Take it from an academic like me that peer review in just over a month is rare and a sign of low-quality editorial work at the journal (the exceptions would be the most open, progressive journals like PCI and similar).
The formatting/style and peer review history alone are enough for me to doubt this. Of course, the other users' points about study design and lack of transparency make it even harder to trust the claims.
They're blue because computer scientist Ben Schneiderman made them blue using research from 1985:
" In 1985, a group of students at the University of Maryland, mentored by computer science professor Ben Shneiderman , conducted a series of experiments to study the impact of different hyperlink colors on user experience. They were eager to determine which color would be the most effective in terms of visibility and readability.
The experiments revealed interesting findings. While red highlighting made the links more noticeable, it negatively affected users' ability to read and comprehend the surrounding text. On the other hand, blue emerged as the clear winner. It was dark enough to be visible against a white background and light enough to stand out on a black background. Most importantly, it did not interfere with users' retention of the text's context."
Mozille should really do better research before posting histories like this. It's easy to overlook the impact of academic research in tech.
The Mozilla article does reference the Hyperties system Ben Schneiderman worked on, linking to https://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/hyperties/ with the following comment:
" This may be an ancestor of our blue hyperlink we know and love today, but I do not believe that this is the first instance of the blue hyperlink since this color is cyan, and not dark blue."
She clarified that in her subsequent article. It was the result of Ben Shneiderman's and his students' controlled empirical studies, not whimsy or arbitrary "creative" design (which we suffer from so much these days).
That is definitely the case in western culture, but in places like China, red is a positive color. Always interesting to learn what are universal signifiers (like up for more) and what are culture-specific signifiers!
> Blue has best contrast on both white and black backgrounds, and stands out from black.
Why would it matter if it has good contrast on two different backgrounds? If you're changing the color of the background, you can also change the color of the link.
There's a rant that can follow this about usability peaking in the late 90s/early 2000s. Back when companies care about usability research over aesthetics. Buttons looked like buttons yadda yadda.
Back in the days where you didn't have to concentrate to grab a window slider, because it was wider than 3 pixels. When the slider itself had more than 1% contrast with the slider bar, and you could easily see how far down the page you were...
But also in the days where some lunatic claimed black-on-gray had more visibility than black-on-white, and every webpage suddenly became, well, like HN.
I have, in fact, fallen for thinking a page didn't have much in the way of content because the scroll bar was hidden. I did not scroll down because there was no indication that you could scroll. So I did not even try. Why would I?
They were blue when I got there and while we discussed how blue was chosen that is the extent of my recollections of the time - that it was discussed but not the rarionale. They were inspired/informed by the range of colors available in CGA, ANSI and early VGA color palettes. You can’t use a color that doesn’t exist on low end hardware.
It would have made sense for Lynx to settle on blue for ergonomic reasons. ANSI blue is a particular shade thats approximated in hyperlink colors.
This is oddly remeniscent of the Rhine Experiments conducted in 1937, where decks of cards with symbols inscribed were presented to a series of subjects to test extra-sensory perception. What Joseph Banks Rhine found as an abstract was that a statistical deviancy exists for programmatic ideation.
What did the internet look like in 1985? I was under the impression that it'd all be terminal based since the world wide web didn't exist. I'm not sure how a hyperlink would function in such an interface.
It definitely did -- they weren't in color though.
I'm not sure if HyperCard ever had full color support? There was some support for color images in a later version of HyperCard, but did color text ever make it before it was shut down completely?
> It definitely did -- they weren't in color though.
They were invisible. In HyperCard you could make any region of the screen clickable, and run a script when it was clicked. Not unlike the image maps that websites used to use. You would normally include something visual in the clickable region, but you didn't have to.
I believe the mouse cursor would change if you put it inside a clickable region.
Sarah McLachlann released a CD album with unemphasized hotlinks that didn't even change the cursor shape. I quickly went from adoration to pure hatred of her, clicking on every spot on the page to see if it revealed anything more.
Yes, HyperCard was eventually used over the internet, and it was the first way I know of that enabled people (kids even) to create and publish graphical web pages with a wysiwyg editor, including interactive forms and graphical buttons and links.
DonHopkins on Feb 9, 2020 | parent | context | favorite | on: HyperCard: What Could Have Been (2002)
Check out this mind-blowing thing called "LiveCard" that somebody made by combining HyperCard with MacHTTP/WebStar (a Mac web server by Chuck Shotton that supported integration with other apps via Apple Events)! It was like implementing interactive graphical CGI scripts with HyperCard, without even programming (but also allowing you to script them in HyperTalk, and publish live HyperCard databases and graphics)!
Normal HyperCard stacks would even work without modification. It was far ahead of its time, and inspired me to integrate WebStar with ScriptX to generate static and dynamic HTML web sites and services!
>In fact, one of the earliest tools that enabled anyone, even children, to author and publish their own interactive dynamic web applications with graphics, text, and even forms and persistent databases, was actually based on HyperCard and the MacHTTP/WebStar web server on the Mac:
>One of the coolest early applications of server side scripting was integrating HyperCard with MacHTTP/WebStar, such that you could publish live interactive HyperCard stacks on the web! Since it was based on good old HyperCard, it was one of the first scriptable web authoring tools that normal people and even children could actually use!
MacHTTP / WebStar from StarNine by Chuck Shotton, and LiveCard HyperCard stack publisher:
>Cal discusses the Macintosh as an Internet platform, then describes how you can use the AppleScript language for writing CGI applications that run on Macintosh servers.
The coolest thing somebody did with WebStar was to integrate it with HyperCard so you could actually publish live INTERACTIVE HyperCard stacks on the web, that you could see as images you could click on to follow links, and followed by html form elements corresponding to the text fields, radio buttons, checkboxes, drop down menus, scrolling lists, etc in the HyperCard stack that you could use in the browser to interactive with live HyperCard pages!
That was the earliest easiest way that non-programmers and even kids could both not just create graphical web pages, but publish live interactive apps on the web!
What was it actually ever used for? Saving kid's lives, for one thing:
>Livecard has exceeded all expectations and allows me to serve a stack 8 years in the making and previously confined to individual hospitals running Apples. A whole Childrens Hospital and University Department of Child Health should now swing in behind me and this product will become core curriculum for our medical course. Your product will save lives starting early 1997. Well done.
- Director, Emergency Medicine, Mater Childrens Hospital
----
Also (a historical note about web browsers with editors, not about HyperCard):
NetScape Gold had a built-in WYSIWYG HTML editor window. But it was a unique selling point -- earlier and other versions of browsers didn't support that. Now browsers have official APIs to support WYSIWYG HTML editing via the "contenteditable" attribute, execCommand function, and Selection class, but you have to implement the menus and toolbars of the user interface yourself, and there are a lot of libraries for that.
>Netscape also released a Gold version of Navigator 3.0 that incorporated WYSIWYG editing with drag and drop between web editor and email components.[49]
I solved my RSI with rest, a vertical mouse, and ZSA Moonlanders. I eventually bought one for home use and one for work use with great performance for the past four years. I can’t imagine going back, especially after replacing the key switches to quieter variants.
The split keyboard opens up the middle of my desk to fit an adjustable stand (Parblo and ElevationLab work well). So I can write and draw by hand if I want.
Sorry, but other academic researchers who have analyzed Langer’s work have found many problems invalidating her claims. These studies have not been independently reproduced and are ludicrous: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/10/19/carroll-la...
"...this widely-cited and influential work was never published in a peer-reviewed journal. The findings were instead reported in Langer’s 2009 book ‘Counterclockwise’. Despite the intriguing results, this study was never peer-reviewed or replicated. In 2019, a protocol for a replication was published, but at the time of writing the results are still pending."
Indeed, she appears to have a history of doing experiments that never get published in peer-reviewed places, but citing them in her books.
I would like to point out for context that the author, Jordan Lasker, is a eugenist derided for shoddy science, falsely using university affiliations, and racist commentary.
I do not write this to contradict particular claims in the article above, but @cremieux should be read cautiously.
He should also be derided for terrible writing. It's not until the 24th paragraph (of 30 total) that we encounter something resembling a thesis.
> With all the pieces on the board, the key to Romania’s Olympiad success is three-fold: put the best students in the same classrooms, put the best teachers with the best students, and then incentivize schools, teachers, and students each to win Olympiads.
This could have been much shorter, but then the reader might notice the abject lack of supporting evidence for these central claims. I don't blame the author for burying them at the end.
I have no idea about author's background or about his other writings, but the conclusion quoted by you seems absolutely correct.
I do not understand why you say that it lacks supporting evidence.
Before this conclusion, the author has explained the system of national exams and of distribution into high schools and inside high schools, that ensures that the best students are grouped together and also that the best teachers are assigned to them.
There is no doubt that even if the average level of education is bad, this system guarantees that the best become very good and much better than students with similar native qualities who have stayed in high school in the middle of less capable colleagues, while being not taught things deemed too difficult for the general population. Moreover, the author has mentioned that the state provides rewards for good results at the International Olympiads, both for teachers and for students.
I do not see what more evidence could be brought. In my opinion the conclusion of the author is well supported and it explains why these students compete successfully against students from much bigger countries.
So talking about eugenics in a positive way equals racist commentary?
I have a genetic mutation (de novo) that leads to a disability and that I don't want to pass on. Natural approach: Die, due to the lack of therapeutic modalities. No chance of offspring. With the help of medicine, I am alive. Now, to prevent passing on mutated genes but still have children, I could use something like IVF and reproductive genetics. This is textbook eugenics(?)
Obviously I disapprove of the stereotypical eugenics of the century. Ranging from Germans murdering disabled children to Danes forcing Greenland women on birth control.
This definitely adds a grain of salt, but as far as I can tell, none of that shows in the article, especially in the final paragraphs explaining how the elitist system is overall bad for the country. But it does make me wonder about possible hidden flaws in the methodology (I'm still confused at some of the earlier statistics contradicting the claims made later)
> Yet another possibility is that Romania has an undersampled ethnic group that overperforms, but whose schools aren’t tested very well. The only group this might be is Romanian Jews and using them as an explanation is problematic for two reasons. The first is that there are too few to realistically explain Romanian Olympiad performance. The second is that we know the identities of Olympiad participants from Romania, and they don’t seem to be Jewish.
This struck me as…odd…before I even saw the parent comment.
This one is not odd and was worth mentioning before rejecting. Just look at American IMO team of 2024, in which most team members have Asian ancestry - some ethnic groups may indeed perform better than others. Picking Jews for this matter wasn’t unreasonable if you know the history of Eastern Europe.
The general vibe of this magazine: support mainstreaming of eugenics ideas (and now eigenicists), the ubermensch / great man theory of history, and other ideas that we’ve largely shied away from for the last 75 years.
Sure, but knowing the intention and bias of the author is sometimes more important than other times. For example, it doesn’t really matter what the bias is of the person giving you the weather report; the weather either is or isn’t accurate, based on the data.
The author of an article about how an education system is or should be structured, however, very much matters.
Yes, a numerate population as assessed by national averages matters. A more numerate population reasons better about economic policies and may vote more wisely. Numeracy is closely tied to the ability to work in a variety of occupations. If we consider probability and statistics, the implications are especially salient.
>A more numerate population reasons better about economic policies and may vote more wisely.
People with good STEM education, even with PhDs in that field aren’t necessarily competent voters and good decision makers outside of area of their interests. Understanding economic policies is still an effort that many aren’t willing to take.
This seems to me more like a reasonable hypothesis than a foregone conclusion.
Personally I suspect there's a floor (can read a chart, understands growth rates and compounding in general) which the public need to assess arguments constructed by specialists, while the rest is mostly understanding ideology.
The reason I believe that is, I think I can pretty much predict 100% of the conclusion of most articles written for the public by knowing the names & affiliations of the authors and the topic. The only uncertainty is what sources and statistics they will pick to reach the conclusion required by their ideology.
A numerate and literate population matters for many reasons, but in theory it’s possible to field a strong team for the Olympiad despite an abysmal national average literacy level. Just look at North Korea for example. They’ve got a “fat right tail” of sophisticated hackers but on average their literacy is terrible.
This is a great start to an evidence database. The next step should be adding evidence and contextual details explaining why each claim is true, perhaps in a table.
I recently used this archive for a course paper and it only took 1-2 days of training and paperwork to get approved.
I don't strictly need this archive anymore, but I recall when the federal layoffs were first being announced that staff were down about it.
As a first-time archives user, this is a major loss to the research community. I met people who flew in from around the country for various projects, working on their graduate degrees and consulting here.
When I used the facilities, I saw signs in multiple areas about people who were caught stealing records and warnings that the consequences are significant (federal crime). But this action is senseless. Their security is very tight with scanning before entering, restrictions on materials and bags that can be brought upstairs, and people monitoring to ensure that special procedures are followed. These places are understaffed and underappreciated. Funding should increase for these national treasures.
The formatting/style and peer review history alone are enough for me to doubt this. Of course, the other users' points about study design and lack of transparency make it even harder to trust the claims.