Honestly, I wonder how some of these publishers stay in business at all. I haven't written a book, but I've been a technical reviewer for friends who have been published with some of the larger technical publishers. Nobody was making money from the process. I do wonder if maybe they're just taking on too many titles and reaching saturation. Do we really need "The guide to making X on Y with Z" for every potential iteration?
From the people I know who wrote or co-wrote books, the way you make money is in future interview processes.
I don't know if they still do it, but when I interviewed for Google, they had a self-ranking system of how competent you are in each technology, and the only way to get the top score was phrased something like "I wrote the book on it (yes, an actual book)".
If you "know" that a study whose title you are predisposed to disagree with has "BS" in it, something tells me no amount of scientific evidence is going to persuade you.
And they've been complaining for decades at this point that corporate is failing them. Not enough new products, bad business and advertising strategies, store renos, the list goes on.
The burger flipper making a lot more money is doing a lot more for their franchisee's than the executives are as of late.
The SNAP equal treatment rule requirement works in both directions: Prices cannot be higher or lower for SNAP recipients. As a retailer, there is an option to request a waiver, though.
IMO, this is a strawman that is either going to be ignored or fixed easily.
The law did not account for every possible situation. Removal of the penny from national currency is clear a situation where minor variations on otherwise normal transactions would not be in violation of the intent of the law.
It'd be like TSA griping that your 100ml bottle of mouthwash was overfilled by .1ml because of slight variations in the filling process. Nobody cares.
I work in admin for a retailer. We got a nastigram from USDA last week reminding us that we were in no circumstances to help SNAP recipients in any way. The current administration very much does not care what the intent of the law is, and is actively looking for trivial violations as an excuse to punish SNAP recipients and SNAP retailers. It would not surprise me at all to see a retailer banned from the program for how they round pennies.
How does this work with coupons, discount for loyalty card holders, etc.?
Presumably that's fine because a SNAP recipient has access to those same discounts. So wouldn't this be the same - the "cash rounding" discount is available to SNAP and people paying cash?
Anyone can have a coupon the law is about not special fees or discounts to SNAP recipients, and since EBT/SNAP cards are essentially debit cards them always being charged exact change could be litigated as differential pricing in theory, which in a country as big and sue happy as the US means someone will try it eventually.
Completely different discussion. Regardless, you skipped explaining why these options worked for Canadian Penny (just 12 years ago) at a time when their penny had more buying power than the current US penny, yet the exact same thing cannot ever possibly work for the US penny.
Things don't just happen to cost *.99 today either, the market just has wiggle room for bullshit about values. With inflation, the coinage that corresponds to also inflates over time. The penny is long past its time.
Furthermore:
> Rounding to the closest nickel will cost consumers about $6 million a year, according to a July study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. That is fairly modest, coming to about five cents each across 133 million American households.
The US lost ~$85 million minting pennies in 2024 because they cost more to make than they are worth. That's over a 10x savings, not a loss. 5 cents is also less than 0.00006% of median household income in 2024.
If people were actually that worried we'd have had laws about credit card transaction fees decades ago.
The SNAP rules don't require equal treatment with people who pay with credit cards, debit cards, or checks, only with people who pay cash. Setting aside the politicized USDA public communications during the shutdown, here's the legally binding regulatory text:
"Coupons shall be accepted for eligible foods at the same prices and on the same terms and conditions applicable to cash purchases of the same foods at the same store except that tax shall not be charged on eligible foods purchased with coupons."
Some places regulate this better. "Buy one get one" is what is sounds like, "2 for $x" means you can, by law, get one for half that price. Unfortunately, even in places that such laws exist, retailers don't know this and it's poorly enforced.
Isn't that pretty easy to get around with better wording? eg. "2 for $x, min 2"
Not if the same law doesn't permit minimums in order to get a discount. People on HN like to pretend that the people who write laws are completely clueless, but they've been doing it longer than we've been alive and know exactly what they're doing.
It helps to read the infinitesimally small print on the sale tag on the shelf. As I've moved from state to state and city to city you can tell where this sort of thing is regulated or not.
I shamelessly pull the tags off the shelves to read them. If the stores don't want me damaging the tags, they can simply make them in a size that's readable.
>Not if the same law doesn't permit minimums in order to get a discount. People on HN like to pretend that the people who write laws are completely clueless, but they've been doing it longer than we've been alive and know exactly what they're doing.
Are there any jurisdictions that actually have such laws? This is basically bulk pricing and it's essentially impossible to outlaw without getting rid of it entirely, which come with other issues. Legislating "2 for $x = $x/2 for each item" is the most you can realistically implement. Moreover any such laws are trivial to bypass by gluing multiple packs together (like they do at costco) and selling that as a separate sku.
Are there any jurisdictions that actually have such laws?
Yes. You can tell because the tag will read something like "SALE! $5 when you buy 2!" and then have smaller print reading "Individual price: $2.50."
Moreover any such laws are trivial to bypass by gluing multiple packs together (like they do at costco) and selling that as a separate sku.
But that's not what we're discussing here. We're discussing discounting existing items when bought in bulk, not creating new items.
To your point, though, creating a new SKU is not without its costs, both for the manufacturer and the retailer. If you're selling something in someone else's store (supermarkets are the example this thread is dealing with), you don't get to just make up SKUs and products on a whim. Think about the logistics involved.
I like n8n. It feels a little less rough around the edges for visual coding than something like huggin or nodered. The documentation is good, but finding examples and things like that offsite is impossible.
The documentation leaves a lot to be desired. Especially regarding custom node development. But also on the user side, for example the kaka trigger node has zero info on its doc page.
reply