A Last Call For Our Phoronix Premium 2019 Autumn Special

[phoronix]

Phoronix: A Last Call For Our Phoronix Premium 2019 Autumn Special

Just a friendly reminder in case you wanted to help support our open-source/Linux news coverage, Linux hardware reviews, and benchmarking work...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Last-Call-Premium-2019-Wiesn

[ntropy]

I am already lifelong premium, can I get free beer instead?

[Guest]

DebianXFCE got banned, so there's no way I'll ever buy premium. The tone of this forum is shifting towards something I don't like at all.

[josh_walrath]

DebianXFCE got banned, so there's no way I'll ever buy premium. The tone of this forum is shifting towards something I don't like at all.

Can someone fill me in?

Debian and XFCE are both shit, but that's no reason to ban someone. D:

[tildearrow]

DebianXFCE got banned, so there's no way I'll ever buy premium. The tone of this forum is shifting towards something I don't like at all.

Really? Did you know debianxfce could harass you endlessly via private messages?

[tildearrow]

Typo:

or at the very leasr to please not view this site with any ad-blocker.

[Guest]

Really? Did you know debianxfce could harass you endlessly via private messages?

I guess I wasn't the lucky one in that case. It's not that hard to ignore these, it's not like private messages on this forum are significant to your life.

[Marc.2377]

DebianXFCE got banned, so there's no way I'll ever buy premium. The tone of this forum is shifting towards something I don't like at all.

He did? Good riddance. I was considering premium (or at least a donation) at the end of this year, guess I'll anticipate that.

In the meantime, every time I read a plea about viewing the site without ad blockers, I think to myself: Given the shady practices of the advertisement industry and the fact that online ads are very disruptive to my workflow (as I have ADHD), there is absolutely no way I'm going to disable my ad blocker. Should I refrain from browsing the site in this case?

This is a bit of a connundrum, isn't it - if I'm not visiting phoronix.com, I would also not be seeing any ads and thus it wouldn't make any money from me in any case (apart from saving some small fraction of the site's bandwidth).

Anyone wants to weigh in?

[Guest]

He did? Good riddance. I was considering premium (or at least a donation) at the end of this year, guess I'll anticipate that.

In the meantime, every time I read a plea about viewing the site without ad blockers, I think to myself: Given the shady practices of the advertisement industry and the fact that online ads are very disruptive to my workflow (as I have ADHD), there is absolutely no way I'm going to disable my ad blocker. Should I refrain from browsing the site in this case?

This is a bit of a connundrum, isn't it - if I'm not visiting phoronix.com, I would also not be seeing any ads and thus it wouldn't make any money from me in any case (apart from saving some small fraction of the site's bandwidth).

Anyone wants to weigh in?

I block ads (with ad nauseam) out of principle. There are only a few websites where ads are acceptable (small still images with a simple link to the site and no tracking besides counting clicks on the ad), and I don't even visit those sites these days. Even 4chan, which did exactly what I mentioned back in the day, has changed their ads into something awful.

Back in the day I thought it was a dick move to block ads, but considering how bad Google is (and they pretty much own the industry), there's no way I'll let them have any money from my browsing, not to mention the amount of data they can get with their trackers. I'd rather go with offensive against ads, by automating clicking them, so their statistics get filled with fraudulent clicks.

Same applies to Phoronix. The amount of ads on this site is unbearable, and they keep getting in the way. I'd much rather block them and cause a small loss than try to put up with them to help someone make 2 cents off me. If you want me to disable my blocker, ads have to be just like I've described at the beginning of the post.

[Marc.2377]

Cool, I had never heard of Ad nauseam.

Back in the day I thought it was a dick move to block ads

Fortunately that thought never crossed my mind. Ubiquitous online advertisement is just wrong.

Think of it this way: If you go have a walk at the mall, you'll see a lot of ads in front of every store, but that is no problem. The stores are there to sell their products and you are there, from their point of view, as a potential buyer. Even if you don't go with the intention of buying anything, you kind of agree to put up with seeing the advertisements. They don't do much harm, after all. And you always have the choice of staying in the comfort of your home.

With online browsing, it's different. You are in the comfort of your home - or, alternatively, you are at work - and you browse websites for purposes that, save for a few exceptions, absolutely do not involve being shown advertisements to. I myself, am usually trying to get work done. The fact that the website I'm visiting uses an advertising network to try and show me ads in invasive to me. Not to mention the tracking. So, when a website tries to force me to disable the ad blocker, I'm not visiting it again. I even add it to the ad blocker's blacklist and to a Google search blacklist extension to make sure of it.

Edit: One thing I don't understand about Ad Nauseam. Considering an ad network tracks what pages an user visits unless the tracker is not blocked at the network request level, this addon is not so great for privacy, is it? If the ads are loaded (in order for the addon to auto-click them), that means the ad network (eg. Google Ads) are still informed you visited the page.
Update: I asked this on their issue tracker. https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/issues/1563