Regulating Technology • Hacker News Board

Re: Regulating Technology

#31

Post by amw-zero » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 11:47 PM UTC

klelatti wrote: post #23

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #5

Can I veer horribly into my favourite tangent - I love the presentation style, the look-and-feel. It's a blog version of what he did at A18Z - a sort of sophisticated corporate but with the look of something that could be knocked up from Markdown. I could steal the CSS, but that's is only 20% of the battle - getting graphs that match the snazz, getting everything just right, but with this off handed vibe. As I get ol…

Interesting but I found the opposite. Font a bit small, grey on grey hard to read and no links whatsoever! (Why not if you are writing for the web?) No strong personality comes across - and I like most of what Ben does. I find it actually visually less engaging than a lot of corporate blogs.

Are you reading on desktop or mobile? I’m asking because I’m setting up a blog myself, and the font I’m using looks a bit small. I’m curious what you think a good font size is in general.

Re: Regulating Technology

#32

Post by arantius » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 12:40 AM UTC

amw-zero wrote: post #31

klelatti wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting but I found the opposite. Font a bit small, grey on grey hard to read and no links whatsoever! (Why not if you are writing for the web?) No strong personality comes across - and I like most of what Ben does. I find it actually visually less engaging than a lot of corporate blogs.

Are you reading on desktop or mobile? I’m asking because I’m setting up a blog myself, and the font I’m using looks a bit small. I’m curious what you think a good font size is in general.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/16-pixels-body-copy...

"16px" is a very good font size. I.e. don't do anything, just let the browser use its default.

Re: Regulating Technology

#33

Post by timsneath » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 1:00 AM UTC

dwaltrip wrote: post #27

timsneath wrote: post #3

The challenges for regulation are two-fold, in my opinion: 1. It just doesn't work. Legal and regulatory solutions are too slow and poorly designed to be effective, see for example the EU browser consent decree applied to Internet Explorer. IE didn't fail because Microsoft was forced to offer a choice of browser; it stumbled because of other nimbler competitors (particularly Chrome) that were able to innovate despite…

> 1. It just doesn't work. * Unleaded gasoline * Earthquake-proof building codes * Air pollution ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_of_1963#Effects ) These are just a few that I quickly came up with off the top of my head. Obviously, not all regulation works. But it is so incredibly false to say there doesn't exist effective regulation that has made our lives much better.

Yes, totally. But the topic is “regulating technology”. In general this space is evolving far faster than oil or building codes, and regulating innovation is much harder than regulating established standards.

Re: Regulating Technology

#34

Post by lebuffon » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 2:31 PM UTC

dwaltrip wrote: post #27

timsneath wrote: post #3

The challenges for regulation are two-fold, in my opinion: 1. It just doesn't work. Legal and regulatory solutions are too slow and poorly designed to be effective, see for example the EU browser consent decree applied to Internet Explorer. IE didn't fail because Microsoft was forced to offer a choice of browser; it stumbled because of other nimbler competitors (particularly Chrome) that were able to innovate despite…

> 1. It just doesn't work. * Unleaded gasoline * Earthquake-proof building codes * Air pollution ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Air_Act_of_1963#Effects ) These are just a few that I quickly came up with off the top of my head. Obviously, not all regulation works. But it is so incredibly false to say there doesn't exist effective regulation that has made our lives much better.

From the top of another head: Banning DDT, Removing Freon from AC systems, mandatory seat-belts and airbags in cars, Residential ground fault detection outlets, Electricity system codes, Gas line codes, Building safety codes ...