Housekeeping for 20240102

Some stats, updates, and whatnot

Who reads Abort Retry Fail? Well, thirty seven percent of readers are in the USA, nine percent are in India, six percent are in the UK, five percent are in Germany, three percent are in Canada, and this publication then has readers almost everywhere on Earth. The exceptions are those one would expect such as Cuba, the DPRK, Libya, and Somalia. Within the USA, all states are represented except for New Hampshire, West Virginia, North Dakota, and Alaska. Unsurprisingly, the most well represented states are California, Washington, New York, Texas, and Illinois. Twenty six percent of ARF’s readers also read Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky, seventeen percent also read the Pragmatic Engineer, fourteen percent also read Semianalysis, thirteen percent read Lenny’s Newsletter, another thirteen percent read Goto10, and then twelve percent read Byte Byte Go.

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UPDATE 20240103: ARF just gained a New Hampshire subscriber!

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By far, the most popular article on ARF has been So powerful, it’s kind of ridiculous, about 3dfx. With roughly five eighths the reads, ‘Be’ is nice. End of story comes in second place. After that, the next few articles are about four times less popular. Oddly, the least popular article is The History of VisiCalc, but that article brought in far more revenue than any of the ten most popular articles. Many subscribers have stated that they particularly enjoy articles about operating systems. These articles will, of course, continue. I do plan to continue coverage of companies, hardware, and other computer related topics as well. Overall, I hope to chronicle the industry’s history as much as any one person can. I enjoy the study every bit as much as the writing. I have been trying to keep to a post per week for the past few months, and while this isn’t a guarantee, I intend to continue that attempt. For some topics, there are decidedly fewer credible sources, and as such some posts are both shorter and shallower. Additionally, there are some topics I plan to cover that will simply take much more time to research and write. Despite inflationary pressure, there is no plan to increase the cost of subscriptions for this publication. Likewise, the current plan is to maintain a tone of political neutrality as much as is possible for any human being and to keep the publication largely free of vulgarity unless quoting an historical figure.

Over the course of 2023, this site has become exclusively a tech history publication. Long time readers may recall that this publication was largely a tutorial site originally, but those kinds of articles have moved back to their original home at absurd.wtf which is decidedly less professional, and on which I spend significantly less time.

On a personal note, I would like to apologize for the variable quality of my posts and the variable rate of posting over the past year. I lost several very dear loved ones in 2023, and I struggled to find focus. I would occasionally be reading a book only to realize I’d absorbed nothing and had to start over. I am sincerely grateful to those of you who’ve stuck with me.