Homepage of Berkshire Hathaway, 17th biggest company in the world - <AUTHOR> http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/ <comment><USER2> I'd assume that Buffet's thought process - correct in my opinion - is that having a fancy website won't get him anything, and will only cost him money to create and maintain.

Unlike most companies, Warren Buffet doesn't care if you buy his stock. The last close of BRK.A is at $99,000 and has an average volume of about 800 - meaning that if you hold that stock, you're almost certainly an institutional investor who's in it for the long run, and who know perfectly well what the company is like. For similar reasons, he doesn't need to project any images of modernity or customer-friendliness, if for no other reason than BRK has no real customers.

Most companies make fancy web pages to appeal to customers and inform them, to project a positive image for investors, or to provide a service. All Berkshire's web page is there for is to distribute some documents, most of which are updated annually or so. Hence no need for something fancy.

While you're there, have a read of the Owner's Manual and one of the annual reports, which are written as if you're friends with Warren Buffet and he's having a casual conversation with you about how business is going. He tells stories, he talks about individuals who have done well this year - but by the end you have a very good idea about how the company is doing, and you've probably learned something about finance (I don't have any shares in the company and I always read them). Also funny is the descriptions of the BRK annual meetings - known as _Woodstock for Capitalists_ - and the associated sales events from all the Berkshire companies.

<comment><USER3> In addition, Buffet likes consumer monopolies -- brands people recognize with a product or service. GEICO and Dairy Queen, Orange Julius, The Pampered Chef -- all recognizable brands and ones people don't associate with BH. This is a good thing. To make Berkshire Hathaway the center of attention dilutes a consumer monopoly.

When holding companies take it on as a strategy, it's a flash in the pan. Yum! Brands' (KFC, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver's) Kentucky Derby sponsorship is a great example.

I'm not going to Pizza Hut to be Yum!'s patron. I'm going there for pizza and I don't like Domino's.

Likewise, I'm not going to Dairy Queen because I like Berkshire Hathaway.

Berkshire Hathaway has no business building a consumer brand. And yet Berkshire's consumer brand is Warren Buffet.

<comment><USER4> Why did this get down-voted? It makes a good point, & one that is well known among followers of Buffet's trading philosophy; namely the bit about Berkshire investing in consumer monopolies or well-known brands. Buffet took this philosophy from Graham, the author of the Intelligent Investor.

<comment><USER5> Yes. Though he heavily modified Graham's methods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "linking to this website without written permission is prohibited." - <http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/disclaimer.html>

<comment><USER6> Reading this text without written permission is prohibited.

(What I mean to say is that the word "prohibited" has no meaning. The use of the passive voice does not make something a legal requirement.)

<comment><USER7> I don't think that's an example of passive voice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If the rest of the web was like this, my web browser wouldn't need 600M of RAM or weekly security updates.

<comment><USER8> And you would never use it for anything besides reading documents.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, there was no eBay, no Amazon, no Excite, no Hotmail, no Viaweb etc. before Web 2.0 came.

<comment><USER10> I work for one of the above - you have no idea how much functionality we wouldn't be able to have (or at least wouldn't be reasonably easy to use) without "Web 2.0".

<comment><USER9> I work in subsidiary of one of the above too. I do have some idea what kind of functionality you couldn't have, the question is how much money would your company not get if this functionality was missing ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The BBC had a documentary on Warren Buffet last week that is worth watching [http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00nn7vs/The_Worlds_Gre...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00nn7vs/The_Worlds_Greatest_Money_Maker_Evan_Davis_meets_Warren_Buffett/) (website is discussed at 00:32:37)

Berkshire Hathaway run a $150BN business with a staff of just twenty, and Buffet often points out having a fancy website is not a priority as long as it is functional.

In many ways their website is analogous to the likes of Google in providing just enough to make it useful and not much more.

<comment><USER12> This is a little deceiving. Berkshire Hathaway might run on only twenty, but its holdings, both wholly and partially, total to much larger numbers of staff.

It's still a pretty efficient and lightweight operation, but it's not an exact 20-people-to-$150-billion comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> <meta name="Template" content="C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\html.dot">

<comment><USER9> Well, they're good friends with Gates (who's also on the Board and sometimes touted as Buffet's successor). Bill probably installed that one himself :)

<comment><USER14> > and sometimes touted as Buffet's successor

Are you on crack?

There is lots of speculation regarding succession, but nobody has been insane/stupid enough to suggest Gates as an option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Uh, right. Now visit the page and click on "Borsheim's", which is the furniture store Berkshire owns. Compare web designs.

Berkshire Hathaway spends a lot --- probably hundreds of thousands annually --- on web design. They just don't use it for the Berkshire Hathaway corporate site.

A single Berkshire B share costs over $3000. Nobody buys them on a whim. There is zero business value spiffing up their web presence.

<comment><USER9> _There is zero business value spiffing up their web presence._

Here, something a lot of start-ups can learn. True, they need good design more than Berkshire, but it feels like form completely overtook function.

<comment><USER16> I dont know about 0, for startups. If I came to a page for a new service I hadn't heard of and it looked like THAT, I'd instantly question it, hard.

<comment><USER15> Which is why BRK's "retail" businesses (like Borsheims, or See's candy, or Geico) or, hell, even the Fechheimer Brothers uniform company, all have top- shelf web presences.

I get the sense that a lot of people commenting here don't really understand how BRK works.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The page gives all the information they want to share. Adding fancy stuff or Warren's pictures do not add any value. They follow similar philosophy at Berkshire's world headquarters where they have just about 20 odd people and Warren doesn't use a computer or even a calculator. World would be so different if we all could get by with only stuff that adds value to our lives.

</comment><comment><USER18> I actually like the simple site design, but I hate the fact that they expect you to have IE if you want to order from their online store. I've tried ordering a Berkshire Hathaway shirt as a gift multiple times, and have been denied each time because I use Firefox and Safari. I will use the phone or snail mail (or even carrier pigeon) before I install IE.

<comment><USER19> Well...you could forge your user agent string in firefox :).

here: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59>

It isn't very polite, but neither is not letting you in.

(That said, I really doubt they care if you buy a shirt or not).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Have to love Warren Buffett's frugality.

<comment><USER20> there's this funny bit in The Snowball, where Buffett suggests to his wife that they let their daughter sleep in an old dresser drawer versus buying a new crib.

<comment><AUTHOR> Snowball was great, there will ever be another Buffett.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _If you have any comments about our WEB page, you can either write us at the address shown above..._

I wonder whether anybody actually does this...

<comment><USER21> I remember reading about someone who wrote letters and mailed them to companies (sorry I have no link to offer). He found a better response from the snail-mail variety and figured it the volume of written mail in a corporation was so low that it reached decision-makers more often then email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> That plaintext site is PR 6 of 10, so apparently Google likes it.

</comment><comment><USER23> I like how the (c) is from 1978!

<comment><USER24> His website couldn't have possibly exhausted then... (?)

<comment><USER25> The content dates back to that time. Check the Chairman's Letters and Annual Reports.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have been thinking a lot about striping away all superfluous pixels and limiting the area of function. Especially with the latest idea's of fast development patterns and feedback loops. I am developing a strong understanding of what we could consider a web foundation. Just as if we were building a structure or a machine.

Every time I find websites like this, I immediately think its simple and limited, yet efficient. But I do dislike this website. This company/website doesn't align with my idea of a new communication tool. However, the latest "web 2.0" site doesn't give me inspiration either. It is full of a bunch of pretty lights and distracting content.

Some times I wonder if the web needs a paradigm shift. Starting to think we are over engineering it when we should be focusing on specific function.

<comment><USER27> Yes yes yes.

Anything more than necessary is too much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Their website is functional and actually has quite a bit of content on it - including many years worth of letters from Buffett to Berkshire shareholders.

I'm sure the site would be fancier if Warren Buffett actually used a computer - but as far as I know he doesn't even have one in his office.

<comment><USER18> He uses a computer to play bridge...but that's about it.

<comment><USER29> I bet he uses a general purpose computer for email, for keeping accounts, etc., just by proxy. That is, he's rich enough that he has other people do the input/output and report back to him.

Doesn't he have a cell-phone, probably a computer; use a PBX, a computer; drive a car, a computer; ride in an elevator, a computer; ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Try following the link to "Charlie Munger's Letters to Wesco Shareholders."

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like it got high-jacked. If you google Wesco Financial, its the first result and its redirected too. I bet no one renewed the domain...

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> [http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.berkshire...](http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.berkshirehathaway.com)

</comment><comment><USER32> I think the funniest thing is that they have a Geico affiliate link on their front page

<comment><USER15> I think the funniest thing is that you called a link to GEICO from Berkshire an "affiliate link".

<comment><USER32> it's <http://www.geico.com/geicobrk.htm> so there is probably some tracking involved

<comment><USER15> I'm pretty sure the marketing departments from "both" companies can get each other's logs verbatim with a phone call.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> caches well.

</comment><comment><USER34> Did anyone actually view the source on this? Besides deprecated Font tags there are incorrectly nested tags and Div tags with nothing in them. He must have literally asked the neighbor's junior high school kid if he'd put it together for $15. Talk about being frugal.

</comment><comment><USER35> Not sure what I am supposed to learn from that.

<comment><USER36> Maybe that if you're as brilliant an investor as Buffett (one of very few to make it really big by investments) you don't need to care about having a snazzy web site :)

<comment><USER35> I'll try to remember that if I ever become a brilliant investor.

<comment><USER36> Be sure to remember who said it first ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I love it, except...

align = center?

Must we?

I guess everyone has their pet peeves...

</comment><comment><USER38> This is what capitalism is supposed to be about.

Profits, not mountains of debt. secure jobs, no govt. bailouts, etc. etc. old school.

Buffet will be studied for generations to come.

<comment><USER9> I agree that Buffet is an excellent (and rare?) example of Good Capitalism.

But Berkshire has tremendously benefited from bail-outs of it's holdings like GE and GS!

<comment><USER39> GS had a deal with Buffett squared away before the Feds _ordered_ them to take TARP money, which they repaid at 20% interest! It's unreasonable to lump them it with the others.

<comment><USER40> True. Too bad the media is on a witch hunt, and finds it convenient to gloss over facts for the sake of generating indignation over Tax-Payer Funded Bonuses Of Inconceivable Magnitude, so most people don't know this.

The GS employees I know are not happy about this...

<comment><USER39> They should include in their annual report "this year our corporate tax paid for x nurses and income tax on our employees bonuses paid for y teachers".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> My coworker bought some BRK.B shares a few months ago, he was making hundreds of dollars a day for a few weeks... I think he had 8 shares :)

<comment><USER9> Not bad... but how the story ends? Did he ever take those paper profits?

BRK haven't been stellar performer lately.

<comment><USER42> From Warren's own words, if you are looking at the price of an asset from day to day, you aren't an investor - you are a speculator, and a speculator generally shouldn't be interested in his company as his investment philosophy is completely at odds with theirs. Obviously this statement applies just as much to the person referred to in the comment you replied to as to your comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> _Shrug_

The site isn't for you.

</comment><comment><USER44> Yeah, right, and Warren Buffet hand writes his annual reports, which his secretary mimeographs and sends by carrier pigeon to stockholders. Give me a fucking break.

</comment><comment><USER44> It's a crappy website. The navigation sucks. It's a hodgepodge of inline and external style sheets. Links to pdfs with no warnings of such. Sure he knows how to invest money, but that doesn't mean his website isn't crap. It's just to show how "frugal" he is. Sure I bet they spend more money on bottled water on any given day than what they spent to produce this unmaintainable piece of crap.

</comment><comment><USER45> Wow, seriously?

I don't get how such popular websites (Drudge, Craigs) can be so underdeveloped. It almost seems like they don't deserve their amount of success.

<comment><USER46> I actually prefer BH's website to any corporate site I have seen. everything is there, is easy to find and there are no pictures cluttering the screen.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: is it possible to teach math interactively using software? - <AUTHOR>

I have noticed that a lot of math games online are for 4 year olds that mostly teach simple concepts like counting, addition, substraction etc. Are there any softwares available on the market that can teach more advance mathematics like calculus, linear algebra, geometry more interactively? <comment><USER2> Take a look at Khan Academy,

[https://www.khanacademy.org/mission/math](https://www.khanacademy.org/mission/math)

EPGY,

[http://epgy.stanford.edu/courses/math/](http://epgy.stanford.edu/courses/math/)

and ALEKS.

[http://www.aleks.com/](http://www.aleks.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this a message from God? :) I am just now resurrecting a nice interactive Algebra environment I sold as a desktop application back in the nineties. Google does not have "the beef" site (socialalgebra dot com) yet, but that's OK, I am still working on it. The promo site "stuck On Algebra" comes up on the google. (Yes the graphic design EMR team is on the way.)

The reason one does not see interactive software for advanced math is that it would have to, inter alia, (1) offer a WYSIWYG maths editor and (2) check intermediate steps entered by the student. Both a bit of work.

Gotta get back to work, those "work in progress" signs are fer real.

</comment><comment><USER4> DragonBox does a surprisingly good job at teaching rudimentary algebra.

<comment><USER3> Yes, that is great product. I am eager to see what the research says on how it translates to conventional algebra, which I believe they have undertaken. Either way, still a great abstract learning activity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not trying to be a "Troll" or anything like that but Google is your friend when it comes to questions like this.</comment>


The OAuth Bible - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Mashape/mashape-oauth/blob/master/FLOWS.md <comment><USER2> Hello! I am the author of this, never expected to see it here! I was extremely surprised when my friend mentioned it was on here and Hacker News wouldn't let me comment.

If anyone has questions or any feedback let me know as it is a work in progress! Thank you for all the kind words!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is excellent, especially the diagrams.

I'd love to see a explanation of the security implications of each flow. As I understand it the "most secure" flow is OAuth 1.0a (three-legged), but its a total pain so it is mostly avoided. OAuth 2.0 is dramatically simpler, but there are bespoke additions (Google and Facebook come to mind) that you have to handle, typically in the name of security. I am ignorant of all the implications and would like a guide.

<comment><AUTHOR> On (in)security of oAuth implementations: <http://css.csail.mit.edu/6.858/2012/readings/oauth-sso.pdf>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> @nijiko,

Your posts are appearing as [dead].

 _nijiko 3 hours ago | link [dead]

Hello! I am the author of this, never expected to see it here! I was extremely surprised when my friend mentioned it was on here and Hacker News wouldn't let me comment. If anyone has questions or any feedback let me know as it is a work in progress! Thank you for all the kind words!_

<comment><USER2> Forgive me for I don't know what this means, I'm new to hacker news

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> +1.

I almost wrote this myself last year after reading the spec, but then all the will to live and relevant details had evaporated from my mind.

It's actually not that hard to understand once you strip the verbose prose.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great work. Thanks for all of this. I can't be the only one who has on more than one occasion waded through the technical descriptions of this topic and read code examples and still feels a bit lost, giving up and just using an existing library and crossing my fingers. I haven't read your entire doc yet but what I have is very nicely explained.

I think if more people understood it better we would all have a better shot at consistency in this regard. To that end you've made a great start. Cheers.

</comment><comment><USER7> Neat! But I've yet to find a place that explains _why_ OAuth requires certain things (vs stating what is required).

<comment><USER2> Tell me what pieces you want explained and I will deliver:

email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Finally! OAuth flow charts in one place!

</comment><comment><USER9> >Excuse me if you may for I wish all to understand this, and not just those with a degree in understanding legal or technical jargon.

I couldn't understand any of it. If this is meant to be for all, then should I go back and learn how to switch on a computer?

</comment><comment><USER10> Thanks! Very useful for these days as oauth being implemented more and more.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice. This is really helpful</comment>


Warren Buffett's 7 Secrets for Living a Happy and Simple Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.successsoul.com/2008/07/15/warren-buffetts-7-secrets-for-living-a-happy-and-simple-life/ <comment><USER2> The secrets:

1\. Happiness comes from within: "In my adult business life I have never had to make a choice of trading between professional and personal. I tap-dance to work, and when I get there it's tremendous fun."

2\. Find happiness in simple pleasures: "I have simple pleasures. I play bridge online for 12 hours a week. Bill and I play, he's "chalengr" and I'm "tbone"."

3\. Live a simple life: "I just naturally want to do things that make sense. In my personal life too, I don't care what other rich people are doing. I don't want a 405 foot boat just because someone else has a 400 foot boat."

4\. Think Simply: "I want to be able to explain my mistakes. This means I do only the things I completely understand."

5\. Invest Simply: "The best way to own common stocks is through an index fund."

6\. Have a mentor in life: "I was lucky to have the right heroes. Tell me who your heroes are and I'll tell you how you'll turn out to be. The qualities of the one you admire are the traits that you, with a little practice, can make your own, and that, if practiced, will become habit-forming."

7\. Making money isn't the backbone of our guiding purpose; making money is the by-product of our guiding purpose: "If you're doing something you love, you're more likely to put your all into it, and that generally equates to making money."

<comment><USER3> The secrets through a warren-pass filter:

1\. "In my adult business life I have never had to make a choice of trading between professional and personal. I tap-dance to work, and when I get there it's tremendous fun."

2\. "I have simple pleasures. I play bridge online for 12 hours a week. Bill and I play, he's chalengr and I'm tbone."

3\. "I just naturally want to do things that make sense. In my personal life too, I don't care what other rich people are doing. I don't want a 405 foot boat just because someone else has a 400 foot boat."

4\. "I want to be able to explain my mistakes. This means I do only the things I completely understand."

5\. "The best way to own common stocks is through an index fund."

6\. "I was lucky to have the right heroes. Tell me who your heroes are and I'll tell you how you'll turn out to be. The qualities of the one you admire are the traits that you, with a little practice, can make your own, and that, if practiced, will become habit-forming."

7\. "If you're doing something you love, you're more likely to put your all into it, and that generally equates to making money."

Also note that this is just a list of some things that Warren Buffet has said. It's not _his_ list of 7 "secrets".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Although the title is cheesy, these are really great points. I wouldn't call them "secrets" as much as common sense and great advice.

While I respect him as a businessman and as a person, it kind of surprised me when he gave all of his money to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. You'd think that someone as opinionated as Buffett would have some ideas about how to apply billions of dollars to make the world a better place.

My favorite is number 4: "I want to be able to explain my mistakes. This means I do only the things I completely understand."

<comment><USER5> While I would generally agree that his advice is more "common sense" than any amazing "secrets", the issue lies not in knowing what to do, but rather in doing it. Many of us have heard Buffett's rules before in one way or another, and some of us may even preach them to others, but how many of us actually live by them ourselves?

<comment><USER6> Well, a lot of his advice is easier to follow when you're Warren Buffett. It's easy to enjoy every day at work when you're the boss, your employees all love you for making them rich, and you've already achieved every goal you could reasonably have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Number #5 needs some clarification. Apparently he doesn't believe this to apply to himself since he didn't make his riches by investing in an index fund. I don't know in what context he said it, probably he means it's the best strategy for the average investor. Quoting Buffet again: "Diversification is a protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know what they're doing."

<comment><USER8> There are very few people who have done better than the market over a long period of time. So unless you are as skilled as Buffett, you are better off with low cost index funds.

<comment><USER6> On average, shouldn't roughly half of investors do better than the market and roughly half do worse?

<comment><USER9> In practice, it's more like 25% do better than the market and 75% do worse. This is because those who do better tend to do _much_ better, while those who do worse tend to do only slightly worse. (Remember, if you don't short your losses are capped at 100%, while your gains are potentially infinite.) Mean/median confusion strikes again.

<comment><USER6> I'm not suffering mean/median confusion (note I said "roughly"), I'm just not convinced the distribution is quite as asymmetric as you think(despite, as you say, being capped at zero). But we don't have any numbers either way, so _shrug_.

<comment><USER9> Could've sworn the roughly 75% figure _did_ come from data (thought it was a Berkshire Hathaway annual report, and it may've been 70% or 80% or something in between), but I can't seem to dig it up, so I guess we'll have to leave it as idle speculation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> He doesn't have a computer at home and plays 12 hours online-bridge per week. It seems like he is playing games at the office. No wonder he is tap dancing to work... ;-)

</comment><comment><USER11> Not to play devil's advocate or disagree with the general message, with which I agree, but Warren Buffett _can_ live in a three-bedroom house in Nebraska. He's immensely talented, extremely well-established, and in a position where his business is entirely results-oriented, so he doesn't have to answer to anyone.

Most people who get caught up in the status bullshit don't start out that way, but develop those obsessions and complexes in order to climb the corporate ladder. They buy fancy cars and apartments to appear "hungry" to their bosses and co-workers. Eventually, they're interested in the status symbols to further their career progress, and interested in that career in order to buy more status symbols; this mixture of toxic attitude and environment becomes cyclical and, once one has a wife and kids, somewhat inextricable.</comment>


I won't buy ebooks anymore - <AUTHOR> https://dustri.org/b/i-wont-buy-ebooks-anymore.html <comment><USER3> I've written two novels, formally published in the UK, self-published in the US. Books available on Amazon, and DRM-free on my website [https://gavinchait.com](https://gavinchait.com).

Both novels were stolen and uploaded to ZLib within the first week of release: [https://b-ok.cc/s/gavin%20chait](https://b-ok.cc/s/gavin%20chait)

Here's how I - as author - experienced it:

\- Within the first week someone buys the book via Amazon using a stolen credit card;

\- Book is uploaded to ZLib;

\- I complained to Amazon, raising both the issue of the stolen work and the stolen credit card;

\- No response from Amazon, although they were quick to reverse the charge (I'm assuming as soon as the card is reported stolen);

\- I complained to ZLib using their DMCA reporting tool;

\- ZLib care about as much as Amazon, and my novels are still up.

I made it as easy as possible to read my work on my website and pay me direct. I released it as a DRM-free epub for use on any device or platform. You can even buy anonymously. Still doesn't matter. Folks like the OP won't support writers.

And, while this won't stop me writing, it makes it impossible to afford to write as often as I'd like. Two years after my second, I'm still trying to save up enough to afford to write my third.

Thanks OP.

<comment><USER4> Sounds like you are employing a reactive, defensive and antagonistic approach to eBook "piracy". Which puts you into the very position you described - at a loss, angry, and frustrated; instead of fuelling your sales and playing a direct hand in your success. Unfortunately I don't have the article on hand, but about a year ago I ran across a description of how an author _dramatically enhanced_ his sales by leveraging eBook "piracy" in order to drive people to official channels.

Yes, he actually released his eBooks for free onto the piracy sites - with a twist: he included the entire first portion (quarter or third, cannot remember) of the book, gave info on where to buy the full copies (with zero recriminations - just the facts!), and then repeated those same early chapters to plump out a fully-sized eBook. He then flooded all the file sharing networks with this copy so as to make it difficult to find legitimately complete copies.

The entire first quarter or third was used to get readers heavily enough invested into his novel to _want_ to run out and buy the official copy -- he _justified_ the effort and expenditure to his readers, and they responded (mostly) positively by actually doing so!

Granted, there was a lot more to it than that, but this was the basics, and it pushed a lot of people towards not just his eBooks but also his physical sales. And there are probably many other strategies out there as well that utilizes the "piracy" platforms to your benefit instead of leaving you tilting impotently at windmills.

<comment><USER5> With all that effort there is little time to focus on actual writing, so one can imagine the quality of that work.

There is a reason real authors and musicians have agents (who are actually reachable unlike the YouTube service ...).

The actual profession is a full time job.

<comment><USER6> > _The actual profession is a full time job._

But the actual professional isn't 100% writing, just as being an independent software developer isn't 100% coding. Half of your time (or more!) may be spent on other aspects of the profession.

<comment><USER7> Other aspects are communicating, researching, not a deep dive into human psychology to ensure people don't pirate your software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I refused to buy Amazon ebooks when I learned that I didn't own them. I only owned a right to read them (dependent on many legal things).

The price of an ebook has so far been the same as the price of a physical book. Considering the resale value of a book is on average about 50% of the original price, the real price of an ebook for the user with this limitation should be ~50% less than the cost of the paper book. (Not taking into account shipping costs, etc...)

This became real to me when my aunt died. She had purchased thousands of dollars worth of ebooks. Had she purchased physical books, those books would have been donated or resold. At a loss to the publisher, but a gain to the original purchaser and secondary purchaser. (or estate in this case).

Unless I as the purchaser am at least partially compensated for this loss of value by a price decrease, I cannot buy ebooks with a resale limitation.

<comment><USER9> The resale value of most books is nowhere near 50% of the original price. The more popular the title and the bigger the print run the less it's worth - until you get to remainder mountain title like 50 Shades of Grey, which are literally worthless, except perhaps as fuel for a wood stove.

I had a library with thousands (and thousands) of books. When I moved I decided to get rid of many of them, because decluttering. Long story short - by the time you've allowed for post/carriage, listing time, packaging, and so on, you're more likely to be left with 5-10% of the nominal cover price - <USER2> that only after endless hours of work.

I donated most of mine, and I still got complaints from the local recycling facility that they were worthless because they were "too obscure" (i.e. pop science, math, stats, and such.)

<comment><USER10> The average paperback book weights between 1 and 2 pounds and would cost 2.75 -> 3.25 in shipping for media mail in the US. In addition amazon would take 0.99.

Pulling up a few random books for example [https://www.amazon.com/Blindsight- Peter-Watts/dp/0765319640/...](https://www.amazon.com/Blindsight-Peter- Watts/dp/0765319640/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1590509557&sr=8-1)

I see I can buy it new for about $11 although I wouldn't be surprised to pay $15 in a physical store. Selling it could get me about 10 but I would have to pay about a buck to amazon and around 3 to ship it for a net of 6.

This is 40% - 55% of original value.

Perhaps more importantly lending or giving them in person arguably gives them the same $10 worth of value. Shipping it to someone produces $10 worth of value for 3.

A book that is shared 3 times has produced $30 worth of value. A book that is shared 10 times has produced $100 worth.

An ebook that you might not be able to read in 10 years is SUBSTANTIALLY less valuable than the physical book.

Adding this value proposition back in and removing DRM that strip actual ownership both laudable goals in themselves are entirely at odds. Artificial scarcity is broken by design and unfixable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Let me get this straight, the author has a bad experience with one website selling ebooks, so they decide they'll never buy ebooks ever again?

In real life, this would be the equivalent of getting one bad meal at a restaurant chain in a city you've never been to before, so you stop eating at that chain anywhere else, despite positive experiences in the past.

<comment><USER12> You raise a valid point, but I have had a similar experience and I think ebooks indeed are in their golden age of piracy right now, like movies before Netflix came along or video games before Steam.

Libgen has _everything_ and it's so much easier than dealing with online retailers and Adobe's bullshit. If you know stores that sell DRM-free ebooks I'd be very interested.

<comment><USER11> I'll leave finding DRM-free ebooks as an exercise for the reader. There are a number of small publishers offering their books without DRM. Some genres are easier than others.

Tor went DRM-free many years ago. I know their catalog is on Amazon.

<comment><USER12> Sorry, I just realized that question was poorly stated. It misses an important point: there has to be a decently sized catalog. It doesn't need to rival Libgen, but it should be something that covers most of your bases. Sorry for kinda moving the goalposts here, but right now, most of the time, looking for a particular book you can't get your hands on it DRM free without going to Libgen. That's the thing which has to change.

<comment><USER13> If you're looking for tech-related ebooks, check out ebooks.com. There's 49185 in their technology category that's DRM-free, including O'Reilly books.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> FWIW, I'm not "buying" ebooks or audiobooks anymore because I found out about the magic of digital access via a library card. This is certainly not a new thing, but since it'd been years since I engaged with the public library it was new to me!

I've been tearing through material lately, all through the library app (Libby, which I think is a rebrand of Overdrive), and it's still magic to me that I'm getting all of it for free. Sure, it comes with the normal library restrictions (popular stuff has long hold waits, sometimes tough to find a specific book vs. any book, etc.) but the sheer amount of books available that spark my interest is really cool.

I fell out of the habit of reading actual books for awhile, and diving back in has been like reconnecting with a long lost friend.

<comment><USER15> I'm in the same boat. I do wonder how much author X makes when I borrow his/her ebook or audiobook on Overdrive. Any thoughts from anyone?

<comment><USER16> My impression is it's similar to physical books. Libraries buy/rent them per copy and loan them out at an equal rate. So authors should get paid similarly to if a citizen bought it from the store. Except if the library already acquired the book, then them leasing it to you does not give the author any money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> nils-m-holm DRM is ridiculous.

I have/had some 20 books on the market, all of them also as ebooks (PDF) and not a single one of them is DRM'ed. I refuse to sell ebooks on Amazon, because their ebook format is not open. This year I will publish my first EPUB book. Also without DRM.

However, most authors just don't know and/or don't care. Either because they do not know anything about DRM or because they only care about sales, and with some publishers DRM is not an opt-in. Unfortunately!

So, yes, I understand the frustration expressed in the article! Look closely before you buy any ebooks!

</comment><comment><USER17> I used to really worry about this sort of thing, and would only buy ebooks from vendors like O'Reilly or Baen because they were DRM-free, and I could read them forever.

These days, I can't be arsed to worry about any of that. I just buy what I want from where-ever (Google, Amazon, etc.). Why? Convenience of course.

Really, how many of these books am I ever going to read again? Tech books in the old days (1990's) would last you a few years at least (my copy of TCP/IP networking from O'Reilly was well-used) but these days? Everything is changing so fast.

So I just buy them, enjoy them, and don't worry about having access to them in the future. A few true classics I have purchased multiple hard copies of over the years anyway. If I end up purchasing electronic something for a 2nd time, I might make more effort to ensure continued access.

</comment><comment><USER18> Yes, pirating media is often easier than buying media that compensates the author and distributor. Didn't we all know that?

DRM and other protection instruments are widespread in digital media and I don't think a good answer to this problem has been found yet, which addresses ease of access & use and also adequate compensation to creators.

We still want an equivalent to physical ownership of media but that's applying old thinking to a modern technology, so frustration is understandable. Truly owning digital media is increasingly rare concept. Being able to sharing individual media items more so. Typically we merely rent temporary access through a defined ecosystem. I don't know what the answer is, beyond acknowledging the limitations of both physical and digital media and not expecting the best of both worlds to be possible.

<comment><USER19> >Truly owning digital media is increasingly rare concept. Being able to sharing individual media items more so. Typically we merely rent temporary access through a defined ecosystem. I don't know what the answer is, beyond acknowledging the limitations of both physical and digital media and not expecting the best of both worlds to be possible.

I think within 5-10 years digital media like ebooks, games, movies etc will transition to being represented by ERC-721 tokens which brings with it the benefits of physical media (permanent ownership, sharability, etc) while also being easy to store, transport, read digital items. The main benefit is that you can buy your ebook/game/movie in one store/ecosystem and even if that system goes out of business your purchase will still be valid at other stores and platforms. You own the item itself and are not renting it from a certain store.

<comment><USER18> This idea has been around for a while, it was trialled during the early days of digital media services when they were trying to preserve the level of DVD and Blu-Ray sales. But it didn't take off widely. It seems to have hung around as Walmart's Disc to Digital, but stopped at the end of last year.

<comment><USER19> The key difference is that ERC-721/NFTs are a neutral platform not owned or controlled by anymore. Those systems were run by a corporation that could pull the rug out from under you at any time which means no company in their right mind would risk their success building on a system that could be turned off or used to coerce them at any time in the future. You can build on top of ERC-721 since you know it will be around in the future and it's stable, like HTTP before it. Neutral systems are a prerequisite for large groups of stakeholders to cooperate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I bought a book with Adobe DRM once. It was a relatively obscure book, and I wanted to support the author. Downloaded the file. Installed Adobe ebook software. Then something went wrong. I had to uninstall and reinstall Adobe software, and after that I couldn't open my new book anymore. Had to break the DRM. I never bought any other e-book with Adobe DRM again. It was obvious that the user experience was the last thing Adobe cared about.

I also avoid Google Play Books. E-books are just one of too many things Google does. IMO Google won't think twice before switching off the service.

I do buy some Kindle titles though. At least it works, books are linked to my Amazon account, and Kindle is core business for Amazon. I bet it will stay around longer.

</comment><comment><USER21> I bought a ebook from Kobo, having never heard of them before and thinking they'd be the small competitor to Kindle that offers a better experience. (Oops, they're owned by a big conglomerate.) I stupidly bought the ebook using my google account to sign-on. Then to read the book, I had to enter my google account username and password _into their app_! Their desktop app is clearly an electron-type web-based thing but they don't have an in-browser reader so there's no secure way of letting them do single-sign on. Here's hoping this app I know nothing about didn't steal my password - the only solace being that a desktop app can screw you over regardless if it wants to.

<comment><USER22> If you buy from the kobo store, you can just go to your "library" on the website and download the DRM free files and then use whatever app you want to read the books.

<comment><USER21> So that's round-about but going to "My Books" (which seems to be their new "library") downloading it gave me a .acsm file which can be opened with Adobe Digital Editions software which will then download the epub. So it works, but surely there's a saner way!! Also note that you can't download the book from the book's page (which only points you toward their app), but only by clicking the dropdown menu on the My Books page.

Thanks for pointing me to it!

<comment><USER22> I guess they sell some books in obscure formats. All the books I've bought has been straight epub.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've done every step the author has done, in multiple flavors. I have the Kindle for PC app running under Wine on my Linux laptop, so that I can get ebooks I buy off Amazon decrypted and converted to EPUBs. I have the requisite suite of DeDRM tools and Calibre plugins so that I can strip the DRM off books I buy on my Kobo. At one time I had an Android VM so that I could pull the decryption key out of my Nook app and decrypt those books as well. It's a massive pain in the ass on every front, and I despise having to do it.

There _is_ hope on this front, however. People need to understand this. The e-book manufacturers implement DRM at the behest of the publishers. Publishers can also request that the books they sell _not_ be DRM-encumbered. You'll see that listed on the product page. See below:

[https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/lightspeed-magazine- issue-7...](https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/lightspeed-magazine- issue-73-june-2016-people-of-colo-u-r-destroy-science-fiction-special-issue)

> Download options: EPUB 2 (DRM-Free)

Or you may see a note like this on Amazon:

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ME0TBFE/ref=dbs_a_def_r...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ME0TBFE/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0)

> At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights > Management Software (DRM) applied.

It's not _easy_ to find books that are DRM-free, but this does show that pressuring the publisher _works_. I think this is the route to go if we want to make DRM-free books the norm. Pressure the publisher, not the platform.

<comment><USER24> As far as I know, there's no crack for Amazon's KFX format.

There is a workaround to download the book in an older format that can be cracked, but when you do so you don't get the newer features that are present only in KFX files.

If cracking DRM sounds like a fun project, check out the thread here:

[https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools/issues/38](https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools/issues/38)

<comment><USER23> That's correct. My version running in WINE is locked at Kindle for PC v1.24, I think.

I can't really think of any "newer features" I would need in the books I'm converting, anyway. 95% of the books I buy are works of narrative fiction or nonfiction, and I buy them on Amazon for the purposes of converting to an EPUB and reading them on my Kobo eReader.

<comment><USER24> The big one for me is the option to set ragged-right. I'm not a fan of full justification.

The other changes only in KFX include hyphenation, ligatures, kerning, and pop-up footnotes. Amazon's Bookerly font is also exclusive to KFX and it's quite a nice font IMHO.

<comment><USER25> It's weird that this has anything to do with the ebook. My e-reader gives those options (and many more) for plain epubs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> We have downloadable music existing without DRM. Music industry tried before and failed. I pay an extra price for FLAC-quality downloadable content without DRM on it. And I hope that the movie industrie will take this road some day, too.

BTT, there are a lot of books where you aren't forced into DRM. DRM creates real world issues for customers, as the shut down of DRM servers in the past showed.

If you put DRM on your book, I won't buy it. It's as simple as that. Which doesn't mean I illegally download it from "somewhere on the interwebz". I simply won't read it at all.

</comment><comment><USER27> This was a rabbit hole they needn't traveled into. Buy the DRM version (if that's all they could find), _then_ download a deDRM'd version from the internet. There are plenty of places to do this, Google being one (intitle:index.of blah blah and such).

<comment><USER28> +1 I'd also recommend sending the author a note to take their ebook elsewhere in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I buy ebooks largely out of convenience. I'll be laying in bed and want to continue the The Witcher. There are plenty of pirated copies of this but I'm not going to trouble myself so I just buy this thing I'll spend weeks falling asleep in front of.

Occasionally I'll try to get something from the library but it has a seven week waiting time on it. Forget it. I buy that then also.

Sometimes I want to remove the DRM from something, I buy a fair amount of ebooks I should be allowed to make this call.

In the past I've used caliber to do this.

Unfortunately the DeDRM plugin is broken on Catalina. As far as I can tell you have to boot macOS into safe mode and disable SIP to get it working.

The eBook market kinda sucks. Not every book is available, for example a friend and I wanted to read Inca Gold as sort of a joke together. He bought the book used in hardcover, this particular novel is not available in the Kindle Store. I clicked the notify publisher they should publish this as an ebook link then I found a copy floating around on the web.

The other thing is pricing. eBooks cost much more than regular books and I can not understand why except because it is convenient. Frankly the device is convenient. Not a lot about the systems that support ebooks feels convenient.

Even supporting services like Goodreads feel clunky and stale at this point.

I largely blame Amazon for half hearted support of kindle. Their flagship device has a micro usb on it.

<comment><USER30> I was able to use deDRM with Catalina, that said my SIP is probably disabled (Hackintosh).

Thankfully a lot of sellers are selling books without DRM. I just bought a number of political books from Haymarket and Verso and that was the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is a distribution and not a format problem.

A poor experience with what sounds like a poor distributor, and, perhaps by extension, a poor and limiting DRM, should not be considered representative for an otherwise neat format (.epub).

If sales are done right, the experience is seamless, as the author himself finds to be the case with other distributors.

<comment><USER32> Honestly I think the emphasis here is on "buy".

Doesn't sound like the author is gonna stop reading ebooks, just that he's gonna pirate them (he mentions how easy it is to get a DRM-free book on Z Library).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I have a lot of Google/Nook/Amazon ebooks that I still need to get around to removing the DRM from. Over the past year I've honestly just started pirating books. I'll try to buy merch off the author's website or support their projects (podcasts, patreon, etc.) so I can contribute something to them if they have such avenues.

Kobe has some DRM free books, but not a lot of authors publish there.

I'd really like to buy DRM free books. I'd even pay twice as much for them. I started going down the eBook route when I was moving and travelling very minimally, and now I rarely read paper books. I prefer the ebook format, but wish there was a Bandcamp for eBooks.

</comment><comment><USER34> I subscribed to O'Reilly Safari and Packt. They provide web pages and mobile apps. Because I don't own the books so it seems I cannot download them, but the apps are not very nice. I would avoid them when I can, so I just use those books as manuals to refer to when I have to read them.

On the contrary, I spend quite some money on Manning Publications and Pragprog to buy some PDFs and read through my PDF viewer and I'm pretty happy about it.

I know it's not a fair comparison at all, since I didn't buy books from O'Reilly and Packt. But the point is just to illustrate DRM + apps really destroy the experience.

</comment><comment><USER35> Considering the author already strips the DRM from the purchased e-books and also apparently knows about Z library, a simple solution seems to be the buy the e-book, ignore it and then download the same e-book from Z library.

I also feel the frustration though. I won't buy e-books unless it either has no DRM or if I know I can strip it easily afterwards.

<comment><USER36> The author usually gets <5% share from the book price. I guess it's much better (although not legal) to just skip buying the book and send a donation directly to the author.

<comment><USER37> Not all authors will accept such donations because it puts them in competition with their publisher.

See Charles Stross: [https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/2009/03/reminde...](https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/2009/03/reminder-why-theres-no-tipjar.html)

<comment><USER38> They also acknowledge that many people work on a book besides the author.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I wish ebooks would follow the movie industry with Movies Everywhere and start offering an ebook copy of the physical books you buy. I love the convenience of having things electronic, but having the physical medium is a great backup if/when these services decide to shut down.

</comment><comment><USER40> Very title of the article has an error. If it has DRM, you're not buying it, you are leasing it.

Agree or not with the use of DRM, I object to buttons that say "Buy Now" instead of "Lease Now" on web-sites.

</comment><comment><USER41> For the record: HumbleBundle frequently does eBook bundles. Obviously that's niche - generally comics, programming books, stuff like that, and you're just buying a bundle and not getting to peruse a library. However, all their ebooks are DRM-free.

I've bought into a few ebook kickstarters, and the books came in open files visibly watermarked with my KS email address. That seems a reasonable approach.

For KS, from the author's perspective this is ultra-high-risk. Their book isn't even on store shelves yet, and yet they're selling DRM-unencumbered copies. Meanwhile if I want to buy a 60-year-old book that's obviously available on every pirate site, the seller will still foist DRM onto me.

So I think we're getting there. There are new businesses working with DRM-free ebooks, since the encumbered ones are basically pirated instantly anyways.

</comment><comment><USER42> OReilly had DRM free books to buy. I bought a bunch.

But Piracy killed it, so now its subscription service, or available on kindle (I don't use). Some authors seem to have deals to give away their books and sell them at the same time: e.g.: [https://www.tidyverse.org/learn/](https://www.tidyverse.org/learn/)

I buy some DRM free books from Manning. They put a footer on each page, saying, licensed to: email@example.com to discourage me from sharing. It doesn't bother me.

Manning also seems to be going a sort of subscription route too. They have "live book" where you buy access to parts of books you want with tokens. Its kinda interesting how they're trying to do micropayments.

[https://www.manning.com/livebook-program](https://www.manning.com/livebook- program)

<comment><USER43> Did piracy really kill OReilly's previous business model? I was sad when they morphed into a weird subscription service

<comment><USER42> I can find a specific reference, but it they made a bid deal of being DRM free a decade ago.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2368560](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2368560)

If ebook sales where working well, I suspect they wouldn't have gotten rid of them.

<comment><USER44> They still sell DRM free books, just through other stores like Google Play.

The reason they switched to subscriptions was because of the cost of running an ebook store and the low ROI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I don't buy physical books anymore. It's just stuff to get dusty and clutter up the place. Reading on a tablet is great- carry it anywhere, also has search, highlighting, bookmarks etc.

I prefer no DRM but I don't complain about the hassle of removing it- I'm too busy reading.

<comment><USER46> I stay on the "happy path." I have a Kindle e-paper reader. I buy a book, I can read it. It's probably DRMd. But it doesn't get in my way. I agreed to the price and I know I may or may not be able to read the book 5 or 10 years from now. I accept that.

I realize this may not be the experience or purchase model for everyone, but for a large segment of the reading public, it "just works."

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Yes, I have been a Linux zealot once. I have been a "no DRM here" zealot once.

I am now running Windows 10 + WSL and I begrudgingly accept if I want to support the authors while reading on an eReader I need to accept the DRM'd ebooks. I am getting too old to struggle with being a zealot. There are better things to spend my time on.

You can download the DeDRM tools from [https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/](https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/) linking to github, no crazy sites involved.

Ps.: Funnily enough, my device is actually called a Not-eReader. It's lovely because it doubles as an emergency HDMI monitor.

<comment><USER48> DRM-using publishers tend to pay authors less than non-DRM ones do, and certainly less than you can donate to them (I assume the full price of the book). So if your intention is to support authors, pirating and finding a way to pay the author in a different way is more efficient.

Nobody does that, of course.

<comment><USER47> I have yet to find a way to pay authors directly. One way I can support the authors is pirating the book, reading it once, deleting it and then purchasing a physical copy and donating it to the library. The end result is the exact same as if I had read the physical copy and donated it: I read the book, I paid for one copy and it doesn't take space which I do not have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Is this communication style a function of being involved in FSF, or does FSF just naturally attract very angry people?

It's not unreasonable that people should be compensated for work that they've spent months or years of their life working on.

<comment><USER50> I am surprised by this comment; the article seemed clear that the author didn't mind paying for the book. Their issue was that the book was advertised as an EPUB file but then came wrapped in proprietary DRM.

<comment><USER51> Their title is literally "I won't buy ebooks anymore". They've stated their intent to only pirate books. And they bought it with the intent of giving copies to their friends in the role as a "library". If they had stated a preference to only buy DRM-free books that would have been different but they literally link to a book pirating website in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Are you me? I could have written the exact same blog article! I have the same experience this month, I ended spending hours to be able to use an e-book I bought, and I also finally needed to convert it multiple times, install shady software, etc.

I didn't find an online shop meeting these criteria:

* really big catalogue (of the size of Fnac.com, etc.)

* EPUB with no DRM

I also sent an email to the (French) publisher/editor of the book to narrate the awful user-experience. Maybe you can do the same ;) If enough readers contact the publishers to say they won't buy ebook anymore with such a poor user experience, it might help.

</comment><comment><USER53> I only buy ebooks that I know I can break the drm on. The first thing I do when I buy a book from amazon is to run it through calibre with dedrm plugin so I know I will always have a drm-free copy.

</comment><comment><USER54> > Having DRM on books is a fucking dystopia nightmare that shouldn't even be a > thing and I hope that the EU will pass laws to nuke them from orbit

Learn polish ;)) there is no DRM on polish ebook sites. You just pay and get links to PDF/EPUB/MOBI formats of ebook. There is only watermark protection, example site: [https://virtualo.pl/ebook/heban-i150038/](https://virtualo.pl/ebook/heban-i150038/) but it is similar in all publishing houses.

</comment><comment><USER55> Relevant: [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to- read.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html)

</comment><comment><USER56> This article resonates with me so much. I recently purchased an e-Book on Wiley too. Atleast, the author got an EPUB with DRM in it, which is pretty easy to remove using de-DRM tools (open source). However, what I got from my purchase from Wiley was some stupid proprietary format that requires me to install some crapware called Vitalsource. There is nothing out there that will de-DRM for you and you are forced to install this crapware wherever you intend to read this - be it on your mobile or desktop. I thought ok, no biggie, let me seek a refund ASAP, but Wiley explicitly disallows refunds, probably this is the reason.

In their entire website, they refer to these things as "E-Books", but it is anything but. It's a proprietary viewer. There is a small "i" icon next to them in the listings, which I presume they must have added recently that now states these things aren't actually E-Books (in fine print). Clever huh?

Either way, I don't understand the point of DRM. People can still make copies if they're determined to, and studies have shown that giving away ebooks actually increases sales. If these sort of publishers go bankrupt, no one will shed a tear. Because, you know, don't fuck your customer maybe?

<comment><USER57> I had a script to de-DRM books from VitalSource. It "printed" each page one at a time to a PDF and then concatenated the individual PDFs into a single file.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Everyone writing about what they think and what they did about it.

I think authors should get paid, and I should have free use over the artifact.

So I wired together some machinery to take a downloaded Kindle file, turn it into a PDF (using the underlying Calibre tooling), and send that to my Remarkable tablet.

I should make it available, think it would be useful to others (under terms that the PDFs are for personal use only- authors need to get paid).

</comment><comment><USER59> I don't mind buying ebooks, movies, music but it has to be simple. With DRM is less good, but even DRM, as long as it's simple. I had the same experience as the author with a book I bought in Spain; they had ebooks so I bought this one. The process was so convoluted and annoying (and only worked on Windows which I don't have here) (also; I am a technical person/programmer; how is a 'normal' person supposed to do this?) that I definitely won't buy again from them.

I think unlike the author though, I was not attempting to remove the DRM; the process of getting to read the book _with_ DRM was many steps (downloading adobe crap, etc) and the endresult was something with DRM that could be opened in another Adobe program but no-where else.

The most annoying part is books 'disappearing' or becoming unreadable like what happens on Amazon; like there are books that I bought which are limited to n devices (all mine and my account!) or they just suddenly cannot be read anymore (and cannot be downloaded again). What else can I do then just download illegally?

</comment><comment><USER60> Instead, buy a printer. It's cheap and you can print anything you want, including books. It's much easier to read on paper and with a highlighter, you will annotate and remember much more.

This works -- especially -- in a country where you have to wait ages for a book to arrive by post, not to mention silly countries like mine, where you have to pay tax on books.

</comment><comment><USER61> Yeah. DRM sucks if you want to lend your bought content, or if you're hoping to have it around for long periods of time (e.g. 10 years+). When I buy electronic copies of Xbox games, I'm under no illusion that I will be able to play them in 10-20 years. I see them as long-term rentals. I've made my peace with that because I have an entire library of games, movies and music on media like floppy disks, VHS, cassette tapes, CDs, DVDs, that I never felt the need to use again and are cluttering up my basement. If I get nostalgic about some content, there's always an electronic copy around somewhere on the internet, usually legal and available for a few bucks.

Having said that, I do agree with the shitty ergonomics and usability of DRMed content. If someone went out of their way to pay for a book or a movie, they aren't the kind of people to go and pirate that - so don't punish them.

</comment><comment><USER62> I buy ebooks because I have intermittent low vision. Large print books worked ok, but the lighting is never right. The ereader has freed me up to read when and where I want to instead of under very specific conditions.

I am also _think_ I am sensitive to the "renters economy" issue. I think I preferred owning them, but I'm not sure why. I've had to dispose of books in various ways in the past for running out of space etc. And I have had books lost or stolen, or borrowed and never returned, so many time. Now I can actually read the books I buy regardless of the quality of my vision. I don't have to worry about running out of space or carrying huge heavy boxes. So I don't know if I really don't like the new way or if I'm just resistant to change.

</comment><comment><USER63> The place where e-books leave me lacking when they have DRM is the ability to loan them or transfer them. It is a lot easier to get a friend to read an important book than to get them to buy it. But I can't lend the kindle copy, which is the format I can read best.

<comment><USER64> It depends on if it's "allowed" for that specific book, but Amazon has had a system for lending ebooks to friends and family for years.

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GJUXNRAHSH6LX6FA)

<comment><USER63> That functionality is enabled for about 1 in 20 titles in my collection, and sufficiently well hidden that I can't imagine most people know it exists.

E-book publishers don't see the value in lending. Look at how they are clamping down on the number of copies available to libraries. To them, every loaned book is a lost sale.

<comment><USER64> I agree it's not widely used and not known about. What surprised me is that I know older family members, who are otherwise fairly technically illiterate, who actively share ebooks using their Kindles. Another older family member, where their local library is very hands on with helping them. They both know way more than I know about what's possible and how to do it.

Another, I believe separate program, is family sharing (it's not a loan you can both read it simultaneously). I'm not sure if that's a separate privilege the publishers must opt-into, but I have used it the one time I tried.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Sometime last year, I was researching the OPDS spec and the upcoming release. I found that it's all linked to DRM ultimately. Check the Readium specs if you're interested.

I was so disheartened to see DRM being pushed with an open standard. It's the whole EME thing again.

</comment><comment><USER66> I don't understand why someone with such a pedigree feels the need to fake he just learned of DRM ebooks.

This is disingenuous and doesn't bring much food for thoughts at the table.

Is the outrage porn card being played to garner attention for something else ?

</comment><comment><USER67> Get burned once...

When you pet a snake and get bitten, you don't pet snakes anymore. But since you already were afraid of snakes (who isn't), you don't have to test petting it to find out it bites.

So the author doesn't have the eBook instinct. e-book. In other words: "electrified book", "less of a book", "not a real book".

Then, he's not using standard tested consumer channels like Amazon Kindle etc, so then he's on his own. He doesn't need to brag about having to set up a VM and going to darknet to hire a Korean hacker gang and buying a DM cracking botnet to crack DRM. He was just being cheap.

</comment><comment><USER68> [https://medium.com/@samclearman/stop-paying-for-e-books- and-...](https://medium.com/@samclearman/stop-paying-for-e-books-and-start- stealing-them-efb293e9a64c)

</comment><comment><USER69> Or just buy ebooks without DRM. Last time when i bought ebooks, the eshop just offered epub/mobi/pdf for download, directly from browser, with only 'social DRM' (info about buyer on separate page in ebook).

</comment><comment><USER70> This is very shortsighted. People are motivated by wealth. Paper books cannot be copied for free but ebooks can, same thing with music. The creators must be compensated or the content that you enjoy would cease to exist.

<comment><USER71> Very few content-creators get a fair royalty. DRM is mostly about publisher wealth, not creator wealth.

I think selling books for 25 cents etc. can result in massive sales. There is a middle-ground between selling overpriced editions with small changes in between, and outright piracy. Digital formats allow large-scale distribution, so pricing copies for under a dollar makes piracy not that attractive, when following the law and your conscience comes so cheap.

But somehow publishers want it all - the large scale distribution possibility of the digital medium, and the margins of the print medium.

<comment><USER72> You need to consider perceived value, most of the books I buy are $9.99-14.99 and if I saw a new book come out for $0.25 my first reaction would be Wtf, then probably: did a child write this?

<comment><USER73> Maybe a middle ground, like what Louis C.K did. He was selling his videos for $5 at one point, if I remember correctly - directly from his website, cutting out the middlemen. Yes, one can buy it and send it to all their friends, but the price is low enough that many people would just buy it..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> My opinion on ebooks is entirely driven by weight. I move often, and am usually stuck with the heavier lifting tasks in my household. Books in dead tree format are _heavy_ , and I'd prefer not to move them.

</comment><comment><USER75> I understand the sentiment. When I buy a book now I first decide if I will ever want to loan it to someone, and if yes, then I buy a physical book.

For the books I write I now only sell eBooks but under a Creative Commons Share and Share Alike license and I encourage people to share with friends. Writing books is a lot of work and I want them to be widely available. Then, you may ask, why not just put PDFs in the public domain? The answer is that I do enjoy getting some revenue from writing, so it is a compromise.

</comment><comment><USER76> Ever since Amazon deleted its first books remotely from people's Kindles, I haven't bought any ebooks, digital music downloads, movies aside from on physical media, or software which is downloaded and delivered digitally.

I do have numerous shelves in my home devoted to Laserdiscs, vinyl, CD's, tapes, and of course many many books. But I don't have any room for media which I don't physically own, nor media which can be taken away as easily as I can download it.

</comment><comment><USER77> I've had my "no more DRM" experience when my ebook reader crashed on a vacation, required a reset and wouldn't let me read the DRM protected books afterwards. I'm still buying eBooks without DRM. At least in Germany, it's common to only have a watermark instead. DRM on eboos is utter trash, it just makes everyone's life harder but can easily be removed by anyone who puts some effort into installing the required tools.

</comment><comment><USER78> Anyone here who gives away some of their books, consider also the Little Free Library if it's in your area.

[https://littlefreelibrary.org/](https://littlefreelibrary.org/)

Previous HN discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8237696](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8237696)

</comment><comment><USER79> It's 2020 and we're for some reason discussing DRM.

It was repeatedly shown for the last 20+ years that DRM can not work, is detrimental for sales, author popularity and income.

Late Jim Baen of baen.com realized that in 1999 and since then sold DRM-free multiformat books with usually first 1/3 to 1/2 of the text available free. And it works just fine since then.

</comment><comment><USER80> The author has a very good point: buying ebooks is a crappy consumer experience.

If that wasn't true, dead-tree books would be as rare as Compact Discs.

<comment><USER81> Click on my kindle icon for "store", find book, click buy, have it seconds later. Alternatively, go to amazon.com and find book, click buy, shows up on my kindle seconds later.

<comment><USER82> Kindle has definitely made it as friction free as possible. The lock-in used to be moderately annoying, but I have a phone that can natively handle other formats (not to mention the kindle app), so I just don't care anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> I only "buy" (1) ebooks to read on the plane. You can't _practically_ (2) loan ebooks and I like to share them with my friends.

(1) You don't actually buy them, you lease them.

(2) For example; Kindle books can only be loaned for 14 days. I guess if you vacationing on the beach, you could probably read it that quickly. Most people only have some weekend or evening time.

<comment><USER84> I dunno about you, but both my wife and I read books is much less than two weeks most of the time, and we both work full time and have other hobbies.

<comment><USER85> Not OP, but my children seem to have a "Kindle Activity Detector" and suddenly want to play whenever I sit down to read. They're only children once, the books can wait.

But, hey, I finished Worm and that's about a million words!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> > The advertised format was epub, an open standard, useable on a large number > of supports. But surprise-surprise, to get the file, I needed either a > specific kind of tablet ... or to use Adobe [] spyware.

How is this not bait-and-switch fraud? OP should file a complaint with their local business regulator.

</comment><comment><USER87> I have a heap of ebooks i got from amazon and find I need to break the drm and convert them to pdf just to read them on my kindle. Really hate the situation on one hand I want to support the author but I don't want to support amazon for the bs that doesn't work.

</comment><comment><USER88> Also one of the reasons I'm gonna take back my old kindle from a family member. You need an old one to break the latest generation of DRM they deployed.

The new ones - paper white etc pull the new format off the cloud which is currently unbroken.

I definitely want a backup of all that stuff

</comment><comment><USER89> I had this exact same discovery/dilemma 3/4 months ago. My windows partition stopped working now so don't think I'm going down that road to buy a book again. The Adobe digital editions hassle just really isn't worth it.

</comment><comment><USER90> I've run into the situation where I want to buy an e-reader. I like the Amazon paperwhite product but my public library doesn't support it (they support Kobo). So if I want to get books from the library I need to buy a Kobo.

<comment><USER64> Mine situation is arguably worse, it varies depending on the book. Some are Kindle compatible, others require Adobe's software, and I believe yet others only support Libby.

What's nice is that I'm able to get access to libraries that are a pretty far drive. I can borrow those books without having to drive to one of their libraries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> What a baby. There are only 2 steps:

1\. install DeDRM in Calibre[0]

2\. Strip DRM from epub

[0] [https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools/releases](https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools/releases)

</comment><comment><USER92> I use Calibre to back up my Kindle library periodically.

I prefer not contributing to deforestation & pollution via paper. This leaves me with specific niche or historical books to buy in paper form.

</comment><comment><USER93> The Pragmatic Bookshelf [https://www.pragprog.com/](https://www.pragprog.com/) deserves a mention, as they're DMR free.

</comment><comment><USER94> I am building an app that enables book exchange based on geographical proximity, think tinder for books. Do you think there is place in the world for such an app ?

</comment><comment><USER95> I've gone this route for books, music, tv, and movies.

Either I buy it without DRM, or I don't buy it.

Almost there with spyware, too. Creative Cloud is next on my list to replace.

</comment><comment><USER96> Can anyone recommend websites where one can buy epubs without DRM? I only know of technical ones like No Starch or Mannings. What about fictions?

<comment><USER51> [https://www.libreture.com/bookshops/](https://www.libreture.com/bookshops/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> Not buying ebooks at all is a bit drastic.

I'd rather just research which sites sells DRM-free (or with easily removed DRM, like Amazon) and stick to those.

</comment><comment><USER98> Switched to Spotify and Netflix when they became available in my country as pirating the content I wanted just took too much effort.

</comment><comment><USER99> Used paper books have become cheap.

"Affording the hassle of a bookshelf" is a thing nowadays, but I chose to indulge in that kind of luxury.

<comment><USER82> Storing them is less of an issue than moving them. You'll get a good workout on the other hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> This is why I bought a SV600. Very few platforms or publishers except for example No Starch Press allow you to buy a PDF anymore.

</comment><comment><USER101> This is the same experience I get when dealing with companies who have mobile apps but are actually just websites, like Instagram.

</comment><comment><USER102> Sorry, but content protections including DRM are the "death and taxes" of the online world. You will have to deal with them one way or another, because without them, authors and creators -- especially small-time ones -- will not be able to make a living doing what they love and so they will stop producing output.

Learn to accept DRM, or go without. Anything else is snatching food from the mouths of the children of authors, artists, and musicians.

<comment><USER103> I reject that the only way forward is to simply accept rent-seeking behavior and move on. It's unreasonable to expect people to pay for a freely reproducible good, and "doing something" about that implies state surveillance and ultimately violence, which leaves me uncomfortable. Based on my understanding of history, I actually believe it's the perpetuation of this violence that created an underclass who can't afford anything in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> I buy them if they are DRM-free.

ebooks.com, kobo.com and shashwords.com are good for this, as are Verso.

</comment><comment><USER105> you don't need the chinese website, you can use github instead...

[https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools](https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools)

</comment><comment><USER106> Ebooks are a gimmick. I only buy them if they are deeply discounted (symbolic value). The only books that I pay full price are real paper books that I can read without a computer and keep in my library.

<comment><USER103> Ebooks are words arranged in a digital document. If that's a "gimmick", then everything is a gimmick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> How is the zlibrary not just piracy?

</comment><comment><USER108> Your link has trojan in it!!!

ebook-converter-program

</comment><comment><USER109> entitled jerk.

</comment><comment><USER110> TL;DR: He doesn't like DRM. Neither do I. Don't support it by buying anything with DRM. There's lot's of ebooks without drm though[1].. so.. you know.. buy those.

[1] Especially within technical fields. Also Norwegian ebooks :D

</comment><comment><USER111> relevant XKCD [https://xkcd.com/488/](https://xkcd.com/488/)

</comment><comment><USER112> I agree your experience has been shit, but work that an author spend months or years of their life on has to have some sort of protection. People need to get used to actually paying for digital services, but they won't when the experience is as bad as this. Companies can not make dealing with their drm more difficult than working around it.

<comment><USER96> Was the author reluctant to buying the book? He bought it. He just doesn't want to have to use Windows and a whole suite of awful software because of the DRM.

<comment><USER21> The author is pretty clearly reluctant to buy the book, based off the first paragraph.

<comment><USER96> Really? The 1st paragraph is just about his friend trying to borrow the book, and noboby having it, and the author eventually buying it. Is the problem that people are trying to borrow books from their friends? This has been going on for centuries.

<comment><USER21> I can't read that paragraph as anything other than "I tried to pirate it and failed".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER113> My preferred way is to pirate everything, and support after the fact, usually by buying copies to give to friends (though more than once it was just "buy the DRM version and never touch it because nothing else was easily available").

I like this because I make sure to support things I enjoy, rather than buying something and finding out it was not as good as the reviews made it out to be. It is a product of my entitlement, sure, but with the wealth of free content available, I can't justify spending money up front anymore.

</comment><comment><USER114> I realized when I bought "The Catcher In The Rye" in digital form that I can only buy it once. But I want to buy more copies of "The Catcher In The Rye", Every time I visit Amazon.com I try to buy "The Catcher In The Rye" but it won't let me because I already own "The Catcher In The Rye" and that's a real shame because I really like "The Catcher In The Rye" and want to buy more copies of "The Catcher In The Rye" whenever I see a copy of "The Catcher In The Rye" which I cannot do in digital form.</comment>


On Extroverted Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://www.gregerwikstrand.com/blog/2011/09/15/extroverted-programmers/

<comment><USER2> At university I spent the vast majority of my time getting drunk, doing drugs and chasing girls. I then took the show on the road and did more or less the same thing in Japan for s few years. There was absolutely nothing introverted about those five years. I made a ton of friends, got into lots of excellent adventures and generally had a good time.

Fast forward a few years and I'm a mid to senior level developer. I'm surrounded by socially, how can I put this this, 'challenging' people. I realized however that after enough time doing this, it's rubbed off on me. I have difficulty making small-talk, making new friends and being sociable.

In my case at least, my 'introversion/extroversion' factor is variable. When I'm jobhunting or marketing or looking for my next project, I'm in 'extrovert' mode. If I'm heads-down programming then I find it much more difficult to deal with human beings.

As an aside, I have serious misgivings about MBTI, not least because I took the test once every month for three months and got different results! It appears to be 'horrorscopes for smart people', or a convoluted wizard for selecting your character class in the big RPG of life.

<comment><USER3> > not least because I took the test once every month for three months and got > different results!

That's interesting, I had the opposite experience. I must have taken the test 5 times over the years, and I got ENTP every time. I didn't expect it to be the case, but I was surprised by its precision.

<comment><USER4> Surely the answer there is that it depends on your exact scores?

Each factor won't be a clear binary but a continuum between the two. Your answers will depend on mood, sure, but will also give a result on that continuum and with a margin for error.

You might've got ENTP consistently. I've had both INTP and ESTJ in fairly quick succession without any intention to mislead. The idea that the test is anywhere near perfect, foolproof and likely to produce absolutely consistent results for all appears unsupported by anecdotal evidence here.

<comment><USER3> > Surely the answer there is that it depends on your exact scores?

Absolutely. I just wanted to provide an anecdotal counterexample, given that my experience was opposite to the one of the original commenter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another theory: the survey was done among _Cuban_ software engineers. Now, I know terribly little about Cuba, but I do know that in some Eastern European countries, computer science is a very popular subject because programmers are in demand. Thus, becoming a programmer is a relatively sure-fire road to a decent career and a decent income.

ExTJ types, maybe more than any other, may be very prone to carefully plan their careers as a matter of course, and listen less to what they _want_ to do most, deep inside. So if Cuba is anything like Eastern Europe, this could explain a large amount of ExTJ types in programming

</comment><comment><USER6> People: Stop using Myers-Briggs to measure anything. It is an unscientific test, developed by someone with no formal training in psychology. Its results are not replicable (the same person is likely to get different results if you take the same test on different days). It is the same kind of pseudo-science as astrology.

Worse, employers have been sued for giving this to their employees and sharing the results among their co-workers. This is bad juju, seriously.

<comment><USER7> Hey, I'm fond of Myers-Briggs. It's useful, fun, and meaningful. It helps resolve interpersonal difficulties. It stimulates conversation. As for measuring, I'm always interested to see survey data on it. Way more than that other boring test I can't ever remember the name of and which I'm told is much more empirical.

Just because something isn't a law of nature is no reason to suppress it. Lots of things we care about are unscientific. Besides, what's considered "scientific" changes over time. (Remember when brain cells "couldn't" regenerate? "Junk" DNA, anyone?)

Let a thousand flowers bloom!

<comment><USER6> You could say all of those things about astrology.

There are great reasons to suppress pseudo-science, but the first and foremost reason is that it isn't true.

<comment><USER7> What about old science? Is that true? When scientists told women to give their babies "formula" in the 1960s instead of breast-feeding them, was that true? Or do you retroactively label it pseudo-science? It certainly had the blessing of the authorities (edit: the scientific authorities) at the time. What about the dietary fat hypothesis, currently falling apart after generations of being such dogma that people lost their jobs for questioning it? When did it go from being scientific to unscientific?

My point is that these boundaries are not nearly crisp and stable enough to bear your level of judgmentalism.

I'm guessing that in Myers-Briggs lingo, you're a J. I'm an extreme P. These two don't get along sometimes. Also, I'm an Aquarius.

<comment><USER6> I label it, and you, wrong. You seem pretty OK with that. Remind me never to hire you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> How many of you think many Introverts may not have participated in the MBTI test conducted?

</comment><comment><USER9> I was thinking about this the other day because I realized that I had shifted from an extrovert to an introvert in less than six months, and that I have gone through periods of my life in one state or the other.

Right now I'm working intensely on a project, and I'm basically living inside my head, totally consumed with what I'm working on. But last year I took the year off and socialized, basically gearing up for what I'm working on now.

But I couldn't just pop back to that extroverted state from my present state of mind. It would be a process, and I would have to transition into it. This got me thinking -- what if people who see themselves as complete introverts are that way just because that's all they know?

<comment><USER10> Guess what, you're probably an extrovert. :-) Introverts recognize they are introverts and that being extroverted is draining no matter how much they do it.

I've known very-obvious extroverts who would talk about "being an introvert" at some time in their life - when it was really them either suffering from shyness or being extremely preoccupied with something. Extroverts seem to have a tough time understanding introverts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> MBTI is a measure of you _preference_. E/I, S/N, F/T, J/P are all preferences. Of course you can switch to the other side. What happens when introverts need to speak publicly? Or when extroverts need that moment of silence to think things through? This test is essentially a filter for your natural inclinations.

Not being relaxed or in a stable state of mind may affect the test's outcome. If you are stressed about a project or super pumped from your trip to Europe, your test will give different results.

Then there is the pop culture influence. Some people may not answer a question correctly because the answer isn't socially sound or in sync with their impression of themselves.

Though online tests are OK to start with; the results should be verified by talking to an MBTI practitioner.

I personally find this MBTI system very helpful in studying myself and people around me. But its true, you need to read up on it before you can start making comments about the test and the theory behind it. It has a lot more intricacies than meet the eye.

It would be very interesting to see the makeup of HNers. Go take the test at <http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp> then read up the description on <http://www.personalitypage.com/html/portraits.html>. See if it matches with your impressions of self. If not, try to switch one of the letters and read up that description.

</comment><comment><USER12> INFP here. I do my best programming when I'm learning something new, or tackling a problem when I'm certain I'm heading towards the best solution.

As soon as I feel like what I'm being asked to do isn't the right way to do things, I get extremely demotivated and distracted. This means that in my case I have more chance of hitting a deadline if I'm following the "idealistic" path even if it is considerably more complicated than the straightforward path.

Unfortunately, this is hard in the real world, so I'm having to train myself to be more disciplined at work.

</comment><comment><USER13> "In my experience engineering jobs are all about working with people."

I completely agree. In my relatively short (four years) but intense (four jobs, in four different countries) engineering/programming career I still haven't been in a situation where social interaction wasn't a daily requirement in order to do a good job.

At the very least you must be able to interact successfully with your fellow programmers, and your boss. Without being confident in your relationship with them, everything becomes more difficult, asking for help, helping someone, providing feedback, admitting mistakes and getting acknowledgment for a job well done.

In a large or very well organized company it might be the end of your social commitment, but in a good part of them you are likely to deal sporadically with customers, engineers from other companies, production, sales, technical support.

If you get to be known as "that guy", if you get to be known at all, promotions and raises become almost impossible to achieve, and in hard times you'll be the first in line waiting for the axe to fall.

Of course I'm talking in my experience, I have no doubt that there are companies where introverts can thrive. But is it to their (ours) benefit ?

I have been an introvert all my life, and getting a job helped me in being more open (in a "sink or swim" way) even more than making me a better engineer.

</comment><comment><USER14> GIFA here. German/Irish/French-American. I find that knowledge just as useful and relevant to daily life as knowing into which personality box the MBTI sorting hat places me.

</comment><comment><USER15> Myers-Briggs is derided by psychologists because 1) it is typographical, 2) the theory behind the test is based on unproven cognitive processes called functions; these are completely speculative, and 3) borderline personalities are inconsistently typed because the types are dichotomous.

On the other hand, Myers-Briggs does have some merit. Most psych professionals actively endorse the Big Five personality assessment. Based on trait theory, the Big Five is empirically valid, though somewhat theoretically sparse. Here's the rub, 4/5 Big Five traits correlate very strongly with the Myers- Briggs letters. E/I to Extroversion, T/F to Agreeably, J/P to Conscientiousness, and S/N, albeit weaker, to Openness. Myers-Briggs doesn't have a measure of Neuroticism(the fifth Big Five trait). So while the actual type combinations are unscientific, the test is still based on personality distinctions that have been researched and supported by the psych community.

Also, personality tests measure tendencies, please don't use exceptions to explain away your personality. Yes, personality is somewhat situation, great. Yes, Myers-Briggs isn't "science," but it is still a useful tool.

</comment><comment><USER5> > _Varona et al. hypothesize that the shift towards more extroverted > personality types is caused by a need for ever more collaboration among > engineers._

I don't believe this. Since when did a person's interest get determined by the need for a particular kind of skill or personality?

26% in a single MBTI type mostly suggests to me that the sample was too small or the research was set up badly.

<comment><USER16> Job positions select for personality types by whether or not that personality type is generally successful at the job. If a job needs someone who is outgoing and reaches out to others constantly, it's going to tend to select for extroverts, and a job that asks people to work alone for long stretches is going to tend to select for introverts.

Not that I believe the results either. I suspect they are fatally flawed in some respect, since most of the programmers I've met have been introverts. (Someone else noted that the study was only among Cubans, for instance.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> ...and the rise of the brogrammer?

<https://www.facebook.com/getwiththebrogram>

<comment><USER18> Jokes aside, I really like the 'brogramming' ethos. I feel it really embodies 'balance' in life.

As the slogan puts it: "Rage at the codebase, rage at the gym, rage at the club". Programming is very much a logical and intellectual endeavour. One has to be creative, yet logically inclined. So on thise side, your mental capabilities are constantly being challenged.

Staying healthy is also an important, hence 'rage at the gym'.

And then finally 'rage at the club' to me implies you have to loosen up, enjoy life and do things the body wants, not the brain. In other words, not be stuck in programming mode all day.

<comment><USER19> "Rage" is not really the embodiment of balance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> ENTP here, arch type for inventor. 2% seems like a low value, although about the normal for entire population sets from memory.

Theres been a few articles here recently on the subject, but being naturally prone to creative and innovative ideas generally doesn't go down well in risk adverse IT departments/teams (let alone business in general if the articles are to believed). So I've grown to not enjoy working in IT teams.

I no longer class myself as a programmer after 15 years of it, and am now self employed.

</comment><comment><USER11> This study does a better job of correlating software developers and personality types

<http://www.wtst.org/2011/WTST2011CapretzPaperv2.pdf>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another reason for showing more extrovertedness is that the general public has become more aware of what programmers actually do.

</comment><comment><USER21> Making friends can be turned into an algorithm for processing inside the programmer mind.

Read this 2 or 3 times and do everything it tells you to do, and you'll have people going out of their way to be your friend.

[http://www.amazon.com/Likeability-Factor-L-Factor-Achieve- Dr...](http://www.amazon.com/Likeability-Factor-L-Factor-Achieve- Dreams/dp/1400080495)

I got the audiobook on this and listened to it twice 6 months ago, I've been following the rules religiously, and my emotional intelligence and personal likability has skyrocketed. I have people who I know who's faces light up (male and female) when they see me and are eager to see me again. They don't know I'm running an elaborate algorithm to do exactly that, and can turn it off as quickly as I turn it on. Learning the basic syntax and procedures are for maintaining loyal close friends is easier than learning Programming.

<comment><USER19> A Myers Briggs xxTJ will be deeply offended that the wrong L is highlighted on the book cover.</comment></comment>


Tory MP defends sharing logins, passwords with all her staff including interns - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42216622 <comment><USER2> Plausible deniability for any future discoveries on her office computer. Very clever.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, either she is 1) uneducated as to why this is a terrible idea (and therefore needs to be educated and forced to change her tactic) or 2) she's an idiot.

<comment><USER4> She's an MP, A group not widely known for excessive intelligence.

As a former co-worker put it "People who'd be fired as middle managers in a supermarket in short order".

<comment><USER5> Or knowledge of modern technology Jen from the IT Crown would be in the third quartile.

BTW an employee in the HOC or Lords requires DV vetting (TS clearance an USA terms) it some what rankles the MP's don't have to.

<comment><USER6> It's CTC vetting rather than DV, significantly less costly to undertake.

<comment><USER5> Ah maybe the one I talked to had a more senior role - your not thinking of MP's office staff instead of actual HOC staff

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Tl;dr - To delegate email, with a side effect of avoiding accountability.

</comment><comment><USER8> The "how to choose a good password" part is dreadful.

The source is "Google Support" but the link does not point to any such recommendation.

</comment><comment><USER9> It is clear that MPs (of all sides) are just not up to date with modern office working. 1 - Hiring of staff 2 - Safeguarding 3 - Use of computers</comment>


How I improved my Hacker News experience - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJBX4pazbBw

<comment><USER2> It allows me to see in detail exactly what the short subject is referencing without having to click through and then hit back. I can hover over each link and quickly visually browse one right after the other.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting tool</comment>