A global movement to ban urban billboards - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/aug/11/can-cities-kick-ads-ban-urban-billboards <comment><USER2> That is one nice thing about living around DC, there are no billboards around the highways around here. You don't notice it until you go to other states. Then it becomes obvious and it looks jarring -- "Hey, what is this crap everywhere? How can people tolerate this!?"

Kind of the same effect if you are used to watching Netflix and then at a relative's house and you see cable TV with commercials every 15 minutes. They probably don't even notice it, but to me it feels strange and annoying to have to put up with it.

<comment><USER3> If like many Washingtonians you never leave NW, sure. But there are plenty of billboards in NE and SE. There are definitely billboards when you get a little ways out on 66, also on 50E towards Annapolis. 95 in VA is non-stop billboards, I forget if 395 has them. The one I'm not certain about is the beltway ... but pretty sure I've seen billboards on the beltway in parts of MD. There are (were?) also what amount to billboards along H St in NW. So I have to disagree, and encourage you to explore the area more.

<comment><USER4> _If like many Washingtonians you never leave NW_

At 7th and H NW there are three giant electronic billboards that play sound, not to mention the array of billboards plastered all over the Verizon center.

<comment><USER3> I mentioned those, but you're right that they're inconsistent with what I said about people not leaving NW. 2006-ish I think there was a big debate on if they'd be allowed ... they've always seemed like a special case, being part of the arena itself. In any case, billboards are few and far between in NW.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've always quite disliked advertising. I really think that it's a rather insidious force in western culture, and it has always bothered me that it's so aggressively forced into people's day to day lives. It nearly always preys on people's insecurities, is intentionally designed to distract you and is often just an eye sore.

I know it's a little goofy and "edgy", but this article reminded me of a quote by Banksy (a well known graffiti artists):

"People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. FUCK THAT. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe then any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs." Banksy

It's overly angsty, but I like the idea that some cities are taking it upon themselves to rid themselves of ads, rather than street artists destroying personal property to accomplish it.

<comment><USER6> I forget where I heard it, but I always liked "Advertising is someone taking a dump in your brain."

<comment><USER7> And the psychologists involved in creating it know exactly how to funnel that refuse into your brain despite all your efforts to the contrary. There is no such thing as "safe contact".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I block all ads on my devices, don't watch tv live, etc but I do like outdoor advertising. It's different. All the loathing here is a little surprising.

From guerilla stickers on the bus and posters on construction site fences to entire buildings wrapped, complete with props (like a car hanging from the side) it makes cities look alive. LED signs, especially the larger ones capable of showing graphics, and (my personal favourite) proper, old-school neons make cities look like cities. Billboards cover unfinished structures or designs from architects who should have never been licensed.

Maybe it's all the crappy communist architecture here but even places that evolved more naturally generally gain. Sure, there are some old towns, picturesque villages and so on but that is nowhere near the majority of the space inhabited by people.

<comment><USER9> Polarized sunglasses sometimes cut out advertisements displayed on screens. [http://imgur.com/doze8mP](http://imgur.com/doze8mP) Maybe we can legally enforce all large public ads to be polarized so that those who wish to not see them can put on a pair of glasses.

<comment><USER10> Do that the other way around and I think you have the right idea. Make ads only viewable when wearing special glasses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I will go a step further: Advertisement _in general_ should be banned.

Yes, I realize how unpopular this is. "Advertising has been around since the dawn of time!" and "Who will know what to buy? Economy would crash." To them I say the following: If you could choose to live your life and never see another advertisement, would you?

If the answer is yes, do you believe it is technologically feasible to live as a human being without ever seeing an advertisement?

If the answer is yes, then we agree.

By the way, if you want or need something, google it or watch a dedicated "ads about X" channel. When was the last time you saw an ad for anything and it changed your life more than marginally?

<comment><USER12> Goodbye to the entertainment industry, I guess. No more seeing a billboard about an upcoming gig for a standup comedian or a band, teasers for movies, reminders about game time...

<comment><USER13> Well, perhaps event promotion is fine. But I wouldn't shed a tear if product advertising was banned in practically all its forms.

You could argue that movies are products but at least movies have a short lifespan so their promotion is time-limited. I guess you could argue that bands and sporting events and such-like are products too. But I'm okay with "music_performance_x/sporting_event_y/movie_z/theatrical_performance_w is coming to venue_v from time_t1 to time_t2" type promotions :)

There's an advertising hoarding/billboard on top of the opera house in the city where I'm from. For a car company. Been like this for as long as I remember. Permanent blot on the city-scape. Permanent eye-sore. Makes me dislike the opera house as a venue because of it. Yuck.

I disapprove of billboards in general and most forms of outdoor advertising. I'm not against personal recommendations and location-based promotion.

I'm sick of having my attention grabbed while consuming media, while browsing the web, while walking or driving. I install ad-blockers on whichever device I can. I keep TV viewing to a minimum and am continually put off by the sheer volume of ads and their vacuity.

I do listen to the radio a lot, I hate the ads on radio less, you can sort of tune them out. Visual ads I guess I hate the most.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I would love to ban the audiovisual advertising in some Sydney train stations. You used to be able to avoid the static paper billboards but these days they have giant video screens and very loud speakers spread all around the platform so you can't escape hearing the constant pollution from advertisers.

I've started blocking ads on my devices again just so I can have a break from advertising in my life.

<comment><USER15> Wow. I've always assumed that the US would have the most aggressive and terrible ads, but real-life auto-play videos are a level of evil I hadn't even imagined. I can almost imagine the IAB's explanation of how blocking inter- uterine advertising is "stealing" from someone.

<comment><USER16> I noticed this in Bangkok. They have a nice sky train system that is cheap as shit and seemed to run well (on time, clean, not too crowded at rush times). However, all the cars have constantly looping video ads with audio. I don't know Thai so it was easy for me to tune out, but if I did and had a daily commute on those trains I think it would drive me nuts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> some-guy I grew up in Davis, CA, right dab in the middle of the Central Valley in CA. From a purely visual standpoint, billboard ads along those freeways were far more ugly to me. The ugliness of billboard advertising in cities can at least be mitigated by the visual "white noise" around it, whereas billboards in farmland stick out like a sore thumb.

</comment><comment><USER17> Entire state of Hawaii bans all forms of outdoor ads. Some company tried to sell ads on bikes but were banned. Another company tried to sell aerial ads (banner pulled by small planes) in Hawaii. The company insisted only FAA can ban such ads, even AFTER FAA announced the state can ban aerial ads.

The pilot was actually arrested.

[http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/26075222/pilot-for- aerial...](http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/26075222/pilot-for-aerial- advertising-company-arrested-after-flying-over-oahu)

</comment><comment><USER18> I can't imagine Tokyo or Taipei without large billboards and other signage draping over whole buildings.

As others have said, I neither miss them nor dislike them. The one thing I will say is that some do cover over otherwise useful windows --which since covered by advertising become useless and wonder how the inhabitants deal with diminished sunlight --but on the other hand you have places like France where you are (were?) taxed on window count on your flat and so people would board them up, so as not to count as "windows".

<comment><USER19> Hearing that somewhere there's a tax on how many windows a housing has, I was confused and immediately rushed to search more about this weirdness.

Don't know about correctness, but [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_tax) says France got this until 1926, so it must be somewhat before the age of modern omnipresent advertising.

<comment><USER18> I lived with a family there over a summer, not sure if they were just telling me stories or not, but my impression from their story is they boarded up some of their windows to avoid taxes. Maybe it was an excuse, i don't know. A nice tale they liked to tell a foreigner.

<comment> sean-duffy In the UK it's fairly common to see windows that have been bricked up on old buildings because of window tax. E.g. [http://www.davidwallphoto.com/gallery/Other/London_England/I...](http://www.davidwallphoto.com/gallery/Other/London_England/IEng278.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> vhost- This might be an unpopular opinion, but fuck it.

I'd replace billboards with graffiti in Portland any day. I can't stand that billboards are plastered all over the place, but one streak of paint on a building left unscrubbed will result in the person owning that building getting fines from the city. I miss the feel of an real urban environment and having real graffiti on walls and over passes.

<comment><USER20> When you say graffiti, do you include the 90% of it that is basically shitty tags?

<comment><USER21> Um, a lot of advertising is basically shitty tags as well.

<comment><USER20> I never said one is better than the other. Although I'd prefer shitty 'tags' with content that may be relevant to someone in 0.0001% of the cases over a shitty squiggle on the wall.

<comment><USER21> Graffiti tags are relevant to someone other than the "tagger" as well.

"Tags can contain subtle and sometimes cryptic messages, and may incorporate the artist's crew initials or other letters."[1]

Just because you and I don't get it, doesn't mean it's content free.

I'm not defending tagging, I'm just decrying most advertising as being equally bad, or worse.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti#Tagging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti#Tagging)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It makes sense. Advertising is inefficient, wasting people's time and attention for the gain of the advertiser.

Advertisements have long been used as a form of micropayment, to fund first TV shows and now websites, where a monetary payment would be infeasible.

There is no such reason to allow advertising in public property (private property is more complicated, but generally the outward appearance of buildings is considered a public good, and highly regulated). The person viewing the building or billboard is not a party to a transaction, so there is no reason to charge that person a hidden fee for viewing that space. In a way it is the ultimate hidden tax.

<comment><USER23> Billboards are illegal in four states: Alaska, Hawaii, Maine and Vermont. I would love to form a SuperPAC to work on outlawing them in the other 46 states.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I can't really imagine Tokyo without the billboards. It's too wrapped up in the aesthetic for me. (Not that I think that should override the preferences of whatever people in tokyo want to do.)

<comment><USER25> Yes... I find the "global movement" label sort of annoying, because it's very much a local issue.

Some places suffer from excessive advertising, other places are energized by it, and the actual contents, presentation, placement, and other details, all of which are intimately tied in with the local culture, matter a great deal as well.

A city like Tokyo would be very, very, different without outdoor advertising, and it's not at all clear that it would be better...

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/snogglethorpe/9503120600](https://www.flickr.com/photos/snogglethorpe/9503120600)

<comment><USER26> > Some places suffer from excessive advertising, other places are energized by > it, and the actual contents, presentation, placement, and other details, all > of which are intimately tied in with the local culture, matter a great deal > as well.

São Paulo was very much like that. Billboards were all over, some were captivating and cool and there were even innovative moving billboards people talked about. Small businesses got creative with theirs and changed their façades in ways that were immediately recognizable. Brazilians are very connected to advertising, so much so that it seeps its way into popular lexicon and shape colloquial language.

Yet, no one misses them now. No one has asked for them to come back. No one will.

Ads are much less an intrinsic cultural phenomenon than you think. We think they matter to culture simply because they exist, but their absence has no important effect on it.

<comment><USER25> > _Ads are much less an intrinsic cultural phenomenon than you think. We think > they matter to culture simply because they exist, but their absence has no > important effect on it._

The thing is, though, every culture, every city, is different, and _you just don 't know_ what the effect will be until you've done it. Maybe Tokyo and other Asian cities would turn out to be the same as São Paulo, but ... maybe they wouldn't.

Because of this, and because it would be a _major_ change, it's not something you want to do unless there's a lot of local support for it; it's something that needs to be locally driven.

Maybe in São Paulo, there was such support, and in the end things worked out, which is great.

But if nobody actually cares, it would be pretty silly to do it simply because of a "global movement."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Billboards are already banned in my state. I'm always struck by how ugly the roads and highways are when I travel to other states.

<comment><USER28> What state is that?

<comment> nommm-nommm TFA says "...several US states including Vermont, Maine, Hawaii, and Alaska are billboard-free."

<comment><USER11> Can we get this on the ballot for California?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't mind billboards it's whats on them that's horrible.

I Williamsburg where I live as far as I understand it's not legal to put up posters or billboard posters. Instead people paint the billboards.

Which is pretty cool.

[http://i.ytimg.com/vi/SneJtEDliUk/hqdefault.jpg](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/SneJtEDliUk/hqdefault.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER30> Meh... I actually somewhat like billboards, at least when I'm making long drives on the Interstate. They're something to look at that's more interesting than farm combines, cows, empty fields, old barns, etc. I especially like the ones that mark off "landmarks" on certain trips... like when I drive down I-40 from Raleigh towards Wilmington, I know when I start seeing the billboards for boat dealerships and coastal golf plantations, that I'm nearly to Wilmington. They help remind me that I am actually getting somewhere. (Of course, so do mile markers, but counting those gets boring, and they're too frequent).

To be fair, I suppose none of this has much to do with "urban" billboards in particular though... other than to say that outdoor advertising, in general, really doesn't bother me. If anything, cities seem like they _ought_ to have plenty of outside advertising.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'd much rather they ban obnoxious high powered LED animated displays. At least billboards don't blind you.

<comment><USER23> Arizona recently outlawed that specific type of billboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> People dislike pervasive advertising because it becomes clear that you are a pawn in the game. This grates, consciously or subconsciously. The dissonant suspicion that you're a bit-player in a game from which you derive no benefit (while others gain massively) underpins sentiment in a number of recent threads: the role of universities [1], the influence of money on research [2], motor vehicle emissions [3].

We don't like being played for fools, and some of us feel that pervasive advertising does exactly that.

But what of the "benefits" of advertising? Free access to content, for instance.

Well that's only "free as in beer". Ad-funded content on the internet, or in print, confuses "free as in beer" with "free as in speech". It assumes that if I can get something for free, then I'm happy to exchange it for something else; that I'm happy to accept content in exchange for my attention being drawn to goods and services that want my money.

Personally, I'm not happy with that. I never opted-in, and I can't (easily) opt out.

Billboard advertising is irritating because of exactly this reason: no opt out.

People who disagree (or simply don't sympathise) with my sentiments probably feel happy to exchange their liberty for advertising. Fair enough -- I don't wish to persuade or disuade. I would, however, like the capacity to make my own choice.

People who think we do have a choice -- it's very, very limited. It seems that every square inch of publicly-visible surface in major cities could be scooped up by advertisers. Risers on staircases; LED billboards on top of taxis; it's getting ridiculous.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372181](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372181)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10372446)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10354127](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10354127)

</comment><comment><USER33> A ban is pretty harsh, how about taxing them heavily enough that they almost disappear? $1MM/billboard/year might be about right.

The reason people are asking for a ban of billboards is that they impose heavy externalities: they're distracting, ugly, et cetera. Capture those externalities rather than ban them.

<comment><USER34> So only the ultra-rich can advertise through them?

<comment><USER33> 99% of billboards are commercial in nature, and are quite expensive even before heavy taxation.

Non-commercial speech is much better served by a human standing by the side of the road holding a placard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I don't care about the presence of visual advertising, nor do I think cities would be nicer if it was all replaced with reproductions of Renaissance painting. It's not that I think I'm unaffected by advertising, it's just that I don't think my quality of life is affected by it in the least.

But I do care about (actual) environmental pollution, poor economic opportunities in the inner city, overly militaristic and authoritarian policing, mass government surveillance, and the deteriorating public transit infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER36> There are passive printed ones. Ugly, but often tolerable and often useful.

Then there are those active ones. Blinking lights, bright to the point of light pollution. I hate those things and they are everywhere now too with more sprouting up all the time.

Count me in for the latter. I'll gladly continue to tolerate the former to get some relief from the active ugly everywhere...

<comment><USER37> Why is this a negotiation? We don't have to have passive ads to get rid of active ads, we can get rid of both.

Advertisers never asked before barging obnoxiously into our collective consciousness. We don't need to pre-emptively make concessions.

<comment><USER38> Consider what it would actually mean to ban billboards. If they were on government-owned land near a highway, placed at the pleasure of the city or state, then sure, they can (and should) decide to retract that permission; no issue there. On the other hand, if they're on private land, then this suggests that a local government can ban you from posting a sign on your own property that's visible to others. Where does that stop, and on what basis could it occur at all?

Within cities, I've seen signs posted on the sides of buildings, presumably with the full permission of the building owner, because the building happened to provide a convenient space visible to a fair bit of roadway. In residential areas, I've seen people post large signs on the sides or roofs of their houses, easily visible to the road. And that leaves aside the numerous small picket or A-frame signs placed in non-highway areas, again on private property: houses for sale, garage sales, lost pets, etc.

As much as I hate advertising, how exactly would you reconcile such a ban with the first amendment in the US?

<comment><USER39> With the long-standing understanding that commercial speech is not protected to the same degree as non-commercial speech.

<comment><USER40> That's a horrible precedent. Most noncommercial advertising is popitical advertising, which is funded by the special interests who will commercially profit from the advertised politicians.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Leaf blowers next, please.

<comment><USER42> Are leaf blowers loud on purpose?

<comment><USER43> Leaf blowers aka. gasoline is free, infinite and burning it doesn't pollute at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> What is better, billboards and a bike scheme, or no billboards? We shouldn't ignore that there are real tradeoffs at stake here (even if they don't involve bikes). [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vélib%27](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vélib%27)

<comment><USER45> I don't understand. I'm sure there are tradeoffs (as with all things) but what do the bikes have to do with it? Was the Véli program funded by billboards?

<comment><USER44> Yep - details in the wiki link :-)

In fact, we even get a quantification of the potential 'value' of the billboards (to the advertisers, at least) :

JCDecaux paid the scheme's start-up costs, totalling about $140 million, and employs around 285 people full-time to operate the system and repair the bikes on a ten-year contract. The city receives all revenue from the programme, as well as a fee of about $4.3 million a year. In return, JCDecaux receives exclusive control over 1,628 city-owned billboards; the city receives about half of that advertising space at no charge for public-interest advertising

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> My city doesn't allow billboards in town. Billboards on the highways are also banned in my half of the county. I really appreciate it. Less visually assaulting and you can appreciate the natural and built beauty better.

</comment><comment><USER47> I was just thinking about this today. My proposal was to replace them with behavioral nudges[0]. Things like "Traveling the speed limit saves X lives and gets you home faster[1]." Basically, they'd be gentle ways of making people more conscious and aware of the road and themselves.

But of course, who gets to pick what the billboards say? And I'm sure nobody would go for it if it were slogans from the State Dept. of Nudges...

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_\(book\))

[1] Real data of course. Citations needed.

<comment><USER48> Sounds like the BRO (Border Roads Organisation) signs you can see in the Indian Himalayas. These are some of the scariest (and most dangerous) roads in the world, so it's a special sort of relief whenever you come across their subtle life-saving jokes:

[https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=bro+signs](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=bro+signs)

<comment><USER40> What is "MR" in those signs.

Tangent: Mozilla just changed the name of its new brotli feature tag, because the "BRO" abbreviation was deemed sexist.

<comment><USER49> (My assumption being that English is a 2nd language for you...) If you're referring to the "Mr. Late" and "late Mr.", it's a play on words. "Mr." being a male title in English, and the dead are sometimes referred to as "the late Mr. Smith" (why is a lifelong mystery to me). So it's better to be the guy that's late ("Mr. Late") rather than speed down a dangerous road and be dead ("the late Mr. Smith").

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Sounds good to me. The amount of visual pollution created by advertising is mind boggling in some places.

</comment><comment><USER51> Another movement I'd like to see in the US is to take telephone poles down and put all that wiring under the ground. Would generate jobs and make the country much prettier.

<comment><USER52> Telephone wires are already largely underground. What you see are power transmission lines. That's why the transformers are up there, too.

I can only imagine it would be rather hazardous to have power transmission lines buried underground, especially in a region prone to any kind of flooding or even heavy, ground-saturating rains.

<comment><USER53> Unlikely. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undergrounding](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undergrounding):

 _" All low and medium voltage electrical power (<50 kV) in the Netherlands is now supplied underground."_

That is a country where, in half the country, with way over half the population, you hit water year round after digging less than a meter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Obviously art is subjective, though in my opinion the mural that _Foster The People_ commissioned in LA last year to promote their new album managed to strike a fantastic balance between art and commerce:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermodel_%28album%29#/media/...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermodel_%28album%29#/media/File:Supermodel_Mural.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER55> If you want to know what such a world is like, go to Cuba. It's a beautiful thing.

<comment><USER56> I'm not sure if you only visited the touristic areas or are being sarcastic.

<comment><USER57> I assumed he was being sarcastic and trying to imply that banning advertising will suddenly make us all communists.

A more serious and relevant example would be São Paulo. They completely banned outdoor advertising and the world didn't fall apart. Seems like they new relaxed the ban enough to allow art.

[http://www.fastcocreate.com/1681353/advertising-comes- back-t...](http://www.fastcocreate.com/1681353/advertising-comes-back-to-sao- paulo-streets-via-graffiti)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> What about how, by design, billboards distract drivers' eyes from the road? The article (and comments here so far) have not mentioned this.

And then if an accident occurs because a driver was distracted by a billboard, we blame the driver for not paying attention? The odds are increasingly stacked against them.

</comment><comment><USER59> PIRC and WWF produced an interesting report on this topic a few years ago: [http://assets.wwf.org.uk/downloads/think_of_me_as_evil.pdf](http://assets.wwf.org.uk/downloads/think_of_me_as_evil.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER60> I live in L.A. and Sunset Blvd would be so very dull without oversized billboards featuring super models, new albums and the latest movies.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-08-11/west- holly...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-08-11/west-hollywood- seeks-cash-from-sunset-boulevard-billboards-on-tax-squeeze)

<comment><USER61> Los Angeles: Boring without advertising.™

<comment><USER62> sunset blvd is sort of like the west coast equivalent of times square, which would also be pretty boring without the ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I suspect there are more people who sell and use web-ads than billboard ads here.

In fact, I'm bet a few people are wondering when they can all be replaced with giant QR codes, so they can automatically be replaced by something a little more "targeted".

</comment><comment><USER64> I wonder what impact self driving cars will have on billboards in the future...

</comment><comment><USER65> I do often see PSA's from, say, the Ad Council, on billboards. I don't really think these should go away, even perhaps if it means living with the obnoxiousness of commercial billboards.

</comment><comment><USER66> How interesting that people within the afk space are beginning to dislike advertisements, while people in the digital space have been actively removing it for a while.

Does u-block allow for extensions?

</comment><comment><USER67> I am living in Bangalore, India. Good to know its already implemented in Chennai. I hope its soon implemented in Bangalore and other cities.

</comment><comment><USER68> I live in a capital city with only one billboard. The cancel has a firm policy against any visual pollution. On one hand I hate that graffiti rarely lasts more than 24 hrs anywhere in this town. On the other, the lack of advertising is really nice. Once I saw a mcdeath logo go up on the back of a traffic sign so I called it in and it was gone the next day.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm all for it. Imagine Times Square illuminated by art instead of ads.

</comment><comment><USER42> I want billboards. Possibly more than now. However, like in Sao Paulo and France in the article, I would like to have them show arts, culture, interesting information. Not car ads.

</comment><comment><USER69> Microsoft HoloLens and adblocking. Hmmmm....

</comment><comment><USER70> Where do I sign?

</comment><comment><USER71> often, billboards are ugly, but all them give "life" to our streets, so, I don't agree with the ban kapipal.com/newspace

</comment><comment><USER72> I am seriously confused by all the good news recently.

First U.S. decides to let nearly 6,000 drug offenders out of federal prison early. [1]

Then I hear _CNN (!)_ was apparently talking about the rise of city-states. [2]

And now this about cities considering or already actively banning billboard ads??

So much sanity and good news in a short time period makes me almost suspicious.

[1] [https://news.vice.com/article/the-us-is-going-to-let- nearly-...](https://news.vice.com/article/the-us-is-going-to-let- nearly-6000-drug-offenders-out-of-federal-prison-early)

[2] [https://twitter.com/digitsu/status/653221388249993216](https://twitter.com/digitsu/status/653221388249993216)

<comment><USER72> Downvoted, that's more like it. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> São Paulo is filled with graffiti instead of ads. Not art, just tags, as most major Brazilian cities. It's not visually clean by any standards.

That said, the article is an ad in itself - "began to suffocate under a smog of signage", gimme a break. I find it funny how anti-ad folk often advertise massively against ads.

</comment><comment><USER73> > Safe for eyeballs ... in a single year, São Paulo removed 15,000 billboards, > many of which were replaced by street art.

so they replaced commercial crap by street art shite that never changes, and that is supposed to be an improvement for the eyes ? Seriously ?

<comment><USER2> I dunno, I'll take mediocre street art over high quality "Buy Samsung!" posters any day, but that is just me.

<comment><USER73> City ads represent fashion, ongoing trends and so on. Without it, it looks like a dying place to me, a museum.

Of course, it depends how bad ads are in your country.</comment></comment></comment>


If an algorithm draws lines on a map, is that the same as land surveying? - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/07/if-an-algorithm-draws-lines-on-a-map-is-that-the-same-as-land-surveying/ <comment><USER2> TLDR: a startup takes the existing survey data and uses it to highlight the region on a map. Missippi says that this is an act of surveying - equating it to a person out on site with little flags and the neat looking tripod thing that surveyors use.

I wouldn't consider that surveying, anymore than I would consider a friend a surveyor if they printed a map and circled their house on it.

If we were being more extreme: according to missippi if you printed a bunch of copies of a satellite picture and drew outlines of each property, you would be a surveyor. Given I have done this for OSM that means I am now a surveyor. My rates start at $500 per line.</comment>


Gregg Pollack on Screencasting and Podcasting for Developers (in 10 minutes) - <AUTHOR> http://www.rubyinside.com/gregg-pollack-on-screencasting-and-podcasting-for-developers-in-10-minutes-3467.html <comment><USER2> Thanks - nice to see my video on here! I am considering extending this to doing quick ~10 minute single-topic interviews with developers of all types. If anyone has any suggestions (especially whether just audio would be OK/preferable) or "no, don't do it....!"s, I'm all ears. (They would ideally be more technical than this.)</comment>


Privnote - send notes that will self-destruct after being read - <AUTHOR> http://privnote.com/ <comment><USER2> haha, this is great. Not that I'm doing to move my super-secret chocolate smuggling ring over to it or anything, but you know, when I need to send my ATM pin or something to someone it should be ok.

</comment><comment><USER3> PGP Desktop has the only true "this message will self-destruct" feature, as far as I've seen.

PGP encrypted messages. Opened in a secure viewer. No copy and paste. No easy screenshotting (dx10 overlay if I'm not mistaken - bypassable, of course, but decent anyway). Close it and it's gone.

<comment><USER4> What if you run PGP Desktop under a modified QEMU that can log all changes to memory state in a particular program?

<comment><USER3> As I said - nothing is foolproof these days; and, besides, there are easier ways like using DX10 image-caputre programs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
      File-> save As

or

      ctrl-a ctrl-c ctrl-v

<comment><USER6> They even tell you

"This note has been destroyed so, if you want to keep it's content, you must copy it before closing this page"

Kinda defeats the purpose.

<comment><USER7> I'd pretty much guarantee that its real purpose is to serve as a simple but pleasant portfolio piece for a designer or developer, and _that_ purpose isn't defeated by it being copyable.

But, I think the point of the service is that _only one person can read it_ not that _it can only be read once_. They could prevent easy copying by using Flash, etc, but it that would be cruel, unusual (well, it should be usual), and wouldn't improve their offering.

<comment><USER8> Can you not screenshot Flash then?

<comment><USER7> I think the key in my statement was _easy copying_. The inability to copy and paste clearly frustrates people, seeing as its the number one complaint against Scribd. But thanks for the sarcasm. ;)

<comment><USER9> You _can_ copy and paste from Scribd documents: [http://img.skitch.com/20080703-fqjkc23nr92t31htq42quirmhe.jp...](http://img.skitch.com/20080703-fqjkc23nr92t31htq42quirmhe.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While it's probably not, doesn't this ring anyone else's bells as a phishing site?

</comment><comment><USER4> I am not disappointed after having seen the website. I expected a fail in the security department. You can't really "self destruct" a message on the medium of a computer unless you have what amounts to some form of DRM.

<comment><USER11> There is a pretty glaring XSS vulnerability, though. I have informed them about it.

<comment><USER12> Yes, thanks for reporting!. It's fixed in the version we deployed today.

<comment><USER11> Wow, you guys are quick! It's looking good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How do you make money with this - AdSense/Ads? Surely there's no "Subscriber Only" version.

<comment><USER3> Why does everyone assume that every single online service or website launched has only one end-goal and that is to make money?

Especially seeing as these comments are made on HN - a decidedly money-making- free site itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet." -- Bruce Schneier

</comment><comment><USER15> Great UI - nice and simple.</comment>


Whiskey Can't Hide Its Age - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/36/aging/whiskey-cant-hide-its-age-either-rp <comment><USER2> I believe there was a story a few years back about someone who developed a new technique for aging whiskey which was supposed to be much faster but the chemically identical (or very similar) to longer barrel aging. I don't think it's as simple as the small barrel aging they mention, because it was more recent and was getting a lot of attention.

Edit: Found it[1], although it's rum, not whiskey. Thanks to etherealmachine for pointing me in the right direction.

1: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9369387](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9369387)

</comment><comment><USER3> The stakes are too high for this problem to be unsolved. People can accelerate the aging of wine as a chemical process. With billions on the line, people will figure it out for Whiskey too.

This will dramatically bring down the cost of whiskey too. First comes from simply increasing the supply. More importantly, most of the cost of whiskey is time. If I spend $5 today making a bottle of 18 year whiskey, and I have a cost of capital of 6% higher than inflation, then I'll need to sell it at $14.27 (5*1.06^18) inflation adjusted just to break even.

<comment><USER4> My impression has always been that drinking aged whisky was more about signalling (both financial status and knowledge and taste), including in the largest markets (France, etc.). Same reason people still wear suits and Goodyear-welted leather shoes for work. So there'll always be a large demand for aged stuff. If you just want to get drunk, vodka is better for hangovers and a lot cheaper. For example, a liquor trader here told me Indonesia is really into Chivas 18 year old, which is by far his largest export there.

That being said, economics have made it happen already: there have been no age statements on the "basic" offering from all mass market Japanese single malts (Yamazaki, Yoichi, Taketsuru...) for a few years now because the vastly increased demand effectively emptied the stock of the 10-12 year old stuff that was previously the default. I also get the feeling that a lot of Scottish houses are cutting their product with stuff that meets the age requirement for labelling but is not as good as what their products were made of 10-15 years ago.

In terms of taste, I think the "fast aged" stuff is a different product. Younger whiskies have a very different flavour profile (not necessarily inferior - try a Port Charlotte PC5-7). Can it become a new market segment, certainly - in fact it already has (e.g. Laphroaig Quarter Cask mentioned elsewhere in this thread). Replace, I'm less sure.

<comment><USER5> I'm pretty sure people still buy those things because they see the value in investing money in quality products, not to signal something. Signaling is a consequence here, not a purpose.

Different whisky products have different markets. There are special limited edition releases of Chivas that are only sold in Asia, for example. Same for Johnny Walker, and many other popular brands. India is crazy for Scotch, but most of its whisky is made of 90% blended neutral spirits and 10% malt whisky. It was only in the past 10 years that they produced their own, completely Indian, single malt whiskys, which are pretty good by the way.

All sorts of whisky brands have been switching to No Age Specified labels for years. Eventually almost all of them will be, partly to avoid shortages, and partly to help consumers try more products from the same brand, and to fight the idea that older = better. And "as good" scotch is relative; they have always blended spirits to get the right flavor profile regardless of age statement, and they continue to do so.

<comment><USER4> > I'm pretty sure people still buy those things because they see the value in > investing money in quality products, not to signal something. Signaling is a > consequence here, not a purpose.

Rather than write up my position on this, I will Defer To Authority and post this excellent Quora answer on signalling and its relationship with quality: [https://www.quora.com/Why-would-anyone-buy-a-Rolex- watch/ans...](https://www.quora.com/Why-would-anyone-buy-a-Rolex- watch/answer/Suzanne-Sadedin) (although I disagree on her premise that there is no objective difference in quality, especially when it comes to wine, but then I am a card carrying Frenchman so hardly unbiased). I particularly liked the ending:

> Of course, none of this applies to me. I honestly love Van Gogh paintings, > not because it signals good taste within my social circle, but because > they're intrinsically beautiful.

Well, I love my Port Ellen, Karuisawa and Mortlach and I would look forward to adding Urushi Seikos or Chanel's Cuir de Russie (vintage, of course) to my collections. For their intrinsic qualities, naturally. Unfortunately, my wife does not see those intrinsic qualities as clearly as I do, so my plans have been put on hold for the moment (and, probably, all future moments).

<comment><USER5> You compared "aged whisky", "goodyear-welted shoes" and "suits" to things like Rolex watches, on the basis that they are all about signaling.

This is like saying, because I prefer an all-wheel-drive car, it is for the same reason as buying a Ferrari, because who could possibly need a an all- wheel-drive car?

Other than people who drive in the snow.

Suits are warm and durable and fashionable, goodyear-welted shoes will last forever, be comfortable and weather-resistant, and aged whisky tastes different than non-aged whisky. You buy these generic categories of products for a practical reason. If you want to pay for the one that costs 10 times more than the others, _that_ is signaling.

I was going to give Johnny Walker as an example, but here's a better one: George Dickel Rye. It's fantastic, it's $26, and nobody knows it exists. It's comparable to a nice scotch. So why don't people drink this instead of scotch? Because scotch has things this doesn't, and they're willing to pay whatever it costs to get it. At a bar, though, I always buy the Dickel if it's available, because you can't beat the value.

<comment><USER6> You should try Bulleit Rye. It's top notch and not very expensive. All of Bulleit's whiskeys are good. Their standard whiskey is a bit sweet but still has good flavor. Great for an old fashioned. Their Frontier is my favorite though.

<comment><USER5> I find most bourbon to have a cough medicine aftertaste, and Bulleit Rye just tastes like a spicy Bulleit, so i'm not a fan. George Dickel Rye tastes like someone took a Macallan and added spice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Eh. Price will go up to match demand, the market will clear.

Meanwhile, turnaround time on a serviceable corn whiskey is less than thirty days from cob to bottle. No one is going to die for lack of drink.

Whole story is a bunch of hype.

<comment><USER8> Wait, what serviceable 30 day whiskey are you referring to? What's the service model?

<comment><USER7> I can't from this whether you are asking an honest question or if you can't google "define:serviceable", or can't google "corn whiskey" and see the first result in either case.

<comment><USER8> I'm suggesting that there probably is a product called "30 day old corn whiskey" and that it probably isn't very good.

<comment><USER7> You are entitled to that opinion, but you've missed the point entirely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if you can put the whiskey in some non-reacting container, and dump the oak inside of it.

This way, the exposed surface of the wood is twice as much (since both sides touch the whiskey), reducing the amount of oak needed.

</comment><comment><USER5> I had a bottle of Renegade, a 100% malted barley distilled in steel barrels with white oak chips for 60 days. It was.... weird, to say the least. Confusing. I don't usually drink malt whiskey other than scotch, so that could have just been totally new to me, but I wasn't a big fan.

</comment><comment><USER10> Here is a free tip to rapid agrers - add sunlight. Putting a bottle of good stuff in the sun for the summer destroys it. But it smooths out the rough stuff a lot. Source - forgot some bottles of cheap scotch on the balcony in my college days.

</comment><comment><USER11> I do like bourbon, but not nearly as much as rye. There have been a number of new American ryes in the last decade. I'm not going to tell you my favorites, though. I don't want the price to go up.

<comment><USER8> That's ok. Most of them are interchangeable MGP whiskeys anyways, and will always have some lower-priced lesser-known entirely-equivalent cousins.

<comment><USER11> True enough. I've sometimes thought about distilling my own as an experiment. It takes a long time to find out the results, though, and you're in constant danger from the revenuers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "During the aging process, changes in heat and pressure push and pull the alcohol in and out of the wood. There is a constant back-and-forth between aldehyde and acid, until the acids accumulate en masse and turn permanently into esters, adding complex character and deep flavors."

This quote I found interesting. It would seem an important ingredient in making whisky is a locale with reasonably varied weather. I wonder if anyone has tried the equivalent of putting their whisky barrels in a giant iron lung? Pushing and pulling the whisky in and out of the wood more often might speed up the aging process.

"When it opened in 2003, Tuthilltown started experimenting with accelerating the maturation of single malt, rye, and bourbon whiskeys by letting the alcohol settle in 2- to 5-gallon oak barrels, instead of the industry-standard 53- to 55-gallon oak casks, increasing the alcohol-to-barrel-surface ratio. The small barrels sped up aging significantly; we could get to market in months, instead of years," says Tuthilltown co-owner Ralph Erenzo"

Laphroaig takes 5-year old whisky and then ages it in "quarter casks" (~80 L or 20 gallons) for several months. The result is actually pretty tasty for a relatively cheap scotch. (Warning: must like Islay's or this one will slay you). Their 10-year old bottling is a bit nicer, but almost twice the price.

It's worth noting that more years in the barrel doesn't always improve a whisky. Islay's tend to lose their famous medicinal character if aged for too long, and other scotches often just get musty. I once had a 30-year old bottling of a rye that tasted like licking a steel drum. I'm not sure what went wrong there. Unlike many other things, there isn't so much a point of diminishing returns, but rather, a point after which a whisky will start getting _worse_ , even as the prices continue to grow exponentially.

"Bourbon made in less than a year may be financially savvy, but most bourbon experts say it falls short on taste. "I don't think new methods are producing whiskey that is comparable," Bryson says. "Some accelerated whiskeys don't feel right. They feel too thin; they don't have the proper 'roundness.' "

I'd have to do a double blind taste-test to be convinced this is true. Are whisky aficionados really more accurate than wine tasters, who famously aren't good at telling what they're drinking at all? I'm certain I could tell an Islay from a Rye or a Speyside, but could I tell a 5-year-old Bourbon from an 8-year-old Bourbon made by the same distiller if they were messing about with these accelerated aging methods?

Aging issues aside, it will be interesting to see how consumer tastes evolve over the coming decades. Scotch has come on big in the last couple of decades and demand for Bourbon is also exploding. Rye (especially Canadian Rye) remains a bit of a niche drink though, but public interest seems to be picking up. Last year, Jim Murray declared the #1 new whisky in the world to be Crown Royal Northern Harvest Rye, which is a good rye for the price, but nothing particularly special. There are several Canadian Rye producers that could easily produce higher end bottlings if the market demand was there, and it does seem to be developing. It would be a fine day indeed if Alberta Premium started regularly producing 20-30 year-old bottlings instead of tricking an extremely limited bottling out every 5 years.

<comment><USER13> On your first point: people have known about this for a long time. Rum, for instance, is mostly produced in warmer climates, and the aging process is 2x to 5x faster. A 3 year rum tastes like a 10 year whiskey. And indeed, Buffalo Trace ages its Blanton's brand whiskey at the top of a meal rickhouse, where it can get the most exposure to the shifting temperatures of the natural world. (it pays off, it is one of the best bourbons you can get for $60 or even more).

Second: Scotch is aged very differently from bourbon, mostly regarding the barrel restrictions bourbon has (new charred american oak, only). A number of scotch distilleries actually buy barrels off of bourbon distilleries after the casks have been used. Thats also why bourbon is almost always much sweeter in profile than scotch or other whiskies. (Also Laphroaig is delicious).

<comment><USER14> It'd be fascinating if a few barrels of Laphroaig were sent someplace warm, but equally as coastal for aging to see how it changes the tastes.

<comment><USER13> Too much effort and money, probably, especially since they have a good spot in the market right now.

However, Jefferson's Ocean [1] whiskey is an experiment where Jefferson's took 68 bourbons aged 6-8 years, blended them together, threw the barrels onto a ship, and sent it on a 6 month sea voyage. Apparently, it yielded some interesting, tasty bourbon. I haven't had it, I havent even seen it in person. But be on the look out, i guess.

[1] [http://thewhiskeyjug.com/bourbon-whiskey/jeffersons-ocean- ag...](http://thewhiskeyjug.com/bourbon-whiskey/jeffersons-ocean-aged-sea- review/)

<comment><USER15> I've had it. It's amazing and well worth the price. Hell, well worth a significantly higher price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not a very good article since it doesn't mention Lost Spirits (www.lostspirits.net), with working technology that can age Whiskey and other spirits in a week. Maybe it's technically true that you can't hide the age, but apparently you can just fake it.

<comment><USER17> I don't understand how mentioning one recent startup which barely has samples out can make or break an article like this.

<comment><USER18> "Barely has samples out" is not really true. Rational Spirits Santeria Rum, produced with his rapid aging tech, has been sold for months now.

<comment><USER19> ...typo

<comment><USER18> Hahaha, whoops. What a typo...

I fixed it now. Thanks</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How would you represent Shakespeares 'To be or not to be' in code? - <AUTHOR> Just a fun question I'd like to see how you'd represent it :)
I think '2be' cannot be a string though, as i think its an instance of something
Just some background on the context:
There are many "meanings" in Hamlet's speech and there are entire essays written on them and how they relate to the play as a whole. What I offer here are some generally accepted interpretations and observations of the speech.
1) The speech represents Hamlet's contemplation of suicide. Hamlet questions whether it is a viable solution to his problems.
2) Hamlet contemplates killing Claudius. He wants revenge but if Claudius will go to heaven, then killing will not avenge Hamlet's father.
3) The speech asks existential questions which have been bothering Hamlet. What happens after death? Is it better to act or to remain inactive? Is existence (living) worth the pain? Why do miserable people continue to live?
https://owlcation.com/humanities/What-is-the-meaning-of-To-be-or-not-to-be <comment><USER2> A or not A = true So to be or not to be can be represented by 'true'</comment>


Planely—Join the flying revolution - <AUTHOR> http://www.planely.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Planely is a Danish start up that I think is best described as "social flying" and networking. It looks really interesting, but I have no idea if anyone's using it.

If anyone'll be using it on their way to or from SXSW, I'd love to hear your experiences.</comment>


Sorry, the Mouse is Not Dead  - <AUTHOR> http://www.markevanstech.com/2008/06/26/sorry-the-mouse-is-not-dead/ <comment><USER2> Sure it's not. Not yet. But I think they're some exciting alternatives brewing. Check out Glancing Pad: <http://yanooshray.googlepages.com>

It's basically a pad that detects movement. You can use it as a keyboard and mouse at the same time. And, although he doesn't say it, I think you can modify it to key-chord so that you're not just inputting letters, but full words, expressions and commands.</comment>


Ask HN: What are today's End to End encryption solutions for non tech people? - <AUTHOR> Non tech people ask me what should they use for their communications in terms of security and I find myself mumbling pgp, follow this 40-step guide, explain public / private keys... It doesn't really work.
How far have we progressed on this? What solutions are there today for secure end-to-end ubiquitous communication to supplement or at cases even replace email.
I'm talking about a primarily Desktop solution, chat will not do, so products like WhatsApp and Wire don't count... Likewise, mobile messengers will not work on an operational capacity for a company / entity. I've seen a few ad-hoc services here and there, is any of them well established? Do you trust them?
Let's try to not get consumed on the subject of communications security itself, but try to think, how would you respond to similar questions from non-tech people? You need to give a straight answer they will understand, follow, and will be satisfactory secure, what would that answer be? <comment><USER2> There are some companies that offer encrypted email accounts.

ProtonMail ([https://protonmail.com/](https://protonmail.com/)) which I prefer, and Tutanota ([https://tutanota.com/](https://tutanota.com/))

<comment><USER3> Didn't protonmail get ddos'ed a while back, then ask for donations to pay the ransom, and try to spin it as a state level conspiracy?

[https://protonmaildotcom.wordpress.com/2015/11/05/protonmail...](https://protonmaildotcom.wordpress.com/2015/11/05/protonmail- statement-about-the-ddos-attack/)

Can anyone in a position to know weigh in on whether it's true that decent ddos protection costs $100,000 per year?

EDIT: The consensus on HN about these questions affects whether I would recommend protonmail to non-technical users.</comment></comment>


Gremlin Introduces Chaos Engineering Scenarios to Prepare for Real-World Outages - <AUTHOR> https://www.gremlin.com/blog/introducing-scenarios#hn <comment><USER2> Gremlin product here. Super excited to have folks give this a try and let us know what you think!</comment>


Debunking SQRL - <AUTHOR> http://security.blogoverflow.com/2013/10/debunking-sqrl/ <comment><AUTHOR> SQRL is very close to being released. I thought this article and the comments were interesting and am curious as to what we think about 'passwordless' authentication. For updated information go to [https://www.grc.com/sqrl/sqrl.htm](https://www.grc.com/sqrl/sqrl.htm)

Thoughts?</comment>


Too Many Knobs - <AUTHOR> http://neverworkintheory.org/2016/06/09/too-many-knobs.html <comment><USER2> I've noticed a trend in many web apps to stop doing something that used to be standard

It's this: you're displaying a list of things that have various properties. It used to be the case that you're be allowed to sort and filter by any property. Many web apps nowadays seem to 'curate' my sort and filter options and in many cases a particular use is crippled because the property I want to sort or filter by is one that the author deemed a minority use-case.

Now the programming cost of allowing filtering by anything is minimal. The cognitive load on the user is minimal (once you've got the UI for one property then adding more doesn't make much difference)

I've found this deeply frustrating on many occasions.

<comment><USER3> "Now the programming cost of allowing filtering by anything is minimal"

Not only is this not true except in your imaginary app but it's also disregarding the incredibly bad UI that can come from allowing everything to be filtered.

A good design has constraints and thoughtful choices. A shitty design has everything possible thrown on the screen because "allow filtering by anything is minimal".

<comment><USER4> This is highly application-specific. If you're looking for components to use in some design, for example, it's useful to have the component value, power rating, cost, form-factor, etc, all displayed together and filterable/sortable. If the application doesn't allow for filtering in this context, then that's something that the user ends up doing mentally. Worse, if the application doesn't allow all this information to be displayed as a summary, you end up with 50+ products for which you have to manually click a link and skim the product brief of each one individually.

For example, here's Newarks's procuct chooser [1]. You can sort and filter by _any_ field. It remains uncluttered by default-populating only the most commonly-used fields, but it avoids sacrificing any capabilities via making these hidden fields easy to access (click the "extended" button right above the table header).

I'd like to point out that in lists like these, the parent comment is 100% correct in saying "[the] cost of allowing filtering by anything is minimal". And while I'm sure an experienced designer could improve the UI, this is a scenario in which _sacrificing_ capability for beauty is absolutely an inappropriate thing to do.

[1] [http://www.newark.com/eeprom](http://www.newark.com/eeprom)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think I can isolate the entire issue to this one line, emphasis mine:

> Only a small percentage (6.1%-16.7%) of configuration parameters are set by > the majority of users; a significant percentage (up to 54.1%) of parameters > are _rarely_ set by any user.

The necessary question is, how many _installations_ used at least one rarely- set parameter? Would those installations have happened _without_ that parameter? How much effort went into developing that parameter, versus the profits of those installations?

<comment><USER6> Reminds me of this article: [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html)

The pull out quote being:

 _A lot of software developers are seduced by the old "80/20" rule. It seems to make a lot of sense: 80% of the people use 20% of the features. So you convince yourself that you only need to implement 20% of the features, and you can still sell 80% as many copies.

Unfortunately, it's never the same 20%. Everybody uses a different set of features._

<comment><USER7> The same idea applies to those advocating for having "simple" and "expert" configuration menus: everybody's expertise is different, and changes over time as we learn and forget things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd rather have confusing software that does what I want, than simple software that doesn't do what I want.

I'd suggest the proper response to this is, "Make the common case easy, make the uncommon case possible."

<comment><USER9> I'd rather have five simple tools that do what I want than one tool that can in principle do what the five tools do if you massage its configuration enough.

<comment><USER10> In my real-world tool kit for household use, I've got a configurable screwdriver with multiple heads of various sizes and shapes (slot, cross- point, etc.). I also have a bunch of conventional screwdrivers. I use the latter far more.

<comment><USER11> But when you come across a Torx screw, I bet you're really happy you have the configurable screwdriver.

<comment><USER10> Actually I have a Torx screwdriver too -- and the multi-head configurable screwdriver doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _sigh_

That's how you get shiny toys, not useful tools.

The advice here is good if your primary goal is to successfully sell glorified interactive ads in a market where people buy software by looking how pretty it is and making their choice in 2 seconds. If that's your goal, then ok, one has to make a living, but in this case I don't want your software, and I'll discourage everyone from using it.

Sane defaults + flexibility are a way to go. Software should empower the user, and part of this empowerment may be suggesting a particular workflow, but it should not _force_ one to use that workflow and never stray from it. And don't give me the excuse that "more options == much more complexity == much harder to add new features". That's only true if you write utter spaghetti code, and fuck it, programmers get paid so much so that they do this right.

<comment><USER13> Emphasis on sane defaults.

One issue is that "sane" changes over time _, but it 's hard to change defaults without upsetting people who suddenly find their defaults changed because of an update.

(Although I'd argue that's best solved by letting them be upset until they understand why the default changed.)

_ e.g. a Video capture which previously defaulted to 320x240 might later default to 640x480 and now default to 1440x720.

<comment><USER14> Or better yet, intelligently handle the change as a suggestion during the upgrade process. "We see you are still using the legacy default 320x240 setting. We are now recommending 640x480. Do you want to change to this new recommendation, or keep your existing setting?" Something like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think Firefox is a great example here.

It has a simple UI to guide the user into finding and setting the most common options. That UI must be as simple as possible for new users and can be changed regularly, according to the changing needs of the majority of users.

It also has an advanced, generic but type-safe UI (about:config) for finding and setting any possible option present in the software.

Configuration files are the traditional way to achieve this second level, but they don't always help the user in _finding_ the options and are generally not type-safe.

<comment><USER16> I think about:config is terrible. It's really hard to find anything in it. It's very "if you know its there you will use" but has no discoverability.

For instance I was wondering if I could have one tab connect over a VPN while the rest were over my normal connection. I have no idea if that's an options somewhere in the millions of toggles

EDIT: You know how applications used to be have an "Advanced" button that'd give you a nicely organized display off all the "extra" toggles? Whatever happened to that paradigm?

<comment><USER17> > You know how applications used to be have an "Advanced" button that'd give > you a nicely organized display off all the "extra" toggles?

I think your example of about:config is also an explanation for why that went away. It used to be possible to reasonably put all of the more esoteric settings on a single page (or a small, single-digit, number of pages), but that's no longer the case for many pieces of software. Also realistically the overwhelming majority of users probably already weren't going into the advanced settings, and those that were are probably more capable of handing about:config.

<comment><USER18> At least there were options that were grouped in a sane fashion and discoverable while I was in a particular screen trying to grope around to find a setting that I needed to change. about:config is not discoverable in any way, shape, or form and we've lost the ability to discover capabilities that you don't look for in particular via a broader search. The ability to find something in passing that is related to your mission has severely diminished.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> And yet _more knobs_ is the difference between Photoshop and Elements, or Elements and Photo Viewer. I'll be Photoshop is full of features with <1% usage, and that's how it should be. Those components don't have to be (shouldn't be) displayed at equal visibility to others, but they shouldn't go anywhere. The entire value of the program is that if you do want them, they're there.

Removing low-use features is a dangerous game; much of the best software out there (Excel, Photoshop, Viz, etc) is defined by an enormous feature set and a high skill ceiling.

<comment><USER3> Arrghh...jesus there are a lot of "engineers" in here that can't seem to see the forest for the trees.

Yes _we_ developers and engineers as a class of human beings love being able to set things to the nth degree as can be seen by the comments here but that's not necessarily the right choice for the vast majority of projects.

Most normal human beings want simple tools that do what they say on the box and don't require much cognitive load at all.

Every setting, every "knob" introduces to the average user a feeling of frustration, confusion, complication.

To an engineering minded person they might find all those options exciting but to someone who just needs to GET SHIT DONE those extra options are hellish and anxiety inducing.

In a few rare cases an application is best designed with more knobs but it's very definitely the exception and almost always a clear sign of shitty design made by engineers for people who they imagine are like them and not professional designers who have actually worked with the general public and know what they actually want, how they think, what they need.

More knobs is almost always a sign of lazy thoughtless design.

<comment><USER20> Not sure why you're getting downvoted. I completely agree.

I use photoshop maybe once every two months and have found that its interface is _completely inaccessible_ if you don't use it full time.

I understand that it's great to have full control over everything, but there's a point where it's overkill in Getting Shit Done. Hell, it's gotten to the point with me where I'd rather use cv2 over photoshop/gimp for most things...

<comment><USER18> Meanwhile, I fire up the average application that uses the Gnome HIG spec, and I find it horrendous to use. They take it a number of steps further and remove, completely and thoroughly, any ability to customize. I very much like the Apple mentality circa 2005 with sane, intelligent defaults, a small number of configuration options in a small number of screens, and an advanced button for everything else. Apple did a very good job back then of making their software feature complete and customizeable without making it a shit show in either the too dumb or too complex direction.

<comment><USER20> There's a middle ground. I'm fine with tons of configuration, but at least make some sane defaults or prompts so that I don't have to read a giant wiki to do an initial setup. Everybody initially runs through it, so why not spend the time it took to write the wiki and write prompts for an installer, instead?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > a significant percentage (up to 48.5%) of configuration issues are about > users' difficulties in finding or setting the parameters to obtain the > intended system behavior

this is the important bit to me.

i don't like using software that feels like it could fall over because i turned the wrong combination of knobs the developer didn't anticipate.

opinionated, fixed configuration is a nicer experience than an app that can do anything, if you bend it to your will.

<comment><USER12> The thing is - some of us want software not for "experience", but for its utility. If I want "experience", I can go to a theme park or play a video game. I expect my software to help me achieve my goals faster and more efficiently, or to at least eliminate clutter in my life.

Also, nothing really prevents one from having the settings hidden in the "advanced" menu. It's not either/or.

<comment><USER22> Nobody ever says they want fewer options, but that's because it's never such a pressing issue as not having the one you want.

In a program I develop, I sometimes remove an option and people complain, then it turns out they were randomly tweaking that option to try to solve some problems that it was never going to solve in the first place. They just liked the feeling of being able to control _something_. So those are cases of bad options that should have been removed because they made it harder for people. People just can't help but try changing settings when something doesn't work, and hiding them in an "advanced" menu doesn't deter them. That's where all the most powerful settings are afertall! It encourages frustrating time wasting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a very important question to ask, but I am a little frustrated reading the paper. I went into reading the paper expecting answers to these questions :

1\. How much is the problem of having too many configuration options mitigated by having sensible defaults ?

"a significant percentage (up to 48.5%) of configuration issues are about users' difficulties in finding or setting the parameters to obtain the intended system behavior; a significant percentage (up to 53.3%) of configuration errors are introduced due to users' staying with default values incorrectly."

The former means the configuration options provided do not match the ones desired by the user, not whether there was too many or too few. If anything it encourages software authors to provide more knobs. The latter doesn't have a strong enough correlation to the number of configuration parameters at all. For example, say all these errors happened at Google because of high load, and they were using Apache with default configuration which was built for small and medium scale websites.

2\. How does having many configuration options affect software update process ?

No idea

3\. What percentage of users are unhappy due to having too many knobs ( decision fatigue, fear of missing out ) ?

17.3%∼48.5% of users calls to the technical support center and questions posted on forums. I assume this is a conservative estimate.

4\. Does having too little knobs cause software to be forked and cause fragmentation ?

No idea

5\. Does the result differ when applied to application software ( vs system software ) ?

Not in scope.

Need more research.

<comment><USER24> As soon as you have multiple dimensions of configuration it might be impossible to provide better defaults-- that "wrong for 53.3%" could be a good number reflecting the best possible defaults.

<comment><USER25> Not really. The video players on Linux have tons of options that I could set, but I hardly ever do.

<comment><USER26> And do those options clutter the ui?

I use vlc. 99% of the time all I need is the standard ff, play, rew and the que bar. But I'm also one of those uses that uses many of the other buried features. If they weren't there I'd switch players but they're buried and so the basic ui is uncluttered

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I can only attest, configuration bloat is especially relevant to complex enterprise products, for obvious reasons. What we normally do in our products is to provide a simple interface to view a filtered list of non-default settings. We also have a way to export this list of custom setting names (not values), so we can query our customer base once in a while, to check which settings are not utilized. We've used this trick to internalize or EOL a lot of "knobs" that haven't been used at all.

<comment><USER28> >configuration bloat is especially relevant to complex enterprise products, for obvious reasons

I've always assumes that enterprise software has complex configuration options because it's more bespoke than the supplier would have you believe. So rather than delivering a piece of software tailored to the need of one, or a few customers, the new behaviour just becomes a setting in a much, much larger system. The goal being having just one code base.

<comment><USER29> Our product is on the small side of "enterprise". We have many configuration options that are customer-driven, but we're not trying to replace bespoke software.

For example, we have 5-6 different settings for password policy. Most customers use the defaults, but the ones in banking and government usually have very specific security rules that require them to tweak the settings. One allows 10-char passwords but requires them to expire in 60 days. Another is 12 characters and 90 days. And so on.

<comment><USER27> We had that too. At some point we added LDAP authentication and it took care of user credential management. LDAP (AD) is universally present in the enterprise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> tl;dr: "there is too many setting, most people won't even use them". The solution IMO is not to remove those knobs completely, but to set defaults well and be able to 'pop under the hood' when you need as you probably know what you're doing by then. A good use case is an editor - most recent successful editos such as Sublime, VSCode etc are minimalistic to begin with, but very configurable behind the scenes. For starting user it's nothing but text editor, for an advanced user it can be a full blown, build, testing and deployment enviornment

<comment><USER31> When making Office 2007, the MS Office team had the problem that 99% of their feature requests were for features already existing. Users couldn't find them.

Their solution was a UI change, from menus and toolbars, to the oft-maligned Ribbon. Advanced settings were kept almost the same as in previous versions, and the button to access those was an arrow in the section containing common settings.

<comment><USER32> _Users couldn 't find them._

That's my problem with the oft-maligned Ribbon. It changes it's appearance based on the window width.

So the first time an option might be a large-icon-with-text.

The next time you look for it, it may be a small icon, have no text, or be completely hidden. That's 4+ visuals for the same option.

</rant>

<comment><USER33> Never mind that menus could be navigated by keyboard. You hit alt, then either the highlighted letters or used the arrows to move around.

Do it frequently enough and you can pretty much do it blind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> "Star had many fewer commands than today's systems, and it didn't do it by having fewer functions. It just had fewer commands." — Dave Smith¹ at The Final Demonstration of the Xerox 'Star' Computer²

Most UX designers are not as good as David Smith; they worship Apple/Jobs' "function follows form" misunderstanding of the Star GUI, and think you need to remove functionality in order to remove complexity.

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

² video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OwG_rQ_Hqw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OwG_rQ_Hqw) text: [http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/201...](http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2015/09/102737965-05-01-acc.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER35> The VMS product managers at Digital figured this out in about 1985. VMS was horrendously configurable, with all sorts of system settings to tweak.

As I recall, product management forced the issue by making it so the dev team didn't have access to their own machines to tweak parameters. It didn't take long in VAX years for the OS to become more self-configuring. It was a draconian approach, but helped customer satisfaction.

</comment><comment><USER36> This blog is providing a valuable service, aggregating and commenting on research. Are there others like this?

</comment><comment><USER37> On topic, I do think studying interfaces is exceptionally helpful. Just take a look at all the approaches in music! Faders, knobs, buttons, toggles...the gamut. Such a fascinating issue...and can be confusing, no lie.

But too manky knobs? How about Too Many Buttons?!

(It's a DJ parody video and actually hilarious):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grYXuR8ODwY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grYXuR8ODwY)

</comment><comment><USER38> Havoc Pennington in 2002: [http://ometer.com/preferences.html](http://ometer.com/preferences.html)

</comment><comment><USER39> This is the kind of thinking that destroyed GNOME 3.

<comment><USER40> I was thinking precisely this.

"User-friendly" depends _entirely_ on the user in question. I find Gnome 2 to be considerably more "user-friendly" than Gnome 3, because Gnome 3 frustrated my attempts to do what I expected to be able to do.

For that matter, I consider bash (and coreutils and family) considerably more user friendly than Gnome, for a given value of "user" (me).

<comment><USER33> And thats why i think KDE back in the day, before plasma and all that bling, had the right idea. The basic behavior emulated Windows 9x pretty closely, thus anyone passably familiar with Windows could jump right in and use KDE.

This in turn lessened the transition friction, as people try to do something but do not find it where they expect it from memory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> So, users don't change the settings on your software? Good for you. That means you have good defaults, and should be one of your goals.

</comment><comment><USER42> Unlike an interface on the net with to many choices, in a none emergency situation, I love having too many knobs.

</comment><comment><USER43> There are some good observations here. I believe a large part of the interface problem is that people try to design interfaces that make tools easy to _use_ , but it's usually better to design interfaces that make tools easy to _understand_. There's a difference.

</comment><comment><USER44> It's funny that they call it "over-designed" when in fact over configuration is usually the result of the opposite: lack of design.

</comment><comment><USER45> My own saying on this:

"That which _can_ be configured _must_ be configured",

corr: "Defaults Aren't".

Inspired by my early experiences with early Windows 3.</comment>


How US companies can avoid paying taxes (video) - <AUTHOR> http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/06/19/business/100000000870844/inside-the-accountants-playbook.html

<comment><USER2> They single out the drug companies in this video, but really it's C corporations as a whole that can game the system. And the system is designed to be gamed. The US tax code is a rabbit's warren of incentives that accountants and tax lawyers get paid well to navigate. Meanwhile, most S corps and LLC's, with their pass through tax structures, bear the full load.

</comment><comment><USER3> Video is only 3m35s long and I thought it was worth a watch.

Nothing shocking or new, but the video does a good job of tying all the steps together for how (drug) corporations can reduce their tax load.

<comment><USER4> The key word being "(drug) corporations" since they are large enough to afford this.

This is beyond the reach of your average small company / startup. 'Little people' do pay quite close to the 35%.

<comment><USER3> Do the little people pay that? Or do they take all revenue as salary and zero out the profit? Which is what I assume every small business does.

<comment><USER5> After you make about 375k, you have to pay 35% tax on every extra dollar of salary too.

<comment><USER6> Source?

<comment><USER7> The IRS, that's the top income tax bracket. They're listed in the form 1040 instructions if you want to see it on paper.

<comment><USER6> Actually, I was referring to the assertion that you're in the 35% tax bracket when your salary hits ~375K. There is a lot of confusion in this area, especially when things like pass-through entities (like LLCs and S-Corps) are involved.

Keep in mind that salary income from an LLC or from an S-Corp is also taxed by Soc. Security and Medicare (the dreaded ~15% self-employment tax) while capital gains from an LLC/S-Corp isn't necessarily subject to it.

My point (and I do have one) is that the tax picture is considerably murkier when there is a business involved, be it a small one or a large one. Income taxes for salaried workers are a relatively straightforward matter. Income taxes for owners of businesses are another thing entirely. Deductions for business expenses are just a small part of that circus. The rules for businesses are a BIG part of the tax code and responsible for much of the shenanigans. If you think paying $250 for H&R block to prepare your return is steep, try paying something like $15-$30K for a moderately complex return for an LLC.

(NOTE: My next-door neighbor just retired from the IRS after 30 years doing small business audits and my ex-fiance is a tax accountant. I've also owned and filed taxes for S-corps and LLCs as a principal. Shit just got real.)

<comment><USER7> I pay my accountant $275 to do the returns for my LLC. I keep my own books the rest of the year. I've been audited by the IRS and owed no money after the audit. Having a business doesn't automatically make things super complex. It's only complicated if your business is complicated.

<comment><USER6> Do you have employees? How about lots of capital assets with varying depreciation schedules? Do you operate in a business that gets different tax treatment for operating in a special zone? Do you get income from many states?

Your situation isn't typical. In fact, it's probably an outlier. I know performers who have to file 43 different state tax returns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Even though the American corporate tax rate is 35%, nobody pays that.

Is she saying no corporation pays that or just drug corporations?

</comment><comment><USER9> Another reason why income taxes are silly.

Downvote? Do you enjoy bearing the burden?

<comment><USER10> While my car currently needs to be repaired, I don't go around saying that cars are silly. The US tax code is a broken mess, but that is just an implementation problem.

<comment><USER9> With all due respect, that's akin to saying my car would be a plane if it could fly.

Tell me, how would you fix the incentives to loophole the hell out of the tax code?

<comment> mkr-hn Convince the loophole abusers to support a new tax system that incentivizes what needs to be incentivized, and funds what we as a society decide needs to be funded. The hard part is finding that tax system. I think the needed change is possible, but I think it'll require things getting so bad that even the worst of abusers are convinced that there's a problem.

<comment><USER9> By definition, the worst of the abusers will benefit the most so why would they ever see anything wrong?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>