote:
| For now it may be conservative congresspeople but once a
| Universal Healthcare proposal starts gaining traction all
| the common support for the initiative will likely
| shatter. People will disagree on what the intended
| outcomes are (are they economic, empathy based, or
| both?), the implementation details, how to pay for it,
| etc...
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Yeah, no. We had this fight when Obamacare was being
| hammered into shape. Universal didn't happen because
| conservatives in both parties refused to do anything
| other than say "the poor can go to emergency rooms for
| treatment".
|
| Now, it's a bit more complicated than that, and single
| payer was never on the table because Obama decided to
| pre-capitulate in the futile hope of being able to tag
| the ACA as bipartisan, but it's only gotten worse. If a
| literal global pandemic doesn't bring people to their
| senses, I'm not sure what will. There's just too much
| money being funneled to incentivize our politicians to do
| the wrong thing (Sinema being an obvious example).
| kodah wrote:
| > Universal didn't happen because conservatives in both
| parties refused to do anything other than say "the poor
| can go to emergency rooms for treatment".
|
| "Conservatives in both parties" is a bit reductive and
| I'll also call out as misinformation/misrepresentation:
| https://ballotpedia.org/Obamacare_overview
|
| But, what is useful here, is you've provided a fantastic
| example of the rhetorical devices and reduction we can
| expect to see.
|
| I say that as a supporter of Universal Healthcare that
| both replaces and learns lessons from VA Medical.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > "Conservatives in both parties" is a bit reductive and
| I'll also call out as misinformation/misrepresentation:
|
| Are you under the impression that Manchin or the other
| Conservative Democrats support universal healthcare?
|
| They do not.
| kodah wrote:
| There's really not that many of them. Secondary to that,
| which might be a bit pedantic, is I dislike
| "conservative" being used as a pejorative as I mentioned.
| It's not really an accurate reflection of what Manchin or
| others believe in or what the populations they're voting
| for are concerned with. As I also stated, I think it's a
| bit reductive.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Seventeen Centrist Democratic Senators voted with Trump
| to kill banking reform.
|
| That does not sound like "not many" of them.
| kodah wrote:
| There are 48 Democratic senators and 2 independents. I'd
| have to look at why each of those 17 decided to vote
| against banking reform. It's not like it's as simple as
| "conservative" or "not conservative", which is exactly
| what I'm calling reductive.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Conservative Democrats have held the leadership roles in
| the party since the end of the Regan years.
|
| >The Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) was a non-profit
| corporation founded in 1985 that, upon its formation,
| argued that the United States Democratic Party should
| shift away from the leftward turn it took in the late
| 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. One of its main purposes was to
| win back white middle class voters with ideas that
| addressed their concerns. The DLC hailed President Bill
| Clinton as proof of the viability of Third Way
| politicians and as a DLC success story.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Leadership_Counc
| il
| troutwine wrote:
| And liberal congressfolk, too, mind. That the behavior of
| Congress doesn't reflect the broad desires of the public
| is an ongoing problem -- Gilens & Page's 2014 "Testing
| Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups,
| and Average Citizens" is a rough read -- and isn't
| strictly correlated to whether your tie is blue or red.
| That said, I do admit that we _also_ have a serious issue
| with the political class at the national level being
| split between folks that tack right as hard as they can
| and centrists that follow them because you gotta land
| where the "center" is.
| corbet wrote:
| Thanks for your nice words...
|
| Being a somewhat private person I don't normally talk about
| health stuff. Also, being a cancer patient, I know better than
| to say I'm "cured". That said, things have been looking good
| for a while, to the point that my oncologist fired me a couple
| of years back. I get to deal with the consequences of the
| treatment, but the original problem is not really an issue in
| my life.
|
| I do, however, make a point of ensuring that our health
| coverage never lapses!
| SEJeff wrote:
| Glad to hear it, also happy to see that LWN is still
| thriving.
| CaliforniaKarl wrote:
| Totally fine with me. I won't bat an eye paying the new price; I
| think the content is well worth it!
| falcolas wrote:
| Without getting into the value/lack thereof...
|
| > will increase to $9/month, which is almost exactly in line with
| that mid-2021 inflation rate
|
| I don't believe that the mid-2021 inflation rate was 28%.
| Sources+ say it was actually around 7% (which is, admittedly,
| bloody insane).
|
| + A DDG search and looking at the top 5-6 articles
| cbsmith wrote:
| https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
|
| Try typing in "2010" and hitting calculate.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| 7% is from 2020 to 2021. 28% is from 2010 to 2021.
| pm215 wrote:
| The article quotes that 28% as being the amount of inflation
| "from 2010 until the middle of 2021". I haven't checked the
| figures, but that seems believable for a decade's worth of
| inflation.
| dannyobrien wrote:
| I've subscribed to LWN for as long as it had subscriptions. I
| think it was for a long time the _only_ journalism site I
| subscribed to. (Actually, I think Jonathan may have thrown me a
| free sub because I was an underpaid urchin at EFF originally, but
| I switched to paying, because it was cheap enough and I felt that
| I should support it.). It has both consistently been the home of
| some of the best researched, most _honest_ pieces about Linux
| and, by extension, the progress and troubles of the open source
| /free software community. I remember on numerous occasions
| wishing that there were equivalents in the politics and current
| affairs space. Subscriptions and Patreons are much more popular
| in those spaces nowadays, but I still don't think I've found its
| equal. At least not one that lets me read it all the week's
| updates in one giant HTML page.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| LWN is one of the most important reporting sources for linux and
| the highest quality. I think it would be awesome if Linux or
| other projects directly sponsored it (maybe they do?). As a sort
| of 'inside' journalism it could really benefit from funding, and
| may give it better access to the inner workings.
|
| Keep it up! love LWN!
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| I used to advocate for bulk subscriptions at every employer, but
| with the growth of cloud services and abstractions like
| Kubernetes I feel like I can't justify it any longer.
|
| We don't even run any Linux ourselves at my current employer.
| Pods and lambdas and databases-as-a-service.
|
| I can't help but think this trend will damage shared knowledge in
| the long run.
| c0l0 wrote:
| I am pretty certain that
|
| > I can't help but think this trend will damage shared
| knowledge in the long run.
|
| is an understatement. There will be a few people in the know on
| how to run "the cloud", and lots and lots of people consuming
| their services, at bewildering premiums.
| jchw wrote:
| When running on Kubernetes or Lambda, you are still directly
| interfacing with the Linux kernel, unless you're under
| something like gVisor. I also don't think the endgame of
| "cloud" is that literally nobody knows how to run servers; in
| fact, Kubernetes is one of those technologies that makes bare
| metal much more appealing. I think cloud has outsized appeal
| for now simply because things are moving so quickly that it's
| difficult to keep up, and I feel like that is probably not
| forever.
|
| Even just for Kubernetes administration, it's probably good to
| keep tabs on Linux, especially technologies like cgroups, even
| if your nodes are managed.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > in fact, Kubernetes is one of those technologies that makes
| bare metal much more appealing
|
| Bare metal on Kubernetes is a PITA though to set up. For
| extremely small scale stuff in private labs, okay, that takes
| half an hour, but as soon as you are on the Internet, maybe
| have a couple rented bare metal machines, it gets nasty. For
| ingresses, you'll usually need to set up MetalLB which
| requires acquisition of a range of IP addresses and it only
| is capable of running _one_ server (the "speaker") as the
| one and only entrypoint for _all_ traffic. Not to mention you
| cannot have roles such as "internet-exposed node" and "not
| internet-exposed node", since MetalLB wants to run on all
| nodes.
|
| Also, a Kubernetes environment will need at least _four_
| separate network ranges - a network for the Pod IPs, a
| network for cluster IPs of services, one for the nodes
| themselves and if you want to expose stuff to the Internet
| you need a fifth one that holds the public-routed IPs. This
| is really funny if you are in a corporate environment that
| uses all three of the historic private ranges (10.0.0.0
| /8,172.16.0.0/12,192.168.0.0/16), good luck carving out
| ranges that do not result in routing conflicts.
|
| Mesosphere DC/OS was more usable in that regard as it had
| pre-defined the roles of nodes, included the load balancer as
| part of the platform and had only two IP ranges (node-
| internal and whatever the public IPs of the public nodes
| were)... whereas it's clear that the only designed/supported
| way to run a major Kubernetes deployment is to use a fully-
| managed Kubernetes provider. Everything else is a world of
| undocumented, spurious-bug-filled stuff and incomplete
| documentation.
| dewey wrote:
| > Bare metal on Kubernetes is a PITA though to set up.
|
| I think you are misunderstanding the previous comment. I
| read it as Kubernetes being so complicated (I enjoy it, but
| that's another discussion) to operate is making the regular
| bare metal operation more appealing. So people might choose
| the well understood bare metal over Kubernetes.
| champtar wrote:
| MetalLB is the best baremetal LB (for k8s) but far from
| perfect indeed. For the IP conflicts, there are other
| private IPv4 range that you can use, just pick something in
| the CGNAT range (100.64.0.0/10) or in 198.18.0.0/15 ("Used
| for benchmark testing of inter-network communications
| between two separate subnets")
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The best thing about HN: You learn something new every
| day. Thanks!
| lima wrote:
| Even with gVisor you're still depending on things like the
| host kernel's scheduler and memory management.
| akuchling wrote:
| LWN also has coverage of language runtimes and other projects.
| Recent stories include one about python-dev discussion of
| adding a literal syntax for frozensets
| (https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/881599/ae07750ec86ed3cc/), a
| new OpenSSH feature on restricting agent keys
| (https://lwn.net/Articles/880458/), Lessons from log4j
| (https://lwn.net/Articles/878570/), etc.
|
| I often skip the really in-depth kernel articles, since it
| makes no difference to anything I do if Linux gets a new slab
| allocator or whatever, but still find my subscription valuable
| for hearing about new project releases, as well as these deep
| project dives.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| The prevalence of this attitude is why we have things like
| Heartbleed and log4shell.
| mindwok wrote:
| My only problem with LWN is that it's so good, I get upset
| there's nothing even close to the quality of it for the other
| hobbies/interests in my life.
| RustyRussell wrote:
| As the person who originally proposed what Jon ended up calling
| the Maniacal Supporter level, I've asked him to double the rate.
|
| $1k a year (deductible) is a bargain when Linux and FOSS is
| literally your career.
|
| (Disclosure: I let mine lapse after I retired from kernel
| maintenance, but I'm thinking of renewing since I still get value
| mainly be following links from HN)
| mindcrime wrote:
| I'm fine with this. LWN is a great value as it is and I don't
| mind paying a little bit more.
| mjb wrote:
| LWN and Usenix are the two subscriptions I happily pay for, and
| would be happy to pay more for. The quality of the content, and
| flexibility around how to share it, is well worth supporting.
|
| I also pay the ACM, and that one physically hurts me every year.
| monkey_monkey wrote:
| I rationalise the ACM membership cost as a cheaper way of
| accessing the O'Reilly library.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-01-20 23:01 UTC)