Why I Spent $100k to Fight a $10k Small Claims Lawsuit - <AUTHOR> http://joelx.com/why-i-spent-100k-to-fight-a-10k-small-claims-lawsuit/12050/ <comment><USER2> My years of experience running service businesses has taught me that my company should not act like a bank. Instead we learned how to leverage a Factoring Company when deciding if there was any risk when taking on new clients. Factoring Companies work with banks to do credit checks on your prospective clients and provide you with a credit limit and term period of which they think it's safe to do work with them.

Service companies shouldn't act like a bank and lend money (service) to companies because we aren't equipped with tools to do it so we get burned as easy targets. The Factoring Company can do that for you and they report unpaid debts to all the major credit agencies for you. You'll very rarely regret not paying XYZ, Inc. the small service company, you'll probably regret not paying a factoring company that works with a bank like Wells Fargo for debt you signed up for. Oh and a factoring company that works with big banks like Wells Fargo will a lot more attorneys than XYZ, Inc. the small service company will ever dream of having.

I used these guys: [https://www.capitalcredit.com](https://www.capitalcredit.com)

They took us on as a client when we got to about $40k/month in revenue. Not sure if that's still where they start. They were a lot more economical than the trendy ones that advertise on Facebook though.

<comment><USER3> i looked into factoring companies myself. I got 3 quotes and they were all an absolutely terrible deal. This is a quote i got from one of the companies, copied verbatim from the email they sent me, they were all around the same terms:

      Based on a turnover through the facility of £200,000:
      Full service Invoice Factoring – including credit control and cash allocation
      £35,000 facility review limit
      Prepayment of 75% against invoices
      12 month contract with 3 months' notice
      Service fee – 3.5% of invoices placed through the facility,
      subject to a minimum monthly fee of £470 (the higher of these two will be taken as the monthly fee)
      Discount fee - (cost of money) – 5.5% above base rate (0.5%).
      This is an annualised fee and based on an average borrowing of £20k would be £100 per month
      Set up fee – £350
      Annual renewal fee - £350
      Security: We would take a bond and floating charge and would request a director's
      guarantee of 20% of the facility review limit.

I decided it wasnt worth it.

<comment><USER4> Please don't use two spaces to blockquote text. It's broken on mobile. Please stick to the > convention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In my company's contract, we limit our liability to the amount paid by the client. Without a liability limitation clause in the contract, you're taking on a potentially unlimited amount of liability in each project. It's not worth the risk. A few good paragraphs in the contract make all of the difference in the world. If you don't have a liability limiting clause, you should.

Also, this client engagement started going wrong from the very beginning, when the team allowed so many changes for free, and even launched the website without final payment.

I'm all in favor of over-delivering -- and I probably also would have fixed the problematic PSDs for free -- but 294 hours of work on a 116 hour project, launching the website without the required final payment, and then continuing to do work is way too much.

<comment><USER6> _In my company 's contract, we limit our liability to the amount paid by the client._

The amount paid by the client in this case was $12k so that wouldn't have changed anything except perhaps the scary lawyer letter (which they successfully deflected).

 _launched the website without final payment_

This was perhaps the biggest mistake here. It would have been much better to fire the client: "OK, we're done here. You're fired. We're keeping your deposit, ceasing work and not launching your site."

<comment><USER7> How do you fire a client? What's your contract clause read that allows this? The challenge (as I see it), is that if you're contracted to perform X work for Y cost, if you 'fire' the client, you're the one breaching the contract and thus liable for a claim? What language do you use to 'fire' the client?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "However, in the second trial the small claims cap of $10,000 is removed and the judge can potentially award much more money in damages to the plaintiff."

This is wrong. $10,000 is the absolute damages cap in small claims court and the small claims appeal (which is really just a new trial). See California Code of Civil Procedure Section 116.220 and 116.221. The exact same claim is simply heard in front of a new judicial officer. It is not possible to amend the claim to add more damages in the appeal. See California Code of Civil Procedure Section 116.770(d).

A judge could award another $1000 but only if the appeal was frivilous. See California Code of Civil Procedure 116.790. This happens rarely.

* I'm a CA licensed attorney and just happened to attend the temporary judge small claims training just a couple weeks ago.

<comment><USER9> > * I'm a CA licensed attorney and just happened to attend the temporary judge > small claims training just a couple weeks ago.

Fair to assume this is not legal advice to the OP (or anyone), then?

<comment><USER10> Factual statements of judicial systems and procedures (e.g. "a judge can find someone in contempt of court") is very different to legal advice ("a judge will likely find you in contempt of court").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Always show up in court if you are being sued. If no one shows up at all for one side, they lose. He sent his assistant, but I doubt that made the judge happy. That's probably the mistake that cost him 100k of his and his employees' time.

<comment><USER12> > Always show up in court if you are being sued

THIS!

If nothing else, its a sign of respect.

The judge doesn't know the history, doesn't know the background. He knows there are two parties that don't agree.

He sees one side prepared, he sees the otherside who sends their assistant.

What would you do if you were the judge?

<comment><USER13> > What would you do if you were the judge?

My job, which includes attempting to determine the facts and deliver a just decision, instead of making a reality-show-style popularity contest out of it.

<comment><USER14> Credibility is part of judgment.

The claim was that he didn't fully hold up his end of the contract. This isn't a criminal case with forensics; this is small claims with a lot of he-said, she-sad.

Not dodging court lends credibility to your side.

<comment><USER15> Attending certainly would add credibility, but it seems unconscionable that the judge wouldn't even let the assistant present their defense at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The abundance of comments here calling out all the author's mistakes is ... strange. My reading of the post is that the author is very aware of what could have been done better. I also think it's obvious to anyone what the missteps were.

Truth is, we all have these tales. We've all made these "blunders". What this article is about is not "Why I Let An Abusive Client Rob Me", it's an explanation of why this small business owner expended his/her own time and money to help fight injustice, and how our court system allows such injustice. Comments about what the author did wrong in their interaction with a client is off-topic, in my opinion.

Having also been on the receiving end of a frivolous lawsuit, my heart goes out to the author. May your fingernails survive until the notice from the judge arrives.

<comment><USER17> > Truth is, we all have these tales. We've all made these "blunders".

Why are you so sure of this? Don't you think it is possible others have been smarter and have avoided making these kinds of mistakes?

<comment><USER18> Just because you understand how to serialize a btree doesn't mean you know how the legal system works, and assume it should be fair.

<comment><USER17> Sure but you don't let a client run up a huge tab, throw in a bunch of hours for free then get upset when it all blows up in your face. Require partial payment up front and then sick to your own rules. Otherwise you are disrespecting you own business and that leads to others doing the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Did the contract in question have copyright to the work only transfer upon payment in full? That is a key piece of leverage that you should include in every contract. This way if the client continues to use the code you can inform them that it is copyright infringement, potentially send the web host a DMCA takedown notice, or have your lawyer pursue them for copyright infringement.

That said, the "self-help" takedown sounded problematic -- much better to have the option of a copyright infringement claim.

If a client pushes back on this provision you can explain that you are 100% insistent but it only comes into question if they don't pay -- that has resolved all objections in my experience, and if they pushed further I'd treat it as a major red flag.

<comment><AUTHOR> This comment is 100% on point. I include a clause in my contracts that I own all of the work we do until payment is made in full.

It still would have been better to have not pushed the site live until the payment was made though. We have a policy for that, but the team gets a bit overeager.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> You can't avoid all conflicts with clients, but clear and constant communication that feels at first like over communication is key to prevent this kind of misunderstanding.

Here's what I've seen work with regards to client communication around scope - especially scope overruns:

1) If the scope creep is minimal (like a 15 minute task that wasn't in a bulleted list in the contract), don't even mention it. Just part of being a good business partner

2) If the scope increase will be expensive IMMEDIATELY communicate to the client that the ask is out of scope. Do this with an email, and call the client and discuss the email with them - ideally before they read it (maybe even call before sending it). It's important to have what's going on in writing, but it's easy to misunderstand email and it's also important that the client understands you are just making sure everyone is on the same page about scope. Sometimes (often) the client may disagree about what is in or out of scope, or push you to include more in the scope as a way of getting additional work for free. Regardless of how this ends up , it's better to have the conversation and understand where both parties stand before you actually perform the work.

3) If you do agree to do the work you view as beyond scope for the original price, it can be helpful to explicitly show this as a discount. In the attached article, this would look on an invoice something like:

Professional Fees : 294 hours X $103/hour = $30,413 Investment: $(18,413) Fees Due: $12,000

Pitched as an investment in the relationship and discussed frequently as it happens, this is harder (but not impossible) to be angry about.

That said, this is one of the easiest things to screw up and hardest to get right. Communication with clients is hard. Some people will never be happy.

<comment><AUTHOR> >Professional Fees : 294 hours X $103/hour = $30,413 Investment: $(18,413) Fees Due: $12,000

I REALLY like the idea of putting extra hours worked as a discount on an invoice... thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Dealing with this issue as well as other legal issues and reading multiple > books on legal issues, winning at trial, etc I think has left me with the > equivalent of half a law degree. I have lots of experience now writing > contracts, researching and preparing for a lawsuit, and arguing persuasively > in front of a judge.

After one court case? That's ... optimistic, to phrase it politely.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point. The "other legal issues" I mentioned were other lawsuits I have been through:

-A patent troll sue me a few weeks ago (got it dismissed voluntarily)

-Another client with a stronger case sue for breach of contract a year ago (I won that and got attorneys fees). This was extremely stressful as it was for big money. I read several law books to prep for this one.

-Six year ago my first salesperson sued for commissions after I fired her (she won because I didn't have a contract)

I also don't want it to look like I get in a lot of lawsuits. I have had over a thousand clients and only two ended in lawsuits. I have also had over 250 employees and thousands of contractors and have only been sued once there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> In these scenarios, I push really hard to have a Phase 1 and a Phase 2.

Everything that we agreed to is Phase 1 and everything is is Phase 2 and does not start until Phase 1 is complete, launched, and paid for.

In this case, it may not have protected him from all the crazy, but it would have reduced that 294 hours to something much smaller. And then he could have bailed on Phase 2 because the customer was an asshole.

<comment><USER7> How do you answer / respond to clients who commonly demand the addition of the new feature / gizmo / gadget as part of phase I (in this case, as part of a new website, they ask for a feature not originally scoped but desired to launch with the new site)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why didn't the author retain an attorney? If I got a demand letter for hundreds of thousands of dollars, I wouldn't trust anyone but a lawyer to help me deal with it. I certainly wouldn't send someone with even less knowledge than me.

A competent lawyer would have made very short work of this claim, would have kept the judge happy, and in the long run would have saved time and money.

The real lesson here is "know who to call and have money saved to retain them."

<comment><AUTHOR> Remember a demand letter is just a threat... It's only when you get sued that actually need an attorney (unless you want one). The attorney who sent the demand letter apparently was not willing to represent this case in civil court, hence why we ended up in small claims.

In small claims court in California you are not allowed to be represented by an attorney unfortunately.

<comment><USER23> > Remember a demand letter is just a threat... It's only when you get sued > that actually need an attorney (unless you want one). > In small claims > court in California you are not allowed to be represented by an attorney > unfortunately.

I'm sorry, Joel, but in my opinion this is just bad advice. In a case like this one, if an attorney sends you a demand letter, an attorney should respond. Yes, small claims court doesn't permit attorneys in all states, but the original letter was a demand for $250,000, which is well beyond small claims. Yes, it was a flatly spurious demand, but that doesn't make replying without an attorney the best course of action. You need an attorney any time someone opposed to you gets an attorney involved in a matter. Otherwise, you're bringing a knife to a gunfight. Sometimes you get lucky and it turns out the gun is loaded with blanks - that's what happened this time. You cannot be certain you'll be that lucky all the time, in fact, in most cases you won't be.

A competent attorney knows the law and _knows_ (not just _suspects_ ) when the other side is being crazy. The letter you originally got is, on the surface, ridiculous, but sometimes, _so is the law_. Frankly, I think responding to their demand letter with a good, well-crafted on-law-firm-letterhead reply (telling them to buzz off) would likely have made them back down, or at least settle for a total cost less than what it cost you to deal with this on your own. Lawyers know this is a game they're playing where each side cowers the other - and if the letter writer wasn't willing to represent your former clients all the way through the process, he probably knew that if his bluff was called, his clients had no recourse. Further, an attorney would tell you right away, and probably for free, how to avoid the biggest mistake you made: not showing up to court. No half-decent lawyer would ever let you make that misstep.

Yes, you would have lost out a little in having to pay somebody to handle the response - but given the extreme risk and expense of (even frivolous) civil litigation, I think the costs of an attorney likely pales in comparison to what you did end up paying in time, money, and stress, plus the ability of an attorney to lower the risk of the situation overall, even if they did charge $1200 an hour (not all or even most do).

Edit: What I'm trying to say is - you seem intelligent and are clearly successful. It's easy for a smart, successful person who has had good luck in the past to think they've got something like this handled. What I am trying to impress upon you is that in this case, you can't afford what might happen if you're wrong, because it might cost you everything. The stakes are too high not to go with the best option.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will take your advice and involve my attorney in the future. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I just want to say, as someone who has dealt with a very challenging client -- who refused payment on 30-40 hours I put in to work, after weeks of being completely non-responsive before the client's deadline -- I can't say how much I appreciate hearing stories like this one. We didn't take the course to court -- we were two - three people and the contract was $10k as a whole, but it left me feeling very raw about contract work. I have to say for me, this is a great ad for this employer being a safe and employee-valuing place to work.

Thanks!

<comment><USER25> Responding not to throw truisms at you; checking that I'm not crazy.

> I have to say for me, this is a great ad for this employer being a safe and > employee-valuing place to work.

The employer is meant to shield his employees from this kind of stuff. i.e. this is a "normal" employer.

Even if the clients don't pay the employer, the employer pays its employees -- that's the arrangement and the risk taken when you own the business (alternatively stated, as an non-exec employee, you trade a premium on salary to not deal with risk).

<comment><USER24> Oh, yeah, I think that's true that part of the employer-employee contract is guaranteeing employees payment.

I guess I mean something a little different then. That it's really heartwarming to see an employer 'go to bat' for his team's work and his company. I was resonating with the experience of directly having freelanced with a client feeling 'out of control.' I was really caught off-guard by it and it felt (in hindsight a mistake) easy to give an inch and give another inch. There's something here -- maybe I can't put my finger on it -- in this blog post that makes me thing the author would be an incredible asset in putting down hard limits and boundaries when they need to be put down.

<comment><USER25> > That it's really heartwarming to see an employer 'go to bat' for his team's > work and his company

He "went to bat" in court as to not risk a default judgment or additional monetary loss. Talking about how your consulting company went _far_ out of scope and criticizing/belittling an ex-client in a blog post is kind of strange, in my opinion.

> I was resonating with the experience of directly having freelanced with a > client feeling 'out of control.' I was really caught off-guard by it and it > felt (in hindsight a mistake) easy to give an inch and give another inch

Yeah, that's really common. Sometimes it's a simple situation of communicating the time demand or cost of client asks and other times, it's employing a firm "no" or calculating if it's worth firing the client (never fun).

> There's something here -- maybe I can't put my finger on it -- in this blog > post that makes me thing the author would be an incredible asset in putting > down hard limits and boundaries when they need to be put down.

I made another post in the thread about this if you're interested[0], but it appears as if this was an issue because of the exact opposite -- contractual scope of work was not enforced and _substantial_ additional work was performed.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13348353](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13348353)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> People like these are mentally ill sociopaths that don't care about the needs of the people they are hiring. The web development profession is filled with dealing with people like these. It's a shit job at the lower end having to deal with small business people. They are all barely scratching a living themselves and the way they are doing it via technology leaves much to be desired, and they expect you to pick up the slack. Honestly it's a shit business and really no one should try to do it at the lower end. At the higher end the same job fetches 100k and the clients are happy to pay for the work. The only catch is that you have to be rich already to make 100k for the same work that at the lower end fetches 10k. It's honestly a stupid mistake to do it at the lower end.

<comment><USER27> Lol so true.

I see small business people who try to make a sense out of all this tech stuff WHILE trying to avoid spending $$ a lot and yeah, some try to lie and cheat to get what they want. Not all, just a few.

<comment><USER26> Quite a few.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Eek. First off, joelx, sorry about the painful process. If things are truly as presented here, I hope things turn out in your favor.

I'm inferring that the post is being polite in leaving off some of the challenging aspects of the client, but as someone that's run a little consulting shop, this alarmed me:

> <Client> at this point began to make lots of requests for out of scope items > not included in the contract. My team bent over backwards to accommodate him > and finish these items...we had gone far beyond what he had paid for. Our > team had racked up 294 hours of work on a project that TheClientCompany had > only paid 116 hours for.

Why wasn't this contract closed, and a new one opened, before the 150% work overage mark?

Obviously, sometimes you need to eat a bit of work due to misestimation/unexpected-unexpecteds/reputation/keeping your client happy, but with the estimation of $12k@116 hours, this is $30k worth of work on a $12k agreement (assuming the estimation didn't account for legal/accounting/insurance/pre&post-sale time/expense, which are a bit more static in my experience).

Was the client not politely informed that the requests were going well beyond the scope of work? If you're beyond 2x of the agreement, I can understand that the client started to think of the contract as inconsequential. When dealing with customers without a technical staff (or experience in managing or running something technical) that are asking you to over-deliver, it's often just an issue of not knowing which asks are time-consuming/expensive -- and if you're making it look easy, the client will think it's easy.

> Our contract requires that before a website launches, final payment must be > made. My team launched despite this and continued to work on it for him.

When you flagrantly break the parts of the contract that protect your business and interests, it's somewhat understandable that the client would expect to be able to sign-off the work before payment.

Just my two cents, but I'm positive that those two pennies have saved me a ton of money in walking away from certain clients during the negotiation phase.

> I ran right up to both of them, and punched him in the nose. I got in big > trouble, but I thought it was worth it.

This metaphor, coupled with the story, makes it seem as if it's "worth it" to hit a client back in front of a judge. Super weird, IMHO.

<comment><USER28> > This metaphor, coupled with the story, makes it seem as if it's "worth it" > to hit a client back in front of a judge. Super weird, IMHO.

It is an analogy. One should _not_ copy exactly what happened in an analogy literally to a situation (what I call "greater example"); instead, one should apply _the lesson of the analogy_.

The situation of the analogy ("small example") was at elementary school, where someone got hit, and wanted to get justice ("an eye for an eye"). He got justice, but at a steep price. Standing up for oneself ensures they are not (or at least less likely) becoming bullied again, but it has its price (e.g. you may lose a teeth or 2, get reprimanded by school, get in contact with police or sued, etc). The goal of eye for an eye might appear as self gratification. That is perhaps part of the goal, but its a rather pointless and -to put it friendly- unintelligent one. Another, far more important part of the goal, is to ensure the other party realises (knows & feels) they were wrong so that the other party does not resort to this behaviour again. Not necessarily solely to the victim. Rather just to _any_ potential future victims as well with whom the victim [would] share empathy and sympathy. One could regard justice as a reaction of the autonomous system (in the "greater example", called "society"), trying to correct its inhabitants/hosts, with the goal of improving the autonomous system at a whole.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, analogy -- thanks (was running on no sleep from travel).

I just don't think it fits the situation, even though I know what he was trying to say. Submitting proof to authority that you had done nothing wrong (as a defendant) is not the same as exacting revenge, even if the authority didn't see the initial harm. Along with the other descriptors of his ex- customer, it comes across as unprofessional.

<comment><USER28> > Submitting proof to authority that you had done nothing wrong (as a > defendant) is not the same as exacting revenge, even if the authority didn't > see the initial harm.

Its not about revenge, it is about justice. I explained revenge is not so much about the person who experienced the initial blow, more so than potential future victims.

> Along with the other descriptors of his ex-customer, it comes across as > unprofessional.

I understand you feel that way but I disagree. It comes across as someone who stands up for his right when put in unjust situations. A potential customer should not need to fear him, as he is normally a solid business partner, and may even work hard in your advantage (for free). He mentions he goes out of the way for his customers, and his very example even proofs this. The people who read his blog regularly supposedly know his personality better. There's a conundrum in the fact that blog posts might be written for people who are more in the know, whereas everyone in the world can read it. We see the effects of that issue more regular, this is'd merely an example of the effect (is there a name for it?).

He is also not posting personal details of the plaintiff. Not enough to identify them. That is professional.

Then again, I am biased. I got bullied at school, and I generally didn't end up returning physical violence. I wish I did. I'd be more mentally resilient now. Not all is lost though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This was the most challenging aspect I experienced when running a company targeting small businesses for four years.

About 10% of your clients will be nightmares who will hold grudges over relatively small sums of money. No amount of contract language will save you from a user who has made use of the software for two years, decides that they're unsatisfied with it and files chargebacks for every payment made over that time.

Sadly, the most rational option is to acquiesce. Even "winning" a chargeback case is a loss, as most payment providers still charge you for the handling of the case and it is a black mark on your account, possibly putting you in danger of losing payment processing ability completely.

</comment><comment><USER30> Can't help thinking the underlying cause is here;

> my email back

...key negotiations happening over email. Make it face to face if you can or at worst by voice and keep minutes for the record. So much misunderstanding can be avoided this way.

<comment><USER25> Talk in person first, sure, but confirm in written form after, whether this be a signed piece of paper or acknowledgement over email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Why did you post this before the actual verdict?

<comment><AUTHOR> Writing this was cathartic after all of the stress on Friday. Also - if I didn't do it now, I probably would not have done it later.

<comment><USER31> I mostly ask because of two reasons - the first being you expressed confidence in winning earlier, but instead losing, and the second being that publicly discussing a pending court case is generally frowned upon by the courts, and pending a verdict can absolutely swing that verdict in a different direction. Depending on the district doing something like this may even be grounds to have your case thrown out, which would put you right back at the start of finding a judge for the retrial, but now with a legal strike against you. It would have been very wise to clear this with your (or even "a") lawyer.

(I absolutely understand the "getting it off your chest" aspect, but it would have been a good idea to hit "save as draft" rather than immediately publishing it)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> tuna-piano Very interesting to read about the different conflict-resolution approaches between the Credit card company and the legal system. The CC process seemed smart, lean, fair and efficient. The legal system seems absolutely terrible.

Why do we accept that level of service (delays, waiting, etc) from one of our most important institutions?

The cynic in me says that since lawyers run the system, and lawyers get paid by hours, they have no incentive to make the system more streamlined.

</comment><comment><USER32> 294 hours on a 116 hour project sucks, but my general rule is once the code is deployed, we're not going to "take it back" over nonpayment. If you fail on your final payment we will ask politely and insistently that you remit it - and not work for you ever again if you don't. But, IANAL, but I can see doing takebacks like this potentially putting you in real civil liability.

A real world equivalent would be like hiring an interior design company to redesign your retail store, and as you're haggling over project sign-off & final payment the interior designer decides to go into your store and personally yank down the redesigned stuff until you pay. You may argue with that metaphor's precision, but I'd guess that's exactly how it feels to the e-comm shop owner. It's simply unprofessional and borderline vandalism which I could easily see a court ruling caused more damages than e.g. a 3 month late payment.

And as we see here, it's a way of pouring gasoline on a fire - a fire Joel righteously wishes to assert he wasn't at fault for, but damn what a waste of money and time. His lesson is, I was right and should have fought smarter, rather than seeing he really didn't need to fight at all.

<comment><USER33> Uhh, they don't own the IP if they haven't paid, bottom line. Having been in a very similar situation to what you just described in regards to the retail store, that is exactly what you do when they drag ass on paying, as you are not a line of credit or a bank. If the customer resists call the sheriff and recover your companies property, and invoice for damage/wear and tear/depreciation & report on the credit of the former client.

What is unprofessional is not paying, if you can't afford something, don't buy it! Also, half up front & half on completion is way too risky, it means at different parts of a contract each party has a ton of risk.

<comment><USER34> Is it that straightforward? The client may not own the IP, but does that mean you have the right to make changes to their site against their wishes? Forget civil liability, I'd be worried about criminal liability from unauthorized access etc.

<comment><USER33> If I go and take something without paying, does the party I took it from have the right to recover said object?

If you have access to the server, due to the customer adding your SSH keys or similar, and they do not remove your keys, that is implied consent. They have not bothered to close the front door, thus you can walk in and take back what you own.

<comment><USER35> You have the right to demand that object and the court system may recover it, but you cannot simply take it.

Even in your own example, for a physical stolen object "They have not bothered to close the front door, thus you can walk in and take back what you own." is a nice way to get in jail yourself.

<comment><USER36> There is a theoretical ethical/legal view of things - and then there is a real-world practical view. If I was dealing with a company who already have lawyers, then sure, I'd go the "right" way and use the legal system (on the basis the legal system actually works...). But a bad client, who can't even run their small business in a competent manner ... and who can't hire better lawyers than me... the use of brute force (vs the legal way) is sometimes the wiser choice. It is a risk to do such a thing, so you have to know the odds, but it could save you some headache.

The legal system is nothing but a tool and a shit tool at that. People who know how to manipulate it are better off than those who think it is more than just a badly made tool - and the most frequent manipulators of it are the bad actors.

I have realized the IT community is at some disadvantage in some sense, compared to non-IT people, because we have such a implicit faith/trust/belief/respect in rules - we spend all day trying to teach computers to follow rules. The vast majority of humans on the other hand have little respect for abstract rules and will do whatever they want, coming up with justifications and rationalizations after the fact. Outside of IT, you have to realize the only rules you have to follow is 'not get caught'. I'm not saying don't act ethically, I'd encourage it, but a lot of people are not interested in acting ethically at all, especially when it is detrimental to what they want. So you have to learn how to deal with them effectively unless you want to drive yourself crazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Is it common to accept payment by credit card for such contracts, with a possibility of chargeback at that? Sounds completely crazy to me (not in the US).

<comment><USER38> That surprises me too. I would expect contract work to be paid for by check or wire transfer. But it's been almost 20 years since I was doing that kind of work. Maybe these days, you have to take credit cards or lose the business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> > If I believe I am in the right I will fight through multiple appeals and > beyond all financial reason to win.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory)

As noble as your intentions are, this is not a scalable way of handling hostile clients.

</comment><comment><USER40> > _their revenues were quite small (to the best of my recollection it might > have been a few thousand a month total sales)_

This may sound out of touch but my advice is: stay away from small clients. They're a pain. It's their money. They're never happy. They find everything is expensive. They love their product so much they can't understand why you don't work for free, since it's such a great opportunity. They're unfamiliar with industry's best practices or fees.

They change their mind often (to be fair, everyone changes their mind but big companies understand that this means a new budget and a new contract, while small ones don't).

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that small clients generally are much more difficult than large clients. I would like to find more large clients.

I can say that the work we do now for large clients is light years superior to work of our competitors since we have been through the wringer with people for whom every penny they invest is important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Title is inaccurate. At the very bottom of the post, he says that fighting the suit over the past two years has cost him about $100K in his and his employees' lost time.

That's not the same as having spent $100K to fight the suit.

<comment><USER42> It is the same! It's a _huge_ mistake, especially as a business owner, to not make that equivalence.

<comment><USER43> I disagree. Unless that time could have been directly converted into billed client work (or something with a tangible payoff) then it isn't the same at all.

It's like people taking about their "hourly rate" when deciding to pay for some convenient service. Your time is only worth that if someone is paying you for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> >Fighting this issue for the last two years has been frustrating and has cost me well over $100k in my time and my employees time.

I am missing how/for what the 100,000 US$ were spent?

Lost time due to having to go to a Court several times + time for preparation?

>Each time I was scheduled to appear in court, I spent a couple of hours the day before refreshing my memory on the case and the facts so that I could present our side. I would miss most of the day of work.

If he lost 2 days of time each time for 5 times, that is maybe 2x5x10=100 hours.

US$ 1,000/hour sounds to me like a bit excessive as a cost.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are correct, it is my best guesstimate on the opportunity cost of all the time I spent fighting this.

Court time: 7-8 days

Preparing 3 ring binder with ~150 pages of evidence all laid out with tabs (Exhibit A, B, C...): 5-6 days

Lost work from stress & sleepless nights: 5-10 days?

My hourly rate is hard to judge - I have 80 full time employees so I don't bill directly for my work any longer. If a client were to insist on me doing work directly for them, I would probably require $700 / hr to do so. I don't think this is unreasonable as I talked to a lot of doctors and attorneys routinely charging $600 to $1200 / hr. I think I have a similar level of expertise at this point.

My cost estimate is probably on the high side :)

<comment><USER44> >My cost estimate is probably on the high side :)

Well, at least here, you cannot confuse "missed income" with "costs".

If you are payed (or can be payed) 700 US$/hour, you should be in a range of around 1,400,000 US$/year of revenue. On this you pay taxes and you have (or should have) some costs, even if minimal.

I wouldn't be surprised if, once you have detracted those, you remain with US$ 350/hour (half of the revenue).

Then what you can spend (and that you can consider as cost) is US$ 350/hour.

And you cannot really consider the "stress and sleepless nights" as "cost", come on, this is what may eventually be "moral damages", and 5/6 days to make a binder with 150 pages? If we take the 350 US$/hour as cost, you have managed in 6 x 10 = 60 hours 150 pages, let's double them to 300 including the ones you discarded, that is 5 pages per hour or less than 1 page every 10 minutes or US$ 70 each for just reading and printing or photocopying a sheet of paper and putting in t in a binder, I understand the tabs, Exhibit A, etc. still ... Realistically it cannot take more than 20 hours at the very most to assemble such a binder.

8 days at court, 10 hours each, 80 hours + 20 hours, still 100 hours at the most, and these should be multiplied by 350 , not 700.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> So why wasn't it a drop in the bucket win? I don't understand how Donald had any damage claims whatsoever.

<comment><USER46> Joel's staff hurt the customer. Not delivering your work until paid is one thing. Reverting the site is totally unacceptable. For one thing, it's use of access you were granted to help the customer to hurt the customer. I wouldn't be surprised to see CFAA prosecution for it---and despite the need to reform the CFAA, this is something that ought to be a crime.

If a tradesman does work on some other Donald's house and doesn't get paid, he can't go remove or undo the work---he can place a mechanic's lien or otherwise go through the courts. We don't accept self-help that harms another, no matter how unfair the dealing was.

<comment><USER47> Not to say it's right, but some tradesman do remove or undo their work:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-LqLU7CxeA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-LqLU7CxeA)

<comment><USER35> There are a bunch of legal acts that explicitly give tradesmen rights to recover materials and equipment installed e.g. in a customer's building in case of nonpayment.

As currently worded (AFAIK, IANAL, depends on your jurisdiction, etc) these acts do not apply to websites in the same manner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> It seems a bit immature to punish a client by reverting changes without prior notice. I'm not surprised they were angry.

It's also not reasonable to spend so much money on litigation. Whenever someone talks about principles in business, in reality, it's all about ego.

Being right doesn't pay the bills.

</comment><comment><USER49> Regardless of who eventually wins, this blog post comes off as arrogant, juvenile and whiny.

It really wouldn't surprise me if "Donald" wins the case. The author quoted 116 hours and $12k and then failed to deliver, and then acted like a big baby fighting and arguing about it.

<comment><USER50> The author gave valid reasons. One was a wrong assumption about the input files and it looks like the author was willing to absorb that. Then more changes were asked by the client.

Small fixed priced contracts are hard and limiting liability is critical. Typical is limiting it to value of contract. Otherwise it is very limited upside and unlimited downside. Key to make it work is change management but that assumes reasonable people on both sides and getting started with it early on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Do people regularly accept payment via credit card for >1000USD in contracting work?

It seems like a bad idea, whenever I invoice payment is stipulated as being by bank transfer.

</comment><comment><USER43> A: Enjoys throwing good money after bad.

<comment><USER52> I vehemently disagree. Like the author, I've had to defend myself from a bully abusing the legal system to enrich himself. It's not about the money, it's a matter of principle. "Throwing good money after bad." This isn't some kind of bad investment, this is a personal attack. When you get attacked, you fight back. You don't sit there and take it. Enjoyment? Are you kidding me? There's only debilitating anxiety. You have no empathy.

<comment><USER43> >When you get attacked, you fight back. You don't sit there and take it.

Why would I fight someone who's clearly more experienced at being an asshole? What am I going to "win"? I'd rather move on with my life and not waste time and energy plotting how I'm going to fight back.

Even if this guy does "win", he hasn't taught the client a lesson. A leopard doesn't change his spots. Dude's going to be awful to work with for life. All he's done is burn time, money, energy to prove a point to himself that he can't be "bullied."

I know some people are assholes and will try to take advantage of me. When one does (fortunately rarely as they're not tough to spot), I cut and run. Why continue to engage?

<comment><USER52> If you want to frame it in terms of "winning and losing", how about your self- respect and dignity? It's not about proving a point or teaching a lesson, it's about being able to sleep at night. It's about taking control of your own life and seeking your own personal justice. Let people take advantage of you and roll over -- that's your prerogative. I will go to the ends of the Earth to defend myself when confronted.

<comment><USER43> I sleep fine. I know that I don't have complete control over my life (nobody does). I don't need to "go to the ends of the Earth" to defend myself. I'd rather just shrug it off and move on to what's next.

To each his or her own I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Article mistakenly says the last hearing was in January 2016, instead of January 2017.

</comment><comment><USER54> I wonder if you could counter sue him for frivolous lawsuit damages.

</comment><comment><USER55> Not going to court summons was your $100k mistake.</comment>


Ask HN: What is happening with Arc? Are there any news? - <AUTHOR>

I would really like to know if there will be any updates to the Arc language. Apparently people are actively developing HN in it, but there haven't been any news or updates to the language in years. It would be really great to hear some news and to know that the project is alive and is being developed =) <comment><USER2> HN is actively developed in Arc, but we don't own the language. It's entirely PG's creation, and I'm not sure what his plans for it are. Sorry, I realize that's not much of an answer.</comment>


Munich mall attack: Calls in Germany for tighter gun laws - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36877388 <comment><USER2> There is no problem with the current gun laws.

The problem are religious fanatics. They will hit you stones, gasoline and fire if they have to.</comment>


Nvidia Geforce Now launches at $5 a month - <AUTHOR> https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/ <comment><USER2> Holy cow, I've never tried any of these types of services before but I'm blown away! I just signed up for the free version to give Fortnite a go. I've played it a tonne on mobile, but never PC because my 2012 Macbook Pro could only pump out about 5 FPS at the lowest graphics settings.

5 minutes of setup and I'm playing on amazing-looking (to me) settings and it seemed damn fast FPS (to me): looks so good and played great! The input lag was not noticeable (again, to me - not a gamer... I died in Pleasant Park trying to figure out how to build a cone).

I think I might be their core audience for this, and am extremely tempted to sign up for $5 a month. My GPU sucks, hard drive is always "nearly full" so keeping games around isn't an option. For a casual like me this seems... futuristic!

<comment><USER3> Yes, there are at least 100M Mac (worldwide) users who could play games now.

Would have signed up even for $10. Considering the quality of those titles. Compare to other $5 Gaming Subscription like Apple Arcade, Nvidia 's offering is much more attractive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been using NOW for ~6 months now and it's incredible. Are you going to get 144hz 4k gaming performance? No for sure but I've been using it for a couple of reasons:

1) Games that aren't available on my Macbook. Simple things like Legends of Runeterra and Magic Arena and Magic Online. Not super graphically intensive Geforce Now has worked better than Wine/VM solutions

2) Games that my Macbook just can't play like F1 2019. Good enough for both single and multiplayer.

Gonna miss it being free but easily worth $5.

<comment><USER5> Mac or laptop seems to be a good reason for this service, but I am not sure about its value for a PC desktop. $5 / month for 2 years is $120. I can get an OK graphic card to play game on my PC with this price.

<comment><USER3> You didn't include the cost of Games. Which is easily a lot more than $120.

<comment><USER6> Geforce Now is a 'bring your own license' system. The subscription doesn't include the cost of the game.

<comment><USER3> What? Interesting. Sorry I am an idiot, how did I miss that. Thanks for pointing it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just tried it from 5ghz wifi on a 200mbit connection. It looks like it added me to the correct region (southwest) and set me to 720p@60fps. Tried playing Mordhau, a "hardcore" first person melee game where milliseconds count, and had a hard time due to input lag and occasional stuttering. The lag seemed to bounce around a bit, sometimes it was ok sometimes it was worse. I only played for a few minutes, but it seems like it would work better for more casual and console oriented games. I'm optimistic it will work better on a wired connection. For reference, I usually play it on a decent gaming pc on a wired connection (ryzen 1700, 1660ti)

</comment><comment><USER8> I had to scroll far into the page to tell what this service even offers.

> GeForce NOW instantly transforms nearly any laptop, desktop, Mac, SHIELD TV > or Android mobile device into the PC gaming rig you've always dreamed of. > Instantly play the most demanding PC games and seamlessly play across your > devices.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is this another streamed videogame service? I think these people don't learn. There were 10+ failed gaming SaaS companies on my memory.

<comment><USER10> NVIDIA, Google, and Microsoft have more of a chance at success. They already have the necessary infrastructure or hardware to scale the business so that latency is acceptable, along with the software expertise to optimize the streaming.

Sure, it still might not work out, but I still think they have a better chance than the previous SaaS entrants.

<comment><USER11> A problem that all the services face is that they can never, economically, output the same quality that a local gaming PC or console can deliver, which means hardcore gamers, who would want to spend money on gaming, will never be customers.

Just look in this thread, the people who are impressed are casual gamers who have no interest in building a gaming PC, and I kinda doubt that group is a reliable customer base.

And when the gaming press reviews these services, they crank up their magnifiers to figure out at exactly what quality level the games are actually being rendered at, and since that is always lower than what hardcore gamers can do themselves on their own hardware, the consensus is always "why bother?".

Good enough quality simply isn't good enough for your prospective customers. And this is why these service are doomed to fail.

<comment><USER12> "which means hardcore gamers, who would want to spend money on gaming, will never be customers"

I mean, either you're paying nvidia $5 per month, or odds are you're paying them many hundreds of dollars for a GPU every two years. I don't think they're really seeing the downside. Nor does your economic case actually make sense (nvidia is filling their own data center full of their own cards -- they can provide a much higher performance per dollar than they can feeding the same through retail channels).

It's also worth noting that the quality offered by this service easily matches or beats a PS4 or Xbox One X. Not sure why you felt the need to squeeze console gamers in when defining "hardcore" gamers. Quite the contrary for people with a console but who have a desktop or laptop that wouldn't normally be able to give a good experience, this service is wonderful to bridge their experience.

"Just look in this thread, the people who are impressed are casual gamers who have no interest in building a gaming PC"

This is nonsensical gatekeeping. I _love_ the service. I normally game on a pretty beefy "gaming PC" and had fed many thousands of dollars to nvidia over the years. Do I not count because you disagree?

But that's irrelevant. People who talk about their "gaming PC" or try to gate- keep who counts as real gamers are a minority. In no universe is that the make or break market.

<comment><USER11> > I mean, either you're paying nvidia $5 per month, or odds are you're paying > them many hundreds of dollars for a GPU every two years. I don't think > they're really seeing the downside. Nor does your economic case actually > make sense

Sure, there's an upside for nVidia in this case, since they supply the cards, but since you need to place your rendering farms as close to the customers as possible for latency reasons, you can't have a global pool of cards to handle peaks around the globe, so your utilization rate of the cards is going to be pretty crap.

Better than the utilization rate of the card that sits in my PC, sure, but not that much better.

> It's also worth noting that the quality offered by this service easily > matches or beats a PS4 or Xbox One X.

...if you have the bandwidth for it. 4K video eats through data caps pretty damn quick, and if you compress it too hard, you're removing details that you spent GPU time on creating, so you have to balance the render quality with a target compression rate, which means that for an acceptable video bitrate, you're not going to run at full detail, which means a local gaming PC, or a local gaming console, will provide better quality, simply because the bandwidth of an HDMI or DisplayPort cable is unlimited and consistent.

Bandwidth caps are the norm at least in the US market, and you have to take those into account.

> I love the service. I normally game on a pretty beefy "gaming PC" and had > fed many thousands of dollars to nvidia over the years. Do I not count > because you disagree?

The question is if you are an outlier or the norm. There's been plenty of companies doing exactly this, and they have all pretty much failed. The one good difference I see in this case is that nVidia allows you to grab games from external libraries, games you already "own", that solves a trust issue that plagued all the predecessors. But I'm still pessimistic about this, I don't see what makes the underlying fundamentals different this time, that would magically make this thing work, when all the others have failed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Tried founder membership to try Apex Legends - plenty of stutter and delay when attempting to play from Toronto. I'll stick to ye old local play for now.

</comment><comment><USER14> I tested this out when it was in BETA about a year ago. It worked pretty well with Path of Exile but it ran into issues when I was trying out Monster Hunter World iirc.

Word of caution - if you have a bandwidth limit it burns through it pretty quickly.

<comment><USER15> Yes, GeForce NOW forced me to get an ISP without a bandwidth cap, as I for the first time found that 1TB/month was insufficient. I was hitting 130GB/day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This landing page (and the associated support pages) weirdly never mention what they include in "your favorite stores". This seems like crucial information, and was certainly the first thing I wanted to know. Why not mention it? First I thought they might not support Steam and be ashamed of it, but the comments here make clear that they do.

Then there are comments here talking about 4K, but Nvidia only seems to mention 720p and 1080p. Sure, most users' network connection probably isn't good enough, but why not tell us? It could certainly be a selling point for connecting this to a 4K television.

</comment><comment><USER17> I instantly suspect of any service/product that fails to tell what it is in the first view of the page, I mean, it's not hard, why should I scroll almost to the bottom of the page to read it?

</comment><comment><USER18> Ars review: [https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/02/nvidia-has-shaken- up-...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/02/nvidia-has-shaken-up-the- netflix-for-games-model-with-its-challenge-to-stadia/)

(Disclaimer: I'm an NVIDIA employee who works on unrelated projects, but I really enjoyed using the beta of GeForce Now.)

<comment><USER19> Do you know if this runs on public clouds? just trying to gauge how long it (if ever) would be available in Brazil...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I read the page and I don't get what it is -- a store that tries to grandfather in your purchases at existing stores -- with a subscription?

<comment><USER21> It allows you to stream your games from Nvidia's servers instead of installing it locally. Mostly to play on underpowered devices such as a tablet, laptop, or streaming stick connected to your TV etc...

<comment><USER20> ah yea, it does say "stream" once in the entire page

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Good news. I've been playing Quake Champions on it every now and then (haven't for a few weeks), and the experience on my iMac is pretty good at roughly 30ms ping:

[https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2018/09/30/1600](https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2018/09/30/1600)

</comment><comment><USER23> Linux and MacOS are each about 1% of the market, yet this product supports MacOS and excludes Linux.

That doesn't seem like a wise choice.

Ordinarily no product needs to target 1% platforms, but this product specifically seems like its early adopters would naturally be non-Windows desktop users. Cutting off half of that crucial adoption seems ... stupid.

<comment><USER24> Most articles I can find put MacOS at 9-15%, about 5-8 times greater than Linux.

<comment><USER25> And there are way more games available on Linux, plus many more Linux PCs will have a strong graphics card. Probably a smaller market. Add to that the strained relationship between Nvidia and the Linux community and Now not being on Linux is really not surprising. A pity, I was about to test this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> something is going on, I registered for the free service, clicking system requirements or any other link gets me to a microsoftonline login, probably some internal service that shouldn't be exposed, [https://login.microsoftonline.com/43083d15-variousnumbers-39...](https://login.microsoftonline.com/43083d15-variousnumbers-39efd9ccc17a/saml2)

"Selected user account does not exist in tenant 'NVIDIA Corporation' and cannot access the application '[https://preview.nvidia.com'](https://preview.nvidia.com') in that tenant. The account needs to be added as an external user in the tenant first. Please use a different account."

</comment><comment><USER27> The 60 minute session limit on free accounts is interesting. One can imagine the future "Watch an add to get an extra 30 minutes!"

Something about it feels creepy to me, but I can't place what.

<comment><USER28> ... or this is just a good way to have people checking if the service works with their connection? It minimizes the barrier of entry and makes people sign up and install the app, it's a common way to do marketing (e.g. for freemium games).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I like the idea that I can just try it for an hour.

</comment><comment><USER30> I can't help but wonder if these gaming-as-a-service offerings are just a way to get more data to train ANNs.

</comment><comment><USER31> Lag, no mods, no hacks, and compressed 4K looks worse than raw 1080p. When will companies learn?

</comment><comment><USER32> Their game search is a joke, no filter, no sort, nothing..

<comment><USER33> [https://static.nvidiagrid.net/supported-public-game- list/gfn...](https://static.nvidiagrid.net/supported-public-game- list/gfnpc.json?JSON)

<comment><USER32> Sorry, i was talking about searching for a game inside the NVidia portal(currently its in final beta,... yet), post recent update to its beta, they went full on with a minimalist search only box..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Synchronous XMLHttpRequest on the main thread, CORS errors, and more... Great job Nvidia. I really enjoy clicking the button to join and having the whole UI freeze for 30 seconds.

Oh even better... Logging out doesn't log you out, I had to clear cookies to actually log out. Edit: Uhhh, even that didn't work, wth is going on here?

</comment><comment><USER12> This is a fantastic service. I signed up to the beta just a few weeks ago and love it. The fact that it just uses my Steam account (or my son's Epic account) makes it an easy winner over alternatives.

The performance, in my experience, has been fantastic. Suddenly on my MBP I can play games that were only previously on my Windows box with a beefy GPU. Better still the fans stay at a minimal level -- on this machine it's barely more than streaming a video. I have a dislike for hearing the GPU fan grinding and this is a relief.

On the flip side if you aren't really close to one of their data centers, it isn't a great experience for twitch FPS games. I tried pubg and it...worked, but I fell from competitive to pretty mediocre given that everyone else had a couple of frames head start.

Still, it's an instant sign up for me. Even for games that I can play locally on my laptops, like Civ 6, doing so with minimal local power suckage, heat and fan grind makes it worth it. I'm outsourcing those to an nvidia datacenter, of course, but better than than in my lap. My experience with this has been much better than even Steam in-house streaming (where I used that big beefy Windows box with a high-end GPU in another room to play from my MBP).

And for those who questioned how the process works, for a steam game it kicks you into a virtualized version of steam that you log into. On first play you "install" the game but they seem to have images for everything so it's instant. Then you play in a virtualized session. It's very well done.

<comment><USER35> Thanks for the explanation! I have no idea why your comment is downvoted right now.

The link to Steam is extremely interesting to me, I did not own gaming hardware (except for a Switch) for long time.

<comment><USER12> Thank you. As to the downvoting -- it takes just one angry guy mad that something doesn't conform with their bias. It's all good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> skay- I have used "GeForce Now" for the past couple of months (during the beta) and it works quite well overall. The latency exists but it is quite low; given that my last few gaming years have been on the PS4 I am more used to this than your typical PC gamer.

There are some quirks with it especially around getting the resolution right. Sometimes the output is a bit blurry because it doesn't quite match the resolution/aspect ratio of your screen.

I would say that it is worth giving this a try. The free limited version is idea for as a trial.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have never used this kind of service before. What is the bandwidth required to stream a game play on a server? And how does the latency affect the experience?

<comment><USER36> From the system requirements page: "GeForce NOW requires at least 15Mbps for 720p at 60fps and 25 Mbps for 1080p at 60fps."

I'm pretty sure I could get that most days even though I live out in the boonies, but it looks like Linux isn't a supported platform and GOG isn't a supported storefront. That's kind of a bummer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> What OS is it using for backend?

<comment><USER38> Windows of course.

<comment><USER37> Why of course? Stadia is using Linux. Using Windows is a waste of license fees for such services.

<comment><USER12> I assume they chose Windows to support the widest array of games, and the most comprehensive and timely support for things like RTX.

Stadia does use Linux, however Stadia has made an enormous number of missteps and seems very close to DOA so I'm not sure they're a good example of much.

<comment><USER37> I'd say using Windows is a misstep and DOA kind of choice for these things.

For the reference, RTX shouldn't depend on the OS, since it's supported as a Vulkan extension.

<comment><USER12> It's an abstract backend host for a remote desktop sort of thing -- there is nothing "Windows-esque" about the experience for the end-user -- so I imagine they could easily support alternatives as the need arises. But given that Windows currently supports 100% of the top PC games, where alternatives support a small fraction of that, it's something they certainly needed to support for now.

<comment><USER39> It's definitely Windows. You do see the Windows 10 chrome on windows (sometimes the steam is there minized) and games in steam install to Program files...

<comment><USER12> Oh for sure they're using Windows to host most/all games, with a very good justification for doing so, but the way the client app interacts with the server they could just as easily have some games hosted in Linux. The point being that they are in no way tied to Windows, it's just the best option for what they're doing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hard Truths about Equity - <AUTHOR> https://whilewest.com/4-hard-truths-about-equity-dfa2f24b3a6d#.pphh8235x <comment><USER2> Number 1 rule of working at a startup: really trust the founders and everyone you work with. Look out for yourself, but at the end of the day, if you are working with someone scummy, they can change the rules at basically any time. So work with people committed to transparency and honest dealing.

Also, while it is nice to think of your particular startup succeeding, it probably won't. And even if it "does" it will likely not be worth >$1b.

One of my proudest moments was hearing from one of my early employees that even if the company tanked tomorrow that she would not regret it for a moment. I hope that for every person I work with, because while I cannot guarantee that the world won't collapse or something unforeseen to happen, I can work really hard to make sure that as we grow and succeed, our culture is one of making sure that everyone is learning and growing and going to excel in their careers and lives no matter what happens to this company. Side note: I am also committed to making sure that people here are compensated well when we succeed, if for some reason our initial compensation structure, which I think has been generous, has holes.

<comment> a-priori Earlier this year I was was laid off from a startup that went bust. We failed to find a market that could support us, and the investors lost confidence and pulled the plug. It was the prototypical startup failure story.

Here's the thing: if the founders came to me tomorrow and said "I'm starting a new company and I need developers", I'd probably join them.

Why? Because throughout the whole thing they acted absolutely properly. They kept us in the loop about the company's situation as it deteriorated and did everything they could to salvage the company and pivot into something new. And we trusted them enough that almost the entire staff stayed on until the end even though we were almost certain for a few months that the company was probably not going to survive.

When the investors declined to reinvest, the founders shut the doors with enough money left in the bank to pay a modest severance and keep a skeleton staff on for a few months to wind down the company and service customers during their notice period.

Some colleagues have told me stories of places they've worked where they didn't find out the company was broke until their paycheques started bouncing, the landlord started stopping into the office asking for the executives, and those executives were nowhere to be found.

<comment><USER3> Can't agree more. One start-up which I worked for a few years went bust. It was an experience that brought up very complicated feelings of proud, pain, excitement, upset, comradeship, disappointment, etc. Although it was painful to accept the outcome, it was not surprising, considering the odds of success.

What I learned from the experience is: when you consider joining a startup, it doesn't matter what products they are building, what market they are pursuing, etc. What matters is the people you will work with. I learned a lot about how to read people during the up-and-down time, about what people you can trust, both their abilities and their personalities. If my ex-colleagues start new companies and ask me to join, I will jump in for some people as long as I can get enough cash to cover the living expenses of my family, and politely decline for some others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've said it before but it is worth repeating, this article is spot on, and the take away should be never ever ever join a startup because you want to "get rich."

There are only three solid reasons to join a startup:

1) _You are passionate about the mission_ \- nothing is more rewarding than engaging passionately in something you strongly believe in and endorse. Start ups have license to pursue ideas that established companies simply cannot.

2) _It will improve your skill set_ \- There is only so much you can learn at school or online, some skills have to be practiced to be learned. Start ups can give you a role you want, even if your resume isn't a match. Which will get you over the chicken and egg problem of you don't have experience in the job you want to do to be hired in the job you want to do. That can get you into a job elsewhere where the "entry level" position requires previous experience.

3) _You will work with someone you respect_ \- Start ups are small, visible, and stressful. Ask anyone to name 10 people they worked with a BigCo and 10 people they worked with at a startup, the latter is much easier. Stress, higher highs, lower lows, creates stronger bonds. Those friendships will follow you through out your life, they will help when you're looking for advice or a job, and support when you are trying to pull off something really hard to do.

If you choose to join a startup for one of those three reasons it will _always_ deliver.

<comment><USER5> My thoughts on startups and equity is that you can't pay your current bills with equity. The only way equity would make a difference in whether I joined one startup or another would be if I received two offers with the same salary, benefits, and point or points you've mentioned above, I'd pick the one with more equity assuming it's preferred.

<comment><USER6> I've never heard of employees vesting preferred shares as part of their compensation. Is that a thing?

<comment><USER5> Hmm I had initially assumed it was but now that you mention it and after googling a bit more, it seems that's reserved for founders and early stage investors (my practical experience with evaluating equity is limited). I suppose I'd rephrase that to look for total preference to evaluate how much whatever share the share of common stock offered would be worth as well as total outstanding shares have been issued, and how many are expected to be issued upon being sold or going IPO so far among other things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The point about only founders getting rich is one that is in stark difference to the way Silicon Valley was pre-bust.

The first company I worked for went IPO a year or two before I joined. The very first admin of that company got so rich from stock options that she bought a vineyard and retired in 1999. Lots of people bought houses with the money they made, including the first engineer who bought a house in prime PA.

I joined another startup just a few years ago, and they were extremely stingy with options. "Less-important" people (ie. anyone non-engineers, or non- management) were getting a few hundred or maybe a few thousand options, which I thought was a bummer. I think everyone contributes to the success of the company, and everyone should get a chance to do well if the company does well. But I've seen this case several times where the founders keep everything for themselves.

I'm not sure what changed, but it's probably reflective of how greedy and self-centered SV is getting. It feels like it's more like Wall Street and less about classic Silicon Valley, which is a shame. Go watch "Triumph of the Nerds", the classic tv special during the dotcom boom and see if you can reconcile the difference of those companies and the ones today.

<comment><USER8> I suspect the cause is the shift in how startups are viewed in Silicon Valley. Even though there've been startups here for a long time, they were always considered risky, marginal and low-status. So the supply of potential employees was low and the early payouts you're thinking of were paying people for taking a risk.

Today startups are considered to be glamorous. They have access to a lot more investment and potential employees. The whole country seems to be making a beeline to pony up for the high rents because the salaries more than compensate for it. There's no longer much risk of lost earnings. Is it any surprise that the equity has gone lower? Arguably the valley as a whole has taken the deal suggested in OP: more salary, less equity.

<comment><USER9> > _The whole country seems to be making a beeline to pony up for the high > rents because the salaries more than compensate for it._

Only if you're at the top of the income bracket (for engineers in SF specifically, not overall for the industry or area). The average SF developer would be better off with an average salary in an area with reasonable real estate prices and state income taxes.

<comment><USER10> But in an "average" area I can't walk across the street to get a new job as an engineer. There's a LOT of safety that comes from that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was lucky enough to once be employed by a company that didn't promise me any equity. They paid me a good salary and treated me well. The founder sold the company after I'd been there for about 10 months. I was called in to speak with him and given a nice check. (Still had my job too.) I'd much rather work for a guy like that.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think this article is missing a fundamental truth about life, and its conclusions are distorted because of that:

 _You have to respect risk_. And ideally research it, quantify it, and manage it. The one thing you cannot do is ignore it.

Joining a startup is risky. Founding a startup is even more risky. Taking stock options instead of salary shifts more of that risk onto you, as an employee. You need to be aware of this risk, and in that regard, all of these articles about employee equity are performing a very valuable service.

But you _also_ have to view them in the context of the whole other portfolio of risks you are taking in your life. The article, for example, says that the chance of rain on the 1st and 15th is 100%. This is flatly untrue, as any former employee of DEC, Sun, IBM, HP, Yahoo, Tandem, Stratus, Symbolics, or other formerly-highflying tech companies can attest. It is a guarantee that you _will_ get screwed over sometime in your working life, and the best response to that is to learn from it and minimize the chance of it happening in the future, or at least maximize the returns from when you _don 't_ get screwed over to buffer your total returns.

</comment><comment><USER13> You need to make sure that the founders are good people. Most of them are not.

I can relate to the one year cliff and the economic incentive behind terminating employees - Thankfully, the founders I worked for in my last startup were fundamentally good people. I wouldn't hesitate to work with them again.

As an employee, you are always at the mercy of the founders - So you'd better study them carefully. I think the best sign of a good founder is that they're usually easy to talk to - They're genuine people and they always talk to you on the same level as any two human beings would, not as a mere employee.

Also, good founders are humble; I had no idea that the CEO of my previous startup could read and write code until about 6 months in - He never said so. I knew the founders were smart when I joined, but I didn't appreciate the full extent until about one year later.

</comment><comment><USER14> Meta: Reading this thread is a refreshing change from the other ongoing thread about Good Inc which is full of bitter diatribes about how horrible startups are for everybody. I've been working in startups pretty much all my working life and now am a founder of one. Some were successful some were not. The successes added non-life changing but still non-trivial amount of cushion to my bank account that allowed me to leave my full time job and work on my own startup while taking minimal cash compensation from the company funds.

The fact is, the time I spent in a non-startup was nowhere near as exciting and fun as the years I spent in various startups, even the failed ones. And the successful ones were lucrative enough for me (none of which I was even in the first 50 employees) to affect some life decisions. Just one person's anecdata here but I started my engineering career 15 years ago and I read the overly cynical, bitter postings with a sense of amazement. My experience doesn't support any of it.

</comment><comment><USER15> #2 is wrong.

I know it's fun to say it that way, but it's wrong. If you work at a startup try going to your boss and saying "I'll give up all my equity for a $100/year raise." They will say yes (modulo a conversation with you about how that's a really bad idea for you).

It would be fair to say that a lot of people overestimate the value of equity a lot of the time. But that's not the same thing as what the author says.

<comment><USER16> You can get a $100/year raise just for the asking. In tech, salaries are just not negotiated at the $100/year granularity. Imagine saying "I'm also considering an offer from this company, can you offer more" and the HR department coming back with "Sure, we can give you $100/year more."

If you can get a $100/year raise just for the asking, and you can also get a $100/year raise in exchange for equity, then simple arithmetic indicates that the equity has zero value.

<comment><USER17> This is trivially wrong. You could get a $100 raise _once_ , and possibly several times. But at some point, the boss would say "alright, no more raises".

At that point, you could say "I'll give up all my equity for another $100", at which point the boss would jump to agree.

<comment><USER18> > But at some point, the boss would say "alright, no more raises".

Not because $100 is too much, but because you've annoyed her by asking too many times. $100 is still trivial in value to the business.

<comment><USER17> This still is refusing to consider the marginal case, which is what the OP was asking about. At some point, even if asked the first time, a boss might refuse a $100 raise. They would still take the $100 for equity deal.

The point was just a thought experiment to show that equity has more than 0 value.

<comment><USER15> Thank you.

<comment><USER16> It is quite something that the best objection HN can offer to "Equity has no value" is "Surely it's worth at least five cents an hour."

OK, equity is worth five cents an hour. I admit it! Let's all negotiate with that in mind.

<comment><USER15> I was making a rhetorical point against the idea that it was worth zero. I was not attempting to actually put a value on anyone's equity.

It's quite something that you apparently couldn't tell the difference between those two things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Overly cynical. The two times I worked for a startup more than 3 months I got paid out for my equity. 2 for 2.

The problem is not equity, the problem is picking the right startup.

Everyone I know that has got rich has done so via equity.

<comment><USER20> > Overly cynical. The two times I worked for a startup more than 3 months

So how many have you actually worked for? "2 for 2 [out of the experiences I cherry-picked to rationalize my bias]" really doesn't support your claim that the author is overly cynical.

> The problem is not equity, the problem is picking the right startup.

If only we could predict the outcome of the lottery, we wouldn't even need startups.

<comment><USER19> If you are thoughtful and careful and quit quickly at a startup that isn't going anywhere / lead by jerks you can usually pick the right startup.

My point is that equity is great and it does everything it is supposed to do (align motivation / create a great team spirit / reward risk takers). The problem is people think that equity is magical and you don't have to worry about the people giving it to you. They are the weak link - not the equity itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think startups will soon be at a crossroads once the flaws in the equity compensation system become more widely exposed. People will be dis- incentivized from working at startups.

<comment><USER7> They've been saying that forever, just like they've been saying "Silicon Valley will suffer a brain drain because people will move away due to the high cost of living." In theory it makes sense, but it never happens in earnest.

Working in a startup is much, much more fun that working at a big corporation. I took a paycut several times to go work at startups just because working at a big company where you work on a single API of one of their products gets boring really fast, regardless of the pay.

<comment><USER22> But at a big company you can also spend 2/3 of your time day-dreaming or browsing the Internet. At a startup you need to be more engaged.

<comment><USER23> 100% agree with "2/3 of your time day-dreaming or browsing the Internet"... however one can only take this for so long before going crazy!

<comment><USER24> Do your own thing on the side. Much better than a few stock options. But make sure to have your project excluded in your IP and non-compete contracts with your employer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> And.... When the dealin' is done, you start to see that unless you're a founder or a really close friend of the founder, you have no one to advocate for you when the chips are divvied up, and you pretty much get to take or leave the deal.

4 or 5 years, slaving away at a startup, weekends, nights. And at the end of the party, you basically have zero say. Congratulations, hope you're best friends with the CTO.

</comment><comment><USER26> "Thankfully, this is somewhat rare, though it does happen fairly often."

Wait, what?

<comment><USER27> The most infamous case of this was Zynga pre-IPO where certain employees were pulled into a room and given the "give up your unvested equity and keep your job, or lose both".

I'm not sure if it's common, but it's definitely not unheard of.

Anecdotally from conversations I've had with founders some are _very, very_ keen on cycling options back into the pool as much as possible. More importantly I've heard some ideas on how to do this that made my skin crawl.

<comment><USER9> > _More importantly I 've heard some ideas on how to do this that made my skin > crawl._

I would be interested in hearing these, as I'm sure many others would be as well.

<comment><USER27> The most egregious and common one I hear is back-loading options vesting (e.g., vest 5% in 1st year, 10% next year, etc) - note that Amazon already does this, though standard is still linear. Dragging out the frequency of vesting is also common to try and create as many unvested options as possible when an employee chooses to leave the company.

One big takeaway I've had from these conversations is how many founders do not see equity as compensation earned, but as some sort of gift to be granted to the virtuous and loyal.

It's a little depressing that the frank answer to "why not vest quarterly" has been "because if they leave we don't get as many options back". It's interesting that we never think about cash compensation that way but do for equity compensation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > Anything of value can be traded for or converted into something of equal > value. Equity does not have this characteristic. You can't spend it, you > can't liquidate it, you can't even trade it.

I like that quote. It really illustrates the problem well.

Or the idea that you'd offer them to get the salary bump based on options value.

At the end of the day it is a gamble, a promise that _if_ the company gets big, you _might_ get a big payout. The hope and dreams account for so much. People will spend sleepless nights, working for 50% reduced salaries for some hope. That is a nice opportunity for the founders -- sell a dream.

Sell it to investors.

Sell it to customers.

Sell it to employees.

Sell it to themselves.

The last is key, you have to believe your own lies to start really be convincing to others.

</comment><comment><USER29> Love the article. Wish I read this before joining a startup.

Minor nitpick, please remove the number from the title.

</comment><comment><USER30> Reading the comments here, reading about "the good old days" before the dot- com bubble burst... do we see early signs of another bubble? I sincerely hope not.

<comment><USER31> It looks like a different sort of bubble this time.

If I recall, in 2000, not only had valuations gone ridiculous, but there were also a couple of big triggers for tech spending to drop -- phone networks globally (big spenders) had overbid on 3G licenses and wanted to keep their other capital spending down, and other businesses had just come through Y2K spending. And the public imagination had lost rationality (press talking about the new economy and price-to-earnings ratios not mattering, etc...)

This time around there's a cultural bubble among engineers (everyone wants to do a start-up), some irrational unicorn-hunting, and a window where governments are weak to VC demands for the sake of an innovation agenda, (eg, Uber's making more headway on taxi regulations than would normally be the case). But little sign that tech spending globally is likely to drop any time soon.

There is also a slightly sad split in that some of the biggest unicorns are technologically not very innovative (Uber, Slack) while innovation & high tech spinouts from research continue to be a less spectacular slog.

But that seems a less worrying bubble for engineers (the number of engineering jobs should still continue to rise, as more and more of companies business models are defined by the tech they use, and so if they want to differentiate their business they need to differentiate their tech)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I joined a startup very early (#12) 2.5 yrs ago that had previously successful and well-known founders. I took below market pay but ended up working out (now valued around $500m) and believe they will succeed long-term.

I've since left but of course early employee equity was one of my top considerations.

To join an early stage startup that you do not think will succeed and become "big" should rarely be worth your time.

</comment><comment><USER33> "The probability of getting rich from employee equity is almost zero, while the chance of rain on the 1st and 15th is 100%."</comment>


Zenhabits - The end of busy  - <AUTHOR> http://zenhabits.net/end-of-busy/

<comment><USER2> I've been doing a lot of things at the same time for many years, school, work, studies outside school and stuff like that; but have never ever felt stressed or really "busy" either.

When people talked to me about how stressed out they were and all the stuff they had to do i used to think "Seems like you should just do it and not be so stressed and freaked out and everything would be a lot simpler."

But some weeks ago I actually felt stressed, for no apparent reason either; it was a really creepy feeling bothering me much, much more than I would have expected. It made it harder to sleep, i would almost get an upset stomach.

I could not figure out for the life of me why I was feeling that way, or how I could make it stop. It was completely new. The feeling have since passed and I hope it won't ever come back. But I have a bit more respect now for people who get stressed, it's not really helpful or useful to just tell them "Don't be stressed and everything would be easier."

And it's not really that easy to just.. get rid of the feeling.

The post is absolutely correct, stop "being busy" and you wouldn't be so busy. But some real tips psychological or otherwise on how to avoid the feeling would be far more helpful than simply; in my opinion: stating the obvious.

"Stop being busy. Just decide to stop, today." Has that ever worked? Has it worked for the author or is he like I was and have simply never felt stress?

<comment><USER3> I agree. The closest thing that page provided to concete advice was to avoid busy work and talk to your boss.

But that runs into two immediate problems. The first is that unless your boss already thinks you are genuinely overworked, they are not likely to be too sympathetic to you wanting to work less.

Now, if you can identify specific tasks that you think are busy work, you may get your boss to remove those or explain why they are not busy work. Of course, those tasks may then be replaced by others.

And this also brings me to the second point. Busywork should be avoided, but you need to make sure it is busywork. Your boss may very well have a good reason to have given you a task that you just don't see from your point in the organization. It may be worth asking him/her about so you can better understand why you are doing those tasks, but that does not mean you should unilaterly decide they are busy work and stop doing it.

Of course that only addresses work. Outside of work you may have more control, but even there your actions likely impact others and this should be considered when cutting things out. A proverbial soccer-mom may easily free up 3 hours a week by removing her child from soccer, but this will certainly impact the child.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As much as I appreciate Leo and ZenHabits, his content us ultra-cyclical. I understand the efficacy of repetition, but I unsubscribed after the 500th post on "doing less." This post is more of a teaser and linkbait for the rest of his site than a solid example of his capacity to inspire.

<comment><USER5> I admire this guy. I have been following his blog since the very beginning. He has come a long way. Having quit his job, works from home, quit smoking, shred ~25 pounds, completed multiple mini-marathons, published books, moving to California from Guam with family (6 kids) and he just recently removed all ads on his most popular blogs which easily gets him 1+ million page views per month. He was charging ~2k per month for a single 125x125 ad. Basically easy money.

I also find his writing repetitive, but I realized that I have grown as a person too over the last ~3 years that I was reading his blog, what seemed inspirational then seems repetitive now, because I have grown out of those concepts and most of it doesn't apply to me anymore. Maybe he was able to sustain his willpower because he is repetitive?

<comment><USER6> I think this is the same with most people putting out inspirational/motivational material. At some point, it isn't inspirational _to you_ , but it still is to others. That means you've grown and developed, and other people can too.

I used to listen to Dave Ramsey a lot years ago to get some motivation and get certain things drilled in to my head. After about the 300th show, I could tell you about 95% of the time what he was going to say, almost word for word. That doesn't mean it's bad or he's repetitive (well, he is) but that it's 'worked' already - I don't really need that type of motivation in my life as I once did, as it did the trick.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When I decided to focus on the things that matter in my life, I got much busier. Sure, I have fewer items on my todo list now, but each one of them takes a lot of time, energy, and focus to get right. When I was less focused, I had plenty of free time because I didn't realize how much work it takes to get the most important stuff right.

</comment><comment><USER8> Great post. Reminds me of Benjamin Franklin's quote -

      Never confuse motion with action.

</comment><comment><USER9> if your schedule is s.t. you can put an end to busy, you're not working hard enough.

</comment><comment><USER10> Busy is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.</comment>


Block The Pirate Bay Within 3 Days, Austrian ISPs Told - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/block-the-pirate-bay-within-3-days-austrian-isps-told-140729/

<comment><USER2> More censorship.

When will the madness end? :(

<comment><USER3> When enough people boycott the content-providers for their heavy-handed actions.

BDS can be used against companies just as much as against countries.

<comment><USER2> It's not the companies though, is it?

It's the legislature/government trying to ensure compliance.</comment></comment></comment>


Why the CrunchPad mattered - <AUTHOR> http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/11/30/why-the-crunchpad-mattered/ <comment><USER2> It didn't matter. The Crunchpad would have basically been a neat tech-toy for the people who had the disposable income to toss at it.

The world is littered with "almosts". You could just as easily argue that the ultimate failure of this indicates that bloggers should stick to blogging and not try to build companies and products.

I'm not saying I wasn't intrigued by it, and probably would have bought one if it ever shipped, but the TC guys shouldn't strain their arms patting themselves on the back for not shipping a product.

<comment><USER3> _The Crunchpad would have basically been a neat tech-toy for the people who had the disposable income to toss at it._

At the price point which they were planning to sell it, it would have been the same price as most netbooks. Since it caters to a similar audience ("casual" computer users), it is possible that if it had launched, it would have been popular.

<comment><USER4> Unlikely, but possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The only reason the CrunchPad mattered was because it gave TechCrunch and CrunchGear something to write about.

There are already tablets available which have the feature set the CrunchPad would have, below the price point they were trying to hit (i.e. <http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.31523> )...

<comment><USER6> That doesn't have the same feature set at all. It's a 7'' screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I must be dyslexic. Whenever I see a post titled "Why X Matters," I can't help reading "X doesn't matter."

</comment><comment><USER7> I know the tablet PC is like the dream device of the future, but do people really think these things will be useful?

I can think of only couple niche uses:

\- replacing a notebook for people who like to sketch ideas

\- replacing a doctor's clipboard

\- doubling as a wacom tablet (cintiq) for designers

A touchscreen PC with no keyboard is extremely limited in utility and ergonomically awkward at best. We're already carrying around android/iPhone devices and slim, lightweight laptops--what does a tablet PC add to that mix?

Unless a company completely reinvents the idea of the tablet PC, I think these devices are destined for failure. Maybe Apple has something up their sleeve?

<comment><USER8> _A touchscreen PC with no keyboard is extremely limited_

I don't know about you, but when I browse the web, I actually don't type that much.

Mike Arrington was specifically referring to the need to browse the web from his couch. In browsing mode, you like to explore and click. Type? Not so much.

And intensive use of my iPhone has shown me that the screen is just a bit too small to seriously browse the web for more than 10 minutes at a time.

So yes, there might be a market there.

<comment><USER7> Sure, while browsing the web, you explore and click _most_ of the time, but there are plenty of instances when you need to type: a query into google or a url into the address bar, logging in to websites, commenting on a blog post, responding to an email. These things will have people reaching for their laptops in no time. Even if these are specifically for browsing the web from the couch, why not just use a laptop? They even have built in stands (the keyboard) so that your arms don't get tired holding them up.

Also, I'd imagine that typing on a touchscreen tablet PC is considerably more cumbersome than on an iPhone, since you'd only have one hand available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _It would behoove the New York Times, for example, to build something like the CrunchPad for consumption of the newspaper. They won't do it because it is seemingly off-mission._

Umm, I seem to recall seeing a really interesting video a while back of a blogger visiting the NYT's tech arm - and being shown their work on small format devices and "digital paper". So I think he's dead off there.

Anyway. It's kind of hard to write commentary like this - because so far there is no real evidence that as advanced a device was ready to go at the (last) price point mentioned. The Crunchpad is an exercise in poor marketing and poor management. None of the initial promises ($200, open source design etc.) were met in the end. There were months of silence about the device. Very few images and demonstrations of ongoing work (apart from the same artfully posed renderings).

To be utterly honest I frankly don't believe they had the product they say they did at the stage they claimed.

Ultimately though whatever stage they were this product never made it from the "TC office" to the shelves. It's _currently_ a complete failure from any perspective.

</comment><comment><USER10> It would have mattered for a week, maybe two.

Then it would be one cool coaster. I could probably set 3 or 4 beers on the thing.</comment>


Brazil: Calls grow for Bolsonaro ally to quit after 'devastating' report on leak - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/05/brazil-sergio-moro-jair-bolsonaro-justice-minister <comment><USER2> It's very odd how this report is jam-packed with assertions and qualifiers regarding the accusations, but somehow fails to specify or give any substance or even provide any basis for these allegations. Instead, they simply complain that the criminal network which was operated by Brazil's Workers' Party (PT) was found guilty of corruption, a fact that is not even dispute by PT, and that somehow receiving a sentence for the crimes they have committed is somehow unfair.

If there is ay basis for thesr accusations then why are they refusing to present thr , and instead just publish baseless accusations and a long string of unfounded qualifiers?</comment>


UX Designer Discusses Board Game Themes and User Experience - <AUTHOR> http://www.leagueofgamemakers.com/the-themes-they-are-a-changing/

<comment><USER2> Moon Festival is not a lantern festival! Lantern Festival is not a harvest festival!

This is my take away from glancing at the box. The adjectives that come floating up in my brain after seeing it are 'dumb', and 'did not do the homework'.

Reading the article doesn't help, since he is aware of this and somehow just papers it away. (No, Ghost Festival is not Lantern Festival either, just like gifts do not make Halloween into Christmas Pt. 2, the Fattening).

Is this what UX designers are always like?</comment>