Mac keyboard shortcuts - <AUTHOR> https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236 <comment><USER2> It's shocking to me how far ahead MacOS is in terms of keyboard shortcuts compared to all other operating systems. There absolutely has been some people there who deeply care and think long and hard about how experts use their systems even if the actual main company doesn't care so much about that segment anymore.

Everything just makes sense logically and mnemonically like using shift to invert actions like cmd+z and cmd+shift+z rather than having ctrl+z and ctrl+y for undo/redo.

Then add to this the ability to rebind any shortcuts in any app at an OS level. It's a little frustrating because I'm trying to move my computing away from Apple because I'm no longer convinced they care about Macs in the long term but just really wish either Microsoft would have the guts to throw a lot of their legacy out and fix all this stuff or that there were some way to actually achieve this level of coherence across the whole system on Linux.

<comment><USER3> > It's shocking to me how far ahead MacOS is in terms of keyboard shortcuts > compared to all other operating systems.

I agree with your other points (including easier customizability), but have to completely disagree with this quoted sentence.

In my experience of using macOS/OS X/Mac OS X as well as Windows and Linux, macOS is one OS where a user cannot avoid using the mouse or trackpad!

On Windows (and mostly in Linux too), I can navigate the entire system, application menus and UI controls without touching the mouse or trackpad, relying only on the keyboard. The same on a Mac would be frustrating because keyboard navigation, especially for menus, is cumbersome. There are many Apple apps that cannot be completely controlled just using the keyboard either. There are many UI controls (including in dialogs) that just need a mouse or keyboard. When I find these instances, for me it's like death by a thousand paper cuts (note: I do have preferences set to navigate through all controls when hitting Tab).

If you disagree with my assessment, please try this using only the keyboard (no mouse or trackpad) and see how cumbersome it is (not to mention inconsistent in certain ways with the rest of the system too):

* Open System Preferences

* Open the Keyboard settings (just an example)

* Navigate from one tab to another within the settings

Of course, I'd like to know how something like this can be done faster using the keyboard.

<comment><USER4> _On Windows (and mostly in Linux too), I can navigate the entire system, application menus and UI controls without touching the mouse or trackpad, relying only on the keyboard._

It's also far more discoverable --- if you press Alt, accidentally or otherwise, the menu highlights and you can immediately use the arrow keys to navigate it. The underlined letters (sadly missing by default in later Windows versions) also make things more obvious.

There's also this oddity:

[https://superuser.com/questions/59007/enter-to-open-a- file-i...](https://superuser.com/questions/59007/enter-to-open-a-file-in- finder)

In just about every other graphical file explorer I've ever used, including the DOS ones, Enter opens the selected item. In the Mac Finder, it's _Command- O_. Yes, I get the fact that it's mnemonic with the others in that list, but it's completely contrary to the customary and rapidly learned behaviour of navigating using the arrow keys and Enter ---which is located very close to the arrow keys, and requires only one hand to operate easily.

<comment><USER5> macOS has discoverability features that obviate the need for the "press alt" feature. You don't even need to know what menu contains your target.

Command-? (command shift /) opens the help menu with fast incremental search through all menubar items, showing you the shortcut of what you're interested in, and also allowing you to tap return to substitute the shortcut.

<comment><USER6> It's a nice feature; a shame that it's not discoverable (i.e. something people would think to look for when they need it, if they hadn't used it before.)

Personally, if I were designing it, I wouldn't have exposed it as a separate bar in the Help menu of the app; but rather just made it an API provider to the OS (sort of like how drag-and-drop data sources work), such that the OS search (Spotlight) could be made a "universal" search, capable of searching _both_ the OS generally, _and_ the currently-focused application specifically.

While I'm dreaming, imagine if you could go into Mission Control and start typing, and it'd highlight/focus the set of windows that "have" the text you're looking for (even if not necessarily scrolled into their viewport.) Like the search you can do in Safari's "tab overview" by pressing Cmd+F there, but across all windows of all apps. Once you've narrowed it down to one window, press Enter and that window will pop to the foreground—perhaps with that text pre-selected as if you had done a Cmd+F search within the app.

Or, something even less likely to happen: imagine if you could move your mouse by searching across the corpus of text _visibly on-screen_ (presumably via interaction with the OS text-rendering layer), such that you could jump the cursor to a specific button; or even to the checkbox with a specific label.

<comment><USER7> _a shame that it's not discoverable (i.e. something people would think to look for when they need it, if they hadn 't used it before.)_

It's discovered when someone clicks on the "Help" menu at the top of every single screen. How much more discoverable can it be without resorting to Clippy-style intrusions?

<comment><USER8> There is nothing on the Help menu that indicates that the keyboard shortcut exists.

<comment><USER9> I thought the post was referring to the discoverability of the search feature.

No way to know that pressing Alt shows keyboard shortcuts on windows either.

<comment><USER10> You sure showed them!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The consistency of macOS keyboard shortcuts is one of the main reasons I have huge problems switching to Linux or Windows. Despite the non-trivial amount of tweaking and customization, I could never achieve the same level outside of macOS.

Just to name a few:

\- CMD+left/right: start/end of line

\- CMD+up/down: start/end of file

\- CMD+Shift+arrows: corresponding selection

\- Alt+left/right: word movement

\- Alt+Shift+arrows: corresponding word selection

\- CMD+a: select all

\- CMD+1,2,3: switch between tabs in browsers/iterm/IDEs/editors

(surprisingly and infuriatingly, this does not apply to native macOS tabs; e.g. in Finder Cmd+1/2/3 changes the view, but not tabs)

All that + the fact that clipboard, undo/redo, app and windows switching are ALL done via CMD makes it truly a modern hyper button. And you still have Control for Emacs bindings, which also work in most Cocoa text fields.

If you're interested, this [1] is one of the best attempts to bring macOS keybindings to Linux (in particular, Elementary OS). It's a set of settings for Autokey [2].

There is also Kinto [3], which solves one particular problem: copy-paste from terminal with consistent shortcuts.

1\. [https://github.com/roymckenzie/macos-autokey- phrases](https://github.com/roymckenzie/macos-autokey-phrases)

2\. [https://github.com/autokey/autokey](https://github.com/autokey/autokey)

3\. [https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto](https://github.com/rbreaves/kinto)

UPD: edit formatting

<comment><USER12> Not sure how different this is from Windows. Use home/end for start of line or ctrl+page up/page down to go to start of document. Ctrl+left/right moves by words. Holding shift selects while doing any of these. Ctrl+backspace/delete to delete by word instead of character. Ctrl+a to select everything. Ctrl+1,2,3 select tabs, Windows+1,2,3 selects apps. The main advantage I see on Mac is the separate ctrl/cmd keys that let you use ctrl+c/v for unix terminals. Other than that, I think it's whatever you're used to.

Of course some laptops don't have end/home/page up/page down keys and you have to avoid those.

<comment><USER13> It's not just that some laptops don't have them, it's also that they're always in a different place. Every time I use windows, I need to look at the keyboard to find home, end, etc. On any Mac I use I don't have to search.

<comment><USER12> It's true, non-Mac laptop keyboards are almost invariably awful layouts, often entirely lacking some useful keys.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I _highly_ recommend everyone learn the readline keys. They apply everywhere, in chrome, messengers, etc. They're the most valuable hotkeys that I've learned other than learning vim.

I set them as the Message Of The Day in my .zshrc (or .bashrc if you don't use zsh) until I memorized them. <c-f> is genric formatting for hotkeys, where c stands for control and you type "f" at same time.

IMPORTANT: For these to be level extremely effective you MUST REMAP your caps lock key to a control key. System Prefs > Keyboard > Modifier Keys button at bottom right

        # MOTD
        function echo_color() {
          local color="$1"
          printf "${color}$2\033[0m\n"
        }
        echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-f  Move forward"
        echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-b  Move backward"
        echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-p  Move up"
        echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-n  Move down"
        echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-a  Jump to beginning of line"
        echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-e  Jump to end of line"
        echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-d  Delete forward"
        echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-h  Delete backward"
        echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-k  Delete forward to end of line"
        echo_color "\033[0;90m" "c-u  Delete entire line"

Imagine you want to go up 2 lines to edit a HN comment. You could move your right hand to arrow key, or you can simply press caps with your pinky and type "p" with your other pinky. So much faster! Now you can see why these are so effective, and are really my favorite.

Note that as you start to use these you will be pleased to see they apply in a lot of applications. For example, type command+L in chrome to jump to the address bar and highlight it, now type "news" in the address bar. The autocomplete dropdown will pop up. Now type control+n (readline move down) and you can scroll through the list.

I'm obsessed with optimizations and efficiency and the 2 things mentioned above are the absolute gems. Also, I highly recommend: [https://medium.com/vunamhung/set-a-blazingly-fast- keyboard-r...](https://medium.com/vunamhung/set-a-blazingly-fast-keyboard- repeat-rate-3d122ddac536)

`0` is a little to fast for me so I prefer speed `1` and it's perfect.

<comment><USER15> Because there is no right ctrl on a mac keyboard, some of these shortcuts are inconvenient. For instance, ctrl-A. Do you use your pinky or your thumb?

<comment><USER16> Enter Karabiner-Elements, to bind right Alt to Control etc. It's one of the first pieces of software I install on a new Mac.

<comment> mark-wagner Not only that, if you hate the virtual escape key KE can make caps lock send escape if tapped and control if held. See [https://medium.com/@pechyonkin/how- to-map-capslock-to-contro...](https://medium.com/@pechyonkin/how-to-map- capslock-to-control-and-escape-on-mac-60523a64022b)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The main shortcut to remember is ⌘⇧? (or ⌘⇧/ on some layouts) which focuses Search under Help. It searches through all menu items and pressing down arrow will highlight it and show its shortcut. Pressing enter will execute it, but I prefer to cancel and use the direct shortcut to build up muscle memory.

<comment><USER18> I just tried this in Firefox and instead of focusing search in the menu bar, it took me to the Firefox help page on mozilla.org.

<comment><USER19> Hm, I can't reproduce that here. What version of macOS and Firefox are you running? Does the shortcut work properly in other programs?

<comment><USER18> ⌘⇧/ worked for me, like mentioned in the other comments. German keyboard. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A bit of a rant, but could be worth getting some input. Coming from mostly a Windows background, it feels like Mac's despite all these shortcuts, still don't have "alt-tab" working properly. The equivalent on Mac is Command-tab, but it doesn't work when going from a desktop app (ie, not maximized) to a maximized window. I can go the other direction just fine, and between maximized windows, but choosing a max window from a desktop app just does nothing.

Am I using it "wrong"? Should I only use maxed windows or only desktop un- maxed windows and not both at the same time? I've googled this multiple times and found little help.

<comment><USER21> "Command" \+ "~" will switch between windows of the app currently in focus.

Not the same behavior as Alt-Tab, but together with Command+Tab it works well.

If you hold Command down after doing Command+Tab, you can also use "~" and "Tab" to select the app to the left or right in the list of recent apps.

<comment><USER22> Thanks, I did not know about that last one. I've been instinctively using Cmd- Shift-Tab for that, which is a little awkward to execute.

<comment><USER23> I didn't know this either! I'll probably continue using shift as it's engrained in me from browsers where ctrl+tab and ctrl+shift+tab cycle through open tabs forwards and backwards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The existence of this thread, with no mention of the Touch Bar yet, but we're seeing keen enthusiasm over shortcuts with as much as 3 keyboard keys involved, demonstrates exactly how useless the gimmick of the Touch Bar is. It provides no snappiness in tactility or aurality, which is a key part of why keyboard shortcuts are so useful and memorable.

My Touch Bar even froze up the other day, though that was almost the first time it's happened in my 3 years of using 3 generations of Touch Bar MBPs. Long live the keyboard, and I hope Apple phases out the Touch Bar soon.

<comment><USER25> >The existence of this thread, with no mention of the Touch Bar yet, but we're seeing keen enthusiasm over shortcuts with as much as 3 keyboard keys involved, demonstrates exactly how useless the gimmick of the Touch Bar is.

For the vast majority of users, the shortcuts we all know and love might as well not exist.

>About 90 per cent of computer users don't use CTRL-F to search for a word - as they don't know such a keyboard shortcut exists, a Google survey found. The results stunned Google's Uber Tech Lead for Search Quality and User Happiness, Dan Russell.

"I think we just all assume that we all know it, but no one actually does."

[https://www.smh.com.au/technology/only-one-in-10-know- what-c...](https://www.smh.com.au/technology/only-one-in-10-know-what-ctrlf- does--here-are-shortcuts-you-should-know-20111130-1o69d.html)

This specific audience is exactly the wrong group to ask about the utility of the touch bar, since we are in the tiny minority who find traditional function keys to be useful.

<comment><USER26> Tech bubble and Google were similarly chagrined to realize normals used SERPs to navigate to web sites when organic results didn't have the site itself top of the list and users were ending up at places that confused them.

From Feb 15, 2010:

 _" Suddenly, the two worlds collided. The tech savvy ran head-on into the tech illiterate and mockery and disbelief started to overtake confusion as the general tone..."_

 _" While we mock those users, the simple fact is they haven't necessarily failed, something failed them. With all of our talk about the semantic Web and search engine optimization and tailoring search results to the individual user, there are thousands upon thousands of users performing the same simple search and following the same wrong road. If this were a standard traffic sign misdirecting this many people, it would have been pulled down long ago."_

// via readwriteweb.com: [https://web.archive.org/web/20100215124750/http://www.readwr...](https://web.archive.org/web/20100215124750/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_google_failed_internet_meme.php)

<comment><USER27> I'm a web programmer, and I use web search to navigate to my bank's site. Because there are probably hundreds of phishers waiting for me to mistype a letter.

<comment><USER28> My firefox just remembers what sites I visit frequently, so when I start typing my bank's URL, that's what I get when I press enter to autocomplete. This seems robust to me; either I get my bank's website every time, or I will get repeatedly scammed (unlikely).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The biggest keyboard ability that macOS gives me is built-in combining characters. alt + a bunch of different characters gives you the ability to write seamlessly in multiple languages (in my case English, French, German and Swedish) without having to memorise altgr character codes or pop up an input panel.

<comment><USER30> You need a lot of those to write fluently in English, too, thanks to all the loan words and phrases we have. Particularly French, but quite a bit of German, too. Having some common currency symbols available is nice. Enough punctuation to write the occasional quotation or passage in French or (especially in the US) Spanish. Even m-dash and a variety of other useful English punctuation and symbols are easier to comfortably type on macOS than anywhere else.

I'd buy Apple machines if I wrote for a living for that reason. Which is silly. You'd think every default English layout would be fairly good for _writing English_ , but I've not seen one nearly as good as Apple's. You _can_ use AltGr or US International, but they're both much worse for general-purpose English writing.

Why other operating systems have's stolen their alt/option-based typing layout is a mystery, to me. Nothing else I've seen comes close _for composing English-language text_. Certainly no other default layout.

[EDIT] to wit (I don't know how HN will handle some of these, I'll remove it if it's a disaster...):

• Bullets.

— m-dashes.

90°

Divers mots français, n'est pas difficile. « Avez-vous un résumé? » (sorry, my French is garbage).

Would you like your change in $, ¢, £, or €, or ¥?

¿Donde esta el baño? (my Spanish is even worse than my French, again, sorry)

∑ π ≤ ≥ and so on.

Straßburg

And on and on. Most of these I remembered despite rarely using them because the layout is semi-intuitive, and the couple I had to hunt for made some sense once I found them and if I had to use them more than a couple times a year, I'd remember. No modifier + 1234 garbage, no common keys used as deadkeys screwing with normal typing, and none of it gets in the way of programming. Every other OS, _please_ just copy this layout for your default English keyboard.

<comment><USER31> Agree. Dashes alone are worth the price of a MacBook Pro: <minus> for a hyphen, <option-minus> for an en-dash, <shift-option-minus> for an em-dash. Trivial to remember.

Just as good is the way Apple handles diacritics. You type a prefix keystroke for the diacritic, then follow it with the letter that's being modified: ö is <option-u, o>, ï is <option-u, i>, è is <option-grave, e>.

Most of the prefixes have easy-to-remember mnemonics: umlaut is <option-u>, grave is <option-grave>, tilde is <option-n> (for eñe, I suppose), but even hunting down these prefixes is fairly discoverable. After typing the prefix, a placeholder character is displayed in the text box showing the mark you've just entered, something like: ̲̈.

Then:

\- <escape> or moving the cursor with an arrow key enters the diacritic as standalone character (e.g. ¨ is <option-u, escape>).

\- <backspace> deletes the diacritic.

\- A character that takes the diacritic enters the modified character.

\- A character that does not usually take the diacritic enters the diacritic and the unmodified character (e.g. <option-n, 5> yields ˜5).

<comment><USER32> Another way to enter a diacritic as a standalone character: control-option-u for ¨.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> second--shift I must say, the single feature that made me switch to macOS (or that made me comfortable with the switch) was the built-in emacs keybindings. I mapped Caps Lock to Control and can finally stick with sane killing & yanking text, as well as jumping around (front,end,back/fwd a char or word).

Gnome/GNU/Linux provides a compatibility layer that isn't as good as macOS's emacs bindings.

<comment><USER33> I've gone further to support meta-keybindings for whole-word movement. Control-b goes back one character, option-b goes back a whole word. It's really easy to add and customize:

[http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/Site/Cocoa%20Text%20System....](http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/Site/Cocoa%20Text%20System.html)

<comment> second--shift Unless an app overloads the shortcut (looking at you Slack...) that seems to work by default for me: c-b and c-f behave as expected.

M-b and M-f work sometimes too, but these two get intercepted for ∫ and ƒ respectively in Slack, Firefox, etc.

<comment><USER33> M-b and M-f work for me in slack with my custom defaultkeybinding.dict. It only requires the app to use OS-native text inputs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> One item on that list I cannot understand:

Ctrl-Command-Power does an immediate reboot. Loses any unsaved documents. Doesn't shut down cleanly so potentially damages the filesystem. No "are you sure?". That's great: they thought the feature of "damage your computer" was so useful they should make a keyboard shortcut for it.

It's one key away from Alt-Command-Power which I use all the time to put the computer to sleep. So the feature is not only convenient, it's very "discoverable". I certainly discovered it yesterday.

Windows laptops solve the problem by making you hold down the power button for 5 seconds, to prevent you from doing it accidentally.

WTF Apple. That's just insane.

<comment><USER4> _It 's one key away from Alt-Command-Power which I use all the time to put the computer to sleep._

(Not a Mac user.) What does (short-)pressing the power button do? On Windows, the default action for that is usually sleep, and as you noted, a long-press is a hard poweroff (that's done in hardware directly, the short-press is just an ACPI signal to the software.)

<comment><USER34> The originally posted link states:

> Power button: Press to turn on your Mac or wake it from sleep. Press and > hold for 1.5 seconds to put your Mac to sleep. Continue holding to force > your Mac to turn off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Human Interface Guidelines for the keyboard: [https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface- guideline...](https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface- guidelines/macos/user-interaction/keyboard/). I wish more developers of cross- platform Mac apps (built with Electron, Mac Catalyst, etc) put these into practice. Any iOS developer whose apps will be on Macs with Apple Silicon should also read it.

<comment><USER36> This is my #1 gripe for cross platform apps. Just let me stay on home row and use existing muscle memory!

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Prior to me adopting Linux as my main OS, I used to love the keybindings on macOS. That many of the same bindings I used in Emacs, also worked in documents was amazing. That is except for Microsoft Office, which did not comply with the system binding. All too often I'd use Ctrl + a to go to the beginning of a line and start typing, and accidentally delete the entire content of the document.

<comment><USER38> I still accidentally try to use these on my linux machine, that's one thing I really do miss. One consolation is that I can still use them in my shell :) Weirdly enough I never accidentally use these shortcuts while using vim. I'd guess my subconscious is somehow aware of the contexts in which I'd use these shortcuts and is able to differentiate between my browser, the commandline and vim but not between using a browser on a mac vs. a linux machine.

<comment><USER39> I use nano exactly because I keep pressing ⌃E in vim ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> One thing I love about macOS terminal is the distinction between Command-C and Control-C in the Terminal. One copies a text under cursor and the other sends a SIGINT. I absolutely hate using Control-Shift-C to copy a text in Linux terminal and Control-C anywhere else.

<comment><USER32> While I like that distinction too, I wonder why Linux terminals can't tell whether something is currently selected or not, and have Control-C do the right thing depending on it?

I've been double-mapping Control-C on WSL for a few months (using ConEmu as a terminal) and it works surprisingly well for me.

<comment><USER41> Some terminals can, kitty for instance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I bought a MacBook Pro in 2012 and it has no symbol on the alt/option key or the control key. 8 years after coming from windows and I'm still confused when I see shortcuts with symbols.

⌥⌘v or ^⌘f

The symbols are unintuitive and a ton of online and in-app resources use only symbols. It's weirdly inconsistent to me that some keys are labeled with symbols, others are not, and they are still commonly used in apple documentation and elsewhere.

<comment> ben-schaaf Just wait till you come across ⎋, ↖, ⇞ or ⌤!

<comment><USER39> (Escape, home, page up, enter)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> [https://www.cheatsheetapp.com/CheatSheet/](https://www.cheatsheetapp.com/CheatSheet/)

Holding a button will bring up a list of available keyboard shortcuts.

</comment><comment><USER44> The thing I miss the most on macOS is the equivalent of Shift + Windows key ⊞ + right or left arrow, to move a window from one monitor to the other. This is useful for apps like Excel and MS Word, which can't be dragged if they're maximized.

I have set up a PC and a MacBook to share a screen, keyboard and mouse (KVM switch). If I'm switched to the PC and I want to look at a window on the Mac, and the Mac's window was on the shared monitor previously, there is no way to shift the window to the built-in Retina screen without switching back to the Mac, which has its own set of problems (I can't reliably switch back to the PC, despite using a top-of-the-line Aten KVM).

I have configured Shift-Command ⌘ + ← left arrow to move the window on the Mac, but it only works for apps with a Window option on the menu.

Some of my favourite keystrokes:

Finder:

        Command ⌘ + Shift + G: Explicitly paste path
        Right-click, Option ⌥ to "Copy as path"
        Command ⌘ + Shift + . (period): show hidden files
        Command ⌘ + ↑ (up arrow): Go up one level in the directories

Terminal:

        Command ⌘ + K: clear screen

Everywhere:

        F11: Hide all windows

<comment><USER45> Termial: ctrl + L also clears the screen

<comment><USER44> No Ctrl + L does not clear the screen. It merely inserts enough blank lines (CR) until the stuff is moved out of sight. It's still there if you scroll up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Mac keyboard shortcuts is one of a handful of features keeping me close to macOS instead of switching to Linux.

I started using Emacs when I was around 6 or 7 years old. CTRL-[aeknpbfl] etc. are hard-wired into my muscle memory, and they all work everywhere on every app when editing text. All the other shortcuts use the Command key. This brilliant distinction made the transition between FreeBSD's command line (what I grew up on) and the macOS GUI an easy one.

I've lost count of the times I've had to use a Windows machine where I've hit `ctrl-a`, started typing, and lost my document. (Just an undo away, but still.) So frustrating.

I recently discovered the KDE desktop. I thought, "oh, this is pretty and really customizable! I could switch to this."

And then I learned there was no easy way to use Emacs keybindings everywhere. (Gnome has an option to do this and it works pretty well.)

If anyone knows of a way to get most of the core Emacs keybindings in KDE, please let me know.

</comment><comment><USER47> Cheatsheet is helpful

[https://mediaatelier.com/CheatSheet/](https://mediaatelier.com/CheatSheet/)

I customized the theme to dark once.

<comment><USER48> I have this running, but almost never use it (it usually pops up while I'm holding cmd and e.g. reading the last few words on a website before I hit cmd+w).

In what situations do you consciously decide to open cheatsheet and learn some new shortcuts related to the app?

<comment><USER47> I don't know what to say, I almost never use it conciously. If I hang in doubt on cmd it pops.

Not working on big sur right now though

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Some of my favorites are pretty far down the list:

I was using Control-A and Control-K a lot on the command line to jump to the beginning of the line, and then erase the rest of the line and tried it once somewhere else and it worked! The other way to do this same sequence (Cmd- right Cmd-Shift-Left)doesn't work in the terminal, and would require me to take my hands off the home row to use the arrow keys (until recently [1] )

Option+arrow to jump by a word is also handy, but I almost never land exactly where I want relative to punctuation the first time.

[1] I am currently using a Kinesis Freestyle Pro with arrows mapped to right- spacebar + [IJKL]. They are still working out some issues for me where it fails if I press Command before Fn (mapped to right space bar). If anyone has a split keyboard recommendation where this would currently work without the order dependency issues with the modifier keys please let me know!

<comment> second--shift > I was using Control-A and Control-K a lot on the command line to jump to the > beginning of the line, and then erase the rest of the line and tried it once > somewhere else and it worked!

This is the behavior of emacs; I'm very happy as I spend most of my time in a terminal window that I can use c- shortcuts both in emacs and in the OS natively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> My favorite Mac shortcut is now option-command B, which I connected to an automator app which changes my external monitor brightness. It calls ddcctl which is a command line script which communicates over the displayport connection to control the monitor. This is a huge improvement over the annoying on screen monitor menu!

<comment><USER51> This sounds like something I'd find very useful, do you mind sharing a link on how to set this up or where I can find more information on this? Thanks!

<comment><USER50> I did this before learning about other tools! But you can download ddcctl from GitHub, then create an automator "quick action" with no input from any application. Then I created a flow of "Ask for text" (brightness), "run shell script" (/path/ddcctl -d 1 -b "$1/"

Once you have that saved you can go to your Mac keyboard settings and add this new automator app as a new shortcut!

Or, use an existing app :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Tangential to the topic: is there somewhere I can buy keyboard stickers with the macOS shortcut symbols on them? I couldn't find them when I looked in the past, and it is frustrating looking at my external keyboard (or even many internal keyboards) and trying to figure out which key matches which funky symbol.

<comment><USER53> Truly.

The fact that menus use all these crazy arcane symbols for keys like Esc, Del, Tab, and so on, but they're not on the keyboard itself, has always baffled me.

Cmd, Opt, and Ctrl all have symbols on the keyboard. For the rest of the keys, why don't menus just literally spell out "Esc", "Tab", "Del"?

<comment> 1-more Option and Control didn't even have these symbols until pretty recently, maybe 5ish years? Annoying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I dislike the way mac makes almost all shortcuts start with the apple key.

Granted windows has a few, they are mostly OS specific, like windows-e to open explorer. on OSX even something as standard as ctrl-c / ctrl-v uses the cmd key.

I have much less difficulty switching between windows and ubuntu than to mac when it comes to shortcuts.

<comment><USER55> Also most Linux/Windows shortcuts feel way more natural than on macOS

For a new tab in chrome Ctlr + T is easily done on Linux/Windows. On macOS for Cmd + T you need to weirdly bend your thumb under your hand while also hitting T somehow.

Or you need to move your entire hand 2 columns of keyboard layout to the right to be able to hit cmd with your pinky.

<comment><USER56> In this forum you're going to get very very downvoted with anything that goes against Apple.

Let's see.

Unix - Ctrl + c

Linux - Ctrl + c

Win - Ctrl + c

Mac - Option + c

Clearly the standard and natural way is the Apple way of doing things...

<comment><USER57> Got nothing to do with it. Computing wasn't invented in 1990.

Ctrl-c/v is a essentially a kludge introduced into Windows because the IBM Model M keyboard and similar didn't have a Meta key. It wasn't until Windows 3.1 that we see Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V being a 'thing'. Before then it was all about IBMs CUA. Apple had CMD-C/V/X on the Lisa 9 years before. I'm not sure what Xerox did on the Alto or if it even used keyboard shortcuts, but they did refer to the operation as Copy/Paste (coined by Larry Tesla who went on to work at Apple).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> A related Mac feature is that you can remap keys at the OS level so that the mapping works across any keyboard or app:

[https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2450...](https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2450/_index.html)

I have Caps Lock remapped to Backspace, even when I don't have a programmable keyboard plugged in. I know Caps to Esc is also very common for Vim users, but I find I make typos a lot more often than I use Vim.

Using launchd you can even do this before login so that it works in the login window.

</comment><comment><USER58> I love osx but the world needs another company that makes great hardware and combines it with a Unix based operating system. I would love to see some competition for Apple.

</comment><comment><USER59> I was forced to use OSX due to some.unlycky life circumstances and I found it to actually be a half way decent OS! Having used Linux since I was 11, it took surprisingly little tweaking before I felt at home.

However: I had serious issues with keyboards. Alt gr (right alt, used for typing a lot of special signs useful for programming. Brackets, @ and such) stopped working more times than I care to count. I ended up having to use karabiner to work around it. There was an issue where the paragraph key magically disappeared. That would have been fine, if it hadn't been my Emacs leader key. I have had issues with some keyboard shortcuts just magically not work due to me using Swedish as a system language, which is something I did not have to deal with in any other OS. It just made the whole experience feel rather unpolished.

Then Catalina came and I switched back to Linux. Now my 2015 iMac is just collecting dust, and since they removed support for target display mode I can't even use it as a second display, which is sad since the 4k 500candela display is the only thing I really miss.

</comment><comment> jorge-fundido Killer keyboard feature for me is ~/Library/KeyBindinds/DefaultKeyBinding.dict - _all_ text controls honor that. Very nice way to get basic emacs shortcuts defined. I've yet to find something half as simple & effective as that in linux desktop land, probably because of the variety of gui toolkits that isn't present in osx.

<comment><USER27> > _all text controls honor that_

Except Qt apps, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Does not mention:

\- CTRL + CMD + ALT + SHIFT + W = Generates 300MB WiFi diagnostics file (as of Catalina)

\- CTRL + CMD + ALT + SHIFT + . = Generates System debug file

</comment><comment><USER61> One strange behavior is that in Finder (in list view for instance), page up and page down (or Fn-Down, Fn-Up) move the view up and down, but the selected item remains unchanged so that hitting the arrow keys returns the view back to the selected item. In order to select a different item, I either use the mouse/trackpad, hold down the arrow key to my desired item, or press Option+Up/Down to move the selection to the beginning or end of the list of files. I don't know of a way to move the cursor by one page view.

It's a behavior that I can get used to, but what I find inconsistent is that the behavior is different in iTunes. It seems like in iTunes, the only way to move the selection is either arrow keys or the mouse. Option+Up/Down doesn't do what it does in Finder.

</comment><comment><USER36> Another tip if you are mousing through a native app's menus in the menu bar, holding ⌘, ⌥, ^ and ⇧ (or combinations of them) will show you the alternate options in that menu that those extra keys in the combo perform.

One of my favorite things about the macOS shortcut system is this idea of variations on operations using variations on shortcuts. They've kept the system remarkably consistent.

Last tip is that if you want a quick way to type keyboard shortcuts, set up keyboard text expansions for things like "commandkey", "optionkey", "shiftkey" etc that resolve to those symbols. I found it slightly fast than bringing up the emoji picker with ^ + spacebar and typing e.g. "place name" for ⌘. (What is the icon for spacebar??)

</comment><comment><USER62> This page is terrible as a documentation/reference source. It's information is indexed by keyboard shortcut instead of the other way around, by functionality.

Intead of:

 __CMD + V __: Paste stuff

It should be:

 __Paste stuff __: CMD + V

Description of what it means to "paste stuff"

<comment><USER63> You're overthinking it. What more do you want from "paste stuff?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> My 'favourite' MacOS pain is Shift-Command- left/right arrow when renaming files in finder

Instead of selecting the whole filename as in documents it switches tab

After nearly a decade of using MacOS full time, it still catches me out every time

<comment><USER65> shift-option-up/down does what you're talking about

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> > Control-K: Delete the text between the insertion point and the end of the > line or paragraph.

There's also "Command+Delete" that deletes the text between the insertion point and the _start_ of the line or paragraph.

<comment><USER39> ⌃K actually _kills_ the text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I need a keyboard shortcut expert to help me out with something specific in Safari.

If I type a term into the URL bar, the bottom list of suggestions is for 'Bookmarks and History'. If arrow down to select one of these, it places it in the URL bar, but the only text I can edit here is the title of the page, I can't actually edit the URL. Is there a way to make the URL here editable without actually visiting the page first? I could just press enter then Command-L to edit it, but I'm looking for a way to append the URL first.

</comment><comment><USER68> Thanks for posting this. I had no idea files could be moved without the mouse!

      Option-Command-V: Move: Move the files in the Clipboard from their original location to the current location.

</comment><comment><USER69> Using most of these on a daily basis. It's great that Apple paid attention to this type of requirement from power users. One shortcut I didn't know about though: option-command-eject (my bluetooth Apple keyboard does have an eject button on it) allows me to put the Mac to sleep within 0.1 seconds. When logging off in the evenings I've always used the menu bar's  -> Sleep, and then carefully not moving the mouse afterwards so that I inadvertently wake it up again.

</comment><comment><USER70> Cmd+Shift+<square_brackets> \- i.e '[' and ']' switch to the previous and next tab respectively

I use this a lot, but is missing from this page. I'm pretty sure I didn't have to customise it in the settings myself. Not sure how I stumbled on this, but it works for me in all applications, native or electron (VS code is the only one I have installed).

</comment><comment><USER71> One of the best things I love about macOS is the sheer beautiful consistency, which although not perfect, is a breath of fresh air compared to Windows.

App-level shortcuts almost always use the Command key, global shortcuts generally use Control, and Option/Shift are modifiers.

On Windows sometimes it's Control, sometimes Alt, and sometimes the same task has different shortcuts in different apps.

<comment><USER72> What? I think macs being more consistent is in your head. It suffers the exact same issue as Windows and Linux. The issue can't be solved since app developers choose which the shortcuts and not os developers.

<comment><USER71> > _I think macs being more consistent is in your head._

I've used both.

> _It suffers the exact same issue as Windows and Linux._

The issue is worse on Windows.

> _The issue can 't be solved since app developers choose which the shortcuts > and not os developers._

Wrong. macOS/AppKit/Cocoa define a lot of standard menu items and shortcuts and provide them to all native apps "for free".

If you look at the shortcuts list for a random Windows app, some shortcuts will use Alt, some will use Control. On macOS, almost all shortcuts use Command, and Option/Control are only modifiers.

Finally, on macOS, you can define custom shortcuts and edit existing shortcuts for _any app_ , from the global Keyboard Preferences.

And you can add your own menu items as well via Automator etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> It would interest you to know that the emacs keybindings in MacOS came from NeXTSTEP. See Figure 4-9 on page 4-7 of [http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/Software/OPENSTE...](http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/Software/OPENSTEP/802-2110.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER74> Another thing that Mac does well is the Swedish layout. ~ [] | \ {} are IMO much better placed on the Swedish Mac layout than in Linux or Windows. In some games in windows I can't even bring up the terminal with ~ as it requires a space to be typed in after so the game doesn't register it as a keystroke. Wtf.

<comment><USER75> Funny. They are terrible on Danish and Norwegian layouts. Like, the pipe is command+i and I always have to look up square and squiggly parens. I think they are on top of normal parens .. or next to. But they are not indicated on the keyboard and they take a modifier, but if you use the wrong modifier, you'll change tab in your browser window. ~ is also not printed on the keyboard and takes a modifier, causing a clash with the command-~ shortcut for changing between windows in the same application.

I am utterly unimpressed and I want to sell my laptop just to buy a new one with US layout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Shout out to Cheat Sheet. Hold down Command for a few extra seconds and an overlay pops up showing you all the keyboard shortcuts for whatever app is in focus. [https://www.cheatsheetapp.com/CheatSheet/](https://www.cheatsheetapp.com/CheatSheet/)

</comment><comment><USER77> I was surprised to discover by accident that many of these also work on an iPad with the smart keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER78> I've been Windows user all my life and recently got to use Macbook.

So far I've been unable to find a key shortcut to minimize ALL open windows (like windows key + M in Windows). It is very annoying.

Also, coming from Windows, cut copy paste operation is also annoying on Macbook.

</comment><comment><USER79> Since the first Macintosh was released in 1984, Apple has continued to add keyboard shortcuts. The list of keyboard shortcut has now become ridiculously long. By the way. Many of this shortcuts also work on iPad with a physical keyboard connected to it.

</comment><comment><USER80> One shortcut that I actually miss from Windows is the one that effortlessly moves windows left and right between monitors/screens.

I use Divvy to tile windows, but I really liked being able to flick a window very quickly over to another screen.

<comment><USER81> I made an app called Window Flicker that may suit your needs! [https://danielde.dev/window-flicker/](https://danielde.dev/window-flicker/)

Would love to hear what you think

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> One keyboard shortcut I haven't been able to find/create is one that moves my mouse cursor from one monitor to another.

I often need to move my cursor from my third monitor on the left all the way to my monitor on the right.

Anyone has a way of doing this?

</comment><comment><USER83> there is a key to "simulate" the left click of the mouse/touchpad (without 3rd app)?

i have my left click touchpad broken and i have problem with long-press mouse actions like moving files etc...

<comment><USER84> There's an "enable dragging" option in the Accessibility settings, which lets you double tap on an object to start a drag without needing to use the physical button. You can choose whether the drag ends when you pick up your finger, or if it continues until canceled with a tap. You can also set it to start a drag with a three finger gesture instead of a double tap with one finger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Such an exhaustive list... yet it omits one of my favorite timesaving shortcuts. In Terminal, option + click will move your terminal cursor to anywhere you want in the current line.

</comment><comment><USER65> By far the most important keyboard shortcut in my work life is "shift-esc", which marks all channels as read in Slack.

Not a system-wide one, of course, but very useful.

</comment><comment><USER86> MacOS is bloated and glitchy nowadays.

But I keep coming back to MacOS. It's funny but the No.1 reason for me is the readline shortcuts.

The No.2 reason is rendering.

</comment><comment> jeppesen-io Until you can move windows/apps with the keyboard like chromeos, windows and most linux wms, I'm going to be frusterated.

</comment><comment><USER87> A bit off-topic but, I've found I never use minimize, what's the use case for that?

</comment><comment><USER88> Seriousish question: Is there any linux distro (or option) to use Mac style shortcuts?

<comment><USER89> Not that I've found. You can mostly do it with KDE and a lot of shortcut setting, but there are a lot of unconfigurable programs hardcoded to use Windows shortcuts. Web browsing is a big one; Firefox used to let you do it be setting ui.key.accelKey, but it's been buggy since the Quantum transition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> Shift-Cmd-. shows hidden files in Finder. Also works in file selection dialogs.

</comment><comment><USER91> Wow, I am surprised at how many I knew, and how many I didnt know!

</comment><comment><USER92> > Command-P: Print the current document

Can we please remove this one ...

<comment><USER93> Why is that?

<comment><USER92> 1\. Bringing up the print dialogue is a slow process so its annoying when you hit cmd-p on accident 2\. Print operation is done very rarely and not frequently invoked in the middle of a keyboard-centric workflow -- how often would it not be more or less equivalent keyboard interruption to use the Print Menubar Action vs cmd-p? 3\. It would be nice to steal the shortcut from all apps and remap it to something useful ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> They're pretty good but try toggling back and forth between two windows from different applications (NOT ENTIRE APPLICATIONS JUST TWO DIFFERENT WINDOWS)

</comment><comment><USER95> oh snap command shift fiiivvvvee, that's a new one for me.

</comment><comment><USER96> Can't wait to read the n-gate summary for this post.

</comment><comment><USER97> How do you activate the top system menu bar, to navigate through it via keyboard only?

I always thought Mac designers were retarded for not making this critical feature obvious.

Another peeve is the lack of dedicated keyboard keys. Like the printscreen key. On Mac you have to press something like Command-shift-4.

Often times I notice, the Mac designers try to simplify things for the sake of design, but they end up making the damn thing harder to use.

</comment><comment><USER98> It is curious how something like this gets published with inaccuracies like that Command-L will create an alias in Finder, when it is actually Control- Command-A.

<comment><USER35> I emailed Greg Joswiak about this (it's cool how some of their leadership will respond to strangers' emails: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24055149](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24055149)) and he said the command had previously changed. It'll be fixed soon on the site.

Are there other inaccuracies?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Tambayar.com, the easiest way to get real-time opinions - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Tambayar will soon be making mobile apps available on Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. Stay tuned and provide as much feedback as you'd like in the meantime.</comment>


Fast Forward - Provisioned IOPS for EBS Volumes - <AUTHOR> http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2012/08/fast-forward-provisioned-iops-ebs.html

<comment><USER2> From the previous company I worked at (which used AWS infrastructure exclusively) and many others I've spoken to, IOPS were the leading issue when it came to AWS usage. Many insane solutions were proposed (such as RAID across multiple EBS just to maintain consistent disk performance), but for most use cases the only guaranteed solution was to move everything to RAM and assume disk is either stunted or useless.

My guess is that in the coming weeks, the infrastructure of the companies I spoke to will change substantially. The SSD instances are now the goto solution if you have a server up 24/7 and (Provisioned IOPS / EBS-Optimized instances) are for when you need burst infrastructure with good disk performance.

There are gaps in the AWS armour, but those gaps have been filled in at a consistent rate.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand why you think utilising RAID across EBS volumes is insane. For years, if people needed more IOPs than a single drive could deliver, they utilised RAID to acheive it. How is this any different?

<comment><USER4> Because EBS has astonishing variance in its response times that cause the entire raidset to have very inconsistent performance. Numbers here: [http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2011/02/21/death- match-e...](http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/2011/02/21/death-match-ebs- versus-ssd-price-performance-and-qos/)

In order for raid-on-ebs to truly perform well you have to setup per-volume monitoring that ejects volumes from the raidset (and runs in degraded mode) when they start performing 10x worse, and then rebuilds the back on to it (or a new one) later. It becomes a rather arcane wizard work contraption of on- the-fly raid config changes, which IMHO qualifies as "insane".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pure cost comparison:

Let's ignore the $0.10/GB-month vs. $0.125/GB-month storage pricing as it is negligible compared to IOP costs.

Standard EBS volumes average 100 IOPS with best effort bursting.

A provisioned EBS volume at 100 IOPS would cost $0.10/IOPS-month * 100 IOPS = $10/month

A standard EBS volume cost would be $0.10/1000000 IOP (an equivalent of $0.26/IOPS-month). The breakeven with the provisioned EBS occurs at 38% utilization (38 IOPS), meaning that provisioned EBS is cheaper above this point.

To match the performance of a 4 volume standard EBS RAID (400 IOPS), you would have a minimum fixed cost of $40/month/GB, vs. the current $0.40/month/4GB + variable IOP pricing.

Provisioned EBS makes sense for scenarios with sustained high IOPS utilization as you get consistent performance with possible lower total costs. For less IO-intensive loads, using a RAID of standard volumes will be more cost- effective.

<comment><USER6> The way they calculate it is a little misleading.

From AWS[1]: Provisioned IOPS is charged by the amount you provision in IOPS (input/output operations per second) X the amount of days you provision for the month.

If I understand the above correctly, the estimate of $10/month would actually be:

$0.10 * 30 days * 100 IOPS = $300/month (In USEAST)

[1] <http://aws.amazon.com/ebs/>

<comment><USER7> _the amount of days_

They've fixed that, it now says "the percentage of days".

<comment><USER6> Thank you for pointing that out, and kudos to Amazon for updating their doc. They have an easy to understand sample calculation up now as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can't wait for RDS to plug into this.

<comment><USER9> I also wish they announced when RDS might start running off of these. In order to achieve higher IOPS i've provisioned 350GB of disk for my ~50GB database. I came across a rumor that after 300GB of space, AWS enables striping and figured it was worth the marginal extra cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> $0.10 per IOPS-month? Is that per volume or does volume size enter into the equation? I.e. would two 10GB 100IOPS volumes cost twice as much as one 20GB 100IOPS volume?

<comment><USER11> I would assume it's per-volume as 2 10GB 100IOPS volumes would be 200 IOPS, while a single 20GB volume would only be 100 IOPS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hopefully this shuts up people always complaining about EBS...

<comment><USER13> As someone whose team used the beta of this product - No.

<comment><USER14> As in no, you didn't consistently get within 10% of the IOPS you provisioned at their promised 99.9%? Or were there other problems?

I'd be pretty surprised if they were going live with this without being able to deliver, especially since this is likely to be _very_ popular with people using EBS for databases under fairly consistent loads. It's one thing for I/O to suck when they're not actually promising anything, but it's quite another when you're very specifically paying for a performance guarantee...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 2012 and unviewable on my mobile sad face

<comment><USER16> Strange, it works fine in chrome for Android.

<comment><USER15> Ah I should've tried that, good tip.</comment></comment></comment>


Make Linux Fast Again - <AUTHOR> https://make-linux-fast-again.com/ <comment><USER2> Are all these really need? According to this [https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux...](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?h=v4.19.43&id=8cb932aca5d6728661a24eaecead9a34329903ff) to me sounds like only "mitigations=off" is the one is needed, no?

<comment><USER2> By checking sysfs reporting, the mitigations=off and all those from URL above ends up in same results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> PRs accepted : [https://github.com/jcelerier/jcelerier.github.io/blob/master...](https://github.com/jcelerier/jcelerier.github.io/blob/master/index.html)

:-)

</comment><comment><USER4> The title makes me want to up-vote but when I click through the link all I see is "noibrs noibpb nopti nospectre_v2 nospectre_v1 l1tf=off nospec_store_bypass_disable no_stf_barrier mds=off mitigations=off"

<comment><AUTHOR> It's the kernel flags that you use for disabling all the Spectre/Meltdown/whatever mitigations that are slowing Linux down by a lot.

For single-user computers this is a useful and sensible option.

<comment><USER5> Be aware of web browsers though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How much will I gain on my desktop if I set those? What do they do individually?

</comment><comment><USER7> To what kernel release(s) do the flags apply?

<comment><USER2> Need to check in your distro kernel. For example, current kernel on Linux Mint (is Ubuntu based distro, so I guess Ubuntu as well) has this changelog: [http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/changelogs/pool/main/l/linux/li...](http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/changelogs/pool/main/l/linux/linux_4.15.0-50.54/changelog) and as you see, it is backported and supported.</comment></comment>


Russia and China teaming up to build floating nuclear power plants - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/29/us-russia-rosatom-idUSKBN0FY1IB20140729 <comment><USER2> So that when we have another leak, it will be even more devastating</comment>


Private voice recognition running locally in browser - <AUTHOR> https://picovoice.ai/demos/porcupine_wasm_smart_lighting.html <comment><USER2> This is very cool. I'm not sure what the path is from "import this github library into your code, listen for phrase 'restart hermes nodes 1 through 4' and trigger appropriate actions" but this is still exciting to see this on- device voice recognition ported to so many platforms and with basic documentation for each.</comment>


Show HN: Online family tree maker built with React - <AUTHOR> http://plantafamilytree.com/ <comment> git-pull Example idea: Consider an example of a filled tree to show off. For instance, _Game of Thrones_

Pivot idea: Consider using the chart tool to map out relations of characters in stories, TV shows, legal cases, etc.

Service integration (client): Consider if your tree could fit in as a GSuite add-on: [https://developers.google.com/apps-script/add- ons/](https://developers.google.com/apps-script/add-ons/)

Service integration (host): create REST API's, or language libraries for people to use your tool programatically

Viral idea: Consider offering family trees for free so Wikia pages can link to them

Viral idea: Consider an embeddable app with zooming/panning that media websites and pay a monthly fee to integrate

Viral idea: Consider an import/export JSON schema users can use to share their graphs

<comment> crooked-v If you really want to stress-test an arbitrary family tree documenter, try putting the X-Men in it.

[http://img13.deviantart.net/4a05/i/2011/253/c/b/x_men_family...](http://img13.deviantart.net/4a05/i/2011/253/c/b/x_men_family_tree_modified_by_devilkais-d49gxw6.jpg) (and that's just the tip of the iceberg!)

Real family tress don't have to worry about time travel or cloning, of course, but that crazy stuff does actually serve as a reasonably good proxy of some of the strangest family trees out there (medieval European nobility, extended families with multiple divorces and remarryings, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I love family trees: they're interesting, complex, data-driven, and beautiful. There are some very challenging decisions you need to make to make a tree readable, like whose ancestors to show, whose children, and how far back. To give you a sense, I have ~3,500 people in my family tree. I want different trees to show, say: a) all descendants of a root ancestor, or b) all of my ancestors.

This is reasonably easy to use and build out a simple tree. Here are two opportunities:

1) There are some UI areas that aren't totally intuitive (e.g., double click to add name), and generally it feels to "clicky" (e.g., too many clicks to get to the action I want). I think your goal is super-simple and "delightful" vs. full-featured.

2) The 1:1 relationship lines get complex, as _every_ parent is linked to _every_ child (so you end up with 2n lines that all overlap).

<comment><USER3> This is very interesting insight! May I ask which software or service you use to keep track of your family tree?

<comment><USER2> Ancestry.com has the best UI and is the "easiest" to use that I've found. You can use it for free to just build your tree, but you'll feel like a second- class citizen. Their data sources are very good and easy to use, but you pay out the nose for them. (Obligatory note that I very much disagree with how Ancestry.com has set themselves up to collect money off the backs of researchers who often work for free, and will put your inputs behind their paywall.)

So Ancestry.com is a good place for research and for family tree management. I've set up the second half of my stack to generate HTML files, which I keep (publicly) on my personal site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Rather than clicking the plus to add a person, I think a more intuitive action would be to double-click empty space. Whether or not you change that, the 'click + to add a person' doesn't work - when you put the word 'click' on a page, people will click that and not pay attention to the rest of the directions. Even if they did, it's a little confusing because 'click + to add a person' isn't clear. You need to be more specific. 'click the plus button to add a person' and then have the plus button move so people see it.

<comment><USER5> A simple guided tutorial, similar to the beginning of most mobile games, could help here. You literally walk the user through the process of adding one person (themself most likely) and then let them grow from there. With a 'skip' option of course, if they don't want or need their hand held.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I've tried to make onboarding easier by showing the popup tooltips, but I guess it needs more work

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When you launch the person dialog, focus on the Name input, then when they click enter, save and close the dialog. You are also missing out on a number of fields when creating a family tree (gender and maiden name come to mind fight off the bat).

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been a user and fan of Geni.com for several years now. I wish they'd update their interface to allow some friendliness like this.

<comment><USER8> Same. I've considered making my own interface for building family trees, as an exercise in UX design. But I'd want it to plug directly into Geni. You can't beat the feature to find other users' trees that match yours. Find long-lost cousins and great-great-great-whatevers that you didn't know you had.

<comment><USER7> I've considered multiple times writing an importer/exporter against their API so that I can use Gramps[1] to manage the rest of it.

[1]: [https://gramps-project.org/introduction-WP/](https://gramps- project.org/introduction-WP/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hey, sounds cool, let me just upload my GED^ file...

Ups, no upload feature (yet) - That would make it much more usable.

(^) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDCOM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDCOM)

</comment><comment><USER10> Good effort. I tried making something similar years ago, and it was hard (the visual side, not the data side).

I don't know what your goals are with this though. I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but to 'genealogy enthusiasts', ie the people regularly spending money in this domain, your website is no more than a toy. In fact, I'm pretty sure that Ancestry.com offers this same tree building functionality for free (when you pay for a subscription with them, it is for the research capability, not the data entry capability).

</comment><comment><USER11> I've searched my entire life for a way to write simple family trees with custom data, fast, with or without a lot of information.

Then I've come up with this: [https://github.com/fiatjaf/rel](https://github.com/fiatjaf/rel), which is a simple way to create triples, then render dot graphs, or any template actually, with them. The database is actually a bunch of YAML files representing each node in the graph (the relationships are stored in the nodes' files also).

</comment><comment><USER12> $4.99 a month seems a bit steep for what looks like a very basic UI with no features like multi-user editing or photos or anything other than a node-link builder.

It's still a nice UI for the primary task.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'll admit that I spent a little too much time on this trying to create the most interconnected tree I could imagine, just to see how many "my descendent is also my ancestor" connections are possible. The flexibility of this is pretty impressive.

</comment><comment><USER14> Beautiful job.

There might be some people posting "why didn't you just..." but I used this to show my kids their family tree and they really liked it.

Freeloaded though, so you need a way to compell people to pay (say extra large posters of the tree).

</comment><comment><USER15> Post to r/genealogy as there are requests from time to time for tree makers.

Fyi. The church of latter day saints (Mormons) have familysearch.org which has circles to show generations. The church has for decades housed and built the largest library for finding relatives. I believe this is because once you enter the church you can "save" all your deceased relatives going back as far as you can.

The tree is really not important to genealogy nuts....

</comment><comment><USER16> I really like the overall approach - definitely a nice friendly way to edit a tree.

The standard way for family trees to link children with parents is through the relationship of the parents. Did you avoid doing that on purpose?

The problem with having a separate parent/child link for every parent/child relationship is that it gets very crowded if the parents have several children.

<comment><USER11> I don't have experience in this area, but wouldn't the standard way get pretty messy in modern relationships, in which people have multiple children with multiple different alternating parents?

<comment><USER16> I assume you want to represent all of the relationships on the tree in any case, so I think minimising the number of required parent-child lines would actually make representing modern relationships less messy.

You'd have a pink relationship line for each partnership (that will be the same and just as messy in both approaches)

Then you'd have one child line from each relationship line to each of the children that came from that relationship, rather than two for each child.

So in a situation where Angus had 2 children with each of Beatrix and Chloe, you would have two child lines from the Angus-Beatrix relationship line and two from the Angus-Chloe line, rather than a total of 8 lines to show all the parent-child relationships in your current approach.

If Chloe also had two children with David then your approach would add a relationship line and another four child lines whereas the standard approach would just add the relationship and two more child lines.

<comment><USER11> I was thinking about not having relationship lines or even the concept of "relationship" at all. Relationships don't have any meaning concerning family nowadays, only kinship has.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I couldn't download the tree i just drew. It gave me an 'unknown error while downloading' Chrome on Google Pixel

</comment><comment><USER18> Coincidentally, I was talking to my father about getting his family tree work 'stored' in some digital format for future generations.

It struck me that a simple directory structure with info about each person in each directory, text files with info in, and then tar'd up would be about the most future-proof format you could get.

Anyone else thought about this?

<comment><USER2> That might be the "easiest", but it's not the most portable, and would be a nightmare to navigate. I'd recommend he work in a software package that can export to GEDCOM. That's a structured data format used by genealogists to track relationships and metadata. The current version is 21 years old, and the original spec was designed in 1984. It's robust and industry-standard. Every single genealogical product worth its salt will be able to work with that format (and export to it).

I hate to recommend them, but ancestry.com has one of the best interfaces in a SaaS product, with a ton of data on the back-end if you are doing _research_. An actual application (Family Tree Maker comes to mind, but don't quote me or take that as a recommendation) might be better for just "documenting" research.

<comment><USER19> I'm not just being flippant, but GEDCOM is a dinosaur. Can you imagine Facebook storing its relationship data in GEDCOM? Unthinkable. Genealogy most certainly needs a new standard.

Also, I know people who work for ancestry, and the general thinking is it's hard to update old interfaces for a newer generation when a very important public is 50+.

<comment><USER2> Oh it's a nasty format, to be sure, and more useful for "cold storage" than something you'd actively work in. But for a long-term storage requirement? It's reasonably human readable and _imminently_ portable as the go-to standard.

You can import a GEDCOM into any family tree software and be up and running in minutes. A tarball'd directory structure would be more of a nightmare.

On Ancestry.com, the UI is fine, and still better than anything else I've seen. If you have any other ideas, I'd love to hear them. My issue with Ancestry is primarily their model that actively hinders collaboration between researchers unless you've paid their toll. They're taking _your_ research and charging others for the privilege of seeing it. Given the open and helpful nature of genealogical researchers (see also: "search angels"), this rubs me the wrong way.

(So I use Ancestry for research and tree management—and I pay them $200/yr for access to their data sources—then I export (what else?) a GEDCOM, route it through a couple scripts of my own making, and publish it on my personal site.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Nice! BTW I've never found a really nice, easy way to draw up organizational hierarchy charts (I've always used Dia or similar, and that's fussy), and I guess it's the same thing more or less?

<comment><USER11> Have you ever looked into Graphviz?

Here's a demo of the same old C Graphviz program running on JS: [http://viz- js.com/](http://viz-js.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Nice work. Which library did you used for rendering connectors? I don't know how would you monetize it if you plan to. Also are you planning to open-source the code base?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's just svg circles animated with css so no libraries were required. I've tried to keep external libraries to a minimum

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> OOC - what value "built with React" brings to the thing you have implemented?

</comment><comment><USER23> Is this project downable? Github?

<comment> iso-8859-1 No. It's proprietary. And you can't even save without paying! :O

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Any reasons for not having Facebook login (and perhaps deeper integration)?

<comment><AUTHOR> No reason in particular, but I don't have a Facebook account so integration with Facebook would have required me to sign up first to test the integration. I don't mind creating an account on Facebook if required, but I am trying to avoid it if possible.

<comment><USER24> Oh, I just got downvoted, unsure why. I was thinking that it's a pretty neat tool to integrate with Facebook. As your primary goal is to build your family structure, you may want to share it with your family members (and maybe have them help building the tree).

Also, depending how you want to grow, fb login is typically the most successful one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Cute graphics ! Some feedbacks :

\- Please make sure forms can be validated with enter, an not just by clicking a button (use for onSubmit)

\- allways auto-focus most important input of form (like a person's name) when opening it (at least when it's empty)

-after adding a person, open the form immediately

\- when tree is empty, put the + button in the center of the screen, big, and with explaination. THen, make a transition to put it back to it's normal place. This way it makes it obvious and then falls back to standard material design location. Other option is to make an empty state image with a big, obvious arrow to the button.

\- maybe add transitions that help user follow the change of state when adding someone to the tree.

Great work overall, i wish you the best for your project.</comment>


Scientist Who Discredited Meat Guidelines Didn't Report Past Food Industry Ties - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/well/eat/scientist-who-discredited-meat-guidelines-didnt-report-past-food-industry-ties.html <comment><USER2> _Dr. Johnston said the real problem is that people don't want to accept findings that contradict long-held views. "People have very strong opinions," he said. "Scientists should have intellectual curiosity and be open to challenges to their data. Science is about debate, not about digging your heels in."_

There's a vast difference between not having intellectual curiosity and not wanting to deal with cranks. Dr. Johnston is not challenging any data. He's simply treated the data to a different type of analysis previously deemed inappropriate for dietary studies and lo and behold, has achieved a different result. Unless Dr. Johnston can show this analysis better describes observed effects, which he has not even attempted to do, then there's no reason to give any of this research a second look.

<comment><USER3> There's a quote from the original NYT article that I found interesting.

> "It is important to recognize that this group reviewed the evidence and > found the same risk from red and processed meat as have other experts," she > said in a statement. "So they're not saying meat is less risky; they're > saying the risk that everyone agrees on is acceptable for individuals.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/health/red-meat-heart- can...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/health/red-meat-heart-cancer.html)

<comment><USER4> I don't think that's an accurate summary of the research. One key aspect of their review is that they don't give much weight to (blatantly confounded) correlational studies. Looking at RCTs that "same risk" is tiny and not statistically significant. For example, looking at all-cause mortality, correlational studies find a hazard ratio of .93, while RCTs find a hazard ratio of .99.

They are definitely saying meat is less risky.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A coworker linked the original study to me, and was quite glib about how this new study is quite reliable and so on. I checked it out, immediately got suspicious by the article (that was even more nonsensical, since it was not written by a scientist), then went into the study's summary instead, which was already way more nuanced .

What mostly stood out to me: the study did not even try to discredit the hard and overwhelming evidence that consuming red meat regularly does give you a single-digit percent incrase of various types of cancers. They then proceeded to give a summary that says that there is no point in worrying over such small percentage likelihood increases, basically (I am obviously paraphrasing here, so)

After that, we concluded with the coworker that yeah, this was not a holy grail counter to "mainstream science", just one slightly fishy one.

But this does not diminish my trust in the scientific method. This just adds one more example to the book 'why you should always try to at least verify/clarify claims before blindly believing them'.

</comment><comment><USER6> Key findings are here - [https://bit.ly/2OqMoyD](https://bit.ly/2OqMoyD)

At a 5% significance level, the hazard ratios posted there are clearly not significant. Most of them are reasonably close to 1.0 - so there is basically no difference in mortality between the control & treatment arm. Sample size is very large, n=48000.

The data he used is public & verifiable, so am not sure what digging into this person's private life has to do. Whether he is funded by meat industry or eats beef himself is as relevant as the color of his underwear.

In the study, he says "issues of animal welfare and potential environmental impact... is outside the scope. Related to this, we took an individual rather than a societal perspective."

Taking an individual perspective is imo the right thing to do. He further explicitly says if you are concerned about global warming etc. this study isn't about that. So he's being blunt & honest.

Those who are batting for the other team, like the opposing researchers & NYT etc. are questioning not the stats or the methodology but the fact that if you make public policy based on this, it will undoubtedly be bad for the environment. Which it will. But that's not the point of the study now, is it ? The researcher himself says it is not the point.

<comment><USER7> Recognizing a failure to disclose a conflict of interest is not "digging into this person's private life"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This kind of stuff should be forbidden, but unfortunately, it's left to universities to regulate themselves. Some have guidelines that say don't take research funding from the tobacco industry and other industries, others don't.

What is ironical, is that this new study DID conclude that there was a link between chronic diseases and consumption of red meat, just like the others before it, it was mostly dog bit men news. But of course, mainstream media didn't read it.

They only read the incredible conclusion, that said that its was not worth for meat eaters to stop eating meat to improve their health, since they like it so much!

One of the authors of one of the studies came out and said that this was the most outrageous abuse of data that he ever saw.

Neal Barnard from the Physicians Committee for responsible medicine pretty much sums it up in this video - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYPYH93nVg8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYPYH93nVg8)

</comment><comment><USER9> If there is any information domain were it's harder to figure out the real truth than current US politics, it's "nutrition science". As someone who actually tries to invest the time to check on sources and methods beyond the clickbait headlines, it's really a mess. Poor scientific methods (observational studies), cherry-picking data to match a bias (Ancel Keys), conflicts of interest all over the place, etc. At a very macro level it seems like a few things are true: (a) 300,000 years of human evolution eating meat; (b) per-capita leveling off or even a drop in consumption of red meat, that didn't stem the huge spikes in disease; and (c) being told to swap out good fats (meat, eggs, dairy) for industrial seed oils and 'fat-free' cookies to make up the calories, leading to an explosion of diabetes.

Fallacious arguments abound for the carnivore group all the way over to the militant vegans who would want to tax or outlaw meat eating altogether, while telling us to shut up and eat our processed patty of canola oil and isolated pea protein. For now, I'll keep eating like my grandparents ate - you know, real food.

<comment><USER10> > "Fallacious arguments abound for the carnivore group all the way over to the > militant vegans who would want to tax or outlaw meat eating altogether, > while telling us to shut up and eat our processed patty of canola oil and > isolated pea protein. For now, I'll keep eating like my grandparents ate - > you know, real food."

It sounds to me like just more bullshit food nostalgia nonsense and you're just perpetuating your own brand of unscientific nutrition opinion. Researching that a bunch of other hypotheses are wrong or partially wrong doesn't mean your idea is right.

"Eating like my grandparents ate" for a lot of people in the US means a wildly lopsided diet of mostly meat and a slew of convenience foods foisted on consumers during the advent of mega supply chain processed foods. "Eating like my great grandparents ate" usually means "eat whatever you can and don't complain" with no serious regard for nutrition or balance.

There are likely confounding effects in rate of disease, obesity, early death etc. due much more to lifestyle differences, general sources of pollution, sedentary habits, prevalence of jobs requiring hard physical work (where even the same job in the same company today is likely partly automated or handled differently to reduce physical labor), lack of good medical screening or testing in past generations obfuscating knowing true rates of disease or health problems due to diet back then, different structures for ensuring screening in schools, etc. The sheer volume of confounding effects that would have to be convincingly controlled for to compare causal impact of past generations' diets is staggering. If we can't even get good science on simple studies across cohorts _today_ , it seems like a ludicrous stretch to claim universal positive causal effect from eating "like my grandparents ate."

The tone of your last paragraph also makes it sound like you would not give credence to ideas of choosing food options that reduce water depletion or CO2 emissions, or even the philosophy of just animal welfare and cruelty in even small-time farming (not saying we know with great certainty what those choices or green impacts would be, only that you seem to have made up your mind that some Norman Rockwell Americana picture of green beans and chicken on the table represents The Right Choice).

If you don't actually feel that way, you may want to consider writing more charitably and not invoking food nostalgia as the alternative to flawed modern nutrition science.

<comment><USER9> Hmmmm… The danger in the constant back and forth of poor nutrition science being hyped up in the media, reversing last week's headline, is that eventually the general population just gives up, and stops listening/acting on ANYTHING coming from this expert group.

Those who want to drive food guidelines by other factors than actual health, should be honest about their motivations, whatever they are, rather than claiming that they are scientifically/health driven. Arguments for animal welfare, water use etc need to be backed by good science as well, not just platitudes. I've had people try to make the argument to me that all the water falling on all the pasture land in the US needs to be 'counted against' meat. That because we treat some animals poorly, we should stop eating all of them, rather than asking why we treat them that way, or how other countries might be doing it better. I've yet to see a good study on the millions/billions(?) of small animals that are killed in millions of acres of U.S. monocrops, but I'm guessing it would be eye opening. For every warning statement on animal CO2 use, I can find a seemingly well done study on positive CO2 capture by regenerative farms (i.e. traditional farms before feed lots). Carnivores on Twitter seem to have had amazing individual successes getting rid of their own specific inflammatory diseases, but then often assume that experience can be extrapolated to everyone, and often discount the long-term health impact of zeroing out plants completely…. It goes on and on.

Lastly, my statement about eating like my grandparents used the words "I" and "my" and was obviously my own rule - hard to imagine what you found 'uncharitable' about that statement. I'm somewhat new to HN - are we not allowed to share our own experiences here?

<comment><USER11> >For every warning statement on animal CO2 use, I can find a seemingly well done study on positive CO2 capture by regenerative farms (i.e. traditional farms before feed lots).

It looks like you are actively looking for data that makes you feel good about your habits and suspending critical thinking. The amount of evidence for the negative impact of the animal industry on the environment is staggering.

<comment><USER9> No, I actually think it's a large negative impact today, but rather than just accepting that's the way it is, I wonder why. Why is the US food system geared toward mass-scale industrial feed lots? What could be changed? On a trip to Ireland I never saw a ruminant in a feed lot, only on pasture, and they were slaughtered 1-2 years after our cattle. Why? Tax policy? Are other countries just not as smart as we are?

<comment><USER10> Hmmm

[https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/revealed-factory- feedlo...](https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/revealed-factory-feedlot- contribution-to-irish-beef-kill/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> First off, these diet studies are not science. It's a lot of drama and PR push by so-called "scientists", it's a bit sickening to see this crap play out.

Observational studies on diets or food intake are useless to draw conclusions that are then plastered all over Daily Mail and so on: people actually read this shit seriously.and it affects people's lives. All based on shoddy, PR- centric "science". I would actually want to see something like "dietfraudwatch" that shames these researchers who don't have high standards to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER13> [http://archive.is/KRWki](http://archive.is/KRWki)

</comment><comment><USER14> > as recently as December 2016 he was the senior author on a similar study > that tried to discredit international health guidelines advising people to > eat less sugar. That study, which also appeared in the Annals of Internal > Medicine, was paid for by the International Life Sciences Institute, or > ILSI, an industry trade group largely supported by agribusiness, food and > pharmaceutical companies and whose members have included McDonald's, Coca- > Cola, PepsiCo and Cargill, one of the largest beef processors in North > America.

I think this is enough for me to disregard that individual and anything he says about nutrition. If you want to eat processed meat go ahead and eat it. You can convince yourself it's healthy too. You can convince yourself sugar is healthy.

<comment><USER15> So, even if he published a replicable study that was convincing, you'd toss it merely because of his affiliations?

That seems like... a poor way to do science.

Personally (I'm a PhD scientist in biology) I think a lot of the claims about sugar aren't actually supported by the evidence and are in fact just driven by super-egotist scientists who want peoeple to believe what they believe (lookin' at you, Lustig).

<comment><USER16> He didn't publish a replicable study, he just said the risk is acceptable.

<comment><USER15> metastudies are trivial to replicate because there is no additional data collection, etc. most metastudies are implemented as simple scripts that can be run by somebody else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am starting to feel that academia and scientists have a lot more dogma than they would care to admit.

People believe whatever they want to believe and find a 'paper' or 'stat' to back it up.

In the end, a person should weigh out all the costs of a meat-heavy diet and consider the all the benefits of a plant-heavy diet. It's not even a debate for me.

I still allow myself to try unique food when I travel to fully experience a culture. I don't overdo it though, my body just feels different when I eat meat after getting used to life without it.

</comment><comment><USER18> The key argument of the authors, it seemed to me, was that because there is only low quality evidence (e.g. correlative) for the benefits of reducing meat consumption. Thus, there isn't evidence to suggest that meat is bad. This doesn't mean that there won't be overhwelming, high quality evidence in the future. One of the authors, in an interview with The Economist, countered this point, however, saying that it is extremely difficult to do sound nutrition research at scale, so the best evidence that we'll ever have is that meat is not bad for you. This signalled a big red flag for me.

</comment><comment><USER19> This smells like a non-story. There's just not enough there.

<comment><USER20> Agreed. Seems like an ad-hominem.

There is often a huge lag between funding, submission for publication and final publication. His interpretation of the rules would be widely agreed upon as reasonable.

<comment><USER21> Well, you don't have to attack the bias of the author. You can agree with the author's findings that red meat consumption is correlated with the exact same percentage increase in cancer rates as previous studies have shown. He has not disputed that.

From there, you can say that his analysis is merely word-play.

"18% increase in likelihood for a 6% rate is only 1 more person per hundred on a population scale. Therefore it is only a 1% increase on the population level" is basically all he is saying.

It is fundamentally non-analysis imo: basic arithmetic meant to reframe reality in a way convenient for a desired headline.

<comment><USER22> Such logic can make anybody say "wordplay" about any study which contains verbal interpretation of statistics, including the original metastudy.

<comment><USER21> If a seatbelt makes you 50% safer in the event of a potentially fatal crash, you wouldn't say "it's really a 4% difference because 8% of the population is involved in a potentially fatal accident"

That is purposefully obfuscating the relevant data.

<comment><USER22> The wording you used for your example is purposely unwieldy, but even so it would be still logically valid. It's perfectly valid as well to say that it obfuscates a particular point you are trying to make. However, as humans tend to have different priorities, and values a wording you prefer may be validly presented as obfuscating points other people see as more important.

<comment><USER21> It is a perfectly reasonable example. Both are individual decisions one makes for individual safety considerations. Introducing society-wide multipliers makes it harder for an individual to make decisions based upon the data. When I get in a car, I am not buckling up for society. When I invest food, I am not making a decision for society.

Unless you believe the primary function of this research is to inform policy decisions which have little to no effect, and not consumers, who have a very direct effect?

<comment><USER23> Risk does need to be presented both ways - relative and absilute - for anyone to make any sense of it though.

People see 50% increase in risk and don't have enough information to make an informed choice. If you tell them that we go from 2 people in a thousand suffering ill effects to 3 people in a thousand they can make their choice.

See the work of Gerd Gigerenzer for plenty of examples of people caused harm because they were told only the relative risk.

<comment><USER21> But in this case, the extra variable adds weird implications that are simply not true...

For instance, if half of the population became vegetarians, the rate of colorectal cancer would go down, and red meat would become even more "safe."

<comment><USER23> People aren't saying that.

They're saying if you have a population of 1,000 people who don't eat red meat you'd expect to see 2 cases of DISEASE_X. If you take a similar population but who do eat red meat you'd expect to see 3 cases of DISEASE_X.

That's a 50% increase, but that 50% relative risk number isn't enough information for people to make any decision. Here we're talking about an extra 1 person in 1000 people. But if the numbers were 4 in 10 increasing to 6 in 10 that's still only a 50% increase.

We need the absolute risk numbers to get an understanding: 0.2% increases to 0.3%. Something that's unlikely to happen becomes marginally more likely to happen.

This is not some weird obscure trickery. It's an important thing for people receiving healthcare to understand. It's mainstream science.

[https://bestpractice.bmj.com/info/toolkit/practise- ebm/under...](https://bestpractice.bmj.com/info/toolkit/practise- ebm/understanding-risk/)

[https://www.eufic.org/en/understanding- science/article/absol...](https://www.eufic.org/en/understanding- science/article/absolute-vs.-relative-risk-infographic)

Have a look at the factbox and the icon array linked in this page: [https://www.harding-center.mpg.de/en/fact-boxes/early- detect...](https://www.harding-center.mpg.de/en/fact-boxes/early-detection-of- cancer/prostate-cancer-early-detection)

But also, we should avoid using percentages and we should use natural frequencies.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3310025/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3310025/) Only about 1 in 4 people understand that 0.1% means 1 in 1000.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > Scientist Who Discredited _______ Didn't Report Past _____ Industry Ties

Fill in the blanks for many industry studies.</comment>


Ask HN: Languages/frameworks for desktop development: recommendations? - <AUTHOR> I've been doing some research for an internal enterprise application project and I'm considering the risks of adopting a non-web-based approach.
What do you think would be good choices of languages/frameworks to develop a "traditional" GUI desktop application? An "old-school" program containing a top-level menu and multiple non-modal screens, containing widgets like buttons, text fields and data grids? Primarily Windows based, but preferably multi-platform?
So far, I'm considering c#/mono/GtkSharp (not sure which fork), but I'd like to get more ideas.
It's been 8 years since my last desktop application project. It was c#/.net 3.5/windows forms. <comment> java-man If Windows is your primary target, you probably want something sourced by Microsoft.

I would, however, suggest either Java Swing or Java FX (depending on how fancy your application is going to be and/or whether it will have modern multimedia.

In my experience, one can develop and ship high quality enterprise grade desktop applications - not only ship, but also maintain them for a period of over two decades.

</comment><comment><USER2> This plug-in allows you use to all of Qt/QML with .NET Core.

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

I'm the author.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You should consider Qt to develop a crossplateform desktop application. Scaling from windows to linux and / or macOS will be easier.</comment>