How the Web Became Unreadable - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/how-the-web-became-unreadable-a781ddc711b6#.r3lqzaeqq <comment><USER3> Designers are ruining software in general. iTunes, the iOS music app, and Google Maps are just a few pieces of software that started out relatively usable (if not exactly stable in the case of iTunes), and have been iterated and stylized to the point where I routinely get enraged by them.

At least Google Maps has walked back that terrible accordion thing that literally drove me crazy.

I basically think design is like a cancer on the web anymore. You know what works? Craiglist, that's what works. Reddit works. Hacker News works. The old, pre-design-goober Google Apps interface worked.

I seriously want to punch a hipster every time I have to use an app that used to work and has now been designed to death.

<comment><USER4> > Designers are ruining software in general.

I agree with you. But what I find hilarious about it is that in the 90s, there was a meme that software engineers cannot do usability very well, and you need specialized designers.

I think it all comes down to humility. Think about and respect the user. Do usability studies and follow their results, like Microsoft used to do in 90s. Don't let your notions of aesthetics overrule the needs or wishes of the users, and especially wish for things not to change.

<comment><USER5> Not saying this is always the case but I wonder if, in some of the cases, this is what makes it hard for designers to get accepted in open source:

the fact that many of the developers are also users and as such are pretty opinionated while the designers that come to open source might often be very eager to "set their mark" on something?

<comment><USER6> I doubt there are many designers working on OSS who don't also use it.

I' even doubt the premise that there are terrible open source UIs created by designers. The vast majority of OSS GUI apps were probably styled by programmers, and I think they proved quite well over last 20 years that they chose well when not becoming designers.

The problem with design is also that it doesn't work very well in the "bazaar" style of development. Consistency is possibly the single most important feature of good design, and it gets hard to achieve without central authorities.

<comment><USER7> GNOME employs professional designers and produces consistently the worst designs in open source: kill features left and right in the name of "simplicity" then add excessive padding to what's left all in service of achieving that "ugly but useless" state that everyone loves.

<comment><USER4> Gnome 2 and KDE 3 were IMHO the best - well designed for usability, traditional, consistent, with good guidelines. I think those prove that it can be in OSS.

However, I don't think users care that much about consistency, unfortunately (even though I think it's important aspect of design). Look at web, every website is different and it's considered a good thing by designers. There is no consistency on web and yet desktop apps struggle to compete.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's true that many designers tend to look at text more like a texture. Instead of making it large and distinct they will make it small and light colored when it's in fact the only valuable thing on the screen.

It's an unfortunate consequence of so much design today going minimal and more typographic, which makes it's hard to differentiate elements any other way than to start evening out the contrast. If everything that is text was just black you would loose the hierarchy.

There er of course plenty of ways to get around it and most experienced designers know how to deal with it. I don't think it's going to be a lasting problem though.

Also important to notice that retina screens make a big difference between what is readable and not. You can get away with much more finesse when you design for retina screens. And I think a lot of designers unfortunately use only that when they design.

If you look at print typography you will find a lot of small text sizes because print is crisp enough to be readable. So technology will take care of most of it IMO.

<comment><USER9> > Instead of making it large and distinct they will make it small and light > colored when it's in fact the only valuable thing on the screen.

But modern web design is the contrary. Large big webfonts, distinct ones for headlines and text as beautiful as possible. Yes, sometimes the text is then made grey and oftentimes this is just bad design, but I don't think the texture comaprision is accurate.

Here for example, in the appengine dashboard screenshots, the grey text in the menu is used to create hierarchy. I would also argue that the greying of the text has another function here: By making most of the menu labels less visible, you can focus the attention to the parts of the page that are the most prominent. Not sure hat worked very well sincethat does nto seem to be used here, but it sure has another effect than the prior design where almostevery element was screaming for attention.

<comment><USER10> > Large big webfonts

This can be aggravating too, just because I'm on a desktop doesn't mean I have 19" monitors and the browser maximized.

<comment><USER9> 19" monitors are like the smallest you can still buy, and have been for some years. But sure, Browsers are not always maximized, and there are small laptops and tablets and smartphones… but modern webdesign has with responsive design really a good answer here that takes that into account, and that also considers the font size. So yes, that can be aggravating, but not in modern webdesign per se, only in bad design in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Subjective though it may be, there are a lot of people who find black-on-white unpleasant to look at. I greatly prefer sites that _don 't_ use it, regardless of what they do with font and size.

This could just be a case of conflicting preferences, but I don't think it has to be. Clear contrasts are achievable without insisting on #000/#FFF web design.

\- The most obvious improvement is simply keeping an eye on contrast. The article mentions using #333 over #000, but none of the unreadable samples provided are anywhere near that dark. #333 is approximately "light black" to the eye, and I suspect would give little trouble on a white background.

\- Another trick is to vary _one_ of background and text. Both Google and Apple violate this guideline by placing dark grey text on a light grey background. Again subjective, but offering a visual 'endpoint' seems to preserve clarity in a way that multiple shades of grey do not (perhaps it just encourages more careful design).

\- Finally, we can choose colors which are not strictly grey. The HN background is a rather usable 244/244/235 - not far outside of light grey, but tan enough to provide more contrast than the pure brightness would imply. The vote/name options here are emphatically grey-on-grey, but it is at least a design choice to minimize their distractingness.

<comment><USER12> Shifting the _background_ colour, _slightly_ , tends to be vastly more readable than screwing with the foreground colour:

[https://codepen.io/dredmorbius/full/KpMqqB/](https://codepen.io/dredmorbius/full/KpMqqB/)

It also far more closely approaches the appearance of print on somewhat aged paper:

[https://archive.org/stream/commercialismjou00holtuoft#page/5...](https://archive.org/stream/commercialismjou00holtuoft#page/54/mode/2up)

<comment><USER13> It's not aged paper, necessarily; look at any well-made book (excluding glossy picture books) and the paper will be stable and opaque but not bright.

<comment><USER12> I'm spending a lot of time going through Internet Archive books (the one indicated has relevance to the whole advertising-supported nature of the Internet as well, I submitted it as an HN article earlier today). So I'm somewhat attuned to the visual appearance.

Different paper ages differently, and I believe that much of the highly- yellowed paper is high-pulp content, as opposed to archival-quality, acid-free rag. The degree of yellowing can vary, and in some cases it's rather more than I'd prefer for comfortable reading. In modest amounts, it's not bad though.

<comment><USER13> Yes, my intent was to emphasize that lower-than-maximum contrast through paper (and not grey ink) is typical of most high-quality printing, to avoid giving the impression that it implies age, wear, or low quality (pulp/newsprint), which designers probably want to avoid.

(There was an 18th-century fad for extremely high contrast, but fortunately it passed. And current printer/copy paper is excessively bright (often even using fluorescent brighteners), but no one considers photocopies to be the height of good taste.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think that a lot of it comes down to designers needing/wanting to justify their job.

If a designer or typographer does good work, it goes largely unnoticed, since navigating the page and reading the text is easy and fluid. This can lead clients to believe that the designer is not doing much at all, when in fact they are doing their job exceptionally well.

This leads to designers adding unnecessary ornamentation (often at the clients behest), just to make it seem as though they are providing more of a service.

As others have pointed out, no one is sitting in meetings reading the boiler plate text on designs, they are just looking at the overall page to see if it 'pops' or whatever. So really, it's as much the clients fault as the designers, although a good designer should be able to communicate why the flashiest, most cutting edge choices are not always the best.

Also, I'd like to recommend this book, The New Typography. It's an old book, but they do a really great job of explaining the goals of typography, and how one can be creative without sacrificing readability, etc. [https://www.amazon.com/New-Typography-Weimar-Now- Criticism/d...](https://www.amazon.com/New-Typography-Weimar-Now- Criticism/dp/0520071476/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1476901379&sr=1-1&keywords=the+new+typography)

</comment><comment><USER15> I think it's a broader problem - too much css fluff, _far_ too much javascript; even the simplest webpages now seem to feel the need to be miniature apps in their own right, instead of just serving the damned content already. I often websurf using an old 1st gen iPad and it's a massively frustrating experience just how many sites nowadays just crash the damned browser.

<comment><USER16> How does that apply to typography?

<comment><USER17> The typography problem the article discusses is just a subset of a generic problem where design decisions are made without any care for people who do not share the designer's exact use case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'll just add this link[0], because I'm sure someone is going to mention it.

[0] [http://contrastrebellion.com/](http://contrastrebellion.com/)

<comment><USER19> Heh, I love how so many tech and design things are "manifestos" or "rebellions".

<comment><USER20> Good point. In this case it shouldn't be about rebelling against an established order, but rather about establishing order (i.e., nice, clean, high-contrast standards) out of an unreadable chaos (i.e. the low-contrast free-for-all).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Greg Lutz of GM once commented that GM's designers had fallen in love with Bang and Olufsen design from the 1980s.[1] Bang and Olufsen was (and still is) big on black-on-black design, with controls so subtle that they're barely visible. This makes for great photos, but not usable cars. He, as head of GM, had to restrain them from making inscrutable dashboards. This mindset seems to have reached the Web.

For an alternative design paradigm, see Olivetti industrial design of the 1960s and 1970s.[2] Bright colors, strong contrast, and materials nice to touch. Any good museum of modern art will have some Olivetti devices of that period. Those are worth a look. They had contrast without clutter.

[1] [https://www.google.com/search?q=Bang+and+Olufsen&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=Bang+and+Olufsen&tbm=isch) [2] [https://www.google.com/search?q=olivetti+industrial+design&t...](https://www.google.com/search?q=olivetti+industrial+design&tbm=isch)

<comment><USER22> Never heard of Olivetti before. You are right, they look great without overbearing or cluttered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm so surprised that all attempts at solutions for "readability" so far seems to have addressed the actual article or post content only. I don't just want to read a sane looking web, I want to browse a accessible and sane looking web.

I'd like to be able to activate a browser mode that cleans up not only the content of the site, but also the structure by creating simple and accessible navigation (perhaps according to html and css rules that I can write myself).

Many sites have a similar type of structure (/about/, /contact/ etc). HTML5 sites with <nav> will hopefully have made this endeavor much easier.

Sites with more complicated structure could perhaps be analyzed by AI and OK'd and corrected by a collective of users (via a browser extension). When the sites has been "solved" by AI and/or it's users, it can be added to a shared database (think something like [https://userstyles.org/](https://userstyles.org/)) that will be automatically queried when you use the site.

<comment><USER24> Reminds me that Opera's Mini browser (a proxy browser that originated on J2ME enabled featurephones) have a single column option. This will attempt to rearrange a page so that everything is a single column that fits the width of the device screen.

<comment><USER23> I have a vague memory of this from my late feature phone days. I remember I actually enjoyed using it considering how limited the possibilities were on these phones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Part of the problem is that a lot of companies use web developer agencies that deliver 'PDF' static pages of 'design' that is full of lorem-ipsum text in light grey.

This 'design' process is not about how it works, it is purely about how it looks. To designers that means not having to worry about what happens when links are clicked and not having to worry about people who look at the design on anything other than a high end Mac (with its non-standard gamma). Certainly do not take interest in the product, hence the rigid adherence to 'lorem ipsum'. In this world text is just shapes on a page, not something that needs to be right.

A design process should be about getting it to work with a focus on content, then, after that, the kids that only know Photoshop (and not a bit of HTML or SVG or CSS) can be called on to provide a little bit of their artwork. Tragically though the process is far too often wrong, with these static PDF images casting in stone what the website will look like, even if the content is illegible.

Far too many people in design are 'poseurs' rather than true creatives. Consequently they can lack true confidence and merely imitate, hence, if Apple are doing spider-grey text in nano-font sizes on a grey background then that just gets appropriated.

There is no user testing in this far too common dev process, it is just whether the guy paying the bills likes the PDF files, then some developers have to deliver this vision without questioning it.

</comment><comment><USER26> I agree that the contrast on App Engine could be bumped up. But in their defense, most of the text/labels on that page are not meant to be read as if they are prose. As much I like Google's old-school blue aesthetic, the underlined hyperlinks in the sidebar were, IMHO, something that had to go away, as it's mostly obvious that every label, except for the bolded subheads, in the sidebar is a nav-item meant to be clicked.

In terms of font-size, I think it's a difficult tradeoff to make. I'm a bit impressed that the designers didn't try iconifying things and instead stuck with pure text. Again, as the admin page is not meant to be read like an article, the advantage of having small text is that at least it's possible to fit more things onto the page, in consistent locations, rather than forcing the user to scroll.

That's not to say that maybe some of the issue can be mitigated by reconsidering what needs to be on the page. I find myself being mostly OK with the typography on the App engine page because 95% of the content doesn't require my attention, and so making everything #000, as it was in the older version, has limited value to me.

I do prefer the older version's simple-table-list layout. I find Google Cloud Platform to be unusable because of its multi-column boxes-everywhere layout.

</comment><comment><USER27> I have worried about this a lot, but basically now try to get inspiration and take example from webs that I consider highly readable. I also developed a set of internal rules; for instance, my maximum "black" is #333 (#333333) and my minimum "white" is #eee (#EEEEEE). Anything going further than these to the middle should have a _real_ reason and not just because _it 's prettier_.

Edit: #333 over a #eee (worst-case scenario with my guideliness) gives a 10.9:1 ratio, while #333 over #fff gives a 12.6:1 ratio, both totally acceptable. So I am not sure how the author concludes that #333 is not good enough and we should use #000;

Why should the people who is doing it right and pleasant change it because few others are using ridiculous colors as in the examples? It's like saying you shouldn't eat any sugar at all because many people is fat when you are perfectly healthy.

<comment><USER28> Why are you throwing away so much of the gamut like this? You are ensuring that the best possible ratio is 10.9:1 rather than 21. Now, what happens if your user is outside and the ambient light on the screen makes what was dark much lighter? What happens when screen dimming kicks in and reduces screen brightness. You are likely designing on a very bright desktop monitor, effectively staring into a lightbulb all day. Turn down your monitors brightness instead of forcing everyone else to turn theirs up to match.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I am using in a still under construction pc a CRT screen.

Two things became obvious:

1\. CRT contrast is amazing, specially black levels. DOOM 4 is utterly gorgeous.

2\. Yet CRT is now mostly unusable because questionable design decisions, I keep stumbling in new games and websites that presume you have a 4k monitor (seriously, I saw some games where the UI on my screen ended with letters unreadable without a loupe...) and presume you have a specific type of lcd, and thus rely heavily on subpixel anti alias that beside obvious looking outright broken on crt with deformed letters, also look wrong on panels that aren't classic lcd or have a unusual pixel organization (for example a panel that instead of rgb in horizontal is gbr, or vertical, or a triangle, or those cheap mobile panels with less blue pixels)

One of the things that most piss me off are windows new default font, that was designed to only look good on lcd. And all those custom web fonts, sometimes gigantic, so you see for example a newspaper article load with all images, then suddenly the text disappear and only come back 2 minutes later and with some funky unreadable font.

<comment><USER30> CRT is also not as good for your eyes and therefore isn't as suitable as LCD [1].

[1] [http://superuser.com/a/389678](http://superuser.com/a/389678)

Some may argue as well that you can obtain better contrast in LCD but I'm no expert in that matter - I have just learned why CRTs are bad due to working as a programmer.

<comment><USER31> I used to get eyestrain after about an hour of using a CRT. I can (and do) sit and look at an LCD all day without eye strain. I still get eyestrain if I'm using a monitor with PWN brightness control. That's easily fixed by turning up the brightness to max, or choosing a well-designed LCD from the start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Does anyone know what the contrast ratio for black ink on white paper roughly is? I was once a big fan of black-on-white on my computer screen, until I read that Solarized aimed for the contrast of "shaded paper" [1] and realized that the contrast ratio on a computer screen was much greater than the contrast ratio in printed material.

Also, it seems to me that monitors have improved in being able to display more contrast than was previously possible. Is that true? Is that another reason why lower-contrast designs have become more popular?

[1] [http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized#features](http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized#features)

<comment><USER33> You'll get more out of turning down the brightness of your monitor than changing color schemes.

White paper will depend more on the room lighting than anything else.

<comment><USER34> For paper a contrast ratio of ~10:1 is assumed. I expect the assumption being based on a lighting situation where one can read with no strain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> There is a reason for this.

I happen to have an almost brand-new LCD screen here with LED backlight and high resolution, and a low-resultion over-a-decade-old LCD screen.

And guess what?

A website that looks totally fine on the old one is so blindingly bright on the new one that it hurts.

It literally hurts to look at.

This can be useful, as it provides a higher dynamic range, which can be used to recreate the blinding brightness of an explosion when watching a movie.

But it also means that websites have to use less contrasts.

The overall problem is:

We specify sizes in the web independent of the actual monitor size, with rem and em and pt and so on.

Why can't we specify colors independent of the monitors actual contrast ratio, too?

Why can't I have a website where the text seems to have the same contrast on and old and a new monitor, while that gif of an explosion is as blindingly bright as possible?

<comment><USER28> If it hurts to look at your monitor set to white, turn down the brightness. Get some room lighting so it's not the only light in the place. Stop doing this to yourself, but don't ruin everyone else's readability because your screen is too bright for your conditions.

<comment><USER35> The issue is that you might want to be able to display both – a darkness so deep that the nightsky looks bright, a brightness so bright that the sun looks dark, and at the same time a white that always looks like a page of a book, and a black that always looks like ink.

As said, it would be best if we had a way to specify colors in specific color spaces.

Then I could make a website that looks consistent no matter how bright the monitor is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The latest web design trends feel like they are trying to make things "readable" for people who don't actually want to read. At the expense of people who want to read. I am so happy when I see a simple page with text and pictures I can scroll through without things reloading or things jumping around.

</comment><comment><USER37> I used to help myself with simply highlighting the text position with click- and-drag with my mouse.

I had to stop doing this after too many sites think it's acceptable to:

1) hijack highlighting in order to display "Tweet this excerpt" or similar stuff (some even did a "Copy this excerpt" \- as if the users were too stupid to press Ctrl+C!)

2) replace the highlight color without taking care that it works on all site parts, it's not really nice if text and highlight colors are the same

3) append their own custom text when pressing Ctrl+C (e.g. appending [source: newspaper.com].

Dear (web) devs: don't f...ing mess with behaviour provided by the system. Just don't.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'd like to see some evidence that today's sites are less readable than those that went before us. Otherwise, it just looks like nostalgia for the 'good old days'.

Well I remember the 90s when we there were plenty of unreadable sites, ugly monstrosities with unreadable typography and garish colour schemes. Meanwhile, much of the web is now dominated by sites like Facebook, Google, BBC, etc - all of which are extremely readable.

Both then and now, the reason for the bad sites is that they are made by amateurs. They're the same people that make those terrible leaflets with 20 fonts and loads of clipart. Just because they exist, it doesn't mean the web is getting worse. My anecdotal experience is that it's improving.

<comment><USER39> > Meanwhile, much of the web is now dominated by sites like Facebook, Google, > BBC, etc - all of which are extremely readable.

The author actually calls out Google and Apple specifically, for breaking their own contrast suggestions

His example: [https://kevinmarks.github.io/appenginebefore.png](https://kevinmarks.github.io/appenginebefore.png) [https://kevinmarks.github.io/appengineafter.png](https://kevinmarks.github.io/appengineafter.png)

<comment><USER40> I actually find the 'after' example an improvement for legibility - <USER2> about the spacing I think is the improvement; I don't find the colour a noticeable disadvantage at all.

<comment><USER41> An improvement for the legibility of what? There is nothing left to be read...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Ironically, site uses rgba(0,0,0,0.8) for the main text. I found it quite hard to read.

I changed it to rgb(0,0,0), removing the opacity.

A lot easier on the eyes.

</comment><comment><USER43> <rant>

My own personal pet hate on this is the m.countdown.tfl.gov.uk website. This used to be super usable on a phone, pretty plain text, urls where I could use the "text" number on each bus stop to jump straight to where I wanted to go by altering the address.

The new version is awful doing requests to the web for each keystroke into a search box (doesn't work well on a bus when signal drops out) urls for a bus stop no longer have any relationship to the SMS text number. Loads of ads so making it slower.

AND my biggest pain is that I can't filter by multiple buses at a bus stop. Once upon a time I had the north bound Monument stop with a filter for the four buses that go from there past my office (There are 13 bus routes on that bus stop).

It does look a bit prettier but when I'm out and about I want low bandwidth functionality.

</rant>

Note to self: Go and see how hard the tfl API is to use....

</comment><comment><USER44> I wanted to make a simple, fast loading site to put essays on. I thought, "Surely modern browsers render html 5 with these fancy new article tags on any device in a readable format, right?"

Nope. Not at all. Shockingly bad.

"But at least there's a CSS way to limit paragraph width to a reasonable number of words or letters that works on any device and that degrades gracefully without resorting to Javascript, right?"

No again.

LaTeX does this exact thing and has for years. Why is this so damn hard?

<comment><USER45> What's wrong with body{width:600px;} and a viewport setting of, from memory, initial scale 1 and width 600? Works for me on every device.

<comment><USER46> Or even better, {max-width: 35em;}

<comment><USER45> Why is that better?

<comment><USER47> If a user sets their default font size to 26px, then a max-width of 600px may be too small... if a user sets their font size to 10px then 600px may be too wide. A value of 35em would scale the container based on the user's selected font size.

Containers should be relative to their content.

<comment><USER45> Makes sense. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> So much for Microformats ([http://microformats.org](http://microformats.org)) which people were once crazed about but I never see developers concerned or interested in. :(

Maybe it's my perspective that it's not widely implemented or talked about in blogs, though I see WordPress has plugins for it. We (the web community) should (should have) pushed more towards a larger usage -- it's not too late folks.

</comment><comment><USER49> Internet Archive is a very good example of how a fantastic website can be completely ruined by "design".

The site was organized and simple to use, but everything good must come to an end, so one day the maintainers announced the site would be completely rebuilt, because the look had not changed in years, and we all know that old is bad.

Time went on and the unavoidable day arrived were the new "improved" design became mandatory instead of an option.

I still cry when I visit Internet Archive at a rare occasion. What before was a organized site useful for research, has turned into an slow bloated unorganized "mobile first" abomination, to further rub salt into the wound they decided that infinite scrolling was a great idea.

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm so glad that I am not alone in this. Over the last few years I have seen people tuning down the font-weight and putting #BBB text on an #FFF background, and I felt like I was the only one who noticed or cared. It's nice to know that I'm not crazy.

</comment><comment><USER51> We need some strong AI to strip away the ads, and extract only the main text, then format that text using the reader's preferences.

OCR 2.0, if you will.

Caveat: it may kill the advertisement industry.

<comment><USER52> killing the ad industry means killing the current web unless there is another revenue stream

<comment><USER53> It's that so? My experience says otherwise. For example, hn will stay, and so will the linked blog. They don't show ads.

<comment><USER54> HN is a meta-site. Without ads, there will be dramatically less content to link to.

<comment><USER53> I marked all the stories that I think are not dependent on ads: [https://sli.mg/ztY27D](https://sli.mg/ztY27D)

18 out of the 30 stories on the first page do not depend on ads. That's good enough for me, even though many interesting things are lost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I love those old Berners-Lee screenshots to remember how good it looked right from the onset. We have added some footnotes since then.

</comment><comment><USER56> By the way, the LTE post [1] on the frontpage is also unreadable with the same problem. Poor design is trending for some reason.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12746110](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12746110)

</comment><comment><USER57> To make matters worse (i.e. take away even more contrast) users might be using f.lux, twilight or similar which will move the threshold of illegibility nearer.

(and there are valid reasons to use these, indeed I have them on phone and desktop).

<comment><USER40>
        > users might be using f.lux, twilight or similar which
        > will move the threshold of illegibility nearer.

Not with the author's example at least - I just tried it with f.lux to be sure, and the white background turns red (viewing it in the middle of the day I can barely believe it looks natural at night!) leaving the grey pretty much unchanged.

I'd say it's an improvement, if anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Ironically, the article itself suffers from too-grey text on a bright background

</comment><comment><USER59> While we're on this topic may I also point out that some CSS settings on some sites (e.g. transform: translateZ(0)) causes Chrome to switch to grayscale anti-aliasing [1] which also drives me and my eyes absolutely nuts. Anyone know why no one seems to care or want to fix it? Even the article linked to here has this problem!

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/tUjqouB.png](http://i.imgur.com/tUjqouB.png)

</comment><comment><USER30> While the article touches on some great points I think there can actually be a balance when displaying certain types of information.

Like in reporting interfaces it's easier to highlight the data that you know the user is going to be looking at consistently - it helps with moving through the document as well as keeping your place. Sometimes information isn't required but if the user were wanting to go back and verify that information or use it to calculate something else they could do so easily (generally in my designs whenever I make something with less contrast I will also add an action for on focus/hover the item fades back in if the user may require that data more but still not as much as the main bits and pieces).

Places that this doesn't work great are articles and journals, big paragraphs of text (such as comments).

Balance, and the right use can make this technique useful in web page design but the author is very correct in that the vast majority doesn't understand the proper use and balance.

For we are not artists nor editor-in-chiefs so to say.

 _edit_ Should note that the reporting interfaces he is displaying do not do this well at all.

</comment><comment><USER60> I love Safari's reader mode exactly because it gives me a larger font black text on a white background. I'm not even that old (mid thirties) but years of monitors and glasses have taken their tolls on my vision. Low contrast, small prints strain my eyes. And when encountered and reader mode isn't an option, I usually close the site/page and go elsewhere if at all possible.

<comment><USER61> Reader mode is great! Age has nothing to do with it - I'm 27 and I also use it regularly in Safari. It also works as a kind of ad blocker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> It's easy: put a magazine close to your screen (monitor, tablet, phone, whatever) and check what's easier to read. Do that in good light conditions to be fair to paper which can't backlit :-) Almost everytime the magazine wins even with smaller text. Play with the brightness control of the display. Sometimes it gets OK but only if the white background is to bright to watch.

</comment><comment><USER53> "between ambient light and backlight leakage, by the time a color makes it to a screen, not even plain black (#000) is pure; instead it has become a grayer shade."

This is changing. The best phone displays display "pure" black. If you open a black image on the screen, you cannot tell if the screen is on or off, even in pitch darkness.

I love pure blacks in my apps and Web pages, contrary to the author.

<comment><USER63> The point is not everybody has a phone with an advanced amoled or similar deep, pure black display. It may be changing, but the majority of the people still has to look at a mediocre screen at best. I love amoled displays, but I realize I'm a bit privileged.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I regurarly copy paste URLs into Pocket to be able to read the content, not even for storing it long term. Pocket became the ultimate readability vendor for me over the last year, for those reasons the author listed in his post and for some other reasons (like advertising for example) too.

<comment><USER65> I do sorta the same thing, but rather put things through an RSS reader. RSS reader strips out much garbage and turns grey font to black.

Edit: Oh, and the use of Ctrl + + is a more frequent command. Bad font color isn't as big of a problem when the font size is embiggened to 72p.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> This same discussion from January 2009: [https://www.sitepoint.com/community/t/why-are-so-many- sites-...](https://www.sitepoint.com/community/t/why-are-so-many-sites-using- gray-text/4667)

</comment><comment><USER67> I have two links on my bookmark bar.

"jqueryfy": javascript:(function(){var s=document.createElement('script');s.setAttribute('src','[https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.mi...](https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.min.js'\);document.getElementsByTagName\('body'\)\[0\].appendChild\(s\);}\)\(\);)

"readability": javascript:$("*").css({color: 'white', background: '#21368c'})

I click the first one and then the second one almost every time I find something long to read on the web (HN comments threads included). It works 95% of the time.

<comment><USER68> Firefox and Safari have built-in reader mode (buttons in the address bar) that clear away page clutter and reformat the text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> It'd be nice if we saw more work on the part of browsers to just force the text into readable formats. iOS Reader and the Android "mobile view" are steps in the right direction, although not specifically intended for this use case.

</comment><comment><USER70> Front-end web experts: please describe what a _user_ of the web can do to increase legibility. (All the comment I've seen so far are addressed to web- site _owners_ or their agents.)

In particular, how can I configure my web browser to override low-contrast text colors? Is a userscript the best way? What is the most convenient way to override font-lightness settings under 400?

Preferably, a single change in the configuration of my browser would result in changes across many web site -- as opposed to my having to make a separate change for for every web site I care about.

</comment><comment><USER71> The example from Apple's own documentation (asking people to use a minimum 7:1 ratio rendered at 5.5:1 on their own web site) is a wonderful gotcha! :)

Edit: and I found the bold option for my iPad. Yay!

</comment><comment><USER72> For readability you want big text and max contrast. The black text on white background will make the eyes focus more, and might explain why some people feel eye strain. Also the black sucks up the light in the room. You can use colors (both text and background) to draw attention, instead of text contrast suggested in modern guides. Remember to always design for content and readability first!

</comment><comment><USER73> Here's a handy tool for checking whether contrast between text and background colors meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0: [http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/](http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/)

</comment><comment><USER74> If not for Safari's Reader feature I wouldn't be able to read a lot of pages. This post is spot on.

</comment><comment><USER75> p { color: hsla(0, 0%, 0%, 0.8); }

</comment><comment><USER76> I have grown to really love Pocket because it makes reading online articles so much easier and more enjoyable. And bumping up font sizes on unreadable sites is such a common habit of mine now.

</comment><comment><USER77> Nice article, but ironically the black text is rendered with opacity=.8

</comment><comment><USER78> I like to work with designers who, like me, have worked on interfaces for nuclear power plants, air traffic control systems, and stock trading systems. Others, IMHO, need not apply.

<comment><USER79> Any suggested resources for learning about these kind of interfaces?

<comment><USER78> I don't. And a quick Googling of "usability design for mission-critical systems" didn't come up with much. But here's some of the salient points I have learned:

1\. Minimize different fonts and colors. Perhaps three fonts and 8 colors (and I don't mean font families)

2\. Screen should be intelligible from 5 feet away

3\. No "chart junk" or equivalent [1]

4\. Dark grey backgrounds (very dark grey is superior to black)

You will find those characteristics to be true in the systems I mentioned.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartjunk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartjunk)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Good read. Will credit Apple for beginning to move away from this trend. Take the Apple Music app in the iOS10 release...thick, chunky, bold headers, much better contrast.

</comment><comment><USER81> And I thought I was the only one it bothered to no end.

</comment><comment><USER82> this is perfectly readable:

[http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/)

<comment><USER83> The paragraphs on that page become way too long in a full sized browser window on a 27" display.

<comment><USER82> maybe this is for you:

[http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Contrast doesn't bother me. It's the countless popups, and repositioning the content multiple times after loading.

</comment><comment><USER85> RealClearPolitics used to have a great interface. Very usable. Very distinctive. Then they went all modern and ruined it.

</comment><comment><USER86> It's somehow ironic that Instapaper cannot parse this article – like most (all?) Medium articles …

</comment><comment><USER87> I wonder if google's decision to make the text/background ratio lighter is data driven.

</comment><comment><USER88> Lots of strong opinions in this thread...

</comment><comment><USER89> (for firefox in windows)

press alt

select View menu

select Page Style

select No Style

Rejoice

</comment><comment><USER90> I don't really agree that the advice not to use black-on-white implies using light-grey-on-white. It's possible for designers to interpret that advice poorly, as the author shows.

Think of Knuth's warning against "premature optimization" and all the dumb decisions that have been justified on the basis of a poor interpretation of Knuth.</comment>


LinkedIn 'Job Offers' Targeted Aerospace, Military Firms with Malware - <AUTHOR> https://threatpost.com/linkedin-job-offers-targeted-aerospace-military-firms-with-malware/156614/ <comment><USER2> Chinese Intelligence use of LinkedIn to steal intellectual property and recruit spies is well documented [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/world/asia/china- linkedin...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/world/asia/china-linkedin- spies.html)</comment>


Inconsistent/ambigious C# 'default' operator behavior with value types - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dotnet/csharplang/issues/2125 <comment><AUTHOR> What do you think?</comment>


OPNsense 18.7.8 released - <AUTHOR> https://opnsense.org/opnsense-18-7-8-released/ <comment><AUTHOR> Also, from 18.7 release notes:

For 3 and a half years now, OPNsense is driving innovation through modularising and hardening the open source firewall, with simple and reliable firmware upgrades, multi-language support, HardenedBSD security, fast adoption of upstream software updates as well as clear and stable 2-Clause BSD licensing.

Another 6 months passed by ever so quickly! The main goal for 18.7, nicknamed "Happy Hippo", is stability so we have not yet begun to adopt FreeBSD 11.2, but there are several of its Intel NIC driver updates included to bridge the gap until 19.1 comes out. The upgrade also includes a tremendous amount of IPv6 improvements including 6RD support as well as authentication and backup framework consolidation.</comment>


Ask HN: opensource Ruby/Rails (or Python) based web app for source study? - <AUTHOR>

We are building a small startup web app with friends and it's all built in PHP (Czech Nette framework). We all have extensive experience with PHP and the app is pretty nice design-wise (meaning data modeling, separation of concerns etc. It's also beautiful :))
However, after playing with Rails and learning Python a bit, I have my doubts about the choice of platform - Rails / Django with all the generation, pre-baked stuff, built in support for unit testing, supereasy deployment systems like Heroku, and yes, counting the current buzz that generates great support for these environments, I am ready to go for it.
I also built a simple but awesome system for world cup betting for my friends in an afternoon in Rails and hosted it for free on Heroku and it kind of sold me on RAD.
I'd rather change the app now while it's small (it's like 70% finished, no billing or other 3rd party stuff integrated yet).
So I guess I have 3 questions:
1) I need to study good Rails or some Python framework app code, especially data modelling parts, security, forms, validation. I want to do it right first time. Got any? :)
2) What do you guys recommend more - Ruby/Rails/Heroku (or some virtual) or some Python stack?
3) If you think that switching platform from "lots of experience" to "new world" in 70% of app finished is insanity, let me know. I just think that the work would be outweighted by benefits soon (plus the kick of doing something new), but I'm too close to the problem. Our current framework has community only in Czech and I think having international community for your tools is important (I am based in NYC personally).
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Hey miso,

I'm python guy. Ruby and python are very similar, but you know this. It's pretty hard choice which one you should try/use. I choose python because google uses it, there is much bigger community, so there is better chance that you can find better support and devs which can work for you.

I'm using Tornado, which is lightweight webserver/framework with django and sqlmap. It's the best solution for me because of speed and stability. And there is another thing, which speaks for python. AppEngine. It's free and it's build pretty same like ggl's internal framework. Tornado is big copy of appengine's code culture developed by friendfeed guys (now facebook). It's very easy to write applications for it and it's free. There are limitations, but they are everywhere. You not need think about hosting in these days, because if you need, you can rent a cloud for very low amount and run your own server.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the info man :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's not opensource, but I really like a lot of the code in the RailsKit SaaS kit (<http://railskits.com/saas/>). If you're doing a SaaS application that integrates with payment gateways (it sounds like you are), this would be a very well-spent $250, even if only to pick and pull bits of code from it.

There are some good Rails projects with source code listed in this thread as well:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/193632/where-can-i- find-g...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/193632/where-can-i-find-good- examples-of-rails-applications)

I've also worked on a large project based on the open Spree source (which was loosely based on Radiant source back in the day), but it has a lot of things that would be needlessly complex for your application in all likelihood (extensions... ugh), so that would probably confuse you more than help at this stage.

<comment><USER2> If you're looking for payment/billing solutions, there exist more solutions, i really like these two <http://chargify.com/> <http://www.zuora.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> PHP isn't all bad, it's super easy to deploy as well and on a bang-for-the- buck comparison it probably works out a lot cheaper than hosting a rails based app.

The rails stuff would most likely be faster to develop and would be easier to maintain long term, which also translates in to some value.

</comment><comment><USER5> Synopsi (hope you know) told me he's using Python framework named Tornado. Maybe give it try.

</comment><comment><USER6> Gemcutter is the best open source Rails app to learn from that I'm aware of: <http://github.com/rubygems/gemcutter>

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://www.opensourcerails.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks I saw this one, but I was leaning more towards getting opinions from the audience that I respect, that is here :) Plus lots of startup people here, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> <http://opensourcerails.com></comment>


Why Facebook Will Flourish: No Food Fights or Vampires On LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/2477/Why-Facebook-Will-Flourish-No-Food-Fights-or-Vampires-On-LinkedIn.aspx <comment><USER2> heh reading that article made me think the exact opposite.

facebook's application platform feels like spam. i have yet to find more than 2 or 3, out of the many hundreds, applications worth installing.

linkedin is great, i just wish it was a little more 'i'm not a business executive' friendly.</comment>


Cheating Or Mastering? - <AUTHOR> http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2012/08/21/cheating-or-mastering/ <comment><USER2> It's very simple, I think:

If you need these courses for credentialing, you have to lock them down more. Get a credit card, require a payment, and issue a token. Validate the name and address (and maybe store a hash of the SSN), and don't allow duplicates. Treat "cheating" as fraud, and act accordingly.

If you need these courses for lifelong learning, the problem doesn't exist. Let someone take it a million times if that's what they need to do to learn.

<comment><USER3> No, credentialling should be separated from learning. If I need to prove I can safely build a bridge, I should just be tested on that. If I want to learn how to build a bridge, my education should allow me to do whatever I need to do to master the subject.

A huge part of our problems in higher education and hiring have come because we've conflated the two.

<comment><USER2> tl;dr: I think that agrees with what I was saying, for some definitions of the word "separated".

The two activities credentialling and learning are strongly related, because testing can be a good way to give feedback during the learning process, in addition to being the only scalable way to filter masters from novices. As far as I can tell, apprenticeships and co-ops don't scale today. Interesting if they could.

I don't think it harms Udacity to run both - a free tier for people to get their feet wet in CS and explore through a lifetime of learning, and a pro tier that gives the equivalent of a Master of Science with certificate (ie, classes only, no thesis). The free tier allows unlimited retries, has no deadlines, and encourages self-learning. But the pro tier separates the wheat from the chaff a bit, is strict on identity, is strict on plagiarism, gives one-try test grades, and has a minimum bar for certification.

You could probably make the divide between free and pro in a much different manner than I just did. I think I gave a pretty old-school university way of thinking about the problem. Of course they are not confined to think this way.

The materials for both tiers could be very close to each other, to the point where it would be wasteful to separate instruction. That's why liberal education and professional education get smushed together into higher learning today. Maybe Udacity can separate out these two in an interesting way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have little doubt that the problems discussed actually exist, but the biggest reason for the difference is simple economics. Anything free, or at extremely low cost, is over-consumed; hence the many sign-us for the course. But completing a course is NOT free, or usually even cheap, it takes a great deal of time and effort for any but the simplest courses; therefore most end up dropping out when it stops being free.

As for the "cheating versus mastery" part, it depends on why and exactly how he is working it. Simply taking the course over and over could be either; signing up for multiple, simultaneous sessions and picking best scoring sessions is pretty obviously cheating.

<comment><USER5> >signing up for multiple, simultaneous sessions and picking best scoring sessions is pretty obviously cheating.

Why? Taking the course multiple times sequentially is potentially okay, but taking it multiple times in parallel is "obviously cheating"? What's the difference, assuming it is always the same student taking the test?

Isn't practice something to be encouraged, and not punished?

<comment><USER6> Practice is indeed something to be encouraged. Practicing to the test is no better than teaching to the test though. It's fine if there are no outside consequences like job offers, certificates with a score behind them etc. It is cheating though.

<comment><USER7> Its cheating because its against the rules.

The question is as the designer of the rules should you design that to be against the rules?

Practicing to the test is a seperate question and a function of how useful you make the test

Another interesting question is jobs, somewhere once (I don't have time to find a good link) there was talk that the business model behind Udacity was that it could sell more accurate info on students to employers than colleges can

for instance they can track who finishes stuff early vs who waits until the last minute to turn something in

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> At this stage, I don't think it matters if Bob cheated because Udacity can't even verify Bob is actually Bob. It does seem strange that the post doesn't talk about the logical next step, physical testing centers that can verify identity, especially since Udacity already announced their first partnership ([http://udacity.blogspot.com/2012/06/udacity-in- partnership-w...](http://udacity.blogspot.com/2012/06/udacity-in-partnership- with-pearson-vue.html)).

</comment><comment><USER3> As we move into a new world of education, our goal should absolutely be mastery. Trying to group students by arbitrary aspects like "age" don't help education. Forcing students into more advanced topics before they are ready or simply telling them "You suck. give up", isnt't helping, either.

I really like the schools the Khan Academy is working with that use the videos to describe and drill on the topic at home and classroom time to work through the problem sets where the teacher and other students can help.

Combining the mastery of this article with the Khan model means any two students may not be working on the same problems or watching the same videos, but they are all working at the level they understand and are able to progress as a result.

</comment><comment><USER7> been a while since I was in college, but nothing was better for studying than just taking practice tests,

if nothing else, MIT's OCW, and all these online classes create a vast library of practice tests, if I was in college now I would try and sign up for as many parallel classes as I could, just so I had practice tests to work through prior to my test for college</comment>


Apply HN: TheyMadeThat – Non-Spammy Linkedin + IMDB - <AUTHOR> Problem:
1. The traditional resume is out of date. Digitizing it and overlaying a social network on top helps, but underneath it's still an old resume. So what's the problem with the traditional resume? The traditional resumes focus too much on job titles and the companies that gave you those job titles. It just doesn't convey what you actually did well enough.
2. People don't get credit for their work. What do we mean by that? Is everyone still willing to believe that only Steve Jobs and Jony Ive developed the iPhone? What about the hundreds of other engineers, designers, and executives behind it?
Enter TheyMadeThat:
We solve both problems by:
a. Focusing on your work instead of your tenure - even your kids (HR & recruiters) can more easily understand what you do:
http://www.theymadethat.com/people/tony-fadell
b. By giving your work their own profiles, with important details such as history and evolution:
http://www.theymadethat.com/things/nest-learning-thermostat
http://www.theymadethat.com/things/apple-macintosh
To reduce the noise and spam; unlike LinkedIn, your social network on TheyMadeThat is simply the people that you have directly worked with on a project. It doesn't matter if they worked at the same company as you, if you didn't work with them on something then they're not part of your network. Most importantly we are not going to spam you about whether or not you know 'yet another random person'.
Feel free to test drive our alpha: http://theymadethat.com
(Just please don't delete any data or add garbage data to our site. Yes we have database backups as well as version history for everything but we'd rather not have to roll anything back, since we already have mountains of other work to do.) <comment><USER2> This looks nice and clean. However, I don't think there is enough information about the projects a person had worked on. For example, if you search "IBM Research," one project that comes up is Watson. Two people are associated with it, and there is a general description about each person that sounds like it came out of their bio pages. If I was looking to recruit someone, I would like to know a little bit more about what he did for that project, rather than a broad description about machine learning. Linkedin provided a much better description of his role with the Watson project.

Also, I assume this is because the page is still in its early stages, but the page was out of data. One of the persons in question has moved on from IBM Research to another company. This leads me to my second question - is every piece of information on the page entered by the user or do you have some crawler that finds relevant information for each person and adds it automatically? Some type of big data analytics algorithm (graphs or tensor decomposition algorithms maybe) would probably be useful in gathering information so that each person only needs to edit rather than add information for himself one by one. (e.g., google scholar page)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, data is something that we're really lacking at the moment. Ideally as time passes, our users will enter it themselves. However for now to simultaneously perform both QA and UX testing, we're manually entering the data ourselves. This is also really more to have data for demonstrating and showing people the platform as opposed to just writing about it.

As for project data, just like LinkedIn people are free to more or less information for their projects. I'm assuming that people who aren't as well known will be entering a better description than people who are well known. We'll see once we formally launch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the simplification around the three central entities (things, people, organizations). The site seems clean and professional. I think it would be really helpful if you had a LinkedIn OAuth setup to allow users to import their prior "organizations" into your site. That way they would just have give details to the "things" they've worked on (if they hadn't yet been entered by a prior user).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah once we have the basic features fully working, we'll probably move on to adding features focusing on convenience

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a consultant (and this situation is very similar for the growing army of contractors out there), it's very difficult to be able to even say specifically what you have made for clients due to NDAs and other legal obligations. I do like this concept, though, for the less-restricted employees out there.

I am curious how you would see this working for something like finance or accounting, though. There are many jobs where you don't produce visible projects that you can point to, but your work has nonetheless been of high value to your employers.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a good question and before I continue IANAL, and anything in my response could be inaccurate.

This is one example:

[http://www.theymadethat.com/people/ryan- porter](http://www.theymadethat.com/people/ryan-porter)

In particular click on the 'AMA Capital Automated Trading System' project and projects related to 'Palantir Metropolis'. Both products are sensitive in nature and unlike say a Netflix platform, you can't provide as much detail since you can't provide trade secrets or classified information. However as hopefully shown in the link it's still possible to provide a really high level overview that gives a gist of the work you accomplished.

Here's another incomplete example: [http://www.theymadethat.com/people/margaret- hamilton](http://www.theymadethat.com/people/margaret-hamilton)

Look at the 'NORAD Semi-Automatic Ground Environment' project. Another way to get around this is to simple list your involvement in building something but not provide any details of your work.

Still, there may be situations where you can never list your work (and we do comply with DCMA requests). Unfortunately, TheyMadeThat just isn't a magic bullet for every project and person's work situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What sort of QA function is there? How much trust in the data can we have? Can I claim to be the _real_ genius behind Unix, or will someone catch me? Reckless exaggerations in resumes aren't uncommon....

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. How trust worthy is LinkedIn? Does LinkedIn verify the data people enter? I could be wrong but I don't think they verify data either.

"Can I claim to be the real genius behind Unix, or will someone catch me?"

You can initially, but unless there's proof we'll probably add an 'unverified' tag to your submissions that are related to really well known items like 'unix' and other modern marvel.

It is definitely a known issue, most of the industry, that we'll be tackling more in the coming months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How does this compare to [https://makerbase.co](https://makerbase.co) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> The main difference is the (optional) level of detail that TheyMadeThat has over Makerbase:

[https://makerbase.co/m/171236/janl](https://makerbase.co/m/171236/janl)

[http://www.theymadethat.com/people/jan- lehnardt](http://www.theymadethat.com/people/jan-lehnardt)

There's more than just his picture and a listing of what he's built.

This gets really apparent once you dig down into the details of what he's built:

[https://makerbase.co/p/38o67a/couchdb](https://makerbase.co/p/38o67a/couchdb)

[http://www.theymadethat.com/things/apache- couchdb](http://www.theymadethat.com/things/apache-couchdb)

[https://makerbase.co/p/uz051b/couchbase](https://makerbase.co/p/uz051b/couchbase)

[http://www.theymadethat.com/things/couchbase- server](http://www.theymadethat.com/things/couchbase-server)

Unlike Makerbase which just features a sentence, a picture, and a list of people; TheyMadethat has version / evolution history as well as predecessors and successors (of the thing).

There's more that I'll try to show later, like additional details that people can enter on a project by project basis that is unique per person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You have some nice ideas on how to improve on LinkedIn. However, you're not offering functionality which is fundamentally different. Thus, I strongly doubt that you'll be able to overcome network effects.

In my opinion, you need to come up with a unique "hook", a feature unlike anything offered elsewhere. The hook will bring in new customers, and they'll stay for the better experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is you on LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanwporter](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanwporter)

This is you on TheyMadeThat: [http://www.theymadethat.com/people/ryan- porter](http://www.theymadethat.com/people/ryan-porter)

[http://www.theymadethat.com/things/emobie](http://www.theymadethat.com/things/emobie)

<comment><USER7> I thought your first response was a bit confrontational, but this one was very effective. Point taken. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't mind that you said that we'll probably fail; I hear it a lot. Specifically your point about not being able to overcome LinkedIn's current network effect is valid, especially when one of our goals was to try really hard to not spam our users and their contacts. However, when you mentioned that we were fundamentally the same as LinkedIn, I mistook your comment as a troll given that I've provided examples in my post.

"In my opinion, you need to come up with a unique 'hook', a feature unlike anything offered elsewhere."

Depending on how much information you enter or for how long you explore our site, we do have a hook. It's related to giants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> why do you need this instead of wikipedia?

<comment><AUTHOR> So from a feature point of view, Wikipedia's strength is that it's super flexible, which is needed given the huge range of topics that it covers. However the weakness with the wiki format stems from this freedom. Even for pages within the same topic, you will get wildly inconsistent formatting which also leads to inconsistent content e.g. For some notable people, authors will include their education but not for other notable people even when the data is available.

Another problem with Wikipedia is its notability threshold, meaning you have to be famous enough in order to deserve your own entry on Wikipedia. Most people just don't meet this requirement.</comment></comment>


There is no Jail in new Monopoly. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/national-international/Monopoly-Gets-Rid-of-Jail-Time-to-Cater-to-Busy-Kids-216985111.html

<comment><USER2> Jeez, kids have no patience these days.

<comment><USER3> Pretty sure kids (and most adults) never had time for a 4-hour game of Monopoly. Monopoly was never a good game; it had balance issues in addition to being too long.</comment></comment>


How useful is game theory? - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2010/02/too_many_fastballs.php

<comment><USER2> I'd argue that game theory could be tremendously more useful if its practitioners made a better habit of questioning their own assumptions about the situations they model.

In the study cited in the article, the authors (seemingly) assume that pitch and play selection have constant or near constant marginal returns. That is, they assume that if pitchers just threw fewer fastballs, they'd be more successful. There is really no reason from the data presented to assume that. Perhaps pitchers need the fastballs to set up better pitches (they do), and perhaps other pitches wear their arms out faster (curve balls tend to). The author of the main article hints at this possibility in the context of NFL plays, but doesn't address it very seriously.

In general it's dangerous to look at data without a solid understanding of the theory behind that data and then claim to have a better understanding of that field than those who operate in it vocationally.

<comment><USER3> On top of that, they coach has to deal with players morale. If a passing play failed last time, the players may be wary of of another passing play. This gets worse if a pass play has failed a bunch that day.

On top of that, you have to deal with player fatigue, risk of injury, etc...

There are a lot of finite resources (or resources that don't replenish quickly) in real life games.

In football as well (I don't know much about baseball), you may not go for maximum yards in each play. If its fourth down with 1 yard to go, you don't care about getting 12 yards, you one your 1 yard (usually). Assuming each play is like the previous is 100% false.

Improperly applied theories are worse than human instinct. Properly applied theories can be better than human instinct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Game theory is a prescriptive theory, not a descriptive one. It's designed to find the decision that maximizes or optimizes the return, based on the availble information about the circumstances. In doing so, it sometimes arrives at counter-intuitive results. The fact that the results are counter- intuitive should immediately imply that it will not predict behavior. The fact that game theory is a poor predictor of behavior is an object of study for psychology, not for game theory[1].

So yes, game theory is useful for making decisions. It's just not useful as a predictor of human behavior.

[1] Except insofar as if you want to apply it, you have to make different assumptions about the behavior of your opponents. But game theory is still perfectly amenable to adding those constraints.

<comment><USER5> There's some parts of economics that have used game theory as an analysis tool based on the set of assumptions: 1) humans, at least when they engage with markets, are rational actors; and therefore 2) markets will converge to the equilibria specified by game theory. Some of the empirical tests of game theory have had a not-so-hidden subtext of casting doubt on that kind of economics.

<comment><USER6> It's funny, I was thinking about game theory applied to economics earlier, as a result of Dani's essay. So, anyway: I have a certain fondness for game theory as an overarching description of _some_ aspects of economics.

But it doesn't describe the whole picture.

Game theory is great for example if you're trying to understand (or even predict) what'll happen when all parties involved are acting merely in the interests of their profits, and none of them are being especially innovative -- "cheating" in terms of game theory. What will industry Z do when faced with regulatory oversight? Let's ask game theory.

At smaller and smaller scales, game theory breaks down due to the greater and greater influences of other aspects of psychology, sociology, and sciences. For example, a business may not act totally rationally in terms of its profits because one or more individuals is more concerned with the business's image.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Alamar admits that a successful running game contributes to the success of the passing game, since you want the defensive backs to have to worry about the possibility of a run. But he isn't convinced that coaches need to run the ball quite so often._

And I'm not convinced that he fully understands the implications of how the game would change if running plays were much less frequent. I know I don't.

For example, if running plays were extremely rare, then defenses would change accordingly. But then there's an obvious exploit. It's possible that a much lower number of running plays is not an evolutionary stable strategy (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy>).

It's an interesting column with interesting research. I just think the problem is more complicated than even what was presented.

</comment><comment><USER8> If "lab tests" show game theory to not work as a predictor, then the scientists performing the test made incorrect assumptions. This does not however mean that game theory does not work or is not useful.

As far as I know, estimating player's ability to reason is part of game theory. The less rational the player, the more variance in outcomes. Game theory is still useful with less rational players because you can still exclude dominated strategies.

<comment><USER7> That's rather the point: are humans rational agents in circumstances where there are objectively better strategies? If you're interested in more on that question, check out "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've found it to be useful every few weeks in day-to-day situations. It's also useful if you ever design and/or run competitive games/events.

I'm not sure everyone needs to be able to prove the optimality of truthful bidding in Vickery auctions, but a basic understanding of Nash equilibria and imperfect information games is useful for anyone who's not a hermit.

</comment><comment><USER10> Game theory is as useful as you question the problem to be. The problem is _never_ as simple as it seems on the surface when you couch it in game theory terms.

It is _not_ the end-all solution to _anything_. It is often illuminating, and shows how at least some of the problem set acts, but it's a very hard-edged theory that, to work _perfectly_ , requires a hard-edged theoretical problem (like the pirates). Knowledge of it, though, is fantastic at helping predict things. _Helping_ , not doing all the prediction for you. Nothing is ever as clear as theories need.

</comment><comment><USER11> The whole argument here is based on the questionable assumption that coaches and players are actually trying to make decisions that maximize the team's score. An individual might do something that's "perceived to be less risky" because if it doesn't work, he can't be blamed for taking too big a risk.

I don't know a lot about sports, but this is clearly the case in corporate environments where the incentives of the individuals deviate from the good of the corporation.

</comment><comment><USER12> Classical game theory is useful in some circumstances if correctly applied. Correct application, however, requires understanding that your opponent is not perfectly rational. This does not enter into most of the game theory exercises I've read.

On a related note, Combinatorial game theory (John Conway's study of a very restricted set of games) was described as being the most totally useless branch of mathematics. Conway was very proud of this.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Wouldn't natural selection want to endow us with a mind capable of maximizing competitive outcomes?_

As far as I know, this doesn't make any sense. If there are two traits in a population, A and B, and A is better for survival than B, natural selection will generally filter B out of the population.

However, its not likely that a trait for "maximizing competitive advantage" has ever emerged (at least, I wouldn't think so).

</comment><comment><USER13> Looks like the Colts are all over this, with 601 pass attempts vs. only 366 rush attempts, during the 2009 regular season. Has the head coach Jim Caldwell, or more likely Peyton Manning, been reading up on Game Theory?

</comment><comment><USER14> Risk aversion does not have to interfer with rationality like the author seems to suggest. We can fit the utility function to take risk aversion into account.

</comment><comment><USER15> Game theory is great for predicting the behavior of game theorists (see telecom auctions).</comment>


Easy change log generation and close interaction with GitHub - <AUTHOR>

Love the idea of code centric development work flows and automation.  Such as generator: https://github.com/skywinder/github-changelog-generator or  todos: https://github.com/naholyr/github-todos <comment><USER2> Yes, [https://github.com/skywinder/github-changelog- generator](https://github.com/skywinder/github-changelog-generator) is my tool. And I already post about it( [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9237038](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9237038) ). But thanks for mention :)</comment>


Show HN: Monitoring the Bitcoin network with Bitcoin-top - <AUTHOR> https://bitcoin.electronrelocation.com <comment><AUTHOR> I've been developing and running this monitoring software for quite a while, and recently got around to making it ready for distribution.

You can run this yourself - the software is AGPLv3 and scripts are included to start the containers as necessary and run your own Bitcoin node.

A screenshot of an older version, on the off-chance that the demo site dies from the traffic;

[https://electronrelocation.com/img/bitcoin- top.png](https://electronrelocation.com/img/bitcoin-top.png)</comment>


How Bitcoin Works (Video) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9jOJk30eQs

<comment><USER2> Great video! Easy to understand how Bitcoin works.</comment>


Could hacking be done in the public interest? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2011/07/could-hacking-be-done-in-public.html

<comment><USER2> You can't merely say that an illegal act is justified because it was conducted to expose another crime (or immoral action, or what-have-you). "Suspicions", even commonly held ones, do not suffice as burden of proof -- hence Constitutional amendments on unwarranted search and seizure, or outcry over racial profiling and illegal immigration. Can I break into my neighbors house because I think he's beating his wife? If not, then why is his computer system not sacrosanct as well? And if so, then aren't we advocating vigilantism? And if he is, in fact, guilty, then am I absolved of B&E? What if he's innocent; am I protected by the "purity" of my purpose?

Conversely, the whistleblower regulation comparison is an interesting one, though my understanding is that it's designed to expose corruption where there is no external proof: you have to be an insider to have access to (or even aware of) the incriminating information. But in an age where information is public, and so too may be the indicators of crime. And in that case, might an outsiders' crime (e.g., hacking) parallel that of an insiders' (e.g., breach of confidential information), and, if conducted for the same purpose and with the same outcome, be afforded the same protection under the law? But this raises the question: if the information is public, then shouldn't we expect the authorities, if the suspicion is sufficient for a warrant, to conduct their own (legal) inquiry? Is this a simple failing of law enforcement? Or (tinfoil hat time) corruption at the "highest levels"? Or a fundamental shift in power (and, perhaps, responsibility) to the common man and the court of public opinion?

Heavy questions. Could it be done in the public interest? Of course. Is it morally (or legally) justified? Perhaps. But maybe the real question: are the so-called hacker/advocacy groups somehow noble in their purpose? This, I doubt -- at least to date.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Are the so-called hacker/advocacy groups somehow noble in

> their purpose? This, I doubt -- at least to date.

I totally agree with this. We've seen a number of groups (Anonymous, LulzSec) claiming to be noble but exposing tons of private information on 'innocent' individuals with the flimsy justification that that was showing that companies had poor security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would argue that the opening up of HPGary's emails was most definitely in the public interest even though not legal. We learned that private, unaccountable security firms were being contracted by the government and corporations to circumvent the checks and balances to power that the US Constitution and Bill of Rights provide us as citizens. Also, it showed that HPGary was willing to try to intimidate journalists into disown their positions and not defending organizations they felt a moral responsibility to protect: [http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/02/11...](http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/02/11/campaigns) .

More generally we are in a time of unprecedented attacks on the ability of the media to perform its role as a check to Power of all sorts:

(Guy who exposed waste/corruption in NSA getting constantly harassed) [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_mayer)

(NYT writer subpoenaed before grand jury to give up source) [http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national- security/rep...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national- security/reporters-ordeal-continues-in-convoluted-cia- case/2011/07/03/gHQAbFDAyH_story.html)

(ATF agent fired for exposing that the ATF was actually selling Druglords guns) [http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/06/the- obam...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/06/the-obama- administrations-whistleblower-problem/241262/)

(bit from The Corporation about Fox news bowing to Monsanto's desire to cover up the dangers of rGBH in milk) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL1pKlnhvg0>

The more the government and Power in general tries to cut citizens off from the information we need to make informed decisions the more activists are going to try to get this info by extrajudicial means. The farther we slide into a world where Corporate power and Government power no longer act as checks to one another and form a united front against anyone who challenges their blanket of unchecked power the more important it will be for some force(s) to stand up to them on behalf of the people's rights, including their right to information.

I'm not justifying what News of the World did, there is no moral basis for playing with the emotions of the family of that poor girl in order to get an edge on more moral news gathering organizations. Hacking is a tool just like leaking is a tool. Both are used for good and bad. The problem is when both are used solely by the people in power to control to hurt the little guy.

</comment><comment><USER4> I was kind of disappointed after the first paragraph, when I realized this wasn't talking about the kind of hacker I thought, as in Hacker News.

If it were, it surely would have mentioned some awesome projects like:

Hack Tyler <http://hacktyler.com/>

Civic Commons <http://civiccommons.org/>

Code for America <http://codeforamerica.org/>

and

Open Plans <http://openplans.org/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Private citizens, at least in the US, are protected from government intrusion without the executive branch proving probable cause to the judicial branch. This is a part of the checks and balances which keep our government from becoming a totalitarian state, no matter how much it seems to want to. No matter how illogical and unreasonable it seems to reject concrete evidence of wrongdoing because said evidence was improperly obtained, such procedure is absolutely vital in order to keep from becoming a police state.

While hacktivism can serve the useful purpose of keeping corporations and public officials honest, it also violates this fundamental tenet of our free society. While it seems very poetic and underdogish for a small hacker group to bring a huge, corrupt corporation to public humiliation, it is at the same time a terrifying incidence of vigilante justice. These corporations _must_ be protected from this sort of thing by the law for the same reason that improperly-obtained evidence _must_ be inadmissible in a court of law.

<comment><USER6> The counterargument, as presented by blendergasket below, comes when the situation is reversed and the government is the target. Consider the recent #antisec releases as a sort of first-amendment freedom of the press, or the attacks on HBGary as people exercising their second amendment right to keep and bear arms.

<comment><USER5> Is the solution then to legalize such intrusions? It seems like it would be far too difficult to differentiate between beneficial and malevolent operations. It would also be extremely difficult for a company to dispute falsified evidence presented by would-be hacktivists. If anon had falsified the HBGary records, would we believe Aaron Barr if he said the data were not correct? How could he suitably prove the non-existence of such data to the public without revealing an inappropriate amount of internal information?

I'm not saying such intrusions and releases are not useful or never reveal important information. But it's sort of like a Crime and Punishment situation. Even if the releases reveal important information about government or corporate corruption which would have otherwise gone unchecked, we cannot officially and legally condone these attacks.

<comment><USER6> A blanket legalization would be bad, I agree. The best approach that I can think of is to set up a way for these releases to be grounds for a warrant. Instead of releasing those credit card numbers to the internet, you send them to the police along with how you got them; the police verify your method and data (maintaining chain of custody along the way) and proceed to court.

There are a few improvements to this method. One would be to fine corporations with poor data security, then using the money to reward crackers for bringing poor security to the attention of the police instead of stealing credit cards. Another would be to get the media involved, using freedom-of-the-press and transparency to keep the government honest.

<comment><USER5> This still doesn't really address your concern about the government, however. And even though at some point in our future it will likely become important (assuming it isn't so already) for the individual to be able to have some sort of recourse against increasingly rapacious and legally invulnerable corporations, the idea of legally condoning the sort of attacks and breaches we've seen recently still seems a bit too wild-west for my tastes.

<comment><USER6> The second half of that was pretty much what I was getting at; I was presenting a way for people to legally demonstrate that a corporation or government entity is breaking the law. If the government changes the laws to make its spying legal ( _cough_ patriotact _cough_ ) the only real solution is for the average user to stop being an idiot long enough to learn, use, and demand good crypto.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It could be... The NIC servers of Govt of India were hacked by Anonymous India (#OpIndia) to mark protest against the huge corruption in India

[http://www.thehackernews.com/2011/06/anonymous-india- opindia...](http://www.thehackernews.com/2011/06/anonymous-india-opindia- strikes-again.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes, with permission. It's called white hat. The way the (UK) law is phrased, permission makes the difference between legal and illegal, there isn't a grey area. The recent hacks, how else could they have been done? Does it really matter that Lulzsec did it rather than criminals who would sell the details on? This way guaranteed continuous reason/blame/motive, which is good press- wise.

</comment><comment><USER9> To answer this question: Yes. And it happens at the NSA everyday when they are monitoring suspected criminals whether they are terrorists planning attacks, foreign spies conducting industrial or economic espionage, drug dealers trafficking banned substances, pedophiles, and other similar criminal activities.

This should come as no surprise to anyone that the NSA or FBI does contain the money, manpower, and legal authority to do things 'in the public interest'.

Patriotic hackers are a different matter and though they tend to hide within the underground, they often times are contracted by authorities to gather information or sabotage other more devious hackers.

EDIT: And of course, someone has to downvote me because they disagree with me pointing out what is already happening. I don't understand how you can disagree with facts.

<comment><USER10> Wait, so if the government breaks the law (I'm assuming you meant illegal hacking, otherwise never mind) they must be doing it for the right reasons and it is great and admirable and wonderful.

But if private individuals illegally hack someone, not for profit, but to release information about cronyism, corruption, lax security, then those private hackers are just schmucks?

This is then similar to how if the government tortures a suspect, that's OK because he might really be guilty. But obviously torture is wrong if anyone else does it?

<comment><USER9> No, I'm clearly talking about legal hacking. That's the whole point of "public interest".

<comment><USER10> Do you need a court order to legally hack, like a search warrant?

<comment><USER9> Under wiretapping laws, yes. But unlike some search warrants, they don't have to be presented to the person under investigation nor do the warrants have to be confirmed to be in use by authorities because that would compromise the investigations.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cod's Continuing Decline Linked to Warming Gulf of Maine Waters - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/science/cods-continuing-decline-traced-to-warming-gulf-of-maine-waters.html <comment><AUTHOR> More like extreme warming: "From 2004 to 2013, the scientists found, temperatures rose faster in the Gulf of Maine than in 99.9 percent of the global ocean. "It was a magnitude of temperature change that few ocean ecosystems have ever experienced," said Andrew J. Pershing, chief scientific officer at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute and the lead author of the study."</comment>


Two internships in different fields. Help me decide. - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZgN8Ckw-f72xeRyL5XXjQ9DowkmxQ1VN0wJlPsvIh6U/edit I generally lurk on HN, but I've decided to try and ask HN.
Please read it and help out if you can.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZgN8Ckw-f72xeRyL5XXjQ9DowkmxQ1VN0wJlPsvIh6U/edit <comment><USER2> The one that isn't amazon.

Honestly I dont think anyone here can decide for you. Its something you need to decide yourself.

You may get some anecdotes here but mostly all you'll get is personal preferences.

My advice flip a coin. If your happy with the result you know which one you want to really do, if you're unhappy, you still know which one you really want to do.

</comment><comment><USER3> I know someone that worked at Raven, everything they ever told me about it amounted to it not being a good place.

Stick with Amazon - Seattle has far more to eat, see and do than Madison ever will.

</comment><comment><USER4> Take the Raven job, nobody will care that you didn't work at Amazon when you talk with passion about what you did over the summer at Raven.</comment>


Ask HN: Struggling to pay rent this month. Can I help you with a gig? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN, long-time contributor with ~1500 karma; throwaway for obvious reasons.
When I used to see these posts, I always was thankful for the position I was in. I never hesitated to send a personal message with my regards and best wishes, and most of the time I'd include a small bit of help. I'm hoping this all comes full-circle, because I desperately need it.
Let's not make this about financial planning (it's otherwise pretty good) but a client has just told me (after telling me they were waiting on a third-party...) they're unable to pay their invoice this month and it's put a strain on me.
About 2 years ago I had an excess of $100k in my bank account. As someone in their early-mid 20s, I was doing very good. I don't live lavishly or have super nice things; I'm pretty frugal and basic. But after some hospital expenses and some very bad luck, I'm down to less than $1k in my accounts, and my assets are non-existent as, well, they never really existed in the first place.
My stack is Ruby/Rails, HTML/CSS/jQuery (yeah, I know), and Sidekiq for background jobs. I can integrate any API or build them quickly. I've scraped more websites than I haven't, and I'm pretty good at it. A JS framework (likely Vue or React) is in my New Years Resolution. Point being, I can get things done and get them done right. I can also consult on SEO, copywriting, marketing, and a couple laughs if need be.
I'd prefer to stay publicly anonymous; I can send over some samples of work via email and we can jump on a call/Skype/hangout/whatever.
I know this won't be met with some of the kindest thoughts; remember, everyone has a story. Some of them are prettier than others. At the end of the day, we're all human.
Again, to reiterate, I'm not asking for hand-me-outs; I can't morally accept them. I'm not asking for a loan. I'm asking if I can start hacking away on that project you've been putting off.
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com (forwards to my personal) <comment><USER2> So I wouldn't advocate abusing this, but...

If you have a Freshbooks account and you use it for sending your clients invoices, Freshbooks has recently partnered with a company called Fundbox which provides advances on your outstanding invoices. I'm not sure what kinds of qualifications you may need to be offered this service (not sure if account age or previous activity plays a role, I've used Freshbooks for a long time before this advance service was put in place), but any invoice under $1K is typically available for an advance immediately. Repayment is on a weekly basis and the fee is rather reasonable compared to the payday loan and title loan services you see advertised to "help" the desperate. You can add anyone as a client with nothing more than a name and an email address and you can send them an invoice instantly. The account set up for Fundbox is literally just connecting your bank account for them to ACH to you (inbound is about 2 days) and for them to automatically pull their weekly payment out. And, you can repay the entire loan at any time with no penalty.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can I ask why are you interested in 1 gig and not a full time job?

Your skills seem pretty much what 2 out of 3 companies in WWR[1] are looking for. If your skills are what you say they are, you'll get hired in no time IMHO.

I wish you best of luck and happy new year.

[1] [https://weworkremotely.com/](https://weworkremotely.com/) and SO careers are the best job-boards IMHO.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can't pass a background check, and this is time-sensitive. I also like my independence since, in times past, things have been difficult to hang onto long-term due to said baggage.

<comment><USER3> Okay, fair enough.

I wish you all the best and a Happy New Year!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Edit: [http://pastebin.com/raw/UnjYhUbT](http://pastebin.com/raw/UnjYhUbT)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been in the same boat as you very recently (top client unexpectedly had to let me go because of low budget, when I was confident it would be fine through the early part of 2016). And I quite understand struggling to pay rent all of a sudden. Not fun! All I can say is, it gets better! Network like crazy, reach out to everyone you know: old clients, former coworkers, even people who offer the same services you do. You might be able to pick up work they're overloaded with, or talk to a past client at just the right time when they're ready to do another project. Also as other people have said, there are great job boards out there (WeWorkRemotely, etc.). Another thing you can try doing is blogging about some of the work you've done, problems you've solved, etc. -- never hurts to include content marketing in your "personal brand" efforts.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't have any work that I can offer, but I wish you the best of luck. I know the fear you might feel about not being able to pay your bills. Chin up!

If I happen to hear of anything, I will ping you.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm afraid I will be facing the same problems here pretty soon. Have you tried calling/walking in to any local businesses that don't have websites set up? $1,000 for a simple static website might look like a bargain.

Best wishes, and good luck.

</comment><comment><USER7> In case you are decide to look for an actual (remote) job as opposed to a short gig, you could try this list[1] of sites that aggregate remote positions.

[1] [https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job#job- board...](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job#job-boards)

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't have anything to offer but I hope opportunities come your way through this; it's not easy asking for help, even anonymously, with the unhealthy way that money is linked to status and pride.

Sorry if this is unhelpful, but what do you have in terms of LinkedIn and other front-facing portfolios (including Github)? I've been out of the Rails job market for a few years now but I still get recruiters who are obviously autoscraping LinkedIn and Github (literally, for any repo that is classified as Ruby) and doing cold emails. I don't know if a full time gig is something that's possible for you but it certainly won't hurt to keep those low- maintenance nets open for the occasional legitimate recruiter doing keyword searches.

</comment><comment><USER9> Been in the same boat and will try to help so sent you a mail.

What helped for me was intensive real-life networking; it changed my life. You cannot imagine what is there to pick from in this world if you speak to enough people.

</comment><comment><USER10> How high is your rent?

<comment><USER11> Too damn high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> That sucks - I had a similar issue back when I was contracting; it happens to the best of us.

Unfortunately, I don't have a project for you, but I wish you luck! Keep at it, you'll pull through!

</comment><comment><USER13> send me a copy of your resume `ramon at 3dr dot com`

</comment><comment><USER14> How much is your rent? I know you don't want to accept money, but I may be able to send a donation.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't have a project, but I wish the best of luck and hope things turn out better for you!

</comment><comment><USER16> hackhands.com is good at fast payouts for what you are describing.

<comment><USER17> On an anecdotal note: I gave a couple of their tests a try just for fun. They really need to start testing actual coding knowledge instead of encyclopedia knowledge of things like "what does this random git flag do? ANSWER WITHIN 10 SECONDS!"

It felt like I was back taking a PHP certification exam from the 90's. I much prefer dealing with companies that gives live-coding exams instead of these sorts.

<comment><USER18> My rule: anything that can be answered in 10 seconds of Googling is a bad interview question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Have you worked with Redux/React at all?

<comment><USER20> > A JS framework (likely Vue or React) is in my New Years Resolution.

Looks like if he has any exp, it's minimal at best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've had good success with gigster.com

<comment><USER22> i use sendgigs.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hope things turn around for you.

</comment><comment><USER24> Can you provide links to your profiles on LinkedIn, Github and Stackoverflow?

<comment><USER25> Can you read?

>I'd prefer to stay publicly anonymous; I can send over some samples of work via email and we can jump on a call/Skype/hangout/whatever.

<comment><USER26> As someone that used to post to HN under an old handle many years ago, and as someone who has been lurking for even longer than that, I must humbly say that the attitude of the community here has degraded significantly.

<comment><USER27> why would you say such?

<comment><USER28> Nobody would ask questions like, "Can you read?" before, and the guy above that wouldn't be downvoted for asking about profile information.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the best online purchase and checkout experience - <AUTHOR> Especially for consumer products (clothing and hardware etc). <comment><USER2> Amazon. I buy a lot there so it has my details already. Sometimes lets me short-circuit with "one-click" ordering. Saves my secondary addresses (I often buy things on behalf of family and have it shipped to them). Review system is easy. Usually my questions are already answered in the question area or reviews. Etc etc.

Basically I can do all of my comparison/shopping on Amazon and most of the time, I haven't missed out on anything.

The other online place I shop the most is Ebay. Unsurprising probably, but I'm shopping ebay for vintage objects (usually tools). Nobody else can compare in that category.

</comment><comment><USER3> Amazon definitely.

</comment><comment><USER4> Amazon by far.</comment>