Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

721–730 of 738 posts

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#721

Post by buellerbueller »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #663
buellerbueller wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would need to ask that of someone who agrees with their font choices. I am only opining that they probably have $REASONS that they believe to be virtuous, and that by calling it virtue signaling, we point that out. In my time as a righteous woke progressive, it eventually dawned on me that the other side was just as likely to believe in the righteousness of their cause, even if I couldn't understand their reasoni…

I just don't understand why it would be a virtue to deliberately make things harder for people. If the font was neutral in terms of being easy to read, then they would never have touched it. To my mind, they're making a "virtue" out of cruelty. The problem is that we've seen what this kind of "righteousness" leads to (gas chambers, The Final Solution, World War II) and yet we're heading down the same road. There is n…

>I just don't understand why it would be a virtue to deliberately make things harder for [some] people

Yes, obviously, you have stated this before. You are clear on that. I agree with you.

What you don't seem to have done (because you keep saying you don't understand why it would be a virtue) is steelmanned the argument of the other side. Only by doing that can you 1) understand why their plan would be considered virtuous by them, 2) understand what the costs of the calibri font are, and 3) make an informed and rational decision.

Maybe you're right and there is nothing that supports their decision except the parts you see as cruelty, but my suspicion is that you havent investigated that.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#722

Post by ajross »

VerifiedReports wrote: post #364
ajross wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because normal people can read "l00l" as a number just fine and don't actually care if the underlying encoding is different. AI won't care either. It's just us on-the-spectrum nerds with our archaic deterministic devices and brains trained on them that get wound up about it. Designing a font for normal readers is just fine .

Normal readers know that capital "i" has crossbars on it. Why design an intentionally ambiguous font? There is only downside to it.

You lost this fight more than a century ago. Helvetica and almost all related grotesque fonts lack a serif on "I", and dominate modern typography. You see them everywhere, on every device. Pull your phone out your pocket and see if you can see "crossbars" on the I. They're not there, and never have been.

And people like it this way! So that's why we design fonts like this.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#723

Post by AshleyGrant »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #157
AshleyGrant wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had read the article, you would know the answer to this question. Calibri is a font designed to be easier to read on screens, which is where documents are primarily read in 2025. Switching to using Calibri as the default was a meaningful change that provided improved accessibility at literally no cost to anyone. Switching back to Times New Roman, a serif font that is provably more difficult to read on screens…

Is screen readability the only value to consider? > If you had read the article Please read the rules.

> Please read the rules.

You made a low effort post, and I pointed out how if you had put in the effort to read the article prior to commenting you would have gotten the answer to your question.

Would you like me to be more patronizing to you and say, "The article clearly states which of the font changes was the performative one and which was meaningful."?

But sure, buddy, run off to hide behind a site rule the moment you get called out for a low effort post you made that is breaking at least two rules itself:

- Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

- Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

> Is screen readability the only value to consider?

Whether it is "the only value to consider" or not is beside the point, and you know it. The Trump Administration's only value they considered is "Biden did it, so we're going to undo it." They considered nothing else. You know. I know it. Everyone knows it. Why do we know it? Because they have made it abundantly clear that they have no idea what "DEI" actually is, so they just slap that label on anything the previous administration did, put out an order rolling it back, and use it as a wedge issue.

If he was actually worried about whether a san-serif typeface was worse for printed documents, he could have simply ordered that all printed documents must use TNR or any of the other better options that exist. But he isn't. He's simply concerned with killing "DEI," where "DEI" just means whatever they decide it means today.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#725

Post by gerdesj »

vintermann wrote: post #395
Jailbird wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cross my sevens! I'll consider starting to slash my zeros. Seems legit.

Øh, that isn't ideal for Danes, Norwegians or people who regularly deal with empty sets.

Fair enough, but I was whittering on about English and not Dansk or Norsk. The empty set should be obvious from context.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#726

Post by bulbar »

nailer wrote: post #680
bulbar wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not. The used font just doesn't move the needle regarding the global impression. 99% of people never ever think or care about the font they use. What else should be decided on on the highest level: spacing, padding, allowance of the Oxford comma? It is useful that somebody thinks about that stuff, just not the highest level of the government. That's like the CEO of Microsoft having meeting about coding co…

> That's like the CEO of Microsoft having meeting about coding conventions, space vs tabs, variable name format etc. Gates absolutely did care when Windows products were bad.

Of course, that's his job. You then decided on strategies, not on details.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#727

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

buellerbueller wrote: post #721
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't understand why it would be a virtue to deliberately make things harder for people. If the font was neutral in terms of being easy to read, then they would never have touched it. To my mind, they're making a "virtue" out of cruelty. The problem is that we've seen what this kind of "righteousness" leads to (gas chambers, The Final Solution, World War II) and yet we're heading down the same road. There is n…

>I just don't understand why it would be a virtue to deliberately make things harder for [some] people Yes, obviously, you have stated this before. You are clear on that. I agree with you. What you don't seem to have done (because you keep saying you don't understand why it would be a virtue) is steelmanned the argument of the other side. Only by doing that can you 1) understand why their plan would be considered vir…

Yes, you're right about me not investigating and steel-manning the arguments from the other side.

However, I think it's a mistake to do so as you cannot deal with fascism by discussion, reasoned argument and logic. When a country starts rounding people up and putting them in concentration camps (it's not a prison if people are kept there without due process) then clearly the fascists have taken over. Instead of playing their game of disingenuous arguments (which are mainly used for distraction and to influence the gullible), their behaviour needs to be called out for what it is.

It's like with Musk's Nazi salutes - any attempt to rationalise that as anything else (e.g. "he's autistic", "sending his heart") is a lie and in my opinion, they deliberately do things which are unjustifiable just to see who will show loyalty and follow the party line no matter how ridiculous it is.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#728

Post by hopelite »

ondra wrote: post #638
hopelite wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> It was Blinken that arbitrarily introduced The _second paragraph_ of TFA gives a reason for the introduction. Please explain how you came to the conclusion that the change was arbitrary.

The definition of “arbitrary” includes “upon personal whim”, i.e., the State Dept leadership, not coordinated across or with other depts, and “not in a systematic manner”.

I get that people’s biases make accepting reality difficult, but this will all end poorly if you can’t even just be objective on basic things like it being detrimental for one single department of the federal government to arbitrarily change rather significant things like the official font, even worn text, communication is the primary work product and format.

Why did you ignore all the other aspects and simply latch onto something you thought was a loophole because you cannot objectively adapt a relevant definition?

This is not reddit. You should have higher standards for yourself.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#729

Post by VerifiedReports »

ajross wrote: post #722
VerifiedReports wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normal readers know that capital "i" has crossbars on it. Why design an intentionally ambiguous font? There is only downside to it.

You lost this fight more than a century ago. Helvetica and almost all related grotesque fonts lack a serif on "I", and dominate modern typography. You see them everywhere, on every device. Pull your phone out your pocket and see if you can see "crossbars" on the I. They're not there, and never have been. And people like it this way! So that's why we design fonts like this.

"And people like it this way!"

Oh really? People have a mechanism for reporting that? And they'll turn away from products using fonts with properly-demarcated capitals?

Ladies and gentlemen, witness the "argumentum ad populum" fallacy.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#730

Post by pyuser583 »

LucasFonts wrote: post #475

Our studio, LucasFonts, designed Calibri. Here are our CEO Luc(as) de Groot’s thoughts on the matter: The decision to abandon Calibri on the grounds of it being a so-called “wasteful diversity font” is both amusing and regrettable. Calibri was specifically designed to enhance readability on modern computer screens and was selected by Microsoft in 2007 to replace Times New Roman as the default font in the Office suite…

“Modern computer screens” have changed substantially since 2007. Calibri was not designed for 4k.

That’s why Microsoft no longer sets it as default, and it is expected to be phased out by institutional consumers.

Calibri served its time. But it’s time is over.

Post reply on HN