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Poll: What is your age?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: What is your age?

#271

Post by esolyt »

mschuster91 wrote: post #246
e12e wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

On Windows, devs rarely care about DPI issues, largely because they either never heard about the problems, thought "oh my GUI abstraction will take care of it" or think that the market share of non-standard DPI settings is too low.

Yes. It's annoying. Asus has a 13-inch 1080p Windows 7 laptop and everything so tiny that it is basically unusable out of the box.

Android does not have this problem since devs always use dp (density independent pixel) as units of measurement and OEMs choose good DPI values when they are releasing devices.

Although less gracefully, iOS solves this problem too (by doubling the resolution and scaling everything by two).

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#272

Post by arcatek »

sandyarmstrong wrote: post #262
eeeeaaii wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are missing the point that this poll is voluntary. So, the "Do not disclose" option is there -- just click on one of the many other links on HN today, or otherwise do something else with your time. There, you "did not disclose."

But that's not really the same at all. There is a huge difference between not voting and voting with "don't want to disclose". The former is unusable as a data point, while the latter is something that can be analyzed and discussed.

Sure. But by checking a wrong answer, we now have an unusable data point AND we have skewed the poll ...

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#273

Post by feralmoan »

ebbv wrote: post #216
alanctgardner2 wrote: post #207

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.

Saying its 'vandalism' is just hubris. Isn't asking if people under 10 or over 90 are using the site in itself setting the poll up for failure? I tend to run with the edict that if you ask a stupid question, you should expect a stupid answer.

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#274

Post by arcatek »

mnicole wrote: post #245
ebbv wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds fine in theory but in reality anyone with a hacker mentality should see that the poll is obviously based on the honor system and is simply a series of options to upvote without actually attempting to ruin the results.

> in reality anyone with a hacker mentality should see that the poll is obviously based on the honor system While sure, this might be the case, it still doesn't negate the fact that fundamentally, HN's arrows (of all kinds) should be able to be "undone". Accidents happen, people are curious. We shouldn't blame the users for a system that is broken and relies on them to ignore long-standing standard UX practices when…

Actually, in a poll, you don't change your mind, it would kinda break the purpose :)

In an ideal world, we should not even be allowed to see the results before voting, since it could bias us (it should not in this kind of poll, of course).

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#275

Post by brudgers »

RobAley wrote: post #116
pg wrote: 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.

PG, have you considered that many (though granted not all) of the "junk" answers may due to the hacker mentality, people asking themselves questions like "what if I choose more than one option, will it let me?", "what if I 'accidentally' select the wrong answer, can I undo it?", "What if too many people give implausible answers, can it be corrected for or will the poll be junked?" and so on. Hackers - tinkers and the…

"have you considered that many (though granted not all) of the "junk" answers may due to the hacker mentality"

What I find more interesting is that this thread has been allowed to survive rather than being downmodded. And that tells me that some influential HN'ers consider the responses to this survey meaningful - either individually or in aggregate. One of the often ignored aspects of HN is that to a meaningful degree it is an extension of people's workplaces. I find it handy to remember that when participating.

I rather doubt that the point of the survey is actually collecting data on HN'ers ages. Detailed demographic information about people on the internet is readily obtainable from other sources.

On the other hand, information about who is likely to "vandalize" HN is more difficult to collect and highly relevant, and this is the jist of PG's response as I read it. I couldn't really come up with a better term for crapping on a poll than "vandalize." The scare quotes are there because what is happening is normal internet behavior.

Perhaps the vandalism is somewhat invited by the absurdity of the youngest age and the quasi-absurdity of the oldest - does it really matter from an HN demographic standpoint to distinguish between those over 80 and those over 90 - both cohorts must have came to computing as adults.

Not that this excuses the behavior, and perhaps the invitation to vandalism is intentional because the wording and presentation of many attempts at data collection via ASK HN is awkward enough to invite meanness of which vandalism is one form.

[EDIT] Indeed, the creator of the poll claims to be studying quantitative psychology.

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#276

Post by solistice »

alan_cx wrote: post #183
ameen wrote: post #159

I'm 24, and come to think of it. I haven't really achieved much that I hoped to achieve by now when I was younger. I wish I could turn back the clock to the last 7 years and get right to what I really could do instead of wasting my time at College[1] and chasing useless dreams. All the best youngsters and to those that made it cheers. And for others like me, stay at it. We'll never know when lady luck will smile upon…

Get the HELL on with it then. You feel bad now? Im 40 and feel worse. I would give anything to be your age again, and have to 16 whole years, plus the 7 you regret, to achieve......well...... anything. I promise you, if you don't you will bitterly regret it. I'm a busted flush, but you have every opportunity. You can even fail lots until you get it right. Oh, forget luck. It does not exist. Its just recognised opport…

I'm sure there'll be another person coming in with 50 years of age and more existential regret to reprimand both of you, but I'm not that person because I'm frankly not that old. None of you two (or any number out there) is a busted flush till you've stopped breathing for about 15 or so minutes, so don't sweat it. Alan, you're 40 years old, and your expiration date is proably still another 30-50 years off. That's more than enough time to do something that makes you happy.

Yes, I'm younger than you two, but I had to say it. I mean I thought my life was done for and wasted when I was 13 years old (tsss...truely depressing times weren't they?), and that was obviously not true. But lack of hope for the future is understandable when your plan A seems blocked, your plan B is nonexistent, and a lot of people tell you you will fail if you don't pull the ship tight together. But there is always a second route to Rome, and along every limes there's a hole you can get through, no matter how extensive it looks. Especially since I only looked for one meter to either side back then.

Anyways, none of you guys are as doomed as you make yourself out to be. If you start out now, will you be as sucessfull as the 19 year Wunderkind who started his multi-million dollar company with 16? No, but you don't need to.

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#277

Post by dunham »

clicks wrote: post #130
pg wrote: 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.

> 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. I'm in my mid-20s, I did not vote dishonestly in this poll, but I wish you'll make the change for me anyway. The small font on a 1080p screen (13" screen) is practically unreadable for me. I have to zoom in about 150% to make out anything.

Have you considered a user.js script? I'm using one to fill in the white borders and wrap comments at a reasonable width:

  // ==UserScript==
  // @match https://news.ycombinator.com/*
  // ==/UserScript==
  (function () {
    document.body.style.backgroundColor = "#f6f6ef";
    var s = document.createElement('style');
    s.innerText = "td.default {max-width: 40em; }";
    document.head.appendChild(s);
  })()
(For Chrome, name the file hn.user.js and drag/drop it onto the chrome://extensions page.)

Re: Poll: What is your age?

#278

Post by danielweber »

rattray wrote: post #254
Jun8 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been here for some time and I usually agree/upvote pg's comments, not because of reverence to him or because I'm start-struck but because, well, the man is a well of wisdom (I regularly buy Hackers and Painters and give it away as presents to the young students I mentor. And OK, I may be a bit star-struck, too.) This is his first comment I disagreed completely and downvoted. As a personal policy I downvote any c…

While I disagree that responding falsely was a better move than simply not responding at all, I agree with your point about hn quality lamentations. As someone who came to hn after "the good ol' days", I would much prefer to see constant reminders of "That's not how we do things here" than "Man, things sure have gotten bad". Entropy is the norm; everything degrades without constant force applied.

One thing I've learned here is that it's much better to encourage what you like than bitch about things sucking.

I don't like the posts that say "weird new tool that everyone but you has heard about has released a new version!" I tried criticizing those posts and got downvoted, probably legitimately.

But my #1 upvoted comment ever, by at least a factor of 3, was this one[1] where I praised a tmux posting that very clearly said what tmux was for someone unfamiliar with the concept.

So clearly I struck a nerve and other people feel the way I do, but I just had to find a positive way to encourage what I wanted.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5462105

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