John Gruber on design:

If people are confused with a design, the problem is with the design, not with the users…. [Smart designers] come up with a design that [isn’t] confusing by encapsulating rather than merely hiding complexity. It’s the difference between actually cleaning up a mess versus just sweeping the mess under a rug.

A good “simple” design will help users to understand what is actually going on, how a thing actually works. A bad “simple” design will leave users just as confused as ever with even less chance of figuring it out, because what they need to see to understand it is hidden.

The full title of the Daring Fireball post was “On Hiding vs. Encapsulating Complexity, in the Context of Twitter’s Experimental Reply Interface,” but Gruber’s insight seems worth holding up on it’s own without the somewhat distracting example provided by Twitter.

Thanks to Ben & Jerry’s and New Belgium Brewing for teaching us that collaboration is overrated.

To be fair the first few sips are kind of interesting, but then it goes off the rails and good for you if you can finish a whole bottle. Which makes it a perfect beer for that holiday party you’d rather not go to, but are being dragged along because season’s reasons.

John Gruber:

Facebook can stay above the political fray, or they can filter out false news. They can’t do both.

Andrew Gelman is ready to move past special sauce forecasting models:

Our current election forecasts and poll aggregators fall in one of two camps: either transparent and simple (for example, the moving averages of RealClearPolitics) or complicated with proprietary “special sauce” (for example, whatever Nate Silver is currently doing)…. There’s lots of concern about media bias from all directions, and open source is the best way to address skepticism about particular assessments.

I think Gelman discounts the value of brands that the audience places in media outlets, particularly when bound-up with something so fraught as high-stakes election forecasting.

However, we’d be much better off if journalists discounted private forecasting models the same way they discounted the private polls released by campaigns.

I’m a bit puzzled why Dems are so anxious when Clinton’s chances are >85%. That’s very high.

– Drew Linzer

[The Mac] will not morph into a touch device any more than a teen’s parent will become cool by putting on skinny jeans.

– Horace Dediu

A new Instagram worth following.

Rick Hasen has given me a new nightmare:

If there are significant problems with people being able to vote on Election Day, this could lead to court lawsuits to keep polls open late, or even to extend voting to a different day, potentially throwing the results of not just the presidential election but numerous elections into question.

Further, a wide internet outage on any day could create a situation for uncertainty and the spread of misinformation. This is especially dangerous on an election day where between the Trump’s campaign charges of rigging and Russian and other interference with our process.

Thanks, Rick!

It used to be that we were embarrassed because he was tacky. Now he’s shown himself to be despicable on every level.

– Erin Kelly, a resident of 140 Riverside Boulevard (AKA the soon to be former Trump Place)