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Comment by pashabitz | Hacker News Reader

A person gives you a whole book they wrote for free and you're complaining about asking for an email? WTF

Yeah, I was sad seeing some of the reactions. To each his own. For a student like me, I would gladly take a free resource and won't mind the newsletter.

Maybe OP can also put a donate button for people who don't want to provide their E-Mail and get the book.

Thanks a lot, tpetry!

The criticism is that it's not honest. "For free" is not correct. It's "book against harvesting your contact data". If that's what the first page would say, then it would be honest and nobody would be upset. But acting as if it's been "published" out of pure altruism is just misleading people, and they are righfully pointing that out.

I took it to mean “free as in beer”

Would you pay money in lieu of providing your real email address? If so, how much?

I’d probably pay $10, that’s worth less to me than my contact info.

Just use a throwaway mail, what's the big deal? Companies already have tons of your private data without you ever even interacting with them. You're just crying into a 50 gallon drum of milk.

Agree. The guy provides engineering know how and we're pigeon dropping all over it for bureaucratic dorkish nonsense? You gotta have an attention span that separates noise from value

Vocal minority.

Because I weigh the potential of being marketed to by email as being a negative value greater than the potential positive value of the information provided in exchange. 'Free (with the potential to spam you later)' is a world apart from 'Free, gratis, enjoy'.

The author loses much more than you. You can always unsubscribe, or — if you don't trust unsubscribe — filter away his emails. From the beginning you were always in full control. Giving your email grants the author no power over you whatsoever.

Nope, they can sell the list (or have it hacked), and then YOU are screwed.

They sell the list and then you can still filter out unwanted emails.

You are being down voted because this is a shallow view. The expression of interest tied to an identity has value. For proof see Google, Meta, Amazon, and Facebook earnings.

Wildcard emails for the win.

It's not exactly free if they're asking something in return.

I only have like a dozen email addresses. Several of them are for junk mail and subscription type stuff. Do you... not have a junk email address? I would strongly encourage you to start on that, because, even just a stupid gmail account you never use for anything important but use for junk is probably a life changing situation for you if you've never heard of doing something like this.

Edit: Super power here is setting up a 1Password Identity (or whichever tool you use, hell, even a snippet) to auto fill junk email in when signing up for stuff vs not-junk email. I have three identities. One for work, one for personal, one for junk. Makes this stuff super easy and fast.

I wasn't trying to make a point about price (e-mails are practically free). The book could cost half a penny and my comment would still stand. People just view items that cost something differently than genuinely free items, and not in a rational, economic way.

For example, see: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-...

YouTube asks you to watch ads, but we still consider it to be free. Many mobile games make you create an account (and provide your email) before you can play but we still consider them free because you don't have to give any money. That's the definition here: don't have to pay money = free. This ebook is free

Hackers from "hacker news" know how to install adblock, so they dont have to see ads on youtube.

You don't value your time = free

Other people do value their time, therefore it's not free for them.

The question here is whether this ebook meets the definition of free as it is commonly known/accepted. As can be proven by the general population calling YouTube free or a mobile game that requires an email free, this ebook can be called free

Yes "nothing is free" yet we still often call these things free. It definitely wasn't free for him to make it.

Average person on here views those hours as billable if they were to do it themselves, when they make decisions about what to do, or alternatives (opportunity cost).

Maybe he should charge them consulting rates for this PDF (and not take their -- correction: an -- email. The horror).

It's only because this is HN that it's even a discussion.

The thing is that calling something free and then asking for something in exchange can trigger someone on autistic spectrum, where likely there is an overrepresentation of on HN.

In that sense for people who value their time, HN is not free.

I would rather use the term opportunity cost.

If you're not technical enough to have a junk email address then you probably aren't technical enough to learn SQL tricks.

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