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How credit cards make money

bam.kalzumeus.com

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Re: How credit cards make money

#3
> It’s often forgotten, but prior to credit cards, many Main Street retailers like e.g. pharmacies maintained hundreds or thousands of credit accounts for customers individually, necessitating their own back offices, accounting, and collections headache.

This article is a great history of how the modern credit card came into being https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/19...

Re: How credit cards make money

#5
post #2

Flagging to remove unnecessary author name in title.

but... i like this author? when i see patio11 or Patrick McKenzie's name in a submission title or submitter field, i know that i am going to be reading some good writing today.

The HN convention is for titles to generally very closely track original titles unless those are misleading/clickbaity/etc, and assume that HNers have the domain name to author map reasonably cached.

(Thanks for the praise! Hope to continue earning it.)

Re: How credit cards make money

#6
post #2

Flagging to remove unnecessary author name in title.

but... i like this author? when i see patio11 or Patrick McKenzie's name in a submission title or submitter field, i know that i am going to be reading some good writing today.

HN's staying power comes from its highly conservative approach to website design but I agree that there are some articles that would greatly benefit from having their author's names attached to them.

Re: How credit cards make money

#7
post #2

Flagging to remove unnecessary author name in title.

but... i like this author? when i see patio11 or Patrick McKenzie's name in a submission title or submitter field, i know that i am going to be reading some good writing today.

Me too. However, including some author's names and not others is inherently an editorializing decision and I'd prefer to keep the editorializing out of headlines. I didn't flag it, but do prefer that the original headline stays (which is "How credit cards make money", not "Credit cards make money" anyway)

In this case, the domain is a clear cue to me.

Re: How credit cards make money

#8
post #2

Flagging to remove unnecessary author name in title.

but... i like this author? when i see patio11 or Patrick McKenzie's name in a submission title or submitter field, i know that i am going to be reading some good writing today.

1. It's not general practice at HN to put the author in the title, unless it really changes how you interpret the title. For example, you might submit Principia Mathematica (Bertrand Russell) if you think there's a real risk people might confuse it with Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Issac Newton.

2. kalzumeus.com is patio11's personal domain, so it's even less necessary to put the author in the title.

Re: How credit cards make money

#9
I'm happy to answer any questions or take suggestions for future issues if you have them, HN.

Repeating something I've said before: this is the 3rd issue of a weekly newsletter, and its going to come out on every Friday for the foreseeable future. As someone who has spent more than 10 years here, I'm keenly sensitive to HN's desire to not have the front page be as predictable as my new shipping cadence. I'd appreciate if folks could be selective in submitting these; in prior years I'd space out my essays to avoid wearing out my welcome but that's difficult to do with a newsletter that is open-to-the-public.

Re: How credit cards make money

#10
post #2

Flagging to remove unnecessary author name in title.

but... i like this author? when i see patio11 or Patrick McKenzie's name in a submission title or submitter field, i know that i am going to be reading some good writing today.

I think there is a risk of developing a superstar cult if the authors name is in the title. I also don’t like titles like “Harvard scientists have found X”. Suddenly the article gets more credibility because if “Harvard”. Although in reality the big name institutions are putting out as much BS as everybody else.
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