

Agree 100%, Ars Technica syndicates those stories (they do it for Wired and FT stories too), so they paid ProPublica to republish the story and give full credit to them.
Ars also has traditionally operated very independently of Condé Nast, and their authors, editors, and staff are incredibly active and as up front as possible in their comments and forums. Perhaps Conde is doing something shady, but if so I have decent faith that Ars isn’t in on it.
One of the risks around monetizing hobbies is that while you may enjoy that hobby now, doing it to make more adds level of stress and responsibility that can quickly make it into another job that you no longer love. Places like Etsy are competitive and reward consistency in listing and sales, so to have any real success you can’t really list just one or two items and wait for them to sell. You’ll drop far down in search rankings and suddenly your store dies because Etsy stops sending people to it.
This isn’t to say don’t try, but be aware it isn’t as easy as “hobby but get paid for it”.