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LWN.Net Celebrates Its 20th Birthday (lwn.net)
Free software/Linux news site LWN.net just celebrated its 20th birthday, with publisher Jonathan Corbet calling the last two decades "an amazing journey." LWN published the first edition of their weekly newsletter on January 22, 1998, and Corbet (who also contributes to the Linux kernel) writes today that "It has been quite a ride. We in the free-software community set out to change the world, and we succeeded beyond our wildest expectations."
Here's how he described their second edition the next week... We were arguably helped by the lead news in that edition: Netscape's decision to open-source its "Communicator" web browser. That quickly brought the world's attention to open-source software, though that term would not be invented for a few months yet, and to Linux in particular. LWN was a shadow of what it is now, but it was evidently good enough to ride on that wave and establish itself as a part of the Linux community.
Corbet reviews the highlights. ("Companies discovered our little hobbyist system and invested billions into it, massively accelerating development at all levels of the system...") But he also adds that "Through all of this, we also got to learn some lessons about successfully running a community information source on the net." For the last 16 years the site has supported itself with $7.00-a-month subscriptions, offering early access to their Weekly Edition plus subscriber-only mailing lists, "allowing our content to quickly become part of the community record."
Plus, through events around the world, "we have met -- and become friends with -- many of our readers and many people in the community as a whole. This community is an amazing group of people; it has been a honor and a joy to be a part of it..."
"The free-software community's work is not done, and neither is ours. "
Here's how he described their second edition the next week... We were arguably helped by the lead news in that edition: Netscape's decision to open-source its "Communicator" web browser. That quickly brought the world's attention to open-source software, though that term would not be invented for a few months yet, and to Linux in particular. LWN was a shadow of what it is now, but it was evidently good enough to ride on that wave and establish itself as a part of the Linux community.
Corbet reviews the highlights. ("Companies discovered our little hobbyist system and invested billions into it, massively accelerating development at all levels of the system...") But he also adds that "Through all of this, we also got to learn some lessons about successfully running a community information source on the net." For the last 16 years the site has supported itself with $7.00-a-month subscriptions, offering early access to their Weekly Edition plus subscriber-only mailing lists, "allowing our content to quickly become part of the community record."
Plus, through events around the world, "we have met -- and become friends with -- many of our readers and many people in the community as a whole. This community is an amazing group of people; it has been a honor and a joy to be a part of it..."
"The free-software community's work is not done, and neither is ours. "
Content is only paywalled for 1 week.
I see nothing wrong with charging money for curating freely available facts. Anyone who values their time less are free to curate their own news feeds.
not everything is paywalled
But often you can just find the invite links to the full version of an article indexed by google, you just have to search the beginning of the text.
This is nonsense. First, the "paywall" only lasts for one week, not a month, as someone else pointed out. Second, not *all* content is embargoed for one week. Third, once the content is out, it is under a permissive CC license.
Please, if you want to critizice something, check your facts instead of spewing fake news.
And USING CAPITAL LETTERS doesn't make alternative facts more true.
/. is desperate for money
The readership of /. has shrunk
The term 'slashdotted' used to mean something, not anymore
Quality of the stories carried by /. has also plummeted /. should go paywall - that way the editors can have all the money they want
You're completely off-base. All LWN articles become free after a very short time. And if you'd bothered to read the announcement on LWN, you'd have seen that the subscription model is what saved the site from going under. Your comment exemplifies the quality difference between /. and LWN readers. :P
For almost 20 years I've been using "lwn.net" to ping-test my internet connection, just because it's easy and quick to type on the command line. It's probably been 15 years since I actually read anything on the site, but I just pinged them a few weeks ago.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
I subscribed for a while, but as a largely non-contributing casual reader who doesn't need immediate Linux news, I actually found it better to read the articles a week later. This was because the readership seems knowledgeable and the comments after a week would be informative. So when my subscription lapsed, I didn't renew it.
What I enjoy about LWN is that it is very technical. I've never looked at a kernel source file, but reading the articles tests my memory of all those university lectures about cache coherency, processor pipelining, scheduling etc.
I'd love it if there were something with a more Slashdot-like breadth of coverage (i.e. more than just Linux), but a more LWN-like readership.
I was working at Tucows in 2000 (I think) when we were told that we'd purchased (or at least heavily invested) in Linux Weekly News. They seemed to expect all of us in the Linux department to be really impressed or whatever, but the truth was that none of really read LWN. I was a Slashdot reader sure, and was running Linux at home, building my own kernel, you name it. I really did pay a lot of attention to the Linux world, but just never cared about LWN.
We had a couple of meetings that I remember rather clearly where LWN was involved (over the phone) but I never got to know any of those guys.
For some reason, LWN just never appealed to me very much, even as a long time Linux user, who even managed to get himself a Linux-related job way back when.
I think Tucows sold off whatever stake they had in LWN about the same time that they started collapsing, and I left for "real" job working at a factory.
Intel shills down voted this to "Score:0 Interesting" from the Intel thread, so I am spamming this to 3 non Intel threads in retaliation.
Change log:
2018/01/01 - Added 14 Useful Links. Disable Intel ME 11 via undocumented NSA "High Assurance Platform" mode with me_cleaner, Blackhat Dec 2017 Intel ME presentation, Intel ME CVEs (CVSS Scored 7.2-10.0)
Intel CPU Backdoor Report
The goal of this report is to make the existence of Intel CPU backdoors a common knowledge and provide information on backdoor removal.
What we know about Intel CPU backdoors so far:
TL;DR version
Your Intel CPU and Chipset is running a backdoor as we speak.
The backdoor hardware is inside the CPU/Bridge and the backdoor firmware (Intel Management Engine) is in the chipset flash memory.
30C3 Intel ME live hack:
[Video] 30C3: Persistent, Stealthy, Remote-controlled Dedicated Hardware Malware
@21:43, keystrokes leaked from Intel ME above the OS, wireshark failed to detect packets.
[Quotes] Vortrag:
"the ME provides a perfect environment for undetectable sensitive data leakage on behalf of the attacker".
"We can permanently monitor the keyboard buffer on both operating system targets."
Decoding Intel backdoors:
The situation is out of control and the Libreboot/Coreboot community is looking for BIOS/Firmware experts to help with the Intel ME decoding effort.
If you are skilled in these areas, download Intel ME firmwares from this collection and have a go at them, beware Intel is using a lot of counter measures to prevent their backdoors from being decoded (explained below).
Backdoor removal:
The backdoor firmware can be removed by following this guide using the me_cleaner script.
Removal requires a Raspberry Pi (with GPIO pins) and a SOIC clip.
2017 Dec Update:
Intel ME on recent CPUs may be disabled by enabling the undocumented NSA HAP mode, use me_cleaner with -S option to set the HAP bit, see me_cleaner: HAP AltMeDisable bit.
Useful links (Added 2018 Jan 1):
Disabling Intel ME 11 via undocumented HAP mode (NSA High Assurance Platform mode)
me_cleaner: Set HAP AltMeDisable bit with -S option
Blackhat 2017: How To Hack A Turned Off Computer Or Running Unsigned Code In Intel Management Engine
EFF: Intel's Management Engine is a security hazard, and users need a way to disable it
Sakaki's EFI Install Guide/Disabling the Intel Management Engine
Intel ME bug storm: Hardware vendors race to identify and provide updates for da
Per se! Dammit, "per say" is my #1 pet peeve!
Empirical evidence proves you wrong. Nobody has come close to doing for free what LWN does. Sometimes, you get what you pay for, and with LWN you get quality technical journalism with no BS.
Looking at the "Software announcements" section on that first edition, I notice they list Webalizer. Made me realize how long that has been around. Another nice piece of open source software.
And all subscribers can create a free link to all paywalled articles if they want to share it with a group of people who are not subscribers so LWN is by far the best version of a paywall that I have every seen.
No they have never paywalled everything. Where on earth did you get that from. Even going to their frontpage just now I can count 20 articles of which only 6 are paywalled. Every subscriber can create a free-link to share with non-subscribers, and each paywalled article goes free after only one week. WTF are you complaining about?
I met Jonathan Corbet at the Boulder (Colorado) LUG back -- had to be sometime between 1998 and 2001, back when the meetings were held at NIST. I'd been an avid reader because their news was always timely, their articles more technical and in-depth that others, and they were local Linux enthusiasts. I continue to be impressed with their technical and editorial content.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
As a fellow member of the community, coder, business owner...
Thanks for all you've done for these 2 decades. While other folks drifted off to do other things, and the community evolved to the mainstream it is today, LWN managed to retain its focus and continue to provide valuable content.
Hats off, and here's to the future of LWN.
I remember when I was studying my RHCE in a local small college. My instructor & mentor RIP, really great guy had lots of good things to say about lwn when I brought it up once.
Additionally, a subscriber can create a "free link", which is a personal link which can be sent to others to allow them to read an article for free, even if it's still within the one-week paywall period. I think theirs is an elegant approach for funding their company while still being good community members. I've been a subscriber for most of their 20 years of existence.