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Poll: What is your age?

news.ycombinator.com

221–230 of 318 posts

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#222
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us old farts use Ctrl + to get around such issues.

That's what OP was using, and someone else was suggesting to use a minimum font size instead. I wonder if there is a way to change the zoom level at the OS if everything is too small, not just the web browser, but that would defeat the purpose of having an hd screen. Also does the zoom level in your browser affect the resolution of videos/images? It seems like it would.

Most OS have the possibility to adjust screen dot pitch (ppi, pixels per inch). Using a "high resolution" display (like my 23"@2048x1152, or an Apple "retina" display).

Technically, setting your font to be eg 14 points, should be an absolute size - the same font should be the same dimensions (in mm/inches) on all displays. Now, you probably hold your smartphone closer to your face than you sit to your 30" LCD screen -- so that might not really be what you want (same font size on your phone and on your desktop screen).

Additionally this only works for scalable graphics -- which is why Apple went trough such hoops to make retina displays usable -- quadruple the dot pitch on screens, and all icons and bitmaps become miniatures.

Personally I just use the browser zoom-function -- I find most sites use too small fonts, and end up with too wide text columns (which is somewhat alleviated by not browsing full screen, but in a "long" window).

Anyway, the following might be of interest:

Xorg, dpi: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xorg#Display_Size_and_D...

Windows (8) dpi/zoom: http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3153/~/ad...

Some notes from Microsoft on writing DPI-aware applications: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd464646(VS.85).aspx

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#223
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I present, No True Hacker ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman ). Some hackers are interested in the results of the poll. Some resent any effort by anyone to collect their personal information. Some just wanted to click all the buttons, to see if they could. None of these are more or less valid than any other viewpoint, and it's silly to argue about what this portends for the HN community.

Whether you're interested in the poll or not is no reason to vandalize it. Being unwilling to share personal information is no reason to vandalize it. Wanting to "click all the buttons" is only a valid excuse if you are under the age of 8. What's silly is defending the dickheads who purposely ruin the poll.

The use of the word 'vandalize' is kind of interesting to me, because it's usually used in a physical context to mean destroying or damaging something of value. It's kind of like using 'steal' for IP infringement; there's the argument to be made that theft implies the loss of something for one party, as much as the gain for another. This isn't really vandalism, in the same way that downloading songs isn't theft. Neither is morally right, but it's a sort of emotional appeal to compare it to someone throwing a brick through your window.

Was phreaking illegal? Totally. Was it unethical? Yes. Do we not consider it a part of hacker history and culture? You can disagree with people and say what they did was not morally sound, but it's silly to say people don't belong on a hacker site because they have an anarchist kind of worldview.

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#226
This might be self-serving, but I'm convinced "year of birth" matters more than age (and, more specifically, "when did you have computers and the Internet" and such).

I think 50 year olds in 2030 will still be involved in tech in ways 50 years weren't in 2000 or 2013.

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#227
post #62

The most significant result of this poll is that HN now seems to be past the point where we can rely on an honor system to prevent users from giving junk answers to polls. A few years ago we could. That's an unfortunate change. However, it's an ill wind that blows no good. When I'm done reading applications, I'll add a little tweak to HN to make the fonts super big for all the users over 80.

In general I think people are more likely to lie on polls than before, but also have always been more tempted to lie on polls which make them offended or defensive, which age probably does.

I'm curious if the take over 80 set are more likely people in their 30s-50s who find age polls somewhat offensive (or at least the implication), or people under 20, or whatever.

Perceptions of age bias actually interest me more than age distribution on HN.

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#228
post #62

The most significant result of this poll is that HN now seems to be past the point where we can rely on an honor system to prevent users from giving junk answers to polls. A few years ago we could. That's an unfortunate change. However, it's an ill wind that blows no good. When I'm done reading applications, I'll add a little tweak to HN to make the fonts super big for all the users over 80.

While the numbers indicated suggest that some people are lying, there are a couple "old guys" I know who would read this site. One is a professor emeritus at the university I work at, and he still keeps up with this stuff. Another is a guy who showed up at our local python user's group a few weeks ago. He's in his late 70s or early 80s and decided to pick up python as a retirement project. (It's kind of an inspiration, I would like to walk into a room of 'kids' in 2060 and say: teach me what you are doing). I've recommended this site to both of them.

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#229
I find it hard to believe that there over 125 people who read this website and who are over 90!

I think what happened here is, some guys read this and decided to be naughty and decided to pick the max age. If lets say we provided another choice saying over 150 yrs old, I am sure it would have been picked and we could have safely ignored the whole set data points without affecting our interpretation of the different ages of people.

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#230

Old enough to know that this has been asked before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2322031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=517039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=126923

759 days ago, 1448 days ago and 1867 days ago, respectively. I think it's OK to ask this question after 2 years. It's great to see how communities change over the years. Yes, I know it's not scientific at all and does a poor job of reflecting real demographics. But, if you think there's value in asking, then there's value in comparing previous answers.

Average account age (especially for people broken down by submitters with frequency, commenters with frequency, and quality commenters by frequency) would be MUCH more awesome than age, I think.
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