Hacker News Reader

Comment by matt_daemon | Hacker News Reader

This whole Technology Quarterly was terrifically written and researched for those wanting further reading: https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly

They're all on the Internet Archive to read free, e.g. https://archive.md/Ed12X

View on HN

Just a minor nitpick. To my knowledge, Archive.today is not known to be related to the Internet Archive (archive.org).

I wouldn’t call it a minor nitpick. From the Internet Archive’s Wikipedia page:

> The Internet Archive is an American nonprofit digital library founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive

In other words, it’s a legal entity and we know who’s behind it.

In contrast, we don’t even know who runs archive.today.

https://gyrovague.com/2023/08/05/archive-today-on-the-trail-...

Yes, they're unrelated.

The Economist also offers a monthly subscription and some free trials. But honestly, they're simply worth their money.

Their content is great, but their subscription system is abhorrent. I’m not resubscribing in the future despite liking their content, and wouldn’t recommend that anyone else does either.

If you want to cancel your The Economist subscription, you can’t just click a button. You need to wait to talk to a sales rep in a chat room… when they arrive, they will basically beg you to stay; here’s a discount offer and here’s another, you’ve been a subscriber for X years why stop now. Only after insisting for 15min that you really want to cancel will they let you. I’ve gone through that process twice, and find it very off-putting.

Yep this. I was on their signup page about to pay and thought to check how hard it is to unsubscribe. I found the exact same process you outline, and many people with worse horror stories where it took all kinds of time and aggravation to cancel their subscription. The content itself is great, but I won't pay money to support those sorts of sleazy business practices.

I even double checked with a support rep to see if anything had changed. Not only did they confirm that there's no easy option to unsubscribe, they tried to gaslight me into thinking that this was for the customer's benefit!

I'm in Germany and can cancel/change my subscription at myaccount.economist.com

I’m in Norway and had to go via a sales rep.

Are you sure that you can click cancel without talking to a sales rep? If so, are there perhaps local German (not EU/EEA) rules on this?

I used to be a subscriber for 20+ years, they are worth their money.

Why "used to", then? because a couple of years ago I could not basically find a way to have my paper version subscription renewed. I was literally not able to renew it! after a few "chats" with their sales reps, I gave up in frustration and discovered I can live without.

IIRC, thew wanted you to have the electronic version at all costs, while I'm happy with paper.

In any case, in an age of vapourware crappy SEO articles, they have a lot of meat, and a global world-view. It's the best way to spend money on news.

I have digital+print. They improved the print version again, so you can remove the glue sticker from the pretty cover, it's embedded in a water-proof shell and the format is simply the best.

I receive the physical "newspaper," but typically consume the content through the audio version, about 8-9 hours every week. Pretty good value for $100-150/year!

Is the Technology Quarterly available as a physical magazine I could buy anywhere? It’s not obvious what the best way to buy individual issues is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com