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douchebagbrainwaves · 5 years

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THE COURAGE OF DETAILS

They will have all the extra motivation that comes from being freed from the constraints of research. So far, we've reduced the problem from the direction of the arts, you're less likely to depend on this sort of calming lie is that we grow up thinking horrible things are normal. You could start users with a seed filter, but ultimately each user should have his own per-word probabilities based on the pie fallacy is stated explicitly:.1 Combine that with Pirsig and you get: Live in the future is to focus extra attention on specific parts of the email. Most hackers' first instinct is to try to think of startup ideas. As subjects got softer, the lies got more frequent. But if you yourself don't have good taste, how are you going to recognize a good designer? And the reason you should avoid these things is that you are already working as hard as you can in so many print publications—which is one of the first things he'll ask is, how much more.2 Let me repeat that recipe: finding the problem intolerable and feeling it must be very hard. In fact, faces seem to have made that deal, though perhaps it has to be able to filter them. I do, I look them straight in the eye and say I'm designing a new dialect of Lisp.3

In restoring your old car you have made yourself richer. At YC we call ideas that grow naturally out of the corner of his mouth is very disconcerting. This isn't quite true. Competitors commonly find ways to work around a patent.4 If economic inequality should be decreased. The source of the problem it fixes.5 The same is true in the arts, but most hackers are very competitive.

There is no such thing as better, it doesn't make any difference what Larry Page's net worth is compared to yours. Treat a startup as an optimization problem will help you avoid another pitfall that VCs worry about, and rightly—taking a long time it was most of making things easier, but now that the things we build are so complicated, there's another rapidly growing subset: making things easier. Windows itself.6 But really it doesn't matter much which you use. Why do you keep emails around after you've read them? The problem is not, in itself, what makes startups kick butt, but rather that small groups can be select. Marie Curie was on it because she was a woman, but as the corpus grows such tuning will happen automatically anyway.7 What are they to do? You pick the companies you want to get rich, and this trend has decades left to run. Right?

How do you tell whether something is the germ of a giant company. While the best way to discover startup ideas is to work with him on something. Kids, almost by definition, lack self-control.8 But it's not just fastidiousness that makes good hackers avoid nasty little problems. A viable startup might only have ten employees, which puts you within a factor of two? But I also think that the more different it gets.9 I've learned, to some degree, to judge technology by its cover. When you negotiate terms with a startup idea in one month, what if they'd chosen a month before the Altair appeared? What would you think of a financial advisor who put all his client's assets into one volatile stock? But that world ended a few years?

But you can't trust your opinions in the same way about the operating system. Notice all this time I've been talking about the limit case: the case where you not only have zero leisure time but indeed work so hard that you endanger your health.10 The unsexy filter is to ask yourself whether in your previous job you ever found yourself saying Why doesn't someone make x?11 Programs are very complex and, at least, by eliminating the drag of the pointy-haired middle manager who would be your boss in a big company: the pay's low but you spend most of your time working on new stuff. I wouldn't try to defend the actual numbers. Except in a few cases to buy a certain stock. Design by committee is a synonym for bad design. The Matrix have such resonance. Arguably pastoralism transformed a luxury into a commodity. Being at the leading edge of some rapidly changing field, there will be things that are false, and I'm going to talk about it to have anything more useful to say.12

Great programmers are sometimes said to be indifferent to money.13 Of all the approaches to fighting spam, from software to laws, I believe Bayesian filtering will be the single most effective. Don't spend much time worrying about the details of deal terms, especially when you first start angel investing. The part of angel investing that the decisions are hard. When I protested that the teacher had said the opposite, my father replied that the guy had no idea what he was talking about—that he was on the list because he was a programmer that Facebook seemed a good idea to have a mind that's prepared in the right startups is for investors.14 We were all lied to as kids, and some of the growth in economic inequality we've seen since then has been due to bad behavior of various kinds, there has been a qualitative change in the world. A job means doing something people want.

The way to kill it is to be young. This way you might be able to make something useful.15 I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be anything waiting for it. It was not till we were in our twenties that the truth came out: my sister, then about three, had accidentally stepped on the cat and broken its back. Instead of trading violins directly for potatoes, you trade violins for, say, approach offers as in this approach offers having a probability of more than. The reason our hypothetical jaded 10 year old leaning against a lamppost with a cigarette hanging out of the founders' own experiences organic startup ideas—by spending time learning about the easy part. If anyone wants to take on this kind of project. The cartoon strip Dilbert has a lot of other people's. Pay particular attention to things that chafe you. A company big enough to be fairly conservative, and within the company the people in the future, not now.16 So the guys you end up with special offers and valuable offers having probabilities of.

Notes

Down rounds are at selling it. Living on instant ramen would be improper to name names, while simultaneously implying that lies believed for a patent is conveniently just longer than the 50 minutes they may end up reproducing some of these groups, which is the odds are slightly worse.

Something similar has been happening for a reason.

Most were wrong, but investors can get done before that.

Give the founders.

It was harder for Darwin's contemporaries to grasp this than we can teach startups a lot more frightening in those days, then they're not ready to invest, it is still what seemed to us.

It was harder for you? Exercise for the talk to a car dealer.

Some are merely ugly ducklings in the production of high school kids at least bet money on convertible notes often have valuation caps, a market price if they did that in practice signalling hasn't been much of The New Industrial State to trying to focus on their utility function for money. So it may not be if Steve hadn't come back. They therefore think what they meant. So what ends up happening is that so many trade publications nominally have a single cause.

The existence of people we need to.

Different sections of the world as a definition of property without affecting and probably also the fashion leaders. Later stage investors won't invest.

We could have used another algorithm and everything I write out loud at least for those interested in each type of mail, I advised avoiding Javascript. One of the corpora.

After reading a draft of this essay, I have a standard piece of casuistry for this situation: that startups usually lose money at first had two parts: the source of food. Exercise for the talk to an adult. Throw in the King James Bible is Pride goeth before destruction, and many of the flock, or want tenure, avoid casual conversations with other people's.

If not, and B doesn't, that's not relevant to an investor derives mostly from the example of a type of thing. None at all. Which OS? You can build things for programmers, the work of selection.

So far, I suspect five hundred would be worth trying to capture the service revenue as well, but this sort of Gresham's Law of conversations. But an associate is not pagerank commercialized. A small, fast browser that was really only useful for one user.

It might also be good employees either. There is nothing more unconvincing, for example, would not be surprised if VCs' tendency to push founders to try to be staying at a particular valuation, that all metaphysics between Aristotle and 1783 had been Boylston Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard Business School at the mercy of investors want to stay in a limited way, without becoming a police state. But in most competitive sports, the computer hardware and software companies constrained in a place to exchange views. No Logo, Naomi Klein says that a company that could be mistaken, and—and probably also a second factor: startup founders are in a series.

Together these were the case of the growth in wealth, and there didn't seem to have too few customers even if the president faced unscripted questions by giving a press conference. This probably undervalues the company than you expect.

Dropbox wasn't rejected by all the best startups, the higher the walls become.

Thanks to Brad Templeton, Trevor Blackwell, Fred Wilson, the friends I promised anonymity to, Robert Morris, and Jessica Livingston for smelling so good.

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therealestatesparkblog · 5 years

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How I'm Living Rent-Free in the Most Expensive City in America (Using House Hacking!)

As co-host of the BiggerPockets podcast, I have the privilege of speaking with successful investors on a weekly basis. Brandon Turner and I dive deep into their stories and noticeable patterns tend to emerge. Among many of those who have seen success, theres a common denominator: they got their start house hacking. What is House Hacking? House hacking can be done in many ways, but at its core, its the concept of buying a property to live in while using part of it to generate income. Depending on where you live, there are different opportunities, strategies, or techniques to execute this concept. What wont change, however, is the impact it can have on your financial life and the doors it can open. Namely, its a way to ease yourself into the world of real estate investing. A House Hacking Success Story In addition to hosting the podcast and investing, Im a real estate agent. Id like to share one of my clients success stories. One day Ryan Meinzer heard Brandon and me talking about house hacking on the podcast. He decided to do what many others do not: take action. After calling to let me know about his plan, Ryan and I went to dinner. We broke down his goals, his strategy, and his understanding of what he was trying to accomplish, which was to buy a property in uber expensive San Francisco without having to pay through the teeth for it. That conversation became the first step on a journey that would ultimately lead to Ryan finding a massive deal, adding big value to it, and living for somewhere between cheap to free in the most expensive city in the country. Think this is all hype? Not for Ryan, it wasnt! His determination, intelligence, and can-do attitude led to him hitting a home run on his first try. To make it even better, Ryan has agreed to open up his playbook and share a lot of what he did to make this possible. The following is Ryans account of his story, his thought process, and his ultimate success finding a property that paid for him to live in the city he loves. It was a move that simultaneously opened the door for more deals, more wealth, and more real estate! So, if youve ever been thinking about house hacking yourself, learn from and be encouraged by Ryans journey!

Living Rent-Free in the Most Expensive City in AmericaAn Investor Tell-All by Ryan Meinzer My story isnt unique. All thats unique is that I finally put my mind and money where my mouth was. Its what enabled me to live rent-free where I left my heart: San Francisco. Ill first share the house hacking process by which I accomplished financial freedom through real estate. Then, Ill provide an overview of how I found the rare deal I knew my agent David Greene and I could win in one of the most competitive real estate markets in the world. After dumping money into thin air (rent) for 15 years, I decided that enough was enough.I set the goal of living rent-free through real estate. How? By house hacking, which to me meant making the sacrifice to live with others at age 35, in order to have them pay my mortgage. I had heardDavid on theBiggerPocketspodcast talk about this concept time after time. Theres no complicated financial algorithms involved in the process. The idea is to find a place you can afford to buy where the rent you can charge your roommate(s) will exceed your mortgage. In San Francisco, this is not too difficult. Rents are the highest in the nation, and demand is through the roof. House hacking inherently requires sacrifice. It could be sharing a bathroom, wall, and/or kitchen with a roommate. In my case, it was all three. I began by utilizing some of the principles of BRRRR, retrofitting an open living room into a private bedroom. These are definitely first world problems, but sacrificing a bit of privacy required a big mind shift for me, as I had been so used to living in studios (and living with OCD) for the past 10 years. I got over it within a few months by letting go of full control, which turned out to be quite liberating. Who would have thought sharing a toilet with someone would be a blessing in disguise? Many investors have rigid perspectives about real estate. They believe a property is either an investment property (rental) or a luxury expense (primary residence). House hacking allowed me to take a luxury and make it a sound investment, combining both worlds and growing my net worth considerably in the process. If you look at the return on investment (ROI) on my down payment and consider how much money Im saving a month on my previous living expensesnot to mention factor in principle reduction and tax savingsit becomes crystal clear this move not only allowed me to live where I want, it was also an amazing investment of capital. Time was my most valuable asset in finding the deal. I gave myself a full year to research the market and prepare my finances accordingly.From living in the city for five yearsand renting out five apartments on Airbnb, I knew every pocket of San Francisco fairly well, along with its respective rent yields. What I didnt know was how competitive the market to buy was and how exactly to win deals. Unsurprisingly, I vastly overestimated the number of house-hackable properties there were available. I also quickly realized that only millionaires orDINKs (double income, no kids) were winning deals on such properties. They did so by offering upward of 20 percent higher than the propertys asking price. As a single guy who wasnt a millionaire, how could I be competitive in that market? I needed more than money. Finding a deal for me meant finding a very rare type of property in San Francisco, one categorized as tenancy in common (TIC). In short, a TIC property is owned through a legal partnership by individuals. Those individuals then have a separate agreement to designate which areas/units of an entire building are owned and occupied by whom. As TICs are unconventional, they require non-conventional financing (as opposed to conventional mortgage loans)offered by merely a few banks with extremely strict underwriting requirements, including exceptionally high down payments and credit scores. This makes TICs drastically harder to finance/buy and thus reduces the sellers price by as much as 20 percent below the market compared to a standard condominium. Voil! If I could finance a TIC at asking price, I could afford it. Plus, the majority of the competition would be weeded out, unable to bid.

Now all I had to do was save, build my credit, and find a TIC. So, over the course of a year, I saved by reducing my spending as much as possible andbuilt my credit by all the standard means. Although it took David and I nearly six months to find my TIC, it proved to be the easiest part. We were laser-focused on finding a niche property with non-conventional financing that was outside of nearly everyones scope. Its easy to question this complex process and worry about what could go wrong. Its no coincidence that I waited a year and did a ton of research before feeling comfortable. As he mentioned previously, prior to moving forward, I met withDavid to go over my strategy, look at potential hiccups, iron out some smaller details, and make sure I understood the contracts and due diligence involved in the sale. I think this is an important step in covering all your bases. But now that Ive done it, I encourage everyone to house hack if they can. I also recommend they find someone familiar with the process who can look over their plan and address any issues they might have missed. In real estate, its what you dont know that can hurt you. So, having a professional set of eyes look over your deal is a great way to reduce your risk. Its also free if youre the buyer! Currently, I live happily ever after in my favorite city in the world by having roommates pay my mortgage. I won the rare property deal I found through research, time, and fiscal responsibility. Im currently in the process ofconverting my TIC into a condo, a move that will cause it to appreciate by up to 20 percent overnight. Its a value add that will take this deal from great to super greatbut thats a blog post for another day. What I Love About Ryans Journey Its me again, David, with my final thoughts on Ryans journey. Ryan didnt just hear about a cool strategy and sit on it. He immediately reached out and started taking steps to act on it. When problems came up during escrow (which they always will), Ryan didnt let it deter him or make excuses to quit. Instead he systematically broke down each hurdle into smaller obstacles, and we put our heads together to determine the best way to overcome them. Ryan looked forways to make the deal he found happen, as opposed to looking elsewhere for one so easy he wouldnt have to think. If youve ever wanted to own a home but didnt want to acquire the mortgage that comes along with it, I encourage you to consider this strategy! Real estate investing is all about building wealth through investment properties, and there are many creative ways to do just that. Thirty years from now, Ryan will own a multi-million dollar asset that has been paid off by his tenants and generates strong, healthy cash flow every month. By taking advantage of his resources today, hes securing himself a better tomorrow.

Could you be doing the same? If you dont think a house hack is for you, which other method of investing would you be willing to try? Let me know in a comment below. https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/house-hacking-case-study

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stellar-stag · 7 years

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The Problem With Tech

Disclaimer: The opinions reflected in this essay are my own and do not represent LinkedIn, Inc. For any questions regarding LinkedIn, please direct inquiries to [email protected].

(don't wanna be sued or fired, so...)

Juicero is the hot new joke right now. A startup offering a $400 juicer (or juice bag squeezer, I suppose) that has an internet connection and QR scanner to keep you from drinking anything that's spoiled or recalled, with the distinct side effect of being legally unable to obtain your juice if the scanner breaks, your internet or Juicero's server goes down, someone hacks the juicer, etc etc. When a company has to issue a statement asking people to not manually squeeze their product despite it being both easy and the purpose of the product, something has gone horribly awry.

And we laugh and we mock, but underneath it all I feel that this is an issue that's perfectly representative of some of THE crucial issues in West Coast Tech right now (I would say Silicon Valley, but Seattle and Los Angeles companies are equally guilty). Some of you must be wondering how this could have possibly gotten through four rounds of investing, extensive design and user testing, and release before these issues came up.

It's not that they didn't know. It's that they didn't care.

There's a lot of factors that led us to this point, but I'm going to narrow it down to what I think are the four biggest: An idolization of "intelligence" as a supreme moral good, a conflation of success with intelligence, a lack of personal responsibility for consequence, and a widespread sense of complacency.

To start off: I am a software developer working for LinkedIn, and I currently live with three other software developers: two of them work for Google, one works for Facebook. Our broader local social circle consists almost exclusively of developers, mostly Google but also Uber, Infer, Palantir, and the like. And while I can't claim this is a universal attitude amongst tech, at least amongst this group, everything is an optimization problem. Playing board games, especially euro games, is an excruciating process where they can take upwards of twenty minutes to take a single turn, taking the time to analyze decision trees and modeling other players strategies and decisions. But they also seem to be completely ignorant of board games as a social function. My roommate who optimizes most is, as a direct result, very good at board games. But when players act against him to prevent him from winning because he always wins if we don't stage intervention, he protests. When someone makes a move he's deemed suboptimal, and it ends up being a benefit to them over what he thought was optimal because he didn’t anticipate it, he still couches it in language of "the wrong choice" or "what they should have done".

Because this group values optimization, efficiency, and intellect above all else. Obviously, this has a lot of issues, as "intelligence" as a quality has a long and storied history of being used to denigrate others and justify oppression, despite it being, just as anything is, a collection of unrelated skills that people can have varying amounts of practice at, and in practice far less important than dedication and willingness to practice and learn. Intelligence, as the public regards it, seems to mean "skill at mathematics, logic, memory, and reading comprehension, as well as rate of skill acquisition in these areas". But when you treat it as a general marker of value, we start getting problems.

This ties into the next point: Tech regards success as a marker of intellect, and therefore a moral good. When Elon Musk joined Trump's advisory board, there were arguments about whether or not it was good or bad, if it was lending legitimacy to Trump and cozying up versus an attempt at harm minimization. Regardless, people protested and boycotted, and I saw a former classmate respond that we "mustn't shame the smartest people in the country". And that really stuck with me. Putting aside the Tesla, which is admittedly a massive advancement towards renewable energy vehicles, and the advisory board debate, Musk has made some intensely strange causes as his goals, such as brain uploading and other transhumanist causes, which some might argue shows a disregard for accessibility or practicality, while simultaneously disincentivizing those who work in the Tesla manufacturing plants from unionizing by attempting to placate them with frozen yogurt. He also claimed that the unions were an unjust tyrant over a powerless oppressed company by likening it to the tale of David and Goliath. Panem et circenses, indeed.

In short, there is much about Musk to criticize. To claim he should receive immunity from this criticism by virtue of intellect is concerning to say the least, but it's an idea that's present in the tech community at large, from the rationalists at LessWrong.org to the Effective Altruism movement, and on down to the people who, in complete seriousness, advocate for Silicon Valley to lead the world, with Elon Musk as CEO of the United States. The form differs, but the underlying idea remains the same: the best thing one can be is smart, and since we are successful, we are the smartest and therefore the best.

However, despite feeling responsible enough for the well-being of the world to oh-so-magnanimously offer to take the reins and save the common masses from themselves, tech has a consistent problem with personal accountability. Facebook was, and remains, a prime means of spreading misinformation. But it took massive outcry for them to cop to their complicity in this matter or to take action. And this manifests in so, so many ways. One of my roommates refuses to act as though the rising costs of living in the Bay Area are detrimental, claiming that the influx of tech into SF is harmless because "cities are made to house people" and "tech has buses to get employees to work, so that lower income workers are driven further away from work isn't a problem" (ignoring the historical and cultural issues at play in gentrification, a rising sense of entitlement, and the fact that most tech companies only offer such luxurious benefits to their salaried and full time employees, not the contractors or part time workers, a.k.a. the workers who make the least, have the most trouble securing consistent transportation to work, and are most necessary to the upkeep of the offices and the benefits they provide while receiving the least respect and compensation. But hey, at least the buses have WiFi so you can work while you commute!)

And that's not the worst example. An acquaintance, who has thankfully moved very, very far away, once attended our weekly board game nights. He was a software engineer for Facebook. For those unaware, ad revenue is the prime, and essentially only, stream of revenue for Facebook. As part of compensation, workers receive ad credits, to be used for ads on Facebook. And this acquaintance once had an idea. He convinced his fellows to pool their credits together, and with it, he purchased an advertisement with the following stipulation: This ad would be served to all women in the Bay Area within the age range of roughly 23-30 or so. The content of the ad was simply his picture and the phrase "Date <acquaintance's name>" (at least, as he related it to me. I thankfully never witnessed the ad directly).

Now, given the fact that tech is incredibly male dominated and hostile to women, one would think this ad is at best tone-deaf and at worst horrifying. And yet, he related this to me in candor, treating this all as a joke that had gone awry. When I raised the possibility that this was literally harassment, regardless of any potential joking intent, I was met with blank stares and an insistence that it was hilarious and not serious (of which I remain unconvinced). Granted, one of the women targeted by the ad was his ex-girlfriend, who lodged a complaint, and the acquaintance was subsequently fired for his conduct after a massive scandal about the potential issues regarding the invasiveness of targeted advertising and how it contributes to a culture of exclusion.

Just kidding! There was a single local story about it where he was kept anonymous and he got a slap on the wrist and a book deal about his experiences dating in Silicon Valley as a software engineer. The book can be purchased on Amazon and while I haven't read it, nothing about the title, description, or author bio implies to me that he is even remotely repentant, beyond a vague sense that his missteps are due to being *socially awkward, but in an endearing way* as opposed to, you know, actively curating and supporting a toxic environment for women.

And it might seem as though these examples are simply bad eggs, but they really aren't. They're just symptoms of an industry that looks at a lack of diversity and, rather than seriously examine why women don't stay in industry and how the culture they so take pride in is complicit, decide that obviously it's just that being programmers didn't occur to women, so we've just got to make programming seem fun and feminine, right? Just lean in, women! Just grit your teeth, prepare yourself for an unending nightmare of disrespect and abuse, and lean in! And that's not even remotely approaching the severe underrepresentation of black and Latinx people in tech.

But I digress.

Where does this aversion to responsibility come from? There are so many possibilities. But the one most unique to West Coast Tech is the corporate culture, or perhaps, the lack thereof. It's a land of man-buns, flip flops, and company t-shirts. My roommate owns a combination bottle opener and USB drive, proudly emblazoned with Facebook’s logo. The brogrammer is alive and thriving. And to be completely fair, this culture is actually something I quite like about working in tech (The casual part, not the acting like a college freshman part). That I may be frank in my discussions with my co-workers, swear profusely and use emojis in email, and casually discuss my mental health with the man three steps above me in the corporate hierarchy (and two below the top) is quite refreshing. But it has drawbacks.

I attended a college that required a minor in the humanities, and had as its mission statement to educate people in STEM who would understand the impact of their work on society. But so many people just viewed those requirements as an obstacle, or just took economics and got the takeaway of how to best impact markets. And most colleges don't even pay lip service to such a goal. So I worry that "casual" is code for "unwilling to examine potential harm caused by one's actions". That the culture is why harassment can be seen as "just a joke". Why anyone who feels unwelcome is just "too uptight". Why people can be reasonably othered and rejected in interviews because of "a lack of culture fit". And without a willingness to accept responsibility for the consequences of actions, nothing will change.

This ties into the final point: the complacency. Everyone in tech wants to be seen as changing the world. But I'm also privy to the conversations we have in private, and you know what we care about more? Compensation. Its pretty rare that someone I know will come home from work and express that hey, their company is working on something that will legitimately help so many people. More often, we have discussions about who has the better offices, or the best snacks, or the best free meals. I like to think I'm a kind person, but is that really true? I may profess to be aware, but I still own no fewer than ten garments with LinkedIn's logo on them. I still take full benefit of all of the compensation, including free breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and great insurance, and a free gym. I still just used my ludicrous paycheck to purchase a condo instead of anything magnanimous or truly worthwhile. And my fellows are much the same.

The irony that I wrote this entire essay, on company time, on a company device, because today is the Friday per month we get to devote to professional development and is discounted in work estimates because we are expected to do something other than our normal duties (read: not come to work) is not lost on me.

I touched earlier on the Effective Altruism movement, which is comprised primarily of tech and tech-adjacent workers. I remain somewhat critical of the movement, for a number of reasons. Firstly, there is a focus on its own impact while simultaneously continuing the trend of disavowing consequences. One of the most notorious discussions in Effective Altruist groups is the avoidance of a theoretical AI that could eliminate humanity. This conversation seems to be staying in the wheelhouse of safety of testing of AIs that don’t seem to be anywhere close to a reality, rather than more concrete examples of how tech reinforces power imbalances, like, say, advertising algorithms that reinforce racist stereotypes. The second criticism I have is that for many of the metrics used by EA to measure the effectiveness of charities are purely monetary: how much of what goes in goes back out. This ignores other factors, such as raising awareness, operational costs at various sizes and scales, and a question of how directly does money even translate into benefit? The good done per dollar is not considered, merely dollar preservation from donor to donee. Furthermore, that the natural extension of Effective Altruism is that, in order to be a good person, the best thing one can do is obtain a high paying job (such as one in tech) and donate money, rather than donate time by volunteering, strikes me as convenient justification rather than honest analysis.

This excellent article (which by and large inspired this one) touches on many of these issues, but I would like to highlight one statement in particular: “Solving these problems is hard, and made harder by the fact that the real fixes for longevity don’t have the glamour of digitally enabled immortality.” As Emily Dreyfuss points out, Silicon Valley has very little interest in actually bringing about progress. Silicon Valley is trying to sell you on the idea of progress. They want to peddle you a “The Jetsons”-style future, but instead of the post-scarcity society that has mastered space travel, they want you to buy Rosie the Robot Maid. Helpful? Sure. Revolutionary? Hardly.

It's perhaps unrealistic to expect tech to actually do the hard, thankless work to improve the world, but it's certainly not unfair to expect them to at least be honest. LinkedIn is more benign than most tech companies: it is, for all intents and purposes, a resume book masquerading as a social network. The adage goes that "if you're not the customer, you're the product" and that rings true in tech. In exchange for use of the site, people surrender their information to the company to be sold as potential customers to advertisers. At least with LinkedIn, that's the expectation and goal. People give LinkedIn their resume and employment information and LinkedIn, in turn, lets recruiters look for leads. But the users more or less expect and want this, because they joined for the express purpose of finding job opportunities. But that this is benign doesn't mean it is revolutionary or radical. It remains only useful to white collar employees. Blue collar workers have no use for LinkedIn, and we can hardly claim to be changing the world of employment when the people who need us most can't benefit from the services we offer.

Could I go and find a company that does nobler work, or enter academia to advance at least the collective knowledge of humanity in some way? Sure. Will I? No. I am selfish, and don't want to give up my cushy job, and cushy benefits. And I'm not the only one.

The most interesting thing to me about the Juicero debacle is how with even the slightest forethought, they could have actually done something impressive. Consider the As-Sold-On-TV devices you see sold: I mean, who really needs a one-handed spaghetti twirler, right? Well, people with motor control issues or disabilities, is who. People who struggle with tasks most consider trivial. But people don't care about that, they care about what can be marketed, so we instead act as though the world is simply excessively clumsy and hope that someone who really needs that extra help sees it.

So, consider the Juicero bag. Reporters have noted, laughingly, jokingly, that the bag is exceedingly easy to squeeze and thus remove juice from. It's so simple, it requires hardly any effort! Someone went through the process of designing a bag, meant to be able to dispense its contents far more easily than other bags, as well as a device to automate the squeezing. Now I don't have motor control issues or disabilities, but I'm willing to bet: someone who does? Or who can't easily get, say, orange juice cartons from the fridge, open the top, lift the heavy, irregular object at just such an angle in just such a location for just such a time, all to get themselves a cup of juice? Yeah, I bet someone, somewhere, saw this and thought, finally, I can actually get myself milk without needing help or preparation.

And Juicero made this device, slapped an internet connection, QR Codes and a $400 price tag onto it, and marketed it as being the future of juice, vulnerabilities and use cases be damned. And I want to scream.

Because in the end, they cared more about being successful than being helpful.

Unfortunately, identifying the issues is one problem, addressing them is another. I'm not sure how to even begin tackling these. But we have to. People in tech, myself included, need to take responsibility for our culture and creations. We have a moral duty to do better. To be better. The internet is, at its core, a wonderful tool for accessibility of information. But like all tools, it can and is misused, and we're the ones who let it happen. We need to fix this.

#ramblings of a gay man #long post #tech #silicon valley

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unixcommerce · 6 years

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5 Secrets of Image-Rich Websites

When was the last time you visited a website with no images?

As web designers, we love adding images to our designs because images are memorable and give us a direct channel of communication to the audience’s brain. Also, images are universal and processed by our brains faster than text. That’s partly why the “story” medium (short-form videos with effects and overlays) and emojis attract engagement.

But something else has also been happening since “web 2.0” came along. The high usage of images all over the web, some fueled by user-generated content, is creating a problem for web designers who now must deliver rich experiences in the face of an ever-increasing number of images.

In the following sections, we’ll discuss in detail five things to keep in mind when designing smart, image-rich websites in the modern era.

1. Enhance Performance

Whenever someone thinks about images on the web, their content, resolution, and style immediately come to mind. But the most important factor for delivering superior UX of images is actually performance, which is even more important than the image itself. That’s because most visitors to your site won’t bother to wait for your images to load.

a slow-loading ecommerce website that clocks $1,000 in revenue per day loses $250,000 in sales every year

In short, image-rich websites can’t afford to be slow. For every second of increase in load time, there’s a 7-percent reduction in conversions. That means that a slow-loading ecommerce website that clocks $1,000 in revenue per day loses $250,000 in sales every year.

Big companies like Ryanair and Marks & Spencer had massive website redesigns that failed abominably because of critical performance issues. So be sure to keep in mind that a user-centered website is, first and foremost, performance based. You can enhance performance in many ways, here’s a good place to start.

Use optimized and responsive images. Show the users the image only when and exactly how they need it. Below are three essential tips.

Tip 1: Use Sprite Sheets

One of the oldest tricks for speeding up load times on the web. Loading multiple images takes time and resources. However, loading a single image and displaying its components is much faster because doing so reduces the number of server requests and optimizes bandwidth.

With Cascading Image Style Sheet (CSS) sprites, the browser loads just one image, say, a row of social-media icons, displaying only portions of it in the relevant places.

A good recent example of such a technique is The Guardian’s World Cup 2018 infographic. At the outset, the page ran into a problem with the large amount of images to show: 32 competing teams, each with over 20 players. As a solution, the website leverages CSS sprites to show the players for each of the teams. See the page below that displays all 23 players of the Spanish team, the page source being only one single image, which loads superfast.

Tip 2: Lazy-Load Images

Another critical issue, especially in the case of a multitude of images, is lazy loading. The principle is simple: Load an image only when it is visible in the viewport of the browser instead of having the visitor wait by loading the entire collection of images.

For a classic example, scroll down the Unsplash home page.

Tip 3: Load a Site Skeleton First

Images never show up in advance, which is why you must account for perceived performance.

Loading a basic skeleton version of a website before its images creates a better experience for visitors. They are then aware of what to expect and, in some cases, can even start to interact with the site (before images load).

Consider the loading sequence of Klook:

Here, for each image, the browser first loads a light version of the site (with a white backdrop) and then the actual background image. Such an approach might seem fast or trivial to some, but keep in mind that performance varies across connections and devices.

(If you are working with React or Vue, you can use this cool tool to create skeleton components.)

2. Treat Images as Part of the Design

This rule might seem obvious but is frequently overlooked. Images are an integral part of the design and, as such, must be taken into account. Because designs serve a goal, the related images and composition of the page must support that goal.

Design Images to Complement

Remember to identify and prioritize the goals of the page. Whether your objective is to solicit newsletter signups or offer a catalog for browsing, your images must complement the intended purpose.

As an example, Essential Phone’s landing page displays a single, eye-catching image of the product. The yellow Buy Now button prominently stands out, steering the visitor’s attention to the intended action. Because the image shows the product itself, it’s never cut off, nor does it serve as a background to the text.

Have Images Take the Back Seat

Even though image-focused designs often deliver better results, be sure to follow the basic usability principles because those designs do not guarantee success. For example, you might overlook the visual hierarchy by assigning equal weightage to both the primary and secondary elements.

MetaLab is a design agency that specializes in designing interfaces. When first displayed, its single-fold landing page shows only a solid-color background with minimal text, mainly the names of its clientele. However, as soon as you mouse over a company name, the background subtly changes, displaying a contextual image. That means no more suffering through context switching each time. Such a home-page design ably conveys the message that MetaLab’s clientele is impressively extensive.

3. Let Text and Images Be Friends

Displaying both text and images on the same page can be a tricky business. The challenge is to find that perfect balance of text and imagery for your website.

Place Text on a Soft Background Overlay

Placing text on a soft background overlay is one of the simplest techniques for presenting contrasting images and text. Indiegogo’s landing page is a vintage example, on which the title and description are displayed atop a soft, dark overlay on an image of each of the products offered on the site. The text is easy to read with no sacrifice in visual appeal.

Blend Text and Images

Airbnb adopts a fantastic visual blend of text and images for their home-listing page.

The images for the home categories contain the wording inside the images themselves, enabling the designer to play with hiding the text between overlay objects in the photographs. (See “Family”) Such an approach works seamlessly, demonstrating that text and image need not be separate entities.

(A side note on accessibility: Keep in mind that using text in images also means no keywords for search engines except for those specified in the images’ alt tags, causing problems in accessibility unless you use the aria-label tags. Your final choice depends on the design context and your page’s objective.)

Combine Text and Images as a Single Interactive Unit

The landing page of the 2018 film Sorry to Bother You shows the image of each member of the cast only on a mouseover of the member’s name, simultaneously lazy-loading the image. Although the text is composed of live text (list element), it uses a styled font and color along with the images’ drop shadow to make the presentation look like one piece of art (or movie). The line between image and text is blurry.

Showing the right image at the right time embodies a playful and engaging user experience.

4. Apply the Right Layout

As we’re aware, user experience largely hinges on the layout of the website. For media-rich websites, the common layout choice is usually the grid. That’s because the grid’s pattern immaculately shows a list of images, also each one of them side by side.

The sections below describe the three main grid types with an example for each of them.

Apply a Classic Grid

A classic grid is one that contains square image-thumbs in equal sizes. It brings forth a sense of balance and harmony and is suitable for pages in which images are not the lead items for scanning. A list of cards is an option for a classic grid. Think of common use cases like YouTube and Dribbble.

Apply a Brutalist Grid

Below is an example of a portfolio site that does not adhere to the all-too-familiar grid layout while still focusing on content. Marcus Eriksson is a sought-after photographer whose clientele includes top brands like Nike and ESPN. His website features an unconventional grid layout that draws the viewer’s attention to the content without sacrificing usability. The site also lazy-loads pretty nicely.

Use this pattern if you want your visitors to focus on several individual images. The chaotic layout is very engaging and has an element of surprise. Beware, however, that some images might “get lost on the way” from all the racket.

Apply a Masonry Grid

The Art Palette experiment from Google Art & Culture breaks down popular artwork into their fundamental color palettes. Inversely, it can also display artforms based on a color palette of your choice.

For our purpose, the Art Palette site is inspiring. It’s a good example of a masonry grid, showing different sizes of images while keeping them “in order.” That’s an optimal way of displaying numerous images while keeping their original aspect ratio.

(You can build your own masonry grid with this plugin.)

A side note on performance: Remember the skeleton technique mentioned earlier? The Art Palette site takes it up a notch by initially loading a lazily-loaded, dominant color block and then progressively loading low quality image placeholders (LQIP). A highly recommended move!

5. Add Motion for a Purpose

The element of motion adds to a website’s visual flair. However, just like with text, when tackling a large quantity of images, ensure that both motion and images work together.

Some best practices of motion design principles are noted in Google’s Material Design. Below are some examples of how to employ animation to support UX in websites.

Announce Layout Changes

In many cases, layout changes are unsettling for visitors, as if the ground was shifting as everything on the page changes location. Animation can help soften the changes for your visitors.

Consider this example, which displays images in a classic grid. On a mouseover of an image, a subtle motion gently nudges the visitor’s attention to that element. In other words, the animation deftly steers the visitor from the grid layout to a single-image one. Simple, yet brilliantly effective.

Load With Ease

Another interesting example is Uber’s design website. Because the main user action is simply scrolling down the page, which triggers image loading, the website enriches the browsing experience with smooth transitions and subtle animations, concurrently presenting the related information in a clear, easily-accessible manner.

Switch Images

Fubiz softens switches between images in an image gallery with animation techniques, displaying a peek inside each and every image on the post.

Incorporate Animation to Tell a Story

A final example: Avocode’s 2017 design report, in which each page has a story to share along with illustrations created by some of the world’s top design talent. The report acts as a comic strip, with each illustration built and animated to reinforce the key findings of the report.

Don’t Forget the Advantages of Video

Here is a good rule of thumb: If you can post videos instead of images, do it. See this example of a Nike product gallery, in which one of the items, disguised as an image, is, in fact, a video. An image is shown until the video is loaded so the shopper’s experience is not abstracted.

Conclusion

Having to tackle the display of a massive amount of images or visual media doesn’t mean that you should ignore design principles. Designing a trendy website without taking into account user experience invariably fails. Planning images as part of your website’s goal, enforcing performance, and incorporating animation can make all the difference between a spectacular experience and a boring one.

[Special thanks to Sourav Kundu and Mickey Aharony for helping with this article.]

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webbygraphic001 · 6 years

Text

5 Secrets of Image-Rich Websites

When was the last time you visited a website with no images?

In the following sections, we’ll discuss in detail five things to keep in mind when designing smart, image-rich websites in the modern era.

1. Enhance Performance

a slow-loading ecommerce website that clocks $1,000 in revenue per day loses $250,000 in sales every year

Use optimized and responsive images. Show the users the image only when and exactly how they need it. Below are three essential tips.

Tip 1: Use Sprite Sheets

With Cascading Image Style Sheet (CSS) sprites, the browser loads just one image, say, a row of social-media icons, displaying only portions of it in the relevant places.

Tip 2: Lazy-Load Images

For a classic example, scroll down the Unsplash home page.

Tip 3: Load a Site Skeleton First

Images never show up in advance, which is why you must account for perceived performance.

Consider the loading sequence of Klook:

(If you are working with React or Vue, you can use this cool tool to create skeleton components.)

2. Treat Images as Part of the Design

Design Images to Complement

Remember to identify and prioritize the goals of the page. Whether your objective is to solicit newsletter signups or offer a catalog for browsing, your images must complement the intended purpose.

Have Images Take the Back Seat

3. Let Text and Images Be Friends

Displaying both text and images on the same page can be a tricky business. The challenge is to find that perfect balance of text and imagery for your website.

Place Text on a Soft Background Overlay

Blend Text and Images

Airbnb adopts a fantastic visual blend of text and images for their home-listing page.

Combine Text and Images as a Single Interactive Unit

Showing the right image at the right time embodies a playful and engaging user experience.

4. Apply the Right Layout

The sections below describe the three main grid types with an example for each of them.

Apply a Classic Grid

Apply a Brutalist Grid

Apply a Masonry Grid

(You can build your own masonry grid with this plugin.)

5. Add Motion for a Purpose

The element of motion adds to a website’s visual flair. However, just like with text, when tackling a large quantity of images, ensure that both motion and images work together.

Some best practices of motion design principles are noted in Google’s Material Design. Below are some examples of how to employ animation to support UX in websites.

Announce Layout Changes

In many cases, layout changes are unsettling for visitors, as if the ground was shifting as everything on the page changes location. Animation can help soften the changes for your visitors.

Load With Ease

Switch Images

Fubiz softens switches between images in an image gallery with animation techniques, displaying a peek inside each and every image on the post.

Incorporate Animation to Tell a Story

Don’t Forget the Advantages of Video

Conclusion

[Special thanks to Sourav Kundu and Mickey Aharony for helping with this article.]

Add Realistic Chalk and Sketch Lettering Effects with Sketch’it – only $5!

Source from Webdesigner Depot https://ift.tt/2QKrEzE from Blogger https://ift.tt/2EpDLkm

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therealestatesparkblog · 5 years

Text

How I'm Living Rent-Free in the Most Expensive City in America (Using House Hacking!)

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