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The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)

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Re: The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)

#161

Post by umziehennachbar »

vfdfv wrote: post #137
umziehennachbar wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what does that mean? Please describe

Give your users something like "first two weeks free", which will annoy the fraudsters who want the charge to go through immediately.

but then doesn't that require you to hold onto the credit card details to process two weeks later. One of the attractive features of stripe is that you don't store cc details on your system but rather they get passed on directly to Stripe. if you implement a delay, you have to hold the credit card to charge later

Re: The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)

#162

Post by JoeAltmaier »

hiou wrote: post #135
ChuckMcM wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a good read, but there was a different mechanism at work for me. When I do something for free, and someone complains about it or finds it wanting, it does not bother me. Sort of like "Double your money back on Free Advice you don't like." But when I am being paid to provide the thing I am providing, a big sense of my wanting to make sure they are getting their value kicks in, and since I undervalue my time t…

I find this so interesting as I have always felt if someone is paying me I make sure to give them exactly what they paid for and not a bit more. A market economy does not allow me generosity. When I'm writing code for myself or others the upside feels boundless as appreciation and enjoyment are much more difficult to quantify.

I worked differently as a contractor. I over-delivered by a little, especially if it was easy to do. By delivering code on time plus a feature or mockup of the next stage, I often got a follow-on contract. Its like the novels that end with "Here's a chapter from their next book!"

Re: The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)

#163

Post by jessaustin »

Killswitch wrote: post #125
jessaustin wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shitheads who are testing stolen cards will probably skip the free tier so they can, ahem, test their stolen cards.

Like mentioned above, when you sign up with the service, you're giving the card info and then you're automatically enrolled in a 2 week trial that will automatically charge afterwords. This should suffice. I don't think they'll wait 2 weeks for the charge to go through. You can automate the process of disabling charges to if nothing happens. Say 2 days before the charge is about to happen, you do an automated audit o…

Thanks, that makes sense.

Re: The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)

#164

Post by pluma »

wobbleblob wrote: post #148
PythonicAlpha wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think, that so many (at least educated) people in the EU believe that ... but the problem is (and I saw evidence for that again and again), that the politicians like to talk about the "Founder culture" or that they want to aid smaller businesses ... but in fact, they do the absolute opposite. I see that, because at least in Germany (where it is very chic in the political class to talk how to aid smaller busin…

I know two people who tried to start a business in Germany and failed, not because of the EU but because of domestic, German rules. One tried to start some kind of innovative form of pharmacy (the details weren't clear to me), but found himself unable to join the pharmacy guild, and apparently it is illegal to start a business without joining the guild. The other tried to start a bed & breakfast business, but the 'br…

Yes, all professions are regulated. Sadly this has less to do with an overzealous government and more with lobbies and accidents of history.

Guilds used to rule all professions in the middle ages and a lot of the regulations are sadly derived from that. This means you can't do certain things without the proper certifications (e.g. if you're a licensed car mechanic or "KFZ-Mechatroniker" that doesn't mean you're also allowed to do paint jobs because for that you'd need to be a licensed "Lackierer").

Likewise, pharmacies and pharmaceuticals in general are heavily regulated, especially with regard to prescription drugs. I think online pharmacies only became legal quite recently (previously most of them operated out of other EU countries, effectively creating a grey market with all the problems that entails for the customers).

What killed your friend's B & B idea was likely the strict requirements for food safety. It's practically impossible to use private kitchens to produce commercial food products and commercial kitchens have to conform to various rules (plus the employees working in them have to obtain the necessary certificates). IMO this is a good thing, but it can of course make easy things (like serving a breakfast in a single bedroom B & B) very difficult.

The huge difference between the US and Germany is that in Germany suing for damages results in compensations that are a fraction of what you see in the US. But at the same time companies are more likely to run into trouble with the authorities before they can harm you and even if you end up with permanent injuries the public healthcare covers them in most cases -- i.e. you're less likely to be harmed and the economic damage of that harm is likely considerably smaller.

But as an employer I have to say some of the regulations, laws and restrictions can be incredibly tedious and annoying. Especially if you're running a very small business.

Re: The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)

#165

Post by pluma »

petercooper wrote: post #87

I pay for Gmail, because I need real business email accounts. Did I get lucky with being one of the early Apps for Your Domain users? We don't pay a bean for our company's Gmail accounts but seem to get most of the features (no ads, custom domain, etc).

You've been grandfathered (i.e. you got lucky and Google decided to uphold the original terms you signed up on).

Frankly, as a European I don't find the paid version worth the price tag (which can be hefty if you have a lot of freelancers working for you). Yes, it's Google Apps, so if you use the entire stack you can avoid the cost of a lot of additional services, but at the same time that means you need to be okay with storing all your confidential data with Google.

But for me the deal-breaker was the way e-mail accounts work when using the same Google Apps for Business account with multiple domains. At least when I evaluated it, there was no way to define aliases per-domain. So if you add both domain-a.example and domain-b.example and want contact@domain-a.example to go to a different person than contact@domain-b.example -- no dice. Also if you want to be able to receive e-mails on firstname.lastname@domain-a.example but not firstname.lastname@domain-b.example, again: not a chance. I'm not sure whether this has changed since then, but this is why I took my business to Fastmail and other isolated services.

Re: The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)

#166

Post by PythonicAlpha »

wobbleblob wrote: post #157
maze-le wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In germany there is a saying: "If you work independently, you are always with one foot in jail". It is not unreasonable either, because I know of accountants and laywers (ie: people who do this all the time) who sometimes get lost in the jungle of regulations and decrees (European, National, Subnational, Communal, Branch of work, Union/Worker-regulations etc.). It is also no uncommon for some regulations, depending o…

Look across your north western border. Many people, especially in the tech and creative industries, work as freelancers there. As long as you have no employees other than yourself, it is made very easy.

When you look over the borders, maybe (can you be a little more specific, btw?). In Germany, being a freelancer can be a big hassle, again! There is currently again a hunt for so called "Scheinselbstaendige" (Fictious-self-employed) and when they catch you (even when you are really self-employed, they just don't agree with you) you can be held liable for it and have to pay huge compensations. It is even worse, because there are different degrees of it and the situation is every time different. So they have different ways to hold you liable for something, you have not done.

Here a link from a German organization of self-employed people that informs about the current situation and what is planned (it is planned to worsen the situation): (sorry, only in German)

http://www.vgsd.de/kampagne-scheinselbststaendigkeit/

The big corporations, of course, which really use different models to betray the social system and their employed people, they have the lawyers and the tricks to come away with it. And again, they are the reason for this hunt ... because they are searching for ways to cut costs -- the state tries to close the holes that make such things possible -- but currently the only people they hurt, are those that are innocent, because the big corporations are always ahead of the game. And additionally I am not sure, if the politicians are really willing to hurt the real big players, because those have so much power -- so they merely show "actionism" and make laws that are ineffective or even hurt innocent people.

At the end (if by intention or just stupidity), they hurt the country ... but we Germans still vote for those people!

Re: The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)

#167

Post by Lawtonfogle »

wobbleblob wrote: post #139
Lawtonfogle wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's a hostile piece of regulation which very severely disincentivize you from starting a business Would this fall under regulatory capture? I'm not sure to what extent existing international businesses worked to get this established.

The intention with EU regulations like these is usually to prevent a 'race to the bottom' as they call it. They're turning the EU into a common market without internal trade barriers, but when you do that, what happens when one country has a VAT of 15% and another of 25%? Businesses that can move, will move (administratively) to the 15% country, forcing all countries to lower their VAT to the lowest level. You can ar…

>The intention with EU regulations like these is

Regulatory capture is almost always given some reason behind it. As such when determining if something was regulatory capture, the stated reasoning behind it is ignored, which is why I was asking to what extent did multinational organizations influence this decision.

Re: The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)

#168

Post by artursapek »

umziehennachbar wrote: post #161
vfdfv wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give your users something like "first two weeks free", which will annoy the fraudsters who want the charge to go through immediately.

but then doesn't that require you to hold onto the credit card details to process two weeks later. One of the attractive features of stripe is that you don't store cc details on your system but rather they get passed on directly to Stripe. if you implement a delay, you have to hold the credit card to charge later

No, you tokenize the card through Stripe immediately and then charge the token 2 weeks later. You don't have to hold on to the card details.

Re: The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)

#169

Post by wobbleblob »

PythonicAlpha wrote: post #166
wobbleblob wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look across your north western border. Many people, especially in the tech and creative industries, work as freelancers there. As long as you have no employees other than yourself, it is made very easy.

When you look over the borders, maybe (can you be a little more specific, btw?). In Germany, being a freelancer can be a big hassle, again! There is currently again a hunt for so called "Scheinselbstaendige" (Fictious-self-employed) and when they catch you (even when you are really self-employed, they just don't agree with you) you can be held liable for it and have to pay huge compensations. It is even worse, becaus…

I thought north western border was specific enough. It's a smaller, less formal, less regulated copy. The only difficulty I can think of is that you have to prove you worked for more than one customer during a fiscal year if you want to make use of the tax deductions for the self employed.

Re: The toxic side of free – how I lost the love for my side project (part 4)

#170

Post by vfdfv »

umziehennachbar wrote: post #161
vfdfv wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give your users something like "first two weeks free", which will annoy the fraudsters who want the charge to go through immediately.

but then doesn't that require you to hold onto the credit card details to process two weeks later. One of the attractive features of stripe is that you don't store cc details on your system but rather they get passed on directly to Stripe. if you implement a delay, you have to hold the credit card to charge later

It looks like Stripe can defer payment for 7 days:

https://stripe.com/blog/auth-capture

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