jasondemeuse

> OP was talking about margins and padding etc which just are a lot less important than designers like to think

Are you just saying that or do you have evidence to back it up? I'm not a designer but I work closely with them and I'd say it's the exact opposite. Developers (myself included) tend to get tunnel vision on finishing functionality but the actual end users of the software care a lot more about the 'small things' like that than you're giving them credit for.

The fact that you say 'tweaking things 1px at a time' shows that you don't quite understand that it isn't about moving things around arbitrarily, it's about creating a design system that does it for you. Every header should have X amount of spacing between it and other elements, every paragraph should have the same size that makes sense with the headings it sits under, backgrounds should draw the users eye to important places, etc.

Using the old/new Reddit is a horrible example, because the old Reddit absolutely had a design system that made sense to the user. It might have been simple, but the spacing was consistent across every element. Watch the comments when a subreddit mod team updates their theme and small things like the padding around the comment preview is missing, it's the first thing that the users of the sub notice.

I've done a lot of end-user interviews, and actually paying attention to your padding/margins and making sure all of the elements fit your grid can be the difference between the user trusting your app because it looks professional, and giving up on it because it looks like a side project (or to use the Reddit example, the difference between using the home page and a half-baked custom sub theme).

HN might not be the demographic that you're going to get that feedback, but unless you're writing your software specifically for developers you're going to be losing a lot of trust regardless of how solid your software is behind the UI. It's not about creating 'art', it's about making your work look trustworthy to the end user.

I've been a PIA customer for a year and a half with no complaints. I'm not a VPN power user by any means but it's been solid for me the whole time and haven't had any reason to look elsewhere.

I've been a Spotify premium user for years now and have never used my Library, but have a ton of playlists organized and nested into different genre/mood/etc directories.

I'm sure there's a good reason why people want to use their Library instead and why the "playlist" way is inefficient since I've seen a lot of users annoyed with the limit, but anecdotally I've never had a problem with the playlist-first way of using the app.

Actually at this point if they put the limits on playlists and had an unlimited Library I'd probably be jumping ship to something else myself.

Is that really your only alternative?

Same here. I did use it often in college when it was still .edu only and got a lot out of it so I understand why people like it.

On the flip side, shortly after I graduated I realized it was my default "thing to do" online (i.e. when I open my browser it was muscle memory to type in facebook.com). Yet when I opened it up I cared less and less about what I would actually see. Anything worthwhile I would have gotten a text/call about, everything else was just attention-grabbing noise.

After I disabled my account honestly I can't say parting with it had any negative effect on my life whatsoever. Anyone who would have invited me to something on FB just sent me a message on something else, or text/called. Any friends I wanted to stay in touch with did so any way in other ways. Anyone that I lost touch with wasn't someone I was trying to stay in touch with in the first place.

It's amazing how often I hear people complaining about Facebook or the people they have "connections" with on there, but just not using the platform is almost a foreign concept for them at this point.

Have you used one? I'm not pushing fidget spinners but I've been a pen-twirler since junior high and the spinner is almost the exact same motion with the same amount of attention involved.

I don't know how you've been using them but I think you're making them far more complicated then they need to be.

Reddit is way more valuable if you subscribe to smaller discussion-based subs that have stricter rules. I haven't gone on r/all or any default subs in years but I still get a lot out of my front page since I try to be selective about which ones I subscribe to.

> the expectation is that if you're not paying, you're the product.

What are you talking about? In what way are Trello users 'the product'? Are you just repeating a catch phrase that people say about other companies or do you actually know this to be the case?

I don't use Trello myself, but unless something has changed there aren't ads being shown to users (the reasons for the 'you're the product' saying for services like Google or Facebook), I'm not sure what data they could sell that would be worthwhile for a to-do app. What else would make the users 'the product'?

AFAIK they make all their money from their premium services, and since being bought by Atlassian I doubt revenue is at the top of their priority list anyway. Atlassian is full of premium services and Trello seems like a way to introduce all of those users to Atlassian's suite.

I don't think OP read enough of the article to know what "McMansion" actually implies...

>Why should anyone care what sort of house people choose to build, buy or live in?

Maybe because that's what she is knowledgable in, and she wants to point out bad practices in the industry she's involved in, or because they make expensive houses with cheap products that are only built to resell as opposed to have someone actually live there for an extended period of time?

Look, these things might not mean anything to you (or me for that matter), or ever have a real effect on you and that's fine, but you really can't imagine why such poor practices might annoy someone whose career is based around knowing not to do these things that are so prevalent?

Do you think subreddits like /r/programminghorror are mean spirited? If someone posted a snippet with 1000 cases in a switch statement, would you say "Why should anyone care what sort of sort of code people choose to write or use in production?"

I don't see how that is any different than this, or how calling out bad practices with broad strokes is a mean thing to do.

I think you totally misunderstood the OP you're replying to. As far as I can tell he is agreeing with your sentiment 100%.

The link you posted, did you read past the top comment? There are a lot of people still playing and many of those that are are still heavily involved. I can't say I've ever played every day or every time I get my phone out, but I know enough people that play often that I still keep it around and play once in a while especially if there is an event.

Of course there was a spike at first release, like every other game. Less press after a year is hardly indicative of the game being only hype. If you can name a game that didn't get less press a year after release I'd love to hear it.

> but it looks like the game has become a lot more harder to play without spending money on it

I'd love to hear why you think this is true other than someone mentioning it with no explanation in the top comment of that link. The only thing I can think of is a slight hit to pokeball drop rates which - while annoying - only affects those in rural areas who don't have access to many pokestops. This game (like Ingress) has always been geared toward urban areas and ignored rural players. This was an issue day 1 and it hasn't changed unfortunately, but this is not a recent development.

Honestly, the game is pretty hollow and is hardly something I'd recommend everyone pick up, but to say that it was only hype and things aren't looking good now is uninformed.

Interesting article about Hoffman, but the title is extremely misleading. There are so many reasons why Microsoft bought LinkedIn that are more important than just getting Hoffman's expertise and a board member.

It's easy for people in tech to ignore how gigantic the CRM market is, but Microsoft has a lot invested in Dynamics and has a huge incumbent competitor in Salesforce, there's no way they could compete if they just started from scratch. However, seamless LinkedIn integration and millions of pre-filled and verified records is a huge boost and an immediate selling point. IMO it's a Hail Mary at competing with Salesforce and if they wanted Dynamics to be viable any time soon it was really their only shot.

Maybe in a big company that doesn't have a majority of remote workers or somewhere that remote is a new concept. The company where I work is ~70% remote and has been since the beginning and there has never been an issue with promotions dependent on being the office or not. A lot of this may have to do with our relatively flat hierarchy though, a "promotion" with us is mostly a raise and going from Junior dev to Senior dev, and the only positions "higher" than that are executives. I definitely could imagine PM type positions being harder to get as a remote employee.