Why I wear the same shirt every day - <AUTHOR> http://waxman.me/why-to-wear-the-same-clothes-every-day <comment><USER2> You aren't Steve Jobs.

I would give the opposite advice. The easiest thing you can do to make people like you more, trust you more and respect your opinion more is to dress well and appropriately.

Job's outfit and Zuckerberg's hoodies work the same way (whether that was the intention or not, I think not). The same part of human brains that stupidly subconsciously judges people by the way they are dressed is doing the same thing with them. They show status by being able to openly reject the standard social expectations around clothes.

So call it a psychology hack or a life hack or whatever but if you are a founder of a startup then you are meeting and needing to impress a fair number of people. You can handicap yourself because you are convinced that it "shouldn't matter" or "this is the startup uniform" or you can be pragmatic about it and gain an edge for relatively minor effort.

<comment><USER3> You aren't Steve Jobs.

\- So what, who says he can't emulate Steve Jobs?

<comment><USER3> I say it. People don't like emulations of other people, especially if the "emulators" consider some superficial thing like this part of their success.

\- I call that BS. That is your small thinking and so you should limit yourself to it. I say go emulate successful people and do what you want to do.

<comment><USER4> This is cargo cultism. Aping dress habits isn't going to imbue you with the attributes that led to success for Jobs.

The lesson a would-be successful person should learn from Jobs is to focus on what's _essential_. If you become so distracted with trying to copy minor habits, you've missed the point. And Steve Jobs was successful far before he started wearing the same thing all the time, anyway.

<comment><USER5> That wasn't the reason given though. He didn't say he did it _just because_ Steve Jobs did it. He said that he did it for the _same reason_ that Steve Jobs did it...which is that he doesn't have to think about what to wear.

<comment><USER3> atlast someone got it, thanks WayneDB

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd like to see a life so absurdly optimized for productivity that the maximum 10 seconds you save every morning by not having to decide what to wear is worth even mentioning.

The next post will probably be about opening doors more effectively, like Kramer, to save a couple of seconds off the time spent opening doors each day.

<comment><USER7> It's not so much "saving 10 seconds" as it is "avoiding cognitive context switching". If you happen to be thinking about something important, you don't want to interrupt that thought process to look through your clothes and decide what to wear, or what to have for breakfast, or which car to drive, or any number of other trivial decisions. If you can replace those with automatic non-decisions ("take the top shirt out of the drawer") then you can maintain focus.

<comment><USER8> oh lord..what about trying to be human for atleast some moments of the day instead of behaving like a production robot ?

I bet we have to face hundreds if not thousands of those trivial decisions each day and most arent reoccurring all the time so you cant automate them...

<comment><USER7> We also choose to avoid making those sorts of decisions when we're focusing on more important things, preferably putting them off for other times. For example, it's common for coders to close their door, not check their e-mail, etc. when they want to be "in the zone".

When I'm getting ready in the morning, I tend to be focused on the important things. In my case, as a stay-at-home dad, the important things tend to be plans for teaching my son and helping him with his disability. I've arranged the rest of my morning to be as automatic as possible so I don't have to think about what clothes to wear or what to have for breakfast.

Incidentally, my son and I were just walking around with buckets on our heads pretending to be robots. Counting robots, not production robots :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "[on Steve Jobs] He wore that famous black mock turtleneck ... not to make a fashion statement"

If you hire Issey Miyake to make a custom turtleneck, then you are making a fashion statement. Also, he wore black for a reason - it's a sophisticated, serious, and confident color (or lack thereof) - which was a fashion statement.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. To interpret that as a "now I have more time to deal with other things" motive fails to acknowledge the fact that Jobs was one of the most prolific critics of subtle details. If he truly had more important things to care about than his wardrobe, he would have worn whatever he had any given day. It may not be fashion, but he established a brand.

<comment><USER11> I would be highly entertained if someone actually established a line of clothing catering to Steve Jobs wannabes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady >> "He wore that famous black mock turtleneck, Levi's, and New Balances not to make a fashion statement, but almost for the complete opposite reason: so he didn't have to think about what to wear"

If I recall correctly that's not true. He actually asked a Japanese designer to create a uniform for Apple employees. The employees didn't like the idea so Jobs decided if they wouldn't have one he would anyway and got the turtleneck designed.

<comment><USER12> These two claims are not in contradiction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Svbtle describes itself as an "invite-only network of people who strive to produce great content." This post is hardly the product of any such striving. Sure, it's a nice little tidbit, but Michael Waxman could have easily conveyed the same message shy of 140 characters.

<comment><USER14> An invite-only network that you can apply to[1]. Those two things don't make sense together.

[1]: <https://svbtle.com/apply>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> There aren't many things you read that actually change your life, but many years ago I read _Days of Atonement_ by Walter Jon Williams, and the (asshole) main character had a little motto about people who wear advertising on their t-shirts (etc.) -- "assholes always advertise". To this day, I will think twice about wearing anything that could be construed as advertising.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Q: What do you call a man who dresses well? A: Grown-up."

As for the advertising, I think a well-dressed young(ish? -- the assumption being younger, single people are more likely to use Grouper) person engaging with potential customers in casual conversation at the popular coffee shops and lunch hangouts in your area would go a good deal further than schlepping to work in the same shirt each day. However, I haven't lived in New York and perhaps the people there are less open to casual conversation.

</comment><comment><USER17> Always Jobs? Einstein often wore the same thing, even rumored to have several copies of the same outfit. Cornel West has been regularly doing this for 40 years. Jobs was hardly unique, and certainly not first. The only thing Jobs seemed to add is what he always did, elevate it to an obsessive compulsion.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wear the same clothes every day because I don't really interface with the public that much and because I've been doing it since I was a little kid. I got made fun of it a lot in school but sooner or later people came to accept it. If you ask me now why I did it back then, I wouldn't know (or at least I didn't think about it enough to think about "why," I just did it).

If you asked me now though, I'd say that aside from appeasing societal norms, there's no point in changing your outer shell incessantly. Clothes don't really get that dirty after a day or two of normal wear, and changing them all the time seems pointless to me. While some people may brand this as unhygienic, I respectfully disagree. I also don't care if other people want to change their clothes every day, I just don't care to do it myself.

That said, there was a lot more to Steve Jobs than his clothing and habits. I don't suggest anybody change their behavior to emulate him, especially on what I consider a weak argument. If you want to wear the same shirt every day, do it for your own reasons, not because of some conjecture you have on what statement Jobs was trying to make.

</comment><comment><USER19> Without any offense, how/why can a post like this make it to the #2 spot in hacker news? I'd like the top #5 or top #3 entries in hacker news be for truly relevant, worth either reading and studying news or entries no?

<comment><USER20> Slow news day, nothin else seemed to be of much mention....

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Strage reaction here. I'd assume that the thought of dressing the same every day has at least crossed most people's minds on HN. It's an engineer's (lazy man's?) solution to a common problem. For me that problem has more to do with clothes management and what to do when your favorite outfit isn't available than with the paradox of choice.

As for what to wear, if you're in a startup you should wear your logo as much as possible; asshole or not.

Pro tip for people who have trouble finding matching socks in the morning:

1\. Donate all your socks to charity

2\. Buy a single pair of socks you really like many times

<comment><USER22> Yep. I've been more or less this for years, although I have a white set and a dark (black or navy blue) set.

As soon as the current set starts to show wear (holes, ripping out when putting them on), I demote all the socks in that set to cleaning rags and buy a dozen or so new pairs, all exactly alike.

I don't think it's especially wasteful -- assuming the socks are chosen at random they should all be about equally worn, and I do recycle the old ones for cleaning, shoe polishing, and so on. They're actually great for that, especially if you turn them inside out so the rough texture is on the outside.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Writing that blog post just removed any time saved from wearing the same shirt every day.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have a closet shelf full of jeans. I also have hangers full of short-sleeve button-up work shirts. I don't do much thinking about getting dressed - I grab a jean and grab a shirt, based on what color I feel like today.

To each their own I guess. I don't begrudge you for wearing your own company's shirt every day. But let's be honest - it's 100% advertising, and 0% optimization.

</comment><comment><USER25> Personally, I've been doing this for the last 6 years and I love not having to think about what to wear each morning. It's liberating not to have to think about whether you wore the same thing too recently or whether a coworker will be wearing the same outfit. Wearing the same clothes every day (i.e. clean identical copies) seems to work well when the clothing is neutral and professional. It works as a casual uniform, and uniforms are perfectly acceptable as long as they are not required. Friends may comment at first, but as long as it's not offensive, coworkers get used to it pretty quickly (in my experience). And since few people at my organization do this, I become unique by wearing non-unique clothing! So far, no detrimental effects -- of course, I'm not trying to attract/impress potential friends with my style or facilitate socializing, so maybe that's why it works for me.

</comment><comment><USER26> Maybe the only reason why Steve Jobs wore a black turtle neck every day is because without it, he'd never be able to use an Apple computer due to the high gloss screen reflections?

Personally, I think staring at my reflection all day long is a bit vain, but of course, to each their own.

</comment><comment><USER27> Kinda surprising to see this much negativity about this idea only three months after it was discussed before: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4084095> The comments there seem a bit less negative I think.

I started doing this shortly after that post, although I'd been thinking about it for longer. I have to say, my decision had nothing to do with saving time or context switching or Steve Jobs (even though what I picked, black t-shirts and jeans, is evocative of Jobs).

I made this decision because thinking about what to wear has always involved a little anxiety for me. I grew up never wearing the right thing, and was bullied and taunted a little bit for it, along with the usual things nerds are tormented about. Even though I'm no longer a socially outcast geek in high school, thinking about what to wear and how to dress gave me discomfort. Now it doesn't. I bet a lot of people who decide to go this route have similar feelings, of varying degrees.

I'm sure this won't last forever, and as I get older or work in a different, less forgiving company, I may need to adapt my "uniform" to be a bit more formal, but I really think people shouldn't take it so seriously here. Obviously if you're selling your startup every day, you might want to think about what you wear, although the OPs approach of wearing a branded t-shirt doesn't seem terrible.

But in general, we're hackers, we should be judging each other by our skills, not what we wear.

</comment><comment><USER28> I see no harm to wearing a logo to represent one's company everyday. I also do not see any real value added. I understand that it can be advertisement. To me that is a quiet a stretch, unless thousands of people see that logo daily.

On the other hand, wearing the same thing everyday does save time and brain effort. I wear the same thing everyday and have done so for about two years. Technically my shirts are different, but I have narrowed down my options considerably. I own five pairs of the same pants(outlier; black). I have twelve button up shirts in plain colors (four are white, four are blue, two are grey, two are green). I either wear a NAU blazer or a black light jacket. I have three of the same sneakers and one pair of dress of shoes.

Everyday I wake up grab a pair of pants and a shirt. Depending on the weather, I can grab a jacket or not.

I consider it a type of lifehack. I do not think it is for everyone. It really simplified that part of my life.

</comment><comment><USER29> My solution to having to choose what to wear was very simple. When I got a little extra cash I reinvented my wardrobe using slacks and shirts (3 suits also, but that's for special occasions that require them). The trick was to get clothes that mainly can be worn interchangeably. Now I just grab a pair of slacks, a random shirt and I'm sure it'll look good because I spent the time to actually analyze my wardrobe woes when buying all the clothes.

On the weekends I just grab a tshirt and a pair of jeans at random, just like teenagers that are uninterested in making fashion statements. Just like the college student with 4 tshirts and 1 jeans that doesn't care about what he's wearing. Just like I do on the weekdays with my more "serious" clothes.

ALSO, people you can't mock the turtleneck thing. Even the top secret spys do it. Tactical turtlenecks anyone?

</comment><comment><USER30> I suspect all the time he saved by not having to think about what to wear he more than spent in thinking about how to justify wearing the same thing all the time, and writing blog posts about it, etc.

I don't know why Jobs always dressed the same, but it could quite reasonably have been to "brand" his image. He was, after all, the front man image of Apple.

Jobs was famous for controlling every detail of his presentations, it's inconceivable that he would not extend this attention to his dress.

</comment><comment><USER31> >I rep a Grouper t-shirt every, single day.

The comma there confuses me.

<comment><USER11> It is permissible to use commas to indicate a verbal pause.

<comment><USER32> It's not good writing. There is no authority on language, so "permissible" has nothing to do with it. Writing guidelines are drawn from what makes the communication effective and pleasing to the reader; often this amounts to "everyone else does it this way," which is where the "rules" you learn in elementary school come from. That said, misuse of commas can be very distracting as they can convey a variety of syntactical operations which readers must parse. They are the most distracting punctuation when used in an unexpected manner. In this case the author would do better to use "Every. Single. Day."

/pedantry (few threads seem more appropriate for it)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> _There are two reasons why I do this:

            I don't have to think about what to wear.
            Free advertising.

The first reason I stole from Steve Jobs_

Really? It says something about lack of imagination, that's for sure. Ironic that one would have to steal such a thought. Also, Advertising != modesty and lack of adornment. So this is sort of un-original and missing the point.

</comment><comment><USER34> Why I don't wear the same shirt everyday: I think shopping for clothes is fun. I'm not awake enough in the morning to do anything but pick out clothes. My company doesn't have branded T-Shirts?

I guess if I tried to do a start-up, it would surely fail as I stare bleary eyed into my drawer of shirts, having just been distracted from the most important idea I've ever had.

</comment><comment><USER35> Despite being a great business person, many of Steve Job ideas were just plain stupid (like for most other human beings). What is funny as that people seem to think in hindsight that even his stupid ideas are great. Don't be a victim of this disease: there is no good reason for wearing the same cloths every day, whatever somebody else have told you.

</comment><comment><USER36> Inspired by Sony, Jobs created a uniform for Apple employees (to bond them) but the idea was poorly received and thereby, scrapped. He ended up wearing the uniforms, which 'grew' on him. Even though he later justified his uniform as convenience, their primary intent wasn't to free up his cognitive cycles for Apple.

</comment><comment><USER37> I have got an idea from this discussion. What about an app which suggests what to wear on a given day? You somehow scan all your clothes into it and then it decides based on the weather, what you wore yesterday, your schedule etc. what is the best fit for the day.

</comment><comment><USER38> I wear mostly the same clothes every day. I have a bunch of plain t-shirts in various colors (mostly shades of gray, but colors too), a few band t-shirts I wear occasionally. 4 slightly different colored pairs of levis, and either navy/red or black/blue shoes. Other than that, a black hoodie and a denim jacket over that if the weather is cool (usually at night). I've got a bunch of button up t-shirts I'll wear for a night out and occasionally at work.

It's simple, clean and standardized, but I can still look different everyday. I can pull an alternate when the time is appropriate and dress up nicer, like for a date. Most importantly it's unoffending to the eye.

A google/grouper/conference t-shirt is offending to the eye. I tend to have a whole lot of preconceived notions when I see someone wear those shirts, usually it's related to their lack of a social life.

</comment><comment><USER39> so if there are any similarities in your "personal brand" and your company's brand, I can assume that you lack creativity, are hesitant to try new design and features, and that your look/feel will soon stagnate?

</comment><comment><USER40> "Startups are hard. Every little bit helps."

Why talk about and wear a shirt for your startup and not even put a link to it? Nobody knows what your startup is, write for an audience that doesn't know you.

<comment><USER41> >> Nobody knows what your startup is,

That's the catch - for the shirt to be effective as advertising, people who see it need to know what it is.

In the absence of any previous knowledge of the startup, most people would simply assume that "Grouper" is a clothing company, or has something to do with fish products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> If it comes naturally to you then it works for you. Otherwise, you spend same amount of thinking time, every morning, that you have to wear same shirt to save time or promote.

</comment><comment><USER43> I have several dress shirts that all go well with an arsenal of sweaters -- I did the same shirt every day for a few years, but my partner insisted I switch it up.

This is my compromise.

<comment><USER44> Business partner or personal partner?

<comment><USER43> Personal partner. She was right too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> <http://artofmanliness.com/category/dress-grooming/>

</comment><comment><USER46> I actually like the advice. The OP does not mention that one should not dress well but merely not wasting time to mix-n-match.

</comment><comment><USER3> nice idea but why not mix it with other stuff..your company hat, watch, tie, jeans etc etc...laptop sticker...so one way or the other you convey the message and look good and feel good too!

</comment><comment><USER47> Because of some misguided idea that picking a shirt to wear takes too long off of your morning? Hint: unless you're Lady Gaga, it does not.

</comment><comment><USER48> _"The first reason I stole from Steve Jobs. "...The second reason was inspired by Larry and Sergey._

Go to a freaking store and buy a bunch of t-shirts, you can get them for as little as $5 each, if money is an issue. Copying Jobs or the Google founders doesn't make you one of them, just makes you an ....</comment>


Payments Startup Balanced Innovates In Wrong Direction - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/11/26/payments-startup-balanced-innovates-in-wrong-direction/

<comment><USER2> This article is just, plain, silly. The author criticizes Balanced because they don't support Bitcoin? Yea, so, here's the deal -- startups need to make money, not chase down ideological, academic experiments like Bitcoin.

As a customer, I can attest that Balanced provides a really, really valuable service to anyone building a marketplace. If you need to support money in via credit cards and money out via ACH, no other solution like it exists. It's fantastic.

Bitcoin is an investment, not a currency. Buying bitcoin is not much different than buying gold. It serves exactly none of the properties of a currency: It's not a good medium of exchange, store of value, or the other derivatives thereof.

Moreover, it's a rogue currency, not supported by any government. In fact, it is decentralized by design. This is great in theory -- decentralization can be great in company structures, software design, etc. But not currencies. It doesn't work. There is no such thing as a modern currency that's not backed by a central bank. Bitcoin is a libertarian's wet dream -- a currency not backed by the Fed that enjoys widespread usage. But it will never be more than that, a dream, because the economics of bitcoin as a stable currency simply don't work, certainly not in a modern economy.

Some of the problems bitcoin is trying to solve are important, and worthy for sure. For example, cryptography in the context of digital payments and identity. So let's take the parts that need solving, but solve them in a practical way.

Innovation in digital payments is coming, but any company operating in this space, as a matter of strategy, must support the existing payments infrastructure. Square is a great example of this: Get everyone swiping credit cards and creating square accounts, then, start paying digitally with your Square "tab".

</comment><comment><USER3> I commented on the Forbes article, but I figured I'd repost my comment here:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

Hey Jon,

Thanks for the comments.

We do our best to listen to our customers. The primary reason that we haven't built Bitcoin support is that we haven't seen requests for Bitcoin as a payout method.

We use GitHub to track feature requests, so I created a GitHub issue (<https://github.com/balanced/balanced-api/issues/204>) for Bitcoin. I'd love to get feedback.

I also submitted the GitHub issue to HN (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4833049>) to drive more attention and increase feedback.

Matin Co-founder/CEO, Balanced</comment>


Google Will Limit Cross-Site Tracking in Chrome by Default Starting in February - <AUTHOR> https://adexchanger.com/privacy/google-will-limit-cross-site-tracking-in-chrome-by-default-starting-in-february/ <comment><USER2> > As long as ad tech companies and publishers with proprietary technology > label their cookies as SameSite=none, nothing will change</comment>


Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tusimple-autonomous-usps/self-driving-trucks-begin-mail-delivery-test-for-u-s-postal-service-idUSKCN1SR0YB <comment><USER2> Back in 1987, at my first job at Hewlett-Packard, they had a little robot that would deliver mail. This was their plant in Loveland, CO, I believe it was the first non-California site HP opened.

Along the main hallways there was some sort of retroreflective tape laid down, and the robot, which looked like and equipment cart, would follow that tape. At every stop it would sound a chime and the secretary for that section would come out and retrieve a bundle of mail and distribute it to their people.

Super simple implementation, but it worked quite well for what it did.

<comment><USER3> IIRC the movie Space Camp (80s?) features a mail-robot, perhaps the kid hides in it?

<comment><USER4> Flight of the Navigator [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4v-dMfzp3E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4v-dMfzp3E)

<comment><USER3> Ah, thanks, I didn't think it was quite right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >TuSimple and the USPS declined to disclose the cost of the program, but Frum said no tax dollars were used and the agency relies on revenue from sales of postage and other products.

Really? This is exactly the kind of thing we _should_ be spending tax dollars on. I have no idea why people think the USPS is this giant wasteful pit of money in the federal budget but they provide a lot of valuable services in addition to steady employment for a lot of Americans.

<comment><USER6> >I have no idea why people think the USPS is this giant wasteful pit of money in the federal budget

A concentrated disinformation campaign funded by people who stand to benefit from privatizing mail delivery. It started with the mandate to pre-fund pension and healthcare benefits for the next 75 years, funding pensions for retired employees who aren't even born yet. That means by federal mandate, the USPS is sitting on $400 billion that they can't touch [1]. That's not all bad in and of itself, but they're also limited by law on what they can charge for stamps, and the federal review board doesn't always let them increase prices to keep up with costs [2].

The same group of people who forced the USPS into an precedented fiscal nightmare are the same people going on TV and telling you that the USPS is fiscally irresponsible and a waste of money and should be privatized. Not a big surprise that Rep Tom Davis III was the author of the bill passed in 2006 but in 2004 FedEx was one of his biggest campaign contributors.

[1] [https://www.uspsoig.gov/blog/be-careful-what-you- assume](https://www.uspsoig.gov/blog/be-careful-what-you-assume)

[2] [https://www.cnbc.com/id/39439918](https://www.cnbc.com/id/39439918)

[3] [https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/109/hr6407](https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/109/hr6407)

[4] [https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of- congress/contributors...](https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of- congress/contributors?cid=N00002045&cycle=2004&type=I)

<comment><USER7> This is happening everywhere with all kinds of government services. "Slash budgets" and by firing full time employees and cutting investment, piecemeal it out to the lowest-bid contractor, the quality of service deteriorates, not much money is actually saved, but someone gets rich(er)!

<comment><USER6> And when the service fails, you can point to it as the reason government solutions don't work and how regulation is bad, which provides convenient reasoning to strip more regulations and privatize more government services.

<comment> the-dude And it has a name as well : Starve the beast.

<comment><USER8> Like every political push, the intent was noble. But it only gains legs when some entrenched interest can profit.

<comment><USER6> Noble? Maybe... I'd say it's dishonest at best. If the USPS failed on its own, there might be a point to the argument that the government is inefficient. But when lawmakers destroy something and then claim that it destroyed itself and therefore we must destroy everything else, it doesn't quite seem right.

It's like smashing a window with a baseball bat to prove glass is easily breakable. Yes the glass broke, that's why you don't hit it with a baseball bat. Rather than replacing the windows with brick, how about just not hitting it with a baseball bat? If you want to prove how easily breakable the glass is, let is break (or not) on its own.

<comment><USER8> You're responding on a completely different level than what I actually said.

> _If the USPS failed on its own, there might be a point to the argument that > the government is inefficient. But when lawmakers destroy something and then > claim that it destroyed itself and therefore we must destroy everything > else, it doesn 't quite seem right._

To be clear, I agree with this. I like the USPS, and think they do a great job.

The point is that grassroots support for "starve the beast" didn't start out focused on the USPS. The USPS was just one of the more vulnerable targets, plus some business stood to gain, so politicians directed the ire there. It's similar dynamic to how in these "government shutdowns", national parks close but the TSA keeps right on going. Or locally, how trying to keep real estate taxes down ends putting the screws on teachers and firefighters, rather than shrinking the town bureaucracy.

The larger point is to avoid simplistically ascribing the worst intent to the "other team". It's an easy answer, but prevents understanding that they actually have legitimate points. And it drives adherence to the agenda of your familiar team, which is also busy manufacturing consent for corporate agendas in a similar manner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >> A safety driver will sit behind the wheel to intervene if necessary and an engineer will ride in the passenger seat.

This is how you know a vehicle is self-driving: there are two people sat in the front.

<comment><USER10> The in-vehicle monitor will likely be a standard part of autonomous and semi- autonomous trucking for the foreseeable future.

A monitor can be paid less than a driver, as they're doing less work, and can respond to onsite issues more promptly and accurately than could a remote one.

<comment><USER11> > A monitor can be paid less than a driver, as they're doing less work

People working full time still need to live you know, even if it's "less work". Last time I checked the "amount" of work doesn't really correlate with the pay too.

You can't tell a professional truck driver "Ok man, you'll be in the same seat, on the same road, for the same amount of time but you get $500 instead of $1500 because it's less work, oh and also if there is a crash and you weren't 100% focused you'll be liable for the damage"

<comment><USER10> What drivers are paid for a given load reflects market conditions like e.g., weather, truck availability, and load availability, more than anything else.

Automating large parts of the driving process would make the job easier and more desirable. More people would be willing to work as monitors, which would increase truck availability and lower rates.

There's also the possibility that a monitor could do other work while the truck drove. Team drivers already do this; the passive driver occupies herself when not driving by reading or even dispatching other loads.

<comment><USER12> How can the monitor do other things if he is expected to have full situational awareness at a moment's notice in case something goes wrong, when you have no idea if or when that might happen?

All the studies say this is actually _more_ dangerous, which is why Waymo abandoned L3 development years ago when they discovered their safety drivers were falling asleep at the wheel. And there's the infamous Uber death which is well documented and analyzed.

<comment><USER10> That's the difference. In an autonomous urban driving environment a monitor is expected to have full situational awareness at all times because driving in cities is a hugely complex process. A truck driving 1,100 miles on I-80 would not need to be monitored as closely, if at all, because that driving process is far simpler. This kind of highway driving accounts for the majority of over-the-road freight.

"Monitor" might be a misnomer, here, in that the monitor isn't expected to be actively watching what the truck is doing; rather the monitor would be expected to respond to infrequent issues and maybe handle off-highway driving to and from shipping and receiving facilities.

<comment><USER12> I understand the idea of having drivers take over in dense urban areas, and letting the truck drive itself along the highway between cities. But this assumes the truck is capable of safely navigating along the highway with zero human intervention. An inattentive driver/monitor is no better than no driver when something unexpected happens and requires a sub-second reaction. _If_ they can do that then they're in business, but I am skeptical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Solving even limited self-driving truck driving would be a huge win. (Geofenced to certain roads)

There's an immediate need and it would save companies a lot of money.

</comment><comment><USER14> I always wondered why it seems we've get automated trucks pretty soon everywhere, but there is almost no one talking about self driving trains?

<comment><USER15> Trains are super efficient. My uncle is a locomotive engineer. He has one or two conductors with a train that is a couple of miles long. They pay a premium to keep staffing at a minimum -- he can be called with 30 minutes notice to come in and drive a train for a 24 hour period.

You'd probably be able to run more smaller trains with automation, but competing with trucks is tough, because the efficiency gains associated with getting rid of people and adding automation are blown away by the need to cross-dock and do the last mile via local truck.

<comment><USER16> So I was a bit incredulous at the claim of miles-long trains.

If anyone else is - turns out, there's a wikipedia page which has more information on very long trains (it's true):

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

<comment><USER17> Yep! This is where the western / action movie trope of racing to cross the train tracks comes from. If you can get the train between yourself and your pursuer, it's going to be a long time before they can do anything to catch up again. Often times in these movies, whoever is fleeing will take a few casual moments to look back at their blocked pursuer because there's so much time to spare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "possible solution to the driver shortage and regulatory constraints faced by freight haulers across the country" \- mmm, every industry is facing worker shortage huh -.-

<comment><USER19> Unemployment is very low right now. However, the most accurate statement is always, "shortage of people that have the qualifications we want that are willing to work for the payment we're offering."

<comment><USER20> Note: Unemployment is measured through participation in various workfinding government programs or receipt of unemployment benefits.

It doesn't really paint an accurate picture of how many are out of work, but getting by through alternative or illegal-quasi-legal means.

It also in no way measures the number of jobs a defined unit of work can supply, or whether the job itself creates enough of a return to be economically feasible to the doer.

It also in no way reflects that many jobs mow push for pre-acquired qualifications, which cost money, and lock out potential workforce.

No one wants to measure _any of that_. That leads to awkward questions.

<comment><USER21> The US federal government uses a monthly survey to compute unemployment statistics; it doesn't just tally up people receiving unemployment benefits.

<comment><USER12> It also ignores people that have not been working for more than a year, so basically if you're chronically unemployed (and are likely the type of person that need the most help) you're conveniently ignored for the sake of bureaucracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think it might be better if the post office went totally to using robots. I've heard too many stories first hand about its toxic culture.

There was a woman who worked in Lansing, Michigan sorting mail. She worked in the back, never had an contact with customers. Every Halloween she'd wear a different costume to work. Three years straight she'd get disciplined for it.

Local TV asked if the employees she worked alongside had a problem with it but they didn't. Only management had a problem with her wearing a costume every Halloween. She said they are determined to stamp out all individuality in the employees. What a horrible place to work.

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder how are they going to fuel up self-driving trucks? You can not drive 2100 miles on a single tank of fuel.

<comment><USER24> Trucks follow well-defined routes that are already well served by several truck stop operators. I would expect the first truly self-driving trucks to partner with Pilot or Loves to offer some kind of full service option where the truck pulls in and someone comes out to fill it up and scan a tag to charge the fuel to the right account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I hope we see an article in two or three weeks about how this trial went. Started on Tuesday, which is kind of exciting, but I'm certain I've seen more articles about trials started than articles about how the trials went.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is exactly the kind of job suited for automated driving. I wonder if there will be automatic-only highways soon spanning these stretches of the countryside, or whether such a thing would even help.

<comment><USER27> Mandatory computer-control will happen when a critical threshold of traffic is already operating that way, and risk/liability will make the restriction inevitable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Inter-city mail should be by rail, which is far more environmental and much less costly. The only reason highways appear to be "cheaper" is the real costs are paid by other people (passenger cars).

<comment><USER24> Is it really cheaper? I would expect rail to be somewhat cheaper but an order of magnitude or more slower.

<comment><USER28> Rail is cheaper in just about every dimension - fuel, track, track maintenance, labor, etc. The downside is it's slower.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> damn. shit is real. guess i'll vote for Andrew Yang.

</comment><comment><USER30> How is the package actually delivered if there's no driver?

<comment><USER31> Read the article. It's about delivering packages from one USPS facility to another not residential delivery.

<comment><USER32> yeah this could have been made clear in the title but they chose the clickbait approach

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Headline is misleading IMO. This is for long-haul mail routing from post office to post office, not last mile delivery.

<comment><USER34> It's still delivering mail, just from one post office to another.

<comment><USER35> eh, USPS sortation facility would be better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Automating postal workers out of their jobs first is a pretty bold play.

<comment><USER24> Does the post office employ long-haul truckers? I was under the impression that this kind of hauling was contracted out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Curious, are these pilot programs sending the trucks out completely driverless? Or are there going to be humans in the "cockpit" sort of managing things and taking occasional naps?

<comment><USER38> Did you read the first paragraph?

> San Diego-based startup TuSimple said its self-driving trucks will begin > hauling mail between USPS facilities in Phoenix and Dallas to see how the > nascent technology might improve delivery times and costs. A safety driver > will sit behind the wheel to intervene if necessary and an engineer will > ride in the passenger seat.

<comment><USER37> Oops. I did skim it, but apparently my skimming skills are terrible. My bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The company making these self-driving trucks - enormously complex products which could kill people if they go wrong - is called "TuSimple"?

Really?</comment>


WSJ: A Stealth Attack on Capital Gains - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/search?q=%22decades+of+established+partnership+law.+It+would+single+out%22+site%3Awsj.com

<comment><AUTHOR> For subscribers: [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870400980457530...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704009804575308981778779248.html)

A new tax that's linked to carried interest that targets VCs among others:

" _Congress has proposed a discriminatory 'enterprise value tax' on hedge funds and other partnerships. It is a threat to any business or industry that politicians decide is no longer popular._ "

What did VCs do to become so unpopular?</comment>


An interview with David Lee, SV Angel, on the Valley Advantage - <AUTHOR> http://techdrawl.com/an-interview-with-david-lee-about-the-valley-advantage/

<comment><AUTHOR> This was a really great interview with David Lee of Ron Conway's firm, SV Angel. They're making 40-50 investments in real time internet in the next 18 months.

</comment><comment><USER2> Nice interview, Russell. David and Ron, thanks for making the US world trendsetters in technology innovation with your "high touch" support to entrepreneurs. We're on your team, just on the other side of the country.

</comment><comment><USER3> great to hear David's attention to the "motivation" & "aptitude" of the founders during the diligence process compared with other firms that tend to focus on the numbers. i'll take _passion_ in a startup any day of the week..

</comment><comment><USER4> All this helpful information from Valley insiders on how absolutely vital it is to be in Silicon Valley is starting to sound quite a bit like too much propaganda. I don't buy it. But then again, I'm not running a startup in the Valley or elsewhere, so how would I know. It seems reasonable to point out that this has all the hallmarks of self-serving propaganda, whether there is some truth to it or not.

<comment><USER5> He did bring up one valid point during the interview to that point. The engineers/etc they know are based in the Valley, so if you want someone who you can have face to face time with on a semi-regular basis, so they can't help you if you don't deal in the area with their pool of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone have any idea how to send an executive summary to Ron Conway?

<comment><USER7> Hi Andrew,

This is David Lee here. Feel free to send them to me, Brian Pokorny and Kevin Carter directly at email@example.com, firstname.lastname@example.com and firstname.lastname@example.com. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Noto – The plain text editor for macOS - <AUTHOR> https://www.brunophilipe.com/software/noto/ <comment><USER2> Noto is also the name of a Google font family. Be careful with trademarks here.</comment>


Ask HN: How to ban users from your site? - <AUTHOR>

What should be the approach for banning offending users from your site? The only way I can think of to identify them is their IP. In the world of proxies and shared ips, how to ban one user, with out impacting other legitimate users? <comment><USER2> Proxies make it impossible to ban anyone. You can detect open proxies like slashdot does and prevent anyone from using any open proxy, but offenders can still use non-open proxies. You can charge for access like somethingawful does so that when you ban someone's account they have to pay $10 or so for another. That's about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can't really ban users from a website that's free to the public. All you can do is bore problematic users into going away.

</comment><comment><USER4> These guys do it all day long.

www.iovation.com</comment>


Top Startup Trends of 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://explodingtopics.com/blog/startup-trends <comment><USER2> " We can expect some of the biggest tech startups of the 2020s to start off as no-code Minimum Viable Products (MVPs)."

I'm excited for this. Many people have great ideas that they can't execute because they don't know how to code and their friends who do are too busy.

<comment><USER3> Agreed! I've seen a developer focus on and advertise their business as taking your no code workflows and refactoring them out into your own business line application. Interesting times ahead in this space!</comment></comment>


RStudio IDE Easy Tricks You Might've Missed - <AUTHOR> https://www.rstudio.com/rviews/2016/11/11/easy-tricks-you-mightve-missed/ <comment><USER2> Who owns up for this one? "Tearable panes are anything but terrible".

</comment><comment><USER3> This is great information. As a user of R Studio I will definitively be moving from R files to R markdown ASAP.</comment>


You May Have Seen My Face on BART - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@isisAnchalee/you-may-have-seen-my-face-on-bart-8b9561003e0f <comment><USER2> I don't believe the author is quite as shocked by the reaction to her poster as she would like us to think. When she asks rhetorical questions like, "Is it so unheard of that I genuinely care about my teammates?" it comes across as feigned ignorance more than anything else.

Her main argument is also a little too wide-eyed - she basically says that because the poster is factually correct (she is an engineer, she works at One Login, she likes working there) it shouldn't be receiving all the attention and criticism.

Except, it's not that simple, because advertisements aren't just lists of facts - they have embedded values in terms of who they are trying to target and what they are trying to communicate.

So when people criticize the ad, they aren't calling into question its facts, but rather its motive - who are they targeting and why? The author tries to discredit the idea that this ad is targeted at men by saying the entire concept is sexist, but I don't buy it. They chose to put her on the ad because she is an engineer, yes, but the fact that she's a pretty female engineer was not accidental, and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous.

<comment><USER3> The problem is whenever an attractive male engineer is on an ad, people say they're advertising to engineers which happen to be mostly men; and whenever an attractive female engineer is on an ad, people say they're advertising for men which happen to be mostly engineers. The values "embedded" in advertising comes from an understanding of the observer and the observer here is a male engineer, always.

<comment><USER4> Let me start by saying, I don't think you're wrong wrt embedded values, but...

> The problem is whenever an attractive male engineer is on an ad

But most ads/media/etc depict engineers as unattractive, regardless of gender. I would say the dice ads intend to frame the men in the photos as unattractive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I see your point with the example of the DICE advert, and not that I think it's a tasteful ad, but it's obviously riffing on the stereotypical Calvin Klein fashion model photo spread (which one could argue is a clever joke in context).

Of course "Alex" would never receive such attention for being attractive (hence the joke) nor would he be harassed for merely appearing on such a dumb advert. It of course illustrates the idiotic double standard between men and women in tech (or even fashion for that matter) which is your whole thesis here.

The first thing that popped into my head when I saw the advert you're featured in was "this is a really poor advertisement" either done with the explicit expectation of eliciting eyeballs (like most ads) or whipped up in last minute fashion with no real thought put into it (I didn't even realize it was a recruitment ad until I read your post).

There's a lot to break down regarding the micro issues (a terribly done ad) and the macro issues (sexism, male gaze, internet rage, etc) but I would be particularly upset with the people who devised this concept. I'd hazard a guess that the other people who were in the running to be placed on this ad were just as photogenic (which if true is completely maddening and upsetting).

It's equally disgusting to me that there's been human toll taken because some schmucks in the marketing department decided to whip this up in one day with clearly little forethought.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm waiting on receiving photos of the other ads back but when I do I will certainly post them. The other people featured in the ads are actually of many different shapes and colors.

To be fair, OneLogin has a relatively small engineering team. Of all of the other female engineers at the company, I have now been there the longest. I really hate needing to validate this but I also have pretty great stats on sprint completion as well. It makes me sad that mine is the only one getting attention and people seem to have these far out opinions on what really is going on.

<comment><USER6> I did see some of the other ads. Unfortunately I was more upset about your quote and the purpose of this ad. I was personally offended that all the male engineers are bragging about their codes and how important their job is, where as you are talking about how cool your co-workers are. I don't think it is your fault but accept the fact that this ad is in poor taste.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's so bizarre how offended people get (the Facebook commenters in this instance) when scrutinizing the person used in an ad. One in particular argues that the author isn't what female engineers are supposed to look like.

That reminded me of a pair of talented, male twins I've worked with who are attractive and quite slender (compared to the average American).

They get odd comments like "you're too slender, you don't look like a normal person", "you're too attractive/well-dressed to be tech" and other odd observations that sound like compliment, but aren't.

Either way, these are the people that you stay away from, and instead spend time working with people like those described in the author's ad.

<comment><AUTHOR> True Story: Once I was with a friend inside the elevator of my apartment building wearing a GitHub shirt. A foreign man asks "Do you work for GitHub?" I replied "No, but I use their product every day." "What do you do?" "I'm a developer" "What?! You're too hot to be an engineer!"

 _facepalm_

<comment><USER8> Don't get me wrong (the comment was really rude and insensitive) but I'd like to explore this social context for a second. How would, say, a jockey react to a remark such as "you are too tall to be a jockey". Being tall is usually considered a desirable trait, yet, I can easily imagine a jockey would be upset with such a comment. I know the context is much more complicated when attractiveness of women becomes the topic mostly because of our civilization's poor history of gender inequality, but it would be interesting to explore the borders of this space of offensive social assumptions. I have, myself, heard I'm "too white to be Brazilian" and that left me somewhat confused.

<comment><USER9> Just ... just, stop. Please. There is absolutely no way that armchair analysis of gender stereotypes in an industry is going to be an insightful discussion, because it's a discussion that really shouldn't even be happening.

You know what I never hear when I go climbing? "Wow, those girls don't look like climbers." I'm helping on the periphery of a project right now to open a small co-op bouldering gym in my town, there's a "core" group of people making it happen, we got together to figure out the building layout and wall design, and half the people there were women. The person negotiating the lease for the commercial space is a woman. Not _once_ have I overheard even a single mention of gender there.

You know what I never hear when I play Ultimate? "Wow, she runs fast for a girl." Again, nobody cares. People show up, they play, they hang out together, they go home.

One of the strongest people doing go (weiqi / badul) lessons online right now is a woman, Haylee. Not a single, "oh, she doesn't look like a go player". Instead, nothing but piles and piles of enthusiasm for every one of her videos. She's becoming a niche celebrity.

The outlier is the software industry. It's full of people that feel they have some kind of special insight into the anthropological origins of gender relations in a technical context, or some such bullshit. This entire thing should be a non-issue. I can't believe an ad for some company is getting this much attention just because one of the ads featured a young woman. It's _stupid_.

Damn I wish tech would just get over itself and start treating eachother like fellow people.

<comment><USER10> > The outlier is the software industry.

You are very badly informed if you think it's just the software industry. I had a brief time at a place with mostly mechanical engineering work and the group of 40'ish people (100% men) were the most misogynistic men I have ever met in my life. Sexism in tech pales in comparison to the daily comments that flew in that office. I am very sure there is much worse sexism going on in other industries besides tech -- why tech gets pretty much all the attention, I'm not sure.

> It's full of people that feel they have some kind of special insight into > the anthropological origins of gender relations in a technical context, or > some such bullshit.

Actually, the friends I've made in the tech industry are some of the smartest. I actually _do_ happen to think that for some reason system administrators are usually very smart folks (but that's just my observations).

> This entire thing should be a non-issue. I can't believe an ad for some > company is getting this much attention just because one of the ads featured > a young woman. It's stupid.

It is a non-issue. It's just a few nutcases on Facebook who made those comments. The bigger problem is the opportunistic attempt to make a story out of this. It's an easy sell, so the players involved are really taking it to town.

<comment><USER9> > _You are very badly informed if you think it 's just the software industry._

You're right. There was a lot of the same during my stint in electronics QA too. I probably should have said "tech industry" instead, although that's a bit broad and vague. Automotive repair shops tend to have a bit of a problem too.

> _Actually, the friends I 've made in the tech industry are some of the > smartest._

I won't disagree there, _but_ "smart" doesn't really correlate with "depth of knowledge". So, no, they don't really have a special insight, because they lack domain knowledge in fields outside their expertise. It seems to be a problem in tech specifically that, because someone is really good at understanding systems in one particular context, they start to believe that makes them as knowledgeable as the professionals in other contexts.

HN and Reddit both in particular exhibit that sort of behavior a lot.

(I realize the irony in saying that I've got some kind of special insight into the behavior of people on HN and Reddit... I'm stupidly becoming a data point in my own argument.)

> _It 's just a few nutcases on Facebook_

I wish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think this is a US-tech issue, and not a tech issue. I'm from Belgium, so maybe other Europeans can confirm or deny this.

My wife is an aerospace engineer who worked as a programmer for quite a while (and in my 'objective' opinion she's prettier than average ;)). She had a surprised "You can work with computers???" comment once, but that is about it. She worked >10 years in the tech industry, and so have I. I've never seen women treated like that, and I worked with quite a few. Such stories would raise quite some eyebrows here, and won't only be considered very unprofessional, but also lacks normal social behavior.

What I notice is that, every time such an issue pops up (about how women in tech are treated), it's always in the US. Seems more like a cultural issue to me, but I might be wrong.

<comment><USER12> Yes, I completely agree. I worked at a lot of companies in the UK, and it was normal to have female developers (both pretty and not so pretty). I find it very strange that the US has such an issue with this topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> hey @anchalee - I attended the same bootcamp as you. I hope you raised how unprofessional the engineer was in your interview process; stuff like this shouldn't be swept under the rug. Good luck and hope onelogin is treating you well!

</comment><comment><USER14> How has no one else called out that this campaign is a terrible attempt to copy the new relic billboard campaign and apply it to recruiting? Without even providing a call to action I might add...

If you really want to point fingers for her specific complaint, point them at the marketing team. It's 2015 and every tech creeper out there has a mobile phone to play on while bored at bart. Her first and last name and workplace are listed - why would they go to onelogin.com/careers (again, with no call to action even - what's in it for them?) when they could just as easily look her up on LinkedIn and try to find some more pics and send an inmessage. And yes, as another woman in tech, I can personally attest that there are TONS of tech creepers out there. NO, I don't think that is how it should be, but I also think that the marketing team should have tried harder to protect their own employees. They should have taken in to account that creepers are there and WILL be exposed to this bart take over campaign. Doesn't sound like a well thought out or strategic campaign.

side note on the dice campaign - big difference here. Those are models. They got paid to pose for the billboards. The Dice marketing team didn't make it easy for tech creepers to find them online to harass them (no last name, no company listed, no identifying features besides the focus of the campaign message - which, btw, actually has a call to action... just saying). Not a fair comparison.

My 2 cents on sexism in tech as a whole - I agree it is a TOTALLY unfair world right now. I battle this in all parts of my work life. Personally have experienced unfair pay, demeaning "compliments", the comments about "being too pretty to know about [fill in the tech subject]". The feeling that I have to wear a fake wedding ring at events to cut harassment down. Being talked down to because I am young and blonde, how "cute". That is a lot of bullshit to be up against! Yeah, it's terrible, and it isn't right.

But I can say that it IS IMPROVING. I see an increased amount of women when I am at industry events or visiting other offices. Could it be better? Hell yes. Keep your head up ladies and don't take the bullshit - which includes being smart about what you participate in and stand up for. When something negative (like this woman's experience being in this campaign) happens to you, LEARN from it and don't let yourself be in that position anymore. Be there for your sisters and girlfriends. Empower each other. It is terrifying, but also liberating. Find where you rock it the hardest and hustle that shit til you get what you want and nobody can deny it from you. If you find yourself in a place where you're being harassed, gtfo and go somewhere better. Be the example and support others, otherwise nothing will ever change.

<comment><USER15> Why is this downvoted??</comment></comment>


The Science of Serif vs Sans Serif Type - <AUTHOR> http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/

<comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR there's no science to back up one being better than the other. Other attributes of a typeface can have an effect for certain mediums (example, large x-height making type readable on screens).

Choose typefaces to match the tone of your content. See also: [http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/hear-all- ye-...](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/hear-all-ye-people- hearken-o-earth/)

</comment><comment><USER2> "We should accept that most reasonably designed typefaces in mainstream use will be equally legible, and that it makes much more sense to argue in favour of serif or sans serif typefaces on aesthetic grounds than on the question of legibility."

Exactly. _It's an aesthetic choice._ Arguing for legibility or readability or any scientific purpose is a secondary argument to _simple design sense._

Typographical choices involving both styles of font can work great; it's up to the designer to make the font match the target style for the correct functional and emotional impact. Simple as that.

Scientific arguments over fonts and typography have always seemed to me like analyzing the chemical composition of paint on a canvas to determine its value. Completely missing the point. Is there a certain measurable utility? Of course. But when a design works, and evokes the correct emotions for the presented work in a readable and understandable way, it just works. It's more functional for being beautiful.

<comment><USER3> Scientific studies of fonts only 'miss the point' insofar as they don't find anything useful... for example, failing to find any real, consistent legibility difference depending on serifs.

If you are not just pleasing yourself whimsically, the point of fonts (like any other thing) is not just to do whatever you want, regardless of whether it is effective or not. Even in the realm of aesthetics. Unless those aesthetics are for my benefit only, I am probably trying to get SOMETHING done.

And unless the way it works is obvious (bearing in mind that many obvious things are actually untrue, and that many true things are not obvious)... it is reasonable to depend on research.

If my art tries to convey sadness but I am so out of touch on how to do that (comic sans) that my peers laugh at me instead, that is likely a failure. If I write a blog post meaning to persuade people to back up their data but rather make people feel content without backups (comic sans), I have failed. If I try to get attention for my product and am ignored because I used comic sans, I have failed.

On the other hand, if comic sans is beautiful to my audience, and if it works for my boss - I had better consider comic sans ;)

The reason we don't follow any recommendations, when we don't, isn't that actually finding things out is point-missing, but rather just that nothing has been found out (yet).

<comment><USER2> Very observant and lots of truth, thanks for the reply. In my opinion, the art and science of design takes all that into account. It's not simply aesthetic, but also purpose and utility as you say. It's a combination of art and science, but like most things, if you look at it strictly from one side or the other, you fail to grasp the whole and quality will suffer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> TL;DR

      Startup founders, pay attention to the

      1. aesthetics

      2. recognizability

      3. psychology of your logo type.

The article had to do more with the _aesthetics_ than the science behind the types. I wanted to add that Microsoft did a lot of research on this in the 80s and 90s with the development of their Office Suite (more recently here: [http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ctfonts/wordrecognition....](http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ctfonts/wordrecognition.aspx)) . I particularly feel that startup founders need to pay attention to the _recognizability_ of their logos given the word shape and neural network modeling hypotheses given in the Microsoft paper. And it's one reason why I switched my logo from being all caps (like ORACLE) to all lower case (like facebook), although cursive (like airbnb) has its advantages as well.

On the other hand, there's the _psychology_ of serif fonts which was left out in the article (i.e. research to support that documents in serif type is viewed with more importance) and is the reasoning behind law books, legal documents and a lot of résumés written in serif type.

</comment><comment><USER5> No mention of acutance at all, surprising. There's a lot to be said about the way the human visual system responds to spatial frequencies, above all else.

Related:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acutance>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringing_artifact>

The way I see it, serifs may have evolved as a way to emphasise and deemphasise the various spatial frequencies in a given letter. A sharp 90-degree line at the end of a stem may help 'cut off' and locally restrict the frequencies represented by the stem in a way that makes them more easily distinguishable by the visual cortex.

Try flicking between these two images and you might get an idea of what I mean:

Normal: <http://i.imgur.com/NPAh3.png>

High-passed: <http://i.imgur.com/IoHCC.png>

<comment><USER3> This is interesting speculation. But it is premature until you know that serif fonts are more legible - that's not something one should simply take for granted.

From the little I've looked into this claim, it has apparently never been demonstrated despite much trying; if there is any inherent legibility difference between serif and sans-serif fonts then it is small enough to consistently get lost in sample noise. (There may be some recent meta-analysis or something I don't know about, though)

Where serifs are preferred, the real reasons are cultural. Serif letters look like the ones carved into Roman monuments and the ones in all the academic journals. But there is no basic cognitive reason why we might not give that kind of prestige to runes, cuneiform, or Arabic in an alternate history.

I think what has to be explained is not the legibility or discriminability of serif fonts (again since I don't think that has really been demonstrated) but rather the preference for them.

It seems to me that many font connoisseurs and font-makers attach a lot of prestige to immersion in the traditional craft, and find less-traditional geometric constructions to be ugly (i.e.: as a cultural judgement, like finding Middle Eastern music dissonant). It happens that this geometric tendency is easier to find in sans-serif fonts.

Maybe this is also part of why sans-serif fonts have become so important to advertising, where there has been a premium on the new and advanced for at least a century. (And this would also add another reason for preference of serif fonts: sans-serif is associated with mass production and consumption, and the default fonts on computers; thus more subject to snobbery).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I did some work here.

There's a lot of problems with legibility research. It's very, very hard to test for "legibility" or "readability" -- as, not surprisingly, the typeface is only a small part of what's going on when the human brain turns symbols into thoughts then plays them back later.

To the extent that we could get valid data, people did best when they were familiar with the typeface in question. And back in the age of newspapers, the closer to the local newspaper layout and typography, the better they scored with news-like information.

melloclello's comment hints at this part: serifs are high-frequency data. So there's more "information" in a serif face than a sans-serif face. In fact, simple filtering of a serif face makes something that looks very much like a sans-serif face. But whether this extra information is helpful or distracting to readability or legibility depends on what the reader is used to. (But even that didn't matter much in our tests!)

</comment><comment><USER7> I've gone through _Design for Hackers_ by David Kadavy a few times already, and Part V is fantastic to gather some context and understanding of fonts and typography.

PS: the whole book is IMHO a great read for people who want to know more about the fundamentals of design. At the very least it will make non-designers able to communicate with designers better.

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe it is confirmation bias, but I can't imagine reading a book or even a long magazine article in sans-serif.

<comment><USER9> In my experience, it's every bit as bad as you imagine:

When I was an undergrad, for whatever reason Univers was the default typeface used for computer document production (much of which was done using the Scribe markup language), and as a result, tons of lengthy documents were printed in Univers, including a lot of stuff that was book-length. [ _Why_ it was Univers I'm not sure. I don't think they had very many fonts though.]

It was absolutely dreadful: reading page after page of text set in Univers was downright _exhausting_.

I think Univers is not such a bad typeface in the abstract, but because of the way it was used, I came to loathe it (and right now looking at some Univers examples on the web, I still feel a twinge of disgust...!).

After I had been there a few years, other document production systems (such as TeX), and newer printing technology (like the Laserwriter I with PostScript!) came into use, and the number of supported fonts increased. Many people shifted to serif fonts for their documents, which was a huge relief...

<comment><USER5> Oh man, my first university used Univers (and not just Univers, the condensed version) for all their signage and handouts as well.

I almost feel like with a font like Univers the similarities between letters could saturate out your pattern recognition quite easily (imagine looking at these same stems and bowls all day long), and that perhaps serifs (or at very least, differing lettershapes) add a much-needed bit of stochastic resonance to the whole process. Maybe the uniformity of modernist typefaces isn't all it cracked up to be. </idle speculation>

An exaggerated example of what I'm talking about: <http://i.imgur.com/Ypwtm.png>

(I wish I had a Discrete Fourier Transform plugin for Photoshop so I could try it with these two examples)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Although I've heard many people say that sans-serif fonts are only for low DPI environments I can't stand serif fonts anywhere no matter the size or display, not even on paper or my Kindle.

I don't know what is the cause, I don't have any vision problems apart from myopia. When I need to read more than a few sentences in serif fonts (like in OS X's Dictionary app) I usually give up and copy-paste the text to somewhere I can view it in a sans-serif font. I've also configured Firefox to show everything in Ubuntu Regular[1].

It started as a preference but maybe by doing that I'm getting increasingly lazier and losing the ability to comprehend different symbols.

[1] <http://font.ubuntu.com/>

<comment><USER11> Care to tell us how old your are? It might just be what you're culturally accustomed to. Just like blackletter or half-uncials look weird to almost anyone nowadays.

For me it's basically the other way around, I find almost any sans-serif (and most slab serifs) to be esthetically unpleasing. It's like reading a book set in highway/emergency signage. Don't even get me started about Helvetica... (And I'm not even that old - 34. Maybe I never should've read that Tschichold book)

<comment><USER10> Oh, sorry didn't mean to leave that out. I'm 22 years old, I recently started using glasses for myopia (it didn't affect my preference regarding text) and I don't have astigmatism.

I agree with you on the aesthetics of serifs, I prefer it when I'm admiring how beautiful a piece of paper looks but when I'm reading I find them illegible. Same goes with cursive, although I can read it just fine I hate every minute of it. I also don't have a nice handwriting (don't know if these tell you something).

It is funny how aesthetic choices differ. I unintentionally associate serif fonts with infographics, ads etc. that I find overdesigned and not my preferred ways to get information efficiently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Don't let the art schools hear about this! LOL. Not that they're big on empirical stuff anyway. (Except as an occasional brief aside to "prove" why their arbitrary choice is "better" than anyone else's arbitrary choice.)</comment>


Geospatial data can help fight Pandemics - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/how-geospatial-data-can-help-fight-pandemics-112e5baec59c <comment><USER2> How long before we are allocated a wristband with GPS tracker onboard.</comment>


YC posting of own blog posts OK? - <AUTHOR>

Is posting links to one's own blog posts on YC considered OK or frowned upon? It looks like it is OK but I'm new here so wanted to get feedback on the issue. <comment><USER2> It's considered OK if the blog posts are relevant.

Submitting only your own material to HN and/or submitting every single blog post tends to make you look a tad bit lame, so I would recommend that submit a good mixture of submissions.

There are a couple of posters here (and I won't name them) that ONLY seem to submit links to their own site. I have personally developed an ignore filter for those people, meaning that any time I see their name attached to something I just devalue and ignore it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> @brk - That makes sense. It's what I would have done anyway.

<comment><USER3> You can use the _reply_ link right below a comment so you don't have to refer to someone's nick and the discussion will remain threaded.</comment></comment>


If goto statements are bad why does linux src have more than 10k of them? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/torvalds/linux/search?p=100&q=goto&utf8=%E2%9C%93 <comment><USER2> Contrary to popular reputation, there are a handful of use cases where "goto" makes the code simpler, cleaner, more readable, and (in rarer cases) faster. In these cases, you _should_ use goto statements. A good programmer can recognize these cases and use goto appropriately. Goto is never necessary in a strict sense but occasionally it can eliminate some pretty ugly spaghetti code.

The use cases for goto I see are primarily complex/thorough error handling (e.g. unwinding some concurrency control mechanisms) and certain low-level state machine patterns. I would expect to see these kinds of use cases in the Linux kernel.

<comment><USER3> And C doesn't have exceptions, which otherwise would cover a lot of where goto's are used.

<comment><USER4> There is a difference though. Exceptions can result in Stack Unwinding which is costly. Gotos are a jump which costs literally nothing.

<comment><USER5> In practice you will do the same thing as unwinding the stack. You'll jump to the end of a function where you'll likely free some heap buffers on your way out and you'll return error status to the caller. What will likely happen next is the caller will bubble up the error: free buffers and report error status to _their_ caller. It works out to pretty much the same thing as a modern C++ code base using RAII, just more manual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The original context of the "GOTO considered harmful" is lost on most of us, as at the time there were large swaths of developers that were trained _before_ structured programming took off, so people were using global variables and GOTOs instead of procedures and functions. GOTO has its place, specially in C.

It is sinful to jump into a different function and pass around information as global state. GOTO as functionality is tangential in this matter.

<comment><USER3> >It is sinful to jump into a different function

So sinful you can't in C

<comment><USER7> You can do it in GNU C! It's used to write direct-threading interpreters.

[https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-3.1/gcc/Labels-as- Values....](https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-3.1/gcc/Labels-as-Values.html)

<comment><USER8> They don't intend for label addresses to be gone to outside of the function they are located in. The stack wouldn't be setup to handle them at all.

Sure, you can store them wherever, and do something like " goto *g_greenthreads[ threadno ].lastpos ", but you would call that within the function defining the label, not outside it.

From your own link: > You may not use this mechanism to jump to code in a different function. If you do that, totally unpredictable things will happen. The best way to avoid this is to store the label address only in automatic variables and never pass it as an argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dogmatically following so called rules in a cargo cult programming style without any understanding of the rationale behind them is many orders of magnitude more bad.

This form of blind programming is terribly dangerous. It takes focus away from the task and placed on the process.

Engage with the problem, engage with the computer. Do not engage with autocratic decrees and programming equivalencies of heretic and kosher.

Goto does something specific. If you need that specific thing then that's why it's there. Ceremonial rituals be damned

</comment><comment><USER10> At a glance, looks like most of 'em are used for error handling. Sort of a `try ... finally` for C. This is actually a fairly common pattern -- check out Python's source code for more examples.

The other way I've seen it used is to break out of multiple levels of nested loops, though that's far less common.

`goto` is bad when it's used in an unstructured way: e.g. A does some stuff, then `goto B`. Then B does some stuff, then `goto C`. C sets a flag, does more stuff, then `goto B`. B does something different this time around based upon the flag set by C. Jumping around in a completely uncontrolled way such that the code can't be comprehended is where goto is "bad".

goto isn't inherently bad, it's just easy to use it in bad ways (and once upon a time, people did so more so than they generally do today -- which iirc was Dijkstra's major beef with it)

</comment><comment><USER11> Linus himself has publicly said he doesn't mind appropriate gotos. "I think goto's are fine, and they are often more readable than large amounts of indentation." Mind you this was 11 years ago, and it's weird to quote him as some sort of oracle. But it seems relevant.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20120331202351/http://kerneltrap...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120331202351/http://kerneltrap.org/node/553/2131)

</comment><comment><USER12> They're usually used for an error clean-up section at the bottom.

Zed Shaw introduces some debug macros here which make use of a goto:

[http://c.learncodethehardway.org/book/ex20.html](http://c.learncodethehardway.org/book/ex20.html)

From that point on in the book, pretty much every function written has an "error:" label at the bottom where stuff gets cleaned up and memory freed. You can see his example code for it there.

Pretty useful macros, really. Context for the "goto considered harmful" always seems lost on young coders these days, unaware of the kind of spaghetti code that overuse of goto had caused.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I've been on teams that have used this kind of error handling extensively, at several different companies. It's lightweight, very little is being done behind your back (do _you_ know when your destructors are being called? really?) and it's easily inspected.

Also, never pass up the opportunity to troll a god-fearing "goto puritan" :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Goto is bad" is something that professors tell first year computer science students because as computer scientists, the students will find novel ways of abusing them.

Using goto for error cleanup is pretty standard, easily readable, and understandable.

It avoids ugly braces and depth.

So, are gotos bad? It depends.

</comment><comment><USER15> One of these days, "gotos: The Good Parts" will overshadow EWD's oft-abused essay, and the world will be spared highly nested, pointy-arrow C resource cleanup code.

</comment><comment><USER16> [http://onlinehut.org/2011/10/goto-is-not-evil- okay/](http://onlinehut.org/2011/10/goto-is-not-evil-okay/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Because they're not bad when you use them for actions which would go in a "finally" block in a language that supports exception handling.

</comment><comment><USER18> I think what people are trying to say is that you shouldn't be taking too seriously all these advises about good and bad features in programming languages. Instead, try to understand the reasons behind such advises. All the bad things, that goto is blamed for, can be just as easily made with a bunch of methods in some object.

</comment><comment><USER19> Even C# has the goto statement. [http://weblogs.asp.net/stevewellens/why-goto- still-exists-in...](http://weblogs.asp.net/stevewellens/why-goto-still-exists- in-c)

</comment><comment><USER20> without a goto, you have to rely on functions/return values/pointers, which implies a function call (sometimes billions of times), which can have performance and design implications.

</comment><comment><USER21> Because it is written in C. "Goto statements are bad" meant: lets start using languages that offer higher level constructs to replace the current usage of goto. Things like "loops" and "functions" and "exceptions". C did not get the memo.

<comment><USER16> > Because it is written in C.

Writing something in C does not automatically imply having to use goto.

> "Goto statements are bad"

Goto statements are not bad.

> Things like "loops" and "functions" and "exceptions". C did not get the > memo.

C has loops and functions. Bro do you even K&R?

It might be a good idea to know what you're going to be talking about before opening your mouth.

<comment><USER21> >Writing something in C does not automatically imply having to use goto.

I didn't say it did. But any large enough C project will obviously use them.

>Goto statements are not bad.

Do you know what quotation marks are?

>C has loops and functions

It does not have exceptions. Which is what all the goto uses in question are being used for.

>It might be a good idea to know what you're going to be talking about before opening your mouth.

How ironic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> GOTO statements are not bad, they make your code run 10% faster while taking just 10 times as long to debug.

So if your code gets executed millions of times per second, like in some OS kernel, it may be wise to use GOTOs.

Otherwise, stay away.

<comment><USER23> Gotos are nowhere near as hard to debug as exceptions.

<comment><USER24> How's that? To debug GOTOs you have to place breakpoints on each possible detection of error (or at a shared trampoline). To debug exceptions, you just enable first-chance exception handling for the kind of exception you're interested in and you're done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is because Linux Kernel source code is not representative of what usual software should look like. And also because C is terrible ;)

<comment><USER16> Please get some experience writing kernel and driver code before making inane statements.</comment></comment>