davidivadavid

It's not obvious that the position is meaningful or what meaning it has. That's why if you look at the history of traffic lights you'll see many variations, including pictograms to complement the colors (e.g. character walking / standing still, "STOP" "GO" text, etc. etc.).

Of course, the point wasn't that the colors should be removed entirely, only that they're only a partial solution.

But the icons are for individual actions rather than the semantic grouping the colors convey, no?

> If it's only way you convey it.

Exactly. That's why your traffic lights example is puzzling to me? They're a notorious example of a case of something that can very easily be (and often is) ambiguous.

Using colors to convey state/semantics is also a big accessibility no-no, fyi.

So Sam Altman has never heard of the hedonic treadmill, I guess.

Beggars can't be choosers, especially when asking support questions, and especially when they're not paying for it.

For every person who asks a question expecting (and deserving) a literal answer, there are dozens of ill-posed questions that require a clarifying preamble to get to any answer at all. It's better not to waste anybody's time.

Support people tend to be able to distinguish between the two pretty well, too. If you ask a precise syntax question, you'll have a precise answer. Ask a vague "do my homework" question, and expect people will ask for clarifications.

You can check some mock interviews here: https://www.youtube.com/c/ExponentTV

The parent's description of this as LARPing is eerily accurate.

To anyone who knows enough about cinema to be vaguely familiar with any large cinema festival, the suggestion that the Oscars somehow promote "esoteric tastes" is hilarious.

Designers have no problem mocking designers doing bad typography. Maybe we don't hang around the same "design circles."

"Why do programmers go out of their way to put bugs in software?"

I wish for once people on Hacker News didn't make sweeping statements about a profession that isn't theirs? Most good designers will recognize those are bad design choices.

It's 1 click vs. 2 clicks away.

Hacker News has rounded corners on its buttons.

Yes, the "character weakness" is a penchant for midwit /r/iamverysmart takes that are well below people's usual expectations. Surely we can agree the reaction is overblown, but as someone said, this is definitely eyeroll material.

Dude, everyone knows that. Seriously.

Nobody's missing the "important point" because everybody who's been on Hacker News for five minutes has heard Paul Graham make that point. Indeed, people have made jokes about startup business plans for decades. Literally everyone knows that those things don't matter for super early stage startups.

The tweet, however, and very much like many of Paul Graham's latest essays and tweets, seems to purposely elude any context, make a very generic a debatable statement, and assert it with complete aplomb. For someone who just wrote an essay about putting ideas into words, if he can't see that this tweet will be interpreted as "balance sheets are useless", he needs to put in a bit more work.

That's what people react to, because the only conclusion is that since he doesn't want to tweet bromides, he must be trying to say something "controversial."

It's really bordering on trolling, which for a man with his age and reputation is kind of cringy, embarrassing, and frankly disappointing to people who enjoyed his past stuff.

It's worded somewhat poorly but you can see what they mean if you look at the terminals of the "a", "t", "j", and "f", for example, which combine a right angle on one side and a curve on the other. They took the idea from the counters, but didn't apply them to counters. (The counters themselves however are a little more vertical than most fonts).

Why don't more developers know how to design stuff if their focus is building web apps?

Those were daily active users. (Not that Statista's MAU numbers are correct, but important distinction).

For those who can read French, probably as good a place as any to mention Grothendieck's journal Récoltes et semailles recently got published by Gallimard: https://www.gallimard.fr/Catalogue/GALLIMARD/Tel/Recoltes-et...

"Because it is code?"

Known to French people as Motus [1] since the 1990s, I was also surprised that people just discovered that game.

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motus_(jeu_t%C3%A9l%C3%A9vis%C...

Isn't the main result of voting theory that there precisely isn't any perfect voting system (satisfying basic common sense constraints)?

Obvious bad faith arguments and wrong information get downvotes.

Can't go wrong with Tufte, but I'm also partial to Stephen Few for a more pragmatic approach ("Show Me the Numbers", "Information Dashboard Design").

It means you probably shouldn't listen to Twitter philosophers too much?

I thought Army of Thieves removed what I enjoy about heist movies (clever puzzle solving, regardless of how unrealistic it can get) and instead replaced it with random acts of CGI-generated safe mechanics animation. Was well made but ultimately unsatisfying.

Not a "technical" person. Use LibGen all the time.

I mean, using LibGen requires all of knowing how to visit a website and type words in a text input field. Not exactly technical?

He popularized it in tech circles where people all read from the same basket of 5 pop science books.

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." — Blaise Pascal

P.S. Of course, most interesting stuff about humanity stems from the same problem...