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A pandemic-era LWN update

By Jonathan Corbet
May 27, 2020
We are living through interesting times that present challenges in a number of areas, including running a business. While we think of LWN primarily as a community resource, it is also a business that is not unaffected by the ongoing pandemic. It is, we figure, a good time for a status update, especially since we have some news to share.

Never has our 2002 decision to move to a subscription model looked like a better idea. Revenue from advertising has reached a level that is essentially indistinguishable from zero, with little sign that it will improve anytime soon. But we didn't depend on advertising because we work directly for our readers; as long as you all support us, we will be in good shape.

Subscriptions have definitely fallen off a bit in the last few months, and we've had subscribers dropping off with a note saying that they had lost their job and needed to cut expenses. But the drop-off has not yet reached a point where we are seriously concerned about it; for that, we can only say "thank you!" to all of you for continuing to support us as the world gets weirder. A special thank-you is due to all of you subscribing at the Project Leader or Supporter levels; it really does make a difference.

After much thought we concluded that we could continue to work to fill the empty staff position we have had for some time. To that end, we are pleased to announce that John Coggeshall is joining the LWN team. John introduces himself this way:

John has been an open-source hacker since 1996 and a core contributor to the PHP project. In his 20+ years in open-source technology he has worked with companies big and small in roles ranging from developer to CTO. As an author, John has published five books on PHP and web development along with hundreds of articles for various publications. Beyond his various contributions to the PHP language itself, John's open-source projects include the PayPal SDK for PHP and the Microsoft Information Card components bundled with Zend Framework. More recently John has taken an interest in IoT development, building open-source IoT libraries for the Arduino platform focusing on the ESP8266 MCU. John currently hails from the Detroit metro area.

LWN readers will have already been introduced to John by way of his article "PHP showing its maturity in release 7.4", which ran in early May. You'll be hearing a lot more from him in the coming months.

Overall, it would appear that that pandemic has not done much to slow down the free-software community, so we are staying as busy as ever. Whether that will continue remains to be seen; there are a lot of unknowns out there at the moment, and it will take time to see how things will play out.

Back in 1997 when work began on what eventually became LWN, we were driven by a strong sense of optimism about the future of Linux and free software. That optimism has been tested by ups and downs over time, but it has largely been borne out; Linux has been more successful than any of us could have imagined, and LWN is still here at the center of it. And we are still optimistic; we have managed to pull together an outstanding community of readers that will continue to support us for as long as we keep doing good work.

That is exactly what we intend to do. We look forward to seeing you on the net and, someday, at in-person events again. Thanks again to all LWN readers, and may you all stay in the best of health.

to post comments

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 27, 2020 21:30 UTC (Wed) by mgk (guest, #74833) [Link] (9 responses)

Awesome to hear you're still going strong: The title got me a bit nervous. Cheers, and welcome John!

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 27, 2020 21:50 UTC (Wed) by a9db0 (subscriber, #2181) [Link] (2 responses)

Couldn't have said it better myself.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 5:30 UTC (Thu) by felix.s (guest, #104710) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, I actually could say it better, by not misspelling our editor’s name…

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 7:29 UTC (Thu) by andreashappe (subscriber, #4810) [Link]

I think he meant John Coggeshall not Jonathan Corbet (;

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 27, 2020 21:56 UTC (Wed) by coogle (guest, #138507) [Link] (4 responses)

Thank you, I’m excited to be a part of the team and looking forward to contributing more!

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 9:47 UTC (Thu) by DG (subscriber, #16978) [Link] (3 responses)

I'm looking forward to some more coverage of PHP that doesn't involve just bashing it :-)

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 22:52 UTC (Thu) by Sesse (subscriber, #53779) [Link] (2 responses)

I had hoped for less language coverage; the endless articles about the latest PEP is maybe my least favorite part of LWN :-/

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 29, 2020 1:55 UTC (Fri) by Hattifnattar (subscriber, #93737) [Link]

To each their own; I really enjoy these Python articles, even though I am not fun of Python language.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 29, 2020 2:09 UTC (Fri) by himi (subscriber, #340) [Link]

I've found them useful, both as a professional devops-type working with Python based code and as a private individual using Python. Some of the politicking has been less than wonderful, but it's been nice to get regular updates about the state of something that's fundamental to my professional life. Exactly the kind of thing that makes my LWN subscription worth the money!

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 27, 2020 23:53 UTC (Wed) by jcm (subscriber, #18262) [Link]

Super glad you're all doing ok!

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 27, 2020 22:03 UTC (Wed) by orf (guest, #121899) [Link]

Thanks for the update. I've enjoyed LWN for many years now and it looks like many years to come. Cheers!

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 27, 2020 22:55 UTC (Wed) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link] (7 responses)

Just today the company that supplied me with a credit card for about 25 years informed me that I have to prove to them I'm not into terrorism or tax fraud. Somehow the 25 years of payments processed by them - all utterly boring - is not enough for them to make that call.

Is there any way I can continue my subscription from a regular Dutch debit account? Because I'd rather not jump through this obnoxious hoop mto continue pay you.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 27, 2020 22:58 UTC (Wed) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link]

... to continue to pay you.

(Please never post when agitated!)

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 7:31 UTC (Thu) by andreashappe (subscriber, #4810) [Link] (3 responses)

Could you use one of those free online credit-card accounts like Revolut or N26? I am using the latter as a prepaid credit card for online stuff.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 9:33 UTC (Thu) by andrewsh (subscriber, #71043) [Link] (1 responses)

A small nitpick: those are not credit cards but debit cards.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 11:53 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Yes but does the LAW say they are debit cards or credit cards? The legal regime here (UK) is very different depending on the answer.

And we have a lot of "pre-paid credit cards" which, if they didn't fall under credit card legislation, would fall foul of trade description legislation instead.

Cheers,
Wol

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 12:44 UTC (Thu) by Tobu (subscriber, #24111) [Link]

I can recommend TransferWise as well, particularly for the way they handle currencies.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 11:40 UTC (Thu) by djc (subscriber, #56880) [Link]

As another Dutch subscriber, I've often used PayPal, which will let you pay directly from a Dutch debit account.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 22:19 UTC (Thu) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link]

Thanks for the various suggestions.

In the mean time lwn's staff has contacted me privately and we worked out a way to transfer my money into their account. This apparently means some extra work on their part, for which I'm rather thankful.

Superb service!

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 0:35 UTC (Thu) by acarno (subscriber, #123476) [Link] (1 responses)

This reminds me: now that I'm no longer a graduate student, I need to make sure I bump my subscription from a "starving hacker" to a "professional hacker." Thanks for continuing to post such excellent articles!

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 1:18 UTC (Thu) by JohnVonNeumann (guest, #131609) [Link]

We can balance one another out, I'm going back to University in August haha.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 1:22 UTC (Thu) by JohnVonNeumann (guest, #131609) [Link] (15 responses)

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this but I figure it's probably the best opportunity, are there any other publications similar to LWN with a similar level quality content? They don't have to be about Linux. I'm just wondering if other communities have a similar level of technical coverage that I can sub too as well and support.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 2:41 UTC (Thu) by songmaster (subscriber, #1748) [Link] (5 responses)

The other tech news website that I subscribe to is Ars Technica, which is somewhat more mainstream but has articles in depth as well as a broad news team. Subscribers can turn off adverts too.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 3:15 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

As a subscriber, you can also de-paginate articles, so you can read without having to click a bunch of times. If you read via RSS, the full articles are there as well. I signed up when they were giving away YubiKeys (the "4" at the time) and coupons for more (which is how I have a number of backups now). You can extend during that promotion, so it isn't a reason to defer subscribing.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 11:20 UTC (Thu) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link] (3 responses)

I'm seconding this recommendation! Consistently professional-yet-entertaining-yet-informative :) I'm a subscriber and read them via a full-text RSS feed, which is also super-great (though it's not perfect - it breaks down whenever there is a slide show or whatever it's called).

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 19:17 UTC (Thu) by logang (subscriber, #127618) [Link] (2 responses)

Honestly, I've read Ars for maybe 15 years now but I'm considering stopping. The quality of their reporting has been trending down so much in recent years. Most relevant here was their article on ZFS that got a bunch of details wrong and blamed the wrong people for the wrong reasons[1]... though, to their credit, they do read their comments and *quietly* fix their bad reporting[2].

There are lots of other examples, like how I got tired of seeing a silly picture of Ajit Pai start a discussion on FCC policy which just signaled the articles were never worth reading because they were almost always just mired in political bias and never really delved into the issues. (Not that I necessarily disagree with their conclusions all the time, but there's no benefit in reading political articles that just presupposes the other side is wrong and ridicules them.) Frankly, I'm bothering to read less and less because of all the articles I just find to be terrible reporting.

The quality we get from LWN is consistently orders of magnitude better -- just more niche.

--

[1] "In January 2019, kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman decided to disable exporting certain kernel symbols to non-GPL loadable kernel modules ... Kroah-Hartman's decision to stop exporting the symbol to non-GPL kernel modules appeared to be driven largely by spite"
https://web.archive.org/web/20200113135446/https://arstec...

[2] "In January 2019, senior kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman fierily (sic) defended a Linux kernel commit which disabled exporting certain kernel symbols to non-GPL loadable kernel modules."
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/01/linus-torvalds-zf...
(If you follow the link in the article, I'm not sure how you can characterize GKH's response as "fierce" -- if anything it was just a stock response.)

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 29, 2020 12:51 UTC (Fri) by BirAdam (guest, #132170) [Link] (1 responses)

I 100% agree with this sentiment. I had been an Ars subscriber for quite sometime, and recently stopped. I’ve quit reading them altogether. Shoddy reporting and political bias are my main reasons.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted Jun 1, 2020 11:46 UTC (Mon) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link]

Perhaps it depends on the section. I read Ars mostly for the science reporting, I usually skip or skim the ones that touch political stuff (not least because I'm not in the US). I've seen the ZFS article and I did have a bad feeling about it so I haven't read it ;) (FTR, I felt that the topic was out of their usual area of expertise)

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 7:26 UTC (Thu) by Sesse (subscriber, #53779) [Link]

I find Anandtech excellent for the things they cover (mostly hardware-related; unfortunately, fairly low volume). However, there isn't a way to pay currently.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 9:13 UTC (Thu) by vkazanov (subscriber, #108183) [Link] (2 responses)

I'd recommend Phoronix. Their best content is covering hardware in relation to Linux and other free/open source OSes. The do use a subscription model.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 10:38 UTC (Thu) by tlamp (subscriber, #108540) [Link] (1 responses)

I appreciate the enthusiasm of the phoronix editor, but IMO it cannot be compared to LWN.
It's much more link aggregation than original content, that certainly has its value and LWN does this also to a certain degree.
But, LWN has a steady stream of articles being authored from people directly involved with the Kernel or Linux userland development community and that subsystem.

If you do like link aggregators, with a bigger focus on the technical side you may want to check out "Hacker News":
https://news.ycombinator.com/

Note that it isn't purely open source related, but quite some linked content is. Also, it's basically coming from a start up incubator, so if you do not like that environment it some posts may not be for you.

There's also: https://people.kernel.org/read

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 16:19 UTC (Thu) by Sesse (subscriber, #53779) [Link]

Agreed. LWN has deep, original content. Phoronix has a bunch of autogenerated benchmarks of rather low quality (even when the results are extremely surprising, he doesn't have time/desire/skills to try to figure out what happened, just makes a brief note and goes on), and then some links to (sometimes) interesting news. I do follow it for the latter, and ignore the former. The hyperbole you just have to ignore. “Linux X.Y.Z is a SUPER-interesting release, it has some obscure update to some DRI driver!”

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 11:20 UTC (Thu) by tpo (subscriber, #25713) [Link] (2 responses)

heise.de 's "c't" (aka Computer Technik) magazine in german is excellent and can be read online when you're a subscriber.

They do have an english publication, but not having read it much I can't tell you about it's content.

"c't" does have ads, but it's not the tracker infected horror like US news sites are.
*t

c't

Posted May 29, 2020 11:38 UTC (Fri) by mbg (subscriber, #4940) [Link] (1 responses)

I recommend learning German so you can read c't.

After a few years as a subscriber (expensive from Australia, alas) the standard tech articles go down very easily, even with my second-rate high-school German. But I do usually need to skip over the articles written by lawyers -- that's when it can go a bit Mark Twain.

No other tech publication has the range of articles, including ones on important social issues. The Linux coverage is pretty good too (shhhh).

c't

Posted May 30, 2020 8:50 UTC (Sat) by PhilippWendler (subscriber, #126612) [Link]

Wow, I also like c't, but learning a second language for it is impressive!

For others: The best articles about Linux in c't are typically written by Thorsten 'the Linux kernel logger' Leemhuis (article overview). It seems that especially of the "Kernel-Log", where he covers the kernel development in quite some detail for the last 14 years, many are actually available without paywall (example - 9 pages long). I suspect that with knowledge of the Linux-specific terms and a machine translation they would be understandable for many.

Unfortunately, Thorsten Leemhuis is on a sabbatical until the end of the year. But he still maintains his Twitter accounts, four of which are in English and cover topics like the Linux kernel, Redhat, etc. An overview of these accounts is on leemhuis.info/me/.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 12:56 UTC (Thu) by Tobu (subscriber, #24111) [Link]

I'm not sure how wide you are reaching, but there are a few subscriber-centered online media that do good work. Some of the French ones are listed on La Presse Libre, I can recommend Next Inpact for technology, and tech policy in particular. As well as Arrêts sur Images for media criticism.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 29, 2020 17:43 UTC (Fri) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989) [Link]

I find Hacker News quite generally interesting => https://news.ycombinator.com/

The community is somewhere between acerbic and caustic in the presence of WrongThink, but, then, who can be cool like LWN?

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 1:55 UTC (Thu) by anarcat (subscriber, #66354) [Link]

glad to see this positive note during those gloomy times, and a warm welcome to John (another Jon? what are you thinking! ;) to the team!

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 6:55 UTC (Thu) by imgx64 (guest, #78590) [Link] (12 responses)

This may sound weird, but the high quality of the user comments on LWN actually discourages me from subscribing.

I'll explain. I read the weekly LWN edition once it becomes available to non-subscribers one week later. By that time, the conversation in the comments section would have more or less become quiet and I could read it as a whole. Sort of like an extra section of the article.

I subscribed once a few years ago and I kept coming back to the same pages to read more comments as they were posted. Now I was spending much more time and the conversation would be fractured because I had lost the context.

And before someone suggests it, email notifications of new comments only make the problem worse! It would make me read each comment at a time instead of couple of times a day.

I don't read HN or Reddit for the same reason.

Of course, the solution would be me getting better self control, and I do feel bad for not subscribing even though I can afford it. However, I wonder if other people feel the same, or have some technical solutions for poor impulse control.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 7:07 UTC (Thu) by imgx64 (guest, #78590) [Link] (1 responses)

And one more thing, I rarely see ads on LWN. I just refreshed the page multiple times and I finally saw an ad after 10 page loads. Is this intentional or is there some bug in loading ads? It seems the One Big Page format is a major reason LWN doesn't generate much ad revenue from me. I simply load the page once and read it top to bottom.

Hey, maybe I'd subscribe if the One Big Page became a paid feature!

Ads

Posted May 28, 2020 12:52 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

There simply are not a lot of ads to present these days. We turned off the generic Google ads years ago; they were invasive and provided little value to anybody (except perhaps Google). So any ads we run were sold explicitly for us, and that market just about doesn't exist anymore for anybody.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 8:24 UTC (Thu) by PhilippWendler (subscriber, #126612) [Link] (1 responses)

I find the "Unread comments since last visit" feature for subscribers quite helpful. I read new articles at some point when I find the time, including the comments posted so far (which I like as much as you). Comments that are posted later I read on the "Unread comments" page, which works well for me. No need to go back to the article pages in most cases, and I can also read new comments in batch whenever I want without relying on mail notifications.

There is just one missing feature that could improve that even more for me: if the "unread comments" page would not show any comments for articles that I have not read yet. Sometimes, fresh articles spawn large discussions that I want to skip over while reading new comments to other articles (because I will read the large discussion after reading the article in its context). Currently I have to rely on the color of the link to the article (indicating whether I have read the article yet) and the search function of my browser (searching for next hit of "Responses to:" lets me jump to the next article's comment section).

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 8:28 UTC (Thu) by geert (subscriber, #98403) [Link]

+1

Thanks in advance!

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 11:39 UTC (Thu) by darmengod (subscriber, #130659) [Link]

The comment sections in LWN articles are usually worth reading after they have had time to develop and "mature", so to say. I really enjoy this aspect of the website, too.

That being said, what I do is simply decouple subscribing to the newsletter from actually reading the articles. Consider the subscription a pure donation without the "benefit" of reading articles sooner.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 12:00 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> This may sound weird, but the high quality of the user comments on LWN actually discourages me from subscribing.

I finally got around to subscribing (at the starving hacker level since I no longer work in computing and am just above minimum wage...) and actually am inclined to agree with you! LWN doesn't seem so good once you don't get your weekly fix :-)

That said, there are other benefits to subscribing, and I do find "unread comments" very useful. Plus, of course, you are supporting LWN and making sure it survives - I saw the glory days, and the collapse/closure of so many good sites as the money ran out, and while I feel LWN may be a shadow of its former self, it's weathered the storm better than most.

Cheers,
Wol

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 20:45 UTC (Thu) by storner (subscriber, #119) [Link]

I have a self-imposed policy of supporting the sites on the Internet that I visit regularly, and LWN has consistenly been among the best sources for technical information - both about Open Source issues, but also weird and interesting stuff that is almost impossible to find elsewhere. As an example, LWN is where I got the first hint of the SPECTRE cpu-issues with so much detail and solid information before any of the other IT newssites picked it up. It gave me a good head start when the higher-ups demanded to know how it would affect us.

And yes, the comments section is usually always worth reading after the main article. People are generally knowledgeable and civilized - unfortunately, this is not so common elsewhere.

The solid reporting by Jon and the rest of the team is what makes LWN stand out from the crowd, so I am delighted to hear this news. Welcome aboard!

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 29, 2020 6:13 UTC (Fri) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]

I found that the unread comments page makes it easier to keep up with LWN comments if you login to LWN:

https://lwn.net/Comments/unread

It would be even better to be able to get all of LWN via email, then you could follow each thread as you want when you want. You could read some articles immediately, then defer reading the comments until the thread has died down, or for each article wait until you are ready. You could track unread comments and switch to already read comments for context.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 29, 2020 8:57 UTC (Fri) by gevaerts (subscriber, #21521) [Link]

Looks like nobody has pointed out the obvious solution yet: only log in if you want to actually post a comment yourself, don't log in for your regular reading :)

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted Jun 1, 2020 5:37 UTC (Mon) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link]

I used to do that myself! But the "unread comments" page does a lot better job of finding comments I haven't seen yet, and it shows enough context not to be lost, so... I'm old enough of a reader to remember times when this was not the case, though :)

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted Jun 2, 2020 21:34 UTC (Tue) by tpenfoun (guest, #5945) [Link]

I'd say, please subscribe. As a microbiologist, I subscribe because, I often learn as much from from the comments as the articles. Articles that come about because of subscribers!

Delayed reading for better comments

Posted Jun 4, 2020 21:39 UTC (Thu) by quboid (subscriber, #54017) [Link]

I also usually end up reading about a week later for the same reason. I still pay for a subscription though!

Mike.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 7:43 UTC (Thu) by philipstorry (subscriber, #45926) [Link]

Welcome aboard John! Your article on PHP was great, and made me reflect on the language at length. Whilst I'm not going to learn it (time is precious!), my opinion of PHP has been greatly improved and I'd now at least consider using it for a project!
(But I'll probably still use Python.)

And I'm pleased to hear that LWN isn't too affected by the current economic climate. It would be difficult if not impossible to replace the kind of reporting that LWN produces, and long may it continue.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 11:39 UTC (Thu) by iustin (subscriber, #102433) [Link]

Very glad to read this, this is good news. Thanks!

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 28, 2020 20:00 UTC (Thu) by sergi (subscriber, #117) [Link]

Best news of the day!

Thanks Jon and company! Keep it up and most importantly stay safe!

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted May 31, 2020 21:38 UTC (Sun) by mtaht (subscriber, #11087) [Link]

thank you also jon and lwn staff and welcome, john!

I could never keep up with developments in linux without lwn. Even just the netdev mailing list is too much for me.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted Jun 4, 2020 11:08 UTC (Thu) by mendie (subscriber, #46973) [Link]

Good news! Welcome, and I shall certainly be reading your contributions (and all the comments, which are in many cases as valuable as the original article)

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted Aug 10, 2020 13:17 UTC (Mon) by msilva (guest, #140710) [Link] (5 responses)

Does LWN have some donation schema? That'd be useful for those who don't want or can't be subscribers but still want to contribute with discrete or recurring (maybe small) amounts.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted Aug 10, 2020 13:41 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

What would be nice if LWN could do what would work fine in the UK.

We have deposit accounts, where you are *severely* restricted in what you can do, but they do have an IBAN number. With that number you should be able to deposit money into the account at any bank. The problem, of course, is what are the banks going to charge you for making said deposit ...

I'm seriously thinking about putting my IBAN on the web, the number of people who've sent me virtual bouquets it would be nice to translate them into real beers :-)

Cheers,
Wol

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted Aug 10, 2020 14:24 UTC (Mon) by geert (subscriber, #98403) [Link] (2 responses)

It depends...

If I wire money in € to whatever bank account in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area (which still includes the UK, for now), it wouldn't cost me (and the receiver, AFAIK) anything.

Outside SEPA, charges (fixed and/or variable) will be added, making it unsuitable for small amounts. E.g. when a customer outside SEPA transfers money to my company's account, my bank (and all Belgian banks I checked) charges 0.1%, and an additional 20€ or so (depending on the phase of the moon) has "disappeared" somewhere along the road. And I understand additional charges have been applied to the originator as well.

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted Aug 10, 2020 18:41 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

Bearing in mind Switzerland is in SEPA but not the EU, I believe we will remain in SEPA too. Which means, if I have heard and understood correctly, we get hit by exchange conversions but that's it. And they can't be that high, either.

Depending on LWN's bank, if America has a similar setup people could pay dollars into that, and I know we can open Euro accounts so we'd get free payments into that - LWN's bank might be able to open a partner account so they can collect Euros in Europe somewhere then convert it into dollars in bulk. The obvious place is somewhere in the Channel Islands or Isle of Man.

Cheers,
Wol

A pandemic-era LWN update

Posted Aug 10, 2020 20:31 UTC (Mon) by rschroev (subscriber, #4164) [Link]

> Bearing in mind Switzerland is in SEPA but not the EU, I believe we will remain in SEPA too.

I'm not sure about that. Three types of countries are in SEPA:
- European Union members
- EFTA members (amongst which Switzerland)
- Some microstates which have monetary agreements with the EU
UK is at the moment only in SEPA because it's under a transitional period, until 31 december 2020.

Since the Brexit negotiations aren't really getting anywhere, I don't think anyone knows what's going to happen when that transitional period ends.

Donations

Posted Aug 10, 2020 14:05 UTC (Mon) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Thanks for wanting to help support LWN!

We are not set up to accept donations. Doing so puts you into a completely different class of merchants as far as the credit-card banks are concerned. I guess that the chargeback rate on donations is high, so they don't like processing them; issues related to that just about killed LWN back in 2002. So we just don't go near it now.

We do offer subscriptions at a variety of levels, and for any period you might desire; I bet you could find a combination that would fit your budget.


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