Despite being clearly self-serving to further promote their ad/product, I found this to be really interesting and detailed in enumerating the cost-benefit analysis they went through
Does this also impact US metrics for capital raised? My understanding is that the Delaware C-Corp is still the startup standard for founders from anywhere in the world to raise global capital, which I imagine skews where the capital actually ends up flowing if they are actually building a company in a foreign location and just using the Delaware entity as a holding co.
Somewhat, but not to the degree as you see in the UK, Singapore, or HK.
Until a couple years ago, it was difficult for someone without a SSN to create a Delaware C-Corp and even despite current political instability, the depth of IP, capital, and R&D available in the US is difficult to replicate outside China, Japan, and maybe India.
Mine is mainly for my book about how Estonia modernized post re-independence and became a startup and e-government hub but I also have a fun 3-day visitors guide for Tallinn, Estonia. https://www.rebootinganation.com/
In a former job I worked on a tech co's policy response to a major piece of California AI legislation a couple of years ago and was stunned to learn that nonprofits (at least, I'd be shocked if this didn't also include companies) basically sponsor bills and just find lawmakers to introduce and champion them.
Many Judicial opinions are done in the same manner. An attorney from the winning side prepares a draft opinion and a judge reviews/edits it and away it goes. The edits in the couple I've personally seen are incredibly light - more or less a rubber stamp with the judge's name on it.
I imagine this holds true (via chatting with insider friends) for many such "industries" including lawmaking, scientific/academic papers, industry RFCs, etc. More or less credential washing.
I'm not sure this is true. I've payed attention to a few high profile cases and I've not seen anything like that come up.
The closest I can think of is when jury instructions are issued. But in that, the two sides ultimately work with the court to hammer out the details of how those instructions should look. And often, they are based on a more or less standard template with minor revisions.
I was watching the Abrego Garcia case. It was done routinely by Garcia's lawyer. They would write an order for the judge to sign then ask them to sign it.
Generally speaking, an attorney can make a request for a ruling by the judge and the other side can oppose it. However, beyond just citing relevant case law there wouldn't be anything that could be copied verbatim by a judge.
There should be relevant court filings that show what you are saying happen. Do you have them?
>ut when I try to find the judge's order exactly copying the proposed order I'm not seeing it
You'll have to sift through them because it happens some of the time not all of the time. The example I gave was how they did it, if you wanted a 1:1 example in that case of the judge just signing off verbatim below ought to fit:
The judge still decided this was the winning side. I don’t really see a problem with this, especially as seeing it is at the end of a deliberative process. By that time, the winning attorney may have a good idea of where the judge stands, what the ruling would be and is also incentivized to stay on their good side.
The judge is supposed to be independent of influence, and fair to both sides. A decision for one side is rarely that 'one party gets everything they want'; it just leans in their direction, especially on the fundamental issues. The ruling also may yield an outcome more aligned with one party, but for different reasons.
> the winning attorney may have a good idea of where the judge stands, what the ruling would be and is also incentivized to stay on their good side.
You haven't seen many litigators at work. Their job is to "zealously" represent their client, getting as much as possible. The speculation about the rest is just hope, not due process.
nonprofits like the <random thing research association> that just happens to be funded by that very industry.
It's literally a laundering scheme. The industry can't wine and dine and send bills over to the politicians directly so they create some "clean" middle men to make it all look legit at first glance.
I appreciate you sharing this! I just published my first book (nothing about programming, its about how the nation of Estonia modernized post re-independence and became a tech/e-gov hub in a single generation) and I can sympathize with a lot of this. My experience was a bit different -- I also knew the advance was going to be nothing and had a day job so I said I didn't need one (which was a relief for them as I was with a smaller publisher) and instead asked for more books to give away and some other contract terms. It took many months of negotiating to finalize the agreement and then they wanted the manuscript in ~7 months from contract signing. I guess they also assumed that I'd miss at least one deadline but instead I took a bunch of time off to get it done. I think the most important lesson for me is that book publishing, unless you're focused on trying to be the top 1% (maybe even .1%) in a popular category, is not going to be very lucrative, especially with a publisher that takes a major cut. It's easier than ever to go direct, in my case because I had a niche book and I wasn't doing it for money, I valued the prestige (or perceived prestige anyways) of having a book with a name brand publisher as I thought it'd be more helpful for my career in other ways, and candidly was mostly a passion project that I didn't feel strongly about monetizing!
If any folks want to talk about nonfiction publishing, I'm always happy to chat as many people were incredibly generous with their time for me and I'd like to try to pay it forward.
I feel 100% identified with you. I am working on a non ficton book about a niche topic and I wouldn't do it for the money at all. It's about the "prestige (or perceived prestige)". I am about to finish the first 1/3 of the book (the first draft, anyway), and I am already attempting to reach out to publishers to see if they would be interested in the book (at least the ones that don't require a literary agent!).
Some of them already replied saying the proposal seems interesting but they want to read a few chapters. I don't know if I am in the right path or not, but I'd love to read more about your experience and what can be shared!
I'll drop in from the sidelines, with the massive track record of having written one (1) book.
The prestige probably isn't what you'd expect. Having an ISBN to one's name carries ~zero weight for the people that actually matter for your career (it may mildly impress some future coworkers in a decade's time, though). The real value of having written a book is that then you have written a book.
Having a publisher carries one extra benefit that was merely implied in the post: you get assigned a professional editor. If you're lucky (I was), the editor has a really good understanding of how to wield language and the lessons you get from the editing process are going to far outweigh any direct financial benefits. When I wrote mine, I had been doing freelance writing for a large IT magazine for nearly ten years - and as a direct result had been taught how to use written language as a weapon by a good number of old-guard journalists. The year I spent on the book project taught me a LOT more still, because I was assigned an editor who herself was studying (in a university) to become a language teacher.
The skills I picked up from that process are with me to this day, and ironically have been the single most valuable asset I have as an engineer and/or engineering leader. Being able to write well to a varying audience is a superpower. You also learn to appreciate professional authors, because what they do is decidedly not easy.
In the end my book sold well enough to earn out its advance, so I guess it was a non-failure for the publisher as well. I also picked up a lesson for all aspiring authors:
Writing a book is easy. You sit down by the keyboard, slit your wrists and pour it all out.
That's awesome, can I ask what the topic is? What I did for "selling" the book was to create a proposal -- about 45 pages that has a skeleton outline of each chapter (it changed significantly during the end writing process but gave the publisher a feel for the topic), a sample chapter, and some more sales/marketing details like what are comparable books (and how well they sold if you have that data), who your audience is and how you plan to reach them (OP was in a great place having a following), why you're the right person to write the book, etc.
45 pages as a skeleton? Wow. I wasn't expecting that much! I guess your book is +120k words? Do you think having a clear vision/structure helped when sending it to publishers?
I think I lack all the last parts (that some publishers are requiring for) such as a social media platform to reach your potential readers. I find that a bit unfair because it means you first have to play the Instagram game and once you are popular there, you can write a book.
If you give me an email address I'd love to tell you more about my book!
Yeah, it was pretty robust in the end! I think I cut down the final manuscript to just under 80k words plus the references (there was actually something in my contract about a max word count). I definitely think having the structure helped, both for the publisher and for me to have a sort of blueprint to follow.
It's not always a dealbreaker, I didn't have any social media following or anything -- the way I pitched it was by figuring out a bunch of conferences, niche podcasts, etc. and highlighting that there was an audience there I could activate (and marketing is a big part of the book process I've learned).
Is this some sort of new LLM that wastes GPU cycles accusing everyone else of being an LLM?
Seriously, I’ve seen this exact genre of comment daily on hn lately and I don’t get what you’re gaining by trying to sniff out bots. Not what anyone has to gain by truly botting on here. Nobody is selling their HN accounts right? And how many pretty run-of-the-mill comments like the above would it take to have an account worth selling anyway even if there was a market for that? 100,000?
That one goodreads review for the Estonia book is amusing. One reader criticized him for providing references. I feel like that's a positive, not a negative, and if you find it uninteresting those tend to be easy to skip.
Yeah, I have to admit because this was my first work I maybe overdid it in providing references because I wanted to default to having real historical data and not just writing a lot of personal opinions with no backing (it was a nightmare writing up that reference section but I'm glad I did it in the end) and if I'm being honest, because I'm not in academia and didn't have credentials as an "Estonia expert" I wanted to play it safe.
Edit: Added some context and I'd also mention that one thing that was quite helpful is that at the start of the writing process I created a massive spreadsheet where I'd add in quotes, writing, and anything interesting I thought I might pull from (some of it manually written, like when watching documentaries). This was hugely helpful when I was going back but also during the writing process so I had a single source of truth I could keyword search. I've just checked it and its got 4787 rows, with most entries being about a paragraph long
I'm (somehow) no longer a goodreads editor, so I can't fix it for you, but there's a forum you can post in to say that you're not the person who wrote all those travel books and get your book detached from them.
Ha its super old now but I think I had read the Ayn Rand book and was frustrated that it felt a little simplistic (tbh I do have some libertarian tendencies but the world is a messy and complicated place) so this was my way of acknowledging the idea but disagreeing with the premise, especially because the libertarian philosophy felt so prevalent in the tech world at the time
It depends what you're looking for! I moved there when I was in my mid 20's on a one year contract to run a team for the government's e-Residency program and ended up staying a bit longer (and have gone back every year since). Parts I enjoyed -- once you find a community it's a pretty strong one (but it took about 6 months for me to make any Estonian friends), there's a good early stage tech scene, the old town in Tallinn is beautiful and city living very approachable. I probably wouldn't move back now unless there was a very good reasons or to raise kids (it seems like a great place for that, very safe, great education system, etc.) just because it's relatively small (total pop ~1.3M) and so doesn't have as much opportunity as other places, plus my parents live in the US and I like being closer to them.
It's a pretty old book, but I think my favorite this year was The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer which was great fun for an avid Simpsons fan (of the first 10 seasons at least).
Of course, I'd also be remiss not to mention that I published a book called Rebooting a Nation about how the nation of Estonia modernized post re-independence and became a hub for startups and e-government in a single generation. Foreign Affairs was kind enough to just do a review: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/rebooting-nation-incr...
Its not clear to me whether this will impact all foreign made drones or just those from China. I get that DJI is the core target, but does this mean that a competitor from Europe (ex. Ukraine which I imagine will have a burgeoning drone market, esp for commercial/defense applications) will need a natsec signoff in order to sell a drone in the US?
Edit to add: From additional reporting on the issue, it seems that the answer is yes, it will affect all countries
Won't this place drone users in US in severe disadvantage right at the time when drones of all kinds are being used to provide all kinds of useful services ? In comparison users in countries with better policy planning will reap benefits.
Shouldn't there been some sort of planning for a local company to provide at least comparable products before needlessly wreaking havoc like this ?
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