Once I got good at typing on it my Acorn Electron (we couldn’t afford the whizzy bbc master!) was an extension of my brain.
Instant response. A full reboot was a control break away. Instant access to the interpreter. Easy assembly access.
I thought, it executed.
I remember our school moving from the networked bbc’s to the PC’s and it was a huge downgrade for us as kids. Computer class became operating a word processor or learning win 3.11 rather than the exciting and sometimes adversarial (remote messaging other terminals, spoofing etc) system that made us want to learn, to just more drudgery.
Having an ordinary key on the keyboard that would effectively kill -9 the current program and clear the screen was a crazy design decision, especially for a machine where saving data meant using a cassette tape!
The layout is so disturbing I could not read it, even though it's exactly my cuppa!
Please use a lot more space, especially between columns. Tilting text creates a sense of vertigo, making it really hard to concentrate, for some of us.
Please keep the layout simple, unless it is actually helpful to the content.
I'm sorry. Maybe it's the font, papyrus", so I changed it to "optima", I stopped rotating texts and put a wider space between colors. Is it better for you?
I have a wide screen and it shows as a bunch of columns that don't fit (there are a lot more on the right), and I have to scroll down for each column. At one point, the boxed text showed a slight rotation, possibly due to vertigo and I closed the site. Resizing the window makes a mess with columns of various height and empty columns.
For readability, you need a lot more space between columns.
Again, this looks like nitpicking, but in reality I am unable to read the content.
It appears you have something interesting to say. Why destroy that with terrible layout?
I have tried many presentations and never found the right one. Arranging the sections in columns, in two dimensions like a spreadsheet, seemed to me to be a pleasant solution. You can zoom out to see the plan, zoom in to focus on a section. Maybe easier on a tablet by double-tapping. And it's readable on a smartphone. Less easy on a station with a large screen where the manipulations are to be done with the mouse. Sorry if it disrupts the reading.
I am likely not your typical reader, and have my own issues. But since you have a technical presentation that needs to communicate meaning, it is a shame to obscure it with suboptimal visual design. You may disagree with my minimalist approach, but I would advise keeping a single-column presentation as it would work on any device the same way.
Who is your audience? If you are presenting an engineering concept, for god's sakes, just use plain html. Your goal is to have readable text and enough graphics to communicate. I think you have to decide if you have something to say, or be a really cool groovy genius with wacky text and layout. As a designer I have to tell you that no, it does not look cool.
The slightly-rotated text boxes are disorienting. Unless you are making a 'tech for dummies' book, there is no reason to assault the reader with distracting callouts. It's actually insulting.
I actually prefer dark background, by far. Until we all have E-ink displays, it is much easier on the eye not to have large glowing fields of white.
My immediate disorientation comes from the fact that even with my enormous display I have to scroll down and right. I start with 2 1/2 columns, and don't know what to do.
The layout code you have is buggy, at least in LibreWolf - upon screen resize (which is the immediate urge when seeing 2 1/2 columns) the display goes wacky - a lot of empty space appears in some columns. The vertical layout does not conform to the width - some text runs over boxes.
That is about as far as I get, without reading a single sentence!
Thank you for all your good advice. I finally chose a more readable font, spaced the columns, added a button to display the document in one column ... and even chose a light background, even if you don't care about the black background. Maybe the final result will be less "insulting" to your eyes and you can give me an opinion on the content?
US Coast Guard has ~13 Billion USD in budget, operates across the globe (there are USCG cutters both on Japan Sea and Black Sea) and is 5th or 6th strongest navy in the world:
Tossing pejoratives like 'psychopath' around in information-free ways is a marker of a bad HN comment, regardless of who it is you're putting down—although the celebrity aspect makes it worse because it adds sensationalism. If you've read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, it should be obvious that this isn't in the intended spirit of the site. In fact, if that isn't obvious of your comment, of which comment would it be obvious?
It's common for people to conclude that the mods secretly hold the opposing view to theirs*. I suppose the logic goes like this: (1) I can't possibly have broken the rules; (2) yet the moderator has scolded me; (3) why? there must be some other reason; (4) it must be that they disagree with me. The mistake is at step (1). The truth is, we don't care—we just want commenters to use the site as intended.
And with any luck this charade will clue the previously clueless into this man's irrational, unstable nature, permanently removing the veneer of credibility and "coolness" that has been instrumental in his success thus far.
I hope that was _sarcasm_... This man is singlehandedly causing more polution, social unrest, and fraud than anyone I've seen in my lifetime. Each of his enterprises is bankrupt without government money and very creative accounting. His behavior is reprehensible and criminal. I can't believe he is not in prison.
The comment you're responding to is a prescription: what people ought to do.
Yours is a description: what people in fact do.
Yet, you phrased it in the same way, with the same emphasis. It might be a world view shifting shock to you. But I have always thought Elon was an asshole, from the very beginning of his self image marketing campaign.
The submarine/rescue situation should've clued many more people into his capricious, reckless nature, but yet many persisted.
This country has a serious problem with platforming and idolizing narcissists and non-violent psychopaths and it needs to stop. Sh*t-shows like this hopefully have a chance of showing everyone that these monsters don't deserve our adulation.
