[bellowsgulch]

After 16 years on Hacker News, I've come to associate its readership with cheap bastards who think everything should be free while simultaneously wanting to keep their 6-figure jobs.

There's a very strong overlap with male gamers, who also think everything involving sophisticated engineering and design should be cheaper than a cup of coffee.

Just call it out and maybe we can collectively choose to towards a culture that doesn't encourage such shameless behavior or perverted values.

[bigbadfeline]

> on Hacker News, I've come to associate its readership with cheap bastards

They might be cheap but they surely aren't stupid. They sure know who not to trust, security beats imaginary profits promised by cheap used-car salesmen who did move software jobs to wherever they could spare a dime.

And you want us to defend their current profits which they swear to use for the removal of the remaining software jobs...

[randbyte]

If you see this as people just want free stuffs you are missing the point. There is an entire different level of danger to allow a few entities to completely own a day to day technology.

Imagine personal computers and open source operating systems completely don’t exist. What you can do on a pc today, you have to always do it on a thin client always connected to a main frame run by a selected few. Everything you do is recorded and subjected to at least 30 days of retention and inspection.

Imagine every car is completely not customer serviceable and have to be connected to one of the three manufacturers in order to operate. Everywhere you go is recorded. The manufacturer may decided the place you want to go is inappropriate for you to go.

[sjbzbeiks]

You’re not totally wrong but I think the motivations are varied. Using myself as an example, I have paid huge sums for software, films, news, and yes open source software, but I hate paying 5 bucks for a sub or buying certain products because the deal just isn’t a fair trade. I’d say most modern software is a bad deal.

That said I am a cheap bastard.

[galaxyLogic]

Note it is easy to confuse "free" with "paid by advertisements".

[vovavili]

I'd gladly pay for software that demonstrates craftsmanship, quality and care for the user. Not a very common phenomenon unfortunately.