Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by runjake | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

runjake

But, do you donate?

https://archive.org/donate?origin=wbwww-TopNavDonateButton

(Couldn't find links for uBo and ytdl. I've asked gorhill where to donate in the past and they've refused donations.)

View on HN

From the uBlock repo: [0]

> No donations sought.

> Without the preset lists of filters, this extension is nothing. So if ever you really do want to contribute something, think about the people working hard to maintain the filter lists you are using, which were made available to use by all for free.

[0] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

I know it is gorhill that wrote that, but I completely disagree that uBO is nothing without the filter lists. I use it the way I used to use uMatrix (rip) to default deny bits and bobs across the web, unblocking as necessary. It’s everything that NoScript should be!

Note that you cannot manage your recurring IA donation for any reason without manually contacting them. For this reason I have not moved my IA donation to my newer credit card nor increased my donation since it was set up. I do not know if this is a dark pattern or just an oddly limited system, but the only officially recommended solution is to use PayPal. So I'd recommend that. https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-update-or-change-my-r...

I've worked on several large recurring payments platforms. It isn't rocket science, but let me tell you it is generally a pain in the ass to to manage recurring payments - in most of the systems I've worked in its easiest to just cancel and start a new one. The schemas are generally awful and make a lot of assumptions in the worst of ways. I wouldn't be shocked if the IA just finds it easier to manage manually than put in the large amounts of money for a refactor. One org I was with it took a Staff engineer nearly two years to rework the very odd weekly recurring feature to make it something that would be later made into something you could edit (of note, it was entirely separate in logic than the monthly recurring...)

I've worked on several platforms with recurring billing, including a marketplace prior to Stripe Connect existing, so I get that it can be pretty challenging.

That said:

- IA doesn't even offer cancelling. That's... not a particularly technically challenging feature. I have a strong feeling that they in fact have a cancel button somewhere in their backend anyways.

- While some of this can be annoying, it's kinda table stakes these days. If you can't handle basic subscription functionality, god help you for things like 3-D Secure.

Thanks for that note.

This is a non-starter for me.

I refuse to donate to the Archive since the unpersoning of KiwiFarms.

The funniest part of Kiwifarms is that they look and act like the people they make fun of.

Thanks, I wasn't aware of that. Another reason not to donate to IA.

Could not find what happened, but if it's the forum known for enabling harassment, and if IA did something bad to this site owner, then I find no problem. Those kind of people deserve what they do to others.

I donated before but then they spammed me with nag-mails asking for more donations. Not going to support that kind of behavior.

A person who shops on amazon can shop using smile.amazon.com and have a percentage of their purchase payments go towards charities or other organizations. The Internet Archive is one of them.

I don't donate directly, but I check the box to donate them a dollar every time I buy something with PayPal.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com