ruswick

I might pay not to be tracked, but I certainly wouldn't pay anything approaching $20 per month.

This argument is really vacuous and makes an inappropriate analogy.

First, we need to distinguish between attaching ads to the mail experience versus injecting them into the actual content. In the original post, this service would actually open these letters and insert ads into them. This is not even remotely comparable to what most email providers do. They insert ads around the service, but never actually alter the content of the email. A better analogy would be receiving a discount on branded stamps or allowing advertisements to be displayed on your mailbox.

Second, the use of the term "read" when discussing advertising is asinine, disingenuous and probably detrimental to the conversation (inasmuch as it can provoke unnecessary fear in non-technical users). "Read" implies active evaluation and comprehension, conceivably by a person. The GMail algorithm does not "read" email in the classical sense. It systematically evaluates the content in a way isn't even remotely comparable to "reading." (This doesn't mean that this sort of advertising isn't bad, but portraying it in the way he did is just unnecessary fear mongering.)

Third, the OP seems to decry "keeping a copy" as some sort of violation. GMail is a webmail service. What the fuck are they supposed to do if not store your mail?

Fourth, this service actually seems like a good idea, and is probably something I would use for various types of mail. The price of mail been steadily increasing, and I would be fine with these practices if I knew they were saving me money. I'm willing to tolerate advertising so long as I know that the service is improving my life. Like I do with 95% of the things I use.

In conclusion, this is a very dubious analogy that doesn't really contribute to the pragmatic discussion of cost versus privacy.

Incidentally, my suspicions were confirmed. This is just some sort of misdirect before they reveal the real logo.

I refuse to believe that this is not a joke.

Perhaps your company's issue is that it's hiring practices are so convoluted and absurd that they are driving away most of the prospective hires that possess brains?

I respect your views and sympathize with many of them, but your original comment did nothing to rationally confront the issues in the way that your second comment did. Your original post pertained to "the president's opponents," which seemed to include all of them. It just appeared as a off-handed, categorical attack, similar to the ones that you decried. I acknowledge that the reactionary, bigoted uber-right is frustrating, but immediately jumping on them in a way that didn't pertain to the the specifics of this case seemed like an unwarranted attack. I wish that you had explained your displeasure in a more thorough and thoughtful way that didn't seem like a political straw man, like you did in your second comment. Sorry if my initial response seemed condescending.

Agreed it seems as though most political reporting, especially on the partisan channels, has been reduced to irrelevant attacks based around embarrassming incidents and off-hand statements. It doesn't even seem as though people want to discus the issues.

Entirely incorrect. Evidently, you neglected to read the details of the article. First, Samsung isn't mentioned at all, so there's no context for this specific debate. The fact that Microsoft or IBM gave more money to government officials means absolutely nothing when someone is trying to to decide between Apple and Samsung. Moreover, this article pertains only to a three month period. You can't possibly pretend that this data is conclusive.

I actually looked up the empirics. First, Samsung didn't really lobby at all until last year, whereas Apple has consistently spent millions. Even when Samsung did start expanding their lobbying efforts, Apple has outspent them by more than double every year.

The article to which you linked is in no way pertinent to the discussion, and totally betrays the actual statistics.

http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000042406...

http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?id=D000021754...

It's upsetting that some proponents of this administration dismiss its critics because they presume that they dislike him categorically. It is this sort of bigoted presumption and political antagonism that is causing the erosion of political discourse in this country. This issue is not that Obama has critics, it's that some people believe that he shouldn't.

Why is it so difficult for people to accept that those who disagree with them aren't just trying to antagonize them, and may have actual, legitimate political orientations and views?

Instead of dismissing everyone with whom you disagree and painting them as irrational bigots, why don't you attempt to discuss something with them?

Although there is clear legal justification for this veto, I still fear that it was issued for perverse reasons. Apple is a lobbying juggernaut and is a favorite among the Government. Undoubtedly, Apple exerted extreme pressure on this decision, and I have severe doubts that this same conclusion would have been reached had Apple sought an embargo on Samsung products. Absurd cases and wholesale perversion of intellectual property law are nothing new in this country. Why has the administration only intervened for Apple?

It's just worrying when proper execution of the law becomes transactional.

I don't want to subsidize other people's consumption of content.

I want to pay for what I use; everyone else can do the same.

The things that you mentioned, though perhaps relevant to the goal of the service, are outrageous from a usability standpoint. I really abhor the tendency for sites to gamify their services or erect gimmicks that impede my ability to interact with their content. I would immediately leave any site that employs the tactics you mentioned.

My time is too valuable for that kind of absurd bullshit.

I agree. It was filled with platitudes and self-aggrandizing, vacuous anecdotes, but never offered any indication as to how one increases their income or reduces their time commitments.

I can soundly say that those first few chapters are literally about nothing. (At least, nothing pertinent to work or income).

This design is visually abrasive. I would suggest getting rid of the the purple accents and changing your typography.

The other issue is that he is not recommending that this be used for research. He is recommending that he can discreetly rent out my own computer to entities that are anonymous to me and with whom I have absolutely no contact, all for his personal monetary gain.

Consensual distributed computing in the name of science in interesting. Secretive distributed computing in the name of individual profit is disconcerting.

Your comment presumes that "negativity" has no place in a "civilized discussion," which is outrageous.

Honestly, the discourse here is pretty civil and all of the points are valid. When did it become "uncivilized" to argue that something is detrimental? (If this is true, is it not then totally "uncivilized" to decry negativity on HN?)

This irrational insistence on artificial enthusiasm and compulsory positivity is ridiculous. Skepticism is the foundation of "civilized discourse."

Nowhere is it written that you have to entertain every idea, even those with which you vehemently disagree, with disingenuous positivity. That's not what HN is for.

That's irrelevant. It's evident that, based on the ridiculous ads that some sites employ (auto-playing videos, those absurd scroll-by ads, etc.) that a lot of companies are willing to drastically degrade their user experience to profit. Who's to say that companies won't take 10% of your CPU, or 20%? Let's universalize this practice. 1% CPU usage in each of 25 tabs begins to seriously degrade the experience and waste tremendous amounts of battery life.

In fact, I'd say that it's only financially tenable to hijack larger proportions of one's CPU. In order for access to 1% CPU usage of an entire site's user base to be economical compared to cloud computing options, this form of computation would either need to be ridiculously cheap or offer a massive user base with untold devices in the computing apparatus. It just doesn't make sense in most scenarios.

This practice is deplorable.

It presumes that individuals have infinite electrical and computational resources, which is utterly false. This sort of computation is inherently going to degrade the functionality of computers, and will severely impact the quality of browsing on resource-constrained devices like Chromebooks (which is what I'm writing this on) while siphoning resources from me, wasting my time and money. It's this sort of degradation that compels people to use ad blockers. Excessive and superfluous resource use ruins the web.

Doing this surreptitiously as he suggests is outright predatory and is altogether reprehensible.

I don't believe that I've ever clicked on a text ad. (That is to say, I had never clicked on one prior to starting using an ad blocker two years ago.)

If I'm attempting to research a product or product category, I'll go to an aggregator like Gdgt or an editorial site like The Wirecutter.

I can't comprehend why one would ever click on ads when intending to spend money. The last source I would ever trust to recommend how I spend my money is an advertising platform.

This product appears to be decently-executed, but the same can be said about most RSS readers. Frankly, this looks identical in both aesthetic and functionality to the dozens of other services that are attempting to supplant Reader. Feedly and Digg reader already offer this product for free. Fever, Feedspot et al. offer novel idiosyncrasies that cater to niche markets. (And "we want to be sustainable" is not a unique justification. There are a myriad of other services offering the same appeal.)

You've made a great product, but so has everyone else. Why is kouio unique, and why does it warrant $5 per month?

That's because game pricing operates under the cartel model.

This is because the market standard was and is $50. It's of no surprise that developers are reticent to pay inflated prices that aren't in line with comparable products.

If everyone else in town is selling coffee for $4 per cup, even the rich people won't patronize a store selling it for $5.

This is my thought exactly, and made me immediately suspicious of the article's analysis.

This sort of incoherence really isn't unexpected, considering that Lorem Ipsum is not a piece of coherent text, but rather a series of sentence fragments and even fragments of words.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum

It was discussed in The Secret Life of Pronouns by James Pennebaker (Although I only read about his finding in an interview in HBR). A few of his most salient points are explained in this article: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201108/the-is-have-i....

There is a positive correlation between frequency of use of personal pronouns and of insecurity and inferiority.

This sort of inferiority can manifest itself structurally, eg. an army private vs. a captain, or individually, eg. insecurity and conceit. Based on the sheer volume of personal pronouns, it is clear that he is being subjected to a sort of myopia, and that he can't look at the issue objectively.

Removing oneself from the situation can be a valuable tool used to create objectivity, and one that this person has not attempted to employ.

If self-employment is merely a "new boss," then why isn't self-sufficiency? Instead of relying upon the highly-developed apparatuses that society has created that enable one to achieve homeostasis and proceed through life, he is going to "indenture" himself to his bodily needs, creating far more work than in necessary. Is it better to be a "servant" to another than to be a "servant" to oneself? His point is incoherent.

Secondly, he presents this notion of a foundationally-flawed and perverse system, and asserts that he is going to leave it, without presenting an alternative. Suppose that one does reject society and become entirely self-sufficient. Then what? He appears to have no ultimate objective nor any motive other than disillusionment with the system. What occurs after he quits his job and builds a cabin in the woods? I'd rather be a servant to society where I know that I at least have nominal objectives and a context in which to live my life, than abandon everything and hope that a life of solitude (or whatever he intends to pursue, he was pretty ambiguous) is preferable to society.

His plan doesn't seem well-devised, and his explanation offers essentially nothing. Just because social arrangements in society are sub-optimal does not mean that abandoning everything is preferable, or even tenable.

While this sort of exploitation is egregious, I think that part of the responsibility lies with the employee. At the end of the day, the company is simply using the employee's labor to further its own ends and enrich its shareholders. In the same way that one would hire an accountant to minimize their tax burden or clip coupons to save money at the grocery store, a company will go out of their way to pay as little as possible for labor. The idea of trying to maximize value is certainly nothing new. What more do you expect?

Ultimately, one can only expect companies to do what is in their best interest, which is often antithetical to the employee's interests. One has to take responsibility and ensure that they get paid fairly. The employers certainly won't.

>risk-seeking, ambitious, 19-year old

The article isn't explicitly directed at "risk-seekers," but merely at ambitious people. It's incorrect to conflate the two. Ambition can just easily manifest itself as a desire to seek a large salary, climb the corporate hierarchy, and seek a nice lifestyle. As a member of the cohort at which this piece was directed, I don't know why everyone assumes that we want to expose ourselves to risk, or why everyone asserts that we ought to.

Why does everyone exhort the necessity of risking everything in an attempt to change the world? What is so bad about simply pursuing a nice life?

Besides merely being an offhanded dismissal of Microsoft employees, it operates under the presumption 1) salary is a factor that can be disregarded by people and 2) high salary is negatively correlated with exposure to smart people.

In the case of the former, the author is clearly myopic. One needs money to live, and the majority of technology companies reside in cities in which the cost of living is substantially higher than the mean. I'm not sure that it's fiscally tenable to exit school with tens of thousands in debt while being subjected to a massively inflated cost of living, and go right into taking a below-average salary at a startup. If anything, one should take a job at an established company, pay off their debt, then take on risk.

In the case of the latter, the author is simply being needlessly dismissive and arrogant. Large companies host hundreds of great engineers and do incredibly meaningful work. Frankly, Microsoft is one of the strongest innovators in the market at the moment. Even if one isn't constructing the most alluring product, one can at least take pride in the fact that they are working on a product with a scope many orders of magnitude larger than most startups. Working on Windows might not be the captivating notion, but it is still meaningful to tens of millions of users.