u90g4u8904's comments

http://gawker.com/5671582/how-facebooks-targeted-ads-reveale...

Most of the news I read here is unimportant, or doesn't affect me. Oh look, a framework. Oh wow, a company got funding.

Occasionally there's a neat article about our industry which makes me stop and think. And then I go into the comment section to have a healthy debate about it. But who am I kidding? I don't know anyone here. And nothing I say will likely change any minds. And vice versa.

At the end of the day, HN is mindless entertainment. Some days I'm restless and I can't just do nothing. But I need a break from work. So I spend 5 minutes on HN and go back to what I'm doing. Unless it's nice outside. Then I take a walk.

"In a nationally representative survey of single, childless people in 2011, more men than women said they wanted kids."

"A different poll from 2013 echoed those findings, with more than 80 percent of men saying they’d always wanted to be a father or at least thought they would be someday. Just 70 percent of women felt the same."

Granted, I don't have tons of studies, and some of this data is a few years old (but still after the 2008 recession,) but I think it's reasonable to conclude that the drop in birth rate can not be explained solely by a decline in the number of men or women who want kids. For sure, that is a big part of it. But the fact that couples who want kids are not having them, and that this gap grew after the recession, leads me to think there are structural issues with our economy at play.

Edit: I see we're talking past eachother. I was responding to your claim that "Also a lot of people don't want children." I'm pointing out that, while that's true, the real problem is people who report wanting children but not having any.

I wasn't responding to your comment about male birth control. Although if you want my opinion, I think it will be good for men to share the burden of family planning. But I doubt it will cause the birth rates to plummet much. Men want children too.

http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2018/05/23/birth-rate-drop

Stephanie Coontz, professor of history and family studies at The Evergreen State College:

"I think the most important and concerning thing about this is not the number of people who are voluntarily childless, but the tremendous gap between the number of children women said they wanted to have and the number that they will probably have. Early this year, the gap reached its highest level in 40 years. I think we need to think very seriously about what it is that pushes people into this kind of 'delaying.'"

Donald Trump is rich because his dad left him an inheritance. His businesses were fraught with turmoil. If he just kept the money in an index fund, he would be richer than he was today.

http://fortune.com/2015/08/20/donald-trump-index-funds/

So reset everything to square one, and there's one person who's not going to make it on their wits.

Need more examples? How about Bill Gates? No doubt, a very smart guy. But he would not be where he is today without that fateful meeting with IBM, where MS negotiated providing DOS for the PC. How did he get that meeting? His mom worked for the United Way, and knew IBM's CEO.

https://forwardthinking.pcmag.com/software/286148-the-rise-o...

Then consider everything else that led to that day. He grew up in a fairly well-off family which could afford to send him to MIT. He was in the right place at the right time when Gary Killdall dropped the ball. He had the benefit of excellent timing, as the window for establishing OS dominance on the PC was very small. I'm sure Gates would even tell you - his success is, in large part, a product of luck.

What I'm saying is, to become rich, it's not enough to be talented. You have to get the right opportunities and seize those opportunities when they come to you. In my experience, there are more people with talent then there are opportunities. So that random room of people is always going to turn out different.

The key here being you voluntarily disclosed this.

> For god’s sake, have these privacy crusaders heard of phone books?

You can have an unlisted number.

>Similarly, if my hospital wants to share my health data with a pharma company and they pool it and then use it to develop cancer cure and make billions – you know, I am OK with that.

Great. Then the hospital can ask you for permission before they use your data.

> I am OK with being profiled online and seeing well-targeted ads.

I'm not

> some of it may feel creepy (uncommon, unexpected, weird, etc), but there is no harm to you and there is definitely value for you.

The value is "more relevant ads." You know what? I hate all ads. I don't care if they're relevant.

The harm is, some company has a list of everywhere I go on the internet. They say it's anonymized, but it's not really. They say it won't be shared with anyone, but they have crappy security so someone could steal that information. They say it will only be used to help target ads, but how can they prevent an abusive government from accessing all that data? The best thing to do is just not collect the data in the first place. (Unless it's absolutely necessary for the service, and you consent to it in an obvious way.)

This shouldn't be on gartner, and shouldn't be on hacker news. This guy's argument is a joke. He completely misunderstands, or is ignorant of, the privacy issues that led to the creation of the GDPR.

Can someone tell me if this is because designers like to copy whatever look is in season? Or is it mostly the clients / managers who are afraid to have their brand identity be too different?

I knew a designer who couldn't tell you what made text legible, or how a grid system worked. But they were good at copying certain styles that were popular. They would read those articles like "20 stunning sites with flat design," pick a few to copy, and then give the client a look-a-like site, regardless if the design made sense for their business. Always thought they were a hack, but they were employed, so good for them.

Edit: Just wanted to point out that the return of serifs is probably a good thing - good designers seeing that minimalist logos are overdone and wanting to stand out. My comments are more directed at what is inevitably to come - hordes of smaller companies copying the most superficial aspects of this trend.