Quoting: Liam DaweIt may turn out not to be worth it, and if so, I will simply remove it and seek other funding somehow (suggestions always welcome).

Speedo carwash fundraiser by you and your homies. Like The Full Monty, but not. :P

Quoting: Linux_RocksSpeedo carwash fundraiser by you and your homies. Like The Full Monty, but not. :P

No one wants to see me like that, trust me lol

Hi,

I'd like to donate and not see the ads but I don't want to use patreon. Can you do something like what phoronix does and have yearly/life one-time paypal purchases? I'm not sure how much money they bring in, but I got the lifetime membership with them, so they got my money that way :)

Love your site, thank you!

Quoting: scratchiHi,

I'd like to donate and not see the ads but I don't want to use patreon. Can you do something like what phoronix does and have yearly/life one-time paypal purchases? I'm not sure how much money they bring in, but I got the lifetime membership with them, so they got my money that way :)

Love your site, thank you!

Hi, afraid not, Patreon is the only option for that. Otherwise I have to deal with VAT and collect and store more personal info from people - it’s just a big headache and Patreon does it all for me 👍

Opened a patreon account just for you :)

Quoting: Liam DaweThanks but no thanks. I don't plan to pay-wall anything as that's one thing I've always said I truly disliked.

I understand your position here on this, but a paywall may not be such a bad idea if implemented fairly. A good example is to look at LWN, a couple of years ago they also ran into a situation where it was "get more money or shut down" due to finances. And like yourself, they focus on Linux related news.

They decided to make temporary paywalls, and it works for them. The basic principle is: The majority of articles are payment-free, with no charges. But some more extensive/detailed articles temporarily sit behind a paywall for one week. After the week has passed, anyone - subscriber or not - is free to access it. In addition, paying subscribers have the option to create a payment-free link for their friends (e.g, The subscriber can make a link, which allows access to the article without payment).

Many of their readers (myself included) decided to subscribe to help them. If you provide quality content and do it fairly, people will pay. Particularly in the FOSS community where most of them outright despise data collecting ads and/or block them entirely by default, which in turn would mean lost revenue for yourself from those users.

You can see more on how they do it here:
https://lwn.net/op/FAQ.lwn#subs

It may feel "bad" to charge for content but, ultimately you have to remember you have your own expenses and you are providing a service to others, as such it is not unreasonable to ask for payment for your services.

Another thing I might add: Cost cutting, do you really need a single server that costs £500/mo? That's a lot! I bet you can find an equivalent server to what you're running for less per month.

Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: Linux_RocksSpeedo carwash fundraiser by you and your homies. Like The Full Monty, but not. :P

No one wants to see me like that, trust me lol

Agreed.

Last edited by BlackBloodRum on 9 January 2024 at 9:51 am UTC

Quoting: BlackBloodRumAnother thing I might add: Cost cutting, do you really need a single server that costs £500/mo? That's a lot! I bet you can find an equivalent server to what you're running for less per month.

The cost is not server related directly. That was just a general life figure of where I want to get to. All funding remember is for me directly for both work and life - this is my job.

And again, no plans for paywalls. Just not happening.

Last edited by Liam Dawe on 9 January 2024 at 11:17 am UTC

What about those of us that are patreon supporters but do not reach the tier amount per month?

Quoting: Arcadius-8606What about those of us that are patreon supporters but do not reach the tier amount per month?

Same as anyone else: you will see adverts. The tiers are there for a reason and that's always been the case since day 1 of the Patreon. Otherwise, everyone could switch to say $1 and then frankly I would have to find work elsewhere. Just basic money matters.

I don't mean literally everyone though, plenty of people are generous <3 (I'm sure most of you get my point)

Last edited by Liam Dawe on 9 January 2024 at 1:36 pm UTC

I could tolerate and understand some level of ads but I find the implementation utterly repulsive and disrespectful. IMO ads should never take more than 15% of screen space and I've seen these take 50-100% of it in different cases on different platforms (computer, mobile). I have loved this site for a long time. I used to enjoy coming here, but now I get a sick feeling when visiting. Not sure that I'll stop visiting, but you've taken a pleasant experience and turned it into an unpleasant one.

This looks really repulsive

Quoting: PlayX

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Quoting: m2mg2This looks really repulsive

Yeah it does. But it's also an obvious joke.

Anyway, as Liam said, you're free to use an ad blocker and he won't hold that against you.

Honestly, I think it looks kinda cool!



Last edited by BlackBloodRum on 13 January 2024 at 8:38 pm UTC

How is it a joke? It looks like what I've been looking at. You shouldn't have to use an adblocker to make a site usable. Also I've seen at least one ad that was deceptive, the whole thing is just dirty. Liam can say what he wants, just like you and I can. It is what it is and I find it disgusting.

It makes me feel like I went to one of those download sites that has 15 ads impersonating the download and maybe, just maybe there is an actual download in there somewhere; and maybe there isn't.

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: m2mg2This looks really repulsive

Yeah it does. But it's also an obvious joke.

Anyway, as Liam said, you're free to use an ad blocker and he won't hold that against you.

Last edited by m2mg2 on 13 January 2024 at 9:20 pm UTC

Quoting: m2mg2How is it a joke? It looks like what I've been looking at.

Oh, my mistake then. Maybe it's regional? Doesn't look anything like that here even if I disable my ad blocker for this site.

It does look pretty ridiculous. That's why I assumed it's a joke.

Quoting: m2mg2Also I've seen at least one ad that was deceptive, the whole thing is just dirty.

Did you report the deceptive ad, as Liam asked?

Quoting: Pengling

Quoting: m2mg2Also I've seen at least one ad that was deceptive, the whole thing is just dirty.

Did you report the deceptive ad, as Liam asked?

No and I'm not going to. I don't really even remember specifics about it. Honestly at first I though my kid got a hold of my phone and installed some garbage on it. After not finding anything out of sorts I looked around and found this page. Was kind of disappointed it wasn't my phone.

It looks like maybe they've been toned down a little. They don't look quite as intrusive as they did the other day. IMO, the ads should be significantly smaller than the content blocks. Blending them in with the content is basically tricking people into paying attention to them and making them bigger than the content blocks is just ridiculous. Having them smaller and to the side instead of mixing them with the content would be better.

I do find advertising to be pretty gross in general on websites. IMO the public is way too accepting of invasive advertising and data collection (as if the industry asked or cared, we really don't have a choice).

Last edited by m2mg2 on 13 January 2024 at 10:11 pm UTC

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: m2mg2How is it a joke? It looks like what I've been looking at.

Oh, my mistake then. Maybe it's regional? Doesn't look anything like that here even if I disable my ad blocker for this site.

It does look pretty ridiculous. That's why I assumed it's a joke.

I was curious too, so I opened ungoogled chromium[1] to check, and my screenshot is how it loaded!

It doesn't look too bad though, as I'd imagine that's how most ads are. It seems typical. It's as I remember it back before I started using adblockers (12+ years probably at this point, as soon as adblock plus originally came out).

There was no pop-ups, so that's good!

[1] I know the browser still says chromium and not ungoogled chromium, that's just because it is chromium but compiled with the ungoogled patches locally rather than using the flatpak for it.

This is from one of my machines. ~90% of the content on the page is ad. Just awful!