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Nebula Sans

nebulasans.com

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Re: Nebula Sans

#101

Post by bonoboTP »

OskarS wrote: post #47
bonoboTP wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It happens so often on YouTube that I see a video recommended but think to myself "if I click this, am I going to get recommendations for terrible stuff for the next month? You can remove videos from your watch history. Or you can open the link in a private/incognito window. Google may still be able to connect it but I don't think it will impact your recommendations that way.

Yes, of course you can, but this sense of always having to curate your watch history and hide from the algorithm is just not there for Nebula. I guess it's different from person to person, but it's remarkable how freeing it feels to me to use a service where that isn't a concern. I'm watching what I want to watch, not what the algorithm is manipulating me to click on. Maybe it will enshittify like most everything els…

To me it doesnt feel limiting. I curate it to get good recommendations. I also switch between accounts. One for trash binges, and one for everyday stuff, one for serious technical content etc.

I use "do not recommend this channel" a lot, and click "not interested" a lot. Open the YouTube front page, remove stuff you would prefer not to have there, refresh, repeat, the algo will adapt.

Same hygiene on social media. Add muted phrases, mute people, click "not interested". It improves the experience a lot.

Re: Nebula Sans

#102

Post by muglug »

bearjaws wrote: post #46

Swear whenever your company decides to invent its own font its like a version of "The Headquarters Curse". You had nothing else better to spend your teams time on so might as well make a new font that 10% of your customers will notice if you are lucky. They could have just picked any other font and used it. It's a video streaming website, how much text content is there vs video content? Headquarter Curse: A theory su…

I think it's important to point out how much easier it is to create a new typeface based on an existing one and using the metrics of another one, than to create one from scratch.

For example, I've built metrics-compatible versions of Aptos and Verdana in the last few days based on other open-source fonts that matched the shapes closely.

For Verdana I just told an LLM to add bars to DejaVu Sans and extend some shapes. For Aptos I had to get a bit more creative, designing a new double-storey g, but it was otherwise fine.

Re: Nebula Sans

#103

Post by zerocrates »

Aurornis wrote: post #39

I like this font and the license it comes with: > The OFL allows the licensed fonts to be used, studied, modified and redistributed freely as long as they are not sold by themselves. The fonts, including any derivative works, can be bundled, embedded, redistributed and/or sold with any software provided that any reserved names are not used by derivative works. Very nice. I’ve paid for fonts for personal use in the pa…

The SIL Open Font License is pretty much the standard for freely releasing fonts. Poke around on Google Fonts or other places that have freely-licensed fonts and you'll find the vast majority use OFL.

Adobe's Source (the basis for this one), Google's Roboto and Google Sans, the very common Inter, Lato and Open Sans, coding/monospace fonts like Iosevka, JetBrains Mono... chances are that a free font you're aware of uses the OFL, particularly if it's even vaguely recent.

Re: Nebula Sans

#104

Post by tishomingo »

bearjaws wrote: post #46

Swear whenever your company decides to invent its own font its like a version of "The Headquarters Curse". You had nothing else better to spend your teams time on so might as well make a new font that 10% of your customers will notice if you are lucky. They could have just picked any other font and used it. It's a video streaming website, how much text content is there vs video content? Headquarter Curse: A theory su…

I understand your point, but it does send a message that the company values design and art. It can be a great signal to attract talent. I know I would be!

Re: Nebula Sans

#105

Post by Computer0 »

pbronez wrote: post #88
WarmWash wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that ad-blocking makes youtube the best value proposition for users. You get almost all the content of nebula, plus tons more, for free, no ads. Don't get me wrong, Nebula is great (although yt actually has a better profit share believe it or not), but the internet needs to look in the mirror before services like it can actually compete with yt.

This surprised me, so I looked it up. Basically YouTube pays ~55% and Nebula pays 50%. This is complicated by Nebula's "creator owned" situation. Which is complicated [0]. It's something like: - Nebula's assets live in Watch Nebula LLC - Watch Nebula LLC is owned by 83% Standard Broadcast and 16% Curiosity Stream (CURI) - Standard Broadcast "is owned by 44 total people, all of whom are creators" So it's fair to say t…

percentages are meaningless in the ad space and I think topic specific CPM would be a more meaningful comparison. Even on youtube itself things like kids toy videos can make 4x or more per 1M views when compared to a Political show or something technical.

Re: Nebula Sans

#106

Post by jonas21 »

OskarS wrote: post #47
bonoboTP wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It happens so often on YouTube that I see a video recommended but think to myself "if I click this, am I going to get recommendations for terrible stuff for the next month? You can remove videos from your watch history. Or you can open the link in a private/incognito window. Google may still be able to connect it but I don't think it will impact your recommendations that way.

Yes, of course you can, but this sense of always having to curate your watch history and hide from the algorithm is just not there for Nebula. I guess it's different from person to person, but it's remarkable how freeing it feels to me to use a service where that isn't a concern. I'm watching what I want to watch, not what the algorithm is manipulating me to click on. Maybe it will enshittify like most everything els…

You can also just turn off your watch history completely and use the subscriptions page as your starting point. I did that for a while, but turned it back on when I realized that the algorithm was actually quite good at surfacing content that I learned a lot from -- most of it was stuff that I would never search for on my own (or even know to search for).

Re: Nebula Sans

#107

Post by ARandumGuy »

OskarS wrote: post #21

It's a little beside the point of the post, but I just want to fly a flag for Nebula: I subscribed solely to get early versions of Jet Lag: The Game, but I'm finding myself watching it more and more! It has many of the channels I would go to YouTube for, but I've also discovered several really good ones that I had never heard of. And it has a similar feel to Kagi, in the sense of "freeing" yourself from the algorithm…

Seconding this. I've been subscribed to Nebula for a couple years, as I watch a lot of video essayists on Youtube and like half of them are on Nebula. In addition to ad-free viewing, you also get:

* No in-video sponsor segments

* Exclusive videos (including some creators and series that upload primarily to Nebula)

* Early access to some videos

* Uncensored videos, as Nebula does not have the automatic content or copyright enforcement systems that Youtube has

* A decent TV app (at least on Roku), so I can watch ad-free on the TV without paying for Youtube premium

All for a much cheaper price then Youtube Premium ($60 annually vs $160, with frequent promo offers). If you already watch a lot of Youtube channels that are on Nebula, I'd highly recommend it.

Re: Nebula Sans

#108

Post by leokennis »

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #67

The font looks great. However, I get the same sense reading bios of Grateful Dead cover bands all pretending what their doing is different when I read descriptions of fonts. You're not "forging a new legacy with a fresh take on the Dead", you're just another cover band. And this is just another font.

If you’re a startup but you don’t have a blog post with some wishy washy doodah showcasing your own personal font, its cute glyphs, its heritage in 1800’s Europe and some translucent overlays showing how it’s definitely different but not really compared to your initial bog standard font, are you really a startup?

Re: Nebula Sans

#109

Post by gralab »

etchalon wrote: post #92
gralab wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. You know that's not what I'm saying. There are many other very respectable typefaces available that they could have used. This one, while it may be custom made, *looks* generic. If I never saw this post, I would have zero clue they made it in-house. This is a PR stunt to get attention on sites like this.

There are so very, very many things you're missing here.

Explain.

Re: Nebula Sans

#110

Post by pibaker »

notahacker wrote: post #99
OtherShrezzing wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure this counts for Nebula. Font licenses (even very liberal ones) are a massive pain and expense for content creators who publish to multiple platforms in a variety of different mediums. Collectively their creator/owners will be paying thousands of dollars/month for their fonts. Something you’ve correctly assessed that a very low number of their viewers will notice or care about. Nebula can make one upfront pay…

Plenty of fonts with the same SIL open font license around already, especially if what you're after is a nice but generic modern sans serif font which 99% of users can't distinguish between. Can't think of any reason why Nebula creators would go for this one other than to blend in with the platform's corporate house style for the 1% of users pedantic enough to notice and... well they could have picked an existing SIL…

Judging from the kind of content creators nebula hosts I'd imagine they do in fact have the kind of nerdy audience that notices miniature font differences.
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