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Comment by pubby | Hacker News Reader

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

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.

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

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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