9 ms·

How much does your wife charge as a therapist? Everyone needs to make money. HN is a weird place to bemoan prices when many here are seeking unicorn valuation

by ProAm 10y ago

How much does your wife charge as a therapist? Everyone needs to make money. HN is a weird place to bemoan prices when many here are seeking unicorn valuations while disrupting industry. Everyone hates laws until its in their best interest to have said laws.

coldpie 10y ago
What? Why should the behavior the OP described be illegal?
- bluejekyll 10y ago
  This is exactly the question. Is the dmca, specifically this section valid law.
DoubleGlazing 10y ago
She barely takes home minimum wage and she is self-employed. Most of her peers are in a similar position. It is not a vocation you get in to for the money. Edit: A common problem in her sector, and other therapy sectors, is that all the recognised diagnosis and treatment systems get bought by the likes of Pearson and other big technical publishers who will demand recurring payments to use the system. For example Owls, a common speech therapy system requires her to use their pre-printed forms to take notes. The basic diagnosis pack costs over $700, but she has to keep buying the forms at $60 for 25 - even thought he system rarely changes.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  How much do you think it'd cost to replicate the software as an open source tool? I've written grants before for funding open source projects, and this anecdote boils my blood.
  - soperj 10y ago
    Yeah, this is just plain thievery from people who can least afford it.
  - japhyr 10y ago
    Can you say a bit more about the process of writing grants for open source projects? I have some long-term education related projects that I'm considering grant funding to support. I have some ideas how to go about it, but I'd love to hear what you've done.
  - safeignorance 10y ago
    Taking on Pearson and other companies that use similarly predatory tactics to extract value from society's most disadvantaged is exactly the sort of "disruption" that the world needs more of. That said, I doubt one could go at it alone with no support or with only a grant -- building up mind share, fighting off BS patent threats, and doing enough sales to break even on these non-development costs aren't the sort of things that a government/ngo grant will typically support. And even if you could find the money, you'll still need access to a network of experts. Someone should setup a fund that force-multiplies government/NGO grants for societally beneifical OSS with funding and access to expertise for these other things (legal/marketing/etc.). The aim could just be breaking even on non-grant-funded costs by selling support/branding/etc. to institutional players like hospitals and large chains.
    - seanp2k2 10y ago
      Agree re: disruption. I've thought about this type of thing a lot, and I wish there was a way to fix the root cause instead of what I consider the symptom (dodgy overpriced software for a specific niche, especially when it targets non-technical users and/or has to do with medicine / HELPING HUMANS PHYSICALLY). I came to the conclusion that it's Very Hard to disincentivize greed. Anyone have any ideas for what could be done to help curb behavior like this by companies (companies which are really just people who are making these kinds of decisions -- never forget that)?
      - evincarofautumn 10y ago
        I’m not sure there’s any overt greed exactly. A company saw a market and launched a product for that market. But like most companies and products, especially in the case of a de facto monopoly, they’re not very good. When there’s no competition, why spend the money to innovate or improve? Your customers are still going to buy your shit. The best way to improve the status quo on a case-by-case basis is to introduce competition, say by developing a better product, marketing it well, and basically out-predating the theretofore market predators. The marketing is easy if you can get enough momentum behind it: “FooCorp wants to sell you these materials for $absurd. We made these better alternative materials. You can print the basic set yourself for free, or order any of our wide, high-quality selection, starting from $reasonable.” I don’t think there is a general solution to the underlying cause, though.
  - DoubleGlazing 10y ago
    Its really simple software, essentially a VU meter. The therapy involves getting patients to shout in a certain way and try and reach certain volume levels or follow certain volume patterns. E.g. shout gently for five seconds and gradually ramp up the volume over 10 seconds. It would be really easy to replicate. I reckon the most time consuming part would be testing and calibration. The whole app directory is less than 2MB.
    - emmelaich 10y ago
      Seems like a audio program like Audacity or maybe Ardour would do the job.
    - thirdsun 10y ago
      Really, any audio editor would do. But you should look into Max/MSP ( https://cycling74.com/products/max/ https://cycling74.com/products/max/ ), where you could build and bundle a simple audio app like that in minutes and have it tailored to your specific needs.
  - imglorp 10y ago
    Another business that does this is the hearing aid racket. An audiologist examines a patient, comes up with a patient's profile (some kind of EQ / convolution map), and then loads that into the hearing aid using proprietary programming cable and software. There are other settings more under the preferences category than DSP, like what profiles go on what switch setting, beeps, things like that. But these are all guarded jealously. The aids are very expensive, more than $5k, for what's now ancient tech. They've only recently gotten BT and only then at the high end, more like $8k for the BT models. We really need open hardware and software, so home users can get an audiologist to compute their profile and then do what they want with it.
    - frostburg 10y ago
      I wonder how different the hearing aids are from a custom IEM designed for live performances... That market is vastly more competitive.
      - imglorp 10y ago
        As I understand it, the audiologist prescription includes an EQ map as well as few different types of filters for different situations: music, conversation in crowded room, 1:1 conversation, etc. Hearing impairments are not totally amplitude dips but also comprehension ones. SO I suspect aids have a few extra DSP filters available to the programmer that IEM's don't, while IEM's probably have wider range and better reproduction for the musician's taste.
    - rosege 10y ago
      Yes you are right, this sector is full of scam artists. See here http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/2014-11-30/5920176 http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbrief... My father who is in the age group now pretty much confirmed all of this when recently shopping for one. As it was covered by his health care they were trying to flog him one at a ridiculous price.
    - evincarofautumn 10y ago
      I saw this kind of predation secondhand when my maternal grandmother (I know her as “babcia”) went in for hearing aids. Her main problem was actually earwax buildup, not general hearing loss. But there’s no money in giving a patient a script for ear drops, so they managed to convince her to drop thousands in insurance dollars and no small amount of her personal dollars as well. <sigh> But, she can hear, and she’s happy. I guess that’s how these companies get away with it—you can satisfy a customer without doing a whole lot of actual good for them.
  - davb 10y ago
    > I've written grants before for funding open source projects Is this a common thing? I would absolutely love to be funded to work on a bespoke open source project for such a good cause.
- Paul-ish 10y ago
  Could a professional organization of speech therapist come together and fund a competitor? Obviously you would need to deal with the free rider problem somehow.
  - niij 10y ago
    The "free rider" problem has been solved. Unfortunately the solution is to have ruthless for-profit businesses, which is where we're at today.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- wil421 10y ago
  How does she barely make minimum wage as a speech therapist? My mother worked in the school system for 20 years making nothing. Now works in skilled nursing, people that just had strokes and other trauma learning to speak, eat, or breathe correctly again. She makes around 80k and regularly picks up side jobs at other facilities for $50+ an hour. I have another friend from college who works in a hospital and makes 70-80k. Although there isn't much increase over the years in a hospital. Just curious because I'm familiar with the field. Are things different in Europe?
Dylan16807 10y ago
If you want to sell software that expires after two years, just do that. Sell a two year license. Don't gouge people in dishonest ways.
dmix 10y ago
HN is hardly an active supporter of unicorn style VC pump and dump. We poke fun of it all the time. This is a common criticism of HN I hear on Twitter by people who clearly don't spend much time here.
- roninb 10y ago
  I hear much of the same. I don't think I've ever seen Snapchat mentioned here without an oogle of 40 somethings complaining about how useless and unintuitive it is.
  - dang 10y ago
    We appreciate your defending the HN community against spurious putdowns, but adding another spurious putdown is not a great way to go about it.
    - roninb 10y ago
      I'm really apprehensive about replying to this because I don't feel like what I said was spurious (and I feel like this comment might have the same unintended message as the first) in any way when I try to recall[1] the threads[2] I've read[3] and participated[4] in. How should I less spuriously describe my experiences here? [0] (This is only here because I wanted to make sure spurious meant "false" and not "fast or quick") http://www.dictionary.com/browse/spurious http://www.dictionary.com/browse/spurious [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12039107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12039107 (2-3 negative, spurious comments about snapchat) [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11075336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11075336 (about 33-33-33 of completely dismissive, completely bewildered, and then simply trying as hard as they can to explain to the previous two groups) [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11778392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11778392 (I honestly didn't want to continue doing this simply to explain my perception) [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9606984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9606984 (This was actually my first comment on Hacker News :) Hopefully this one won't be my last...) edited formatting of the links
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
desireco42 10y ago
I usually feel for people getting downvoted because they speak their mind, but... No people don't have to make money this way. There are plenty of ways to make money and it is not important that she doesn't happen to make a lot, even if she made a lot, I don't think this makes any difference.
DanBC 10y ago
People aren't complaining about the price, they're complaining about the fucking stupid way that price is enforced and the gouging that happens when the inadequate hardware fails.
hiram112 10y ago
Though I don't necessarily agree with you, I'll upvote you as I think you bring up a good counterpoint that's not being discussed. It's possible that this company's business plan assumed the replacement by obsolescence model - instead of a high upfront cost to recoup their R&D, they expected users to replace it every few years at full cost. This is no different than the vast majority of the bait & switch type schemes the tech industry and every other market uses. If one is acceptable, I don't see why the other is not, just because a small percentage of the population on HN understands how to replace the electronic components of said hardware. Should a chemist be able to manufacture patented pharmaceuticals in his garage simply because he/she knows the procedure? What if the drugs cost $10K a month because the company spent billions developing and marketing them? Now what if the chemist decides to make the expensive drugs for his family? And his friends. And their friends. Where does it stop? The DMCA has been abused, but it isn't so cut and dry.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  No customer is or should be obligated to make obeisance to a company's "sacred" business model.
  - blastrat 10y ago
    this company has not taken action to enforce DMCA or any other licensing gripe with the guy, so as yet he hasn't forced to pay obeisance to anything, and he didn't, so that issue is not really on the table. you are essentially taking the position that the company should be forced to sell its software unbundled with hardware because you would prefer it that way. Under your logic, the unicorn Uber could be forced to provide their software independently too, why should I have to use Uber's cars if I just want to use their software for scheduling and other market clearing tasks that I want to undertake, including scheduling competitive ride sharing. My headphone broke; I didn't like my Uber driver; how dare they bundle them together. Now, I actually believe that Uber and other unicorns should not be allowed to become unicorns the way they do because I think we could achieve the same level of innovation in the public interest without monopoly prices. But I don't attempt to get my way by sneering at people and downvoting them.
stuartd 10y ago
I wish I had enough rep to downvote you. For shame.

by ProAm 10y ago

coldpie 10y ago

What? Why should the behavior the OP described be illegal?

bluejekyll 10y ago
This is exactly the question. Is the dmca, specifically this section valid law.

DoubleGlazing 10y ago

She barely takes home minimum wage and she is self-employed. Most of her peers are in a similar position. It is not a vocation you get in to for the money. Edit: A common problem in her sector, and other therapy sectors, is that all the recognised diagnosis and treatment systems get bought by the likes of Pearson and other big technical publishers who will demand recurring payments to use the system. For example Owls, a common speech therapy system requires her to use their pre-printed forms to take notes. The basic diagnosis pack costs over $700, but she has to keep buying the forms at $60 for 25 - even thought he system rarely changes.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
How much do you think it'd cost to replicate the software as an open source tool? I've written grants before for funding open source projects, and this anecdote boils my blood.
- soperj 10y ago
  Yeah, this is just plain thievery from people who can least afford it.
- japhyr 10y ago
  Can you say a bit more about the process of writing grants for open source projects? I have some long-term education related projects that I'm considering grant funding to support. I have some ideas how to go about it, but I'd love to hear what you've done.
- safeignorance 10y ago
  Taking on Pearson and other companies that use similarly predatory tactics to extract value from society's most disadvantaged is exactly the sort of "disruption" that the world needs more of. That said, I doubt one could go at it alone with no support or with only a grant -- building up mind share, fighting off BS patent threats, and doing enough sales to break even on these non-development costs aren't the sort of things that a government/ngo grant will typically support. And even if you could find the money, you'll still need access to a network of experts. Someone should setup a fund that force-multiplies government/NGO grants for societally beneifical OSS with funding and access to expertise for these other things (legal/marketing/etc.). The aim could just be breaking even on non-grant-funded costs by selling support/branding/etc. to institutional players like hospitals and large chains.
  - seanp2k2 10y ago
    Agree re: disruption. I've thought about this type of thing a lot, and I wish there was a way to fix the root cause instead of what I consider the symptom (dodgy overpriced software for a specific niche, especially when it targets non-technical users and/or has to do with medicine / HELPING HUMANS PHYSICALLY). I came to the conclusion that it's Very Hard to disincentivize greed. Anyone have any ideas for what could be done to help curb behavior like this by companies (companies which are really just people who are making these kinds of decisions -- never forget that)?
    - evincarofautumn 10y ago
      I’m not sure there’s any overt greed exactly. A company saw a market and launched a product for that market. But like most companies and products, especially in the case of a de facto monopoly, they’re not very good. When there’s no competition, why spend the money to innovate or improve? Your customers are still going to buy your shit. The best way to improve the status quo on a case-by-case basis is to introduce competition, say by developing a better product, marketing it well, and basically out-predating the theretofore market predators. The marketing is easy if you can get enough momentum behind it: “FooCorp wants to sell you these materials for $absurd. We made these better alternative materials. You can print the basic set yourself for free, or order any of our wide, high-quality selection, starting from $reasonable.” I don’t think there is a general solution to the underlying cause, though.
- DoubleGlazing 10y ago
  Its really simple software, essentially a VU meter. The therapy involves getting patients to shout in a certain way and try and reach certain volume levels or follow certain volume patterns. E.g. shout gently for five seconds and gradually ramp up the volume over 10 seconds. It would be really easy to replicate. I reckon the most time consuming part would be testing and calibration. The whole app directory is less than 2MB.
  - emmelaich 10y ago
    Seems like a audio program like Audacity or maybe Ardour would do the job.
  - thirdsun 10y ago
    Really, any audio editor would do. But you should look into Max/MSP ( https://cycling74.com/products/max/ https://cycling74.com/products/max/ ), where you could build and bundle a simple audio app like that in minutes and have it tailored to your specific needs.
- imglorp 10y ago
  Another business that does this is the hearing aid racket. An audiologist examines a patient, comes up with a patient's profile (some kind of EQ / convolution map), and then loads that into the hearing aid using proprietary programming cable and software. There are other settings more under the preferences category than DSP, like what profiles go on what switch setting, beeps, things like that. But these are all guarded jealously. The aids are very expensive, more than $5k, for what's now ancient tech. They've only recently gotten BT and only then at the high end, more like $8k for the BT models. We really need open hardware and software, so home users can get an audiologist to compute their profile and then do what they want with it.
  - frostburg 10y ago
    I wonder how different the hearing aids are from a custom IEM designed for live performances... That market is vastly more competitive.
    - imglorp 10y ago
      As I understand it, the audiologist prescription includes an EQ map as well as few different types of filters for different situations: music, conversation in crowded room, 1:1 conversation, etc. Hearing impairments are not totally amplitude dips but also comprehension ones. SO I suspect aids have a few extra DSP filters available to the programmer that IEM's don't, while IEM's probably have wider range and better reproduction for the musician's taste.
  - rosege 10y ago
    Yes you are right, this sector is full of scam artists. See here http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/2014-11-30/5920176 http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbrief... My father who is in the age group now pretty much confirmed all of this when recently shopping for one. As it was covered by his health care they were trying to flog him one at a ridiculous price.
  - evincarofautumn 10y ago
    I saw this kind of predation secondhand when my maternal grandmother (I know her as “babcia”) went in for hearing aids. Her main problem was actually earwax buildup, not general hearing loss. But there’s no money in giving a patient a script for ear drops, so they managed to convince her to drop thousands in insurance dollars and no small amount of her personal dollars as well. <sigh> But, she can hear, and she’s happy. I guess that’s how these companies get away with it—you can satisfy a customer without doing a whole lot of actual good for them.
- davb 10y ago
  > I've written grants before for funding open source projects Is this a common thing? I would absolutely love to be funded to work on a bespoke open source project for such a good cause.
Paul-ish 10y ago
Could a professional organization of speech therapist come together and fund a competitor? Obviously you would need to deal with the free rider problem somehow.
- niij 10y ago
  The "free rider" problem has been solved. Unfortunately the solution is to have ruthless for-profit businesses, which is where we're at today.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
wil421 10y ago
How does she barely make minimum wage as a speech therapist? My mother worked in the school system for 20 years making nothing. Now works in skilled nursing, people that just had strokes and other trauma learning to speak, eat, or breathe correctly again. She makes around 80k and regularly picks up side jobs at other facilities for $50+ an hour. I have another friend from college who works in a hospital and makes 70-80k. Although there isn't much increase over the years in a hospital. Just curious because I'm familiar with the field. Are things different in Europe?

Dylan16807 10y ago

If you want to sell software that expires after two years, just do that. Sell a two year license. Don't gouge people in dishonest ways.

dmix 10y ago

HN is hardly an active supporter of unicorn style VC pump and dump. We poke fun of it all the time. This is a common criticism of HN I hear on Twitter by people who clearly don't spend much time here.

roninb 10y ago
I hear much of the same. I don't think I've ever seen Snapchat mentioned here without an oogle of 40 somethings complaining about how useless and unintuitive it is.
- dang 10y ago
  We appreciate your defending the HN community against spurious putdowns, but adding another spurious putdown is not a great way to go about it.
  - roninb 10y ago
    I'm really apprehensive about replying to this because I don't feel like what I said was spurious (and I feel like this comment might have the same unintended message as the first) in any way when I try to recall[1] the threads[2] I've read[3] and participated[4] in. How should I less spuriously describe my experiences here? [0] (This is only here because I wanted to make sure spurious meant "false" and not "fast or quick") http://www.dictionary.com/browse/spurious http://www.dictionary.com/browse/spurious [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12039107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12039107 (2-3 negative, spurious comments about snapchat) [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11075336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11075336 (about 33-33-33 of completely dismissive, completely bewildered, and then simply trying as hard as they can to explain to the previous two groups) [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11778392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11778392 (I honestly didn't want to continue doing this simply to explain my perception) [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9606984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9606984 (This was actually my first comment on Hacker News :) Hopefully this one won't be my last...) edited formatting of the links

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

desireco42 10y ago

I usually feel for people getting downvoted because they speak their mind, but... No people don't have to make money this way. There are plenty of ways to make money and it is not important that she doesn't happen to make a lot, even if she made a lot, I don't think this makes any difference.

DanBC 10y ago

People aren't complaining about the price, they're complaining about the fucking stupid way that price is enforced and the gouging that happens when the inadequate hardware fails.

hiram112 10y ago

Though I don't necessarily agree with you, I'll upvote you as I think you bring up a good counterpoint that's not being discussed. It's possible that this company's business plan assumed the replacement by obsolescence model - instead of a high upfront cost to recoup their R&D, they expected users to replace it every few years at full cost. This is no different than the vast majority of the bait & switch type schemes the tech industry and every other market uses. If one is acceptable, I don't see why the other is not, just because a small percentage of the population on HN understands how to replace the electronic components of said hardware. Should a chemist be able to manufacture patented pharmaceuticals in his garage simply because he/she knows the procedure? What if the drugs cost $10K a month because the company spent billions developing and marketing them? Now what if the chemist decides to make the expensive drugs for his family? And his friends. And their friends. Where does it stop? The DMCA has been abused, but it isn't so cut and dry.

nitrogen 10y ago
No customer is or should be obligated to make obeisance to a company's "sacred" business model.
- blastrat 10y ago
  this company has not taken action to enforce DMCA or any other licensing gripe with the guy, so as yet he hasn't forced to pay obeisance to anything, and he didn't, so that issue is not really on the table. you are essentially taking the position that the company should be forced to sell its software unbundled with hardware because you would prefer it that way. Under your logic, the unicorn Uber could be forced to provide their software independently too, why should I have to use Uber's cars if I just want to use their software for scheduling and other market clearing tasks that I want to undertake, including scheduling competitive ride sharing. My headphone broke; I didn't like my Uber driver; how dare they bundle them together. Now, I actually believe that Uber and other unicorns should not be allowed to become unicorns the way they do because I think we could achieve the same level of innovation in the public interest without monopoly prices. But I don't attempt to get my way by sneering at people and downvoting them.

stuartd 10y ago

I wish I had enough rep to downvote you. For shame.