For aesthetic or other preferences you change the default font to whatever you please. The default font shouldn't be about aesthetics, it should be first and foremost about usability. Especially on printed media since there it cannot be changed in a whim.
A couple of years ago I went into archives of Dutch newspapers to learn whether and how the famine of hunger in Ukraine (known as Holodomor) was reported back in 1930's. Fuck me, it was hard to read those excerpts. But it is what it is. OCR could've converted the font. The problem is, is the OCR accurate? Like, is my search with keywords having a good SnR, or am I missing out on evidence?
Personally, Times New Roman was likely the reason I did not like Mozilla Thunderbird. I have to look into that.
> The default font shouldn't be about aesthetics, it should be first and foremost about usability.
The thing about usability is that it's both objective and subjective, and one can argue that aesthetics is part of usability. For example, I find writing code much more pleasant with Comic Code font, and I can imagine that there are other people that would hate it.
Sure but I think we could agree it looking nice ranks lower than being structurally more difficult to read for people? If there were a freely preinstalled option that was both sure but given the choice between functional and aesthetic readability wins hands down.
Off topic but did you find anything interesting? I spent a few days researching Holodomor and was surprised how poorly understood it still is even today, and badly reported at the time. Good propaganda case study. There’s a dramatic film about the reporting too, Mr. Jones (2019).
I haven't researched it explicitly, but I do come across "what happens in the wider world" notices in small historical newspapers and sometimes I search to see what it was about. Saw a mention about some general winning an important victory, searched his name, found out he was one of the whites, and the first thing claimed about him was that he only came in "once the war was already lost".
What I found was that yes, it was reported about, but very little. The notable person who did research the event, Gareth Jones, is indeed an interesting story (he was also referenced to by the newspapers). I believe it was underreported, but we could've known. Helped, now that is a different question I don't dare to answer. The Soviets used disgusting tactics in Eastern Europe, see the book Bloodlands.
Printed document isn't what I was on about. There the default should 100% be about accessibility (and then we just want that by default cause we're used to it).
PDF -> Nope.
.doc(x) -> Sure.
Website, OS, apps (including terminal) -> Sure.
Now regarding PDF I might've tried a long time ago when reading some old document (like CIA about MKULTRA). I don't remember if I succeeded. But there are PDF editors out there. I do think it likely screws layout (esp. larger documents), but that can be true for .doc(x) as well.
I think it would be a smaller issue if it only applied to digital media. Presumably though this applies to all media.
And I can certainly confirm that changing the font of PDF will almost always result in a unreadable mess. Something about how a PDF doesn't have text "blocks" and instead fixes each character making text reflow almost impossible.
The Dutch dev of Calibri commented on the history [1].
He makes a couple of good points, nuances. The main one I liked is related to your premise: it was that the Times New Roman font was optimized for printing newspapers whereas his successor was meant for computer screens.
Ultimately, IMO this is just bullying people with bad eyesight and dyslexia (and said bullying I can only regard as hatred towards minorities which reminds me of a different era). My father had MS and due to that bad eyesight. He had special glasses with a special lens to read. Of course any font change has a learning curve, but to me this just hits home as I've seen him struggle to read.
He passed away ten years ago, the glasses were custom-made in 70's or so. He'd close one eye and use the other (better suited for this). He'd have tremors, including in the eyes. Reading made him very tired, eventually a friend would read complex beta literature before him. To me (as kid) the glasses felt like a huge looking glass.
A friend of my parents also made a custom card deck, with huge symbols and letters. That way, we could work around his disability. We always had to work around his disability, and it regressed but slow variant and he was also too old to get the medicine which effectively stopped the MS from getting worse. However, it meant other people who had the quick version or were younger got more QoL.
I don't think he ever used Calibri. I mean, at that time, he wasn't into computers anymore. He had all kind of health isssues due to MS. It pains me to think people like him now have more difficulty to read letters because of BS decisions like these just cause NIH or whatever the silly reason must be. But there's also good news: if it is digital, they can override the font and such.
Sounds like he had lots of good people around him helping him.
The technical aspects you mention are important. I have diplopia, and also close one eye. It gets worse in the evenings. I love paper books and own many, but all my reading now is on a Kindle, with a huge font. It makes it so much easier.
> the wine glass scenario is a _realistic_ scenario
It is unrealistic because if you go to a restaurant, you don't get served a glass like that. It is frowned upon (alcohol is a drug, after all) and impractical (wine stains are annoying) to fill a glass of wine as such.
A pelican riding a bike, on the other hand, is realistic in a scenario because of TV for children. Example from 1950's animation/comic involving a pelican [1].
A better reason why wine glasses are not filled like that is that wine glasses are designed to capture the aroma of the wine.
Since people look at a glass of wine and judge how much "value" they got based partly on how much wine it looks like, many bars and restaurants choose bad wine-glasses (for the purpose of enjoying wine) that are smalle and thus can be fulled more.
The spiritual successor of Starcraft is Stormgate. I cannot comment on it, I have no idea how good it is. AFAIK it is multiplayer only. I played Dune II, Warcraft II, C&C, Red Alert, Starcraft (didn't like, I never understood the hype), Dark Reign, Total Annihilation, Warcraft III as kid, but... only single player (at various difficulties). That is just how games were generally played in the 90s. I do remember using a null modem cable at some point, but IIRC was only to play Doom and Duke3d.
I believe the RTS genre at a whole got superseded by the MOBA genre (with DotA and LoL). A genre I tried once (HotS) and was terrible at. If you're shit and you're not improving (I didn't enjoy it either, I felt forced to do it for a reward in another game), stop trying. I never tried any other MOBA, except maybe a touchscreen one, Warcraft Rumble? Either way, I got burned by Hearthstone Mercs and fell once more in the trap with Rumble. After Blizzard announced removed of addons from combat, I've finally said goodbye to the Warcraft franchise and Blizzard in general.
There's one game I really do like which has a kind of RTS with map feeling to it: Total War: Warhammer series (though I laud their BS with DLCs and multiple game versions). I suppose the whole Total War series is as good, I just like the Warhammer universe. The other day, Settlers II was discussed on here, including a FOSS clone. Settlers II is also a game I liked (III not so much though artwork was nice, never played the orig.). Supposedly it isn't RTS, tho I am pretty sure back then it was called RTS.
I agree, I think MOBAs superceded the "real time" part of RTS's, while the more turn based Civ/4x, Total War series strategy type games ended up taking a lot of the base building part. Having them both together was just straight up difficult and incredibly intense, like the game itself demanded you be on adderall because your attention cannot wane for a single moment.
The better I got at competitive RTS's the less interesting the game got for me, it just kinda of felt like chess where there was only going to be one or two interesting interactions in the game if played well, otherwise its just a game of who makes a mistake too early.
Teamfight Tactics and Autochess are interesting newer entries though, allowing time to strategize and adding a lot of randomness to the games, where you can't just play one build. Even then though, as these games get more and more explored, "optimal" strategy gets eventually discovered and the game devs especially in TFT are in a race to try to keep things high variance but also seem fair - its definitely a difficult job!
> The better I got at competitive RTS's the less interesting the game got for me, it just kinda of felt like chess where there was only going to be one or two interesting interactions in the game if played well, otherwise its just a game of who makes a mistake too early.
I feel the exact same way. The ELO system saves you from getting steamrolled if you’re a casual player but improving just means the game becomes formulaic to the point of no longer being fun. Stronghold 2 was kind of interesting in that it was an unranked lobby with good variation in player ability and team-oriented maps. Most players knew the basic economic and combat metas, but you’d often end up in situations where one of your teammates dropped out on a 3 vs 3 and you’d still win.
It had its time, but its just not accessible to people - shooters which require as much attention, mechanical skill and perseverance but at least matches are relatively quick and there's a team element. Starcraft can be just grind grind grind all of your openers and don't stop, don't sleep, don't eat, just queue
> The spiritual successor of Starcraft is Stormgate
This was their claim, but it did not pan out in reality. It flopped on launch, hard. Peak player count since launch has been less than 100, and is currently hovering around 25.
It was really proof that gameplay often takes a back seat to visual identity, ESPECIALLY if the gameplay is extremely derivative, which this was. They had a massive amount of goodwill from fans of the genre, but when they started sharing screenshots it deflated fast - its not a 2025 game, its a 2010 clone of a popular 2005 game. Its nigh impossible to make a spiritual successor to genre defining games in WC3 and SC2 - too many things need to go perfect.
It had a better chance if it could find its own voice, but it ended up feeling like a direct to home video sequel to a popular movie
Huh the gameplay was ass?
The units weren't interesting, the strategies derivative, the flow bad, the balance off, not even half finished campaign and 0 goodwill from kickstarters after rugpulling content that was promised and charging them for it
The sign for me was when the art style was announced. The last thing in the world I want from a modern RTS is Fortnite-style animation targeted towards tweens.
Get distracted? I mean, are you American? Have you ever looked around you in traffic? Look at all these billboards and bullshit and tell me about distraction. If you are on a mission you do not open your social media. People do so due to boredom, I guess. The sensible thing to do is... stop using social media.
Aside from that, let us assume you won't stop with that (after all, it is free!). Smartphones have a driving mode which you can set, setting them on DnD. I take my smartphone out of my pocket when I wait before a traffic light, and that works, but I only do so when I need to and what I certainly do not need to do at that point is have a look at Facebook or Twitter. I also don't have Bluetooth on 24/7 on my smartphone (one reason being tracking concerns). On a Pebble watch, I can put this off. Sadly a software killswitch, but better than nothing.
Had to look up what OpenSea is. NFT. So from one hype (and arguably scam) involving GPUs to the neXt one.
reply