So You Want To Fix The Housing Crisis - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/02/so-you-want-to-fix-the-housing-crisis/ 15 of the 30 cities with the highest rents in the US are all in the San Francisco Bay Area. <comment><USER2> Housing is one of those issues where the political paradigm is so complex, it's impenetrable. Everyone has their own opinions about what the main engine is and it's hard to get anywhere.

Here's my own perspective, it has nothing to do with any city in particular.

(A) Housing is not a free market. Supply and demand exist, but that is not enough to make a market free. It's never a free market because decisions are (necessarily or not) always made at the political level. This covers things from planning, interest rate policies, bankruptcy laws tenancy laws, and even things like bank bailouts. Housing is unavoidably political.

(B) There is a conflict of interests between home owners and renters. One wants high prices, low availability, the other wants low prices.

(C) There are lots of interests that fall on the rising prices side. Rising prices make it easier to make money on loans, building, etc. They make it easier to raise tax revenue that funds public services that all sorts of parties have an interest in.

(D) Owner-occupiers should be neutral. They own one house, regardless of market price. But because of financing, and a lot of incorrect but persistent psychology about personal wealth they usually feel firmly on the high prices side. No one wants their house to lose value.

(E) Nominal increase in property value is inflation. Inflation has real impact on the "real" economy (as economists use the term). This has to do with the value of outstanding loans and annuities.

We are looking at problems that are mostly political and cultural as if they are economic. Ultimately a lot of the things that drive demand for houses are the same as the things that drive demand for universities. Demand for elite universities is not about competing for education as a scarce resource. Same with housing. It's not about competition and scarcity . It's about culture and politics.

<comment><USER3> "Owner-occupiers should be neutral"

Except for people who want their home to provide a cash inheritance for their children when they die, or who want to sell their home and downsize while still alive to raise cash. That's not an incorrect psychology.

<comment><USER2> Those are edge cases and they can go both ways. Inheritance for their children to buy a house with? Even with inheritance, it can be zero sum. You inherit a house which you use to clear a mortgage or buy your own house. You still have one house. Unless the houses multiply there is nor real addition of wealth.

Some people do accumulate capital in their houses and downsize. But even in cases where it happens, they might have been better of with cheaper housing costs all their lives enabling savings amounting to more capital at retirement.

Homeowners might end up on either side of this equation. Rapid growth periods place earlier buyers in a better relative place to later buyers. But I think the upside is over valued by home owners while the downside is undervalued. Much of the upside is in fact access to capital.

It's interesting how foreign the idea that lower prices make us wealthier is when it comes to housing.

<comment><USER4> Edge cases?

That's the entire middle class you just called an edge case. You might be able to do the math, they can't. All they know is that they bought for £150k, sold for £175k, woohoo, they made £25k. Doesn't matter their new house was even more expensive.

Also the baby boomers cashed out big on their houses before the recession, so their children irrationally believe that's what's going to happen to them.

All your other (pretty good) points now look slightly ridiculous by association because you're so out of touch with normal people.

<comment><USER2> I meant that instances where homeowners really win or lose significantly from rising house prices are edge cases. They exist and are common. But, they go both ways.

I believe that the mentality you are describing is generated by the system moreso than it generates the system. If people expected their £150k house in Norwich to be worth £125k in 10 years, the whole psychology would change. people would see houses as what they are. Things that cost money. Things you live in.

*I also think that all the mortgage encouragement is counterproductive. If 10 year loans were the norm, house prices would be lower. Own-to-let would require higher returns (7-9%) over a lower purchase cost, but housing as an overall cost to the people in the country would be lower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" If you need an example of how intense this is, over the summer, 71,421 people, or 8 percent of San Franciscans, decided that we should all vote on every single project over the existing height limits on the waterfront by passing a ballot initiative. It was funded primarily by a single wealthy couple that didn't want to lose their views, and they put it through in one of the lowest turnout elections in city history."_

What she doesn't say, really matters: that initiative was primarily about _stopping a massive government handout to the multimillionaire owners of a professional basketball team_ , which would essentially give away a choice bit of public property in order to build an arena in a part of town where no arena should exist. The ballot initiative was put in place to make it much more difficult for that land-grab to go through.

This stuff isn't just about people being ridiculous NIMBYs. Honestly, I think it's _more_ ridiculous to look at San Francisco and claim that the problem is that we aren't building enough, when you can walk up to just about any live/work space in SOMA (i.e. the new construction), and see that the tenant list is mostly startups. That's what happens when you let developers build whatever they want -- they build for the most lucrative allowed use of the land. And that usually isn't residential construction.

Is there NIMBYism in the bay area? Absolutely. But the biggest problem, by far, is that there's a massive technology bubble inflating everything from real estate to salaries in a very tiny slice of livable property. The price increases are being driven by greed and speculation as much as any sort of sustainable demand.

<comment><USER6> > I think it's more ridiculous to look at San Francisco and claim that the > problem is that we aren't building enough...

I have no understanding of this (common) sentiment. We are adding jobs at 10x the rate we are building new housing. There are only two variables in the equation. You can not will the relationship between supply and demand out of existence.

> That's what happens when you let developers build whatever they want

No, this is exactly what happens when you don't let developers build to accommodate the market. According to the article, a 640 sq ft single unit costs 500K$ to build [1]. The worse case scenario is that after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, the project is delayed by any one of dozens of parties that can block development for years.

In summary, of the 1/10th of the required housing we do build, it is quite literally __impossible__ for any of it to be affordable and turn a profit. Any laws that make building more onerous will only exacerbate the problem.

1\. [http://www.spur.org/publications/article/2014-02-11/real- cos...](http://www.spur.org/publications/article/2014-02-11/real-costs- building-housing)

<comment><USER5> The very first chart in that SPUR publication shows you that the vast majority of development costs are in land and construction. If you do the math, the regulatory costs in that chart amount to 16% of the total. This is consistent with what I've read from architects and urban planners -- regulatory expense in SF is <= 20% of building costs. And most of _that_ is a set-aside for low- income housing.

In other words, regulation is a red herring. Even if you _eliminated all regulations_ , the cost of building a housing unit here would be beyond the reach of most people. Land and construction, in a tiny, dense city where everyone wants to live in the same three neighborhoods: it's expensive because it's expensive.

<comment><USER6> Regulator expenses in building houses may only be 20-40% of the cost, but this isn't true of the price! In healthy markets, houses are priced close to the cost of construction. In SF (in the 90s), house prices were over 140% the cost of construction [1]. I'd expect the difference to be even larger today because regulations are more ridiculous.

I agree, if we eliminated all regulations, the cost of building a house would decrease perhaps 40% at the most. I'd expect some of this savings to be passed on to tenants. If this were the only consideration, housing would still be unaffordable. But, without regulation, we'd also see at least _10x_ increase in new construction. Housing would be built until it were no longer profitable. IE, the price of apartments would approach the cost of building them (from astronomical to merely expensive).

The Bay simultaneously welcomes any and all new jobs while it refuses to build housing concomitant to the demand. It will never be cheap to live here, but maybe we could drop the distinction as the most expensive city in the country.

1\. [http://www.researchgate.net/publication/228180251_Zoning%27s...](http://www.researchgate.net/publication/228180251_Zoning%27s_Steep_Price)

<comment><USER7> > But, without regulation, we'd also see at least 10x increase in new > construction

This is theory. Reality would be very different.

<comment><USER8> What like 9x increase? Clearly more housing would be built if were simply allowed. Developers are building to the maximum units/sqft permitted on every project.

<comment><USER7> I would suspect more like 1.1-1.2x.

Essentially, for most homeowners their home is their biggest investment and they should be expected to act in their economic self-interest to preserve and increase the value of that investment, and thus we can expect them to do what they can to prevent more homes from being built.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I might feel bad for people dealing with housing in SF.. But I live in Auckland. Considering moving back to Texas so I can feel sorry for people dealing with both cities' housing.

Most aren't familiar so I'll paint a picture(in NZD). The average selling price for a home just this past September was 683,101. What will 683k get you? Pretty much a shack by US standards. Probably no insulation. No central AC. It's actually pretty hard to describe just how little you get. Sure, you can buy lower but even at 550k homes come with descriptive words like "Real potential", "A real do-up", "Great starting point", "Fringe", "A foot on the ladder". Oh, and did I mention the 20% DP you need for a mortgage now? And the interest rates will have you paying double unless you pay it off fast. Meanwhile, median household income is about 60K(USD).

Renting? Anything under 400/week will most likely be unsuitable for a couple. You really don't start hitting "descent" until you're closing in on 500/week and they come with more bedrooms than you need.. Almost no good one bedrooms. There is this threshold you have to cross before you start finding places that have been kept up. See, there is a tremendous housing shortage. This causes much of the low end stuff to go barely maintained through decades of renter churn because they are sure to find another renter regardless. You might search months for a suitable place to rent, and then have to contend with many others after the same place. Often between the time a listing goes up and you can call, same day, it's mysteriously gone. A lot of the choice places don't schedule appointments; they herd groups of 20 through at designated times on viewing days. The property management agents, which you'll most likely be dealing with because you're renting a property from some guys portfolio of like 5(corporate owned apartment complexes are almost unheard of), are often times very unhelpful and even rude.

A lot of the points about renting are mirrored in buying. Most homes go to auction because the shortage. People get desperate and end up bidding high to secure a place and be done with the process.

In the US people absolutely hate packing and moving. In Auckland simply finding a suitable place to live is so bad, you don't really pay any mind to the actual moving:|

End Rant.

</comment><comment><USER8> Another interesting article from Kim-Mai Cutler on the absolutely fascinating Bay Area housing market. In case you missed her last one and the discussion in HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7590250](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7590250)

One correction is needed: tenancies in common (TICs) ARE NOT a method of avoiding SF rent control rules. It has absolutely no effect on whether or not a particular unit is subject to rent control. It is simply a way that people can share ownership of a multi-unit building - like a coop. On the other hand condo conversion does remove many of the burdens of the SF rent control. That in turn is why the SF government had to essentially outlaw condo conversions. The rules are very complex and constantly changing - educate yourself and then talk to a lawyer.

<comment><USER10> I'm aware of that, but unfortunately, a lot of real estate interests use TICs and the state Ellis Act to kick out long-term rent-controlled tenants.

<comment><USER8> Well technically it is only the Ellis Act that makes eviction easier. TICs just happen to be the best exit for a building that has been "Ellis Acted" and therefore cannot be rented for several years. All the units still remain subject to all the rent control rules if they are ever rented again - plus a whole bunch of other rules meant to discourage the practice. Again TICs are just the way multiple people own a single real estate.

BTW - TICs have an unusual meaning in SF. In most (English law) places it simply means property held "as undivided partial interests" \- say 50/50 by two owners. In SF it means not merely this but also that all the owners have an agreement between them about who live where, etc - much like a coop agreement. It is sort of a condo-lite created in response to the restrictions on condo conversion - part of the endless war that is rent control (that only reliably benefits lawyers and politicians who are usually lawyers too). Again - complex stuff - see a lawyer. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The problems mentioned in the article certainly are not unique to SF, though the scale is pretty large.

Sidney, MT, which is in the Bakken oilfield, has such a shortage of housing that workers there spent last winter sleeping in campers and trucks on the side of the road. In the winter, the temperature can dip to -30 degrees. The dept of transportation (DOT) bottled up a housing projected for almost a year over a right of way dispute. In this case the developer agreed to pay for the improvements, but the DOT insisted on overseeing the process, which increased the cost 2x.

In my experience:

1\. Homeowners fear change because they usually like their neighborhood, have most of their assets "at stake", and envision worst case scenarios.

2\. Too many elected officials categorize themselves into a soundbite. They don't just campaign by the soundbite, but they govern by it. Project details and reality be damned, I'm pro-parks!

3\. Top municipal employees almost always have too much power. When a new elected official comes in, they listen to his/her goals and then put new processes in place, while seldom removing old processes. This adds unreasonable amounts of time, complexity and cost to projects.

The first and second problem can frequently be worked out but the third problem is crippling. If you want to fix the housing crisis, start there.

</comment><comment><USER12> Just moved to SF (with two kids so renting a 3br was a required expense).

Why aren't the big tech and VC firms spending a lot more on lobbying, redevelopment, etc?

Though I'm the beneficiary of the rapidly increasing salaries, some relief on the housing side would remove a lot of the pressure for wage increases. A lot of really talented engineers won't even bother taking interviews for bay area jobs due to the housing situation. It seems a bit unsustainable to me.

<comment><USER3> Can I ask where you send your children to school in central SF? I heard bad things about SF state schools - is that true? Are there better private schools as well?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Fix it, but, uh, not until I leave."

As a homeowner in the Bay Area, my politics are: "Let's fix it!" But with as much equity as I've got pulling in the other direction, it is damn hard to toe that line.

<comment><USER10> I wrote the article, and I'm personally concerned that housing prices affect the mix and balance of companies in the local tech ecosystem in favor of the big corporations like FB, Google, Apple and heavily venture-backed startups. It's bootstrapped and smaller companies that hurt in this situation because they can't afford to pay the salaries that cover the living costs here.

If the bootstrapped companies can't afford to be here, they end up starting in some other city far away and growing into a significant presence there. That's probably good for those communities, but not necessarily good for the long- term health of the Valley if our ecosystem ends up being too dependent on two or three mega-corporations.

If you look at Palo Alto, it's a microcosm of what could happen to the entire region. That city has basically starved itself of young companies because it's not growing housing or office capacity. And with foreign purchases of 1950s era ranch homes there, I'm mildly concerned that Palo Alto will turn into our regional equivalent of the Park Avenue stash pad or the Kensington ghost mansion for Chinese that are escaping a poorly performing domestic real estate market and Xi Jinping's unprecedented crackdown on domestic corruption. Perhaps that's good for property prices, but it's terrible for having a living, breathing, dynamic community.

<comment><USER14> It's bad for bootstrapped startup, but startups who decide to raise funds can still do fine.

Anyway that's always been Silicon Valley's strength: VC money. If you want to start a bootstrapped startup, Silicon Valley is a bad place to start with. You're in competition with so many cool companies for recruiting, while in a big enough city with a university you can easily be one of the sexiest company to work for and attract the talented workers who don't want to move to California.

<comment><USER10> Right now, the way that tech companies get around this is by paying their employees progressively more and not really engaging with the political system.

But this particular strategy also has its downsides from a community perspective, because it starves out other uses of our city for public service workers, teachers, artists, etc.

Perhaps there is another way where we are politically engaged, where we can generate broad political will for more housing given that the largest and most successful companies have a hand in funding or supporting diverse growth (in the way that New York's biggest corporate institutions are also great patrons of the city's arts).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can't find any reason to be optimistic after reading this article.

Is there any reason to even consider moving to the Bay Area after graduating? It seems like any other city would be more manageable.

<comment><USER6> You only read bad news; the reason to move here is because the bay is the hub of the both entrepreneurship and tech in the US. Having said that, rent is expensive but salaries are more or less commensurate.

<comment><USER16> No, no they are not.*

Several times in my career I have looked at moving to SF, and when it's gotten to the point of talking about salary and upscaling that to what I made at the time, that's not true.

The numbers discussed were about 20% more, but that did not cover the huge delta in housing costs.

<comment><USER6> It is true that you will spend proportionally more on housing here. It is also most likely true that your total savings will be higher here. EG, you could save 50K$/year in the valley whereas you could only save 20k$ a year working in Iowa. The 20K is much larger compared to the cost of living, but you will be better off when you retire if you squirreled away the 50K$. If you want to move to Iowa at that point, all the better, you can now afford a palace. This assumes you can incur the cost of moving and can stay employed.

<comment><USER7> And if one purchases a property, they are on the receiving end of massive home price appreciation-- housing becomes an investment rather than an expense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Stockton is bankrupt. Go build and live there for 20% of the price, you can still come to SF for meeting VCs. Or somewhere across the bay.

"Oh but they don't have my favourite vegan frozen yogurt there, and in Starbucks all I see is PCs" grow up.

They think of themselves as the most innovative people of this generation and use the internet yet they can't manage to have their team 10mi from where they think it should be. Pathetic.

<comment><USER18> I'm not really familiar with the Bay Area, only been there a few times for work. That said, it looks like Stockton is a bit farther from SF than your post would indicate... And I'm only guessing that a commute in and out of SF daily would be about 3-4 hours of time (just from what I'd seen going to/from the airport into the SOMA area)... I may be mistaken here.

I've spent enough of my life commuting.. I do best with about a half hour commute, which gives me warm up/down time for my day... I really don't want to have a 12-13hour day from when I leave home, and get back.

All of that said, I don't get why there is such a focus on bringing people into the Bay area... It would likely be easier and cost less to relocate the Yahoo guys and build-up further in, or hell, Atlanta or Phoenix. The company could spend the savings on building up the community they move into, probably get great tax incentives, and the employees would bank a lot of cash on the relocation. New hires would come in to more closely match the local economy even.

Phoenix, for example, has pretty decent internet... an okay cultural scene, some great food (okay, not as good with seafood), and already has some very large companies doing software development here (American Express, Paypal, Wells Fargo, Go Daddy...) with a lower cost of living. Yes, summers can seem like hell on earth, but there are lots of places within an hour or so that aren't.

Okay... done ranting...

<comment><USER17> "That said, it looks like Stockton is a bit farther from SF than your post would indicate... And I'm only guessing that a commute in and out of SF daily would be about 3-4 hours of time"

You're right. But what I'm suggesting is: Don't commute there.

Get your team there. If someone is already living on SF, great, they can stay there and do meeting through Skype/Hangout.

If they're moving there, they can live close to the company cheaply.

And if someone needs to do a meeting on SF, going there once/twice a week is not too bad.</comment></comment></comment>


KiwiCo Eureka Crate: Monthly Science Kit Subscription - <AUTHOR> https://www.kiwico.com/eureka <comment><USER3> Hmm, apparently I'm the only one who had a not-great experience with these. Our child received the Kiwi level as a gift and thought one of the months was cool (the arcade claw, pictured on the site) but the others were pretty lame. We would have considered continuing the subscription if we could have seen what was coming, but given our mediocre experience during the first stint, we didn't spring for a renewal ($20/mo for Kiwi level, and more for some of the higher levels).

<comment><USER4> Exactly same experience here, for 2 of their age brackets. Not impressed, like a lot of these "crates".

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you (or the parent post) care to explain what's boring about them? Not everything can appeal to everyone, after all - that would seem to be an inherent flaw of the crate model. I had a look at their catalogue... A lot of the Eureka crates seem to be sports-related (a table tennis robot and a golf putter for instance), and some of them haven't got any moving parts (the golf putter), which would've certainly made it more attractive to some - <USER2> personally, I don't _really_ have a problem with that. From what I could gather, they also explain the design choices behind each kit, which makes it all the more interesting. I'm a bit concerned about the durability, since neither their tiny printing press nor their pendulum clock look like they'll make it for longer than a week, but overall, it seems like a fun thing to do on a rainy afternoon.

<comment><USER3> The claw was great. The kaleidoscope was meh and the tree was not fun to build or play with. And given that they start you out with the great kit and then get progressively worse, we assumed the trend would continue. For 20 bucks a month you can buy lots of legos or other interactive toys. The kit items were also not especially durable. Legos last decades, Kiwi projects lasted 1-3 months before breaking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> MEL Science kits deserves a mention here

[https://melscience.com/](https://melscience.com/)

Currently has a 3 month special. No affiliation other than the relevant young person seems to derive at least some benefit.

<comment><USER6> It's available in many languages too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My daughter get the Kiwi Crate (gifted subscription from Grandpa), for about a year now, and it's an absolute highlight of our month. We make a day of it each time one arrives and put together a little video of completing it to send back to Grandpa. It has become very special to all of us.

They've created something really amazing with this. Other crates/boxes/etc exist, but they consistently nail the balance of challenge vs fun and overall quality. My 5 year old can follow the instructions herself with only minor prompting from me, and you always get some form of lasting & inspiring object afterwards rather than just stuff that ends up in the bin like many other similar programs. Her room and our house are littered with things she's built herself and that still get use many months later, and they've taught her heaps about how things work.

<comment><USER8> This is my experience, the kids love them. My one wish though is that the finished projects could fit back into the box for storage. Then they could take them out an 'use' them and put them away. I realize that would greatly limit them scope of projects. The assembled planetarium necessarily is larger than the box.

Fun stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gifted this to my young nephews... parents report they love it and look forward each month as a family project. COVID made this unexpectedly awesome...

p.s. no connection to the co, found them from a Google search...

</comment><comment><USER10> We renew my son's subscription every year. He loves the kits and there's something new every time. Nicest folks in customer service too.

</comment><comment><USER11> Why the kiwi name? I'm in NZ and thought there may be some connection.

<comment><USER12> There's no direct connection to New Zealand. The founders visited New Zealand at some point, and brought back a stuffed kiwi toy for their child. When naming the company, it crossed their mind and so they went with it[1].

Their offices are in Mountain View. I used to live around the corner from them.

[1]: [https://www.kiwico.com/blog/2011/06/09/why-the-name-kiwi- cra...](https://www.kiwico.com/blog/2011/06/09/why-the-name-kiwi-crate/)

<comment><USER13> Coincidentally, the crate/box color is brown-yellow, almost like the kiwi fruit skin. Quite sturdy boxes, handy as toys organizer when on road trip with kids. Feeling bad throwing these boxes to trash, but they will add up.

As an idea, maybe they could make use of the surface and print some cut out details which could be eventually assembled into something (a model of some kind). Or the very least put some templates on the website to facilitate the reuse.

Kids would learn that the box should be considered a resource too, not just the juicy sweet content inside, so to speak, extending the kiwi-fruit metaphor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My kid brother has received a few boxes through a Summer program at his school. They're form the Atlas line and are pretty fun. We did one just this morning and it's a good bonding experience.

</comment><comment><USER15> My kids have done the Kiwi crates and the Atlas crates and they've really liked all of them. I would bet they'd like the Eureka ones when they're older.

</comment><comment><USER16> We got a three crate subscription. The first crate was disappointing but subsequent ones were better.

We were surprised when the subscription renewed on us, since we thought we paid one time for three crates.

</comment><comment><USER17> I love how these encourage learning science while playing but they leave out low income kids. I wonder if there's a way for things like these to be available for low-income kids also?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I read about something about a subscription bankrolled by the US government in an early edition of Make Magazine (2006-ish). Every month you'd get an item + a booklet of some sort which suggested an experiment. Apparently you got things like small fossils, and if I remember correctly, a small chunk of some radioactive material. It got cancelled in the 70s... I'll see if I can find it again.

<comment><USER17> Oh cool, I wonder if a similar program like this could work now. I'll try to find it also.

<comment><AUTHOR> Found it! Things of Science: [http://ecg.mit.edu/george/tos/](http://ecg.mit.edu/george/tos/) for the price of 5$/year.

[edit: looks like I misremembered though, neither the Make article nor the website mention radioactivity... must have got it mixed up with something like this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_U-238_Atomic_Energy_La...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_U-238_Atomic_Energy_Laboratory)]

<comment><USER17> Nice! Thanks for digging into that</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Has the average web page actually gotten smaller? - <AUTHOR> http://www.webperformancetoday.com/2014/05/21/stop-presses-average-web-page-actually-gotten-smaller-bigger/ <comment><USER2> A single data point does not make a trend. I think it's highly unlikely that websites are going to get smaller over time, for the simple reason that consumer internet speed/bandwidth gets faster and faster every year.

The real interesting statistic is page load times. If load time is remaining static whilst page sizes are increasing (mostly due to images it seems), then there isn't anything to worry about. Businesses are just keeping their websites within a certain performance envelope and are responding to greater bandwidth as it comes about. (Not to mention JS speed increases)

If on the other hand, websites are growing fatter and page load is getting slower, then there is something counter-intuitive happening. But I doubt it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wrote a tool a while back to see whether the number and complexity of DOM elements on webpages has changed over the years - [http://domtree.breckyunits.com/](http://domtree.breckyunits.com/)

I was surprised to see that at least as far as the HTML is concerned, there hasn't been much change in the past 15 years.

</comment><comment><USER4> First off, "smaller" is comparing May 2014 to Nov 2013, a short-term effect.

Second:

> The only content type that experienced significant shrinkage was "other".

> So ruling out third-party content leaves us speculating that either the > shrinkage is due to a decrease in use of video (quite possible) or an > undocumented change in the testing process (somewhat possible).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

There is some interesting info in the article, but the headline isn't it.

</comment><comment><USER5> One important thing to consider (and I'm not sure that the survey does) is that a lot of this weight may come from cached sources, such as javascript libraries sourced from CDNs. While more libraries = more total content weight, using common libraries may reduce the weight of the content that actually gets loaded, by eliminating the requirement for redundant compatibility boilerplate and providing DOM manipulation tools that allow much of the page content to be created client-side.

</comment><comment><USER6> separate shoutout to the HTTP Archive [http://httparchive.org/about.php](http://httparchive.org/about.php)

Never knew this thing existed, but seems like a really nice resource.

</comment><comment><USER7> suspect it is due to CSS3 and its powerful arsenal which has replaced a lot of js</comment>


Veganism: An Engineer's Perspective - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@coloradoreed/veganism-from-an-engineers-perspective-2fbe0828540b <comment><USER2> I'm diabetic and allergic to legumes. It's nearly impossible for me to get enough protein or complete protein without excessive intake of either legume derived protein or carbs.

Beyond that, I like meat and feel that eating meat is part of a natural state of being. I find that factory farming has other issues and most don't eat enough head to tail profile for appropriate nutrition though.

Aside: I think another large issue is that most people aren't eating enough healthy balanced fat profiles, and get too many fats higher in linoleic acid which is more problematic. Most natural sources of unrefined and specifically animal protein are generally 0.5g fat to 1g protein or higher. The eating of animals combined with cooking food are what allowed homosapiens to evolve. Not that I fault those who chose a vegetarian lifestyle, though the religious zealotry is a bit annoying.

<comment><USER3> Have you tried spinach and other leafy greens? Loads of protein, fiber and other nutrients. Also you only need the essential amino acids and not whole proteins. All protein is equal as plants contain all the essential amino acids. Also since you have access to the internet and time to post here you probably have never had protein problems (think third world people who are starving). Also too much protein turns into glucose then into fat.

<comment><USER2> Okay, you try eating 10# of spinach a day for a week and see how you feel. Not to mention how many stores I'd have to go to and the environmental impact of all of that driving in order to get enough.

I would like for you to try for a month of eating vegan, with no pre-processed products with 100g of protein a day, and 50g of balanced fats without any legumes. No peas, beans, lentils. And on top of that, stay under even 100g of carbs and under 20g sugars a day. Note that I stay under 50g total carbs (including fiber) and under 20g net carbs and generally under 5g sugars a day.

By the end of a month, you probably won't want to do it any longer... beyond that, you may lose your job, as it's pretty rough trying to eat 10# of greens a day.

So fuck the righteous, religious zealotry of the cult of vegan.

<comment><USER2> You can vote the above down all you like... the fact is, I'd have to eat over 8 pounds of food a day to get a sufficient level of protein a day. I have enough eating the 2-3 pounds of food I typically eat as it is. It's utterly ridiculous. I stated why I eat the way I do, and included that I like meat, and that I really don't care for the religious-like approach that most vegans take.

Only to have that ignored, and for someone to make a suggestion that just doesn't work in any practical way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The OP quotes a study that says vegans are at least as healthy as _other vegetarians._ That's not a comparison to meat eaters and not much of an endorsement.

He neglects the recently published study (posted here on HN) that connects vegetarianism with depression and other mental problems.

I hate factory farming, too, and was a vegetarian myself for many years for that reason. But animals can be killed for food without being inhumane. The cure for factory farming is to make it nice for the amimals. Giving up meat to fix factory farming is throwing the baby out with the bath water.

<comment><USER5> How is killing a being that doesn't want to die humane? And sadly meat production at the current level without factory farming is even more devastating for the environment if even possible.

<comment><USER4> No being wants to die. That said, much of the animal kingdom (of which we are a part) lives by doing just that. Animals can be raised in kind and happy places and can be killed painlessly.

While I agree with the goal of changing factory farming, I don't think we can fight biology. It's ok if people eat animals. We evolved to do exactly that.

<comment><USER5> I find it very ironic that we as the dominant species being capable of feats like space travel, worldwide real time communications, eradication of diseases, DNA engineering, nuclear energy and more cannot find another form of nutrition than that of a bear or a baboon.

<comment><USER4> Eating is pretty basic. I see no reason to deny our basic biology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Engineer's analysis for an engineer's perspective:

\- Point 8: this is not sufficient by itself; having a Declaration on Consciousness is not enough without papers and documentation.

\- Point 2: correlation doesn't mean cause; vegans tend to have a better food education, but this doesn't prove that veganism == healty.

\- Point 3: not sufficient, it doesn't show how human body absorbs and uses those nutrients.

Beyond this, you're missing much more infos, such as documentation about vegan food (lack of?) impact (soy and avocados, for example) and going on.

See you next time.

</comment><comment><USER7> > I've created a set of three simple statements (with supporting references) > that represent the fundamental arguments that brought me to veganism:

>It's unnecessary for humans to consume animal products, i.e. we can thrive on a vegan diet [1, 2, 3].

> Consuming animal products is one of the largest individual contributions to > climate change [4, 5, 6].

> Consuming animal products results in slaughtering ~75 billion sentient farm > animals each year — animals that want to live [7, 8].

> Logically, from the above three points, it follows that consuming animal > products is unnecessary and causes destruction to the environment as well as > billions of sentient animals.

Logically, this is textbook circular reasoning or a tautological fallacy. The author's three points are that consuming animal products is unnecessary and causes destruction to the environment as well as billions of sentient animals. To then say that the _exact same three things as the three points_ follow from those same three points is circular reasoning.

<comment><USER8> The blog post may benefit from an editor, but those three points are supported by the footnotes, whose very references – but not content – you included in your quotation. The footnotes themselves constitute more than half the post and include citations of published studies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Consuming animal products results in slaughtering ~75 billion sentient farm > animals each year

I am sympathetic but people do not seem to understand that a huge number of animals – probably many more than this worldwide – are destroyed when fields are plowed.

<comment><USER10> totally agree!

however, we plow fields mostly to feed the animals we eat...

<comment><USER11> the feed the animals are happy to eat is boring and can grow very densely, the food vegans would like to eat (if a lot of people went vegan) would assuredly not just be corn, or wheat, or legumes.

<comment><USER10> "the food vegans would like to eat": vegan/vegetarians already exist, and we study and analyze their diets when determining crop usage, e.g. see reference #5 in the blog post. Or, my personal favorite: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0594-0](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0594-0)

tldr; omni diets consume about an order of magnitude more crops in total, so, you know, more animals die in crop production to eat animals than not eating animals...

oooo, also of interest: we actually eat a very small number of crops, 40 crops make up 90% of the global calorie consumption (see ref #4)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Being vegan is hard. If you notice, there are qualifiers for the health statements such as "well-planned" and "if appropriate food choices are made". Being lacto ovo vegetarian is much easier and probably has close to the same health benefits and environmental impacts. Regardless, I think everyone should try either one for a while and see what works for you. My family ate meat pretty much every meal growing up so I felt trying veganism was a good experience, but ultimately it didn't work out. I still eat meat but less frequently.

<comment><USER3> "well-planned" and "if appropriate food choices are made", these statements are there because some people who "try" to go vegan end up eating too little and not enough variety. It would be like trying to survive solely on a limited selection of MREs or solely on sugary cereal at the supermarket. The human body isn't stupid and if you aren't giving it the things it needs then the "diet" your eating (meat or no meat) is bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's worth noting that all reasons to go vegan, if you don't find them sufficiently convincing to actually become vegan, are also good reasons to simply eat _less_ meat and other animal products.

</comment><comment><USER14> I enjoyed the succinctness of this post. Not sure if I agree that there's amazing vegan cheese though ;)

<comment><USER8> I'm a big fan of Tree Line and Miyoko's nut cheeses, and Chao fermented tofu cheese slices.

<comment><USER15> Kite Hill has great cream cheese as well.

<comment><USER8> Oh yes! Forgot about them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> First of all, whether something is "sentient" is a bit subjective, and whether eating a sentient being is okay is also quite subjective. If we strike that list item, we are left with the climate change argument.

However, they're also missing a number of other arguments, such as:

\- difficulty eating a balanced diet \- inconveniencing others (must take into account vegan options when going out to eat with coworkers/clients) \- some meat sources don't particularly contribute to climate change (e.g. hunting/fishing on your own)

If your going to try to come up with a deductive argument in support of veganism, you need to take into account all major arguments on all sides of the issue (vegetarianism, piscatarianism, etc).

As such, I'll only accept this argument as a completely subjective argument because the climate change argument (and part of the sentience argument) entirely depends on how you source your meat, leaving the completely subjective sentience argument.

<comment><USER10> Did you take a look at reference 4-6, particularly #4, and Figure 1 in #4? The animal products we consume are objectively more resource intensive than the non-animal products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Brilliant. Thanks for compiling this information.</comment>


Wikipedia: List of lists of lists - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lists_of_lists <comment><USER2> I wished this was "Outline of outlines of outlines". I used to seek out those articles a lot in my free time when I was a student. It only made my hunger of knowledge grow.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_computer_programming
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_computer_science
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_mathematics
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_history
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_linguistics
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_law
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_biology
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_science

etc.

<comment><USER3> All in one place: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:PrefixIndex/Outline_of](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:PrefixIndex/Outline_of)

<comment><USER4> There's also [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Contents/Outlines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Contents/Outlines) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_outlines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_outlines)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One positive thing about Wikipedia lists: they provide a great way to explain Russell's Paradox. A lot of people have trouble with the concept of a set containing itself, but not with a web page linking to itself. So, we can imagine defining a Wikipedia page of the list of all lists which do not link to themselves, and then ask - does this list page contain a link to itself? Two cases:

(1) The page _does_ link to itself, in which case it is wrongly present in the list of lists which do _not_ link to themselves.

(2) The page does _not_ link to itself, in which case it _should_ be present in the list of lists which do not link to themselves.

Since both cases result in a contradiction, this means we cannot define the list of all lists which do not link to themselves, and thus any formal language (now called "naive set theory") which allows us to define such a set is logically inconsistent.

The solution to this paradox was to use a set of axioms (most commonly the Zermelo-Fraenkel axioms) which do not allow the construction of such a contradictory set, while also maintaining all the expressive power of naive set theory.

To anyone interested in this stuff (plus Gödel) I highly recommend the graphic novel Logicomix.

<comment><USER6> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinker_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinker_paradox) ?

<comment><USER5> Nope, nothing to do with that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Better yet, this iteratively deepening list of land-lake layers: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_island#Islands_within_lak...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_island#Islands_within_lakes_recursively)

This culminates in:

      The largest island in a lake on an island in a lake on an
      island is a nameless, approximately 4.0-hectare (10-acre)
      island at 66.687°N 70.479°W, situated within Nettilling Lake
      on Baffin Island, Canada.`

</comment><comment><USER8> My favorite Wikipedia list is its list of unusual articles:

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

</comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me (and I'm sure others had the thought) of the Awesome GitHub repo[0] which links to many of the other Awesome-* repos.

[0] [https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome](https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome)

</comment><comment><USER10> A lot of these "lists of lists" are just "Something A-M" and "Something N-Z". That's just a paginated list!

</comment><comment><USER11> someone should add a list of lists of genes and subindex them all the way down. Just ruin that page.

</comment><comment><USER12> That is so meta.

<comment><USER13> We clearly need a meta-article about meta articles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> so very lispy</comment>


Why you should ask questions at your next tech company interview - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.com/why-you-should-ask-questions-at-your-next-tech-company-interview-5070384dc5a0 <comment><USER2> If you only have 5 - 10 minutes, ask for an email to follow up with. I usually give out my email address if a candidate is doing well. If you are going to join the team, you don't want to go in with wrong expectations.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here are questions that I like to ask:

1\. What are you biggest pain points?

2\. If there was one thing you could change about the company, what would it be?

</comment><comment><USER4> This is really great - I have been doing some hiring recently and it would really help me if candidates asked more questions so that I can talk about their interests.

</comment><comment><USER5> I doubt 5 or 10 minutes is enough time to ask/answer more than one or two questions...

<comment><USER4> If you're doing several interviews with different team members you might be able to ask them about different things.</comment></comment>


Retrocomputing the New Scientist magazine Enigma puzzle - <AUTHOR> http://jimpulse.blogspot.com/2012/02/retrocomputing-enigma-45.html Successfully solving an unclaimed Enigma puzzle 32 years after publication, in BBC BASIC. <comment><USER2> I love this article. Aside from the various HN Newsletters, is there a site that highlights by day the more interesting content like this?

Not to rant, but here I go anyways. There's too much non-important noise here. Clicks and comments only get you so far. I'm thinking a "Was this article helpful to you?" type rating. Were you glad you read this article or is it TMZ-like content of the programmer/tech/start-up world?

I'm also tired of the "this is what helped me get things done" life process improvement / self help type articles.

/endrant</comment>


Samsung opens its Bixby assistant to developers - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/07/samsung-opens-its-bixby-assistant-to-developers/ <comment><USER2> Bixby as presented at SDC today is built on a different platform than the Bixby most people are familiar with. (The new Bixby is the work of Samsung- owned Viv Labs.)

It really is an interesting platform that's worth playing around with. You essentially define a set of "concepts and actions" (objects and functions, effectively), and then give Bixby example sentences for natural language training that specify which words represent input concepts and what the goal is (for instance, an action like "BookUber" or "FindHotel"), and Bixby dynamically generates the program for you, including adding steps on its own to prompt the user for missing information (i.e, you say "book a table at The French Laundry next Saturday at 7" and it knows it needs to ask you "for how many"). You can easily teach Bixby about context and continuing conversation, so you could say "change the reservation to Sunday" and it would know what you were talking about. And, it can even learn the user's preferred defaults over time, so if you usually specify a table for two, it assumes that's what you mean. (You'd be able to change that on a confirmation screen before it books anything, of course.)

Full disclosure: I'm a tech writer at Viv Labs, so I'm absolutely biased. :) But I acquired this bias from working with the product.

<comment><USER3> I thought Bixby was always based on Viv tech? Was it just in-house pre- acquisition stuff before?

<comment><USER4> We all agreed a long time ago to never talk about S voice again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My experience with Bixby has been mixed as I am not too fond of the leveling system they have in place. However, I recently got a Samsung TV that has Bixby integrated and I dig it for the small tasks it can accomplish well such as changing the TV input selection. I can't wait to give the dev stuff a try!

On an unrelated note, I am pretty upset that my Samsung ~$1200 TV has ads built into it.

<comment><USER6> I'm annoyed that smart TVs are a thing; it's like having a smart monitor, it just doesn't make sense. I'd rather have a beautiful dumb display that I can plug in to the smart part, allowing the (relatively cheap) smart part to be upgraded without having to upgrade the (relatively expensive) display part.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, but it's pretty much impossible to find not-smart TVs. :(

<comment><USER8> It comes up nearly every time this topic is discussed here, but commercial series displays are what you are looking for. Prepare to pay more, but in exchange get a display that just functions as a display.

<comment><USER9> Paying more for fewer features doesn't make sense though. I'm also guessing the commercial displays also are tuned more for endurance and less for quality.

<comment><USER10> The pricing makes sense. Demand dictates price, not features. Products catering to a smaller market tend to cost more, especially if you are buying individual units from a supplier who usually sells in bulk.

LG's IT line[1] is not unreasonable in terms of pricing, especially if the purchaser is also paying the electric bill, demands long-lasting color accuracy or otherwise wants a purpose-built solution. I have not used one and I don't know if budget display manufacturers like TCL and Vizio have comparable products.

1\. [https://www.lg.com/us/business/commercial-display/it- product...](https://www.lg.com/us/business/commercial-display/it-products)

<comment><USER11> > The pricing makes sense. Demand dictates price, not features.

Sure, but lower demand would usually mean lower price, unless the consumers are willing to pay extra for something that other products are missing. In this case, I'm not sure what the other products are missing in comparison, but I'm also not familiar with these TV's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does this mean we can finally turn off the dedicated physical button or repurpose it? I'm not holding my breath.

<comment><USER13> I turned it off in the Bixby settings on my S8. I tried repurposing, but nothing worked reliably for too long, so I decided to just nix it.

<comment><USER14> Were you able to turn it off without signing up for a Samsung Account and accepting hundreds of pages of ToS?

<comment><USER9> I was up to a point, except that a really long press of the button still goes to bixby.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, the long press opens up the 'Bixby Voice' to accept voice input. Happens even when the phone is locked. A bit annoying, but thankfully rare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is there still a lot of energy being devoted to voice assistants? We seem to have hit a very deep trough on the hype cycle. And I'm not really surprised.

<comment><USER16> Yes. They are a very big bet for Apple, Google, Samsung, and Amazon. Nearly half of Americans use them, mostly on their phones [0].

[0] [https://www.google.com/amp/www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/201...](https://www.google.com/amp/www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2017/12/12/nearly-half-of-americans-use-digital-voice-assistants-mostly- on-their-smartphones/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> who cares</comment>


Why Joel Spolsky was wrong about 'duct tape programmers' being good programmers. - <AUTHOR> http://www.stochasticgeometry.ie/2009/09/25/duct-tape-considered-harmful/ <comment><USER3> The notion that there's only one kind of "good" programmer strikes me as very shallow. The way that everyone's vision of good programmer seems to align with "just like me" is egotistical as well. Is there just one kind of good writer? One kind of good chef? One kind of good lover?

Sure, there are some traits that generally correlate with good programmers (clear thinking, love of scientific method, intellectual honesty) and some traits that generally correlate with bad programmers (magical thinking, forgetfulness) but after working with many, many different kinds of programmers, I've found that there's more than one way that works and having different kinds of people on your team is a good thing. Monoculture leads to groupthink and groupthink is an innovation killer.

I like to think that I'm a good programmer (not _great_ like some people I know, but whatever). I'm good at the kind of work that I choose to do, but I'm aware that there are all sorts of scenarios that I'm not right for. I once left a job after just a few months because the technology/team/culture fit just wasn't right; to that group, I surely wasn't a good programmer.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am not Joel's biggest fan, but sometimes I feel that his detractors choose not to put his writing in context and only criticize him to create link bait.

Joel was writing about an interview of Jamie Zawinski.

Joel and jwz are of the same generation.

jwz worked at Netscape in the early 90s.

In the early 90s, C++, templates, multiple inheritance and multithreading _did not_ work.

Dennehy also somehow seems to miss Joel's main point that programmers should be pragmatic and be wary of using technologies they don't understand, as this is bound to get in the way of shipping a product.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't really get this article. Dennehy writes:

 _However, while Dyer was making a point based on insufficient reliability and robustness in the available tools, Spolsky is making the same assertion purely on the basis that it takes more time to produce a good design than to use a simpler tool and "duct tape" a solution._

This is not an accurate reflection of Spolsky's article. In particular there is this paragraph:

 _One principle duct tape programmers understand well is that any kind of coding technique that's even slightly complicated is going to doom your project. Duct tape programmers tend to avoid C++, templates, multiple inheritance, multithreading, COM, CORBA, and a host of other technologies that are all totally reasonable, when you think long and hard about them, but are, honestly, just a little bit too hard for the human brain._

Added: Spolsky is not claiming that these techniques take too much time. He is claiming that it is very hard to use these techniques to make a product that is reliable and robust.

My reading of Spolsky is that he is making the claim that is it a good idea to have programmers on your team who are very focussed on shipping product, and don't really care whether the technology being used is particularly advanced or popular. They just want to do whatever it takes to ship.

I think he's right; it's good to have these people around. Programmers love learning about new technologies and programming techniques, and when we learn about them we want to apply them. Our enthusiasm can push us to use technology that isn't really required for the problem at hand, and when that technology is difficult to use correctly, this can cause big problems. Having someone around keep you focussed on what matters - shipping a working product - <USER2> very helpful.

</comment><comment><USER6> So I see that the OP's title is "Duct tape considered harmful" but the title here is "Why Joel Spolsky was wrong about 'duct tape programmers' being good programmers."

These are two very different propositions. The OP's title suggests that duct tape is a bad idea and when you read the post you discover the essay was prompted by Spolsky's post. Whereas the title here suggests that the focus of the article is Joel Spolsky. In fact, the if the article is really about why Spolsky was wrong, this admits the possibility that Duct Tape programming is helpful, but that Spolsky got the arguments in its favour wrong.

I'm not arguing the editorialized title is a poor choice, just pointing out that it has a very different and much more personal focus than the OP's title. What do people think: Is it an improvement on the original?

</comment><comment><USER7> Yet I think that Joel nailed it with this phrase:

"A 50%-good solution that people actually have solves more problems and survives longer than a 99% solution that nobody has because it's in your lab where you're endlessly polishing the damn thing"

I also agree with nickelplate's comment (summary: Joel's main point that programmers should be pragmatic and be wary of using technologies they don't understand, as this is bound to get in the way of shipping a product.)

</comment><comment><USER8> This post reminded me of "Moby Dick". Extremely long introduction that has nothing to do with topic promised in the title, so boring that I lost all interest, before getting to the author's actual point.

</comment><comment><USER9> Summary: blog author disagrees with Spolsky, but doesn't really provide any arguments.

Pointing to the Tacoma bridge seems a bit silly. I suspect the Tacoma bridge incident is more like the unpredictable black swan, so more meticulous engineering would not have prevented it either.

</comment><comment><USER10> I skipped the first 3/4 to get to the point. Though I think there are enough people that don't know the history to justify that first 3/4.

</comment><comment><USER11> The article concludes with the summary 'duct-taping a solution can be harmful'. Would anyone, include Joel dispute such an obvious point?

</comment><comment><USER12> I think that this largely misses the point.

The first thing to point out is that writing software doesn't map very well onto civil engineering. In civil, your base requirements are supposed to be very well defined. 'I need a bridge from point a to point b, it has to support x amount of traffic weighing y kilos'.

The point of the Tacoma Narrows incident is that 'flutter' was something that was hereto unmentioned in the design requirements of the bridge. It wasn't accounted for, therefore the bridge collapsed. To imply that 'proper engineering' would have prevented the collapse is wrong. They used proper engineering... they just didn't account for everything that they needed to account for.

No one is going to argue that solid design, trusted components, testing and QA are not important parts of programming. (They are good, especially the components, testing, and QA bits).

What the original Spolsky 'duct tape programmer' post is railing against is the disguise of over-engineering (because of incompetence) as the above things (particularly the design part).

The point being that the extremely competent don't need to disguise their software in an elaborate drapery of buzzwords and patterns. (Because they don't need a justification to fall back on if it doesnt... 'well we used x and y and z hot new thing').

<comment><USER13> I majored in a traditional engineering, and I wish programmers/CS types would stop comparing programming with mechanical/civil engineering; they are completely different processes with completely different mentalities due to completely different requirements.

Which is not to say there isn't some overlap - writing software for, say, a MRI machine would likely be held to the same processes and standards as most traditional engineering, but let's be honest, 99% of programming isn't that.

> _"The standard approach taken to minimise or prevent these unacceptable > outcomes is conservative design, using trusted components, with testing and > quality assurance being critical parts of the design and implementation > processes."_

I think the blog author is out of his expertise here - this is an extremely "software" abstraction of the engineering design process.

I'm not convinced the traditional engineering process works _at all_ in software - traditional engineering _is_ waterfall (where do you think it came from?), but unlike a bridge you rarely ever know all of your requirements and specifications up front. Also, you design 100% of a bridge up-front because you can't "iterate" a bridge, but you sure as hell can iterate a website.

We push code out quickly and iterate because we _can_ , and the consequences for system failure are minimal at best. Want to try a new lane arrangement on a bridge? If you could build bridges like you build software, you'd just build two with the competing lane designs, and get half of the car traffic to drive over each. Oh wait, you can't do that in real life. This is why I balk every time someone thinks we should be held to the same standards as traditional engineers - there's no compelling gain and everything to lose.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Want to try a new lane arrangement on a bridge? If you could build bridges > like you build software, you'd just build two with the competing lane > designs, and get half of the car traffic to drive over each. Oh wait, you > can't do that in real life.

Nope. You can, however, run rather detailed mathematical simulations of what the varying loads will do to the bridge and cross-check against established data.

Want to know the _real_ difference between civil engineering and software engineering?

About 126 years.

<comment><USER14> Actually I rather enjoyed the article, especially the opening bit about the pursuit of popularity destroying blog value, but you can't just pretend that software engineering is just simply a form of engineering still in its dark ages (though it's obviously cruder than traditional engineering disciplines). Computer science is an extension of pure math going back thousands of years, of which civil engineering is another only slightly older offshoot. The problem spaces are simply not comparable.

In civil engineering you are dealing the same constraints: physics, which can be refined to perfection because they will be used billions upon billions of times throughout history and will never change. In civil engineering the stakes are high, people will lose lives. Finally, the parameters for success are very easy to measure in advance... it's easy to calculate how much traffic a bridge will carry, and you can even render exactly what it will look like for aesthetic evaluation before construction begins at all.

Contrast with software where the problem space is infinitely larger (ie. the entire realm of abstract thought vs physical space, which also makes it less intuitive by people btw). The costs of failure and repair are most often trivial (especially for web software). And the suitability of software is often not known at all until it is delivered (in this regard architecture has more in common with software engineering). You can't just hand-wave these things away by stating that software engineering is an immature discipline. Even with the exact same number of man hours behind software engineering that you have behind civil engineering, there would still be a such a tiny dent in the problem space as to leave software engineering looking primitive.

It's not that no one takes software engineering seriously either, take military or NASA software. Those guys have the most advanced software engineering principles on the planet, but even there, it's specifically suited to their use case. I'm sure there's a lot we could all learn from them, but if you want Microsoft Word to have that quality are you prepared to pay $500,000 a head to run it?

I agree that Joel totally threw the baby out with the bathwater in the duct- tape programmer defense, but let's not disparage the state of software engineering. It's certainly much less disciplined than other forms of engineering, but that's simply a cost-benefit tradeoff that seems reasonably close to optimal.

<comment><AUTHOR> >In civil engineering the stakes are high, people will lose lives.

If you're building a bridge, yes. But it's not always so critical.

This holds in software engineering as well - If you're mucking about writing the next tetris, odds are, noone's going to die if you stuff it up. If you're writing embedded code in a medical device, lives definitely are at risk (and if you step back and look, not only is embedded code the majority of deployed code out there, but it also has some of the most mature development practices - not everything in software is agile)

The problem arises when you try to draw the line between those two extremes - for example, who knew people were daft enough to follow GPS instructions that navigated them under bridges that were obviously too law, or off piers into harbours, or into oncoming traffic on one-way streets or onto train tracks (complete with oncoming trains). The criticality of the system you're developing isn't always a simple thing to determine.

And don't forget - history has recorded very very similar arguments to yours that claim exactly what you're claiming, while arguing that mechanical engineering will never go from art to science...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Stop Using Arial & Helvetica - <AUTHOR> http://www.64notes.com/design/stop-helvetica-arial/ <comment><USER2>
        {Arial) It's just a bad copy of Helvetica - a really bad one. It's just ugly.

The author mixes personal preference whilst aiming to clarify technically which I am not very fond of.

As a designer, if there's anything I learnt, all this doesn't matter. These are basically tools. A good designer will make even the stupidest font (if such a thing exists!) look beautiful. A bad designer will make bad designs no matter what. Remember, a lazy carpenter will always blame his tools. Sure, good fonts give you that extra 'edge'. But remember, right now we don't have a very good way of displaying custom fonts over the web without some kind of Javascript hack or increasing the page loading time by directly loading the font file and/or without having alignment issues across various browsers.

Also, there are uneven artificats rendered across font edges in some browsers which only worsens the User experience of using a custom font. Thus you'd be much much better off using arial or the likes of it.

Upon reading the author's article you might be convinced that one font is better than the other, but given the time, I can lead you on an infinite loop comparing various fonts side by side saying something is better than Helvetica and something else is better than this something, and so on. The real fact is, when you read content, the font doesn't matter much unless it is pretty bad. So if you read a lengthy article on a blog and if I just asked you what font it was, I'm sure you wouldn't have an immediate answer, unless you are too much into design, etc.[1]

[1]In fact, I'd like to present the author (and all of you) a challenge:

<http://www.ironicsans.com/helvarialquiz/>

<comment><USER3> [Quiz spoilers] If anyone's struggling with the quiz, key things to look out for are slanted vs horizontal lines (e.g. in 't'), the capital R, and general balance (e.g. the 'O' in Helvetica is more circular). It's the combination of these that make the Helvetica logos, generally, look "nicer."

Edit: that said, I challenge anyone to reliably describe which "Mattel" is the correct version!

<comment><USER4> Helvetica uses varying widths. Ariel tends toward fixed widths. For other hints, see previous discussion - <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5086793>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I looked at it, stared at it, stared at it again. I cannot tell the difference between Arial and Helvetica. And though I could tell the difference between Helvetica and Lucidia, I don't get what the issue is supposed to be, except that Helvetica seems a bit smaller.

<comment><USER6> Keeping that one bit away: [http://ilovetypography.com/2007/10/06/arial- versus-helvetica...](http://ilovetypography.com/2007/10/06/arial-versus- helvetica/)

That's not the main topic of the writing :)

<comment><USER5> The point being, if it takes 3x magnification and careful examination (after having been coached) to spot any difference, it's hardly worth worrying over, let alone admonishing use of one over the other.

It just becomes another case of <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoIvd3zzu4Y>

<comment><USER6> "That's not the main topic of the writing :)"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The custom font he's using made my eyes schitz out. Switched it to Arial and it became much more readable.

This just seems like font snobbery more than anything else.

<comment><USER8> He's using Georgia, and recommending it. But a not so unpopular position is that serif-fonts don't fit to the web, given the low dpi of current monitors. Maybe if you target tablets.

Besides: > It's good to keep it in golden ration or between 1.5em to 1.6em

I can't take someone seriously who believes in the golden ratio. That is debunked into oblivion.

And: Arial is different then helvetica, but there are not many technical issues with it.

<comment><USER9> He's using a custom font, Adele I think. Can't read shit unless it's blown up to 150%.

<comment><USER8> Ah, alright. It's Georgia on my system as the Adele font is not loading (maybe Ghostery, dunno). Strange that the fallback of a sans-serif font is a serif one, but well.

<comment><USER9> Isn't Adele a slab serif? Or I might be mistaking the names. Pretty sure it was a slab serif there.

<comment><USER8> There is the font Adele and the font Adelle -.-

<https://typekit.com/fonts/adelle-web> is indeed a slab serif, whatever that is. The css is

> "Adelle","Droid Serif",Georgia,serif

so it fits together after all, at least from that point of view.

<comment><USER9> Spot on! Nice work, detective ;) Thanks for clarifying this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Since I literally can't see the difference in the Arial and Helvetica, even side by side, I'm going to say it's a pretty good rip-off. I don't know exactly what you're looking at, but I assure you that the average person has no idea they're different.

<comment><USER3> This will probably help:

<http://www.ironicsans.com/helvarialquiz/>

It really stands out in e.g. logos, but less so in body text. I don't understand this author's vehemence against them though...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would have appreciated it, if the article tells me _which_ difference I am supposed to see. I know, the fonts look different, but why is one deemed 'superior' to the other?

In the section 'Alternatives', it proposes Verdana, but in the comparison, Arial looks sharper than Verdana, even if you open the image. Further, Arial can put "more" letters into one line. Maybe it is a coincidence, but I'd like to have seen number 15 of the Hacker News list shown in the Verdana font.

I'm not impressed yet.

</comment><comment><USER12> What is it with all these web pages stealing my back button lately? This site adds three pages to my browser history for one click.

Also, in my totally non-objective opinion, the font used on that page feels really shouty to me.

</comment><comment><USER13> This article seems to rest on the totally false premise that there's no difference between setting headers and setting body text.

Arial is terrific for body text, because at small font sizes the modifications separating it from Helvetica are basically impossible to even render. Since it has all the hinting to ensure it displays nicely at small sizes, it's a best- of-both-worlds scenario. And Helvetica looks pretty good at large font-sizes, even on Windows systems (admittedly less smooth, but the readability concern goes away). There's no reason to stop using these, just play them to their strengths.

Likewise, Verdana and Georgia are terrible for headers. Not for any technical reason like hinting, but simply because they were designed to be extremely legible on computer monitors at small font sizes, at the expense of actually looking good when blown up. Hence Verdanagate: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA#Verdana_typeface>

</comment><comment><USER14> Agree with the OP. Just use Verdana (sans-serif) and Georgia (serif). If you are on Debain (and its children) you can install "ttf-mscorefonts-installer" -- which provides Andale Mono, Arial, Verdana, Georgia, Comic Sans, Times New Roman and Courier New.

[0]: [https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/precise/+package/ttf- mscorefont...](https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/precise/+package/ttf-mscorefonts- installer)

<comment><USER15> I can't believe the author suggested Verdana or Tahoma. They look terrible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is pretty ironic!

Does the writer not know that the font he chooses to use does not render properly without OS level font smoothing?

In fact the increasing popularity of these 'fancy' fonts in websites is a problem for me. They render very aliased on my machine at any zoom level (I always have windows set to maximum performance vs fanciness)

</comment><comment><USER17> I find it hard taking advice on typography from someone who thinks using slab serif fonts as body text is A-OK. Reading that page made my eyes bleed.

<comment><USER18> So it's your position that Jill Shimabukuro shouldn't have won any awards for the design of the 16th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style because it uses FF Tisa for the body text?

<comment><USER17> Because you can't see the difference: sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Just a terrible article.

        "Arial and Helvetica are the default font stack for most browsers and for most of the websites. That's bad, really really bad. Arial and Helvetica suck on web and for paragraphs of text - they are quiet *(sic)* unreadable (as compared to many other typefaces created specifically for web). And Helvetica looks ugly without proper kerning and Arial is just an ugly bastard son of Helvetica."

This is wildly ignorant linkbait. Whether or not Arial is a rip-off of Helvetica or not is irrelevant to his argument. They're both excellent body fonts, and the versions on your computer have had countless man hours spent on hinting them perfectly for the screen.

        "Helvetica Neue was recreated for web."

Nope. It was created in 1983, as a more consistent type family. [1]

Okay, this bit is brilliant in it's ignorance:

        **"So Why do People Use Them?"**
        "Prevalent reason is ignorance. People just don't care/know about design - let alone typography."

This is jaw-droppingly misinformed. They're beautifully neutral typefaces that work very well across tons of different situations. There's a reason that font-family: 'sans-serif' defaults to Arial and Helvetica. To suggest that someone building a website doesn't make a conscious decision about one of the most important choices in their design is highly unlikely

        "Second reason, which makes most sense, is availability[1]. Arial is available almost everywhere (~99% Macs and Windows machines have it)."

Now this is the one spot-on point. This has classically been a very, very good reason to use one of the canonical web-safe fonts.

        "Safe bet and cross-platform compatibility - Arial was created in image of Helvetica. They are very much same in terms of x-height and other measurements. So they are the safest thing to do! Different x-height can break your layout! It's easy to work with defaults no matter how bad they are."

I suppose that's dependant on your design, but it shouldn't be so reliant on x-height as to actually break it. If you're using a custom font, you should really make sure you have a web-safe font in your font stack, and that your site works well with it.

        "They like it. (Gulp!) Well however much I'd like to say "to each; his own" - still there are good things from mad. Justin Bieber can never be compared to Tony Bennett - he is just not that good technically no matter what poplar taste is. Arial is shit and Helvetica hardly works as good on web."

Well, I suppose there's no accounting for taste.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetica#Neue_Helvetica_.28198...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetica#Neue_Helvetica_.281983.29)

</comment><comment><USER20> Don't tell me what to do. Especially when the reasons are nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER21> He makes some good points, and gives good alternatives. Definitely worth the read. I bookmarked it and will run over it later in more detail.

But gotta say, I did not like the font that he chose to start his article in. But what do I know, I'm just a User!

</comment><comment><USER22> What a pretentious article.

> Do NOT Use Black on White

> The only reason I don't visit Quora is bad typography. Yeah, I am that > crazy!

Meanwhile, OP's body copy is a heavy slab-serif, his headers are a custom sans-serif without any margins or visual differences besides 6px in size. Using something like <http://www.gridlover.net/>, you can accomplish better readability and hierarchy.

He suggests type based on what's available on your OS despite the fact that those should be your fallbacks, not your defaults now. We've got a brilliant library of web type that look good and sites like <http://hellohappy.org/beautiful-web-type/> \+ <http://font-combinator.com/> \+ <http://daneden.me/type/> help to figure out what emotion you're going for.

He also completely ignores the weights and families available with Helvetica that truly make it superior to Arial that you can call for most OS X users, and fallback with Arial for Windows folks. <http://css- tricks.com/snippets/css/better-helvetica/>

<comment><USER23> I'm also not a big fan of his use of hyphens '-' for dashes '—', since we're so passionate about typography.

<comment><USER22> Once you —, you never go back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I will quote/paraphrase what a good friend of mine said on MSN: "Lol I wanted to ask you what font you used on your website because it looked good, but it turns out it was just Arial"

And I had the same numerous times with both Arial and other default fonts. The trick is line spacing, font size, and line width. Either that, or it's personal preference and the OP's preference differs from mine and most people I asked about it.

I personally have a much bigger problem with _not_ using standard fonts. They're usually broken in two or three browsers (testing in Firefox, Chrome or Internet Explorer 9), and even if they work I find them ugly more often than not, or at the very least they're less readable than normal fonts. The most used tool in my browser is Inspect Element to reset fonts on many blogs to the browser's default.

I can't disagree with his love for Georgia as a serif font, but even Times New Roman can be pretty (yes, pretty) if used correctly. It doesn't take very long (perhaps 30 minutes the first time, 10 minutes after that) to set the correct settings for spacing and the like. So I do agree that Georgia is usually the superior choice, but Times New Roman is not hideous per se.

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't want to argue whether to use Arial or Helvetica, as I personally think that the proper thing to do is to use sans-serif and let the preferences of the reader/webbrowser sort this out, but:

What happened to these screenshots? It's not just the scaling-down for the article (which shouldn't happen if you want to make a point about fonts…), even the original images look weird to say the least.

Overzealous anti-aliasing?

<comment><USER6> 1\. Have you read the article? It's not Arial "OR" Helvetica.

2\. Click on the screenshots to see them fullsize.

<comment><USER25> 1\. The point is that websites _should_ _not_ _specify_ _a_ _font_.

2\. The fullsize screenshots are nearly as ugly as the scaled-down versions. I searched for the text and the Wired article is rendered nicely without funky subpixels blurring everything for me (on Xfce/Opera, 1440x900). If the standard of font rendering on other devices is as bad as appears to be shown in the screenshots, this would be yet another reason not to worry about specific fonts but fix the rendering first.

<comment><USER26> > The point is that websites should not specify a font.

Seriously? One of the most important aspects of your design, and you want to leave it up to the browser? Web design is 95% typography. If your website doesn't specify a font you aren't doing your job as a designer.

<comment><USER27> > Seriously? One of the most important aspects of your design

Most websites need a lot less design than they have. There are properties that, for branding or other reasons, need to exert full control of their look and feel that need strong design, but most websites don't, and over-design gets in the way of disseminating information to users.

> If your website doesn't specify a font you aren't doing your job as a > designer.

Not every website _needs_ anyone doing a job as a designer. There certainly are very important places for design on the web, but the web as a whole is an information dissemination platform, not a full employment program for graphic designers.

<comment><USER26> You and I are using the same word, 'design', to mean two completely different things. To me, design is _all about_ disseminating information to users. That's why designers should care so much about typography - readability is absolutely key to a good design.

I wish there were a good specific word for what you're referring to as 'design'. It's very prevalent, and in most cases it's actually a great example of poor design.

<comment><USER27> > You and I are using the same word, 'design', to mean two completely > different things.

I don't think we are. We just have different opinions about the need for it.

> To me, design is all about disseminating information to users.

Design is about _presentation_ of information to users, not dissemination.

> That's why designers should care so much about typography - readability is > absolutely key to a good design.

Readability is subjective and not essential to dissemination; design is about controlling presentation, rather than leaving it to system through which the user accesses the information. For information that doesn't have specialized presentation needs, this will make the presentation _worse_ for people that have their defaults well tuned for themselves in the name of making it better- than-untuned-results (ideally) for the average user.

> I wish there were a good specific word for what you're referring to as > 'design'.

There is. "Design".

<comment><USER26> Readability is not subjective. Small font sizes, low contrast, bad kerning, and many other things _objectively_ decrease readability.

It sounds like you think the web should be a collection of RSS feeds and APIs. That's interesting and all, but that's not even remotely what the web is. The system through which the user accesses web information (aka browser) is only well-tuned for a very small minority of users, because the vast majority don't even know that they _can_ tune their browser, let alone think that they should. Further, I've never seen a browser where the defaults make for excellent readability. In every case I've seen, they don't even make for _acceptable_ readability.

> There is. "Design".

Appreciate the snark, but I was talking about a _specific_ word for what I understood you to be talking about. Design is the exact opposite of a specific word. It's so general as to be downright vague. (Also, since you said you didn't think we were talking about different things, this comment really isn't useful.)

<comment><USER27> > Readability is not subjective.

Yes, it is.

> Small font sizes, low contrast, bad kerning, and many other things > objectively decrease readability.

There are elements of design which affect readability more consistently across individual users than other elements of design do, but that doesn't stop readability from being subjective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Ah, font snobbery is truly a strange thing.

What if, stick with me here, people like Arial? What if the website's audience likes the fonts that this font geek doesn't like?

Besides, as is eventually pointed out, most web sites were designed with availability as the main criteria behind chosen fonts, not design. That's why you can specify more than one as fallbacks. If you design a website totally around a specific font then what happens if the font isn't available?

True, we have web fonts today. If you start a new project then seriously consider using a web font. But this type of judgmental opinion isn't fair to websites designed before the rise of the web font. For some, switching to a web font for an established design may be a significant undertaking with unforeseen consequences.

EDIT: Read the guy's about page. He's apparently a young guy that already knows everything. His description of himself doesn't portray him as much of a professional.

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't even know where to start with this post.

Arial has its flaws (what font doesn't?), but to call it "a bad copy of Helvetica" is just plain wrong. If Arial is a copy of Helvetica, then Helvetica is a copy of Akzidenz Grotesk, and so on.

Traditional web fonts had their place and might still be a valid choice for some sites, but with higher resolution screens becoming more and more commonplace solely recommending "web fonts" no longer makes sense. If anything, Verdana and Georgia look clunky on retina screens (like they do in print), whereas classic fonts aimed for print have regained their subtle shapes and now look elegant on screens.

Yes, Lucida has a larger x-height and thus looks 'more readable' to a lot of people — but only at the same pt size. I'm so used to Helvetica's word shapes and tight letterspacing, though, that I'll have to disagree on that as well.

</comment><comment><USER29> Feels a little ironic that the wrong image format is used in an article talking about the details of web design. In some of these pictures, both the "good" and "bad" fonts look bad to me, but I can't tell if it's because of the compression or not. In others, the "bad" font looks better to me, but I'm guessing this is because the "good" font was more aliased before it was compressed. The lower-contrast text examples also look blurrier than the high- contrast ones. Images with relatively few colors (like pictures of text) should be stored as PNG, especially if being able to pore over the details is important. This might be a good article with a good point (I don't know much about typefaces), but I feel like the examples really work against the article.

</comment><comment><USER30> Thanks for this. I like the actual suggestions for what should be done, rather than just ranting against poor practice.

This article doesn't mention margin sizing, nor maximum column widths.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm going to suggest something radical. Spell-checking one's work before publishing it is more important to design on the web than one's choice of font. This is a provocative article, but it has so many typos that I can't take the readability argument seriously.

A couple things I saw (at least in the version I read): Hacker News and Justin Bieber are both "poplar." Programmers spend "shit laods" of time. And Helvetica has issues with "it's availability" on Windows.

</comment><comment><USER32> JPEGs for text examples! I'm sorry, but a big part of the apparent differences between the different font examples comes from compression artifacts. It's not that Helvetica is a inherently brighter font than Lucinda Grand, see e.g. the first example. Just judging from the images, the difference in readability of the different fonts might come as much from how well they compress as anything else.

<comment><USER33> The images are also scaled down to 82% of the original size when viewed inline in the document.

Another related issue is that when you screenshot something, you're not capturing any of the enhancements that are made by technology such as Cleartype for rendering fonts on LCD displays. (<http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearTypeInfo.mspx>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This reminds me of audiophiles who say that listening to music on anything other than vinyl through a Class A tube amp on [favorite speaker manufacturer] speakers is a waste of time.

Grow up.

Most people cannot appreciate the difference. Taste is subjective. Look at the Billboard Top 40.

You do what you want, other people will do what they want.

If someone ASKS for your opinion, of course share it with them. But writing screeds about how the rest of the world needs to conform to your tastes is hilariously stupid.

<comment><USER6> Much of UX design is suck. People can't tell a difference, not at least in detail. If I were to change color of a button, maybe you'd think no one cared.

But such things do make a difference.

<comment><USER28> I think you just proved the point, most people will not notice, nor care, about a change in fonts from one family to another if they are similar.

If one were to change a button from red to a slightly different red, which is a detail, then most will not notice nor care. Change it from red to green then there could possibly be a change in response; be it good or bad.

<comment><USER32> Even if they don't care or consciously notice, the small details do make the experience. Even the reader who can't name even one font of knows what serifs are will experience the different fonts differently. One site will make his reading a little less comfortable, maybe make him tense some small facial muscles, and after a few minutes he just closes the tab because for some reason he doesn't even care to articulate he just feel slightly annoyed with the site. Another site has a design with a calming and harmonic color scheme, few distractions, a font that can be read without strain and our reader finishing his reading in a good mode and adds the site to his RSS feed. :)

Of course the most perfect site won't save crappy content, but the ugly site's content may never be read. It's similar to all the non verbal clues in human interaction. The tone of your voice and even the color of your shirt do make a difference.

<comment><USER28> But you are talking about several elements across the board that I would agree would have some sort of impact.

I'm just saying that changing from one font to another that are almost identical, and to the layman are identical, will not have much impact in the long run.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Once you find the perfect font, with it's microscopic differences set just so, you'll realize you're on the web and not print so fonts look different to your users. High DPI, low DPI, Windows/Mac/Linux/iOS/Android, etc etc. I wouldn't waste much time fretting the differences between Helvetica and Arial unless you're printing the result.

</comment><comment><USER36> Verdana is lovely, but it takes up too much space. This is especially a problem in information-dense contexts. Ariel fits much better.

It's also interesting to me that the author chose a paragraph font that I find too heavy and too "interesting". Reading it was unpleasant.

</comment><comment><USER37> Personally, I'd rather see content delivered in a sane standard format and let users apply stylesheets that match their own preferences or needs.

<comment><USER6> Assuming the users know what stylesheets are and write them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Minor thing - but did you mine "quite unreadable" rather then "quiet unreadable"?

</comment><comment><USER39> OP Authour (fast?)thoughts on Open Sans?

<comment><USER36> I'm in love with Open Sans for paragraph text...

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> > …shit laods of time

typo

</comment><comment><USER41> Ok. I don't see any aesthetic difference. I can read all text equally well. All text looks easily parsable, nothing looks ugly.

I dislike this article.

</comment><comment><USER42> Calibri is where it is at. Should be the universal font for documents.</comment>


A coworking space wants me to sign a 2 year non compete just to be a member - <AUTHOR> Just a reminder for you to READ before you sign things.  Tucked into the rental agreement was this extremely onerous non-competition clause
11. Non-Competition and Non-Solicitation:
a. You hereby agree that while you are receiving the Services and/or using Your Designated Space, and for a period of twenty-four (24) months thereafter, you and to the extent you control your Members, your Members, will not, without our prior written consent, directly or indirectly:
1) Engage or assist others in engaging in any business or enterprise (whether as owner, partner, officer, director, employee, consultant, investor, lender or otherwise, except as the holder of not more than 1% of the outstanding stock of a publicly-held company) that is competitive with * business, including but not limited to the business or enterprise of providing licensing desk or office space or other office services to third parties on a temporary and/or permanent basis, anywhere in New York, New Jersey and/or Connecticut; or <comment><USER2> Also remember you can always treat agreements as negotiations. Tell them you don't agree to that part and cross it out and see what their response is.

(For the record that's always worked for me in employment contracts where the first offer has been some ridiculously broad non-compete. I've always has some variation of "Oh yeah - that's just HRs standard boilerplate, obviously we don't mean to have that apply to _you_ - just cross it out and I'll initial and sign it without that clause...")

<comment><AUTHOR> I did - I spoke to the cofounders about it and they were firm - they believe they need it to keep someone from running off with their intellectual property (I'm not sure exactly what IP a coworking space has...)

<comment><USER2> I'd respond with "OK, thanks. I won't waste any more of your or my time here then..."

Even if there are no other competing coworking spaces to use locally there's bound to be other temporary/occasional desk space options if you look around hard enough, and _I_ would choose not to be contractually obligated to those sorts of arse-clowns. (Intellectual property in co-working space??? _Seriously??? Patent it or GTFO...)

<comment><AUTHOR> yes - I walked away, signing with another one nearby

<comment><USER2> Petulant-me would be _soooo_ tempted to email them and say something like "Thanks for your time. I've chosen another option. I'm happy to tell you why, I'll just need you so sign this NDA first..."

<smirk>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is insane.

you can't "engage or assist others in any business ... that provides space ... or _other office services to third parties_ "?

So potentially excludes:

\- an IT company that runs cable to other offices \- a snack and coffee delivery company \- a paper recycling company \- providing wifi to buildings with offices

?

Just for the privilege of paying them for office space?

PASS

</comment><comment><USER4> Mhewwwww, not to worry unless you think your going to get into the co-working market. Even then, almost always non-competes don't hold up in court.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm almost certain this one isn't enforceable and I probably won't ever do anything in that space (but remember that also means taking software contracts from coworking spaces as a consultant) but I still won't sign something onerous just so I can pay someone money to work in their office</comment></comment>