Bonum Certa Men Certa

What's "Bytes Media" Anyway?

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 16, 2023

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THE name "Bytes Media" does not mean much. We don't use it for anything and even its E-mail account is mostly abandoned. So what is it then?

Well, back in the financial crisis years (2008 or thereabouts) this site had already grown very large following. I needed a source of income for myself, not for the site (the site never ever had income; it still doesn't). It's kind of hard to write things without a roof over one's head. At one point I set up a fallback in case I need to do a job outside the realm of technology and in 2010 we started the audiocast called "Techbytes" (later we unsurprisingly found out that other shows had already adopted the same name). In 2013 we took over Tux Machines (its owner was getting remarried to her former husband) and having an 'umbrella' for the two sites made sense. The word "bytes" relates to "Techbytes".

Just to be clear, "Bytes Media" is not some registered for-profit or anything remotely like that. It's just this Web site that hasn't been worked on for nearly a decade, except the minor PHP tweaks I had to make to ensure it keeps running (dynamic page stuff can become a real pain over time!).

Techrights is the labour of love and not a business. It'll never be a profitable venture and in fact it costs over a thousand dollars per year just to run (server bills). But as Drew DeVault's blog put it the other day, there's more to life than making money. If you wish to change society or industry (or "the world"), prepare to make sacrifices and to face resistance.

I've received tons of abuse for running this site, but I keep on going. Even my family received abuse for it. It's not fair to them. But this is how the world "works".

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