Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 317 posts

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#271

Post by ezoe »

WalterBright wrote: post #55

Pricing things can be strange. Back in the old Zortech days, we included full library source for free with the compiler. Library source wasn't even available for other compilers. Nobody particularly cared that we did that, and it was never mentioned in compiler reviews in the press. One day, Borland decided to package partial (not including floating point) library source for their compiler as a separate product. The…

That's hilarious. I wonder D's adoption and share was changed now if it was free back then. It might be used instead of Go or Rust today.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#272

Post by eru »

unnouinceput wrote: post #262
bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a rare client who pays more than the agreed-upon price.

You're wrong. I have plenty of clients that seeing my efforts in putting that extra-mile for their project paid a bonus as well. But that's because I have good communication with them and plenty of times when they need it something fast I simply code it in front of their eyes instead of "let me see these requests and I get back to you". That's the difference between a senior developer and a junior one.

Well, bobbylarrybobby only said rare. Not 'non-existent'.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#273

Post by ezoe »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #268
marktangotango wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A looong time ago I worked at a comic book store and the owner had a table of freebies at the front of the store. The distributors were always sending marketing material with cool artwork, so instead of throwing it in the trash when it piled up, he figured why not give it away? No one touched it. Then he started packaging it into $5 “grab bags”. That crap was gone in a week. The lesson? “You can’t give shit away, but…

People do value things by what they pay. I saw this when I was consulting, pushing up my prices resulted in more respect and better treatment.

"Since I paid a lot of money on this consultant, his advice better be good. No it must be good otherwise I'm wasting my money."

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#274

Post by piva00 »

eaenki wrote: post #175
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting comment! I have this relatively unconventional theory that, if we use automation just right and make the cost of food production, delivery, and preparation low enough, and also do so where ownership of the machinery is distributed throughout society, that we could make it a social norm to give anyone who needs it free food. All in a voluntary system. We just need to make the actual cost of the whole suppl…

That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. Not only it shows a complete lack of understanding about agriculture (e.g a cheeseburger sells $1 but just the water would cost more than that if not subsidized -> which leads to water waste which is scarce) but just think about it... agriculture itself is the original sin of humanity, which lead to the few great things that humanity built but also to the destruction of this pla…

Not if it was an intensive kind of agriculture, something similar to Dutch glasshouses but in a much more sustainable and advanced level.

Don't constrain your imagination to the current reality...

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#275

Post by WalterBright »

ezoe wrote: post #271
WalterBright wrote: post #55

Pricing things can be strange. Back in the old Zortech days, we included full library source for free with the compiler. Library source wasn't even available for other compilers. Nobody particularly cared that we did that, and it was never mentioned in compiler reviews in the press. One day, Borland decided to package partial (not including floating point) library source for their compiler as a separate product. The…

That's hilarious. I wonder D's adoption and share was changed now if it was free back then. It might be used instead of Go or Rust today.

I do wish I'd come up with D in the 1980's.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#276

Post by MaxBarraclough »

1123581321 wrote: post #206
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A similar thing happens in the podcasting space. It's a pity it's still quite inconvenient to make micropayments. If I could make a single click to pay a penny for access to a single article, I imagine I'd do so frequently.

You would need to pay quite a bit more to make this viable for most publications. The ballpark formula is the issue price divided by the number of articles the average reader wants to read enough to pay anything . For example, a WSJ is $4, so if readers wanted to read ten articles, they should charge 40-50 cents for them. A more realistic price might be $1-2/article since the median reader won’t be that interested. P…

I'm thinking of what happens when HackerNews links to a New York Times article. People hit the paywall, so someone posts a workaround. NYT get $0.

If there were an extremely convenient way to pay a few pennies for access (a price low enough that I wouldn't think twice), they'd be making something, at least. I'm not about to go through the hassle and cost of subscribing for a month, to access a single article, and neither is anyone else here.

I understand that this 'one shot' model isn't necessarily representative of how their website is generally used, of course.

> a WSJ is $4, so if readers wanted to read ten articles, they should charge 40-50 cents for them.

For a physical copy.

Disregarding current promotional prices, The Guardian charge £12/month for a digital subscription. New York Times is £8 for 4 weeks. Not sure how many articles the typical reader gets through though, or how that should inform our thinking here.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#277

Post by Chris2048 »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #241
marktangotango wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A looong time ago I worked at a comic book store and the owner had a table of freebies at the front of the store. The distributors were always sending marketing material with cool artwork, so instead of throwing it in the trash when it piled up, he figured why not give it away? No one touched it. Then he started packaging it into $5 “grab bags”. That crap was gone in a week. The lesson? “You can’t give shit away, but…

Recently I was moving and had some furniture ("junk") to dispose of. Calling a company to come get it was really expensive considering the stuff was effectively worthless. Posting it on Craigslist for free was useless -- no one wants your crap fo free. Posting a Craigslist ad for $20 for an otherwise free couch? Gone the next day. It's bizarre that this works, but boy, does it work.

Sometimes use "it's free" to imply "no liability" to an extreme degree, e.g. sell a couch infested with bugs.

i.e people anticipating human psychology on the seller end.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#278

Post by [deleted] »

karaterobot wrote: post #69

I didn't know about the Red Cross and its donuts. The example I've always used for this is helping a friend move. If the friend asks "hey, will you help me move? I'm buying pizza and beer afterwards!" I will more than likely say yes, even though I can buy my own pizza and beer. If they instead say "hey, will you help me move? I'll pay you $21.58 for your time," I'd probably bristle. Even though that might be the equi…

[deleted]

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#279

Post by yoshyosh »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #167
boulos wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In behavioral economics that’s sometimes referred to as “social norms versus market norms” [first useful link, 1]. The example given (I think it’s via Ariely) is that you wouldn’t pay your friend to have cooked you dinner. This is the same thing: there’s social contract value in helping your friend out, and they’re showing appreciation with a token . In fact, if you friend offers you more money than the pizza and bee…

Interesting comment! I have this relatively unconventional theory that, if we use automation just right and make the cost of food production, delivery, and preparation low enough, and also do so where ownership of the machinery is distributed throughout society, that we could make it a social norm to give anyone who needs it free food. All in a voluntary system. We just need to make the actual cost of the whole suppl…

Pretty cool concept you should write more about this. Do you have any other examples of companies that give away their IP but still thrive in the physical or digital world? Will definitely check out Prusa Research. I've always wondered if a restaurant could be built upon a similar concept, teaching people how to recreate it's foods but being so cheap and accessible that the cost of creating it yourself outweighs just buying it.

Re: The Cost of Free Doughnuts: 70 Years of Regret

#280

Post by ptman »

vkou wrote: post #233
ntr-- wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When a team's workload falls by 50%, there's rarely a magical stream of "useful work" that arises to replace it with. Yes, there is. It's known as "addressing technical debt".

Yes, but what's the customer revenue gain from it?

not revenue gain, but https://understandlegacycode.com/blog/5-arguments-to-make-ma...
Post reply on HN