Good news / bad news

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It has been a while since the last LWN update. So here are a couple of items of LWN metadata.

On the "good news" side, we've finally managed to implement an often-requested feature: per-article RSS feeds for readers who want to follow the comments on a specific article in their RSS reader. The feed URL appears in the metadata headers for each article and comment, so subscribing to an article-specific feed should be a matter of a simple mouse click for most readers.

Of course, the unread comments page remains the best way to follow conversations on LWN, in your editor's humble opinion.

The not-so-good news is this: while LWN has held up reasonably well through this whole "economic crisis" thing, the simple fact is that its effects are being felt here. Some subscribers are not renewing, and others are moving to lower subscription levels. Costs have also increased - for example, our credit card bank evidently was unhappy with the size of its government bailout, so it raised credit card processing rates considerably. We are told that health insurance will be increasing 20-30% in a few months. Needless to say, these things are putting a squeeze on the budget.

What it comes down to is that something will have to change for LWN to continue operating. We very much intend to continue, so we're considering all of the options available to us. Since we're evidently not seen as being too big to fail, those options are generally unpleasant; they include price increases and/or staff reductions. No decisions have been made, but, one way or another, LWN readers are likely to see some changes as we get this operation back onto an even keel.

Thanks, as always, for supporting LWN.

