10 ms·

As I type this comment, most other comments are pointing out how a 6th grader got this wrong, by failing to suggest the "correct" solution of abandoning printin

As I type this comment, most other comments are pointing out how a 6th grader got this wrong, by failing to suggest the "correct" solution of abandoning printing. I don't... how do I put this nicely. This is a kid. He is smart. He looked at the problem from a new angle. He came up with a nice hack. Presumably we want more kids with more of a hacking spirit. I hope he doesn't read Hacker News.

mjolk 13y ago
Exactly. It's easier to get someone to modify his/her existing behavior than it is to get someone to stop a habit altogether. Additionally, do you know what doesn't require electricity to display text? Print on paper.
- imikushin 13y ago
  e-ink?
  - mjolk 13y ago
    That's enables long battery life, but it still requires electricity. Computers are great, but doesn't mean that they are the solution to every problem.
    - zanny 13y ago
      And you need electricity for every page printed. Considering the rotors of a printing press, it is likely more than it takes to broadcast the page over the net to a device, and then view it for a few minutes.
      - smsm42 13y ago
        The problem is not volume, the problem is delivery. It is easy to deliver a lot of electricity to specific point (printing press) at specific time (when document is printed). It is much harder to ensure electricity will always be there and available when you need to consume that information. Also, given how fast the printing press prints and how many times a printed document can be read and for how long it can be stored, I'm not sure it actually is more electricity to print. Then there's another problem. Try fetching electronic document from 50 years ago. What? You don't have tape reading machine? You are not even sure which format it is in? Oops. Now try looking at a printed document from 500 years ago. Provided it does not physically degrade, can be read pretty easily. You can see Gutenberg's bible in the Library of Congress and you don't need anything to perceive information there. How much of today's electronic info would it be possible to read in 550 years?
        zanny 13y ago
        > How much of today's electronic info would it be possible to read in 550 years? If the encoding standards are non-proprietary and you either kept data stored in a linear binary format compatible with modern persistent file encoding, or just translated the works over time, then all of them. All ODF / PDF files should be readable in 500 years. You can back them up for minimal cost in facilities around the world, and since the specifications to render them are completely open standards, you can (at worst) write software to interpret them again if necessary. When dead tree rots, it rots. You had to (painstakingly) transcribe dead tree papers over and over to insure they don't degrade. We already have ROM archive tape standards meant to last millenia in the absence of environmental decay of their containments.
        smsm42 13y ago
        They should be, but that assumes docs about what PDF format is survive, and they'd know how to read media on which PDF is stored (which is much more scarcely documented - do you know how your HD encodes data on physical level?) and have compatible hardware or know how to build one. That's a lot of hops and failure on any of them may render the whole chain unworkable. And, of course, magnetic media can degrade and be physically destroyed as well as dead tree media. There are standards for long-term storage, but most of the info is not stored that way. We find most routine documents from thousand years ago written on paper, cloth, leather, bark, papyrus, etc. but today's routine information would never survive even a century, only specially preserved data - a tiny minority of it - would.
- dpierce9 13y ago
  ^This. In many cases, agencies cannot simply stop printing because they are legally required by congress to put stuff on paper. Agencies cannot compel congress to fix badly written legislation but they can change their default font. Where I come from, cost-savings that don't require an act of congress are called good ideas. (PS there are probably other considerations such as accessibility for the visually impaired that I don't know enough about.)
- joshlegs 13y ago
  takes electricity to get it there, though
amirmc 13y ago
Indeed. He identified an approach that seemed off the beaten path, took a systematic and consistent approach, quantified the savings and wrote it up. I'm impressed. We should be encouraging this sort of exploration and rigour in school kids. It doesn't even matter if we 'grown-ups' think there's a 'better' solution.
- simonebrunozzi 13y ago
  Yes. 100% agree.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  Somewhat. The story rests on the assumption that all government printing is done with a wasteful serif font, and that $$$ could be saved by using a slimmer one. Sure, people discuss toner vs ink, government discounts vs retail prices, and the necessity/desirability of printing things on paper in the first place. But almost everyone has accepted the assumption at face value. If, like most Americans, you prepare your tax return in the next couple of weeks - an annual ritual which involves a truly mind-boggling amount of printed paper - take a look at the fonts on IRS documents. Almost invariably, the IRS uses thin Sans Serif fonts. As do a great many other government printing departments. Now I don't expect the kid to think about this since he probably hasn't had to fill out a tax return yet, being only 14. But perhaps it's the sort of thing CNN ought to have mentioned, or asked the Government Printing Office about, if they were interested in presenting useful news. Of course, they're not, in this case; it's clickbait which relies on readers accepting all the assumptions in the article and patting themselves on the back for feeling smarter than Uncle Sam.
  - Consultant32452 13y ago
    The other side of the equation is that serif fonts are easier to read. What is the cost in time and/or productivity that a person might lose by utilizing a font that is less easy to read?
  - smsm42 13y ago
    I've submitted tax returns for last 5 years without ever printing anything at all. I don't think you need any printed paper - in theory, it can be done with zero paper at all, in practice many places send you printed forms (though I believe they have an option to choose electronic delivery, many of them do not support it) but you could do without printing anything yourself if you want to. Maybe if the tax return is really complex and most of the software can not handle it you'd have to go back to paper. But for vast number of Americans, tax returns are simple enough.
IgorPartola 13y ago
I agree. More importantly, this opens it up a new approach that can be used in lots of places. Perhaps development of fonts that require less resources when printed. While printing government forms may seem like a waste to us, there are lots and lots of places where paper is still the cheapest and best solution: name tags, business cards, flyers, posters, billboards, random one off signup forms, booklets with info (think of populations without access to the web that need to be educated about things like STD's, etc.), instruction manuals, product packaging, official documents (passports, etc.), paper money. I am all for going paperless as much as possible, but think of the back of your toothpaste container and the warnings printed there. Could there be both a savings and an environmental impact in using a better font?
- ska 13y ago
  It's hardly a new approach - people have tried this sort of thing for decades. I don't know of any significant adoption analysis, but it pops up as an idea fairly regularly. edit: There is some confusion; this was a response to parents "More importantly, this opens it up a new approach that can be used in lots of places.", not to the article. It doesn't really open anything up. I think it was a fine school project, fwiw.
  - vermontdevil 13y ago
    It may not be a new approach. But I liked how the kid experimented and tried to think of other ways to solve an issue. It's the spirit behind that counts. It can lead to other interesting hacking endeavors down the road in that young man's life.
  - IgorPartola 13y ago
    I'm sure it's not a totally original idea, but if this gets enough publicity it might push for actual innovation. As a somewhat related anecdote I was repeatedly told by my professors that in Physics everything is named after the last person to discover it, not the first.
    - tveita 13y ago
busyant 13y ago
Exactly. "If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away." - Linus Pauling
3rd3 13y ago
I think you read too much negativity into these comments. None of them said it is a bad idea.
ProAm 13y ago
You'll not abandon printing in the next 75 years. It's not a realistic solution. This kid provided a fix you can put into place in the next 12 months that will save a good chunk of change. Getting people to not print anything will take considerably more time and money to implement.
ozh 13y ago
I feel like hacking HN to upvote this twice.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
zimpenfish 13y ago
My main issue with him is that he didn't spend 5 minutes researching this on the internet because it's come up many times previously and doesn't count as a nice hack worthy of any praise. Sorry kiddo. As an example, these links are all 2010 or earlier. http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/the-right-font-can-save-you-money/ http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/the-right-font-can-save-you-mone... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125639616 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1256396... http://www.sitepoint.com/cut-costs-by-saving-ink-with-ecofont/ http://www.sitepoint.com/cut-costs-by-saving-ink-with-ecofon... etc.etc.
- amirmc 13y ago
  Are you suggesting that every high-school science project should be original, ground-breaking research?
  - zimpenfish 13y ago
    No but I'm suggesting this isn't nearly as big a deal as people are hyping and that the kid - whilst diligent - ain't a genius.
    - amirmc 13y ago
      Nowhere does it suggest that the kid is some kind of genius. Not in the original article, nor in these threads. It's clear that this was a school science project and that he was encouraged by his teachers (and his reviewers) to pursue it.
      - zimpenfish 13y ago
        Fair point - it doesn't actually mention the word "genius".
      - SilasX 13y ago
        The fact that it's considered newsworthy enough ("man bites dog" & all that) to merit a CNN story is itself the claim that this is somehow novel or interesting. It's the same objection you'd have if CNN posted a story about "kid uses physical model to predict lava distribution from volcano using baking soda and vinegar".
ripter 13y ago
The real issue is that a bunch of people have thought of this before, some even made websites and posted articles, but they didn't get on cnn.com (and the top of Hacker News) for it. So now they are hurt and upset.
- voltagex_ 13y ago
  Shouldn't these hypothetical people be happy that their idea has finally gained a bit of traction?
  - noobermin 13y ago
    The gp is implying that they are jealous of a 14 year old.
ycaspirant 13y ago
Yes, he is a kid, but I believe that the best way to show respect to a kid is to treat him like an adult. The article mentions that he was encouraged to publish in the Journal for Emerging Investigators, and it goes on to say that this journal has the same standards as academic journals. The whole point of this exercise is to treat him like a grown up in the grown up world, because that's the best way of showing respect to a kid. Therefore, it is in fact your comment that is more disrespectful to the kid than the other comments which are pointing out flaws with his proposal.
ollysb 13y ago
No one in government is going to stop printing documents any time soon. Abandoning printing might be the most efficient solution but it's also the most disruptive solution. His solution is elegant in that it would receive little in the way of friction whilst providing tangible benefits.
- tarblog 13y ago
  It's not completely trivial to change what font the government uses. There are a lot of documents that would need to be layed out differently after the change.
  - derefr 13y ago
    > There are a lot of documents that would need to be layed out differently after the change. You could take any font with both "normal" and "light" weights, and then apply the leading and pair-kerning from the normal weight to the light weight, to produce a font that reflows text the same as the normal weight, but uses the ink of the light weight. I do wonder whether the results would cause typographers to gag, though.
  - baddox 13y ago
    I actually think it would be a lot easier to eliminate printing on a document by document basis than changing the font and dealing with all potential issues arising from that.
- tudorw 13y ago
  I agree, on a global scale this could have real impact, especially if the headline grabbing aspect can encourage people to look at other ways to save ink and paper usage in general. I understand that there is a financial impact in laying out new forms, the future savings on ink costs could go towards a usability and accessibility audit and use the findings to inform the new layout designs :)
  - chrissnell 13y ago
    > there is a financial impact in laying out new forms This is a huge cost. Consider the U.S. Army, one part of the much larger Department of Defense. The Army has literally thousands of pre-prepared forms [1] and manuals. It's likely that these forms get printed hundreds of thousands of times per day. You could indeed save a lot of ink by switching to Garamond but that means that each form needs to be re-done. Some are simple MS Word forms where it might be easy. Others are PDFs and most are XFL (awful Lotus Forms), all of which will take a major effort to convert. Multiply that time and effort across an entire government's worth of forms and the effort required is mind-boggling. It would take many years for this to pay off. [1] http://www.apd.army.mil/ProductMap.asp http://www.apd.army.mil/ProductMap.asp
mistermumble 13y ago
Yes, great work for a school project. But realistically, not a good idea. Garamond uses less ink because it is skinnier and less readable. It's a font for young eyes, or for Apple customers (long time user of Garamond).
- illuminate 13y ago
  Exactly. Great project. The media is to blame for trying to portray this kid as some sort of brilliant revolutionary, all externalities are being tossed to the side. It's not jealousy to point out that our current inefficiency is preferable to faux-fiscal conservatism.
walshemj 13y ago
Well it only applies to inkjet printers one one hopes that schools that are printing large numbers handouts use a cheaper laser printer and not a 6 color photo quality inkjet which are designed for small numbers of high quality prints.
joshlegs 13y ago
I would guess the other commenters are jealous that their problem solving skills don't get as much attention. "No, this kid was WRONG!!!" is a way to justify that they are better thinkers, and therefore relevant. In a day and age when everyone has to justify their own existence, I suppose it's not that surprising really.
- illuminate 13y ago
  "I would guess the other commenters are jealous that their problem solving skills don't get as much attention" Using slightly more literate ways to call critics "haters" is not any more constructive.
zenbowman 13y ago
Indeed, this is smart, effective and non-disruptive.
NAFV_P 13y ago
> I hope he doesn't read Hacker News. I hope he does, it's a good measure of the average hacker.
- 6cxs2hd6 13y ago
  I actually meant that as, "I hope he doesn't read this stuff about him on Hacker News". I'm sorry it was unclear. Unfortunately it's too late to edit my comment.
dinkumthinkum 13y ago
Well you're right but also the "just use digital" is flippant and ignorant. Changing fonts is simpler and cheaper on the short term than digitizing everything. It's also a more realistic goal. There us nothing with doing both. This is pretty sime stuff.
baddox 13y ago
> This is a kid. He is smart. He looked at the problem from a new angle. He came up with a nice hack. Presumably we want more kids with more of a hacking spirit. Yes, this kid is smart, and smart is good. But smarter is better. I don't understand the problem.
aaron695 13y ago
Is hacker news for adults to discuss the real world and learn or to support well meaning but wrong opinions and ideas? Unfortunately the two are not the same.
novaleaf 13y ago
The people saying he failed finding the "correct" solution are underestimating the challenge in getting people to change their behaviors so radically. of course, the same could be said for changing the font, but hey, baby steps. ps: i don't actually agree with the font switch idea. less ink means lower readability in marginal situations (at night, after photocopying 3x, etc etc)
zem 13y ago
this is why i prefer reddit comments to hn - sure, they can be rambunctious and troll-heavy, but the insightful comments are mostly free of that overlay of sneering cynicism. here's the top reddit comment on the story, pointing out that the idea is not new: http://www.reddit.com/r/geek/comments/21la0q/14_yr_old_student_figures_out_how_to_save_the_us/cge65fo http://www.reddit.com/r/geek/comments/21la0q/14_yr_old_stude... but with no trace of sneering - it congratulates the kid on a good idea, and points out that ecofont does it and better. contrast this hn comment saying exactly the same thing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7487637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7487637 but with a far more condescending tone.
winstonx 13y ago
Yes, he has an impressive mind. Which is why we shouldn't just pat him on the back and say "good boy." Rather, we need young impressive minds to solve real problems. Government spending is intentional. If he doesn't get that, he's more likely to end up building pointless boondoggles for the government rather than solving real problems.

mjolk 13y ago

Exactly. It's easier to get someone to modify his/her existing behavior than it is to get someone to stop a habit altogether. Additionally, do you know what doesn't require electricity to display text? Print on paper.

imikushin 13y ago
e-ink?
- mjolk 13y ago
  That's enables long battery life, but it still requires electricity. Computers are great, but doesn't mean that they are the solution to every problem.
  - zanny 13y ago
    And you need electricity for every page printed. Considering the rotors of a printing press, it is likely more than it takes to broadcast the page over the net to a device, and then view it for a few minutes.
    - smsm42 13y ago
      The problem is not volume, the problem is delivery. It is easy to deliver a lot of electricity to specific point (printing press) at specific time (when document is printed). It is much harder to ensure electricity will always be there and available when you need to consume that information. Also, given how fast the printing press prints and how many times a printed document can be read and for how long it can be stored, I'm not sure it actually is more electricity to print. Then there's another problem. Try fetching electronic document from 50 years ago. What? You don't have tape reading machine? You are not even sure which format it is in? Oops. Now try looking at a printed document from 500 years ago. Provided it does not physically degrade, can be read pretty easily. You can see Gutenberg's bible in the Library of Congress and you don't need anything to perceive information there. How much of today's electronic info would it be possible to read in 550 years?
      - zanny 13y ago
        > How much of today's electronic info would it be possible to read in 550 years? If the encoding standards are non-proprietary and you either kept data stored in a linear binary format compatible with modern persistent file encoding, or just translated the works over time, then all of them. All ODF / PDF files should be readable in 500 years. You can back them up for minimal cost in facilities around the world, and since the specifications to render them are completely open standards, you can (at worst) write software to interpret them again if necessary. When dead tree rots, it rots. You had to (painstakingly) transcribe dead tree papers over and over to insure they don't degrade. We already have ROM archive tape standards meant to last millenia in the absence of environmental decay of their containments.
        smsm42 13y ago
        They should be, but that assumes docs about what PDF format is survive, and they'd know how to read media on which PDF is stored (which is much more scarcely documented - do you know how your HD encodes data on physical level?) and have compatible hardware or know how to build one. That's a lot of hops and failure on any of them may render the whole chain unworkable. And, of course, magnetic media can degrade and be physically destroyed as well as dead tree media. There are standards for long-term storage, but most of the info is not stored that way. We find most routine documents from thousand years ago written on paper, cloth, leather, bark, papyrus, etc. but today's routine information would never survive even a century, only specially preserved data - a tiny minority of it - would.
dpierce9 13y ago
^This. In many cases, agencies cannot simply stop printing because they are legally required by congress to put stuff on paper. Agencies cannot compel congress to fix badly written legislation but they can change their default font. Where I come from, cost-savings that don't require an act of congress are called good ideas. (PS there are probably other considerations such as accessibility for the visually impaired that I don't know enough about.)
joshlegs 13y ago
takes electricity to get it there, though

amirmc 13y ago

Indeed. He identified an approach that seemed off the beaten path, took a systematic and consistent approach, quantified the savings and wrote it up. I'm impressed. We should be encouraging this sort of exploration and rigour in school kids. It doesn't even matter if we 'grown-ups' think there's a 'better' solution.

simonebrunozzi 13y ago
Yes. 100% agree.
anigbrowl 13y ago
Somewhat. The story rests on the assumption that all government printing is done with a wasteful serif font, and that $$$ could be saved by using a slimmer one. Sure, people discuss toner vs ink, government discounts vs retail prices, and the necessity/desirability of printing things on paper in the first place. But almost everyone has accepted the assumption at face value. If, like most Americans, you prepare your tax return in the next couple of weeks - an annual ritual which involves a truly mind-boggling amount of printed paper - take a look at the fonts on IRS documents. Almost invariably, the IRS uses thin Sans Serif fonts. As do a great many other government printing departments. Now I don't expect the kid to think about this since he probably hasn't had to fill out a tax return yet, being only 14. But perhaps it's the sort of thing CNN ought to have mentioned, or asked the Government Printing Office about, if they were interested in presenting useful news. Of course, they're not, in this case; it's clickbait which relies on readers accepting all the assumptions in the article and patting themselves on the back for feeling smarter than Uncle Sam.
- Consultant32452 13y ago
  The other side of the equation is that serif fonts are easier to read. What is the cost in time and/or productivity that a person might lose by utilizing a font that is less easy to read?
- smsm42 13y ago
  I've submitted tax returns for last 5 years without ever printing anything at all. I don't think you need any printed paper - in theory, it can be done with zero paper at all, in practice many places send you printed forms (though I believe they have an option to choose electronic delivery, many of them do not support it) but you could do without printing anything yourself if you want to. Maybe if the tax return is really complex and most of the software can not handle it you'd have to go back to paper. But for vast number of Americans, tax returns are simple enough.

IgorPartola 13y ago

I agree. More importantly, this opens it up a new approach that can be used in lots of places. Perhaps development of fonts that require less resources when printed. While printing government forms may seem like a waste to us, there are lots and lots of places where paper is still the cheapest and best solution: name tags, business cards, flyers, posters, billboards, random one off signup forms, booklets with info (think of populations without access to the web that need to be educated about things like STD's, etc.), instruction manuals, product packaging, official documents (passports, etc.), paper money. I am all for going paperless as much as possible, but think of the back of your toothpaste container and the warnings printed there. Could there be both a savings and an environmental impact in using a better font?

ska 13y ago
It's hardly a new approach - people have tried this sort of thing for decades. I don't know of any significant adoption analysis, but it pops up as an idea fairly regularly. edit: There is some confusion; this was a response to parents "More importantly, this opens it up a new approach that can be used in lots of places.", not to the article. It doesn't really open anything up. I think it was a fine school project, fwiw.
- vermontdevil 13y ago
  It may not be a new approach. But I liked how the kid experimented and tried to think of other ways to solve an issue. It's the spirit behind that counts. It can lead to other interesting hacking endeavors down the road in that young man's life.
- IgorPartola 13y ago
  I'm sure it's not a totally original idea, but if this gets enough publicity it might push for actual innovation. As a somewhat related anecdote I was repeatedly told by my professors that in Physics everything is named after the last person to discover it, not the first.
  - tveita 13y ago

busyant 13y ago

Exactly. "If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away." - Linus Pauling

3rd3 13y ago

I think you read too much negativity into these comments. None of them said it is a bad idea.

ProAm 13y ago

You'll not abandon printing in the next 75 years. It's not a realistic solution. This kid provided a fix you can put into place in the next 12 months that will save a good chunk of change. Getting people to not print anything will take considerably more time and money to implement.

ozh 13y ago

I feel like hacking HN to upvote this twice.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

zimpenfish 13y ago

My main issue with him is that he didn't spend 5 minutes researching this on the internet because it's come up many times previously and doesn't count as a nice hack worthy of any praise. Sorry kiddo. As an example, these links are all 2010 or earlier. http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/the-right-font-can-save-you-money/ http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/the-right-font-can-save-you-mone... http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125639616 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1256396... http://www.sitepoint.com/cut-costs-by-saving-ink-with-ecofont/ http://www.sitepoint.com/cut-costs-by-saving-ink-with-ecofon... etc.etc.

amirmc 13y ago
Are you suggesting that every high-school science project should be original, ground-breaking research?
- zimpenfish 13y ago
  No but I'm suggesting this isn't nearly as big a deal as people are hyping and that the kid - whilst diligent - ain't a genius.
  - amirmc 13y ago
    Nowhere does it suggest that the kid is some kind of genius. Not in the original article, nor in these threads. It's clear that this was a school science project and that he was encouraged by his teachers (and his reviewers) to pursue it.
    - zimpenfish 13y ago
      Fair point - it doesn't actually mention the word "genius".
    - SilasX 13y ago
      The fact that it's considered newsworthy enough ("man bites dog" & all that) to merit a CNN story is itself the claim that this is somehow novel or interesting. It's the same objection you'd have if CNN posted a story about "kid uses physical model to predict lava distribution from volcano using baking soda and vinegar".

ripter 13y ago

The real issue is that a bunch of people have thought of this before, some even made websites and posted articles, but they didn't get on cnn.com (and the top of Hacker News) for it. So now they are hurt and upset.

voltagex_ 13y ago
Shouldn't these hypothetical people be happy that their idea has finally gained a bit of traction?
- noobermin 13y ago
  The gp is implying that they are jealous of a 14 year old.

ycaspirant 13y ago

Yes, he is a kid, but I believe that the best way to show respect to a kid is to treat him like an adult. The article mentions that he was encouraged to publish in the Journal for Emerging Investigators, and it goes on to say that this journal has the same standards as academic journals. The whole point of this exercise is to treat him like a grown up in the grown up world, because that's the best way of showing respect to a kid. Therefore, it is in fact your comment that is more disrespectful to the kid than the other comments which are pointing out flaws with his proposal.

ollysb 13y ago

No one in government is going to stop printing documents any time soon. Abandoning printing might be the most efficient solution but it's also the most disruptive solution. His solution is elegant in that it would receive little in the way of friction whilst providing tangible benefits.

tarblog 13y ago
It's not completely trivial to change what font the government uses. There are a lot of documents that would need to be layed out differently after the change.
- derefr 13y ago
  > There are a lot of documents that would need to be layed out differently after the change. You could take any font with both "normal" and "light" weights, and then apply the leading and pair-kerning from the normal weight to the light weight, to produce a font that reflows text the same as the normal weight, but uses the ink of the light weight. I do wonder whether the results would cause typographers to gag, though.
- baddox 13y ago
  I actually think it would be a lot easier to eliminate printing on a document by document basis than changing the font and dealing with all potential issues arising from that.
tudorw 13y ago
I agree, on a global scale this could have real impact, especially if the headline grabbing aspect can encourage people to look at other ways to save ink and paper usage in general. I understand that there is a financial impact in laying out new forms, the future savings on ink costs could go towards a usability and accessibility audit and use the findings to inform the new layout designs :)
- chrissnell 13y ago
  > there is a financial impact in laying out new forms This is a huge cost. Consider the U.S. Army, one part of the much larger Department of Defense. The Army has literally thousands of pre-prepared forms [1] and manuals. It's likely that these forms get printed hundreds of thousands of times per day. You could indeed save a lot of ink by switching to Garamond but that means that each form needs to be re-done. Some are simple MS Word forms where it might be easy. Others are PDFs and most are XFL (awful Lotus Forms), all of which will take a major effort to convert. Multiply that time and effort across an entire government's worth of forms and the effort required is mind-boggling. It would take many years for this to pay off. [1] http://www.apd.army.mil/ProductMap.asp http://www.apd.army.mil/ProductMap.asp

mistermumble 13y ago

Yes, great work for a school project. But realistically, not a good idea. Garamond uses less ink because it is skinnier and less readable. It's a font for young eyes, or for Apple customers (long time user of Garamond).

illuminate 13y ago
Exactly. Great project. The media is to blame for trying to portray this kid as some sort of brilliant revolutionary, all externalities are being tossed to the side. It's not jealousy to point out that our current inefficiency is preferable to faux-fiscal conservatism.

walshemj 13y ago

Well it only applies to inkjet printers one one hopes that schools that are printing large numbers handouts use a cheaper laser printer and not a 6 color photo quality inkjet which are designed for small numbers of high quality prints.

joshlegs 13y ago

I would guess the other commenters are jealous that their problem solving skills don't get as much attention. "No, this kid was WRONG!!!" is a way to justify that they are better thinkers, and therefore relevant. In a day and age when everyone has to justify their own existence, I suppose it's not that surprising really.

illuminate 13y ago
"I would guess the other commenters are jealous that their problem solving skills don't get as much attention" Using slightly more literate ways to call critics "haters" is not any more constructive.

zenbowman 13y ago

Indeed, this is smart, effective and non-disruptive.

NAFV_P 13y ago

> I hope he doesn't read Hacker News. I hope he does, it's a good measure of the average hacker.

6cxs2hd6 13y ago
I actually meant that as, "I hope he doesn't read this stuff about him on Hacker News". I'm sorry it was unclear. Unfortunately it's too late to edit my comment.

dinkumthinkum 13y ago

Well you're right but also the "just use digital" is flippant and ignorant. Changing fonts is simpler and cheaper on the short term than digitizing everything. It's also a more realistic goal. There us nothing with doing both. This is pretty sime stuff.

baddox 13y ago

> This is a kid. He is smart. He looked at the problem from a new angle. He came up with a nice hack. Presumably we want more kids with more of a hacking spirit. Yes, this kid is smart, and smart is good. But smarter is better. I don't understand the problem.

aaron695 13y ago

Is hacker news for adults to discuss the real world and learn or to support well meaning but wrong opinions and ideas? Unfortunately the two are not the same.

novaleaf 13y ago

The people saying he failed finding the "correct" solution are underestimating the challenge in getting people to change their behaviors so radically. of course, the same could be said for changing the font, but hey, baby steps. ps: i don't actually agree with the font switch idea. less ink means lower readability in marginal situations (at night, after photocopying 3x, etc etc)

zem 13y ago

this is why i prefer reddit comments to hn - sure, they can be rambunctious and troll-heavy, but the insightful comments are mostly free of that overlay of sneering cynicism. here's the top reddit comment on the story, pointing out that the idea is not new: http://www.reddit.com/r/geek/comments/21la0q/14_yr_old_student_figures_out_how_to_save_the_us/cge65fo http://www.reddit.com/r/geek/comments/21la0q/14_yr_old_stude... but with no trace of sneering - it congratulates the kid on a good idea, and points out that ecofont does it and better. contrast this hn comment saying exactly the same thing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7487637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7487637 but with a far more condescending tone.

winstonx 13y ago

Yes, he has an impressive mind. Which is why we shouldn't just pat him on the back and say "good boy." Rather, we need young impressive minds to solve real problems. Government spending is intentional. If he doesn't get that, he's more likely to end up building pointless boondoggles for the government rather than solving real problems.