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How much will it cost to change fonts?

To change tens to hundreds of millions of documents, roughly 50-200M USD.

It’s only for the department of state though, and the previous cost to change to Calibri was about $145,000 over two fiscal years.

that was the cost of additional a11y remediation, likely the direct cost of using a different font/typeface going forward was the time it took for people to read the memo and get used to change the formatting (maybe even set a new default, maybe change templates).

https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/full_text_of_marco_rubio_...

of course simply comparing years without a control we have no way of knowing the effect of the change (well, if we were to look at the previous years at least we could see if this 145K difference was somehow significant or not)


Thanks for linking that.

Sadly way more informative than our traditional outlets.


A dollar a doc? Sounds like a sweet job.

In practice though, you only have to be as confident as the guy who will eventually sell you something for it.

> If AI frees up VFX artists so they can work on movies rather than commercials, I'm all for that.

If they've run out of bread, let them eat cake.


> If they've run out of bread, let them eat cake.

Genuinely don't know what you're talking about.

There's massive demand in Hollywood for good VFX people. It's not some luxury job or something...?


There's demand for VFX artists like there's demand for video game developers; so many people want to do it that it drives wages down and there's demand for even cheaper labor. Nobody dreams of making TV commercials, movies are what people want to make.

Yes there are so many people that want to do it. Unfortunately, they're mostly junior-level. There continues to be a real shortage of senior-level VFX talent.

Okay, so the junior VFX guys who could only get jobs making commercials should, now that there is less demand for them to make commercials, go make movies instead? Make it make sense.

Why are you assuming it's the junior VFX guys making commercials? Commercials have big budgets too.

It's the same studios. They do work both for Hollywood and ad agencies.

But if ad agencies decide they're happier with lower-quality AI for 5% of the price (whereas they weren't if junior artists were still 50% of the price), while movie producers are not, then yes. They can make movies instead.

Does that "make sense" enough for you...?


Okay, so the senior VFX artist who has the experience to get a job in the movie industry if he wants it, instead gets a job in the commercial industry because the pay is better or maybe he just prefers it, now has to work in the movie industry contrary to his preferences.

No matter which way you slice it, you're not doing anybody a favor by eliminating their job. People generally already work the best job they can manage to and by eliminating that job you're making them pick another job they otherwise wouldn't have picked, or worse and more often, leaving them without a job because they were already working in the best job they were qualified for.

The whole "now that these jobs have been eliminated, the former workers are free to find a new job!" thing is bullshit cope. Always has been. They were already free to chose another job, and chose the one you think you're 'freeing' them from. You're not giving them choice, you're taking it from them.


There's a reason nearly all of the old guard VFX studios were driven to bankruptcy over the last decade and it doesn't have anything to do with massive demand for talent.

Yes, the reason was massive underbidding and fixed-bid contracts that would overrun. In other words, mismanagement.

There still aren't enough senior-level VFX artists in a Hollywood. It continues to be a blocker.


Expecting people to stop asking casual questions to LLMs is definitely a lost cause. This tech isn't going anywhere, no matter how much you dislike it.

These days, most people who try googling for answers end up reading an article which was generated by AI anyway. At least if you go right to the bot, you know what you're getting.

VC reinvents the milk man (who used to deliver much more than just milk.)

Our milk man still delivers a lot more than just milk.

Doesn't matter if they can, because that's not how any of the shot callers want it done.

That is in fact how it is being done in the US and the EU.

I bet they use iphones and leave computers to their underlings/assistants.

"Compute? Think with own brain? Our servants do that for us."

Do those small utility boxes alongside the tracks make sense for fiber optic? I expected things like that to be larger, if only because fiber has a minimum bend radius.

Edit: Good article though, I enjoyed it a lot.


The min bend radius isn’t that large in my experience. On the order of 10cm IIRC, possibly even less.

Even less is correct: outdoor fibers (G.652.D) have a minimum bend radius of about 30mm. The indoor counterpart (G.657.A1 and A2) have 10mm and 7.5mm.

The larger cables tend to have strength members with higher physical bend radius restrictions, i.e. you can't bend the steel or kevlar elements that tightly without breaking things.

Those are more of a technically no?

Like I have fiber to the house and you really need to pinch it and whatnot to cause an internet outage.


A small bend radius means it can have a tight bend.

A large bend radius means it has to be a big bend.

A 7.5mm bend radius is really small. You can bend that stuff pretty tight before you create a problem.


Much smaller than that, some might even say a utility box is overkill: https://old.reddit.com/r/techsupportgore/comments/nvwcuh/the...

Fiber’s perfectly happy being joined in 12” by 16” boxes for small runs. The terminal box in my garage has a few loops and is more like 6” x 8”.

https://www.seeclearfield.com/fiber-optic-wall-box/metal-wal...


Railroad minimum bend radius is orders of magnitude bigger than fiber's.

It's not really a real problem for most retro computing enthusiasts; it only comes out to a couple of bucks a month in electricity, and that's assuming you leave the computer running all month.

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