How the Web Became Unreadable

I agree that the contrast on App Engine could be bumped up. But in their defense, most of the text/labels on that page are not meant to be read as if they are prose. As much I like Google's old-school blue aesthetic, the underlined hyperlinks in the sidebar were, IMHO, something that had to go away, as it's mostly obvious that every label, except for the bolded subheads, in the sidebar is a nav-item meant to be clicked.

In terms of font-size, I think it's a difficult tradeoff to make. I'm a bit impressed that the designers didn't try iconifying things and instead stuck with pure text. Again, as the admin page is not meant to be read like an article, the advantage of having small text is that at least it's possible to fit more things onto the page, in consistent locations, rather than forcing the user to scroll.

That's not to say that maybe some of the issue can be mitigated by reconsidering what needs to be on the page. I find myself being mostly OK with the typography on the App engine page because 95% of the content doesn't require my attention, and so making everything #000, as it was in the older version, has limited value to me.

I do prefer the older version's simple-table-list layout. I find Google Cloud Platform to be unusable because of its multi-column boxes-everywhere layout.

To make matters worse (i.e. take away even more contrast) users might be using f.lux, twilight or similar which will move the threshold of illegibility nearer.

(and there are valid reasons to use these, indeed I have them on phone and desktop).

It's that so? My experience says otherwise. For example, hn will stay, and so will the linked blog. They don't show ads.

I have worried about this a lot, but basically now try to get inspiration and take example from webs that I consider highly readable. I also developed a set of internal rules; for instance, my maximum "black" is #333 (#333333) and my minimum "white" is #eee (#EEEEEE). Anything going further than these to the middle should have a real reason and not just because it's prettier.

Edit: #333 over a #eee (worst-case scenario with my guideliness) gives a 10.9:1 ratio, while #333 over #fff gives a 12.6:1 ratio, both totally acceptable. So I am not sure how the author concludes that #333 is not good enough and we should use #000;

Why should the people who is doing it right and pleasant change it because few others are using ridiculous colors as in the examples? It's like saying you shouldn't eat any sugar at all because many people is fat when you are perfectly healthy.

HN is a meta-site. Without ads, there will be dramatically less content to link to.