Paged Out
pagedout.institute191 points by varjag 5 hours ago
191 points by varjag 5 hours ago
I ordered the print version, but I have to tell you that print-on-demand provider has an incredibly convoluted purchase cycle. I came close to stopping at least 3 times.
* No buy now button: add to cart, accept cookies, view cart, checkout
* Account creation required pre-purchase
* Email verification required pre-purchase
At the least, it was a fairly linear flow except for the email verification (and the email was instant) but christ just let me pay.
EDIT: Ah I see, reading the other comments it's not meant to be paid for. It's meant to be distributed to people "in the right circles". Okay, lucky someone mentioned that. The POD provider only has a 1-hour cancellation policy. Though on second thought, I can't be arsed to go back and cancel for the $27. I'll just skip subsequent ones.
Thumbing through it, #7 has some good stuff in it. Thanks for sharing!
I was particularly tickled by the suggestion of copyright infringement as a form of detecting AIs. "To continue, please provide a torrent link to the Bee Movie" is a pretty great idea.
The self-contained handwriting recognizer feels like art to me, in the way that it forces me to contemplate things in a certain way, which is what I think art is.
I think this is great. I love this.
I immediately went to the menu to see how I could buy a subscription, and there isn’t a place, as far as I can tell through my search, to do so.
This goes for all new startups (non-profit or not!) if you want me to give you money, make it easy for me to give you money.
This is an online magazine, ostensibly, and as such I would expect to see a “subscribe” page, which would take payment information, and I would get emailed new issues as they come out.
If you want to support them now you can order prints. They have a sponsorship edition that costs extra if you want to extra support them.
There's an RSS feed that is exposed in the standard manner (link tag in head), precisely what you're looking for. They do not offer a paid subscription, just the option to 'buy' individual issues, which is also linked under every issue.
That sort of friction is just enough to keep folks from giving money.
And that’s not me saying this, there’s an entire cottage industry devoted to pricing and buying decisions, and how friction reduces revenue.
If I take your suggestion to its logical conclusion, I would need to:
1. Get an RSS reader (I don’t have one, haven’t used one since google reader shut down) 2. Subscribe to their RSS feed. 3. Remember to check my RSS reader. 4. Each 3-4 months (just long enough for it not to be a habit forming exercise), click on the link. 5. Put in my credit card information each time. 6. buy the issue.
Or, I could use their “preferred” method:
1. Subscribe to their email list. 2. Click the link every 3-4 months when an issue drops. 3. Put in my credit card information every 3-4 months? 4. Buy the issue.
Each of these has far more friction in them than necessary, and hurts their overall goal, which is to make their magazine self-sustaining.
I think the magazine is not designed to be a product that is bought, but rather something that is given away for free. A lot of the verbiage on the website discusses various ways to get and reproduce the magazine for free. Most of the content is submitted with a creative content license.
> I would expect to see a “subscribe” page, which would take payment information, and I would get emailed new issues as they come out.
You are not expected to pay to get emailed as new issues come out. Just join this group (link found on FAQ page) and you will get notifications: https://groups.google.com/g/pagedout-notifications
> I think the magazine is not designed to be a product that is bought, but rather something that is given away for free.
Indeed - when you're in the right circles a free print copy of PagedOut will find its way to you.
if you're asking "how do i easily buy prints", that's under the prints link atop, and you'll ultimately end up at lulu
https://pagedout.institute/?page=prints.php
https://www.lulu.com/search?contributor=Paged+Out%21+Institu...
I discovered it easily on desktop, idk about mobile
Paged Out are looking for more articles for the next issue. Information here: https://pagedout.institute/?page=cfp.php
I'm old enough to remember 90s zine culture and i have to say this is awesome. Thanks for this.
This is awesome. I love the format.
I will be throwing money at these people. This magazine needs to live and spread its wings.
Is it ironic that they publish it as a PDF? I get that it's the easiest way to control the print layout and also nicely self-contained... but how many of us are opening it in a sandbox as we should?
Never heard of needing to open a PDF in sandbox mode, but it makes sense cause of potential malicious content so I looked up if Chrome does it by default with it's viewer. It does, as does Firefox and Safari so that covers most browsers.
My PDF renderer is written in JavaScript and runs in a web browser, it is already sandboxed.
There's a typo in the URL here: > If you have a topic in mind but are not sure if it is suitable for Paged Out!, check out the Writing Articles page or contact us
It links to `?page=writing.pho` rather than `.php`
They were handing out printed version of the previous issue on this year’s Xenium demoscene party in Poland. Amazing stuff. Feels good, like good old demoscene zines.
Oh this feels very 2600. Makes me wish I hadn't cancelled my print sub a while back.
It's freaking awesome to see AI models (handwriting OCR) being distributed by printed out on a magazine page.
to settle a convo w/ a friend, how did y'all go about blasting emails inviting writing submissions? they suspect automated (naturally), i suspected possibly automated + "have had blogs hit hn front page", idk
edit: oh, right, this isn't a Show HN
Long live the zine!
Super cool. Loved reading this.
Have not read a word of it yet, but I immediately grabbed all the covers. Magnificent art work.
I can order prints.
Too bad they don't take security so seriously themselves.
https://pagedout.institute/?page=/etc/passwd
;-)
AI?