mdlman

I’d love to read more about these type of patterns. Do you have any recommendations?

Ha. Just tried to upvote your comment and opened your profile instead. Still appreciate the information density, but I can see how it’s a pain for people who are more active here than I.

It might not be worth it to you, but you might try a slightly better quality printer paper. I’m using a generic store brand premium laser/inkjet paper (24 lb/90 gsm), and I’m not getting any bleed through or feathering. It costs more than normal printer paper, but handles ink well and goes on sale often.

I’m with you. Although I recently started writing a lot more than usual. I ended up buying a used wire binding machine. I’ve been making notebooks with nice printer paper and cardboard from cereal boxes recently. It’s worked surprisingly well, although I may get a better source of cover cardboard soon. The nice part is that I can make notebooks of any size and any paper (like watercolor paper for sketchbooks) with lots of pages. Much simpler than sewing the binding.

This is related, if not exactly on point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffle_House_Index.

This sounds really cool. Do you have any recommended resources for this?

Are you at a firm? I’d encourage you to ask the people on your team. It wouldn’t be a weird question to ask a fellow associate (or if you are comfortable, the partner).

You also want to make sure you understand your firm’s email archiving and retention policy. Some firms have specific controls in place (systems that delete uncategorized emails from your inbox after a certain amount of time).

I worked on M&A deals, but doing the IP/Privacy support and not running the whole deal. My structure while working at a bigger firm, which wasn’t perfect, but worked, was to have a folder for each client and a folder for each big client project/deal. Then just keep moving emails to each project folder as they came in. I didn’t really trust rules to do it for me automatically, but that’s just me.

I also set up Outlook to file reply messages in the folder where the original email was. Then I would generally respond only after I’d move the email.

I feel like I’m rambling now, but in case this is remotely helpful, here are a few other thoughts/pain points: 1. I kept my tasks list separate from my inbox. 2. Hot keys are great, especially for moving to folders and finding emails in a thread. There’s not much you need a mouse for after a while. 3. Moving emails to folders is slow if outlook has to populate the huge list of potential folders each time. If you have lots of clients, it may make sense to split things up alphabetically first (Clients A-G in one folder, etc.). 4. This system was also helpful for syncing emails to the correct folder in the firm document management system, which is a whole separate conversation.

Feel free to disregard, but I figured I’d pass along my system, as it seems to be pretty different from what I’m reading here. Firms are interesting animals, especially where record keeping is involved.

Seems like this is being downvoted, but I’d be interested in hearing more from both sides on this. I’ve only played around with trivial Clojure programs and don’t know anything about the pains (or joys) of “real world” applications. Any good discussions on this somewhere?

What did you end up reading, if I may?

That's an interesting point. To add to it slightly, maybe the goal is to create a healthier community. Without the guilt or annoyance you mention, it is possible for both the donor and the recipient to maintain a positive relationship going forward (less of an ongoing power dynamic or bitterness).

My guess would be that when these levels developed, most giving was within a close knit community.

Definitely. In the U.S. at least, there were literally laws in place prohibiting merchants from mentioning credit card surcharges or changing prices accordingly, although details varied by state. Supreme Court ruled against one a few years ago on a free speech basis [1]. Now more, if not all, are being challenged.

[1] https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c1069ffd-dafb... (hopefully the link works)

Not stupid questions at all. I'm not entirely sure of the best way to answer this, as the internal quoting is getting messy. Here are my initial thoughts, though:

In a perfect world, maybe we would not need contracts. Certainly not so many. For low risk and low volume agreements, like your skating rink membership, maybe a contract is not helpful. Although I would be interested to know what happens this winter if a pandemic means the skating rink shuts down. Should the rink reimburse customers who only got partial use out of their membership?

There are statutory protections for service providers, but they do not cover everything. For example, they do not give the service provider recourse against the user for their bad actions. They also do not address the service provider's IP, nor do they address licenses from the user to the service provider.

By "feedback," I meant suggestions for changes, like if you told Facebook about a new feature that you would like to see but then sued them if they built that feature. Or if you sent them an email they never saw but then they implemented the feature.

I guess it boils down to three big points: 1. Litigation is nasty and expensive, even if you are totally in the right. It is expensive to go before a judge or jury to say "This user did awful things, so I banned them and did not provide a refund. Here's what they did and why we kept their money." It is much cheaper to cut it off early with a motion to dismiss or motion for summary judgment by saying "This person violated Section 7 of the TOS, so I terminated in accordance with Section 8." 2. Lawyers are hired to look out for their clients' interests. It is their duty to their client, and they can be sued for malpractice if they do not. We generally agree that this is a good thing, I think. But it is a risk to the lawyer, not just the business, if the lawyer leaves a lot of issues open. 3. Your point about legislation is interesting. However, you could approach from the other direction as well, and have legislation that says certain liability cannot be limited or certain actions cannot be taken by businesses regardless of contract. This is what we do now and arguably could/should do more, and it has the added benefit of not making lawyers act out of their clients' interests.

I don't expect this to be very satisfying, but hopefully it at least puts this all in a bit of context.

You can certainly be of the opinion that these contracts are by definition dishonest, and there are definitely companies that do shady things and protect themselves with these types of contracts. But I think that there have to be at least some examples of services that are honest that still need these types of protections.

Imagine a service that is objectively good -- maybe a non-profit organization creates a free app to help connect homeless people with food, shelter, and potential employment opportunities. Businesses can then use the app to post jobs, etc. The non-profit runs on a shoe-string budget and certainly cannot afford to get caught up in litigation related to issues arising between users of the app (e.g., a homeless user upset that they did not get a job because a bug in the app lost their application, or a business upset because they were connected with a dishonest applicant). It seems fair that the non-profit should be able to limit its liability here.

You have a really good point about deceptive businesses and the importance of transparency and balancing the power between businesses and consumers. It is bad that shady businesses can be protected by contracts, but those contracts also protect good businesses. I honestly do not know what the solution is, but I personally think that eliminating contracts is less useful than strong consumer protection legislation like stronger privacy laws.

I don't have a lot of time to comment to this, unfortunately, because I think it is a really important discussion. However, whenever I see these issues arise on Hacker News, I rarely see much said in defense of Terms of Service and Privacy Policies. Speaking only about Terms of Service right now, the problem is that if things are not laid out at the beginning, the business takes on all liability (or at least runs the serious risk of that liability). While that may sound reasonable initially, that means that nearly all of the amazing services we have would be impossible from a business perspective.

The problem is, we have an extremely litigious society, and lawyers are asked to think through and address all of the risks. The lower the dollar amount, the lower the liability that a company can reasonably take for the transaction.

Do you want to have an account? Great, but we need to be clear about who is responsible for use of the account and its credentials. We also need to clarify when it can be suspended or terminated. Do you want to submit content? Cool, but we should confirm that what you submit is your own responsibility, and we need to add some language about ownership and licensing to avoid copyright and other IP issues. We should also confirm that certain types of activities are not OK (e.g., pornography, harassment). Do you want to provide feedback? Awesome, but you cannot sue if it is used. Do you want to use APIs? Sweet, but there are things you can and cannot do so you don't break or abuse our system. Are you paying for things? We need to be clear how that works. And through it all, we need to have key provisions about warranties and limitations of liability so the business is not on the hook for millions when the account is worth $10.

And all this is for a simple service. There are countless ways to add complexity to a service.

I still agree with a ton of points here about the dangers of one-sided agreements, limited options for services, complex legalese, etc. But I will say that this is a trickier issue than people seem to give it credit. It may be nonsensical to say that a consumer read and understood a contract, but it is also nonsensical to say that companies should risk bankruptcy for free or cheap services (unless we are OK with free or cheap services no longer existing).

Could be worth a shot. I used to strongly dislike first person narrative, but it is less of an annoyance now, and some of my favorite books are from that perspective. I think it was partly reading and discussing some of my friends' favorite books (e.g., The Perks of Being a Wallflower), where their enthusiasm helped me appreciate it, and partly listening to good readers (e.g., Martin Jarvis reading Wodehouse or The Dresden Files read by James Marsters).

It might also have helped to read first person narratives where the narrator was more observer than actor (e.g., The Great Gatsby).

Figured I'd add that Martin Jarvis is my favorite Wodehouse reader, and the audiobooks are usually available through my library (Overdrive/Libby) app.

Out of curiousity, is your dislike for first person any different when you listen to a story instead of read it?