Pinboard Turns Eleven - <AUTHOR> https://blog.pinboard.in/2020/07/pinboard_is_eleven/ <comment><USER4> "Much of the core code on the site dated back to 2009-2010 and was written by Past Me, a vindictive, inscrutable nemesis who devoted his life to sabotaging Present Me.

Doing this on a live system is like performing kidney transplants on a playing mariachi band. The best case is that no one notices a change in the music; you chloroform the players one at a time and try to keep a steady hand while the band plays on. The worst case scenario is that the music stops and there is no way to unfix what you broke, just an angry mob. It is very scary."

OMG. I think I stopped and laughed for a solid 30 seconds when I read this.

I don't think I've ever felt so "seen" in my whole 25 years as a programmer.

<comment><USER5> Maciej is an outstanding writer. I recommend reading his blog ([https://idlewords.com/](https://idlewords.com/)) if you haven't already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Broken record: I get that people are really into tagging and I see how I could, like, instead of writing HN comments or playing Dark Souls, nurture and groom an elegant garden of them for my own 10,000 bookmarks.

But that's not why I use Pinboard. It turns out ("bookmark people" apparently already know this) that a huge collection of bookmarks basically functions as a personal search engine. My primary interface to Pinboard is a "pin:" search engine shortcut.

What makes this so effective for me is that if you have an archive account (you should have an archive account; it's the best money I've spent for a computer thing easily), Pinboard indexes the contents of PDF, so I can instantly search the contents of all the papers I've bookmarked.

I don't even think about what I'm bookmarking, what to tag things, or even what to title them; I just cram 'em all in there and let search figure it out. And it works great. Pinboard is a steal.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the testimonial!

I thought bookmarking was incredibly stupid until Joshua Schachter explained it to me like this: when you save something, tag it with the words you would use to search for it six months later. It blew my mind and eventually gave me a livelihood.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pinboard is my secret weapon for those obnoxious lists of citations I sometimes get to spackle onto the end of comments on the internet. I've been on there since December 27, 2010 (Merry Christmas to me), and currently have 8,698 bookmarks across 1,544 different tags. I'd have a few hundred more if I could hurry up and transfer all the open tabs from ios safari.

...so I'm genuinely worried about those declining user numbers. I've dabbled with the API enough that I could pull everything down on fairly short notice, but I sure hope I won't need to anytime soon.

<comment><USER9> > ...so I'm genuinely worried about those declining user numbers

My story might be relevant. I only recently learned about Pinboard. $22/year isn't terrible, but it's just a bookmarking service. Free trial? Nope - <USER2> need to pull out your credit card and fork over $22. You get seven days to request a refund. (Will I actually get it? No idea who's holding my money.) He's happy to boast about competitors disappearing, but I use OneNote, and Microsoft isn't going anywhere. Yes, Microsoft is horrible, but they're also spectacularly wealthy. Ultimately I didn't subscribe.

Businesses need to ask from time to time if their business model is the right one for the current year. Expecting people that don't know you to give you $22 for a bookmarking service, without a trial period, might be wishful thinking in 2020.

<comment><USER10> I tried Pinboard earlier this year. I found it too slow and was having issues with just general timeouts trying to categorize my bookmarks.

I requested a refund and got it straightaway. Along with a kind reply from the owner. No issues. (I think I had paid via PayPal so I was hardly worried). Also... $22.

Must everything be a free trial? There's a lot of issues and costs associated with that for businesses (and increasingly regulation).

Now that I see this post from the owner, I'm inclined to sign back up again. I could have been one of those actually attempting to do a mass import when he was fixing it. And him being on 10-year old tech probably greatly contributed to my personal experience.

As the product itself goes, I think it's worthy and useful. Having it be mobile-friendly will be helpful not so much for me but when I want to share a list of links to some other people I know who haven't used a full-size keyboard in five years.

<comment><USER7> Hey, thanks for reconsidering the site! It sounds like you caught things in mid-maintenance, or on a day when someone decided to crawl everything with no pause between requests.

For what it's worth, one feature I want to make work on the site is "create a sharable list of links to give people", it's a use case that comes up a lot.

<comment><USER11> While you're here, add a "used none" filter (alongside existing "used once") in tag editor please?

<comment><USER7> There's no such thing, though. All tags are on at least one bookmark by definition.

<comment><USER11> But when I delete the last bookmark for a given tag, I still see the tag in the tag editor, even after a page refresh. And I can still click on the tag which brings up 0 bookmarks. Does it just take a while to be removed?

<comment><USER11> OK, never mind, it just takes a while for it to be deleted (around 10-15 seconds). I've just been impatient.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it's done by a background script. But genuine orphan tags should not be possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Member since 2012 (ah wut, I still have the activation email!), after migrating (easily) from a dying Delicious. Thank you so much for running this! As far as actually useful web services go (and holy crap is this useful!) it's by far the most stable I've ever used, and it never got bogged down in useless crap like 99% of other web services which constantly need to pivot while looking for a way to actually make money.

It's been a frickin' journey. ~2004, started using Delicious. ~2005, built my own search site because Delicious couldn't handle searching through a few thousand bookmarks with a few thousand tags! 2006, contacted by a researcher looking into tag clouds because mine had more unique tags than bookmarks. 2012, migrated to Pinboard for a fixed lifetime fee. Best money I ever spent! Today, heard about the bookmark archive functionality and signed up immediately.

</comment><comment><USER13> Oh dear. I'm a positive newbie here! Found my original receipt; 1st Jan 2015 for the princely sum of $10,60 for lifetime membership. And I only have a measley 1680 links saved.

It's always a gamble with these one-time lifetime offers as you never know if the site's even going to be there in a few months time. But, even if Pinboard folded tomorrow, I'd still consider I got a great bargain.

I must admit my heart sank a bit when I read about the rewrite opening the door to new features. For my uses, Pinboard is pretty much perfect as is [and I've never noticed any problems using it on mobile]. I really hope the developer doesn't start adding loads of extra bells and whistles [read "bloat"] to try and attract new users. I just want my bookmarking service to be boring, reliable and so unintrusive that most of the time I forget it even exists... til I see an article like this on HN.

PS: Off-topic. But I really like the way "maciej" writes. He comes across as a genuinely down-to-earth, self-deprecating and funny guy. Such a refreshing change from all the 'trying-far-too-hard-to-be-hipster-cool' writing out there at the moment.

<comment><USER14> Out of curiosity, what do you use to store and search bookmarks on mobile? Both the old (third-party) iOS app I used to use and the old macOS app I used to use have stopped working years ago due to neglect. So I use the service pretty sparingly on desktop and pretty much not at all on mobile.

<comment><USER13> I'm on Android not iOS. But I use the Pinboard app. When I want to save a webpage, I use the "share link" menu [under the browser hamburger menu] to send it to the Pinboard app.

<comment><USER15> Definitely check out Pinkt for Pinboard [0]. It is a rather new Android Client for Pinboard which is actively maintained and has quite a nice UI - <USER3> besides that it is OSS.

[0]: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fibelatti....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fibelatti.pinboard)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> 11 years? Wow. And here I am, ever since I saw this project I have been wanting to start something and its 11 years of just thinking.

I need to get going.

</comment><comment><USER17> That picture of past you... what is going on? On the table I see the following beverages: wine, liquor, coffee, water. There's also a cheese grater. And what looks to be a bottle of pills. Okay. Now on the window sill behind you is ... I don't even know, coffee, a cleaning product, some napkins maybe, another wine bottle and other sundry items.

This looks like maybe a table shoved into the corner of a tiny restaurant, away from the main area.

Apparently it's night time.

I guess it's as good a place to write code as any other. :-)

<comment><USER18> From a past update:

 _" I launched the site in July 9, 2009 from a small kitchen in Botoșani, Romania."_

[https://blog.pinboard.in/2019/07/i_cant_stop_winning/](https://blog.pinboard.in/2019/07/i_cant_stop_winning/)

I suspect that's the kitchen :) My own kitchen table during this confinement period isn't too dissimilar...

<comment><USER7> Yeah, that's my Romanian kitchen. The bottles are Transnistrian cognac, local red wine, and the empty glass that looks like a cooling tower is a Turkish tea glass. These are the rocket fuels that built Pinboard.

The white bottle is just Greek table salt, though. No fun pills.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> torb-xyz I don't think there is any service I've been more happy with the last decade than this one. The (optional) PDF archival in particular is great. I also appreciate that since I pay for it and it's not freemium or anything, it won't go away in a attempt to please investors.

</comment><comment><USER19> Pinboard is ok, but recently I found myself to either just webclip the article into evernote, or make a note about it in Roam Research. Somehow just having tagged links doesn't work for me anymore.

</comment><comment><USER20> Can you all share your workflow/use cases with this and other bookmarking services?

I'm geniounly curious because the way I treat bookmarks is that they are temporary links I wanna go back to, so they all end up being deleted sooner rather than later. When I want to visit a website I just type in the website's name in my browser and either let autocomplete do its magic, or just let it take me to Google where I tap on the first link. The idea of keeping bookmarks saved and organized/tagged is alien to me.

<comment><USER21> I have two use cases. The first is to keep track of interesting articles I find and plausibly want to refer back to in the future. A 3rd party browser extension and mobile app make saving very easy, and then I tag each item with a high-level category. This is also pretty painless, and brings a lot of value (otherwise you just have an unsorted collection of links - not helpful). An example is my 'long reads' tag [https://pinboard.in/u:guyaglionby/t:long- read/](https://pinboard.in/u:guyaglionby/t:long-read/). The 'unread' feature is also useful here - I've got >10 long reads banked for when I'm looking for things to do.

The second is as a kind of mechanism to give myself permission to close a bunch of tabs every time they accumulate. Each is _obviously_ open for a good reason and I may want to read it at some point, so sticking it on pinboard is a nice way of shoving them elsewhere. I don't save everything - curation is important (in the same way as with tagging). Lots of what remains are things that may be useful for me in the future but are not immediately, like design guides [https://pinboard.in/u:guyaglionby/t:design/](https://pinboard.in/u:guyaglionby/t:design/). Some of these things I leave as 'unread'; others that feel more like reference material I mark as 'read' immediately so as not to have them in my to-read queue.

<comment><USER20> > otherwise you just have an unsorted collection of links - not helpful

Yeah I think this is my problem. I'm on iOS so I use Safari's reading list feature to keep track of articles I want to read. But it's just a dump, no organization, and after I read an article I don't know what to "do" with it anymore so I just delete it.

I think I need to figure out a system where I actually refer back to things because I seem to google for the same things over and over again. Pinboard seems like it could help

<comment><USER21> > system where I actually refer back to things because I seem to google for > the same things over and over again

Yep, this often frustratingly turns nothing up for me. Hence, Pinboard :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Very recently I deployed (in my personal VPS) espial ([https://github.com/jonschoning/espial](https://github.com/jonschoning/espial)) which basically a self-hosted pinboard clone. I'm extremely happy with it.

I wish it had a browser plugin but besides that it is amazing

</comment><comment><USER23> I like pinboard but when I had problems with my archival account a couple of years ago I didn't receive any response to emails even though I chased for months. No longer subscribe but would love to find a similar alternative. Maybe poor customer service is the reason for the number of active customers dropping off.

<comment><USER24> I run www.historio.us and I reply to emails :P

<comment><USER7> He does! And unless I'm wrong, historio.us has been around as long as Pinboard but never gets half the HN love.

<comment><USER25> Most of that is on me, I haven't given it the love it deserves, but I'm currently rewriting it and will be modernizing it, making it responsive, and adding new features.

<comment><USER7> Enjoy, and congratulations on running a long-lived solvent business that actually answers its email.

<comment><USER25> Thank you, and likewise, congratulations for running a long-lived successful business!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I know this comment doesn't add anything to the discussion, but I'm another happy user who loves the product and uses it daily. I feel like it gives me the superpower of being able to answer any question my teammates have with a dump of my favourite books / essays / papers on the subject.

</comment><comment><USER27> If I have the time, I like to open up /recent[0] to see what's in there. /popular[1] is good too, but with /recent you usually find some obscure less popular (but still good) link that always surprises me. I am glad the Internet still has little rabbit-holes like this that you can get lost in.

[0] [https://pinboard.in/recent/](https://pinboard.in/recent/)

[1] [https://pinboard.in/popular/](https://pinboard.in/popular/)

</comment><comment><USER28> I've signed up in September 2010 and been a loyal user ever since. Pinboard is pretty much my archive: cool things I've seen, project ideas, solutions, etc.

</comment><comment><USER29> I imported my bookmarks into pinboard, but found it quite a chore to go through them and tag them properly, so I abandoned that. Firefox sync keeps my bookmarks available everywhere anyways.

Now I use pinboard for my youtube subscriptions, every time I subscribe to someone on youtube, I add it to pinboard and tag it.

Very useful when your subscriptions range from several different sports to tech or gaming.

Would do same for instagram but I have too many subscriptions and it's useless when someone changes their @account.

They could really do with a lists feature ala twitter.

</comment><comment><USER30> I became a Pinboard customer on December 17, 2010 and currently have 7,940 bookmarks, the most recent pin was added yesterday.

It's a great service. I recommend it to everyone.

<comment><USER31> Thats very impressive. I joined in September 27, 2011 and have only 1,830 bookmarks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Note that this blog post is from 2020, but when I visit [https://blog.pinboard.in/blog/](https://blog.pinboard.in/blog/) then the top post is from 2017.

So many the technology refresh did break something! ;-)

Disclaimer: I'm a customer.

</comment><comment><USER33> I use Pinboard since April 22, 2010. And I use it every day since then.

Best $6,28 I ever spent...

</comment><comment><USER34> Pinboard is an abandoned graveyard, I requested a download of my archived bookmarks, got it like 6 months later - not 'under an hour' as promised, better late than never I suppose. I wont be renewing.

<comment><USER7> "Abandoned graveyard" is the whole bookmarking business model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I got the bookmark sync one time purchase account years ago and used it for a couple of years but these days I just use Firefox sync and it solves most of what I cared about.

</comment><comment><USER36> Wow! And thanks for such a great service. I have been a happy customer since 2013 and I believe I bought one of your promo - pay for lifetime account with some $10 or so. :-)

</comment><comment><USER37> Some of the previous anniversary links are 404s. :)

<comment><USER38> 2 years: [https://web.archive.org/web/20110709213326/https://blog.pinb...](https://web.archive.org/web/20110709213326/https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/07/two_years_of_pinboard/)

3 years: [https://web.archive.org/web/20120713030912/http://blog.pinbo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120713030912/http://blog.pinboard.in/2012/07/pinboard_turns_three/)

4 years (broken HTML in the elevenversary post): [https://blog.pinboard.in/2013/07/pinboard_is_four_years_old/](https://blog.pinboard.in/2013/07/pinboard_is_four_years_old/)

5 years (broken HTML in the elevenversary post): [https://blog.pinboard.in/2014/07/pinboard_turns_five/](https://blog.pinboard.in/2014/07/pinboard_turns_five/)

6--7 and 10 are valid.

Nine is apparently Right Out.

<comment><USER39> > Nine

Something happened in 2018. There are no stats for that year too.

<comment><USER40> > Every year when I don't forget I try to publish the same stats

This implies he just forgot about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> You fixed my [twitter search] bug!

<comment><USER42> Which one is that? I'm still trying to find a way to exclude the "twitter" tagged results from my searches.

<comment><USER41> Mine was the opposite. It stopping including any tweets I made after 3 July 2017 in my searches. It appeared to be still downloading them, just they were not included in searches. I think the bug was still present a few months ago. No idea if others were affected or just me.

I also saw a bug where it didn't include the end of tweets (possibly some sort of character limit). But that was pretty minor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> No mention of the price increase? Hm.

<comment><USER44> Maybe I'm being unfair but (solo?) people get bored.

People get bored of maintaining, polishing or developing new features once the revenue stream is consistent. The product stagnates. Income stream starts to dry. People that once could manage frugally get used to have plenty. What do they do to get back on track? They increase prices. This is the beggining of the end. An order of magnitude smaller, but been there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Would love to see a Go-based bookmarking server (no JavaScript) and CLI/ncurses app that uses yaml/toml/json files for bookmarks:

      google:
        tags:
        - search engine
        url: https://google.com
      duckduckgo:
        tags:
        - search engine
        url: https://duckduckgo.com

<comment><USER46> Is that your requirements doc? "As a customer, I want a bookmarking tool written in Go that uses yaml files"?

<comment><USER45> No, I am not a customer because I do not believe bookmarks should be something that you pay to host in the cloud. However, for a self-hosted alternative my suggestion would be awesome and likely superior as it could be synced with any provider (Google Drive, One Drive, Dropbox, Nextcloud, etc).</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to move from development to security compliance? - <AUTHOR> I'm a Java dev 10+ yrs. I would like to move into a position where I can consult companies about security compliance. How do I make this move? The problem is without prior experience it seems all doors are closed. Finding a development job and then hoping an opportunity comes up to get compliance exposure seems not very promising.
Anyone made that shift?
Any pointers appreciated, thanks <comment><USER2> CISSP would be a good start. That will open a _lot_ of Federal government doors, health IT doors, etc. If you want to be a white hat at Qualcomm or compliance at Google, that's going to be pretty tough straight out of the box. The people I know in such jobs earned their way to them with a lot of hard work and now live with the sword of Damocles hanging over them.</comment>


Metaphors Are Us (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/75/story/metaphors-are-us-rpp <comment><USER2> > The flotation device in the toilet water tank was rubbing against the side, > getting stuck halfway up so that the tank didn't fill completely.

Wouldn't that cause the tank to overflow instead?

<comment><USER3> Nope. The only way for the tank to overflow is for the flotation device — the ballcock — to be removed from the tank, causing the valve to never close.

<comment><USER2> But if the flotation device never rises to the height where it closes the valve, the water will keep on flowing in (?)

<comment><USER3> You seem to be thinking of only one force when in fact there are at least two forces acting on the ballcock. If you were to empty the tank instantaneously by cutting out the bottom of the tank, what would happen to the ballcock? It would fall on its own.

The ballcock has an upward force (buoyancy) acting on it, causing it to float when the tank is not empty. It also has a downward force (gravity) acting on it, causing it to fall, when the tank is empty.

So the reason why the ballcock causes the valve to open and close is due to a pressure differential.

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

<comment><USER2> Yes, but if the ballcock is stuck "halfway up", then I assume the valve is open (or half-open).

Anyway, I see in the schematic that there's typically an overflow mechanism.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Let's not forget, Bill Gates hasn't always been the good guy - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/29/lets-not-forget-bill-gates-hasnt-always-been-the-good-guy <comment><USER2> Microsoft's evil tactics seem childish in comparison to Google's. Where Microsoft bundled a browser with their OS, Google did that with Android, and created an entire separate OS running on their browser, and paid devs to include their browser as opt-out installation in tons of unrelated freeware, and leveraged their control of the most performance-hungry sites on the internet to make those sites run noticeably smoother on their browser compared to their competitors.

Despite coming with Windows, being the default web standard, and being the proscribed browser for government computers with a market share of 95% in 2004, IE immediately lost a third of that when something better, Firefox, came along. Google would never in a million years let another browser become a threat to their dominance. They'd either get bought out the moment they began picking up steam or Google would crush them with ads, exclusive site functions, and search page warnings.

The only real difference is market share. The Google/Apple duopoly enables behavior a hundred times more egregious than anything Microsoft ever did.

<comment><USER3> Yep, imagine Microsoft banning developers from every Windows operating system because you made a Microsoft Word document complaining about Microsoft prices

The world we live in makes Microsoft look innocent, and they basically owned the entire OS market

<comment><USER2> The easier computing devices get the less technical the users have to be to use them, and the more vulnerable they are to being taken advantage of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Gates did some bad stuff in relation to MS, and now he is doing some good stuff in relation to philanthropy, shock and horror, people are not always saints.

This is the very foundations of `cancel` culture, find something in someone's past and criticism them on, no matter how they have grown as a person or to whatever level they have changed, you should always judge them on their actions of the past.

I am not saying that you should not take a person as the sum of their actions, but we shouldn't just them on a slither of their actions. I would not say that Gates is a good person either. Hey welcome to people being people.

</comment><comment><USER5> what is the purpose of this article? is this relevant to something other than the current "Bill Gates invented coronavirus" conspiracy nonsense?

<comment><USER6> Well he is indirectly responsible for all the malware that propagated through Windows because of the well-known fact that Windows is a closed source, and therefore vulnerable system. Windows 10 has better mitigation against such threats, but is not bulletproof by any means. This man has contributed to the recent wave of ransomware attacks that have plagued IT departments.

<comment><USER7> So all viruses on closed-source software are the fault of the developer of that software for not opening it up?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Why weren't there more stories on the small businesses Sam Walton put out of business with Wal-Mart? Most success is driven that way. In its heyday, IBM was never loved." — Bill Gates (Fortune, 28 December 1992)

"Any government action that would derail or delay Windows 98 would hurt the American economy and would cost American jobs." — Bill Gates (5 May 1998)

"I want to get as much mileage as possible out of our browser and Java relationship here. In other words a real advantage against Sun and Netscape. Do we have a clear plan on what we want Apple to do to undermine Sun?" — Bill Gates (8 April 1997)

</comment><comment><USER9> let's not forget, distilling anyone into "good" or "bad" is a trait of a weak mind.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I was fascinated by the author's take on the juxtaposition of Bill Gates' malevolent legacy of old, to wit:

[http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2007021720...](http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2007021720190018)

with the "new" Bill Gates model of what seems to be benevolence and global amity. Personally, I struggle with my sourness towards his past behaviour in light of what I see as admirable conduct in the present.

<comment><USER10> This too applies to me. I disliked his effect on the industry at large, and software licencing, and pace of development. His work outside of the computing industry has been humane, and focussed on matters often at odds with the US republican christian-right wing: women's reproductive health, contraception and vaccination. For that, I applaud him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Despite his cut-throat approach to business, Bill Gates has a more _net_ positive impact on the world that most people who have ever lived.</comment>


What was the first program you ever wrote? - <AUTHOR> http://www.chrisfinke.com/2008/08/21/what-was-your-first-program/

<comment><USER2>
        10 PRINT "HELLO"
        20 GOTO 10

Same as everyone else I reckon :-)

<comment><USER3> Ditto, although I think I got fancy with the C64 BASIC and used ? instead of PRINT:

10 ? "HELLO" 20 GOTO 10

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> hello world in pascal!</comment>


Jade template language forced to rename to Pug - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pugjs/jade/issues/2184#issuecomment-175763098 <comment><USER2> Great example of a community coming together to just get stuff done. Benefits of open source right there.</comment>


Ask HN: What would your ideal jobs board have/do?(Developers and Employers of HN) - <AUTHOR> Hi, I was thinking to build a remote jobs portal awhile back. I decided otherwise given all the portals already online. However I am not completely satisfied with what is on offer.
Just wanted HN's views on what they think would make for an ideal remote jobs board for them.
For instance
What kind of filters would be of use to help find relevant listings quickly?
Would some level of standardization to a job description be of help?
What all vital information about the job should be stated upfront - Like AirBnb does for the rental spaces (AC, Rooms, Pets allowed etc)? Is newsletter the best means of learning about new job listings or there could be a more effective method?
My main issue while going through remote portals was the difficulty of narrowing down to relevant listings. I felt that potential deal breakers such as compatible Time-zones, minimum daily overlap or location constraints, or travel requirements are usually not provided in the listing. Even when they are, it's not possible to filter using them. I imagine that would waste a lot of time and effort having to read through many incompatible listings. Worse, if the only way someone learns about these constraints is after sending a CV and cover letter.
I'm just wondering what other such problems are?
Also, what are the problems that employers face when posting to job boards? What's their ideal job board? <comment><USER2> I would say focus on remote.

The job board market is incredibly crowded and you've got to have something very different to stick out.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see, I was not certain if the problems I had with remote portals were something others were facing as well. Since the standard seems to suggest otherwise</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What software do you use to clean audio? - <AUTHOR>

If you have audio files like recorded interviews, lectures, and such, what software do you use to clean them up?
Years back, I tried out Adobe Audition, which - abstruse interface aside - did a great job. But has anything better with a simpler interface come along since?
I'd imagine there's a simple drag-and-drop app for OS X out there, but I don't really know what the best place to do the research for this is. If I had the technical knowledge to make such an app, I definitely would, because I keep encountering interviews that are barely audible, even from prolific podcasters.
I have to assume that there's software out there for people with little to no technological proficiency who just want to clean up their audio files.
Are there any good alternatives out there? What do you use? <comment><USER2> Audacity <http://audacity.sourceforge.net> helped me sort out a bad sound track from some video before splicing it into a short film.

</comment><comment><USER3> Camtasia studio has a very good noise removal part. <http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html>

Try Sony Vegas for more professional approach!

</comment><comment><USER4> The wireless router is shielded by the operator.Is there a way to anti-shield?</comment>


US cripples Iran's military command and control systems - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/with-trumps-approval-pentagon-launched-cyber-strikes-against-iran/2019/06/22/250d3740-950d-11e9-b570-6416efdc0803_story.html <comment><USER2> I really have a hard time believing anything anymore. How much of any of this really happened? Is this all just an information game?

Trump's M.O. is using these self aggrandizing anecdotes to convey success when there is nothing under the surface. The media is feckless; skeptical when convenient, subservient when the war drums have been banged.

What really happened with the drone? What really happened with the response? Where are the receipts?!</comment>


The Government Gave Big Oil the Power to Prosecute Its Biggest Critic - <AUTHOR> https://prospect.org/power/chevron-big-oil-power-prosecute-its-biggest-critic/ <comment><AUTHOR> This case is insane to me.

Not only did the government allow Chevron to prosecute him in their place, the judge overseeing Donziger's case openly blogged in support of Chevron, suggested to Chevron what they should file against Donziger, and the judge even put him under house arrest in contempt of court _BEFORE_ the trial even began, something for which apparently there is no precedent in the history of the United States.</comment>


Ray Ozzie gets it but Mesh won't save Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/4/microsoft_live_mesh_ray_ozzie_gets_it_so_is_microsoft_saved_

<comment><USER2> One step at a time. At least they are moving in what seems to be the right direction.</comment>


Ask HN: What unknown tech blogs or sites do you read regularly? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It always interests me how little replies this generates on HN, compared to how frequently it's asked.

A real shame...

<comment><USER3> This instance from 2012 that I bookmarked had 80 replies. Many of the replies provided several, or many, links. I wonder how many still work?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4928762](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4928762)</comment></comment>


Show HN: I want to work at Rap Genius, so I made this. - <AUTHOR> http://blueprint.byankit.com

<comment><USER2> everyone here is hatin; this is a rap genius idea and shows great initiative on your part to demonstrate tangible benefits you can immediately bring to the team.

Would be extremely disappointed if the Rap Genius team didn't follow up with you on this

</comment><comment><USER3> Is Rap Genius just a layer of fluff over a lyrics site? Are they using "commentary" and "criticism" of the lyrics to eke out a fair use claim?

<comment><USER4> The point of the fair use doctrine is precisely to protect discourse of artistic works, i.e., by commentary on or criticism of such works. The depth and quality (or lack thereof) of such discourse is irrelevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> FYI: cofounder's name is "Mahbod", not "Maboo".

<comment><AUTHOR> you're right! I referred to him with full name throughout the site later on (in the annotations), but the album cover was meant to be more playful, so I went with his nickname (<http://rapgenius.com/Maboo>). appreciate you looking out though :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "There are not more than five primary colours," is true, three is less than five

<comment><AUTHOR> you got me there

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great initiative. Terrible rap.

<comment><AUTHOR> agreed. terrible rap.</comment></comment>


Alaska oil sets new record - <AUTHOR> https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mcrfpak1&f=m <comment><USER2> @mods: Propose updated title "Alaska Field Production of Crude Oil Sets New Record Low"

<comment><USER3> That would also be editorializing.

<comment><USER2> "Alaska Field Production of Crude Oil" would be a less helpful title, and it seems...redundant to write a blog post solely to make the observation follow convention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What, exactly, is the new record?

<comment><USER5> Record low perhaps? Yeah it isn't clear here.

<comment><USER6> The data doesn't even show a record low. The latest data point is markedly above se of the ones before it.

Besides, presumably Alaskan oil production was once zero - just this record doesn't go far enough back.</comment></comment></comment>


A quickly hacked together map for crowdsourcing unsafe hosting countries - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Ryan-ZA/hosting_safety_map

<comment><USER2> I hope this thread takes off. I would say that in the neighborhood of where I live:

       Thailand :: Not Safe (USA has massive infrastructure in

the country, look for Voice of America radio stations which bristle with more sat dishes and antennas than BBC or CNN could use in their headquarters and you can guess what they really are

       Vietnam  :: Not Safe

       Laos     :: Not sure, but the Laos government is not

terribly warm to the American government. However I expect that they are open to the Vietnam and Chinese governments. Either way, no place to host.

       Cambodia :: Not sure, their recent extradition of the

Pirate Bay co-founder on trumped up visa issues was likely from a simple bribe paid to a government official. And anyway, services and infrastructure is still thin on the ground. There still isn't even one data center in the country that is independent of an ISP (I'm working to change that :)

      Myanmar  :: No infrastructure and won't be safe from

local snooping when it is, though I don't think they will share with the West either.

      Singapore :: Not safe.

      Malaysia  :: Not Sure.

      Indonesia :: Note Sure.

      Hong Kong :: Was safe before the handover in 1997, I

owned an ISP there at the time and there was no meddling that I could see. But it's a very different world now. I would tend to stay away.

</comment><comment><USER3> A good start, have you considered using geojson? Github has a native viewer for that.

<comment><AUTHOR> The github native viewer doesn't seem to allow for setting color to countries - or at least I can't work out how. You'd need to host it outside of github with json to do it, I think, which puts it on par with the current map?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think you should also make it clear in the readme that just hosting data in a better jurisdiction doesn't help in a lot of cases, since if the data owner or host lives in a different less friendly jurisdiction the law becomes almost impossibly complex.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks good - can you explain the color coding?</comment>


Streamus updated to be compliant with YouTube terms of service - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MeoMix/StreamusChromeExtension/releases/tag/v0.177 <comment><USER2> When I opened Streamus today, I received this message:

Hey everyone, Sean here.

So, good news for people who love bad news.

I've been working with YouTube on-and-off since November of last year regarding their Terms of Service. The past four months have involved a lot of talks with them.

Prior to July 7 I was led to believe that Streamus would be fully compliant with YouTube's demands once it supported showing video. I spent hundreds of hours making this a reality.

Unfortunately, after adding this functionality, I was informed that showing video was not sufficient. YouTube has demanded that Streamus pause music when minimized. Failure to do so will result in Streamus being removed from the Chrome Web Store on July 14.

So, for now, this is the end of the road. :(

This update provides you with the ability to export your playlists back to YouTube. Right-click on a playlist through the left-side menu, or click the 'More actions' button, to see the option. Doing so will create a new playlist on your YouTube account and move all available songs to it. The code isn't very smart. It won't be able to update an existing playlist, but at least you can get your songs out.

As for me? I will begin working on SoundCloud support effective immediately. Streamus will be unpublished from the Chrome Web Store while I work on this.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns feel free to e-mail me at email@example.com or you can find me on the r/streamus subreddit: [http://www.reddit.com/r/streamus](http://www.reddit.com/r/streamus)

I'm truly sorry. I had the utmost confidence that adding support for video would fulfill YouTube's demands and was heartbroken when I learned this would not be the case. You can view the full conversation I've had with YouTube here: [http://i.imgur.com/15gaOf6.png](http://i.imgur.com/15gaOf6.png). I fought long and hard for you all and this was not a decision I took lightly.

I look forward to listening to music with you all once again in the future.

<comment><USER3> Last commit "Hiding video for final update since it didnt help" [https://github.com/MeoMix/StreamusChromeExtension/commit/ba6...](https://github.com/MeoMix/StreamusChromeExtension/commit/ba6354705176f927e8091a3aa58e88e1a2e11534)

Wouldn't it be possible to have most of this functionality in a client-side web app, and then Google could do nothing to shut it down?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's unfortunate for Streamus, but expected and reasonable in my opinion (especially since the developer knew he was breaking the ToS from the beginning).

YouTube presumably has negotiated contracts with the content owners which allow them to stream audiovisual content under a certain set of constraints. Many content owners distribute their content in other ways (e.g., selling music on the iTunes store), so they allow their content for "free" on YouTube only because they know that the audio component will be accompanied by a video of their choice and they will be supported by ads. These content owners wouldn't want YouTube to be used just like an ordinary music streaming service without being compensated properly. In order to hold up their end of the deal, YouTube has to enforce their terms of service, otherwise they risk losing the contracts that they have already negotiated.

If Streamus wanted to keep doing things like they were before these changes, then they would have to go and negotiate contracts with the content owners, just like YouTube had to do. Streamus has to abide by the ToS (which is in turn the terms of the negotiated contracts) if they expect to use the YouTube API.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sean:

I've been a fan of Streamus from early on. Thanks.

YT's policy seems to be "No Audio without Video, unless the Audio is from YT running in another browser tab, then it is OK."

That being said, there's a Chrome App that lets you run YT in a separate, hidden tab (so you can't accidentally close the tab, for example).

Maybe you could open a hidden YT tab in parallel to Streamus, and you would be meeting their requirements? Or maybe you could start with a version that opens a visible parallel tab, and then later add an option to make it hidden?

Of course, this implementation might use double the bandwidth. Maybe you could play the audio through Streamus, and the video in the tab?

Good luck.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The conversation thread with youtube is also interesting: [https://t.co/CNZQIz78hU](https://t.co/CNZQIz78hU).

<comment><USER6> Thanks for posting this. While I can empathize with the work he put in, I can't imagine that he thought this would turn out any other way. He has an app that allows users to play music for free, he thought he could find a loophole that would be allowed?

<comment><USER7> I wonder what's gonna happen, will they let his code behave like an embedded youtube player or will they backpressure on every other websites at the risk of annoying a big chunk of the web ?

<comment><USER6> Sounds like websites with embedded YouTube players will continue to work as they do today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's always a pain working with legal stuffs & guys. YouTube make two valid points:

\- Streamus has to display video

\- Streamus has to display ads

And Sean's doing his very best job to display the video. Ads will be fixed by YouTube team. So far so good...

However, the final one is not reasonable at all: "stop playing after hiding the extension". How could that be different with another tab open and playing YouTube video on YouTube website? If this is a requirement in the deal with labels, even YouTube.com is not compliant with its TOS :-)

I got the same pain while developing UpNext[formally SoundCloudify]. Basically like Streamus, but has SoundCloud support. [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/upnext-music- playe...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/upnext-music- player/dgkfcdlmdppfhbfmooinbcejdaplobpk)

Don't make it viral, otherwise, it'll be the same fate as Streamus :(

</comment><comment><USER9> Honestly reading the conversation I think Youtube made it pretty obvious what they were going to require. The dev seems to be willfully ignorant in his replies.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's been weird following streamus for a while, I don't use Chrome so I've never really used it. It's sad to see a project backed by such a dedicated developer go down like this.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's open-source so you can still change it to do what you want, right?

Incidentally, I've also been using YouTube as a sort of internet-radio recently, with just a simple shell script that searches for videos matching specific keywords and plays them in a pseudo-random order via youtube-dl. Works well enough, although I do get the occasional non-music coming through.

<comment><USER12> Yeah but Google Chrome all but bans extensions outside of the Chrome extension store.

<comment><USER11> Developer Mode is still a way around that, but some of the comments made here are rather prescient:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7237725](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7237725)

(Search for "YouTube".)

<comment><USER13> Prescient? They've had the nonsense youtube rules for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Streamus always loaded the video and it is now simply being presented to you

I really didn't know this. I thought Streamus only download the audio stream (since most youtube downloader able to retrieve audio stream without the video)

</comment><comment><USER15> I once built [http://youmixer.com](http://youmixer.com), before FB broke the login and I never bothered to fix it.

Try creating a mix without signing in.

Does YouTube now ban that?

</comment><comment><USER16> Do you know of any high-quality alternatives?

<comment><USER17> Use youtube-dl to download from YouTube (and many other sites). youtube-dl downloads the full video/audio file by default (which these days involves downloading and muxing audio and video streams), but it can also just download the audio.</comment></comment>


Curing Diabetes with a Low Carb Diet - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidshaywitz/2017/03/08/can-silicon-valley-cure-diabetes-with-low-carbs-and-high-tech/#7bbc7092190a <comment><USER2> Type 2 diabetes is a lifestyle disease. Changes in lifestyle can reverse the disease. Coupled with early intensive insulin treatment, exercise and diet is __the known cure__ for T2. The current (pharmaceutical) standard of care in America is to subject the patient's body to further stress at the expense of vital organs.

<comment><USER3> > Type 2 diabetes is a lifestyle disease. Changes in lifestyle can reverse the > disease.

Not so fast cowboy. Yes, diet and exercise can contribute to the disease, but some people can eat three doughnuts a day and not get DMT2, some get it despite a healthy lifestyle (including, if you believe the article, the CEO of this company, an ironman competitor).

And some of the damage is irreversible. Damage to pancreas, damage to circulatory system, etc. So catching it early (why they screen for "pre diabetes" and which is why the other company in the article went after pre diabetic patients). Once the patient has been diagnosed with full blown non-T1, then 100% reversal is probably not in the cards, simply a maintenance regime. For most people that includes drugs.

I agree with you without reservation that it's clear that you're better off on many dimensions by maintaining a healthy lifestyle, but like it or not (and I don't like it) that's hard for most people to maintain for many many reasons.

Also, "diabetes" describes a symptom (essentially excessive urination with sugar excreted in the urine"). Under "T2" (basically: anything which isn't your immune system attacking your beta cells) are a cluster of diseases which cause the same symptoms.

<comment><USER4> genetics plays a big part in type-2. I know several athletic types who have type-2 (through inheritance)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I didn't read the story because of addblock but I've seen headlines like this before. As someone with type 2 they always annoy me. I've been eating low carb for a long time (sometimes more successfully than others) and while I can keep my blood sugars under control with the diet, and hopefully keep my body from further damage, I have not "cured" my diabetes. If I eat a high carb meal, my blood sugar will shoot up way higher than that of a normal person. I still have diabetes. Eating low carb is not curing me, but it is helping me keep things under reasonable control.

<comment><USER6> I've recently been diagnosed with type 2 (a few months ago), and have noticed significant benefit from a low carb diet, just as you state. I'm curious if you've looked into intermittent fasting as a method of trying to reverse type 2 as well.

The general gist is that it gives your pancreas some "time off" from having to manage blood sugar increases due to daily ingestion of food, hopefully allowing it some time to "heal". I've started this and have noticed a small bit of improvement in my blood glucose levels, both on the fasting day and for a few days on the non-fasting days. I've been fasting one day in six.

I'm skeptical of this actually "reversing" the disease, but it does seem to help my numbers, as well as helping me lose a small amount of weight. It also reacquaints me with hunger, and makes it easier on the non-fasting days not to succumb to non-hunger related eating cues, at least in my experience.

<comment><USER5> Interesting you mention the idea of fasting. I'm learning more about it now. My roommate, who is not diabetic but interested in low-carb anyway, has been investigating this for a while and has brought it to my attention. Any tool I can add to the toolbox is worth considering.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it possible to create a new social network of the size of fb/twitter? - <AUTHOR> What would it take to overcome their network effects? <comment><USER2> I guess the question to ask is, whether the next social media behemoth will be able to slap people through the phone?</comment>


Hurricane Ike's impact on Planaroo.com's traffic - <AUTHOR> http://webspeed.typepad.com/planaroo/2008/09/hurricane-ikes-impact-on-planaroos-traffic.html

<comment><USER2> Really nice, succinct strategy article. Impressive how far a little anticipatory legwork can go in building buzz and bringing customers in.

</comment><comment><USER3> The problem with it..is that every other niche you'll most likely just be posting rumors the moment you heard them...so you'll lose your credibility fast. I mean hurricans aren't just going to disappear into nothing

</comment><comment> patrickg-zill Great idea! I wonder how many other such niches are out there - no doubt lots of them...</comment>


The New Yorker has formed a union - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorkerunion.com/ <comment><USER2> Just for another data point: I live in Idaho, which is a right-to-work state:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to- work_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law)

Here we tend to call it right-to-work-for-less. The gist of it is that employees aren't compelled to pay union dues if their workplace pays union- negotiated wages. If you think of union protections as something like a private form of OSHA, or say private car insurance, then opting out of paying for them while still receiving benefits is self-evidently not sustainable. Not enough people pay (essentially the same as having too many scabs) so unions can't maintain their bargaining power. The end result is that there are almost no unions in Idaho.

My experience with this was when I was moving furniture as a non-technical day job in the early 2000s. It was $10/hr for warehouse work and $12+/hr working for private truck drivers (you could negotiate your own rate). But if you went across the border to Oregon (a non-right-to-work state), it was at least $15/hr. I had several drivers from California pay me $20/hr for the same reason.

Our warehouse charged $34/hr. In a business where the work is done primarily by laborers, it's hard to understand how it's fair to pay them less than 1/3 of gross income. That's because it's not. Many businesses here charge $75-100/hr or more and pay their employees the going rate of $15/hr. The end result is that Idaho now has some of the highest wealth inequality in the nation:

[http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article209332734...](http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article209332734.html)

I mention all of this because I get the feeling that non-right-to-work states are enjoying the benefits of unionization without realizing it. It's one thing to argue the nuances of liberty and another to make 1.5 to 2 times as much money (or more) and provide for yourself and your family.

Unionization isn't about raising prices. It's about paying better wages so everyone is better off rather than one millionaire at the top. I think of it as "the person doing the lion's share of the work should receive the lion's share of the income". I feel it's important to really stress this on a site like Hacker News whose readership prides itself on being informed and rising above propaganda.

<comment><USER3> This mental model of an economic system leads to disaster.

> The gist of it is that employees aren't compelled to pay union dues...

This is always the argument unions make to get mandatory contributions from employees. The risks of doing so are the following:

1) that all employees regardless of their individual contribution get the same salaries, meaning that over-achieving workers will work less, and under- achieving workers will not work more. (a.k.a. elimination of incentives)

2) That employees that do not like how the union is managed cannot work in that place, either because the union would not allow them, or because they have to pay for an organization that they do not belong to voluntarily

3) That the union, having sole negotiation power for all workers, takes kickbacks from the company for lower compensation for all workers.

4) That even if the union is incorruptible, its optional but its subscribed by most employees, that it actually manages not to decrease productivity, then, there is another company that does not have the same problem, will attract more capital since it gets bigger returns, and the company fails anyway.

Unions are not economically efficient organizations. They are politically efficient, so they serve a great political purpose, but their work in the economic sphere is only destructive.

<comment><USER4> 1) Lots of unions and guilds don't operate like this; maybe you get more based on seniority, education, performance reviews, by hitting targets, or some other measure. Maybe the guild (think of the hollywood ones; writers and actors guilds) sets a minimum pay but you're able to negotiate for more. Union=same salaries is far too simplistic, there are lots of ways this can be negotiated.

2) Same is true for non-union workplaces - you don't like how a place is run I guess you're going to be unhappy there. With a union (that you can take part in, vote for your leaders, vote on your contract, etc.) maybe you can change that.

3) Sure, if your union/leadership is corrupt. Vote the bastards out then. With no union...the company just keeps that money that would have been used to bribe a union official. Not clear to me that's better for the worker.

4) Maybe. Maybe the union attracts better employees, improves retention, etc. and leads to a better and more profitable workplace. Maybe the whole industry gets unionized so it's an even playing field and the owners of all companies lose (and workers gain).

I certainly think it's possible unions reduce the total amount of wealth generated from a system. But so what? I think society would be better of if, for example, Walmart made $90b instead of $100b and the workers gained $9b. (Numbers completely made up, of course).

<comment><USER5> I have yet to see a union that would support management firing an underperforming employee, but have seen many that would protect underperformers.

I've also never heard of a union that supported performance pay, because by the law of average most of their members will be under average, and they wouldn't want to irritate them.

<comment><USER3> Any union worth a damn should always fight any performance based pay because it goes contrary to their interests.

<comment><USER5> Except they don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unions always look like a good idea to workers. But to me a union is a sign of an industry in stasis or decline. There are no dynamic organizations that are adaptable, that are also Union shops. Everywhere and always unions are a force of conservation. They conserve the status as it exists today. Roles, processes, relations, all are frozen in time.

Unions work best for workers in places like the public sector where the employer is a government that literally cannot go out of business and where the state grants the union a monopoly so that other companies cannot enter the market and displace the union workers. Teachers, police, postal workers, firemen ... these are roles where no market competition is allowed and consumers are not given a chance to chose alternatives when service gets really bad. That's where a union is most beneficial to workers because they can extract a pound of flesh from the public and the public can't do anything about it.

But at a place like the New Yorker, where people can get news anywhere, and there are upstart competitors nipping at your heels, a union will just hasten the decline.

Now management will have to go through protracted union negotiations to make changes to the labor force at the company or to adjust roles and responsibilities.

I love the New Yorker. I hope enough rich urbanites are willing to pay a subscription to keep the magazine going even if times move on.

<comment><AUTHOR> >There are no dynamic organizations that are adaptable, that are also Union shops

The entertainment industry and professional athletes are all unionized. I can't think of more competitive and dynamic industries than those outside of tech.

<comment><USER6> Hollywood, California, is unionized. The film industry as a whole is not. And Hollywood, California is not a dynamic part of the film industry. I would say the rest of the world is a lot more dynamic than Hollywood.

Indie film is largely non-union.

You can't with a straight face say US professional sports are dynamic. The NFL is one of the worst government-supported cartels in America. The players, I would argue, are screwed over by the NFL, despite having a union.

<comment><USER7> Can you define your terms a little bit? It seems like you're assuming we all have the same sense of what "Hollywood" means, but you're relying a lot on synecdoche to make a point here.

<comment><USER6> The part of the film industry that is unionized is precisely the part of the film industry that is not adaptive and dynamic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Writers? Actors? Animators? Various skilled trades? All or most are unionized.

You seem to be shifting a lot of goal posts to suit your narrative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Good for them. I hope that this works out well for both parties (labor and management).

I'm curious about the details. I believe that in New York if a union negotiates your contract you are legally obliged to be a member of that union and incur whatever costs are associated (dues). My mother is a labor relations specialist for NYSUT (New York State United Teachers) and she is very concerned about a coming SCOTUS ruling that would remove that legal obligation. How does The New Yorker's new union plan to deal with that if/when it comes?

<comment><USER9> Forced membership of a union!? Seriously!? How awful. I'd rather quit than have it forced on me. If I was at the New Yorker I'd almost certainly join, but only if I could do so willingly. Ugh.

<comment><USER10> Collective action doesn't work when free-riders can benefit from the work of the collective.

Unfortunately, most US labour laws are set up in such a way that most gains made by a union are extended to non-union-members. The only viable response to that is a membership requirement.

<comment><USER11> Why are laws that way? On the face it seems like overstepping.

I can see how union gains might be _naturally_ extended to non-union (safety improvements in a factory, say), but I can also see that the union could negotiate for higher wages to cover the cost of running the union, which avoid free-riding concerns.

The issue I would expect is that mandatory membership (or at least mandatory partial-dues for partial benefits, as is common in some municipalities) is required because the union simply wouldn't work if half the labor force opted out and the employer could simply hire all non-union workers; and the Law decided that unions deserve a right to exist, similarly to how the Law decides that a State or City government is mandatory for all residents.

<comment><USER12> > the union simply wouldn't work if half the labor force opted out

Can't you see how weird this is? 'The law needs to make people be members of a union, because if they didn't the union wouldn't exist and people wouldn't be able to be a member of it.' That's so circular!

Just let people be in a union if they want to be, and not if they don't want to be, and let the union live or die based on people voting with their feet like that.

If your union isn't effective because people aren't joining then you need to change what it is your union offers them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've never been part of a union and really don't know much about them. Could be a dumb question, but could someone describe the pros and cons in layman's terms? I usually hear the terms "workers rights", "wadges" and "unions" in the same sentence, so I assume unions are a way to ensure members are all treated the same - in terms of salaries, PTO, etc. If I had an opportunity to join a union, would I accept the wadges that were previously agreed upon by the union/administrative reps? Or, would I have some wiggle room in my salary? For instance, let's say I feel that I'm worth $40/hr, but the union is only paying $30/hr, could I negotiate the higher rate? Sorry for my lack of understanding on this, but I appreciate any helpful comments.

<comment><USER14> One way to think about it is in terms of economic theory. Negotiations are fairest when both sides have equal power. But you have approximately one job, and a company typically has way more employees. It's more painful to lose a job than to have 1 employee quit. So the negotiation is fundamentally unfair.

So when it comes time to negotiate your annual raise, it's not you alone dueling with your boss (and the whole corporate hierarchy backing him up). Instead it's you and all your colleagues getting together, sending in some representatives, and saying, "Profits are way up this year, so we all deserve decent raises. Let's talk numbers."

(This is less interesting to tech workers, in that we already have a ton of salary negotiating power due to supply/demand differences. But personally I'd still like to see more collective action to deal with other issues. A good example is the way employees recently forced Google to get out of military contracting. Or imagine how different Uber might have treated employees if they'd had a union that helped keep awful managers in check.)

<comment><USER15> Is there economic theory supporting unions? Asymmetric negotiating leverage is not generally recognized as something that undermines market outcomes.

<comment><USER16> But you don't care about market outcomes, but about your own personal outcome (and I assume the economic theory alluded to wasn't macroeconomic but micro). The market can converge to fair non-union wages, or it can converge to fair union wages, which would be higher. Capitalists claim that unions reduce overall profit and harm the market, but workers shouldn't care about that (i.e. lower stock performance and higher wages are better for workers, at least in practice, given actual wealth distribution).

<comment><USER17> You are forgetting about customers. I own no companies and work for one company, but I am a customer of many. A personal cost/benefit analysis like the one you're describing would have to take that into account.

<comment><USER16> The way it works is that management involves the union in its decisions, and they reach compromises. After all, it is also in the union's interest that the company stays viable. If all the increase in wages gets is paid for by an increase in prices, and management isn't willing to cut profits, then that's unlikely to be acceptable to the union. The goal is to keep the company performing well, but to even the playing field when negotiating the distribution of profit among management, shareholders and employees. This is called co-determination: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co- determination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-determination)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm always wary of unintended consequences, but I hope this works out for the staff, while not sinking the magazine. The New Yorker has been consistently producing some of the best long form journalism, as well as some of the best public policy thinkpieces.

<comment><USER19> I couldn't agree more. Some of their stories are masterpieces of journalism and they cover broad spectrum as well (style, tech, finance, literature...). I guess they are really unique.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Increasing labor costs and reducing employment flexibility at companies that already have notoriously poor business fundamentals? Can't wait to see how that plays out.

<comment><USER21> The reduced flexibility worries me far more than the cost. I've worked in union workplaces. There's always some instances of doing nothing (or doing busy work) because the nobody who's allowed to do whatever needs to be done is available and the other people who could do it won't because they're not allowed to do that job. When that happens regularly there's ripples through the workplace culture and work ethic and quality nose dive. I hope the union treads lightly and carefully. If they go full on public transit rail-workers union on day one it's gonna end badly.

<comment><USER22> Forgive me for being flippant, but yes, if a union of writers acts like a bad example of how unions are supposed to act, the union of writers will be bad

But why would you say that? It feels very defeatist to me to do something like that

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > Our decision to unionize comes at a moment when much of what defines The New > Yorker—its atmosphere of deliberation and care and its devotion to factual > accuracy, careful prose, and expert design—is vulnerable to competing > priorities from our corporate parent, Condé Nast.

This is something that reddit users should also probably keep in mind as they use the site, as Condé Nast owns reddit as well.

<comment><USER24> Actually, Condé Nast hasn't owned reddit for a long time.

<comment><USER25> Who is the owner of reddit?

<comment><USER26> [https://redditblog.com/2013/08/06/reddit-myth- busters/#indep...](https://redditblog.com/2013/08/06/reddit-myth- busters/#independent-reddit-inc)

<comment><USER25> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> My first instinct reading this was to think about the gothamist/dnainfo kerfuffle.

However, Checking the new yorkers revenue shows around 200 million/yr, I definitely did not expect that and likely means it can easily support a union. (unless the new yorker is loaded with debt, which it might be)

<comment><USER28> Not taking a position either way, but revenue is not the important number here: its excess margin, which in publishing is extremely low.

<comment><USER29> And the New Yorker has a history of being notorious for expenses -- at its height it had writers paid on contract for a full year that write one story (an excellent story, but still), expense accounts through the roof, and an editorial staff that none could rival. Those specific days are gone but its cost structure is still above what many other publications have, so I suspect the margins are still well below average. I love the New Yorker (it went off track for a while, but it's gotten much better in the past 10 years) and what they do takes serious investment and talent, but there's also ways to do it smartly. Although it looks like all of this is preemptive so we'll have to see where it goes.

<comment><USER28> That may be true, but if the margins were low because the excessive expenses were due to paying people too much (per your example), then a union trying to raise wages might be the last thing they need to survive. :-)

<comment><USER30> Back in my day, you raised wages when you could demonstrate success in your endeavor to drive more revenue/margin. You got paid _less_ when you drove costs higher.

Seems like this is a basic law of economics or something. Monetary rewards for success, monetary losses for failures. Unions have a tendency to be out of sync with this, which means their objectives aren't aligned with managements. Which ... never ... ends well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if they considered an employee buyout. It seems like Union v management can be counterproductive, but all workers owning the company seems to put all workers in alignment. It's kind of weird with New Yorker as there isn't "labor" per se, as it's writers and editors and publishers and whatnot.

<comment><USER32> No. That would spell the end. The magazine relies on economies of scale for sharing costs of print and digital infrastructure across its other Conde Nast titles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I am not very knowledgeable about this subject. So please mercy for my dumb questions.

How does union work in Germany or other European countries. How are they still able to keep up their economic competitiveness. Is it because of small population or that they've built a moat around their patents etc... Or they've access to cheap workers from poor neighboring nations or if their unions are all fake scheming together with the owners to raise the productivity for workers and give them false sense of security? I've never seen non German union leader for a German company even tho I've seen lots of non German folks working for them. I never understood why

<comment><USER34> I'm sure someone who's actually worked in Germany and has more direct experience than I will come along and correct me, but…

* The corporate culture is very different to the US, and there's much less of the antagonism you often see between employers and employees in the US. This manifests itself in various ways, most obviously with employee representatives on the board. There's lot more recognition that both losing staff (especially en mass) is hurtful to the company even in "replaceable" rolls (because there's always job specific knowledge) and that driving the company into the ground isn't good for the employees (because then they don't have a job).

* If it's obviously cheaper to move manufacturing overseas (or decrease labour through automation, etc.), the unions are less likely to fight it than they are in the US, but rather negotiate with the company some agreement either moving employees to elsewhere in the organisation or giving them training so they have the skills to be able to find another, safer job.

* An extreme example is a union negotiating a pay _decrease_ for its membership in exchange for increased investment in the company to ensure job security (i.e., valuing the long-term outcome of consistent income above short-term income).

So, in short, a lot of it simply comes down to a willingness to compromise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I've found most people who hate the idea of unions have never had any exposure to them. I've actually never been in a formal union but have used "collective bargaining" and even did union organizing and helped a couple of labor negotiation disputes because the unions benefit me as a non member.

I think it's hilarious when people's only exposure to unions is textbooks or being put in charge of managing union employees and they scream bloody murder.

Unions are fantastic and being eroded solely through lobbying efforts of billionaire Koch suckers.

<comment><USER30> My union stories. TL;DR definitely not fantastic. Quite the opposite.

In grad school, early 90s, we were getting this brand new ethernet installed. Originally they were going to run thin-net, and decided instead to run UTP to the offices.

As one of the major users of modems to dial into the university ISP, in order to run our code on supers, I was quite eager to get my connection. They prepped the wiring, and then scheduled us for a month or two out.

The reason for this was that they needed one specific union person to cut the hole in the wall for this, and they were busy.

Ok, this is just silly.

So I asked, "hey, can I help out here? I know how to do this, and can do it in my advisors and my office."

We were told that if I did

a) they would charge us $3k USD (quite a lot to a poor grad student) PER HOLE, to fill it in.

b) they would then charge us another $3k USD to cut a new hole.

Because, union.

I've got other stories when I was at SGI, and we were setting up systems at Ford ... we couldn't simply carry our computers ourselves ... oh no ... that was verboten. We would get written up, and disallowed back on campus.

No, unions are not fantastic. They mostly evolve from being useful constructs to being rent seeking monopolies on labor, opposed to any measure that reduces their ability to seek/collect rent.

In grade school, we had a teachers strike[1]. I remember being on a bus, being attacked. By teachers. Who yelled and screamed at us. They threw rocks at the windows. Cracked a few. Police were called, but none of them suffered consequences for their actions. Even though quite a number of us saw them do this, while the only crime we had committed were being small kids on a school bus.

My experiences are not aberrations ... I've heard quite similar stories from many others, be they schools, or where ever they've encountered unions.

I do have to point out that you are tipping your political beliefs with your last sentence. I've experienced first hand, the violence, and rent seeking behavior of these groups. The lakeland strike was written up in a book a few years ago. Longest and meanest strike in the country by teachers. It made for a fairly shitty 6th and beginning 7th grade for me.

It is certainly your right to believe whatever you wish. Me, and many others, whom have suffered from the downsides to unions ... their rent seeking, their monopolization drive on labor ... are opposed in principle, without any goading on behalf of Koch or others.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/07/archives/430-teachers- str...](https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/07/archives/430-teachers-strike- lakeland-schools-opening-due-today.html)

<comment><USER36> it's a little difficult to extrapolate a broad picture of union benefits or costs from these anecdotes, just because one of them is, well, a kid's story from a lifetime ago...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I didnt think HN needed a downvote button until this thread.

Quick Union story- Was an engineer at a factory. Foam pieces were blocking my path to the process room. Like, there was a tiny pathway, probably not shoulder length wide that I'd turn and squeeze in, and that was the path to my room.

The floor was a wreck, something bad happened with the temperatures + wax or something. The floor was a mess, foam everywhere. This was my job and I was failing tonight. Messing with temps and wax constantly, checking if chemicals were weird. Pretty much grasping at straws to fix this issue.

Well back to the blockage. I couldnt get to my room without either clearing the foam or walking around the factory.

So I took the piece of foam and tossed it into the garbage bin behind me.

Oh what a mistake. The next morning my boss was swamped with last night's mess and citation/form/write up that I was doing Union Jobs.

I was punished by having to take 2 days off unpaid. They paid a worker an entire day's salary, and I got some sort of negative mark on my record. My boss wasnt happy about this despite him being understanding of the silliness.

This was one of many many things that got to the point of hating unions. 95% of people just wanted to work. Then you had people that abused the system to the point that it didnt work.

<comment><USER30> Funny how the union abuse anecdote gets downvoted, while the pro-union propaganda doesn't.

My stories are similar.

Its not a right or left issue. Unions, with very few counterexamples ... to the point where I am unaware of any ... devolve into rent seeking constructs, which increase costs, decrease quality, etc.

I'd love to be wrong about this, but I've not yet seen counterexamples, where unions are held up as paragons of what we can be if we work together.

Many may have started to provide an offset to the asymmetric power of the management ... but pretty much all of them eventually are corrupted by the power that they yield. So much so that they can negatively impact people whom are not part of their union, wish no part of it, and yet have no choice but to join and pay dues.

This is a problem. A union should be a temporary construct, something that can be brought into existence quickly to offset/blunt bad management. Just as quickly, once it succeeds in its mission, it should deconstruct itself. To be formed only when needed. It should not persist. When it persists, it starts with nest feathering by officials at the top, rent-seeking behaviors, etc.

<comment><USER36> You might not be getting a lot of counterexamples because you're obviously coming at this with such a deeply held belief that no one wants to bother..."water? is it wet?? I surely don't think so..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment> andrewl-hn > The New Yorker has been a vital force in American journalism for nearly a > century.

I'm honestly very surprised that there wasn't a union in a company with such a long history. The lack of unions in tech industry always seemed like an anomaly to me, but I attributed it to a fact that most tech companies are too young or too small.

</comment><comment><USER38> > Our decision to unionize comes at a moment when much of what defines The New > Yorker—its atmosphere of deliberation and care and its devotion to factual > accuracy, careful prose, and expert design—is vulnerable to competing > priorities from our corporate parent, Condé Nast. We are determined to do > everything we can to protect the health and the integrity of our publication > from staff cuts and reorganizations handed down by corporate management > without warning or transparency.

It seems like one of their worries is about Condé Nast taking a more direct role over the publication.

> We are asking Condé Nast to recognize our union, and we look forward to > beginning an amicable collective-bargaining process.

<comment><USER32> > It seems like one of their worries is about Condé Nast taking a more direct > role over the publication

Condé Nast has been doing exactly this over the last 5 years as they got better organized. They'd be in worse shape had they not done this. The biggest impact has been in product, engineering, and design.

The New Yorker has always been well run for the most part so when Conde managed across the board cuts it was The New Yorker that was often exempted given they never threw money around like others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Nice story, but the issue with 'the press' is not 'fat cat owners', it's 'the bad business model'.

I'll bet the New Yorker would pay better + healthcare if they could. But they probably can't. They are probably facing 'going out of business' just like every other publication.

So I'm not sure if the union will matter, sadly.

</comment><comment><USER40> Hah [http://newyorkerdumbdumbs.com](http://newyorkerdumbdumbs.com)

<comment><USER40> "Dear New Yorker Writers,

You recently formed a union. Congratulations on that. We hope that you receive all that you desire. But because of the argument in your open letter announcing the union –– an argument that proposes that you should receive more money because you want to have more money –– we are concerned that your intelligence, considerable though it is, is in this case unable to grapple with the actual reality of the world. Your magazine comprises both fact (sort of) and fiction. When you're asking for money, it's typically best to focus on the fact world, not the fictional world."

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> As someone from the UK I find a lot of this hilarious, our employment laws are strict as fuck, unions are optional even in unionised businesses and no one gets fucked over if you don't join

</comment><comment><USER42> There is a lot of anti-union propaganda going on in this thread. I call it propaganda because most of it has no root in reality.

Having an organized workforce should be the cost of doing business. If you can only survive as a corporation that does the bare minimum to take care of employees you have no right to be an employer in the free market. Most corporations _can_ function with organized labor, but would rather not because it cuts into profits.

<comment><USER43> As a customer, I _hate_ interacting with unionized industries. Try, for example, having a booth at a trade show. It is completely awful, and most of that is because of unions.

> If you can only survive as a corporation that does the bare minimum to take > care of employees you have no right to be an employer in the free market. > Most corporations _can_ function with organized labor, but would rather not > because it cuts into profits.

Think about this from a systems perspective. If you are a country that requires businesses to take a certain amount of overhead, then some percentage of businesses will just not be viable. Therefore your entire economy is x% smaller (at least). You can claim that this is offset by the economic well- being of the employees, but that's not at all obvious and would require a lot of justification. (If it were true, you'd expect countries like France to be more healthy economically than the USA, whereas in fact France is quite stagnant). If your economy is x% smaller, it means you are not competing effectively with other countries and have less leverage when dealing with them. And the shrunken economy has real consequences on the standard of living of people living in the country. etc, etc.

If you think of this only from a lens of "capitalists are evil people who deserve to be taxed to support the good workers" you are going to be missing most of the picture.

<comment><USER42> If you are using economic growth as the key indicator of a healthy economy you are missing most of the picture.

We hyperfocus on growth at the expense of other aspects of our economy. If you create consumer goods but systematically depress the wages of the consumers who buy the goods, eventually you've cannibalized your source of revenue. Similar to how cancer cells are hyperfocused on growth at the expense of working within the systems they're assigned.

I don't see how the economic wellbeing of workers is in need of justification.

<comment><USER30> Wow ... relating management to cancer.

In a free market, workers would be able to find other employment if their company treats them poorly. In reality, the demise of the free market here hasn't been hastened by "cancerous" management, determined to "screw the workers over" ... it has been hastened by rent seeking behaviors of the unions, driving costs up. Which has resulted in said management looking for ways to control/lower costs.

Such as moving labor intensive work to a) lower cost areas, and now b) automating to the point of which you no longer need many workers.

Those are all cost based decisions. No one, that I am aware of in management, is twisting their mustaches saying "if only I could find some way to screw my workers over even more". Everyone in management is being asked "how can I increase productivity as measured in producing more widgets per unit cost, or reducing the unit cost to produce each widget?".

Unions do not reduce cost per widget. They do not increase productivity in terms of more widgets per unit cost. They simply increase costs. Which drives the conversations on how to reduce costs. Move factory. Automate.

Take an industry with net margins of a few percent at best (most industries), and have one portion of their cost structure increase to remove a material fraction of that margin. The company owners (stock and bond holders) would be all over that board to find a way to reduce costs.

The darkly ironic aspect of this, is that 401k's and/or pension funds (defined benefit is going away in favor of defined contribution) that may be part of a comp program for union and non-union folk, are likely investing in these companies, making these demands upon them, to increase their profitability. That is, the union worker has competing antithetical goals at play that cannot be simultaneously satisfied.

Yeah, it would be nice to pay everyone a wonderful wage, have no poverty, no hunger, etc. The moment an industry player says "yes we are going to raise our prices to pay our people more money", is when their competition comes in and says "but we will charge less" and takes their business.

If you don't cannibalize your own revenue, your competitors surely will. Amazon is doing an incredible job of this, in they find niches which become profitable for some, which they then enter, leveraging their buying power. And they have largely cannibalized Walmart, who used to do the same to others (don't feel bad for them as they get a taste of their own medicine).

Denial of reality and the way economics actually works is a recipe for disastrous consequences. The free market is there, whether you want it to be or not. If you refuse to grow, your competitor will. At your expense.

If you increase your costs in one column without being able to decrease them somewhere else without harming productivity, you are increasing your risk. Not paying people better. But betting their jobs on something that isn't based upon sound economic theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Hell yeah. I'll subscribe just to support them. Also the New Yorker is very high quality journalism.

</comment><comment><USER45> I imagine this is going to affect their journalistic impartiality.

<comment><USER46> For better, or for worse? It could be argued that whatever bias a union leads to could also have been happening in reverse in a non-union environment. Job insecurity, lack of benefits, etc. such as the article mentions, also could affect impartiality.

<comment><USER45> I think for the worse. They will now have a major bone in the individual liberty vs enforced collectivism fight.

Their benefits are directly derived from their employer not having the freedom-to-contract/full-control-over-their-private-property.

<comment><USER47> > freedom-to-contract/full-control-over-their-private-property.

Ah yes, I forgot that employees were private property of employees. These damn uppity workers thinking they could band together to negotiate. Why wont they just negotiate one on one with me so I can pay them less?

<comment><USER45> That's an absurd straw man.

I'm referring to their company, and their right to offer any terms of employment they want, which is restricted by federal law stating that you cannot have employment terms that discriminate against unionized workers, enable the company to refuse particular demands by unions (e.g. collective bargaining), or fire an employee for particular types of activity, like staging a strike.

Union-privileging labor laws usurps an employer's control over their own company. They replace contract law with central planning that regiments the acceptable range of employment relationships between consenting adults.

<comment><USER47> You referenced freedom over private property when discussing union-employer negotiations. Maybe that was a mistake but your phrasing implies to me that you view the employers rights as greater than all others.

Why are the employers rights being trampled here if the union is a bunch of employees who agreed to negotiate together? The employer can refuse the unions deal, and then its on them to figure out how to run a company without employees.

The employers dont have a right to divide and conquer the employees so that they can get better terms.

>They replace contract law with central planning that regiments the acceptable range of employment relationships between consenting adults.

How is this even replacing contract with central planning? Are you trying to connect the bogeyman of communism with unions? Consenting adults are the ones who decided what the employment relationship was

<comment><USER45> >>Why are the employers rights being trampled here if the union is a bunch of employees who agreed to negotiate together?

Because federal law forces the employer to negotiate with the union, and prohibits the employer from negotiating with any other party.

This violates the employer's rights by giving unions special rights to the employer's private property.

>>The employers dont have a right to divide and conquer the employees so that they can get better terms.

Yes they do. In a free society, you can negotiate with whoever you want. You unionizing shouldn't impose any restrictions on me negotiating with a third party, or obligations to negotiate with you. Laws that impose these requirements are oppressive.

>>How is this even replacing contract with central planning?

The laws that regiment employment relationships are decided by a central body, and restrict the contract freedom of millions of people.

<comment><USER47> The federal government doesn't make employers have to continue working with unions. Scabs are a real thing. The unions are able to force companies to negotiate anyway because it is difficult to replace a large number of employees at once, especially if they have any skills.

>The laws that regiment employment relationships are decided by a central body, and restrict the contract freedom of millions of people.

By this argument any employment law is central planning. That's hyperbole

<comment><USER45> If the majority of employees in what federal law defines as a work unit unionize, and vote to collectively bargain, the law prohibits the employer from negotiating individually with any employee in that work unit, even if they did not vote to collectively bargain:

[https://www.nlrb.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/basic-p...](https://www.nlrb.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/basic- page/node-3024/basicguide.pdf)

>>The Employee Representative. Section 9(a) provides that the employee representatives that have been "designated or selected for the purposes of collective bargaining by the majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for such purposes, shall be the exclusive representatives of all the employees in such unit for the purposes of collective bargaining."

>>What is an appropriate bargaining unit. A unit of employees is a group of two or more employees who share a community of interest and may reasonably be grouped together for purposes of collective bargaining. The determination of what is an appropriate unit for such purposes is, under the Act, left to the discretion of the NLRB. Section 9(b) states that the Board shall decide in each representation case whether, "in order to assure to employees the fullest freedom in exercising the rights guaranteed by this Act, the unit appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining shall be the employer unit, craft unit, plant unit, or subdivision thereof."

There are numerous violations of the employer's freedom of contract in federal law, enacted at the behest of unions and their supporters.

>>By this argument any employment law is central planning.

Any labor law that violates the freedom of contract, by regimenting the range of employment contracts that may be entered into by consenting adults, is a form of central planning.

>>That's hyperbole

Why?

<comment><USER47> What is the "freedom to contract" that you keep bringing up. Contracts are legal instruments defined and enforced by the government, so if the government says you can't do x in a contract then you can't do x.

>That's hyperbole Because you are stating that anything other than absolute freedom is central planning.

Beyond all of this, you started off this thread by saying that you think this will bias the journalists and affect their integrity. You've moved the goalposts multiple times and it's obvious you just don't like unions. If you want to have a discussion about that then put you're argument all out on the table instead of shoving it in after saying something provocative

<comment><USER45> The freedom to contract is what I described. The prohibitions you bring up violate the freedom to contract.

You're making an appeal to legality to claim that freedom to contract doesn't exist, which is an intellectually weak argument.

>>Contracts are legal instruments defined and enforced by the government

A contract is defined by the parties that sign it. It is an agreement. Agreements between individuals are not defined by the government.

In other words, agreements do not exist only by virtue of the govermment willing them to exist. They are private arrangements that we have delegated the enforcement of to govermment.

>>Because you are stating that anything other than absolute freedom is central planning.

I asked you 'why' because I don't see what's hyperbolic about that. Any rule that supplants free choice with a rule imposed by a central authority is an expansion of the scope of central planning at the expense of personal freedom.

This is absolutely undeniable and I don't understand why you're trying to make it out to be a controversial statement.

>>Beyond all of this, you started off this thread by saying that you think this will bias the journalists and affect their integrity. You've moved the goalposts multiple times

How could you possibly accuse me of that, when I was only answering the questions posed to me?

You're not treating me reasonably at all.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>