If you had tried Ubuntu, KDE Neon, CachyOS, ElementsryOS, or really any other distro, this would not have been your experience.
Arch is a Manual experience designed for power users. It is not a good choice for even your average Linux user, let alone a first time Windows convert dipping their toes.
Being a 503c, they're required to disclose their expenditures, among other things. CN gives them a perfect score, and the expense ratio section puts their program spend at 77.4% of the budget
https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/200049703#overall-ratin...
Worth mentioning that Wikipedia gets an order of magnitude more traffic than the Internet archive.
In their latest available annual report, the Wikimedia Foundation reported that in 2024 they brought in $185M in revenue/donations, of which they spent $178M. Of that $178M, $106M was spent on salaries and benefits, and $26M on awards and grants. So, that accounts for 75% of their spending. "Internet hosting" is listed at only $3M though there are other line items such as "Professional service expenses" at $13M that probably relate to running Wikipedia too.
Scroll down to the "Statement of activities (audited)" section:
If you look at the audited financial report of last year.
$3,474,785 was spent on hosting. Which makes sense its basically a static site.
This is out of expenses of $190,938,007
Thats about 1.8%. This is not new. Its been the case for years. Wikipedia has never had very high hosting costs. Its always been going into their grants or whatever else.
Despite the nonsense about AI overloading their servers even if it doubled the load it would barely affect the budget.
That figure will also be hugely unreliable, because as we've seen, there is tremendous incentive for insiders to leverage their information immediately before it's relevant.
If the odds sit at 97% NO for weeks or months, then 3 hours before the invasion an insider makes their play, you would have to be constantly monitoring this market, interpret that spike correctly as an insider trade, and be able to, in that very short amount of time, take actions that change the outcome for you, personally.
I think this take highlights one of the core problems our democracy faces - winning elections and governing effectively are entirely different skill sets. These things may even be, in part, antithetical.
I merely intended it as a reasonably general proxy for relevant experience whose ruleset would be difficult to weaponize. I agree that in theory there almost certainly must be better methods than elections by which to select legislators, leaders, and other official positions. However I'm not aware of any in practice, particularly when the inevitability of bad faith attempts to abuse the system are taken into account.
As self-proclaimed hackers who are part of a community whose core values include curiosity and critical thinking, we do ourselves, and the world, a massive disservice by closing our eyes and ears to important information just because it's political in nature.
Hacker culture and fascism are antithetical, and we should all be acutely aware when the current regime moves towards violence to squash dissent.
i know the site moniker is "hacker news" but the tech industry at large is the furthest thing from being anything resembling a collective of hackers...
The actual technical thought leaders aren’t necessarily representative of the tech industry at large. Id like to think at least some with a hacker ethos have made it to decision making positions - and hacker news is a spot for em to congregate.
Eh, I think most of the folks here are, whatever else, "temporarily embarrassed venture capitalists". That certainly seems consistent with fascists and with the tenor of much of the discourse I read here.
reply