vintageseltzer

The goal of law firms is to maximize billable hours and make it difficult for non-lawyers to conduct legal work. Working efficiently is not the goal at all.

Isn't the massive devaluation of the lira over that time period the main factor?

Soaking lentils (and other legumes like chickpeas) cuts cooking time by about half.

A big reason for the doom and gloom narrative that you constantly hear in the US is government-media propaganda efforts to manufacture citizens' consent for constant war in order to fuel the military-industrial complex. This has been happening since at least the 50s.

This kind of thinking led to Juicero.

How long did it take you get to that point?

I read this article when it was first published and was very moved. I was able to donate to him here, if you are interested: https://www.gofundme.com/bzeek/

Consider this: if you were trying to park your money somewhere safe, like a bank, and they said that in order to make a deposit you had to pay a 15% non-refundable fee, wouldn't you look elsewhere, especially if it was a $2M deposit?

Have you considered working remotely? There are a lot more remote positions available these days than you may think.

I often wonder why an open-source advertising system (like a self-hosted AdWords) hasn't caught on.

When it comes to ads on my site, I'd love to cut out the middle man and be able to manage my own clients, content, tracking and payments, all served from my own domain.

I've seen a few sites managing this on their own, and the result has been great: well-targeted, nicely-designed ads that the site owners and advertisers stand behind. It definitely takes more work, but I don't see anything wrong with that.

May I ask: if one is not "famous" (i.e. popular), why should one expect their site to be profitable from ads alone?

If my limited edition, 250-prints-per-month 'zine isn't making money, is that the advertising industry's fault, or is there an issue with my expectations?

People ask the "how do we fix dwindling ad-based revenue" question all the time. The answer is clear, it's just not what people want to hear: metered paywalls or a subscription model (or, you know, selling an actual product / service).

The inevitable response to that is, 'but I don't make enough money off of that.'

Well, there you go! To me, that's where it should end. You don't have enough of a readership to support your website as-is. That means you can continue doing it as a labor of love, scale it down to something you can manage and that is profitable, or just, well, accept that your site isn't as great as you thought it was, and that you won't be making as much money off of it as you thought.

Isn't this basic market forces at work? I have a suspicion that even if 50% of these sites bloated with ads and deceptive, click-bait content were to die, society as a whole would actually be much better off, and the efforts of people building these kinds of sites and expecting a return would be better directed elsewhere.

After 15 years of doing so, I can no longer tell people that the quality of Apple's products are worth the cost.

I waited three years to upgrade from my late-2013 MBP and I see no improvements of value in the new version.

The new MBPs have seemingly worse battery life, the RAM is the same, ports I use every day are gone, and now their "portable" laptop requires you to carry around a bunch of adapters and wires. The touch bar is a naked marketing ploy. Might as well be straight out of the mid-2000s Microsoft playbook.

I work at a "unicorn" and I can tell you that the majority of developers eligible for new machines are delaying upgrades or getting a Surface. I'd do the same if not for homebrew.

I feel the same about their phone line. I've been praying my iPhone 5 continues to last because I have no interest in paying more money for their flimsier successors and then paying a tax to buy new headphones.

I am also a shareholder and am quite concerned. The Apple Watch is a joke. Their desktop machines, monitors and routers are stale, obsolete and overpriced.

Usually I like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it's clear they have lost their way and the marketers have won. What is their leadership thinking? How long until talent starts to migrate out?

Thank you for responding. The parent comment has to be one of the worst HN comments I have ever read.

It is important that people who exaggerate and lie are held accountable for their words.

No, it's the other way around — the private industry's self-driving car technology is based on research funded and carried out by the military-industrial complex. See: Uber's takeover of the CMU robotics lab (NREC).

I used to believe that, but yeah, that hasn't happened and is not likely to, because the real world does not operate anywhere close to an efficient market.

Instead, those with the means of production have hoarded the benefits. Despite all of our technological progress after the American industrial revolution, we are working more hours and earning less as a whole. Despite record profits, companies are not increasing wages and prices are not decreasing for anything except cheap, low-quality, mass-market consumer goods.

See: trickle down economics.

I don't have first-hand experience, but I would guess it would be the same reason most people do: (1) when you roll your own CMS, you have to build all of the features your editors and designers request yourself, the scope of which people tend to underestimate significantly and (2) when you use a hosted solution, you can't customize the site to be exactly the way you want it to be — WordPress offers self-hosting and full customization.

Despite its warts and un-sexy image, WordPress just works for most people's needs when it comes to a simple blog, has a wide range of plugins that solve most anything someone would need from a CMS, can be truly customized, and allows them to move on and spend time on more important things.

Daily — for charging and tethering on the go.

I have lost hope in the future.

Guantanamo is still open, the NSA is as powerful as ever, a partisan puppet has been installed at the CIA, and Trump has all of these tools at his disposable.

The UK just codified all of their past illegal surveillance activities.

I don't think I will have children.

You may be interested in: https://www.codementor.io/

I have personally never used it and am unaffiliated with it, but a friend suggested it and has found it useful. He explained it to me as a dedicated, personal Stack Overflow.

Are there female and / or gay people in your life whose rights matter to you?

I realize they have enough applicants not to care, but constantly reading this kind of thing about Google makes me never want to apply to work there.

It sounds like they took the worst parts of a startup, graduate research lab, corporation and bank and put them all together, but they have enough advertising $ that it doesn't really matter.

> "Survivorship bias" I hear you say.

I understand your sentiment, and have felt the same way. I made the same bets on Apple, Tesla and Amazon at around the same time and beat the market. I think the issue is — can you replicate that for the next 30+ years? I don't think I can.

> The Olympics are truly not about money for the athletes. And indeed, they cannot be.

> The rest of the athletes are there because they love the competition. And there's nothing wrong with that! It's truly a win-win that hundreds of athletes are living out their dreams by competing for a gold medal in canoeing or archery or what-have-you, and that somebody will even be watching them do it.

This line of argument is what enables corporations, advertisers and governments to exploit athletes and the tax-payers of host countries to the tune of billions every year. Same as how the NCAA exploits college athletics.

> ((This is also why NBA players earn by far the highest salaries among U.S. athletes - basketball allows for much more player/fan connection than any other major sport.))

The highest salaries among U.S. athletes are earned by baseball players, and it's not even close: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_sports_contrac...

Not to be rude, but are you kidding?

HN has provided you with a workaround, WSJ has provided you with free content, and that is not enough?

How about signing up for the WSJ?

> ... it's not about gobbling together the right tools and do some plumbing to make it work. No, it's using tools to craft a work of art. Anyone not recognizing this is an inferior software developer by definition ...

So — if you don't prioritize your ego and personal sense of artistry over accomplishing the task, you are an inferior developer? I would never want a person like this on my team.

> we've hit the end of ad-supported startups.

How about ad-supported, one-or-two-person operations with good traffic? Is advertising still a viable revenue model for something like that?

That's not the nicest way to ask for additional information, but see:

https://panopticlick.eff.org/about#browser-fingerprinting

> The site you are visiting may choose to analyze your browser using JavaScript, Flash and other methods (just like Panopticlick does). It may look for what types of fonts you have installed, the language you’ve set, the add-ons you’ve installed, and other factors. The site may then create a type of profile of you, tied to this pattern of characteristics associated with your browser, rather than tied to a specific tracking cookie.

That was the feeling I got from the startup community about ten years ago — lots more bootstrapped, single-person, not-so-sexy startups.

These days, since startups are much more fashionable, it feels like it's the majority of startups are all about getting VC funding and ran by much more "idea" people.

1. Many ad networks do not support serving over HTTPS. 2. Serving HTTP ads only your HTTPS-only site will show scary mixed-content warnings in many browsers, driving away users.