joshuarrrr

Mistakes happen: https://apnews.com/article/ncaa-portland-3point-line-d78742b...

I guarantee it’s a human typographic error, where the superscript was lost when converting the text from the print layout.

(Source: I used to work at the magazine and am painfully aware of previous such mistakes.)

Yeah, it seems like it. You can see how the budget ballooned here: http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/the-life-cycles-of-failed-pr... (select the 5th project)

One of the authors here- we have another graphic coming about Queensland Health. The craziest part was when IBM estimated it at $6 million.

What's worse is that they didn't try to even hold those requirements on paper.

Hi, I'm one of the authors of the piece. As my co-author would say, the industry is fueled by failed projects. But because outright failure is common, huge overruns can be seen as a success when they actually manage to deliver anything of use.

A Spectrum editor here- yes, we know the layout is far from ideal, especially on large monitors (I'm painfully aware-my primary monitor is a 30-inch cinema display). We just had a meeting about page templates for infographics last week, so hopefully it will me much better in a couple months.

Yes, and the idea of comparing Africa to other countries is certainly not new. Here's an example from 2006: http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/35-the-size-of-africa

At the time, the Economist also redid the exercise starting with an equal-area projection: http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/cartograph...

Presumably you could also use lossy compression across users, especially for the boring parts. I imagine that, within the confines of my bowl, my milk and cheerios look pretty similar to yours. Do the actual differences matter, as a record of some particular breakfast experience? I suppose only if they float into some surprising configuration.

The IEEE's datacenter in New Jersey has been without power for days and eventually ran out of generator fuel. There were some intermittent DNS issues after Spectrum moved to backup servers in Arizona. I've been told they're resolved now.

That's right-it will be fully implemented in an upcoming redesign, but we've already shifted our production and design process to a non-paginated model. Usually when our articles were posted on Slashdot, Reddit, or here, readers used the single-page URL anyway. So the number of pageviews past page two was almost negligible.

Agree completely with font size and column-width critiques, both of which are addressed in an upcoming redesign. And, for that matter, I've always had issue with Slate's UX and design choices.

>The fact is that editors simply don't believe there is special expertise here.

I agree that UX and design are often neglected when traditional publishers work in digital mediums. But I find it odd that you can appreciate the experience that leads to good UX and design but not the editorial and reporting experience that leads to good copy.

I'll ignore your general disdain for writers and editors, and point out that not all readers want the same thing. I've pushed for non-paginated articles at my publication, but I admit that I'm not always happy with the result, and we do hear reader complaints about not being able to orient themselves in an article like this: http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/astrophysics/the-cosmolog...

(hopefully a wider content-well after an upcoming redesign will help)

I'm curious to hear what people think of a hybrid pagination system, like that currently used by Computing Now magazine. I like that it gives the user a sense of the article length without interrupting the flow of reading. http://www.computer.org/portal/web/computingnow/careers/cont...

>there are copycats that don't do the testing, don't optimize for their niche of readers, and are probably losing both money and readers because of it.

I think this is much more common than sophisticated A/B testing.

At our publication, we were able to make the business case that the added pageviews from pagination didn't make much of an impact on the bottom-line. Because we generally run out of premium ad inventory each month anyway, most of the extra impressions were just for extremely low-revenue, Google-served remnant ads. Again, some publications thrive on volume, but it's a tough way to make money as CTR on Google ads is very low.

>If it didn't improve their revenues, they wouldn't be doing it.

The publishing industry has not always been about maximizing profits. The weird hybrid of advertising and reader-supported has created a different mentality in the business. There are plenty of things that publishers still do- like supporting foreign correspondents- that are driven more by the editorial side of than the business side.

I think the term's a bit too old to be considered hip and trendy.

Did you have any specific criticisms about the way cypherpunks were represented in the article itself, or is this just a superficial complaint about the headline? As an editor at IEEE Spectrum I would say that it wasn't intended as a pejorative.

My boss works in a different city, and we're on the phone all the time. The simplicity of this is priceless. I especially appreciate that the viewing side requires no setup. That makes it much preferable to WebEx or Skype when I'm dealing with less tech-savvy folks.

It's because it's their mobile website. The text on the normal version of the story seems to zoom fine: http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsberg-li...

I think you have to consider that not all submissions are equal. Some stories are likely to shoot to the top of the front page regardless of their competition. For those, you would want the post to peak when there are the most readers, which requires posting during competitive slots. But for more run-of-the-mill submissions, posting during a time of less competition is probably a bonus.

That's because it's totally optional, and anyone who doesn't like it can stick with the default. I'd wager that if they switched the main site tomorrow, there would be some negative feedback.

A couple more:

Miter limit will behave differently, as it will revert to bevel instead of cutting off the joint. (65 occurrences)

Adjusting the font kerning within dynamic text is not supported. (7 occurrences)

Fair enough, that's his call to make. Meanwhile, I'll keep using InstaFetch for its value added to my Android phone.

Agreed, in fact offline reading (+Kindle syncing) is why I sought out the app in the first place.