When executives are making $500k/year, and there are millions in Google money floating around, it's hard to make the case for donations.
321 karma · joined March 10, 2018
Almost all news organizations -- they're not bloggers but chances are they're using blogging software (mostly WordPress) -- have figured this out. And they're still not making enough money from advertising. Hence subscriptions. Bloggers can go this route directly with https://substack.com.
Google-owned YouTube's willingness to compensate those who make popular videos has fueled that service's growth and helped it draw a young audience.
The fact that Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have no way of "paying" its top performers, as it were, is interesting. You get paid in eyeballs. In exposure. Since the pay for blogs is usually non-existent, there's some value in the "likes," and most people who envision making money off of their social-media/internet presence need to get a side hustle to their side hustle -- a product they can make and sell.
This happened to me a couple days ago. Except it was a 12-year-old post.
That's it.
Writing for SEO and trying to game Google is not interesting to me. There comes a point where the only think that keeps you going is the desire/compulsion to write.
WordPress is still around, and I recommend it. It's more "social" than ever in some ways, and the built-in comments are looking better and better as the years go by. (I use Disqus to moderate the comments for more than a dozen blogs in one network, but for an individual blog, I prefer the native WP comments.)
Even though the major blog platforms (Movable Type, WordPress, Blogger/Blogspot, etc.) had a social component in the form of comments, the big social media sites -- including Reddit -- took it up quite a few notches. People like the feedback and the conversation. Blogs can be much more of an island. Some like that, too.
I have been amazed by how stable Fedora manages to be. I think I had a problem maybe once every couple of releases that needed a fix, and the community is always there to help. The Fedora bug-reporting process is terrific. There's a lot of engagement with the users and a genuine desire to help.
After about 2 years, I went to Debian Stable.
The biggest pro about Win 10 is that it handles 1080p resolution so well. Why Linux distros are not "tuned" to 1080p out of the box, I don't know, because there are few non-HD laptops out there these days.
But the Win 10 cons drove me away:
* Terrible driver support from vendors (what's broken stays broken, I had sound issues that were never going to be resolved)
* Windows 10 updates are horrible, and they kill your productivity. I had a couple of incidents where I couldn't use the laptop for DAYS at a time.
* I really missed the sane package management you get from a good Linux distro. I never tried Choclatey, so maybe that would have made me a happier Windows user.
* WSL is great, and so are Git and all the other Unix/Linux-originated apps I was using. After awhile I figured, "I don't use MS Office or Adobe apps, so I might as well just run the Linuxy stuff I use on a real Linux."
Debian Stable is definitely not so hot on a year-old laptop, though a newer kernel from Backports can really help.
I have a 3-year-old HP laptop and have been running Debian Stable on it for about 6 months now. It's been a fairly seamless experience, as these things go.
For newer laptops, I definitely recommend Fedora. It's the easiest way to get new kernels -- which are what you need for new hardware -- on the regular.
I'm not surprised, but Flatpaks install everything in the user's home directory. So if you know you're going to be using Flatpak apps, make /home bigger.
The option to upgrade once a year makes this more palatable, to be sure.
I haven't tried Silverblue yet, but that might make the upgrades faster and less painful.
But the opposite is also true. After years running Xfce and GNOME in Linux, I went back to Windows 10.
First I had to replicate my workflow, which meant using a lot of programs that could be run on any system.
Then, aside from the Microsoft updates and all the problems they cause, the total lack of package management for applications makes even more work.
I had WSL, and that is great, but running a terminal in Linux (or MacOS, even) is just easier when everything can be accessed by any program in or out of the console.
Eventually I realized I was fighting Windows with little upside. I got an M.2 SSD, installed Debian Stable (after 2 years of Windows, I REALLY didn't want a lot of updates), and everything is running great.
If you depend on Microsoft Office and/or Adobe Creative Suite apps, that's a reason to prefer Windows or MacOS. Otherwise, you can do very well — and maybe even better — with the Linux desktop of your choice.
My current laptop is three years old. GNOME 3 runs great. It's extremely responsive, and I like the way it works with the "hot corner," super key and desktop search. I use a few GNOME Shell Extensions, but not too many.
I really don't understand why developers are so enamored with Apple. Unless you are developing for Mac or iPhone, a good Linux distro, or even Windows 10, seems to be a better if not equal choice.
I managed to get my hands on an iMac, and I set it up to see how I'd like MacOS. Getting it "right" was harder than Windows, and I was really surprised at how super slow Homebrew could be. It really made me appreciate Debian's apt — and even Fedora's dnf.
Mac's Finder doesn't compare well to Windows' File Explorer (is that what they call it?) or Nautilus/Files in GNOME.
One thing Windows 10 and MacOS do well is support HD and UHD screens without fiddling. Linux desktop developers need to finally realize that HD (1920x1080) is now the baseline, and 4K-ish resolutions are common and should be completely supported out of the box.
My comfort level with Linux is high, and when I spend most of my time in the same web browsers, in addition to the file manager and text editors, it made sense for me to switch back. Windows is too much work with too little upside.
Gitlab is a good alternative, but why not have more choices? Anybody who might want to hire you can click a link to a Codeberg/Gitea site and see what looks like a very familiar repo. It should be the project itself that is attracting users and devs, not where the git repo is remotely hosted.
For free-software projects, a Gitea site like Codeberg might be an even better choice because of the conflicts involved in using a commercial entity like GitHub that uses closed-source software yet bases its entire business on a free project (Git).
And you can't state quantities on the Target.com site when you select an item. You have to go into the cart and change the quantity. That's something most sites do better.
Also, I understand it's a difficult time inventory-wise, but don't let me put stuff in my cart if you can't deliver it and won't let me order anything until I remove them. Give me a "save for later" feature ... like Amazon does.
(Edited for typos)