

Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is? (1999) - aaronbrethorst
http://white.bikeshed.com/

======
babarock
Modern communication is broken. We think we're just getting tools to be
reachable by people of interest. Instead we're just giving the world a way of
spamming us. Constantly.

Phones are the worst. Excluding the few times I'm actually expecting a call,
every time my phone rings it inevitably interrupts something I am doing. It's
almost never urgent. I am basically spending hundreds (if not thousands by
now) of dollars to get a mobile device to allow the world to interrupt me at
any time. And there's very little I can do about it.

* I often ignore it on purpose, set it to "silent" mode or simply refuse answering (an act now commonly seen as _rude_ by most). 9 times out of 10 I get the notoriously useless voicemail: "Hey it's me, call me back when you can".

* Last year I was victim of what can only be described as a phone spam technique from my ISP. In the course of 10 days, I received over 25 calls (most of which I intentionally refused to answer) from commercial representative trying to sell me an "upgrade" to my subscription. They were calling from a private number. Short of completely changing ISPs (particularly difficult to do in my area) or going through legal channels, there was nothing I can do to protect myself from the spam attack. The phone system didn't let me, by design.

* In my home country, SMS spamming is beyond insane. I mean 5 to 10 daily promotional SMS. That's me paying money to get something in my pocket that vibrates to give me advertisements, 5 to 10 times a day.

Email, and online communication, are a _little bit_ better in that aspect. You
usually have an inbox that you can check at your convenience. Unfortunately,
even these inboxes get flooded with volumes of info you don't necessarily want
in there. There's a very particular kind of spam, the one that doesn't (and
shouldn't) be removed by commercial filters, that pollute our stream of info.
The flooded mailing-lists mentioned in PHK's email is an example. The photo
album of my dad's second cousin's niece is another one.

On top of all this, modern trend is to add "instant notifications" to your
phone, so that even email (or Facebook/Twitter/your-favorite-website messages)
will interrupt you several times a day.

And looking forward (a bit), it does seem that phones and emails are going to
be outdated at some point. The current trend is to have these "Feeds". I
distinctly remember closing my Facebook account, the day they switched the
landing page from my wall to my "Feed". All of a sudden, Facebook was not a
tool I use anymore, it's a data stream I consume.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that unsolicited interruptions irritate me.
They irritate everyone when done physically. To me a phone ring is equivalent
to someone poking me on the shoulder when I'm in the middle of something.

I had never read the Bikeshed email, although I was familiar with the story. I
always heard it in the context of project management "we didn't deliver on
time because we lost our time _bikeshedding_ ". It's actually about spamming
and unsolicited communication. Don't pollute my stream of info.

And get off my lawn.

~~~
rayiner
It's actually becoming quite common for people in their 20-30's to dislike the
phone.

I personally love getting phone calls. Luckily the crackdown on spam calling
seems to have worked in the U.S., so it's always family or friends. It's a
great pick-me-up ("someone was thinking of me!"). Several of my friends don't
find it charming, however...

~~~
dylangs1030
I'm in my 20s and I hate talking on the phone.

However, I have what some people call an "old generation" feel for it. It's
not that I would rather text than talk on the phone, it's that I would rather
not interact unless it's in person.

I text only one person frequently - my significant other, throughout the day.
Sometimes family and friends text me, but otherwise, I don't reach out that
way much.

I do use the phone for any communication that is more sensitive, lengthier,
more important or more personal than texting, however, and I prefer it to
texting. It's just that, where possible, it doesn't match up to seeing a
person's face too.

EDIT: I probably seem really introverted...ironically, I'm not! I'm a life-of-
the-party jokester kind of personality in social contexts. But isn't it
annoying when you're texting and someone misreads the tone? Or when you're
making faces or elaborate hand gestures on the phone and the other person
can't see it?

~~~
sliverstorm
Of course phone conversation is inferior to talking on the phone, but I
wouldn't say I hate talking on the phone. I already know that when I'm talking
on the phone, it is either a) to arrange meeting face to face or b) because
face to face is not an option.

------
phamilton
For those who like subtle jokes explained, the URL accepts any color as the
subdomain. Everyone can have this particular bikeshed in any color they want.

~~~
vacri
It accepts any word and also nothing. Just tried 'mongol', 'restive',
'philharmonic' and '27b-stroke-6'.

Presumably the Mongols liked bureaucracy, since the colours were the same for
those two...

------
tessica
Great piece! A bit OT, but the black text on grey bg was VERY hard to read.

~~~
mcpherrinm
You can change the background color by changing the url.

[http://pink.bikeshed.com/](http://pink.bikeshed.com/)

------
gonzo
Brett Glass is the patron saint of bikeshedding.

------
ndesaulniers
phk is awesome, he also wrote the beerware license [1]. lassez-faire

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beerware](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beerware)

------
aaronbrethorst
would a mod mind changing the URL to
[http://white.bikeshed.com/](http://white.bikeshed.com/) ? It's the same
content but much easier to read (sorry about that...)

~~~
panic
We should go with [http://black.bikeshed.com](http://black.bikeshed.com)
instead. The black background will save power on devices with OLED displays.

~~~
thezilch
[http://grey.bikeshed.com/](http://grey.bikeshed.com/) is a good middle ground
and definitely better than the linked.

~~~
jfb
You're nuts. OBVIOUSLY
[http://orange.bikeshed.com](http://orange.bikeshed.com) is the correct URL
for reading this on HN.

~~~
libria
[http://ff6600.bikeshed.com/](http://ff6600.bikeshed.com/) to be precise.

I'm impressed with how much effort he put into his dynamic subdomain parser.

More obscure colors work as well:

[http://fuschia.bikeshed.com/](http://fuschia.bikeshed.com/)
[http://limegreen.bikeshed.com/](http://limegreen.bikeshed.com/)

~~~
thezilch
He does NO parsing; the subdomain is literally applied to the _< body
bgcolor="{{ subdomain }}">_.
[http://libria.bikeshed.com/](http://libria.bikeshed.com/)
[http://thezilch.bikeshed.com/](http://thezilch.bikeshed.com/)

~~~
jwegan
If you look at the page source he actually does parse the color to determine
if the text should be white or black.

~~~
thezilch
To be pedantic, he does NO parsing _of the subdomain_; he "parses" the
computed-style color designated by the browser's parser.

~~~
therealfitz
I wrote that javascript, and I like my bikeshed painted pedantic
([http://pedantic.bikeshed.com/](http://pedantic.bikeshed.com/))

Happy everyone is enjoying it!

~~~
thezilch
It's too bad the original post and no comment links to
[http://bikeshed.bikeshed.com/](http://bikeshed.bikeshed.com/). The best kind
of right.

NOTE: RELATED: _/ bikeshed_ in Google Hangout takes on a similar role.

