That one looks only at carbon emissions, which is not the main issue with Natural gas. The problem is that since it's a gas it leaks and natural gas in the atmosphere is a very very potent greenhouse gas.Though ofcourse over time in will break down to simple co2
At a guess - I suspect they are assessing risk of investing time/money in installing your product into their company and how they would deal with issues if you are off ill one day or want a holiday.
You need to be honest about your company size, but turn it into a positive, such as sole developer, backed by a third-party support package (assuming you have one), or that the company is expected to grow fast, so they wont be relying on just one person to fix things etc.
Pitch it really well, and depending on the type of customer, they may even end up wanting to invest in your company to help you scale up faster than you could expect (yes, I have seen that happen with start-ups).
Don't be afraid of awkward questions like these, as they will crop up, and each time you gain experience in handling the RFP style enquiries, and with experience comes improved skills to close those sales deals.
Yes, I used the term troll from my background many years ago writing about patent trolls, so maybe it irks people, but people who complain about one word in a much longer article are maybe... missing the point.
Anyway, as you will probably notice from the article, I am not "picking the first photos that is convenient", but being sent the banner images etc by event organisers to promote their events.
Yes, I can go back with a form for them to fill in and confirm they have copyright clearance etc., and doubtless they'll check, and confirm they have from photo agency X, and maybe I should also check that the photo agency has issued clearance, and that they themselves have validated that the photographer has verified they definetly took the photos... etc etc etc.
You can see that there has to be a point at which you accept that someone in the chain is being honest.
The issue isn't me nicking photos that are convenient, but accepting that a photo sent to me to use in an article/event listing has been cleared by the PR/marketing dept that is sending it to me.
The majority of problems come from small orgs who may seem to lack an awareness of copyright, so to protect myself, I am now taking the decision not to use their images unless I have built up trust in the sender.
However, even large orgs have been caught out - one example was the large theatre that paid for a license to use an image in a marketing poster, only for the stock agency to object to it being used on my website because the license (weirdly) only permitted use in their publications and no where else.
That's a large org trying to do the right thing, and I am trying to do the right thing, and still getting hammered by... well, yes, they're copyright trolls.
Surely you just have them sign a standard form that they have the correct license to allow you to use the image? Then, if you get targeted by a license holder the burden is passed to the people that told you they had the license. Regarding the larger org “trying to do the right thing”, they still failed to do their job properly. These license agreements are usually quite clear and specific in my experience. Their inability to understand it is the issue. They need to hire someone who can. I might not fully understand the tax system but I still have to follow it and “I tried my best” is not a valid excuse.
Charities, even small charities, have lots of money. They can handle small license fees. They want to comply with the law/regulations/licenses just like any other business.
I don’t think all orgs he’s dealing with are charities proper. AFAICT some of them are tiny volunteer-run groups. I think we safely can assume that not all of those groups have vast amounts of funding.
Fair enough. I still feel like you shouldn’t take stuff that’s not yours. The OP has made the right decision if they don’t want to deal with the overheads of ensuring the images are properly licensed, but denigrating people for catching you out on it isn’t a good look imo.
I guess the reason he wrote on his blog is to inform the users about the change. Why someone posted this to Hacker News though, I’m not sure… It doesn’t really invite to very interesting discussion, IMHO.
> hen, if you get targeted by a license holder the burden is passed to the people that told you they had the license.
Well, not really. The contract you propose will merely give this guy the right to sue his client. He'll still directly owe the moeny to the person making the copyright claim, because that's how liability works.
Right, it's a chain. The burden is still on the guy at the top and the shit rolls downhill.
What I want to know is -- what would stop a photographer anonymously uploading his entire portfolio to Wikimedia and then suing them for publishing all his images?
> because the license (weirdly) only permitted use in their publications and no where else
What is weird about that? You can buy the licence cheaply with restrictions and you can also pay much more for a less restricted version.
This makes perfect sense, if anyone who licences a picture could freely re-licence it to anyone then the original creator could only sell a licence once therefore they would have to ask much more for that licence to be able to make a living.
> people who complain about one word in a much longer article are maybe... missing the point
I don’t think so. The complaint goes to the hearth of the article. You cannot complain about people enforcing their copyright and at the same breath admit that they are right. If they are right then they are not copyright trolls.
Now if you would tell us a story where one of these people were trying to shake you down for an image you clearly and evidently had the copyright for that would be a different story. But your story as told undermines the phrase you are using, which is the core of the article.
As it reads you are chaffing that you have been ripping off people’s work (without intending to) and now they found an avenue to complain to you.
> I can go back with a form for them to fill in and confirm they have copyright clearance etc.
That is not what the form should say. What it should say is that they (named organisation if you trust them to be around, or named individual if you don’t trust the organisation) will pay any copyright fines you receive in relation to the images they gave you. This is a contract between you and them, so talk with a lawyer to make sure it can be enforced and has all the right elements.
If users support these organisations, they can donate directly, especially given that most Wikimedia donors have no idea their money is not being spent on Wikipedia itself.
What is dubious about Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), the Borealis Philanthropy Racial Equity in Journalism Fund, Howard University School of Law and the Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice (IIPSJ), InternetLab, STEM en Route to Change (SeRCH) Foundation, or the Media Foundation of West Africa? I've poked around to each of them and haven't found any scandals. Do you just not like the values of these organizations? I wouldn't think "dubious" is the right word then. Also, if you didn't like their values, it doesn't make sense to donate to wikipedia, an organization that implements the same values.
Another manager who had been there for less than two-and-a-half years got $324,748 in severance, more than 100% of her salary in her last full year of employment ...
Also, $100 million have gone into an "Endowment" that has never to this day, in nearly a decade of existence, published audited accounts. Report in Wikipedia's community newspaper:
Promises have been made for years that the Endowment, held by the Tides Foundation, would "soon" be registered as a separate 501c3 nonprofit org and start filing public accounts ... still hasn't happened.
A leason I learned many long years ago is not to treat a customer cancelling a subscription as a lost customer, but as a customer going on holiday from you.
When you make the cancellation process smooth and friendly, if that customer is reconsidering at a later date, they will remember that their last interaction with you was a pleasent one.
If it's hard to unsubscribe - then their last memory is a bad one, and it's even harder to persuade that person to resubsubscribe again.
This is admitedly more applicable to industries with a lot of annual churn between suppliers - such as insurance, internet providers, power suppliers etc -- but it should be a rule of thumb for all companies.
Good lord yes. I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal for a bit, but then ended up low on cash and needing to cut back on spending. Of all the subscriptions I stopped at that time, they were the most annoying. Because, even though I was able to sign up easily online, there was no way to cancel other than calling them. That disparity in ease between starting and stopping my subscription is why I will never pay them again.
I was low on money and cancelled my Audible subscription for a month only to realize I lost all my tokens. I never resubscribed because of that.
I later learned that they have some special limited "pause subscription" mode that retains tokens, but I didn't see that when I was cancelling, and I shouldn't have to research different ways to cancel a subscription.
I just cancelled audible this morning, and did not see any pause subscription. It may have been there, but I was annoyed with other dark patterns. "no! i want to stay subscribed!" as a bright orange button, and "continue cancellation" as a muted grey button, for example.
When subscribed to audible through apple I get "your credits never expire" clause... I've cancelled my subscription, subsequently restarted when I need more credits, and cancelled again... still have 4 credits.
Exactly, I failed to cancel the subscription the first time due to probably that dark pattern.
I pressed the Submit button but the next page fooled me so I thought I could close the browser tab.
I realized I was still charged a few days later, I went back to ensure I was cancelled where I realized I didn't complete the flow because you have to click "Continue cancellation" on the page that you land on despite thinking you’ve completed the process.
NYTimes used to be like this, but last time I looked they had fixed it. Making unsubscribing hard is just such a slimy dark pattern. Immediately creates anger and hatred from users. I guess someone has demonstrated math that shows it is more profitable in some cases, but it is still disgusting.
> I guess someone has demonstrated math that shows it is more profitable in some cases
Don't underestimate how deeply, fundamentally, mind-bogglingly incompetent most decision-makers are at most companies. Not only do these people have no evidence to suggest it's more profitable (long-term, anyway), they literally do not care. The vast majority of decisions made at the vast majority of corporations in the U.S. today are driven by the Principal Agent Problem, made by people who will never be held account for any of their decisions, nor suffer any consequence for any downstream or long-term effects of anything they do. It's all just a game of who can suck the most blood out of the company short-term before finding another host. These virulent parasites will never give a shit about such mundane concepts as "supporting data".
I'm convinced this is one of the most significant social problems in the U.S. A huge number of American adults spend a third of their lives in an environment where there is no acting towards a common good, and in many cases are actively encouraged to behave in antisocial, cutthroat ways towards other people. There is no way everybody just leaves that at work when they go home and suddenly become good and caring citizens. That's not even counting all of the direct damage they cause directly through the business itself.
Can confirm that the NYT has fixed it, as I recently went to go see how much of a pain in the ass it was to cancel. I was at least considering cancelling because I just don't read NYT enough to really justify the expense. Since it's such a huge PITA, I chose a day when I had some time, because by golly I'm sticking with the process to the end, no matter how long I sit on hold with "customer retention".
Oh, you can just click a few "are you sure?" buttons, and that's it? All done online? Well, it isn't that much money every month, and I do read the NYT. If I can easily cancel, then...oh, what the heck, let's keep the subscription.
I cancelled my NYT subscription a couple of years ago and had to chat with customer "service" to cancel. One of the things they asked me about was keeping the crossword subscription ($20/year), which I might have done. But I was so irritated by the annoying process that I just wanted to cancel everything. So they definitely lost money thanks to their "customer retention" tactics.
Same here. And you have to call on East Coast business hours (I'm west coast). I am a crossword aficionado and would enjoy having the NYT crossword puzzle fresh each day. No way am I keeping a subscription that was so hard to cancel.
The Wall Street Journal lets you cancel your subscription if your address is in California, but not if it's in another state. If I wanted to cancel my subscription, I'm just going to pretend to move to California for a day or two. Maybe that's fraud and I'll go to prison for the rest of my life, but it's still better than calling them.
>” I'm just going to pretend to move to California for a day or two. Maybe that's fraud and I'll go to prison for the rest of my life, but it's still better than calling them.”
That’s the best part, California’s prisons are over capacity so you’re likely just going to be given parole and community service! /s
When I canceled my NYT Crossword subscription (they got rid of the convenient .puz file format that could be downloaded), I had to call.
I found the CA law and explained to them how what they were forcing me to do was illegal in the state of CA, started citing the law, and the NYT rep immediately tried to cut me off so it wouldn't be recorded, I assume.
Exact same experience, I signed up for them as part of a class in college and honestly liked their reporting. If they hadn't made me call them and sit through a call center lecture I would probably be paying for them now that I have money.
Both the WSJ and the NYT used to be awful. But now, in California, this sort of thing is no longer a problem. We have a rule here that subscribing online means you should be able to cancel online.
That makes me want to subscribe to companies' services like this even less: if they need a law to force them to treat customers right, then I really don't want to give them my money.
I checked the date on the linked article and it's from yesterday. online "geo-ip" stuff always says i live in georgia, dallas, or oklahoma - and one time tacoma!
Dallas makes the most sense as that's where at&t's fiber terminates from this area. If i lived a little further south it would go to either georgia or whatever major city is along I-10 in texas, don't feel like looking at the map.
Starlink used to show me near chicago, but now is pretty consistently also dallas. T-mo is most likely to show me on the east coast.
This is why I like subscribing to things through iOS (and iPadOS). There’s one place I can check to see all my subscriptions and stop any of them with a click or two.
When I want to subscribe to something on my iPad, I don’t think about it very long because I know it’s going to be easy to quit. It will sometimes cost more but I’ve been happy to pay it because that’s what easy quitting is worth to me.
And this is why the most clamor for sideloading etc on iOS is from other companies, not users: They would love to fleece the users with as few interventions in between as possible.
Sideloading would absolutely benefit users. Even just being able to choose and install your own web browser would have enormous benefits. Android users know.
Exactly. My personal example: wanting to cancel due to shady advertising practices, my newspaper said i owed them money for an additional subscription I didn't make, and then threatened to send it to a collection agency.
I hate to turn my back on local news, but its owned by Gannett now who've ruined it, so I guess I'm ok with it failing. Sad though...
Yep, when I switched away from Sprint, it was a huge pain, switching from T-Mobile was so easy I felt a little bad for them being so helpful. Of course, the choice doesn't really exist anymore, but I was only interested in going back to one of them.
And not just that person, but everyone else as word gets around. Another commentor mentions Wall Street Journal; I’ve often considered subscribing to WSJ, but the horror stories I’ve heard about unsubscribing have pushed me away.
The Economist's unsubscription process is also terrible: looong hold on the phone and then many minutes of repeating to the person on the other end, no I'm not going to reconsider, cancel my subscription. It's a great magazine but heaven help you if you decide to stop getting it.
And, as suggested above, this has actually kept me from re-subscribing again later.
Thanks for sharing. I've heard they're good, but comments like this and my firsthand experience with other publications makes me feel better about not subscribing to anything.
I don't understand why companies don't think this way. AT&T and Verizon both screwed me on the way out. Verizon decided to suck $15 more, and since I wasn't expecting another last bill, It got a $15 late fee so they got $30 out of me. In exchange, I've banned them from my life. AT&T made cancelling a royal pain in the ass, and also slapped me with some stupid fee.
T-Mobile, Google Fi, Ting, and (somewhat) Mint mobile all made it really easy to leave. I've been back to them a few times and I recommend them to others in my life. That $30 from Verizon cost them $100 per month in revenue for what likely would have been many, many years. It's just such a silly short-term approach IMHO.
Sometimes a particular company is exceptionally bad (looking at you, Comcast), and leaving them as a statement is a fine solution. But in general, what I feel I've learned, I can't boycot every company that treats me poorly, because I'd not have anyone left to take my business to. People vote with their feet, or something, but only up to a point, I guess.
The poster you replied to named a bunch of mobile phone service companies that treated him well. (I can personally vouch for several of those same companies BTW: I had no trouble leaving them.) Why would you not boycott companies that treat you like crap, when there are clear alternatives that don't?
They were talking about it being hard/easy to leave, which seemed like a single data point. I'm on T-Mobile, and I like them, and I'm not surprised to hear that they have good support for leaving. But I still have had at least one experience where I had to furiously remove myself from their store over some bs they pulled. Should I now boycott them? I'm not even talking about the principle of second chances, but just that I'd run out of providers real quick if I had to boycott them for every one or two offences, as much as maybe I'd like to.
There's dozens of mobile providers. What kind of "bs" are they pulling that you'd want to boycott them all? I had several in the US, and all the smaller ones (MVNOs) were fine: they did exactly what they claimed as far as billing and level of service. The only reason I left any of them was because I found better network coverage, or moved. I honestly don't understand why you'd want to support a company that treats you poorly when you have SO many alternatives.
Misplaced incentives. Hardly anyone is recognized, let alone rewarded, for the good impact of something they did years ago (like implement customer friendly policies); yet, they’re immediately penalized for what looks bad on a spreadsheet (like losing a customer, e.g. by letting them leave without repercussion such as termination fees).
> When you make the cancellation process smooth and friendly, if that customer is reconsidering at a later date, they will remember that their last interaction with you was a pleasent one.
When I purchase a new subscription the first thing I do is cancel renewal so I can do it manually. When a site makes this easy I'm actually much more likely to end up re-subscribing and leaving it on automatic since I know I'll be able to have peace of mind and cancel any time.
> A leason I learned many long years ago is not to treat a customer cancelling a subscription as a lost customer, but as a customer going on holiday from you.
I was waiting for "so that's why we re-subscribe customers after a 6-month hiatus / every time we update our mail delivery service". At least that's what some companies have done to me...
This is why I keep coming back to Netflix. It's a simple process to subscribe or unsubscribe. I don't find enough interesting content to fill 12 months of use but I love that I can watch for a couple months, go away for the summer, and then pick it up again as the days get colder and darker from my sofa with just a remote or a click of the trackpad.
Yep. I wanted to temporarily cancel the NY Times. The process was horrible and the first time I called they said it would cancel at the end of the month and it didn't so I had to call them again and go through the whole horrible process again.
I will never resubscribe again because the cancellation process was so horrible.
what is really funny is that someone with an MBA was working behind the scenes to claim this suscriber churn flow dark pattern was A/B tested, and the test "conclusively demonstrated" that action B (hiding the cancel/forcing user to call/etc) resulted in XX % less churn, ergo resulting in additional YY revenue/quarter.
Yet, anyone with basic reading comprehension can read this thread, and conclude these dark patterns are destroying the brand with existing customers.
How can they know for sure though? It's not like they can look at their spreadsheets and definitively say "these subscribers over here" wanted to cancel but stayed because they couldn't figure it out.
This is a great way to think about it, and upon reflection I definitely operate in this way.
I'd love SiriusXM at the promo rates they offer, or even at full price in a month where I know I'll be on the road for a while. I will never re-subscribe because they make cancelling so hostile.
They’ve (SiriusXM) made cancelling a lot easier as of late. They even give partial refunds and let you pause. I wouldn’t say it’s perfect, but I have been able to hop on and off over the last year without major heartburn.
How does it work now? When I did it twice before (including semi-recently), I could only do it via chat or over the phone - either option took about 5 minutes and required talking with somebody.
I would love a faster dishwasher -- not because I need the dishes washed faster, but becuase I live in an open-plan flat with the kitchen and living room in the same space, and anything to reduce how long I have the dishwasher churning away would be wonderful.
Fortuanately, I tend to get away with a 30-min wash for most days, but someone please invent a 10-minute dishwasher please :)
My Bosch dishwasher is inaudible from 2 meters away in a typical background level of sound. There are several other brands with similar levels of quiet.
Dishwashers in commercial kitchens are rapid, much less than 10 mins. I have always wondered why, exactly, we can't have that at home. A dishwasher so fast that it's done while you're still clearing up from dinner and you can put stuff away immediately would be fantastic and is clearly absolutely possible.
> I have always wondered why, exactly, we can't have that at home.
You can. It’s just way less efficient, way noisier, and way more expensive. A Hobart conveyor dishwasher has a cycle time south of 3mn (and throughput of 3 racks/mn, with conveyor speeds reaching 6ft/mn). But it’d probably take most of your kitchen and blow up your electric panel (they need an exclusive 208V 3-phase, and if you plonk for the booster heater that’s a separate supply of the same).
It might also be less reliable, as it won’t really have the occasion to get up to spec (like only running a car for a few miles at a time and never getting it to temp before stopping).
Home dishwashers are designed to work with essentially random inputs (with acceptable results), work very efficiently, and last for long at relatively middling loads / cycling. The middle one is an especially big factor, modern home dishwashers use very little water and less power, so e.g. they’ll often cycle between top and bottom racks rather than have the water and power to run both.
Industrial dishwasher use much stronger detergent. So at home often have paintings, drawings or golden things on the dishes. With an industrial dishwasher such things would be a short joy.
Also you need much more electricity, because you need to make a lot of hot water in a very short time.
To my understanding, restaurant dishwashers also assume that foods residue has already been removed, and are primarily to sanitize the surface with high temperatures. Residential dishwashers, by contrast, start by prewashing anything that is immediately removable, main wash to slowly break down anything stuck on, and only then go to the high temperature sanitization step.
Commercial dishwashers also assume they’re installed in a location with lots of airflow and ventilation, so they can just dump steam into the room and trust the HVAC to remove it. A residential dishwasher may instead have a cool-down step during which the steam condenses, which avoids releasing steam into the kitchen.
Hobart’s prospectus don’t necessarily agree (there’s a fair bit on managing residue), but it’s definitely on the lighter side of dirty, and not for heavily soiled stuff like pots and pans.
I asked at the shop where I bought our dishwasher. They have a different precondition. Home dishwashers deliver clean results from messier inputs. Dried fat on the plates from yesterday's breakfast. The fast dishwashers have to be run within minutes, and you have to be more careful about how much dreck there is on the plates.
I too would like to have a faster dishwasher. When we cook while the dishwasher is running, a queue builds up on the working spaces, and there's only so much space. It's a problem.
More pertinently, this isn't the first article I've read titled "nobody wants [x] — [conclusion]" that was confident and wrong about the starting premise. Is this the kind of thing women call mansplaining? Sounds like it.
And you ideally would have one of the large sinks and huge water hose to pre and post rinse the dishes if need be. From having used one of the commercial kitchen dishwashers, I think the amount of work is actually more than for a home appliance dishwasher, but the benefit is speed. There is no waiting around.
(The chemicals are probably also dangerous to the intestines, as seen on HN.)
> […] but becuase I live in an open-plan flat with the kitchen and living room in the same space, and anything to reduce how long I have the dishwasher churning away would be wonderful.
Once you hit a sound rating of 44 dB, anything lower is not perceptibly different to human ears; there's a video with 55, 44, and 39 dB samples at:
There's no sense paying for a unit that is quieter than 44 dB (though there may be other features you want to pay extra for, and you get the quieter operation 'for free').
why do you guys use a dishwasher? we traditionally never have used one (not just me, i mean the community) so there is no "need" for it. rich people buy one just to flaunt their wealth but dont use it because it is too much of a bother and even for them, the dishwasher soap is prohibitively expensive for no apparent reason.
elbow gease, is just a part of the routine. You cook, you eat and you clean.
> even for [rich people], the dishwasher soap is prohibitively expensive for no apparent reason.
The dishwasher tablets we use are $0.16 each. If we ran the dishwasher everyday, that’s under $60/yr. Rinse aid adds about $0.04 per load, so < $75/yr total for daily use. Are they wildly more expensive in other places?
The powdered detergents are even cheaper I think, but I’ve never had reason to consider further economizing as we run 3-4 loads per week for a family of 4.
An EnergStar-rating dishwasher has to use ≤15L on its normal cycle, even with a full load. Imagine how many dishes and pots and pans you can fit in a standard dishwasher.
https://group.met.com/en/mind-the-fyouture/mindthefyouture/n...