radicaledward's comments

Hey thanks for your response!

Please note that this response is only in the context of your home page desktop design on Firefox. I'd need to spend some additional time doing analysis on mobile and other browsers.

In my opinion, the main thing you want to do is not change responses to the user's systems native controls. This is an essential part the principal of least surprise - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishmen...

In your case, my main problem with the design is two pieces, my scrollbar is missing until after the slide show and the animated pieces of the slide show don't move using the same "physics" principals as a bare html page in the same browser. The lack of a scroll bar (I have an optional setting on so it is always visible if present) means that I don't expect there to be additional content on the page. Then when I do try scrolling, ot feels like nothing is happening at all and then I hit some invisible threshold and the page scrolls _for_ me. This feels a little bit like lag, which in any other case would mean that my computer is breaking. That's a bad feeling.

In most cases I would suggest a medium scale redesign - save the font choices, the colors, and some of the layouts but go back to the drawing board on the user interactions. However I know that designs like this continue to be popular and so I'm going to have to keep working on them. I've found that there are some decent compromises out there. So here's what I would suggest:

1) For the transition between the final slide (pip 3) and the actual page content drop the fixed animation entirely. That content should simply be at the bottom of the page the entire time.

2) For the transitions between the 3 images of Venice (or wherever?), I think you're going to need to do a bit of playing around. Ideally the largest object on the screen should move in direct relation (and with a 1 to 1 ratio) to the scrollbar without any delay. The absolutist in me wants to say that you should just place the 3 images in a stack and be done with it, but I realize that's not eye catching enough for the audience you're targeting. In your case one option would be to consider the "largest object" to be the horizontal scan line where one image stops and the other image starts. But the problem there is that you're still going to have to do significant scroll jacking to get that transition point to move...

However, I think you can get an effect like this using transparency or opacity settings and some complex positioning. You might need JavaScript for slide transitions after the first, but I would have to actually build the thing to figure it out. I'll think about it overnight and let you know if I come up with anything! (No promises though!)

Another option might be to use background-clip: content-box; for the transitions and then some JS magic in-between slide transitions to change which image is in the foreground and which is in the background.

The text at the bottom would continue to switch in a slide show style I think. You would have to try it and see.

If you want to preserve the delay between slides, you'll need to add a somewhat large visual element to the design that continues to move as the user scrolls even while the image stays in place, but in this case, I'm not sure if that will be necessary.

None of those solutions will completely remove scroll event listeners, but they will bring the experience back significantly toward being in line with normal system interactions.

This feeling of lack of control vs perfect control is something I look for in the video games I play. I've come to believe that it is the single most important part of game design for me. Games like QWOP and Getting Over It play with this idea intentionally, while historical successes like Mario 64 and Soul Calibur have made waves in the gaming world specifically because their controls are so refined and fluid.

Sorry I wrote so much! I appreciate the work you're doing with this site and I wish you much success!

I did the native version of this after someone mentioned it in one of the general articles on phone addiction that have been making their rounds on HN since the start of the year. So far I don't feel like it has had much of an effect. I've only noticed two direct behavioral changes for me so far:

1) It is forcing me to wait to watch YouTube videos until I get to a computer because I want to see them in color. That seems like it should be a big gain, but I still find myself scrolling through my YouTube recommendations anyway. Habits die hard I guess.

2) It is also delaying my reading of the couple of web comics I follow since, again, I want to see them in full color.

So I guess my phone usage overall has dropped considerably since YouTube takes up most of my time. I'm already off Reddit starting a couple of months ago and I've been off of Facebook (except Messenger) and Twitter for over a year. So maybe I'm not really the target of all of this, but I definitely spend more time than I would like on YouTube.

I also made a change to my settings so that my phone screen no longer wakes up when a notification arrives. So it is less distracting when sitting on a table.

In addition I saw a couple of other pieces of advice on here to curb phone use: One of them mentioned putting only fast utility apps on your home screen and removing notifications that don't come directly from people (basically every notification except for personal e-mail, human texts, and Slack messages I guess?). I haven't tried either of those things yet but I'm definitely considering it. They both require a bit more thought and planning than simple settings changes.

In regards to the site linked, I have only one additional piece of input: Please stop with the scroll jacking. This is a well known web design anti-pattern. I don't understand why this fad has persisted as long as it has. It literally feels like the site is broken when interacting with it using a click wheel.

It is not scifi, but I think some mention of Tuck Everlasting should be made. The book was really important to my understanding of death when I was growing up.

Unfortunately it looks like the author, Natalie Babbitt, passed away last year. So they can't interview her.

I'm not sure if your counter example holds up. Wikipedia indicates that Edward Gibbon wrote way more than just The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [1]. And those are the works we know about that he didn't just burn immediately (or whatever). The successful stuff sticks around and holds up, but that can create inaccurate views for how many failures came before (and after) the success.

As a side note, I also find it amusing that you expect Churchill's "aura" to fade. If current trends are any indication, he's moving toward folk tale hero status rather than the slow march toward obscurity (with multiple appearances in Doctor Who and other fictional media). In my opinion, the only thing that potentially stands in the way is a possible upheaval of the Western power base or an Alexandria style purge of knowledge. I say this as a US citizen who is much too young to remember the fall out of the war, much less the war itself.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Gibbon

Can we add a unit to the title here on HN? The only reason I clicked through was to see what unit the 25M was in. 25 million grams? 25 million milligrams? 25 million rupees?

(it's $25 million USD)

If your rent is more than 30% of your income and you are between the ages of 25 and 34, you are normal (46% of the renting population). Even at above 50% your rent to income ratio is still fairly common (23%). Having a rent to income ratio above 30% is also correlated with having an income that is very low [1].

If you are at 30%, you are also meeting one of the most common recommendations in personal finance (regardless of whether that recommendation is _good_ or not).

It seems obvious to me that recommendations of either moving or finding additional housemates both can have significant short and long term negative impacts on financial stability, emotional, and physical health (I didn't bother looking for a source for this because this is hacker news not a dissertation).

1. https://www.earnest.com/blog/rent-and-the-30-percent-rule/ which cites http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/jchs.harvard.edu/files/jch...

I'm not the parent, but the new Pokemon game has been amazing for me. I'm 28 and single though. So obviously the target market. I've done more walking since the game came out than I had done in years. I've seen a lot of nature too. I found an owl in the park near my house. It was so close I could almost reach out and touch it.

In the context of the article, Kaphan is talking about technologies that isolate versus technologies that connect people. For the examples he gives:

1 seems to be neutral to me (people talking robotically to voice recognition systems). This is neither isolating nor connecting. It is just a different means of interfacing with a computer. I'm sure someone somewhere made a similar argument when the typewriter was invented.

1 seems isolating. Looking at your phone instead of being mentally present at your current location can be isolating. But then it depends on what you are doing. If you are participating in a text message communication, that's connecting you to someone else while isolating you from the physical world.

But Pokemon seems like it falls in the "connecting" category. I have something new in common with random strangers that we can discuss. I go out with my friends to play the game. The downside for some people seems to be that I am now physically present connecting with them and they would really rather I didn't. They liked the park empty and quiet.

Of course there are the incidents of people playing while driving or the one guy who walked off a cliff that one time (99% of the articles I've read slamming Pokemon Go mention the same 3 Reddit posts without attribution). But for me personally, I'm more present and walking around when I play Pokemon than I am when I'm posting on HN.

I think the majority of the Impossible Project's marketing is already aimed at the fine art community and instant photography enthusiasts. Many people in those groups had been spending excessive amounts on expired Polaroid film prior to the project's creation.

I'm hoping this is a high-end camera. They already have the low-end market covered by the decades of old Polaroids lying around. I have an excellent 600 Business Edition ($30 ebay) and don't really feel the need to upgrade.

Not a film, but I'd say we're pretty much there in video games with roles like the one Ellen Page had in Beyond: Two Souls. Note that she even explored legal action against the game company because of an unauthorized scene.

I would be more interested to see where we get with synthesis actors. I could see them creating a single recurring screen actor from 3 or more human beings. One or more for appearance. One for particularly good facial expressions. Another for voice. Maybe another for movement.

> Shouldn't matter as long as your dwelling is properly insulated.

I realize that neither of us are citing sources, but I'm pretty sure you are wrong about this. I don't want to spend too much more time on this response (I wrote the other bits first). So I'll leave it at that.

> I concede this point, although moving trucks to cleaner fuels will resolve this.

It could mitigate some of this, but definitely not all of it. Resources will still be spent on replacing worn parts or entire trucks in the fleet. Expending resources will always have some negative effect on the environment.

> This is mostly a sunk cost with existing suburban and rural infrastructure.

I said maintenance not construction. Infrastructure decays incredibly quickly. We are constantly replacing and upgrading our infrastructure. Power lines go down in storms. Water pipes get broken as the earth settles. Roads are repaved or rebuilt constantly.

> No disagreement, although you're not required to have a lawn. You can cover the whole area with rock or a garden (I know several people who do either).

Fair enough.

> My local suburban trash service uses methane from the local landfill to power its vehicles, and in due time will switch to electric vehicles.

Ok, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be easier (cheaper and less resource intensive) to ramp up such services for the same number of people if those people are living at a higher population density.

> This was the point I was most interested in responding to. In all cases, electric vehicles are better than petroleum vehicles, even if powered by fossil fuel generation sources. Its much simpler to maintain emissions controls on one coal plant than 100K cars. Also, your fleet gets "cleaner" as renewables and other clean energies come online, whereas your petroleum-powered vehicles will always burn petrol for the life of the vehicle.

I seem to be thinking about completely different sources of environmental damage from you. My understanding is that 1) the majority of the environmental costs from cars actually comes from new car production, not from fuel consumption. 2) Electricity distribution is inefficient enough that it requires a disproportionately large amount of coal to power a car when compared to the petrol used to drive the car the same distance. 3) Electric car batteries are composed of materials that must be mined, which carries its own environmental costs.

For the record, I didn't downvote you. I don't downvote people just because they disagree with me. I also don't have downvote privileges on this site anyway. I'm enjoying the discussion and I hope that you are too!

I think a lot more goes into making urban life better for the environment than just cars. Off the top of my head I would expect the following to contribute:

Suburban heating and cooling involves larger spaces for less people (houses being bigger in the suburbs),

In an urban environment, there is a lower environmental cost for transportation and processing of food/water/other goods (fewer locations to deliver to).

In an urban environment, I would expect fewer materials are needed to maintain infrastructure (power lines, water pipes, roads, etc). Manufacturing all of these parts involves an environmental cost.

Suburban living currently almost certainly means a big lawn. Traditional green lawns are bad for the environment.

Urban communities can also centralize waste disposal and (I suspect) more easily implement recycling programs.

Finally, don't forget that an electric car is only actually better for the environment if the electricity is produced sustainably (this is mostly not the case in the US). I suspect that electric cars may actually be worse for the environment if powered by most US power plants.

I think they meant that it takes the users a long time to learn to be cynical.

I was born in 1987 and I didn't think of myself as a millenial until someone told me a month ago what the definition was. I'm still not sure if I agree that my behavior matches up as closely with the behavior of the people born in the 90's as the demographics people would like.

In regards to point a: I've never really driven in our downtown area enough to experience this problem. I hear a lot of other people complain about it though. I imagine, if I started driving in the downtown area more this would probably get added to my list of complaints.

In regards to point b: I don't drink more than 3 or 4 times a year. So this doesn't really come up for me, but I do agree that this is a factor for a lot of people.

As for not using my phone when moving between places, I don't use mine much during transit either. However, the mental pressure of being completely unable to check it when it pings seriously bothers me. With that being said, I actually spend most of my time on the bus reading books, which is definitely not something I can do while driving. I guess I could amend my post by saying that driving takes away time when I could be doing literally anything else, and, with modern advances in technology, 90% of the things I would be doing otherwise can be done on the bus.

>> Researchers say they’re intrigued that millennials’ aversion to driving and owning a car has endured even since the recession ended.

This is a direct response to the above quote.

Every time I read one of these articles I'm surprised that the rise of smart phones isn't cited as a contributor to this change of preference. Every minute I'm driving is a minute that I am disconnected from the internet. Constant connection is arguably a bad thing, but I'm pretty much addicted, and I would bet that everyone else is too.

Of course there are many other contributing factors to my preference for mass transit over driving. My perceptions that inform my preference (whether true or not):

* Cars are simply not safe. It isn't just that I'm worried about getting hurt in an accident. I don't want to be responsible for harming someone else. * Many forms of media have constantly reminded me as I grow up that cars are bad for the environment. * Cars are incredibly expensive. If I never buy another car, I could easily afford a small house with the money I will save over my lifetime. In addition to the car, I have to pay for gas, insurance, and maintenance.

However, in the end, I still have a car. I have a car because my city's public transit is still slow and unreliable. It is getting better. And I use it quite a lot to get to things in the interior of the city. My car gets me to the events I go to on the edge of town, and it covers me when I need to get somewhere in the middle of the night, when the bus isn't running.

I'm not sure how similar I am to other millenials, but these are the things I think about when I see a quote like that.

I have a windows laptop that I use 2 or 3 times a week and sometimes I have 10 updates pending (2 of which fail repeatedly until I uninstall them and re-download them). This is a huge downside of continuous delivery to something that isn't cloud based.

Maybe it depends on who builds your devices, but I have had several usb prongs break off on me even when I was careful. This happened on one desktop and several gaming consoles.

I'm unsure how your response indicates that obesity is a self-control problem. Participating in a camp for however long and dramatically changing food intake is bound to create results. But if people could get the same results on their own then they wouldn't need the camps in the first place.

In addition, the group of people that are aware that this type of service is available, and that can afford to take multiple days off work to go to a bootcamp exercise program and pay for the program, is a unique portion of the human population with significant commonalities in genetic markers, cultural backgrounds, and many other areas. Their accomplishments should not be used as an indicator for all of humanity (and of course neither should the events described in the original article).

For the person below who asked for references: Unfortunately I don't keep a file of research on obesity because I don't have the problem myself. So I can't directly point to the things I remember reading. But that is also why I started my comment with "I believe".

I believe in many cases it is well documented that obesity isn't caused by a lack of self-control. However that knowledge is simply not accepted by the general population. I would guess that it is difficult for people to accept this for the same reason that rich people have difficulty accepting that poverty is commonly not the fault of the poor. We may even be able to generalize these problems to all forms of victim blaming.

This is an excellent read! It is also included in Gibson's collection of non fiction writing - Distrust That Particular Flavor, which I highly recommend.

Thanks! I will give it a try!