The salaries are a result of the insane hours they have to do. Biglaw needs to pay those salaries to keep getting young associates in the door because burnout is a real problem in the industry. If salaries were lower and hours/stresses were lower, you would probably still find people wanting to be lawyers. A different kind of person, maybe.
(Not that I think AI will necessarily have that effect. We just don't know yet)
Salaries are about scarcity and leverage, they have little to do with working hours. Nurses pull insane hours and they still don't get paid as much as doctors.
Very few people, if any, are going to bust ass in law school or medical school if they're not going to get rich off it. Better to do literally anything else.
In Biglaw, the scarcity is driven by the hours and stress. If it was a chilled 9-5 job you would certainly have more people willing to do it, even if it paid less.
Millions if not billions of agreements are made every day without the involvement of lawyers. Lawyers are only needed for particularly complex situations and even there they are generally only "needed" in the sense that parties feel they would add value.
Yeah, and you can already get fill in the blank legal forms for a lot of basic situations, including leases, wills, employment agreements, etc.
The interesting question is whether AI can fill a niche these can’t — or, alternatively, help a layperson evaluate a contract they’re asked to sign better than they could themselves.
In my experience it basically doesn't even try to interpret the law. It just summarises the publicly available law/guidance out there and, if there is a question about how to interpret some provision, might set out the arguments for each interpretation. It doesn't really take a position. It is pretty good at drafting though. (Legora)
Interesting! In other unrelated domains, models seem more willing to take a position. It may be nuanced, but they do tend to take a stance. I think it's good that it leaves the interpretation to humans, but I wonder if this is also some sort of a guardrail to minimize liability...
Of course you will get tired if you change your OS every three months. I have used roughly the same ArchLinux setup for years now, probably over a decade, and it is remarkably stable. Things break very occasionally but are easily fixed (and are usually a result of my own tinkering with experimental software).
Also regarding everything convergence of desktop environments, there are plenty of more interesting options out there, but they don't call themselves "desktop environments" - tiling or scrolling window managers, for example, which are often infinitely configurable though scripts.
Probably wishful thinking but does this get us any closer to porting postmarketOS to these devices? (Or even LineageOS, though I think LineageOS may have decent support on many of these devices already?)
Don't really see why. The issue with PostmarketOS is that there isn't enough people working on it.
Not that the phones are locked down. Otherwise phones with open bootloader would have good support.
A couple of times now I have walked a stretch of the Camino de Santiago (each time it was just a small bit near the end; sadly don't have the time off to do a full route which can take a month or longer). I find the simplicity of it super rewarding and enjoyable compared to my busy life back home. Just, for the most part, miles and miles of peaceful countryside.
It's kind of the opposite of what is described in the article, where the author is using his time off to improve his knowledge in other areas. Personally, I find that back home I am constantly thinking, both at work and in my time off, so much so that I forget what the end goal of all that thinking actually is. So doing these long walks helps me take a break from that and put it in perspective. No laptop, as little smartphone use as possible, I will maybe read a book or two in the evenings but nothing too heavy, etc.
As an aside, I am in a non-tech field, and programming is my hobby (and nothing like my day job). I enjoy it and I think it helps me stay sharp, but it has its drawbacks as a hobby. Being a solo hobby, and not one that many people in my field are into, it's not really something I can easily bond with others over (unlike, say, golf or chess). And sometimes it can be the opposite of relaxing when you encounter a bug that you can't seem to diagnose or fix.
Chess for me is not a social hobby, I've tried, but I can either have a conversation or play chess. I'm pretty sure the limited ability I had to do both has waned over the years too.
I had only heard about these things on HN, and thought they were primarily popular as a toy for people to hack on. I didn't realise they are so popular amongst "normies".
I have no current need for one as I am happy with my cheap second hand Kobo but it's great that they exist, especially with the open source alternative firmware. Hopefully they don't clamp down on that in future.
TikTok (ironically) has a bunch of anti-brainrot content, I think the Xteinks got popular that way. Super easy to use and even flash to 3rd party firmware.
The policy is far from clear cut, and even having read your comments I am still not sure what you think it's trying to say. The policy suggests that an app may lead users to another payment method where the payment is a "tax exempt donation". What tax, specifically, are you suggesting a donation to OSC is not exempt from? You mention sales tax, is it the case that donations are not exempt from (ie, are subject to) sales tax?
Or are you saying the key point is that the donation not tax-deductible for the donor, which is a different thing to being tax exempt (and does not have anything to do with the "taxability of the transaction")?
The mere fact that they have to avoid dealing with sales tax here (unlike their typical transactions) is clearly extra complication for them. So you can understand that sales tax being 0% (thus "not taxable") can make things harder, not easier.
Having to deal with bookkeeping or paperwork for tax deductions could also make things harder.
In any case, whether you think these are easier or harder, and regardless of which cases should be supported from a business perspective, their policy page (at least the one that I'm reading) very clearly says you can't use their system for such donations.
If you can't use their systems for a donation with a sales tax rate of 0%, then per the policy that means you can route users to alternative payment methods for those transactions. So by your reasoning, if donations to OSC are not subject to sales tax, then what the app is doing should be okay.
(As an aside, I have no idea if donations to OSC are subject to sales tax, but I would be surprised if they were given there is no sale or supply happening, and no one here seems to have suggested they are.)
> In any case, whether you think these are easier or harder, and regardless of which cases should be supported from a business perspective, their policy page (at least the one that I'm reading) very clearly says you can't use their system for such donations.
I disagree, because it uses the loose term "tax exempt donations", and nobody, it seems, can agree on whether that means exempt from income tax (ie, recipient does not need to pay income tax on it), exempt from sales tax, or deductible for income tax purposes (personally I think this is likely what it is intended to capture, and the only real basis on which to distinguish between 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(6) organisations, but in fact is the least supported by a literal reading).
> If you can't use their systems for a donation with a sales tax rate of 0%, then per the policy that means you can route users to alternative payment methods for those transactions. So by your reasoning, if donations to OSC are not subject to sales tax, then what the app is doing should be okay.
I'm not seeing "if not {this}... then {that}" implication anywhere that you're citing. i.e. I do not see anything that implies at least one of the billing systems must be permitted for any given app. All I'm seeing are some sets of conditions under which you can use Google's payment system, and other sets of conditions under which you can use an alternative billing system. Sometimes they overlap and sometimes neither applies.
What's clear to me is:
- Page [1] says that you can't use their billing systems for "tax-exempt donations" (however that is supposed to be interpreted).
- Google's last correspondence says "For more information about alternative billing and external linking options available in some countries and regions, see the FAQ", and does not claim that such options are (or aren't) available to them. Page [2] says that this varies by country, and it's not clear to me what countries apply to them, but they seem to be in Japan. I am unclear on what they have/haven't done here, but it sounds like they have not followed all the requirements in [3] (or whatever the relevant requirements are), as [1] says: "Developers serving users in eligible countries/regions may offer users an alternative billing system within the app if they enroll in the applicable program and agree to the additional terms and program requirements."
I'm not sure if you have more information beyond this, but that's all I'm taking away so far. Perhaps I'm missing something?
And obligatory disclaimer (because this is HN): none of this is to suggest I like these circumstances; I'm just discussing the facts as I see them written.
And they were not right? The issue here is that Google doesn't define tax-exempt properly, but does tell you to not use play. And then throws a fitty when you do that and they decided it's not the right kind of tax exempt?
At least,that is how i read it.
And then the way google deals with these cases is the real problem: no communication, no recourse, just spam HN and pray.
And I am 99.99% certain they don't want such transactions for some other reason, perhaps they can't make as much money from them orso
I'm pretty sure they could support this if they wanted to, which implies they don't want such transactions. And they obviously aren't going to make it easy to get around something they don't want. So we agree on that. It sucks. I'm not debating any of that. I think our only disagreement is on whether the policy is clear, and AFAICT it is, as terrible as it might be.
(Not that I think AI will necessarily have that effect. We just don't know yet)
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