What Games Are: Virtual Reality, We Hardly Knew You - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/30/vr-we-hardly-knew-you/

<comment><USER2> Meh, has Tadhg actually tried the Valve VR room demo? If he has't tried that demo, I question his credibility in claiming that VR doesn't work.

I'm as skeptical as any about the Oculus acquisition, but having experienced the Valve VR room demo (now owned by Oculus), I think we're a lot closer to the Matrix than anyone would have thought after looking at DK1. My first thoughts after taking the demo rig off was "wow, I'm going to have to reconsider what the next 10 years looks like for humanity."

<comment><USER3> He obviously did not try the demo. The demo meets all specs that Mike listed in his talk and it exists today, thus nullifying the entire thrust of the article.

The demo is not consumer-product-ready, as it is currently expensive and the tracking requires you to paper your room. But those things are all solvable (inevitably with a bit of time, which is why Mike said 'within two years').

A number of the key people responsible for the Valve work are now at Oculus with a mandate to consumerize the best tech possible. So yeah, it is going to happen. Do not believe this article. Oculus CV1 may not get all the way there but it will be better than is necessary to show clearly the writing on the wall (the main factor in its quality being cost, which the Facebook deal helped tremendously with). CV2 will, I expect, be pretty badass.

(I have tried the Valve demo and then spent a few days working with my game on their hardware.)

<comment><USER4> Also if conditions need to be perfect but the effect is incredible we will just see the return of the arcade. The OP can have fun with candy crush 2 waiting outside while I fly my cowing through the death star for real. If VR is good people will queue to pay for it, even if doesn't work at home for another 10 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Argument: VR is a non-starter because it only works with gaming PC's, which only uber-geeks still own and normal people think of as being just for work.

Response: What is an Xbox, if not a proprietary gaming PC? Sony is working on VR for the PS4. Meanwhile, Valve is trying to bring linux gaming PC's to the living room. This stuff is not going to be limited to work computers. Eventually, with a wireless connection or a sufficiently powerful mobile computer (i.e. Your phone in a few years), VR will be available wherever you feel like putting on a headset.

Argument: VR is only going to attract the hardcore gamers, and they don't trust Facebook, so nobody's going to buy.

Response: Oculus is just one of several big firms currently making major pushes into VR-land. Sony is another and you can bet MS won't be far behind.

Argument: Presence doesn't work if not everything is perfect, so VR is doomed.

Response: What do you have when you play a game through a monitor? Imperfect presence. You interact with a virtual world through a window. You frequently walk around in that world as a humanoid avatar speaking to other humanoids and you completely forget you're looking through a window into their world. Imperfect presence works. It even worked back when you could see pixels the size of your avatar's head. VR simply puts your head through the window and lets you look around. Why didn't it take off sooner then? Up until now, 2D windows had clearly superior lag properties and limited resolution meant things looked better on smaller displays. It's also pretty wasteful to blow pixels on peripheral vision, so we didn't bother when pixels were expensive. VR headsets don't have to be perfect to take off. They just have to be as good as 2D displays in the ways that matter.

P.S. Bluray cannot be considered dead until a viable alternative arises that addresses its market: Audio/Video-philes. This is a niche market, but a stable one.

<comment><USER6> So what about the following?

Argument: VR will be a niche market because most styles of gaming have diminishing returns on increased immersion. After all, even with continuous rises in graphics quality in the hardest of the hardcore market, the mass market seems to have refocused its preference-attention on game design around the time mass mobile gaming became a thing and game consoles started costing $400.

<comment><USER5> AAA PC/console titles are out-grossing Hollywood and continue to grow every year. This explosive growth continued through the last console generation despite the high cost of the Xbox360 and PS3. A bigger danger for console makers is hardware saturation of the market. If gamers don't see compelling reasons to update to the new consoles, we could have another 1983 on our hands. VR, besides offering a potential edge in the console wars, could present a way to combat saturation. This is no doubt why Sony is pursuing VR so aggressively.

The mobile market is still comparatively tiny in terms of gross, but it must be pointed out that it is not incompatible with VR. Current handsets are not powerful enough to support VR but that will change in a few years. The question is, how much immersion do mobile users really want?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I disagree with many of the arguments in the article. I think VR — especially on consoles — has a real chance of making it into gaming.

But I agree that it's not going to go mainstream, not in the way that smartphones have. VR is probably going to get popular with console and PC gamers, but I think many others simply will not care about presence. I say this as someone who has played with the Dev kits. They are fun, and magical experiences the first few times. But ultimately they get put away for more convenient entertainment that is just as engaging.

Edit: which is why the Facebook thing is so weird. I don't think anyone actually wants a metaverse. I think people want fun and interesting unique-to- VR game and simulation experiences.

</comment><comment><USER8> Won't take off in the marketplace? Seems plausible. Doesn't produce novel experiences? Already false but maybe this can be spun convincingly. But _the technology can 't possibly work_? That just seems silly.

</comment><comment><USER9> The Facebook acquisition really seems to have broken some people's brains.

Either you think it works or doesn't, whether or not Facebook bought a company doesn't speak to the technology or possible market.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think we'll be able to have great solutions to supplying our eyes and ears with believable virtual realities. But I'm not sure what we're going to do about our arms, hands and legs. I'm really interested to see how the experience on a VR treadmill is, I have a feeling it will leave a lot to be desired.

</comment><comment><USER11> From what I've read, the problem of motion sickness present in the earlier Rifts (including Dev Kit 1) is mostly fixed in recent versions that incorporate positional tracking, because it reduces the disconnect between your head movement and what you see.

</comment><comment><USER12> These arguments are so poorly constructed, I hope this was just meant to be link bait. Otherwise, the writer is quite ignorant of both the current state of VR and overall history (in my humble opinion).

</comment><comment><USER13> All this Oculus bashing makes me want to order my dev kit even more.

</comment><comment><USER14> he's apparently thinking its tablets and mobiles all the way down? - The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.

</comment><comment><USER15> curious if Meta ([https://www.spaceglasses.com/](https://www.spaceglasses.com/)) is going to fill this niche.

</comment><comment><USER16> "I think there is a world market for about five computers"

</comment><comment><USER17> Someone is going to post this article to Hacker News in 2022, and we are all going to have a good laugh.

</comment><comment><USER18> Yep and I bet this guy was writing articles about the epic failure of tablet computing in the 2000's too...</comment>


Aol Employees Make Zombie Video About Talent Exodus - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/30/aol-zombies/ <comment><USER2> That's it, Techcrunch is officially over. Jumped the shark!

</comment><comment><USER3> Wait, AOL still has talent there?</comment>


Biggest question when becoming self-employed: What do I do for health benefits? - <AUTHOR> https://www.talktomira.com/post/the-ultimate-guide-to-self-employed-and-freelancer-health-insurance-in-nyc <comment><USER2> Yeah, this is a very tough nut to crack. When I've been in this situation, I've found that getting health insurance was simply impossible to afford, even when just looking at catastrophic insurance.

What I did was to create a new budget item, setting money aside every month into a pool that could be used for medical emergencies. That doesn't help much at the start, but eventually you get enough of a bankroll to cover everything except actual catastrophes.

Other solutions are preferable if you can afford them, though.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://berniesanders.com/issues/medicare-for- all/](https://berniesanders.com/issues/medicare-for-all/)</comment>


Ask HN: The most useful Mac keyboard shortcuts? - <AUTHOR> Ones that most people don't know about, that you actually regularly use. Thank you!<p>Edit: "Not a shortcut exactly..." tips are most welcome too. <comment><USER2> Command-e, put the selected text on the find clipboard.

Then command-e, command-g (find next) will search for the selected text without sacrificing the copy/paste clipboard.

Also, the find clipboard is shared between apps, so you can command-e in Safari, then command-g in Xcode.

<comment><USER3> Note, cmd+e seems to be a safari thing; no such luck in chrome. I just cmd+f again.

<comment><USER4> > cmd+e seems to be a safari thing

Works fine on Firefox. I'd say breaking it is a Chrome thing.

<comment><USER5> Actually, doesn't work for me in Firefox (68.0.1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Spectacle ([https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle#keyboard- shortcuts](https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle#keyboard-shortcuts)) will change your life with better/faster window management.

And Karabiner Elements ([https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner- Elements](https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements)) to remap keys to something more useful (who uses Caps Lock anymore?)

<comment><USER7> Spectacle is great but abandoned. It hasn't been updated in years. Bug reports and PRs are piling up.

It looks like someone else is currently working on a Swift rewrite. [https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle](https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle)

<comment><USER8> There's Amethyst as well, which generally works really well, it's been basically the first thing I install on a new Mac for years now

[https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst](https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cmd+shift+/ \- brings up help search to search through menu items. Huge feature to me over windows, Linux-based desktop environments.

Not exactly a shortcut, but I once made a gesture-driven shortcut app ([https://thimblemac.com](https://thimblemac.com)) - it's been on hiatus the past couple years but have been wondering if there's value in it for programming work contexts.

<comment><USER10> Cmd+shift+/ doesn't work in any app I'm running. Did you set that up yourself?

<comment><USER3> ditto. no worky in chrome, vs code. In slack, it brings up emoji (which is pretty neat!). In Notes, it centers text.

<comment><USER11> OP grandparent meant CMD-?, and ? happens to be SHIFT-/ on US and international keyboards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not a shortcut exactly, but remap caps lock to ctrl.

So much easier in terminal and for using shortcuts like ctrl-A & ctrl-E for beginning and end of line, etc.

<comment><USER13> Or to esc. Saves my vim pinky a lot of grief.

<comment><USER14> I forget what the tool was, but I recall someone mentioning they mapped CapsLock to ESC when tapped, and to Ctrl when held.

<comment><USER15> It's Karabiner Elements on the Mac.

On Linux you can get it to do the same thing with a combination of xmodmap, setxkbmap and xcape (but it's fiddly) and on Windows with AutoHotkey (but it's fiddly) — neither are as easy to use as Karabiner Elements, but they do work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In Finder, Command-Shift-. (period / full stop) will show hidden files.

</comment><comment><USER17> Cmd-space Type a few characters: start or switch to an app. Just hide the dock. Keeps your hands on keyboard and your eyes where you want them to be.

Control-cmd-F makes most apps full screen (or toggles back)

^k, ^y, etc...standard text widgets accept basic Emacs commands.

<comment><USER17> Four finger swipe on keyboard slides between full screen apps (or spaces)

<comment><USER18> You mean on a trackpad?

<comment><USER17> Yes, sorry, that's what I meant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> cntrl+a: go to start of a line

cntrl+p: go up one line

cntrl+n: go down one line

cntrl+k: cut line proceeding cursor

cntrl+f: forward one char

cntrl+b: back one char

These work everywhere you can type text on Mac: including in this HN text box, in the url bar, etc. I absolutely love these shortcuts...

<comment><USER20> IIRC, these are enabled by default if the text view is a standard NS* text view (don't recall the actual class). It's always a bit of a surprise when I find a window where these _don 't_ work, and that's a good indication that someone has implemented their own class for the text view. Little nugget holdover from those Unix-loving NeXT devs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Shift-option-command-v: paste text _without any formatting_ as opposed to simply using command-v

<comment><USER22> I used to sell a reasonably popular app on the Mac AppStore called Plain Jane that made that shortcut default.

Code [https://github.com/i386/plainjane](https://github.com/i386/plainjane)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not exactly a shortcut, but [https://contexts.co/](https://contexts.co/) completely changes Cmd+Tab; without it I would be materially less productive

<comment><USER24> That looks nice. Is it working well on Mojave? Last update 8 May 2018, and the release notes don't mention anything.

I own a similar app called Witch[1] from Many Tricks (the guy behind Moom). Also a nice Cmd+Tab upgrade.

[1] [https://manytricks.com/witch/](https://manytricks.com/witch/)

<comment><USER25> Was wondering the same thing, the developer indicated it does via Twitter: [https://twitter.com/contextsapp/status/1138209813714821120](https://twitter.com/contextsapp/status/1138209813714821120)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> CMD + `/~ to switch between windows of the same app. Or if you're in the CMD Tab switcher will cycle through the list backwards.

</comment><comment><USER27> Option-clicking on things, e.g. the wifi status symbol, will give you more detailed/different information.

<comment><USER16> If you hold down option in Xcode while cleaning the build from the menu, "Clean Build" turns into "Clean Build Folder" which applies to all targets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> In the Finder,

cmd-shift-A opens Applications folder

cmd-shift-U opens Utilities folder

cmd-shift-L opens ~/Library (might not work on older versions or if ~/Library is invisible)

cmd-shift-H opens Home folder

cmd-shift-C opens toplevel computer folder

cmd-[ "Back" button for Finder windows

cmd-] "Forward" button for Finder windows

cmd-1 changes window to icon view

cmd-2 changes window to list view

cmd-3 changes window to column view

cmd-4 changes window to cover flow view

</comment><comment><USER29> Command-~ to switch between windows of the current program.

</comment><comment><USER30> If you've used Cmd-C to copy something to the clipboard, pbpaste is really useful to pipe the clipboard contents into a pipe or to a file (pbcopy being the inverse)

</comment><comment><USER31> Shift+Cmd+4 for screenshot(s)

<comment><USER32> Shift + Cmd + Ctrl + 4 for copying the screenshot into clipboard

<comment><USER33> OMG. This is awesome. I always open the "Grab" program but this is exactly what I should have always known. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Oldham-Made Setting a text replacement (sys-prefs > keyboard > text) for "@@" to your email address. It's something we type multiple times a day, it's important to not have a typo, and @@ is something you rarely type in any context. This works with most apps, though some won't allow the text replacement to apply.

</comment><comment><USER34> Cmd up arrow and cmd down arrow for navigating through folders and opening docs. I miss this so much when I using Windows.

<comment><USER35> Cmd + right or left arrow for home and end keys. I miss it so much on windows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like ShiftIt (free) for basic window management. I have opt+ctrl+cmd+[arrow] set to move my active window to that part of the screen. Ie, left arrow has that active window take up the left half of my screen. I then cmd+tab to another window and put it on the right side. Super quick for my window management needs.

</comment><comment><USER36> Alfred 3's Clipboard History.

I map it cmd-shift-v and I can bounce between all of my most recent clipboards. Saves so much time.

<comment><USER37> I don't have alfred, but I've sincerely loved Clipy. Like, it totally changed how I use cut/paste:

[https://github.com/Clipy/Clipy](https://github.com/Clipy/Clipy)

<comment><USER36> Does Clipy support images?

Alfred supports images, rich text and a few other mime types for its history.

<comment><USER37> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> You have to turn it on in accessibility settings, but ctrl + scroll to zoom in.

</comment><comment><USER39> Cmd+Shift+G, in any finder window. Go to Folder with keyboard nav, very handy.

</comment><comment><USER40> Mac Keyboard Shortcuts for a comprehensive list: [https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201236](https://support.apple.com/en- gb/HT201236)

</comment><comment><USER41> Didn't see Command + Shift + G mentioned when in Finder.

"Go to the folder:"

<comment><USER42> FWIW tab completion works in that dialog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I remap every single key on my keyboard into custom modifier. So my caps lock is escape on single press and cmd/opt/shift on hold.

My control key is a. My command key is e. I open apps by pressing w + <key>. ie w+l opens VSCode. Press it again and it switches to previous app (under the hood w+l calls a Keyboard Maestro macro).

It's quite awesome.

[https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/dotfiles](https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/dotfiles)

</comment><comment><USER44> Command+? (Command+Shift+/)

Brings up the Help Viewer where you can search any menu items for the current app.

This IS pretty much the built-in command palette for all apps!

</comment><comment><USER45> Command-<down arrow> to open the selected item in finder. A small convenience, but makes my finder usage completely mouse free.

</comment><comment><USER46> The Contexts app makes Cmd-Tab behave like it does in Windows, switching between windows, and only ones on the current Space.

</comment><comment><USER47> Not a shortcut exactly, but turn on the "zoom" accessibility feature bound to something like CMD. You can then zoom in anywhere on the screen by holding the shortcut and doing a two finger gesture. Useful for reading small text, checking some CSS rendering close up and to point out a feature on the screen to someone nearby.

</comment><comment><USER30> Ctrl-Cmd-Space in most text edit fields to open the character viewer to enter emoji and other common unicode characters

</comment><comment><USER48> Ctrl+Shift+Eject/Power: Turn off the screen; Cmd+Alt/Option+Eject/Power: Send macOS to sleep

</comment><comment><USER49> ⌘^q to lock the screen

<comment><USER3> that quits my active window. I have to cmd+ctrl+q

<comment><USER49> ^ is the symbol for ctrl, sorry for the inconvenience

<comment><USER3> doh, my bad!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> macOS:

* command+O: open file

* command+shift+3/4/5: screenshot tool (one of the best shortcut on macOS in my opinion)

* command+alt+space: switch keyboard input source

* "=", ">", "<" "-", while holding down `option` gives you "≠", "≥", "≤", "–"

Apps:

\+ Safari: command+shit+\ (show tab overview)

\+ FileMerge: command+D to jump to next conflict

\+ VSCode: control+shift+E: toggle focus

\+ iTerm2: command+] to switch between panes

\+ iTerm2: command+K: clear buffer

\+ Dash: command+shift+D

\+ Spectacle: [https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle#keyboard- shortcuts](https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle#keyboard-shortcuts). And also, as zuccs's comment [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20621517](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20621517)

<comment><USER51> \+ VSCode: CMD + b toggles the sidebar (whichever is open)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> The app witch lets you command-tab to switch apps but it lets you choose any open window of any app. So if you have 4 separate terminals and 3 chrome windows and multiple word documents open you can scroll to the exact one that you like

</comment><comment><USER53> If you have a touchbar - [https://pock.dev](https://pock.dev) is a huge improvement.

Cmd-tab for switching between apps quickly. Takes a few days to get really good with it.

</comment><comment><USER54> For all those with Touch Bars - remap Caps Lock to be the Escape key

</comment><comment><USER55> Does anyone know a way to assign a keyboard shortcut to show and hide a specific app? I love this feature in iTerm2 and would like to have it for my browser and text editor as well.

<comment><USER56> I have it set up in Keyboard Maestro. It's useful, as if you also use Keyboard Maestro's app switcher (Cmd+Tab), you can set that up to never show certain apps in the switcher - apps like Spotify and Tweetbot that I always have open, but clutter the switcher.

<comment><USER55> I'll check it out. Thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+Right for desktop switching without using mouse.

<comment><USER3> The biggest thing I missed going from Ubuntu to Mac was the ability to take your current active window with you when you switched workspaces using only the keyboard. In Mac, you have to use a mouse. Now I only use the other workspace/desktop as a quick way to get a clear screen to access something on the desktop like a recent screen shot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> ⌘⌃D -- looks up whatever word the cursor is hovering over or whatever text has been selected. Works system-wide except (irritatingly) in Microsoft Office.

</comment><comment><USER59> CMD + SHIFT + G to navigate Open/Save dialogs with the keyboard. Supports autocomplete with TAB. Navigate multiple suggestions with UP/DOWN arrow.

</comment><comment><USER60> Hot corners. I have top right corner as put display to sleep. So I can just walk away from my Mac at work if I want to go grab a coffee or something.

<comment><USER61> Me too! It's a great tip

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Not a shortcut exactly, but get some app that adds shortcuts to snap the current window to various presets. I use Spectacle, but there are several.

<comment><USER63> I use Magnet, which comes with very nice KB shortcuts for window manipulation. It adds on the one feature from Windows that I missed on macOS.

<comment><USER64> Another recommendation for Magnet. Using an ultrawide with my MBP it makes snapping windows around the screen really smooth and a key part of the workflow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Late to the party: CMD + L selects the URL of your tab. Comes in quite handy for sending URLs to people. CMD + L => CMD + C => done :)

</comment><comment><USER66> ⌘-] and ⌘-[ to navigate between items like conversations in messages or Slack. Seem to be a fairly de facto shortcuts.

</comment><comment><USER36> Vimium browser extension.

Key commands generated to follow any link on the page. It makes browsing really efficient.

</comment><comment><USER67> Cmd + Shift + F3 is one that I'm using periodically. This will show your desktop (files).

</comment><comment><USER68> Esc. I spend most of the time on chrome and esc key can close most of the annoying popups.

</comment><comment><USER69> Option (or Alt) ⌥ + Down Arrow in Finder. Goes into selected directory.

<comment><USER49> ⌥↑ goes up in turn, which is super useful if you're in a file picker and the back button is disabled

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Anyone have a good keyboard shortcut to switch between two screens?

</comment><comment><USER71> The one I remember best is Control-OpenApple-Reset.

<comment><USER72> Which is all very well, but Macs have never had an OpenApple or Reset key (the Command key used to have an Apple symbol on it, but now just has the cloverleaf symbol).

Suggests your experience with Apple computers dates back at least to the '80s! :-D

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Hammerspoon. Lets me define my own keybindings.

</comment><comment><USER74> ctrl + command + 4 Saves screenshot in clipboard, saving your Desktop folder from screenshot clutter

<comment><USER75> Hit space after to select a window to capture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> cmd+delete = moves selected item to trash.

shift+cmd+delete = empties trash bin.

It's easily my goto combo to delete something fast.

</comment><comment><USER77> ⌘+shift+6 (touchbar screenshot)

</comment><comment><USER78> CMD + CTRL + Q

Lock screen

<comment><USER56> Add in a shift and it logs you out too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Late to the comment party, hopefully this still helps someone!

Probably the most important knowledge is to learn the Mac modifier key symbols, since they'll help you learn more shortcuts from the menu items you use.

⌃ Control ⇧ Shift ⌥ Option ⌘ Command

——— SCREENSHOTS ———

[⌃⇧⌘4] Copy screen selection to clipboard. In this mode:

\- Press [space] to capture a single window.

\- Hold [⌥] to toggle whether to include window shadow.

[⇧⌘5] Show extra options, including screen record (10.14+)

——— MISSION CONTROL ———

[⌘MissionControl] Show desktop

[⌘Tab] Switch between apps. In this mode:

\- Press Tab to go highlight the next app.

\- Press [⇧Tab] or [`] to highlight the previous app.

\- Press [Q] to quit the highlighted app.

\- Press [H] to un/hide the highlighted app.

[⌘`] Switch between windows of the current app

——— TEXT EDITING ———

[⌥Delete] Delete word

[⌥⇠]/[⌥⇢] Move cursor to next word

[⌥⇡]/[⌥⇣] Move cursor to next paragraph

[⌘⇠]/[⌘⇢] Move cursor to start/end of line

[⌘⇡]/[⌘⇣] Move cursor to start/end of text field

——— FINDER ———

[⌘Delete] Move to trash

[Enter] Rename selected file

[⌥⌘V] Move copied file here

\- You can see this option if you open the Edit menu and hold down [⌥].

——— DRAGGING ———

\- You can drag the "document proxy" icon in any titlebar. Make sure to hold the icon for a bit before dragging. (This delay is probably to prevent people who want to move the window from dragging the icon.)

\- If you're dragging a file into a folder, press [Space] to immediately open the "spring-loaded" folder.

\- In many apps, hold down [⌥] to duplicate instead of move.

\- In Finder, dragging a file across filesystems will duplicate by default. Hold down [⌘] to move instead.

\- You can [⌘Tab]/[⌘`] while you're dragging an item.

\- To navigate a open/save dialog to a particular place, drag the folder or file into the edges of the dialog. Be careful not to drag it into the middle white area of the dialog, as in some cases it might move/copy the file.

\- To open a Finder window at the same location as an open/save dialog, use [⌘R] (R for "reveal").

———

(Note: There are many more shortcuts in each category. These are just the ones that I find the most useful.)

</comment><comment><USER80> Command + Control + Q

Locks your screen</comment>


What It's Like to Be a Diagnosed Narcissist - <AUTHOR> https://www.thecut.com/2019/01/what-its-like-to-have-narcissistic-personality-disorder.html <comment><USER4> There's a good chance my brother suffers from borderline personality disorder. My therapist has explained the biggest issue about PDs: the disorders make a person extremely unlikely to seek out help, as (to put it poorly) they believe the problem exists with the people around them and not themselves. This means that very little is understood, medically, about the disorders and how to treat them effectively.

The author of this piece is an extreme anomaly, not for having a PD (it is surprisingly common), but for having received effective treatment.

If you suspect that someone in your life suffers from a PD, I strongly recommend "Out of the FOG[1]." It focuses on what you can do to protect yourself and potentially have the semblance of a healthy relationship.

[1]: [https://outofthefog.website/toolbox- intro/](https://outofthefog.website/toolbox-intro/)

<comment><USER5> There is also a healthy debate over the degree to which personality disorders represent a true disorder, or just an extreme personality on the edges of normal distribution. If you consider it in those terms, then "treatment" amounts to having someone voluntarily attempt to change their personality at a fundamental level. Even if they wanted to, how likely is that to succeed?

All too often treatment for personality disorders, especially in Cluster B just train people how to better fake "normalcy" and to speak the language of therapy.

<comment><USER6> > _There is also a healthy debate over the degree to which personality > disorders represent a true disorder, or just an extreme personality on the > edges of normal distribution._

I'm not sure that's a meaningful distinction. That is to say, a "disorder" should be something that interferes with your ability to function and flourish in a normal environment. I'm not sure it's meaningful to draw a distinction between people who absolutely cannot function and people who merely _effectively_ cannot function. Just because your ankle is sprained and not broken doesn't mean you don't need medical care or that you should be walking.

<comment><USER7> Well, if functioning and fluorishing is defined by conformity, this doesn't seem very meaningful. Some personality disorders allow a high functioning career and social life.

To be clear I am trying to illustrate the idea that a disorder seems inherently devilish to define.

<comment><USER8> > Some personality disorders allow a high functioning career and social life.

No, they don't, because built into the definition of disorder is the impact it has one someone's life.

<comment><USER5> Which is a bit of an issue isn't it. Is Shkreli in Cluster B? Probably, and now he has the impact on his life to prove it. So before that, when he was just incredibly successful, had no criminal record, and seemed able to function at a high level did he have the same disorder? If outcomes represent a diagnostic criteria then it reveals a weakness in understanding or even defining the disorder in question.

It's important to distinguish between diagnostic criteria, and the disorder itself, if they are actually disorders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I know a couple of men like this, and it's not confidence, arrogance, or judgmentalism that defines them, it's a lack of respect for normal adult boundaries, and a need for external validation that motivates their basic decision making. It's solvable for them if they learn enough, but I see them as psychologically un-weaned.

Men interact based on boundaries and often hierarchies, and a guy who is obliviously transgressive to that is usually thought of as "on the spectrum," or more rarely, a narcissist. Sometimes they are in actual positions of competence or authority, where their lack of respect for personal boundaries is consistent with an externally granted authority role, and this misdirects from the more pathological aspect of their behavior. Being transgressive is sometimes a sign of exceptional intelligence as well, so people tolerate it under the aegis of "brilliant jerk."

Personally, I have some sympathy for them because it's such a steep hill to climb if they are going to ever improve, but have learned to just be unambiguous about setting boundaries and making it clear I think they have a blind spot on boundaries they need to manage.

Provided you aren't being paid to take their abuse, you can reasonably say to them, "Consider whether you may have a blind spot on personal boundaries." If you are being paid, I recommend getting paid somewhere else.

</comment><comment><USER10> I had to disentangle myself from a friend who was a narcissist.

Looking back it feels like I was his 'sidekick'. I was one of his sources of narcissistic supply.

He thought he was improving me, helping me with my 'problems', like I was his project. This went on for years before his personality became sufficiently extreme that I couldn't ignore it any more.

It was a very difficult time, and it was surprisingly hard to disentangle myself, even though being around him made me feel bad.

<comment><USER11> Hey - I was recently in a similar situation. Friend of 8 years, roommate, etc.

His arrogance, narcissism, having to be right about every single little thing (impossible to be wrong), built so much toxicity I could not take it anymore. I had to cut him out of my life, it was so toxic to me as a person.

I'm about three months out from it. I feel better. I feel less anxiety, he isn't stressing me, etc.

Now I can better focus on my own problems and continue building myself to my best self.

Hope your journey is going well!

<comment><USER10> It's been a long time so I'm ok, thanks for asking.

People who haven't been in that kind of relationship can't really know what it's like.

You really do have to sever all ties with a person like that. You can't be in 50%, they demand all of you and more.

It sounds like you did the right thing.

<comment><USER11> Yup, came to the conclusion it has to be severed ties. And I really look for the best in people too

What helped me was when my best friend growing up committed suicide a few months ago, when I was home I kept thinking how amazing a person he was, how nice, how pure and caring....

Then I thought about this person I was spending all my time with, the opposite kind of person. It made me sad to lose someone so good, I decided I would cut that other person out because they were so bad. IF that makes sense...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think children get really harmed by parents who happen to be narcissists. I've seen a lot of hurt on Reddit about being raised by narcissists and It's almost as if children of these parents should have been warned growing up and so they could have avoided the pain of realizing the love is different than normal. I think healcare needs to focus on the family development with a narcastic parental figure and similar to other illnesses.

<comment><USER13> Isn't blaming their parents' character flaws for the adult children's character flaws just a way to avoid responsibility by those adult children?

If a grown up child thinks parent should've fixed their flaw before it affected the child, then they presume that the flaw could have been fixed or mitigated.

In that case, why the child spends time blaming the parent on reddit now, instead of working on fixing the flaw that was, in many cases unknowingly, created by the parent?

<comment><USER14> Determining the etiology of a problem sounds _exactly_ like taking responsibility. I think you wrote your post with a mean-spirited attitude.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's interesting, considering my mother's side of the family tends to seemingly run a bit narcissistic. My grandmother especially, but I also see bits of it in my mother.

The best way to describe it is that her world sort of exists around her. Things only really matter if they personally affect her, and when they do it revolves around her feelings, regardless of the feelings of those around her. She clearly deeply cares about me, but the ways she shows that affection revolves around herself if that makes sense.

It does make discussing emotional matters a bit...difficult, at times. But I've long since accepted that.

<comment><USER16> I think that the vast majority of people (narcissist or not) will never do something unless they personally benefit from it in some way. Everything that people do is for themselves. Even when people give money to charity; they do it because it makes them feel good.

I think that maybe the difference between a narcissist and an altruist is that a narcissist doesn't derive any positive emotions from helping others.

<comment><USER15> I disagree, I personally believe it's possible for people to be altruistic entirely for the sake of altruism. Making themselves feel good is secondary to the altruistic action.

And I think that's what differs between a narcissistic action and an altruistic one. Narcissists absolutely can and do derive positive emotions from helping others, but it's either entirely to help their own self-worth and/or achieve a certain goal, like the example in the article of helping an old lady accross the street.

An altruistic action is done for the sake of helping someone first, with the positive reinforcement as a potential bonus. A narcissistic one is done for the sake of positive reinforcement with helping others as a side effect.

<comment><USER16> You may not realize it consciously, but writing this comment probably made you feel (at least slightly) good about yourself.

Not consciously realizing that helping others feels good doesn't mean that you're more of an altruist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Its worth noting that the line between Aspergers (which I probably misspelled) and NPD can be blurred, particularly in women. Similarly, egocentrism, generalized anxiety disorder, NPD share features. This matters because empathy and patience is an effective strategy for engaging with those suffering from most of these disorders... but not NPD unless you're trained to do so.

<comment> core-questions Can you tell me more about this? I think I'm facing this situation - <USER2> increasingly feels some kind of half-ASD, half-NPD that makes my domestic life less than ideal.

<comment><USER18> I'm no expert but suspect the empathy deficits present differently. Seems more willful on the part of the NPD, perhaps. With ASDs, it's often a case of not being self-aware enough to know how you come across, but once pointed out, it can be helpful to know. The narcissist may not even care? The subject of this article, to his credit, may not be the norm. And there are other differentiating factors. Along with autism comes certain sensory issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The author's comments about the "positive vs negative aspects of narcissism" are interesting.

I remember reading[0] about how one of the most effective ways to determine if someone is a narcissistic is to ask them... "are you a narcissistic?". That surprised me at first because self-diagnosis is almost always a bad idea, but on second glance it makes sense that people who think about themselves all day could be more introspective than normal (or sometimes not: they could waste their day thinking about how great they are).

But if part of success is understanding your own thought process and working around your strengths/weaknesses, these are useful insights for anyone on the narcissism spectrum (see: everyone)

Ref: [0] [https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/socially- relevant/20...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/socially- relevant/201601/how-profile-narcissist-one-simple-question)

<comment><USER20> > I remember reading[0] about how one of the most effective ways to determine > if someone is a narcissistic is to ask them... "are you a narcissistic?"

So what would a narcissistic person answer to this? Yes?

<comment><USER21> Yes - or they would explain all of the good things about their worldview.

Source: [https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/280718.php](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/280718.php)

"People who are narcissists are almost proud of the fact. You can ask them directly because they don't see narcissism as a negative quality - <USER3> believe they are superior to other people and are fine with saying that publicly."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Thanks. This was a disturbing read as each paragraph further convinced me I suffer from the same thing. Time to go see a shrink.

EDIT: and clearly only a narcissist would comment on how relevant the article is to _them_ specifically... sigh

<comment><USER4> Even if you don't have a PD, going to a shrink is always a good thing. It's great that we spend so much time looking after our physical health in the modern world, but we should also be taking more care of our mental health.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think a lot of what this person describes about their thinking process and life patterns is actually going on in everyone's brain, but with less awareness of it.

The irony is, I guess, that the narcissist part is only the part that actually making him think that these patterns are somehow special or unique to him.

<comment><USER10> All mental disorders are made of up behaviours, and mental processes that are common to everyone, just taken to an extreme.

It usually starts to be considered a disorder when it starts to interfere with functioning, or maintaining healthy relationships.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I was glad to see that the article explicitly mentions introvert narcissists (or "covert", as they're sometimes referred to).

> But the form in which narcissism can present itself also varies, says > Malkin. While most people are familiar with what Malkin calls the > "extroverted narcissist" — the braggadocious chest-thumpers — there are also > introverted narcissists, whose sense of specialness may derive more from a > sense of victimhood than superiority. "These are people who … might feel > special because of their emotional pain," says Malkin. "They agree with > statements like 'I feel I'm temperamentally different from most people,' or > 'I have problems that nobody else seems to understand.'" (Malkin says this > form comes up a lot in teenagers.) Because these narcissists aren't so > showy, or grandiose, they often fly under the radar.

I've spent five years in a very difficult relationship, and only when someone pointed me to the direction of narcissism I was able to understand what is going on. The other person check pretty much all of the boxes describing a covert narcissist, and only after understanding what I'm dealing with I was able to look for the right form of therapy (for myself) and finally leave the relationship nearly a year later.

</comment><comment><USER24> Just like a narcissist to write a post about himself. <grin>

<comment><USER25> There were about 200 instances of "I" in that post.

<comment><USER26> Most of the article is the author asking the person questions about himself; I'm not sure how anyone could give proper answers to those questions without using first person pronouns.

<comment><USER27> Brewdad could refer to myself in the third person.

<comment><USER26> > I spoke to one such person, a 46-year-old man who was diagnosed with > narcissistic personality disorder in his mid-30s and was treated for years > afterward. [I'll note here that while his English is pretty much perfect, it > is his second language; he is Dutch, and lives in the Netherlands.] That > conversation, which has been edited for length, is below.

It seems pretty clear to me that the author is not the person who's answering the questions.

EDIT: I see what you're saying, but it would be more strange to answer questions like that than in the first person. I don't think I've ever read an interview where the interviewee didn't respond to questions in the first person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is there any truth to the fact that in order to be covered by medical insurance in the USA, mental disorders have to have a DSM entry for medical coding practices, and that this has created a plethora of acronyms, or other labels for phenomenon that haven't really been sussed out as actual disorders? I have heard many people over the years reference the DSM as some way validating a phenomenon or label applied to themselves by their therapist or self-diagnosed.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'd be interested to hear, anyone reading this, if you know someone who tends to behave in a narcissistic way, exactly what are they doing that you see as narcissistic?

<comment><USER30> My mother, I suspect, is some level of narcissistic. She can be generally okay, and even nice to be around on occasion, but if there's a _hint_ of her being in the wrong, she becomes exponentially more defensive.

"Never happened" is one. She'd claim that the the event of her doing wrong – calling others names, sabotaging others' performance, behaving in an immature, passive-aggressive kind of way – never happened. "Yeah, it did" is met with further denial. _Maybe_ she'll admit she did that, but _only because_ it was justified: maybe she felt _so bad_ she could do nothing else, or maybe someone forced her to behave badly.

In general, her negative traits are flung under the rug, and her positive traits are put under the limelight. She would never admit to not knowing things, unless not knowing things puts the responsibility for the failure away from her. She'd also claim how good at <something> she is ("I'm such a good psychologist! I understand people _so well_!"), and any attempt at countering her positivity assertions are dismissed passively.

I suspect her faking illness – presenting herself as ailing to gain attention and sympathy, which becomes self-fulfilling bullshit – also has something to do with the perpetual-victim mentality that underlies narcissism.

<comment><USER31> This is usually referred to as gaslighting, which you may know.

A Narcissist's Prayer

That didn't happen.

And if it did, it wasn't that bad.

And if it was, that's not a big deal.

And if it is, that's not my fault.

And if it was, I didn't mean it.

And if I did...

You deserved it.

<comment><USER32> After learning about the narcissistic prayer and having siblings and my SO tell me that they thought my mom has it she proceeded to pretty much say this exactly after wiping her wet hands off on my shirt in the kitchen when we were visiting. Just remove the 'you deserved it'.

I asked her to not open our private mail when we were moving and had to redirect it to my parents (no other relatives nearby) and after doing so she threw a fit and threatened to kill herself on a main street in the capital rather than to say that she was sorry to my SO for opening all out mail.

She even sent me photos in a fit of rage proving that she knew the mail was fine to open, because it said it was just a bill for the redirecting in one case, something that was only visible from the inside after opening.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are GIS skills in demand? - <AUTHOR>

I'm being considered for a position that would largely involve developing data mapping applications using ArcGIS and related software.  I've done some mapping stuff before, but I'll probably be expected to take some classes to get where I need to be.  If I invest the time to do that, I'd like my new skill set to be portable ... so, HN, are GIS skills in demand? <comment><USER2> At least in the United States, pretty much all geographic information - at the local, state and federal levels - is now being remeasured and stored in GIS formats. I can say first-hand that governments and government contractors are constantly needing programmers that can talk to ArcGIS and properly visualize that information. This is true for any agency that needs to deal with official definitions of geography when calculating their statistics - I've seen law enforcement agencies, transportation agencies and housing agencies all need GIS applications developed, to name a few. And probably some sexier TLA agencies in Washington, although my experience with GIS for transportation didn't give me much exposure for those fields.

The nice thing about this sort of career is that you can do it in a wide variety of cities and states. Your girlfriend is moving to Florida? You can work for the state transportation department in Tallahassee. Oh, she's in Miami you say? Miami's almost certainly a big enough city to be creating its own municipal GIS data and needing programmers to work with it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Definitely. Down here in Australia, even before the mining industry boom, there was always a shortage of GIS developers.

I did ArcGIS development for a few years, and some other ESRI development before ArcGIS was a twinkle in MapObjects and ArcIMS's eye. I've never seen anyone skilled in those technologies wanting for work.

Plenty of contracts to, which can be quite lucrative once you've got some experience under your belt.

I could go on...

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm from Europe (Belgium) so I can't really comment on the situation in the USA. But we have here a continuous need for good GIS programmers for government contract work but also for utility organisations and some larger businesses. Also things like track-and-trace are booming. I never regretted getting in this business although I must admit that I came from the opposite direction (from a master in geography to fulltime programming).

</comment><comment><USER5> Yeah, GIS skills are useful in many different fields. I work for a lines company, and they use GIS extensively to manage their electrical distribution network.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes.</comment>


Kickstarter: Practicing Ruby Contributors Fund - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/828998531/practicing-ruby-contributors-fund

<comment><USER2> Hi,

I run practicingruby.com and am the one who set up this Kickstarter. All the money is going to contributors, and the materials will all be released under CC BY-SA as soon as they're published. In addition to a $500 honorarium, I will set aside five days for each collaboration to help w. anything that's needed... whether it be editing drafts, turning raw notes into an article format, researching, seeking technical reviewers, etc.

Happy to answer any questions anyone has, or respond to feedback.

We are funded already w. 8 days to go, and because Practicing Ruby does have some recurring revenue from monthly subscribers who support the project, we've already broken ground on commissioning contributed works. That means we should publish something new within the next few weeks.</comment>


Firefox Monitor - <AUTHOR> https://monitor.firefox.com/ <comment><USER2> How does it differ from the haveibeenpwned service?

[https://haveibeenpwned.com/](https://haveibeenpwned.com/)

Both offer email alerts but Firefox Monitor said my old email was found in 11 data breaches while haveibeenpwned said 14.

<comment><USER3> More services like this can't be a bad thing. If haveibeenpwned disappeared tomorrow, we'd have no replacement

<comment><USER4> "Breach data provided by Have I Been Pwned"

<comment><USER4> but it is a good service, that it alert me when i want to navigate a site, where data breach happened.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Rekindle – Reconnect with old Facebook friends - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sumitshyamsukha/rekindle <comment><AUTHOR> I'd appreciate any thoughts, comments, or feedback that you might have!</comment>


One Question That Will Reveal What Kind of Coder You Are - <AUTHOR> http://dancali.io/blog/one-question-that-will-reveal-what-kind-of-coder-you-are <comment><USER2> Personally, I would never hire anyone who sides with the painting aspect.

Why?

Software development needs structure, and it needs it to guarantee maintainability, quality, testabiliy, readability. Art doesn't need any structure, it is subject to interpretation, personal interpretation which is horrible to read, understand and maintain.

Regarding the example in the article, what 'Andy' does is good solutions engineering by asking the right question (why?), but not software development.

So the example premise that Andy managed to realize (not: develop) a requirement in 20min instead of two weeks does not support any conclusion about anything in software development.

</comment><comment><USER3> This doesn't even make sense. Andy's insight was nothing to do with programming or software development - he identified a flaw in the proposed design and suggested a better solution. That's not coding, and it's not specifically related to software development either. 'Software Development' is rarely done in isolation, and often requires teams of people with different skill-sets. Some will be excellent at estimating effort, others will be great at identifying product flaws and fixing them.

Look at it this way - I wouldn't want to walk over a bridge built by somebody who has no engineering skills but can paint.

Oh, and my 2 cents - programming is part science, part art. It's neither one or the other.

</comment><comment><USER4> Building a bridge requires creative as there are many different forms a bridge can take. Similarly with coding, there is an aspect of both engineering and creativity. If I had to choose between the two, building a bridge seems like the obvious answer because the end goal (generally) is not to create art and provoke imagination, but to engineer a certain task. Building anything, such as a chair, requires some level of creativity, and in the case of woodworking, is often considered art. I would say 80% engineering and 20% creativity when it comes to code.

</comment><comment><USER5> Reminiscent of [http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> it feels more like being a cathedral or a ship builder from the 15th century. A mix of art and technique following requirement and plan much more loosely that today's precise construction of ship and bridges.</comment>


Code-Pointer Integrity [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://dslab.epfl.ch/pubs/cpi.pdf

<comment><USER2> Any updated plans when we can expect -fcps/-fcpi to land in clang? Looks much better than the current -fsanitize solutions.</comment>


I quit my job at the start of the pandemic to launch a company - <AUTHOR> https://theprofile.substack.com/p/i-quit-my-job-at-the-start-of-the <comment><USER2> The wonderful optimism of the author reminds me of last night's Venkatesh Rao thread on brain calibration:

[https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1297743621777580034](https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1297743621777580034)</comment>


How we solved our office Wi-Fi problems - <AUTHOR> https://triplebyte.com/blog/how-triplebyte-solved-its-office-wifi-problems <comment><USER2> >Assign static IPs for infrastructure like access points. This makes them easy to reach when reconfiguration is needed

Am I missing something, or did they buy consumer routers to use as access points?

Triplebyte, I can save you a ton of management, troubleshooting, and learning time: switch to Ubiquiti Unifi or an equivelant now, youll have one pane of glass to reconfigure every device. The devices will talk to each other, to help hand off clients between them. All channel management will be by the devices working together, they can throttle down power if they are causing each other interference. I cant even begin to list all the different benefits with a single set of settings vs devices that dont work together. Even an asus aimesh network would likely be better. Youre asking for a troubleshooting nightmare.

You can either pay a couple hundred a year for the management interface, or $80 for an on prem tiny little stick that hosts it. (paying for the cloud hosted one, has its benefits, and is my recommendation.)

Access Point - [https://unifi-hd.ubnt.com/](https://unifi-hd.ubnt.com/)

POE Switch - [https://www.ubnt.com/unifi-switching/unifi-switch- poe/](https://www.ubnt.com/unifi-switching/unifi-switch-poe/)

Management Interface - [https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-cloud- key/](https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-cloud-key/) OR Cloud Management [https://unifi.ubnt.com/](https://unifi.ubnt.com/)

Router - [https://www.ubnt.com/unifi-routing/usg/](https://www.ubnt.com/unifi- routing/usg/)

You should never need to track down or log into individual devices to configure them.

I dont mean to be a complete ballsack, but isnt it weird for a company thats mission is matching talent to problems, to fail to find the talent to adequately address their problem, and to be giving authoritative (mis)advice on something they are not remotely domain experts in. It doesnt seem like the best advertisement.

That said, this is the KIND of post companies should be making when their seo expert says to use keywords. Good job writing about improving the internals of your company, and not just what your company does. Write a V2 of this post once you upgrade, and rename the old one, "How we Created (and then mitigated a Device Management and Troubleshooting Nightmare)

<comment><USER3> Fine, I'll say it: Ubiquiti is not suitable for a business environment. They don't have a good track record of pushing out security fixes. They've blatantly violated the GPL (and introduced security vulns in the process). Their "enterprise" features don't work well (e.g. hardware acceleration, WPA+Radius). Depending on what you buy the PoE may be non-standard passive or it may not.

Unfortunately because they're primarily in the business of slapping a slick web interface on Vyatta they don't have the skill required to debug the hardware acceleration. They don't have a single clue how to get RADIUS to work with their fork of Vyatta. And their support is fine for a home lab situation.

And let's not speak of the chronically overheating stuff.

<comment><USER4> >And let's not speak of the chronically overheating stuff.

Some-time wireless installer here, I bring a snippet of anecdata.

A recent client had the full Unifi experience for an outdoor network, including 3x EdgeSwitch XP (formerly known as ToughSwitch) in a single IP65-rated, largely airtight enclosure.

The network would go offline on summer afternoons. It was overheating, those models run hot and are not recommended for low ventilation areas, but they weren't convinced.

I fitted a thermometer, went back three days later and checked the logs. The temperature peaked at 143 Celsius.

<comment><USER5> 143 _Celsius_??? That's 289.4 Fahrenheit, which I find difficult to believe. Not impossible... just difficult. That's quite impressive.

<comment><USER4> For completeness, that was when the summer sun was shining directly on the enclosure in the hottest part of the day, during a country-wide hot spell. Still, no airflow, heat generation, etc.

Every day, cut out. When it cooled down, it worked again. This continued for about two months, then they failed.

<comment><USER3> Sure that's kind of a worst case scenario there. One of the bigger problems with the ER-L design, IMO, is that they don't have any sort of temperature measuring device inside the case itself. They run hot even without extreme ambient temperatures so you'd think there'd be some baked in way to monitor the temperatures, but no.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Generally pretty solid advice. I say that as someone who is known for solving tough wireless problems. :-)

On the cable termination part: I've (mostly) stopped crimping cables because I've had too many go flaky and don't have 4-5 figure testing equipment. One thing I'll add is that there are ends for solid conductor and stranded, make _SURE_ you have the right ones for the cable you are using.

These days I always just put on keystone ends and then use commercial patch cables from there. I've had very good luck. I'd recommend against the advice to use a screw driver to punch them down, the Leviton ones I prefer you just put the cap on and they punch down themselves. The random ones I get from Ace Hardware have a little punch tool included.

One additional recommendation I have is to put 5GHz radios in each space. 5GHz has more spectrum, and less interference, but it penetrates drywall significantly worse. But that's a good thing, because it cuts down on interference from your neighbors.

Beware of microwave ovens, baby monitors, cordless phones (last 2 more in residential areas). They can be intermittent interference, and won't show up on the non-commercial spectrum analyzers. Our 2.4GHz used to go out when we'd run our brand new microwave. But it would also go out at other times, possibly when a neighbor ran theirs? 2.4GHz penetrates buildings quite well, which kind of sucks.

My credentials: [https://www.tummy.com/articles/pycon2012-network/](https://www.tummy.com/articles/pycon2012-network/)

<comment> swingline-747 Been There, Done That, Bought The T-Shirt.

Solid core is generally for premise wiring (PVC jacketed in walls, PTFE- jacketed through ducts); stranded is typically for patch cables. If you try like the first place I worked at in the mid-90's trying to put stranded ends on solid-core wire, breaking of tools and unreliable cables will make.

There's cheapo Chinese cable tester kits on eBay, AliBaba and Amazon that do a good-enough impedance at GbE spectrum testing to not have to spring for a Fluke "will-survive-nuclear-winter" "official" tester. Backfilling connectors with epoxy is another idea to avoid corrosion... as long as it doesn't affect the impedance or dielectric values much. No-snag boots, axial aligned label zipties are also a big help. Barcode label and floorplan everything.

Finally, always test every cable with iperf3 (two laptops or one laptop w two ethernet ports) and reject for reworking/replacment any cable with abnormal latency or bandwidth figures.

PS: our head-office networking guy was awesome; worked 10% time just to keep benefits since his wife was GOOG's first admin.

<comment><USER7> It might be worth mentioning that CCA (copper clad aluminum) cable which is sometimes sold with misleading descriptions in places like eBay and Amazon, is not the same as solid copper and should be avoided for power over ethernet applications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's only sort of passively mentioned in the article but I am AMAZED at the number of people who don't hardwire everything they can.

Obviously phones are out, but why not hardwire every laptop when it's at the desk? If someone's using a actual desktop computer like an iMac then what's the point of Wi-Fi? Clear up the signal space and get a 100% reliable and ultra fast connection.

<comment><USER9> You could say the opposite I guess.

I'm AMAZED at the number of people that bother hardwiring everything they can for no reason when they have no interference issues.

Why go to all the effort of hardwiring every laptop at every desk?

If someone's using a laptop and moving around the office, why cable every desk when you can have gigabit wifi wherever you are?

<comment><USER10> Wired:

PING 10.0.3.1 (10.0.3.1): 56 data bytes

64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.737 ms

64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.636 ms

64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.701 ms

64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.633 ms

...

\--- 10.0.3.1 ping statistics ---

8 packets transmitted, 8 packets received, 0.0% packet loss

round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.516/0.644/0.737/0.075 ms

Wifi:

PING 10.0.3.1 (10.0.3.1): 56 data bytes

64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=6.713 ms

64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=3.508 ms

64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=2.425 ms

64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=2.127 ms

64 bytes from 10.0.3.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=4.057 ms

...

\--- 10.0.3.1 ping statistics ---

22 packets transmitted, 22 packets received, 0.0% packet loss

round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 1.429/3.769/16.722/4.054 ms

Depending on what you're doing, this can make a HUGE difference.

<comment><USER11> Although I'm skeptical (though see below), as the sibling comment is, that this small an increase in best case latency would make a difference in a typical office environment, I'm curious if it was (as close to) apples-to- apples as possible. That is, was it comparing 802.11ac to gigabit ethernet (or 54/108 Mb/s Wifi to 100Mb ethernet), and were the interfaces connected the same way (e.g. both via USB or both via PCIe/Thunderbolt)?

Despite my skepticism, I've seen that, in the typical office setting, wireless latencies can vary much higher. It stands to reason that, no matter how well- engineered, it's still a shared medium, which means that congestion or interference caused by a neighbor can ruin someone's VoiP call during the time it's happening.

<comment><USER10> Both computers are connected the same Unifi network. One was a Macbook Pro using the builtin wireless (ac; listed as 144 Mbps in the Unifi controller iirc) and the other a Mac Mini connected via cable (1Gbps). They both pinged the router, so all traffic was local. There are no other wifi networks nearby (single family house area, 50+ meters between houses), and basically no other traffic on the network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you're based in SF and want to have a high quality boutique IT shop work with you, without hiring IT staff yourself, then I can't recommend [https://www.boxit.net/](https://www.boxit.net/) enough.

I was managing consumer grade routers for the company since its inception until we switched to Aruba APs (which are awesome <3) and then eventually to an office with a real firewall, several APs, and a switch for 100+ cabled desks. The folks at BoxIT were a real life-saver at that stage, both for the initial setup and proactive monitoring of your network's health over time. Having your staff spend brain cycles on this stuff isn't the best ROI IMO.

The one thing to watch out for is VoIP in SF office buildings. Our APs conflict with about 300 other APs in the area, so getting reliable VoIP for your sales people over WiFi is not even worth trying. We got lucky and inherited an office where the previous company learned that the hard way and wired every nook and cranny with ethernet.

<comment><USER13> Thank you!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My startup purchased Meraki, and we don't have to deal with many of these issues. We also paid an electrician to do wiring and crimping. SDE time is expensive and we want the team focused on building our product, so we made the tradeoff to pay more for the network gear and installation. As a result our entire team, engineering and everyone else, has network access that "just works". This was true when the 35 person team showed up at our last office for the first time, and continues to be true.

The configuration is done through a hosted dashboard that also provides monitoring. We're in a heavily regulated field, and the Meraki dashboard provides a lot of evidence for compliance audits. It also enables us to remotely control devices (e.g. lock, wipe, locate) and ivestigate issues when integrated the Meraki MDM solution.

We did have to tune the bitrate for wireless.

We also cannot setup redundant VPN tunnels to AWS (Meraki only supports one tunnel for non Meraki VPNs), so we have to do manual faiilover. This is my biggest gripe with Meraki. We are investigating adding a Cisco ASA to handle site-to-site VPN to AWS with redundant tunnel support.

</comment><comment><USER15> > Use fast DNS servers

I use GRC's DNS Benchmark tool[1] for this whenever I set up DHCP somewhere, and the results are sometimes surprising. If you're on a *nix or macOS, it runs well under Wine.

[1] [https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm](https://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm)

<comment><USER16> This is great if you're at home or there's no IT team like in the article (a dream come true!) but if you're in a more corporate network these kinds of tools will usually ping NSFW servers.

I also prefer namebench ([https://github.com/google/namebench](https://github.com/google/namebench)) since it runs at the command line.

<comment><USER17> What sort of DNS server is NSFW? I can't imagine that any DNS benchmark would need to reach out to anything other than a DNS server. If I recall correctly, the GRC DNS benchmark uses a set of domains set up expressly for the benchmark itself.

<comment><USER18> Disclaimer, I haven't looked at GRC explicitly, but often tools like this will

* check whether a range of domains are censored by the DNS

* lookup a bunch of domains and ping them to check whether the DNS server is returning properly localized addresses using EDNS - Cloudflare DNS is a good example of one that was not (at least a few months ago)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Pro tip: Keep your router/managed switch configurations in source control as text files.

</comment><comment><USER20> Biggest issue I have with the solution proposed is the recommendation to avoid DFS channels. These channels are much more "cleaner" as adoption is less due to added cost caused by extra design and certification.

Radars are pretty static and does not come and go (especially weather radars), so the router does not need to move from channel pretty much. False alarm can be an issue but if one has a decent quality router, it should not be very often. Furthermore, after a radar detection (false alarm or actual), routers can switch to non-DFS channels and and start operating immediately.

<comment><USER21> With the caveat that some clients really have trouble with DFS channels. Generally not a problem if you're refreshing your office with new wireless though.

</comment></comment><comment> matthew-wegner UniFi is already mentioned elsewhere in the comments already, so this whole post is likely redundant. If you're at the level of cobbling together consumer routers, even flashed to DD-WRT/Tomato/whatever, change. If someone your team is Cisco certified from a previous life as a network engineer, and insists you use Meraki kit and pay the fees, well, you're in SF and paying SF salaries anyway, so probably just go for it.

If you run a full UniFi stack, you can view your entire topology in the dashboard--it'll tell you which switch port or access point/SSID a client is connected to. Here's my home topology:

[https://imgur.com/MnJwHiB](https://imgur.com/MnJwHiB)

Note that most switches are double-uplinked for 2000Mbps throughput, and there's a 10-gigabit core router. 10gbe isn't nearly as expensive as you might think, especially for very small teams. It is possible to get access points to deliver 500-700Mbps speeds, too--that's going to depend a lot more on your device's radios than anything. See speed benches for UniFi kit at: [https://goo.gl/RL4kkW](https://goo.gl/RL4kkW)

This guide doesn't cover VLANs, but it probably should mention they exist. Any IOT or networked camera type devices that don't need Internet access shouldn't be allowed egress, and VLANs are an easy way to implement network segregation. You almost certainly want a guest network too, both wired and wireless.

</comment><comment><USER22> > There's no IT team at startups

Uh, what? Are you nuts? Hire somebody.

<comment><USER23> I work for an MSP servicing small businesses, Triplebyte sounds like one of our clients. I guess since they're developers they think IT is optional and they can save on costs (and/or their time is worth less than ours, which I doubt). And then later those decisions come home to roost and it costs more to pay some company like ours to come in and do things properly. I mean hell with modern wifi like Ubiquiti or Meraki you shouldn't even have to think about half the stuff in this article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've tried all kinds of WiFi gear over the past 5 years -- Apple, UniFi, Aruba Instant -- and all of them have been unsatisfactory in one way or another:

* Most of my client devices are from Apple, and I easily got the best WiFi performance overall with 802.11ac-capable Airport Extremes, which is impressive given how relatively cheap they are. However, I'd like multiple SSIDs, and Apple gear can't do that (the guest network support doesn't count). Regardless, Apple is out of the game, so this isn't a long-term solution.

* The UniFi gear had _terrible_ 802.11ac performance, even when my devices were in the same room as the WAP. At the time, I was using first-gen 802.11ac hardware from UniFi, so it's somewhat understandable, but the poor performance combined with 2 of the units failing within the first 6 months didn't leave a good impression.

* The Aruba Instant WAPs were reliable and got good performance (though not as good as the Apple WAPs), but I'm not a fan of their licensing. Without a support contract, it was possible to hunt down the latest firmware updates, but they didn't make it easy.

I recently bought a PC Engines APU3C4 with a mini-PCIe WiFi card and a couple of Chaohang antennas [1], and I'm contemplating build my own WAP. This would give me all of the configurability and tweaking that I want, and I could deploy it as just another piece of my personal little devops pipeline.

However, I don't know much about the RF side of things. I'm aware there's a lot of black magic involved, but it's not clear to me how much performance and/or range I'm going to lose by piecing together COTS stuff versus a professionally-engineered solution from Ubiquiti et al. If anyone who's reading has built their own WAPs, I'd love to hear from you.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01E29566W](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01E29566W)

<comment><USER25> I've heard multiple people saying Apple wireless APs perform so much better than others. I really wish someone could do a technical deep-dive and explain how Apple did it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> While it doesn't really matter whether you use EIA-586-B or EIA-586-A so long as you're consistent, I've been told that EIA-586-A is the standard in Canada.

addendum:

Re crimping RJ45 - the better way to do terminations is to use the EZ-RJ45 pass-through plugs like the ones made by Platinum Tools. You need a special crimper, but it's night and day easier. If you're using AWG23 Cat 6, you also need to make sure your plugs can handle those wires (not an issue with the Platinum Tools plugs).

<comment><USER26> Only thing I've found annoying about passthrough plugs is it's easy to not quite cut the wires flush with the end of the plug. This can make the plug not seat fully.

At least, this is true for me. Maybe I did it wrong.

<comment><USER7> I think this depends on which crimper you use. I used a cheapo crimper from China I bought off Amazon (I wasn't doing enough terminations to justify Platinum Tools' top of the line crimper which cost more than 2x what I paid) and it was leaving maybe a mm or less of wire hanging off, because of the crappy tolerances.

On the other hand, I saw some videos on Youtube of people using other cheap crimpers, and they were getting clean flush cuts. Luck of the draw is a big thing when you get the cheaper tools.

Originally I thought that 1mm or less was preventing my plugs from seating fully but on further inspection I found that the locking lever on my plugs weren't consistently locking. I made the mistake of not using the matching Platinum Tools strain relief boots for my plugs, which actually have a piece of plastic that pushes the locking lever up a little more to ensure a more secure mating between the plug and port.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> When you're deploying multiple APs you also want to turn down the broadcast power on them. If the signal of multiple APs overlap too much, clients won't roam onto the next AP in time.

Also don't be afraid to hire someone to do a wireless survey - or do it yourself. Someone will walk around with a laptop, and try to find wifi blackspots/hotspots, and can recommend adjustments to AP power and/or placement.

<comment><USER21> Yep, and disable the lowest data rates, particularly if you have decent coverage. The AP is forced to send certain types of traffic at the lowest available data rate so everyone can hear it so you save a lot of airtime on that traffic but also clients will be more likely to roam because they can't "stick" to a far away AP at a really low data rate even if they wanted to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Shame that security wasn't really addressed, other than the brief mention of WPA2-PSK. I feel like PSK in general is a horrible idea in an office environment. Lots of people + lots of devices ≈ shitty password which never gets changed.

But then I still haven't had any luck setting up a WPA2 Enterprise config that works on all devices.

<comment><USER29> wondered too how they didn't even mention WPA2 Enterprise

I thought that was the defacto-standard in office environments. It certainly is for EDU

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> > _Multiple access points should share the same SSID. They must have exactly > the same security settings (same password, exact same mode, i.e. WPA2-PSK > Personal) for clients to be able to automatically roam between APs._

I will also add to this, consider having all the APs on the same channel. My experience is that some OSs (I'm looking at you, Windows) don't roam properly if the following three things are not the same:

1\. SSID

2\. Authentication/Encryption

3\. Channel

It does sound like the author has deployed consumer access points. For a proper office scenario centrally managed is the way to go. Finally, never use WPA2-PSK Personal in a work environment. Use proper back-end authentication such as Radius or MAC filtering, or a 'Register me via a captive portal' system with a central LDAP type user directory.

<comment><USER31> I had to change my SSID's on my 5Ghz and 2.8Ghz WiFi because Macs used to confuse themselves and constantly disconnect.

Using the same name for both didn't work

<comment><USER30> Your problem is using the same SSID for both frequencies. Have a single SSID for all your 5Ghz APs and another for the 2.4Ghz ones.

<comment><USER32> That's the opposite of what this article says to do, which I think is why the above commenter mentioned it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> We had internal debates about different SSIDs for 2.4 vs 5 GHz, but in the end, this is the optimal configuration we landed on.

I was also surprised by how slow S3 was with a single download connection, but really fast when using aria2 to parallelize the download.

<comment> brian-armstrong Putting 2.4 and 5 onthe same SSID is a recipe for sadness. OSX does very poorly at deciding which band it should be on, and 2.4 is largely useless in most of SF. OSX also tends to be pretty sticky. The worst is that it uses RSSI as its metric rather than SNR.

<comment><USER34> I know that at least with my Ubiquiti access points I simply set them to prefer 5G and they will move clients over to that. I have had limited issues with roaming and such with that enabled.

<comment><USER2> The recommended setting for Band Steering is Balanced I believe. Probably depends on how many clients are connecting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I have gigabit internet at my house and a single WiFi access point. I am running dual SSID's one for 2.4GHz (don't use it), and one for 5Ghz (use it). The 2.4Ghz is set to auto-channel, but the 5Ghz I statically set to channel 161 (5Ghz, 80Mhz). It shows a Tx rate of 866Mbps, and on SpeedTest.net I get around 400ish Mbps up and down. Sometimes going further back into my apartment I have to connect and disconnect from WiFi in macOS.

Should I try using a lower 5Ghz channel such as 36 or 40? Won't that decrease overall throughput? My understanding was the higher the channel number on 5Ghz, the theoretically higher the throughput.

</comment><comment><USER36> I really wish MacOS would allow you to choose which band or BSSID to connect to.

Every so often I have to physically drag my laptop to the superior AP and restart wifi to get my laptop to stop connecting to the bad AP.

<comment><USER37> I believe Ubiquity has an option to force clients off of individual APs when their signal falls too low.

Bad for WiFi at distance but good for roaming within an office.

<comment><USER2> The setting is a mbps setting. If the negotiated rate falls below X, disconnect.

<comment><USER38> Nah it's RSSI-based.

<comment><USER2> thats not how they visually expose the setting in the gui. you choose a transmission rate floor, not a power amplitude minimum.

[https://i.imgur.com/imKDQ14.png](https://i.imgur.com/imKDQ14.png)

there is also a minimum RSSI, but its a per device setting, not a per site setting. [https://i.imgur.com/Z6Jsxjl.png](https://i.imgur.com/Z6Jsxjl.png)

Fast Roaming and 802.11 Data Rate Control are the way I would set this setting, vs trying to pick a manual dBm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I disagree on the channel width. Yes, a packet uses double the bandwidth, thus double the chance of collision. But also half the time so half the chance of collision.

And you can get more channels than 3, if you use 20Mhz channels, not the 22MHz channels by simply not using 802.11b. only use g&n and you get four channels.

And _do_ use the DFS channels, exactly because people like this author are not there to congest the channel. Just make sure you have non-DFS too while the DFS AP is in listen mode.

So this article is very much not written by an expert.

</comment><comment><USER40> Anyone have a recommendation of a company in the Bay area that solves this issue for startups? Someone I can just call, have onsite and get my people back to work in <5 business days?

<comment><USER2> do you mean strategy/planning/design/bestpractice or troubleshooting and implementation? the former can get complicated if you dont scope right, which is why business analysts and enterprise architects exist. just because youre a startup, doesnt mean you dont want to explore where components can be reused, how many places you need to log in to manage your company, how things compliment and overlap each other, and which vendor you should use for which service. good foresight and some lucky guesses can make your life easier later. when you buy three kitchen sinks, and they all offer payroll services, you have to pick which is authoritative. same with file services, corporate planning, financial forcasting.

where do you want to put your portfolio management, in something dedicated like clarizen, smartsheet, or wrike; somewhere simplistic like or asana or trello, with finance like anaplan. now that anaplan is on the table, it might change how you feel about adaptive insight. now you might need to replace your gl. losing adaptive insight for anaplan might push you away from workday and towards ultimate, because of the ownership structure (not at all a technical decision.) ten cascades later, you are asking yourself aryaka+hyperv+qumulo+simplivity+ruckus+salesforce+gsuite+adaptiveinsight+workday or velocloud+esxi+nasuni+nutanix+ubiquiti+anaplan+dynamics+office365teams. your either or's become complex and intertwined. you might think some of these decisions are just "IT/technical" but at the the end of the day every decision cascades into another, changing the scope of the next decision.

if my somewhat silly rant didnt make my point: too often companies want to outsource decision making that belongs in the c suite, that can give them a competitive edge, if done right, in house by magicians. you lose your magic and secret sauce by going with what everybody else does. its akin to whatsapp being erlang based vs going with metoo ruby. or how newspaper publishers have an edge when they also develop the hosting platform and license to others (vox chorus, gizmodo kinja, wapo arc, say tempest, bi viking, vs wordpress.)

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-do-the-biggest-companies- ke...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-do-the-biggest-companies-keep-getting- bigger-its-how-they-spend-on-tech-1532610001)

[http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/09/newsonomics-the- washington-...](http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/09/newsonomics-the-washington- posts-ambitions-for-arc-have-grown-to-a-bezosian-scale/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> > Multiple access points should share the same SSID. [...]. If you use > separate SSIDs [...] it will often lead to laptop users remaining marginally > connected to an AP they're barely within range of.

I constantly run into this issue in my home network. Is solving it really just a matter of reconfiguring the routers to share she same SSID or is there more to it?

<comment><USER42> One more thing is required - the different APs must all be on the same layer 2 network. 802.11 (WiFi) clients, by design, assume that all APs broadcasting the same SSID provide access to the same 802 (Ethernet & friends) network, and so assume their DHCP leases and TCP connections etc. will carry over. If you break that assumption then roaming will cause issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> > connection requires only 8 of the 16 physical connections to be made > successfully. A working 1000BASE-T (gigabit) connection requires all 16 of > 16!

Small error here, should be 4 of 8 and 8 of 8, respectively ;)

<comment><USER44> The sentence you copied started with an important qualifier: "Counting both ends of a cable,"

> If you're new to making cables

However, IMO if you're making your own _patch cables_ , you're so far on the wrong side of what's reasonable that I don't know what else to say. Punching down horizontal cabling to jacks makes sense; there's no other choice. Making patch cables is an enormous waste of resources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Never seen parallel s3 chunked downloading using `aria2c -x 16 -s 16 -k 4M -o ${OUTPUT_FILENAME} ${DOWNLOAD_S3_URL}`. Any drawbacks of this? Corruption?

</comment><comment><USER45> Cool! Building big-office/building-size WiFi networks had always been such a huge pain... Thank you for sharing your experience!

</comment><comment><USER46> On moving day ..? They rented office space and did not check the infrastructure? Glad you guys got power and running water.

</comment><comment><USER47> > Don't put 5 GHz on its own band.

Uhh, do they mean "don't put 5 GHz on its own SSID"?

<comment><USER8> I thought it was considered and GOOD idea to put the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz APs on different SSID is because some clients won't connect to the faster one automatically. Or maybe it was because all traffic slow down to the lowest level.

Is that no longer an issue? Or maybe these aren't problems as long as the 2.4 and 5 access points are physically separate.

<comment><USER48> Software has been written that will forcibly disconnect a 5GHz capable client that is found using 2.4GHz. How widely deployed this is, I don't know.

Avery did a talk about it (and other things) a couple years ago: [https://apenwarr.ca/diary/wifi-data- apenwarr-201602.pdf](https://apenwarr.ca/diary/wifi-data-apenwarr-201602.pdf)

<comment><USER49> What's the point of using one SSID for both frequencies if you make roaming between them impossible?

<comment><USER48> The AP can make the decision as to whether or not it's possible. It has data about how well the packets are getting through on both bands (as long as the device probes both bands). If it sees that 5GHz is working, but the device is using 2.4GHz, then it can disconnect it from 2.4GHz. But if 5GHz doesn't work, then it can allow the client to stay on 2.4GHz.

Clients do pretty stupid things, which is why the AP is the right place to control this sort of thing. (If you have more than 1 AP, then you have signal strength data from the other APs, and AP A can disconnect the client and force it to use AP B. This seems to work better than letting the client decide on its own.)

<comment><USER49> Sure, as long as it's using real signal data to make the decision then things are good.

<comment><USER48> Yup. I can certainly understand the hesitation because it's basically two computer programs both saying "I'm smarter than you! No _I 'm_ smarter than _you_!" which rarely ends well.

But I think since WiFi clients are so varied in their intelligence, the ideal thing is to build the roaming functionality into the AP... because at least you have the ability to fix it once and for all for everyone. Whether or not currently commercially-available hardware does that, I don't know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I run a pfsense + unifi network for the home and it's fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER51> Don't you need a central controller for seamless roaming?

</comment><comment><USER52> This is so boring it feels like a placed ad on hacker news.

<comment><USER53> Agreed. Can't understand the votes for this. This is literally IT 101.</comment></comment>