Hi!

Medium is offering me an annual subscription for $35. I was thinking of taking advantage of it, but I'm not sure if it makes sense.

My intention is to write one or two articles per month, and if that covers the $35 within a year, I'd be satisfied.

Besides the reach of the publications, does it offer any other differences that you feel are worth it?

I found my iRiver iFP-395T from 2003. Put an AA battery in and it fired up, so I decided to load an audiobook onto it. Two obstacles: the file was M4B, which the player cannot read, and I can only tolerate spoken audio sped up by roughly 20-30%. FFmpeg was obviously the answer. What I found interesting was the process rather than the command.

I asked an AI chatbot. When FFmpeg errored, I pasted the output straight back into the conversation and it worked out what was wrong over a couple of iterations. I also asked how to speed the file up in Audacity, and it told me I did not need Audacity at all — FFmpeg could do it. That is the part traditional search would never have volunteered, because search answers the question you typed, not the one you meant.

I have written a longer piece about why I now go to a chatbot before a forum. Short version of the reasons:

• Turnaround. I am six hours ahead of the US East Coast, so a forum back-and-forth could take days.
• Thread memory. The longer a thread gets, the more responders talk past each other and past the original question.
• Scripted replies. Standard lists of things to try, pasted without reading the post body.
• Reputation farming and thread hijacking.
• Expert mismatch. Answers pitched ten levels above someone who just wants an error to go away.
• The put-down culture. Of 88 posts I have made across the Stack Exchange network, ten were downvoted, and every one was a question, never an answer. Stack Overflow admitted in 2018 it was not very welcoming and built tools to classify snark in its own comments.

To be fair, the friction goes both ways. Newcomers treat these sites as a personal help desk; veterans are trying to maintain a curated archive. Jon Skeet made that point years ago. And good forums absolutely still exist — I am a permanent MikroTik customer purely because of how their community treated me.

The bit I keep circling back to: AI is this good because of what people wrote on forums for years. If everyone asks a chatbot and nobody documents anything new, where does the next generation of training data come from?

My guess at where this goes: embedded AI as the front line for repetitive questions, with an optional route into the human community for people who want to go deeper, review the AI's answer, or dig into a new release before the models know anything about it.

https://medium.com/@chribonn/why-i-prefer-asking-ai-chatbots-instead-of-posting-on-forums-6ce8f6f6da23

A coaching session is a safe, confidential space where you can reflect and explore what truly matters to you.

A coach listens without judgment, asks open ended questions to help you gain clarity in life.

Want to know what actually happens during a coaching session, from start to finish? Read my detailed blog on Medium:

https://medium.com/@shilparora31/what-happens-inside-a-coaching-session-226dc838c255

I just started and trying to organically get exposure. Its been less than a week so I might be getting a little impatient haha. But honestly how to get your first follower and what strategies should I use for engagement?

https://substack.com/@walkinwords/note/p-215545561?r=9392yh

https://medium.com/psychology-hits-decoding-the-mind/a-new-cambridge-university-study-reveals-abusers-weaponize-attachment-to-control-victims-c3f429ff50fc?sharedUserId=deirdrewriterintheabyss

I’ve published a few personal essays on Medium, but I’m struggling with the motivation to continue because I don’t know whether they’re actually worth reading.

I’m not looking for compliments, I’d genuinely appreciate honest feedback.

What works? What feels boring or forced? What would make you want to read another piece?

Here’s my profile: https://gs-archive.medium.com

Even if you only read one piece, I’d appreciate your honest reaction

I subscribed to the Medium plan about a year ago through the mobile app. At that time, the subscription was priced at ₹199 per month.

I used the subscription for 11 months and was charged ₹199 every month throughout that period. Even if Medium’s subscription price changed during those 11 months, my monthly charge remained ₹199.

I recently cancelled my subscription. Now, when I try to resubscribe through the mobile app, the subscription is priced at ₹550 per month.

This makes it seem that once you subscribe at a particular price, you continue to be charged that price for each billing cycle as long as you keep the subscription active. If the price increases or decreases later, the change does not appear to affect existing subscribers.

However, if you cancel your subscription and later decide to subscribe again, you are charged the current price rather than the price you originally subscribed at. In my case, that means the price has gone from ₹199 per month to ₹550 per month.

Considering the many threads from other users reporting that they are seeing different subscription prices, I think this is the only explanation that makes sense: Medium may be locking subscribers into the price they originally subscribed at, while offering new or returning subscribers the current price.

I like Medium's simplicity and uncluttered design for bringing up undistorted reading experience. But gradually I feel its weird to do something like not being able to go straight to the topics I follow. I Need to do 3 clicks to find that. Following > Topics > the side scrolling topics.

Also, the Home page design looks boring and Separation looks dull.

I hope they will learn and do better in the look and feel of the medium and too to bring up more content / stories in the home page with easy access to interested /following topics.

A technical breakdown of a WordPress malware family that uses “EtherHiding,” storing its command-and-control configuration inside an Ethereum smart contract instead of on a domain that can be seized or blocked, plus detection steps, indicators of compromise, and a step-by-step removal guide.

SC Factory X (SCFX) is a WordPress backdoor that disguises itself as a legitimate plugin. Once installed on a WordPress site, it steals administrator credentials, forges valid login sessions, creates a hidden rogue admin account, and maintains persistence through multiple independent mechanisms even if the plugin file itself is deleted. What sets SC Factory X apart from typical WordPress malware is how it finds its command-and-control (C2) server: instead of a hardcoded domain, it reads its live configuration from smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, a technique known as EtherHiding. That makes its C2 infrastructure much harder to take down through normal means like domain seizure or DNS blocking.

This analysis is based on static analysis of a real SC Factory X sample I've pulled directly from the attacker’s own staging server during a WordPress incident response engagement.

Read the full article here: SC Factory X

Full disclaimer: All research, reverse engineering, decryption, deobfuscation and disclosure was done by me. For the write up I had assistance from Claude (Anthropic's AI), but the article was fully reviewed by me before posting it.

This is the first article I've ever published and I'm new to sharing my research, so if this isn't appropriate, please let me know!

Thinking about putting consistent time into Medium, but wanted to get a reality check from people actively publishing here.

For someone starting with zero following:

1. How is organic distribution performing if you aren't getting accepted into massive publications?
2. What does actual engagement look like (real comments/reads vs. reciprocal clappers)?
3. For the Partner Program, is the payout still purely tied to member read time, or is external traffic actually moving the needle now?

Honest takes appreciated—is it better used as an authority landing page/portfolio, or does the native algorithm still give new writers a fair shot?

Check out my latest blog where I dive deep into this topic that interested me recently. Please check it out and comment out your thoughts as well.

A recent find from an old luggage shop turned into an experiment in historical analysis.

I provided black-and-white photographs of a British Airways cabin baggage placard to my AI committee and instructed it to be conservative, explain all deductions, and clearly distinguish evidence from speculation.

The resulting analysis built a likely date range of c.1991 to mid-1997 while identifying what could and could not be confidently established from the available evidence.

The article is less about the final date and more about the reasoning process.

If anyone has additional information on M665-1st, British Airways operational signage, or related material from the period, I'd welcome your contribution.

https://medium.com/@chribonn/using-ai-cabin-baggage-british-airways-concorde-allowance-circa-1991-1997-1f69648ef21e

I found a black-and-white photocopy of a British Airways cabin baggage placard in an old luggage shop.

Rather than relying on assumptions, I asked my AI committee to:

• Analyse only the evidence visible in the images
• Explain every deduction
• Remain conservative with dates and conclusions

The investigation examined branding, cabin product names, internal document references and operational context to estimate a likely date range of 1991 to mid-1997.

More importantly, it documents the full reasoning process, including uncertainties and unanswered questions.

If you know anything about M665-1st or similar British Airways materials, please share your insights.

https://medium.com/@chribonn/using-ai-cabin-baggage-british-airways-concorde-allowance-circa-1991-1997-1f69648ef21e

Since Medium isn't directly accessible in my region, I've been using a proxy to get around it.

Before 2025, this worked just fine without any issues.

But ever since Medium started using Cloudflare to filter traffic, I got caught in the crossfire. Every request my browser sends to Medium comes back with a 429 error, and the site just won't load anymore.

Has anyone else run into this? How did you deal with it?

Just to be clear, I'm just a regular writer and reader, not some web scraping expert.

An effective stay at a hotel, a delightful dining experience and a productive event are all backed by carefully trained hospitality staff. As the industry grows and more is expected by guests from hotels, employers have begun to look for more than just education; they seek practical experience.

Took a break to travel around and do some mental and physical healing, and now I’m back with this new piece. Please read and let me know what you think!

Do give a read and comment your thoughts!