Spolsky: Digg servers vs Stack Overflow servers - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/#!/spolsky/status/27244766467 <comment><USER2> Stack Overflow is probably getting 90% of their page views through Google SERPs. That means nearly every request is a single answers page from a non- logged in user. Stack Overflow could write out static HTML files for 90% of their traffic. That would let them scale to >500M page views on one server.

Digg on the other hand is generating highly dynamic pages on a per-user basis for a lot of their traffic. That's inherently more resource intensive.

That said, Digg clearly wasted a ton of money on servers. They pretty much had to. The only way to spend $40 million is to over hire and over build your datacenter.

</comment><comment><USER3> Incidentally, we now serve about 24 million page views a month off 2 servers. (We serve images off www.)

</comment><comment><USER4> I mentioned this to Spolsky already but depending how you want to count servers (web servers or all front facing servers or all servers in your infrastructure?), we have 10-20 servers servicing 350 million page views per month. That is of course not counting all the ajax requests that we also service, which don't count as page views. So we service 17-35 million page views per server, compared to StackExchange's 12 million page views per server.

We use PHP and Apache, so the gloating about ASP being way more efficient than PHP seems to be unfounded.

</comment><comment><USER5> I handle over 50 million page views a month with a single server on a large (7.5GB RAM) EC2 instance. 2-3 MySQL queries per page view, no caching. It's hard to imagine not being able to cut Digg's infrastructure size by an order of magnitude with the right architecture and perhaps more RAM per box than whatever they're doing now.</comment>


EOF Is Not a Character - <AUTHOR> https://ruslanspivak.com/eofnotchar/ <comment><USER2> To complicate things, DOS has an EOF character (ASCII 26, ^Z), which is used by _some_ text file reading and writing routines to indicate the end of a text file. (Confusingly, other routines might behave more like the Unix behavior described in this article.)

Also, Unix terminal drivers commonly treat the EOT (end-of-transmission, ASCII 4, ^D) character specially and _generate_ an EOF condition in response to a user input containing EOT. This creates an especially challenging situation for beginners to understand because, while EOF is not a character, there is a character at another layer that sometimes causes an EOF condition—yet that character itself is neither EOF, nor equivalent to EOF, nor guaranteed to cause EOF in every circumstance. (Also, the EOT character's behavior in this regard can be changed with the stty command, and it can be input as an ordinary character from a terminal by first escaping it with ^V...)</comment>


Where are the Asian hackers? - <AUTHOR> http://www.e27.sg/2009/04/03/where-are-the-asian-hackers/

<comment><USER2> I used to work at a technology incubator here in central Japan. Statistically speaking, you've used something from our startups -- it was just buried deep in a car, navigational system, cell phone, video game, or movie.

I was regretfully not as successful as I would have hoped getting the startups to think in terms a bit broader than producing components consumed by Japanese mega-corps. Oh well -- working on it, one day at a time.

The guy next to me at the day job is actually planning a B2C startup, after being inspired by a lot of the US Web 2.0 darlings, particularly the B2SMB ones, and the absurdly easy replace-your-salary-math when you're a 20 or 30-something Japanese engineer. I honestly believe that that realization could rock this country. (Imagine how attractive startups would be if a highly- motivated, well-educated hacker could expect a $2,200 a month salary straight out of college and, if he was willing to work a decade of 60~70 hour weeks, might break $4,000 by the time he was 30.)

Someday I hope to have the chance to test out a pet theory of mine: an American web application with Japanese visual design would be a galloping success. (There are small town pizza joints here whose flyer art rivals much of what I've seen on Smashing Magazine. Oh crikey the B2C possibilities...)

</comment><comment><USER3> Uh, do the folks running the Asian equivalent of a "Hacker Space" use the word "Hacker Space"?

 _Is_ there an equivalent of a "hacker space" in every culture in the world? Could this be like asking "where is the USA's professional Starcraft league?" [1]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft_professional_competit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft_professional_competition)

It's really nice that the hacker concept is as international as it is. (Thank you, giant worldwide Internet!) But I wouldn't be astonished to find that it is not _perfectly_ cross-cultural. Especially since the idea of a "hacker space", by that name, is only a few years old. (Before that it might have been called a "ham radio shack" or a "model railroad club", or perhaps a "Homebrew Computer Club".)

I assume that lots and lots of Asian hackers are busy building lots and lots of Asian-language products to serve lots and lots of Asian-language-speaking customers.

\---

[1] Man, I _wish_ we had a pro Starcraft league. But I wish, much more strongly, that we had Korean-quality high-speed internet.

</comment><comment><USER4> I actually think that Asian hackerspace have more to offer than the western counterparts. For one the manufacturing facilities are nearby, that means not only are tools available, but industrial machinery and more importantly assembly workers are totally accessible.

If anyone interested to start a hackerspace in Macau, let me know I have space and workers. www.goldentime.com.mo

</comment><comment><USER5> [http://maps.google.com/maps?q=maps+mountain+view,+california...](http://maps.google.com/maps?q=maps+mountain+view,+california&ie=UTF8&split=0&gl=us&ei=qFzVSfDMMqTyswPk0KmgCg&t=h&z=12&iwloc=addr)

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, they've all flocked to the valley, you say? :p

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> let's not forget that russia is also part of asia</comment>


Why I'm moving away from RabbitMQ - <AUTHOR> http://senthadev.com/2012/11/07/why-im-moving-away-from-rabbitmq/

<comment><USER2> Did you look at beanstalk? It has both of the features you're looking for: the ability to set a delay and when a job experiences an error it will be placed in the "buried" queue (which is like your Dead Letter Queue)

<http://kr.github.com/beanstalkd/>

It has client libraries in most languages and also definitely won't require the use of polling.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did browse the beanstalkd, but I didn't try it. Since we were moving our infrastructure to aws, it was feasible for us to use aws simple queue service. And I'm using long polling (which will wait 20 seconds to reconnect again) and bulk sending to reduce the no of calls to SQS.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Orchive, a crowd-funded news outlet founded by highschool students - <AUTHOR> http://orchive.com

<comment><USER2> It's nice to see tech cross over into worlds traditionally governed by the humanities. There is so much journalism that can be automated and refined. Same goes for law.</comment>


The Eternal Treadmill of Fitness Trends: From Hot Pants to Hot Mess - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/09/style/vintage-fitness-trends-photos.html <comment><USER2> It I was hoping for a better researched article on the lineage of various workout philosophies. Crossfit as an offspring of circuit training, the large family of aerobics including Tae-Bo and many other forgotten ideas.

I also found the tone towards all those excercises a little negative; working out and staying fit is clearly good, and establishing and popularizing excercising in the first generation in human history that had technology to really help with many physical tasks is a difficult and noble task.

The consequence of insufficient excercise on human health is too severe than to belittle the attempts or to focus only on the gender issues of the past.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. I get a little tired of the sneery tone many journalists take towards the past, giving themselves an implicit pat on the back for being sooo much smarter.

<comment><USER4> Cynically, that sort of tone is much more newsworthy than "exercise is good, health science is tricky and slow, so fads are probably bunk and anything is better than nothing". Write one timeless article like that and you're finished, but attacking the idiocy of whatever trend came before the current one is a stable opportunity.

(Even more cynically, it's the same dumb presentist instinct that shows up everywhere from film styles to foreign policy. "We've got to arm this faction because the stupid idiots before us armed _that_ faction because the idiots before _them_ armed the other faction...")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The truth of exercise is that the same stuff that worked 10'000 years ago still works. There isn't really a need for innovation in the world of fitness, but people like variety, or the promise of shortcuts, or the scene attached to a style of fitness, etc. (There is gradual improvement in technique and programming, but this isn't the kind of fitness fad the article is about.)

<comment><USER6> What worked 10,000 years ago? Not being snarky, I'd like to know.

<comment><USER7> Walking a lot, fasting (usually unintentionally), occasional higher-intensity work. No easy access to sugar.

<comment><USER8> Thinking about it, only time people would have easy access to carbs is during the period of natural ripening of fruit, so late summer/early fall.

Perhaps harvesting and storing honey in limited quantities as well?

<comment><USER6> tubers have lots of carbs though</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Interactive Mind Map for learning - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge-map <comment><USER2> In my opinion, Mind Maps are not great for organizing information, learning things or keeping track of things. Notice how the Github read-me itself is formed like a Table of Contents. Table of Contents (or other organized lists) are better for organizing your information and placing it in thematically similar topics, etc.

In cases where you're presenting or recalling information, the more linear narrative of a Table of Contents is superior. Use your brain's natural triggered associations to tie subjects together or to recall related topics, and use hard-copy writing to commit concrete, factual and clear information to that 'external' memory.

There is a reason that we've been using TOC like structures much more than Mind Maps. Mind Maps are terrible. We use TOCs, concrete lists, tools like Universal Decimal Classification and Dewey Decimal Classification to organize information, because they work and cover up the weak areas that human brains have.

Google Image search "Mind Map". You will see colorful distracting pictures like this: [https://www.mindtools.com/media/Diagrams/mindmap.jpg](https://www.mindtools.com/media/Diagrams/mindmap.jpg)

If you want random associations, follow links on the web. Browse Wikipedia, open new random tabs. Learn new topics, discover new interesting things! Just don't use Mind Maps.

<comment><USER3> Author of the project here.

I do agree with you that mind maps have their flaws and limitations. But I found most curated list and most content in general to be quite rigid in structure. These mind maps should let the users explore and be guided through arrows.

And the big problem that I find is that google and other search engines are a black box. You have to know what you want to ask for to get an answer. The poses a big problem because many don't know what to ask.

Wikipedia is great too but I found it to lack in the visualisation aspect. Everything is connected but many people don't know exactly how and where and with what it is connected. These kinds of visualisations are very popular on the internet ([https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer- roadmap](https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap) is one example) because they do bring clarity as to what it is the person doesn't know. However this repository although great, it just shows an image.

With these mind maps I can replicate the same but make it interactive. Now users can not only see what they don't know, but if they do want to learn it, they don't have to waste time online finding resources, they just click on a link and see what the best way of learning the topic is. If any questions arise when they are learning the content, then the search engine of their choice will answer these questions.

I also try to solve the problem of dependencies of knowledge. For example if user wants to learn 'machine learning'. I show that machine learning requires knowledge of statistics and linear algebra ([http://i.imgur.com/A75JMNt.png](http://i.imgur.com/A75JMNt.png)) and then give links to the mind maps of both of these topics so user can learn them. There should be no wandering around and wasting time finding resources and being lost.

<comment><USER4> Have you explored taking links from Wikipedia and adding them into your visualization? It might be interesting considering most articles have resources at the bottom.

<comment><USER3> I do link to wikipedia articles on nearly all nodes. I just expand it with more learning resources after. I think wikipedia is always a great starting point for learning about any subject. Or you meant something else?

<comment><USER4> I meant crawling wikipedia to add nodes automatically

<comment><USER3> Oh I see. I think something like this has been done before and the results are usually messy. Although I do want to use algorithms and curate things in a more 'smart' way that I do now. A bonus point of doing it by hand is that I take in the time to understand the topic for myself and actually understand why that node goes there and not in some other place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks similar to [https://metacademy.org](https://metacademy.org). I am curious how these maps are built and how resources are being selected (methodology-wise)?

<comment><USER3> Author here. I was greatly inspired by this website. It was my goal to actually combine metacademy's idea of solving the dependency problems of knowledge and do it in a similar way but visually.

<comment><USER6> But how do you choose which resources (books, articles, courses..) to include? Is it performed algorithmically or by hand? I was working on the similar project (dependency trees for concepts) and the biggest roadblock I faced was the addition of new resources, since it is laborious, doesn't scale well and is pretty subjective.

<comment><USER3> Currently the entirety of the mind map was hand picked and curated by me. I did use the internet a lot though as there are quite many threads online that have recommendations on what the 'best ways of learning X' is.

I also try to ask help from other people, ideally experts in their fields on how to best structure the content. Mathematics one is quite challenging just because everything is really so connected as far as ideas go.

I hope as this projects gets popular, more people will be willing to help and improve it. It is a collaborative process after all.

<comment><USER4> I've had pretty good success crowdsourcing recommendations for [https://www.findlectures.com](https://www.findlectures.com) by asking offering a weekly email of talks, and prompting people for recommended speakers / conferences on sign-up.

I have a separate form on the site to get suggestions, but the email signup one has better quality because it weed out people who want to spam the site with their own content.

<comment><USER3> Hey Gary, I love what you have done with find lectures. I use it quite often actually to find material. I am thinking of perhaps making a newsletter for this project saying 'what is new' in the mind map. What do you think?

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I think that would be interesting. Let me know if you make one!

<comment><USER3> I did. :)

Here it is (bit.ly/learn-anything-letter).

<comment><USER4> Signed up! I'll be interested to see how the Patreon thing goes as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is excellent but discovery has too much friction. I've been looking for something like the google knowledge graph for personal or business use haven't been able to find anything pre-made and I'm far too lazy to build it myself with Cayley or Neo4j or _insert graph database here_. Has anyone heard of anything similar? Just want an easy way to search, and add entries to a graph database, hopefully with node-level permissions that can be applied. I feel like it would help everyone, so I'd assume someone other than Google would have made it already but I haven't found it... anyone up to the task so I can be lazy?

</comment><comment><USER8> This is really cool and I hate to show up to complain, but the text is blurry on my screen (mac, chrome) -like blurry enough that i get an uneasy feeling that makes me want to close the window.

</comment><comment><USER9> Can't wait to build off of this. Mind maps are good for many, but others would prefer structured lists. Either way, a crowdsourced/curated learning base is something I've been itching to build.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have been working to do this with a high(er) degree of granularity for a high school physics curriculum. The idea is to represent a student's unique journey through a topic space, and break free of the enforced and artificial linearity that a textbook's sequential chapters impose.

Don't we all learn naturally by following our needs, or curiosity, through webs of knowledge, forging our own path to understanding?

EDIT: Found one of my favorite quotes on this: "The student feels that, on his own, he wouldn't have followed the route he has just been led down; and he forgets that there a thousand paths in intellectual space open to his will." – The Ignorant Schoolmaster (Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation), Jaqcues Rancière

</comment><comment><USER11> Kudos! Great job! One bit of advice: this would work better as a single page app that magnifies/animates as you zoom in on topics, letting you keep the big picture in sites.

<comment><USER12> Agreed. Zoom in on subgraphs for nodes which represent complex topics in their own right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I need to read the rest of this discussion a bit later, but a quick comment in case anyone is still here:

I see mind maps and tables of contents as different UI views of the same data. Years ago I used a product on Windows called Inspiration which let you flip between the two views: a hierarchical/collapsible outline, and a graphical map showing boxes and lines (or such).

Since I found myself using the collapsible outline feature much more than the pictures, but wanted many more features and support for a theory of knowledge, I wrote and am working on adding features to:

[http://www.onemodel.org](http://www.onemodel.org)

It makes an internal knowledge graph as one uses the product (stored in postgres, runs fast). It builds an object model on the fly as a side-effect of using the product, using relationships, numbers, etc as knowledge at an atomic level where words are secondary. The best info organizer (for my style at least) that I know of, though (so far) less feature-rich than many products. I hope the About page at that link explains the present and future well.

</comment><comment><USER14> I worked on something similar a while ago. First I also looked into building something more visual/map like but after many iterations I got frustrated by the lack of overview one had for more complex maps. So I pivoted to a more TOC/text based version. It was supposed to be community driven but when I finished my studies, the app lost the utility it once had to me. But it's still up & running:

[https://owleo.herokuapp.com/concepts](https://owleo.herokuapp.com/concepts) Source: [https://github.com/Gregoor/owleo](https://github.com/Gregoor/owleo)

A startup that also takes the visual learning map route is Expii: [https://www.expii.com/](https://www.expii.com/)

</comment><comment><USER15> One suggestion on helping people remember better. The emojis are ambiguous. Like I cannot remember the difference between the 2 book icons. I suggest make them the same with a $ sign on the paid one, Or better $ flying out of a book for a paid ebook.

IMHO people learn better with pictures that are vivid, would you remember something better if I attached it to the word "elephant" vs "an elephant with a pink underwear"?

</comment><comment><USER16> Love this idea. I hope it can grow.

Just played around with the demo, one think I would change is to make it work as a single page to make it instant, it feels kind of slow.

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting but not really surprising that mathematics is the big sink in the graph. Although I'd put philosophy there too.

</comment><comment><USER18> Cool idea, but not _really_ interactive.

Being an etherum fan, it was amusing to see only ethereum listed in the decentralized computing category ([https://my.mindnode.com/mxFpyqEV2YXLGBoLgUBydSWkB1qdXqzvbqzQ...](https://my.mindnode.com/mxFpyqEV2YXLGBoLgUBydSWkB1qdXqzvbqzQpZZv#-146.1,-63.6,2))

</comment><comment><USER19> This has been on my mind for a really long time and I'm trying to make basically the same thing except the focus would be on interactively building your own map rather than exploring others but now I got to see if I can add that to this rather than build my own.

<comment><USER3> If you do consider adding and improving this mind map, it would be amazing. Thank you for that. I want it to be a collaborative process where anyone can come in and propose a change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Mind maps are interesting tools, and even overlapping mind maps can be useful ways of showing where multiple sources of understanding can work together...but I feel like this is just arriving at semantic graphs again. And those graphs are already very well trod.

<comment><USER21> You're not wrong by virtue of mind maps being an applied graph, but the motivations for the edges and clustering is meant to mimic the architecture of human memory as we understand it. A proper mind map can represent abstract and disjoint relationships between concepts using these tools. We can organize data into lists and tables of content, but that's not actually how humans process it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Am I the only one that when I click on anything, the image just zooms and there's no link?

<comment><USER3> You have to click on the link with the mind map ([http://bit.ly/learning- mind](http://bit.ly/learning-mind)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Seems like a case for making mindmaps like this out of wikipedia

</comment><comment><USER24> I find it interesting that most things lead to either Computer science, Mathematics, or psychology.

</comment><comment><USER25> Finally! :)

</comment><comment><USER26> Great work

<comment><USER26> Former teacher, have been thinking about knowledge graphs / dependencies for years related to project based learning. Reach out if you ever want to talk. My Twitter is the same as my handle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is so cool! What a great project. Awesome resources linked up too.

</comment><comment><USER28> Nice graph-based menu.

</comment><comment><USER29> AAPL only?

</comment><comment><USER30> "anything" as long as it's within a narrow range of worthy® pursuits</comment>


Cathay CEO lists self instead of giving names to CCP - <AUTHOR> https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3765103 <comment><USER2> I'd want to see independent confirmation of this. It's a beautiful story, but here's another media report (by the SCMP, owned by Alibaba, but still regarded somewhat trustworthy by and large):

"Cathay Pacific Airways' handover of crew details 'satisfies mainland Chinese regulator'"

"CEO Rupert Hogg threatened to sack any employee who actively supported the protest movement, including taking part in the illegal airport demonstrations."

[https://www.scmp.com/news/hong- kong/transport/article/302288...](https://www.scmp.com/news/hong- kong/transport/article/3022887/cathay-pacific-airways-handover-crew-details- satisfies)

<comment><USER3> UK sources are not reporting anything in line with what the politician in the referenced social media post is claiming.

Instead we have comments like this from the Independent:

> [Cathay Pacific] said it would comply with a directive from the Civil > Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), which ban any employees who took > part in the protests from working on mainland China-bound flights.

[https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and- advice/cathay-...](https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and- advice/cathay-pacific-ceo-rupert-hogg-resigns-hong-kong-protest-china- latest-a9061991.html)

and from the BBC:

> Last week, Cathay Pacific had told its staff it would not stop them joining > the pro-democracy demonstrations currently sweeping Hong Kong.

> But on Monday, Mr Hogg warned staff they could be fired if they "support or > participate in illegal protests".

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49367949](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49367949)

It is certainly possible this is true, but I find it troubling this story is at the top of HN without other reliable sources backing it up.

<comment><USER4> > Last week, Cathay Pacific had told its staff it would not stop them joining > the pro-democracy demonstrations currently sweeping Hong Kong.

> But on Monday, Mr Hogg warned staff they could be fired if they "support or > participate in illegal protests".

Not sure that's contradictory. You're allowed to go to the legal protests, but you'll get fired if you do something illegal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Weibo users are insulting their stewardesses who support HK.

[https://m.weibo.cn/search?containerid=100103type%3D1%26q%3D%...](https://m.weibo.cn/search?containerid=100103type%3D1%26q%3D%E5%9B%BD%E6%B3%B0%20%E7%A9%BA%E5%A7%90)

Comments like "She's so ugly, you can find hundreds of millions of Chinese prettier then her" "Cathay is a hive of cockroaches".

_

China's ICBC rated it as "strong sell". [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-13/china- s-b...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-13/china-s-biggest- bank-cuts-cathay-to-strong-sell-over-protests)

_

This whole thing most likely will come to an end in September, in one way or another, before the 70th anniversary of China takes place, couples with this period of heated party in-fighting, no inharmony will be tolerated, something could happen.

<comment><USER6> Fwiw, they tend to prefer "flight attendant" to "stewardess".

Edit: Not kidding, they are sensitive about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In many ways this was absolutely the best the CEO could have done. It seemed inevitable that he would resign, but its great to see that he didn't sell out his employees - which a few weeks ago seemed like.

A good way to be remembered positively during this situation.

</comment><comment><USER8> If this is true (and from his resignation, it would seem that way), this is very refreshing news.

There are horrible examples throughout history (Argentina in the '70s, where German automakers volunteered their left-leaning employees) of what amounted to business leaders giving up employees' lives to opaque regimes to ensure further profit for themselves and their companies.

This may or may not have resulted in anything as extreme as that, but credit where credit is due.

</comment><comment><USER9> Now, ask yourself : would your boss do the same for you ?

<comment><USER10> Would you do the same for your peers? I would. If you doubt yourself, you may want to look for a better job for your soul.

<comment><USER11> Easy to write it on HN until you're in the situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I always wondered with the social credit score system, how long until something like that is extended to the rest of the world, HK seems like a natural place to start, as would the developing world.

</comment><comment><USER13> With chilling, but not entirely unexpected consequences:

 _Indicating the intimate involvement of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the investigation of the airline, Hogg 's resignation was first made public by Chinese state-run media outlet CCTV at 4:50 p.m. on Aug. 16. It was not until 5:14 p.m. that Cathay Pacific itself officially announced that Hogg was stepping down as CEO, leading to speculation that his resignation was the result of pressure from Beijing authorities._

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't really get it - why would the company know which of their employees was or was not part of this or any other protest?

<comment><USER15> If you threaten executives with fines, jail, shutdown etc. , they can feel very motivated to find out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is a typical CEO move. If you have to do something that seems honest and good, at least make sure you get credit for it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Make no mistake, this is the equivalent action of the type of Oskar Schindler's. CCP wanted those names so they could eventually disappear them.

<comment><USER12> Better yet to pressure companies to not hire / fire anyone who is on a list... that way folks can see "what happens" to people who don't do "the right thing".

The general population will find that quite upsetting.

<comment><USER17> You mean like James Demore and Bret Weinstein?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Mr. Rupert Hogg I salute you!

</comment><comment><USER19> Make no mistake. If China has a GDP 2x the US and the US business are heavily reliant on China we'll also be licking Xi's boot. You already see it with how Hollywood kowtows to China with the hopes that it can get a movie into the country. Trump's tariffs are not popular with many but it is breaking dependence on China's supply chain and manufacturing.

<comment><USER20> Trump just continued for a second time a special allowance for Huawei to purchase components from US companies so the notion that there is any sort of coherent trade policy directed at China by the current administration seems suspect. I opposed the TPP on numerous grounds but I do wish a less cumbersome trade agreement in a similar vein with the same partners had been enacted.

<comment><USER21> The lack of a unified trade policy is easier to understand if you bear in mind that it's actually a huge team of people negotiating on the US side, almost all of which none of us have heard of before. It's definitely not Trump hashing a deal out on the top floor of his office: he's probably providing some executive direction, but even then he has other things demanding his time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> He was asked to step down</comment>


Watch the money - <AUTHOR> http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/11/watch-the-money.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Fsethsmainblog+%28Seth%27s+Blog%29 <comment><USER2> When people don't use the products that they're trying to sell it will show. A while ago I met a guy who's created yet-another app to allow people to start a store online. I asked him if he's running a successful store on it yet? He thought my question was irrelevant.

37Signals have always built apps that solve problems they've had.

<http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch02_Whats_Your_Problem.php>

If you're working on an app that solves your own problem (and you believe that the problem you have is not unique) then the likelihood that your startup is going to succeed must be much higher.

<comment><USER3> Just a piece of trivia, the Viaweb folks didn't start their own store on it -- <http://www.paulgraham.com/vwfaq.html> (scroll to the last question).

<comment><USER2> But they did build the Viaweb marketing site on it ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hmmm - "if you work for a non-profit and you don't give money to charity, what exactly are you doing in this job?" Well, from the charities that I've seen, the money they pay in salaries is far below what the same job in the private sector would pay. Not a fair comparison IMO

<comment><USER5> Maybe the person who works for a non-profit doesn't give because he/she knows more about how your contribution dollars are actually allocated.

The naive giver thinks that all or most of the money is going directly to the part of the non-profit that does the charitable work. In reality, that part may only see very little (or even none if the donation isn't high enough) of the money. A lot of it may go to administrative costs and internal-facing departments. Like any large organization, a large non-profit has a lot of overhead.

I'd like to know if there's a way to know for sure how your donation is actually being used. It would be good that if you found out your money wasn't being used satisfactorily, you could demand your donation back and it would all be legally binding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Money is more than a transfer of value. It's a statement of belief. An ad agency that won't buy ads, a consultant who won't buy consulting, and a waiter who doesn't tip big—it's a sign, and not a good one."

My favourite counter-example: the millionaire who doesn't spend money.

The fact is that the waiter, the consultant, the ad agency and the charity employee have every reason to ignore Seth Godin's judgment of their individual, subjective spending preferences and investment principles.

<comment><USER7> Millionaires try to convince people to spend money?

<comment><USER6> Not all of them try to convince all of them, but on average I assume many of them tend to, yes.

Also, my main point was in my last paragraph.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There does come a point when this ceases to be realistic. It's unlikely, for instance, that a doctor is going to develop software to use in his office himself (especially with HIPA regulations!)

<comment><USER9> I think you missed the point here. The warning sign would be a doctor who doesn't go to other doctors for healthcare.

A better software analogy would be a software development company that doesn't like using software.

<comment><USER8> I don't think I did. It wasn't the doctor I was referring to. Medical software needs to be developed, but it doesn't seem likely that the people developing it will be the people who use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Drug dealers shouldn't get hooked on their own drugs.

</comment><comment><USER8> Rachel Maddow doesn't even own a TV. Should that be a warning sign?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you conduct technical interviews - <AUTHOR> I'd like to ask how other small- to medium-sized companies structure their technical interview process:<p>Do you use commercial tools (e.g. coderpad or similar) or your own custom-built or ad-hoc solution? <comment><USER2> As a non-technical person, hiring my first developer was harsh. I had to rely on the candidate's curriculum and trust my instinct.

I wish I had a tool to help me.</comment>


How hackers will jailbreak the iPhone 5  - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/136435-how-hackers-will-jailbreak-the-iphone-5 <comment><USER2>
        On something like a Linux PC, where you have full access to the source code
        and the ports on the back of the computer, finding a kernel exploit is
        relatively easy

Something made me stop reading there.

<comment><USER3> I apparently stopped reading even earlier, when I got to:

> In the iPhone 4S's case, the A5 SoC withstood hacking attempts for months — > much longer than any other Apple device — before it finally fell.

In fact, we never found a bug in the A5's bootloader: Corona (the 5.0 exploit I helped implement) and Rocky Racoon (related 5.1 exploit) were purely bugs in iOS, and as of 6.0's release we are not much better off on the 4S than we will be on the 5.

(edit: OK, I decided to at least skim the rest, as I realized I should probably at least know if they said anything I'll have to deal with ;P.)

> The one glimmer of hope is that iOS 6 has already been jailbroken — but only > on antiquated A4-based devices (iPhone 3GS/4), and it's still only a > tethered jailbreak.

So, iOS 6 is not jailbroken: the A4 is; this is a similar mistake to the earlier one, but in the opposite direction.

The reason this is bothersome is because I can tell you with utter assurance: if Apple releases iOS 7, and it supports your iPhone 4, we will be able to jailbreak it, and it won't even take much effort; I don't even need to see iOS 7: I can tell you that today.

It is thereby not at all interesting that we have a jailbreak for iOS 6 on these older devices, and doesn't offer forward any kind of "glimmer of hope" ;P.

<comment><USER4> Ah, thanks for the info; will update the story.

You edited! So I will edit too!

Thanks for the background info on the iOS 6 jailbreak.

Btw, have we met before? I recognise your name...

<comment><USER5> > Btw, have we met before? I recognise your name...

Are you really asking that question after writing an article on iOS jailbreaking?

<comment><USER6> Extremetech.com has never prided itself on in-depth journalism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I hope everything works out for them. Jailbreaking makes the iOS experience 100x better.

<comment><USER8> I hope it doesn't. Apple needs to stop taking credit for the jailbroken ecosystem, even though they're doing whatever they can to _hinder_ it.

"I don't buy an iPhone because they're locked and I think we need to support open devices." "Who cares, just get one and jailbreak it."

<comment><USER9> _Apple needs to stop taking credit_

How are they taking credit for the jailbroken ecosystem? I've never heard Apple once mention jailbreaking in any marketing context. (Really, in any official context at all.)

<comment><USER10> How about how they take credit for inventing the appstore, even though jailbreakers had a thriving app marketplace before you could install anything besides the default apps on the first iPhone/iPod touch?

<comment><USER9> If you want to get worked up over that, sure. I won't question that assertion. I'll just point out that other platforms had "app stores" before even the iOS jailbreakers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If there's no jailbreak available for the iPhone 5 in the next year or so I might find myself buying a non-Apple smartphone for the first time ever.</comment>


Windows 8: Improving our file management basics: copy, move, rename, and delete - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/08/23/improving-our-file-management-basics-copy-move-rename-and-delete.aspx <comment><USER2> I want the copy functionality to tell me about conflicts right away, rather than when it starts copying that file. I also want it to continue the non- conflicting files while I'm deciding.

I cannot tell from the video whether Windows 8 does this or not.

<comment><USER3> >I also want it to continue the non-conflicting files while I'm deciding.

That's the big point. The most serious usability flaw is when doing a large copy, and every single file with a permissions issue requires user intervention to make the copy continue. Keep a running list of problem files, and let me peruse them at my leisure - keep copying the rest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the OS that is supposed to carry MS until at least 2015. If they are going to unveil the cool stuff during BUILD, why just not wait a couple of weeks?

\- The examples seem dated, like people copying pictures over USB drives in the era of facebook and dropbox. He runs the example on a netbook, which I guess means after his sister leaves he needs to get another USB drive and copy those files again to his PC.

\- Why did he copy files, edit them, copy them back and then need to figure out what version he wanted to use? Now he's got two copies of the same filename in different locations and they may get out of sync.

\- Why in the case of conflict, does a number have to be added to the file if you want to keep both versions? Why not have some type of versioning and conflict resolution built into the filesystem? Look at a user's computer, directories are littered with filenames like "copy of Myfile (2) 2011_may.doc".

\- Where is the touch interface? Those buttons are small and all the dialogs assume a mouse.

I do like the blog and I like that they introduce different members of the Windows8 team, but they need to focus on more compelling features.

<comment><USER5> Facebook and Dropbox are not like running water yet and even that isn't available everywhere. A _lot_ of users still use USB drives to copy pictures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can you imagine Apple reassuring its users that there will be a "vibrant market" for 3rd party providers of what became Lion features for a long time?

<comment><USER7> Didn't OS X not have restore from trash until recently(even after gnome)?

<comment><USER8> But OS X did have the consolidation of file transfer dialog boxes for a long time.

(Although it still has woeful conflict resolution <http://cl.ly/9Zqg>)

<comment><USER9> Lion lets you keep both.

<comment><USER10> Lion does not let you skip files that you don't want copied, if they already exist. Which is a ridiculous choice, and one that is very hard to work around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One copy tool that's not well known is RichCopy from Microsoft. It's a great copy util when dealing with huge amount of files. It supports parallel copy, resume from failed, and copy only changed files.

<comment><USER12> So Windows users finally don't have to install cygwin for rsync

<comment><USER13> I suppose. If you didn't know about Robocopy (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocopy>) which has been around since the NT days.

Rsync under Cygwin was always too slow. Any sort of significant I/O is slow under Cygwin.

<comment><USER14> Robocopy, while useful, does not have very many of the features of rsync, apart from retries.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rsync>

<comment><USER13> But with all the problems of rsync and cygwin on Windows, Robocopy is the more logical choice for such tasks. I'm not going to load up explorer.exe in WINE on Linux so I can move some files around with the mouse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Am I the only one who still uses Total Commander instead of Windows Explorer whenever possible? I'd love to see this multiple-jobs-in-movecopy-queue functionality in it, but in all other situations it suits me so much better.

<comment><USER16> Is it sufficiently better than FreeCommander to justify the 48 USD?

(also, has that website been updated since 1995? 'Order by fax' - WTF? 'Now also with Paypal!' - Uh?)

<comment><USER17> You can install the trial and it will run forever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I guess my first feeling when I see that histogram is ... that's not something I've ever wanted.

Pause button is kinda cool though.

<comment><USER19> I think the histogram solves the usability issue where a network transfer is hung up but the "transfer speed" linearly, slowly drops off (because it is calculated as a total average). The only way to verify the transfer previously is to check if the total transfer percent/value changes absolutely.

<comment><USER18> Wouldn't a rolling average of the last 15 seconds solve that problem?

<comment><USER20> It wouldn't solve it, it would just reduce it. It would still take 15 seconds to be able to identify that your connection dropped if you judged based off of that figure alone.

<comment><USER18> If your throughput suddenly dropped to 0 and you were watching a 15-second rolling average of that throughput speed, you'd within a very few (far less than 15) seconds know that your transfer speed had cratered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I tried not to troll this, but these kinds of dialogs are present in GNOME for long time: <https://twitpic.com/6aiqxt>

\- at the end of the day, that's what most of end users are going to notice.

I have high doubts about the pause button too, will it freeze the window to 'Not Responding' or it will just pause the operation in progress...

<comment><USER22> It's interesting to note the difference between the Windows 8 dialog has compared to the GNOME one.

You can minimise the Windows 8 dialog.

On Windows 8, the dialog shows both where the files are coming from and where they're going to.

By default, Windows hides most information in favour of a percentage. Click "More details" and Windows shows you much more information than GNOME does - Windows has emphasis on power user information.

The Windows dialog's layout is much better. The GNOME dialog's buttons stick out. GNOME's dialogs are really ugly and this is no exception.

It really shows the difference in polish between the two products.

My criticisms of Windows' dialog is that 'flat buttons' are aesthetically appealing but not particularly user-friendly, and perhaps Windows should show filesize and progress by default.

<comment><USER23> > You can minimise the Windows 8 dialog.

IIRC, if you "closed" the gnome one, it went to the systray, which is a UI problem all its own.

Also, you can pause the win8 operations, not just cancel them.

As for ugliness, this seems to be a shot of Hardy, give or take, so 2008-ish. I would say that the Ambiance theme that debuted to much controversy in 2010 is improved over the screenshot. (And neither of these are Gnome's default.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Reading this article makes me notice the difference between Windows and OSX/ _nix. Windows is allowing the user to pause and schedule their copy operations, whereas OSX and_ nix just provide a copy window with the ability to cancel the operation.

Even when I want to delete something in Win7, I get the message "Discovering items...". In that time, my *nix box has already deleted it and moved onto the next task.

I wish they wouldn't spend so many expensive developer hours to make an efficient pausing mechanism on your copy and move operations when instead they could focus on why the copy and move operations are taking so long in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER25> I got excited... I was hoping for renaming and moving files that are in-use. That continues to be the bane of my win7 experience.

<comment><USER26> That's something that has been annoying me since the first NT... Today it annoys less because my contact with Windows machines is much smaller, but it still bites me every once and then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Would it tell me beforehand that not enough space is available instead of failing midway? Also, I can see a use case for this pause item here: not enough space? we paused the transfer so that you can free up space and resume, or cancel at will.

The _"use pause to prioritise the thing I'm not interacting with"_ part is egregious at best. Let me drag/drop the activities to prioritise them: _"I want THAT one to complete faster, so I move it to the top"_ seems much more pertinent UX.

Besides, having ten parallel copies is a sure performance killer on a single disk. Certainly having a queue with a bunch of worker slots per (read+write) device could be a nice design. A new copy task from disk A to disk B could thus be delayed because there are already a network transfer to disk A and a copy from USB key to disk A in progress. Number of per disk workers could be dynamically adjusted according to IO wait times on a given disk, so that a non-copy task (like starting an application or opening a file) would get priority. Raising/lowering priorities would automatically start/pause transfers according to available workers.

<comment><USER17> It can't know in advance if it has free space or not.

1) Other files might get deleted in the process freeing more space.

2) Other files might get copied to the same volume as well claiming space.

3) There may be transparent compression involved meaning that you could copy more data then it seems or that the original data would claim more space in the target volume.

<comment><USER27> I'm on a PC. I'm copying a 30GB total (VM splitted disk VMware image, a bunch of selected folders containing photos or whatever) on an external disk with only 10GB left. The thing should tell me beforehand if I have enough space, not midway through the process.

Yes I could look it up beforehand, but why make me take three actions (look for free space on device, look for total space required, order to copy) when one would be sufficient? The computer should do the tedious tasks and let me decide.

<comment><USER17> But I just explained that it is impossible to know in advance if it there's free space or not...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The graphs of transfer rates are cool and all, but consider the average "mom" user - what are they going to do with that? Is a complete graph of transfer speed really necessary? It seems a bit of geekyness thrown in because it's "cool" rather than adding significant extra value over a simple text label with the current transfer speed.

<comment><USER29> I don't suppose this "mom" user would click "More information" -button at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Can't help but think the file transfer rate charts is development effort that could have been better spent elsewhere. I don't really need graphically representation of the speed of my copy/paste from start to end.

</comment><comment><USER31> The current copying paradigm is utter 70's. Here's a hint for you from the 2000's, you Microsoft or Linux or Gnome developers:

What I would like is that copies seem instant and transparent. Actually, I wouldn't like to think of copying at all. I "copy" (or merely just order) a file to (appear in) some place and it immediately becomes accessible from there. Or I decide to move it back a few seconds later and I can do that.

In reality the computer should manage the low-level copying internally and consider it more like syncing.

I shouldn't have to care about how long something takes or how the kernel will queue the actual copy operations, or whether it copies anything at all but just creates a copy-on-write mapping to the same data. I also shouldn't have to wait for copying: I should be able to just copy something and immediately turn off the computer. The operating system would continue copying the blocks, if necessary, when it's restarted later. All copy operations ought to be logically atomic as well: either a copy is immediately made or it isn't, the physical details of copying and remapping the corresponding blocks shouldn't be any of my concern.

So, an immediate, transaction-based and logically coherent file operations with automatic kernel-level delayed-I/O backend is what I would call the 2000's.

I hope that there already is at least one research O/S somewhere that would do this.

<comment><USER32> Why stop there? Why not just stop worrying about files and folders, and just think about documents, pictures and videos instead? Why should I have to care about the low-level filesystem at all?

Cue iOS.

<comment><USER33> _Cue iOS._

Which was a nice experiment which proved that it didn't work. You know what you can't do on iOS which most users want to be able to do?

Yeah. Work with the same document from multiple viewpoints, or applications. You can't work with documents across applications on iOS because you supposedly don't have files.

Like I said: A nice experiment, but it proves that "no files" only works for the simplest of use-cases and limits the ability to work with data beyond the limits that people reasonably expect to find.

<comment><USER34> Nah. iOS didn't have the time to prove anything at all. It's not done yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I was really impressed with Office 2007 when it first came out. After watching the video that demonstrated how it was developed incorporating extensive user feedback etc i was even more impressed. I expected the same methodologies would be applied to Vista and they werent so i was somewhat dissapointed, but Windows 7 turned out pretty good.

That said, Office 2010 was over-engineered in many ways. I just hope they dont over engineer Windows 8

</comment><comment><USER36> Every day I have to work on both Vista and Windows 7 machines. The W7 user experience is much better. One of the reasons it's much better is that Explorer is much better. The user experience with Vista Explorer truly sucks and that suckiness always seems to be in my face. My point being that Explorer matters and any improvements to it with W8 would be a large positive.

</comment><comment><USER37> I notice that file extensions are visible in some of the screenshots. Does that mean they're getting rid of that dumb (IMO) policy of hiding the extensions from users by default? The result was lots of naive users clicking on nekkid-pitcher-of-hot-celeb.jpg.exe because they couldn't see the .exe part, in exchange for...what, exactly?

<comment><USER38> And they punished those of us who make them visible again, by having the "edit filename" function mix the extension with the filename, even though wanting to change the extension is about 100 times more rare than wanting to change the characters right before the extension.

I've seen a nice version of this in linux somewhere - when you push F2 two boxes come up and the cursor is positioned in the one to the left of the dot but you can move across to it easily.

EDIT: Ah, this is available in windows 7 too. Nice, finally.

<comment><USER2> In Windows 7 (maybe Vista too), the "edit filename" function lets you edit the extension, but has only the filename selected. Thus Edit -> start typing -> Enter changes the filename, leaving the extension intact.

<comment><USER8> For what it's worth, OS X does this <http://cl.ly/9ZeF>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Are multiple large copy jobs common? I can't recall ever doing large copies of two distinct sets of files simultaneously, which makes me wonder when I'd ever use this dialog box. Would be curious to know what their telemetry data shows.

Another thing I think is interesting: the graph will never be intuitive because they've compounded the progress bar with the actual plotting. Thus, fast operations will take up a larger percentage of the graph because during fast operating speeds more progress will have been completed. Conversely, slow periods in the graph will be disproportionately smaller compared to the actual percentage of time that the slow operation took.

</comment><comment><USER40> It really bugged me when he hit 'more details', then had to drag the window back up to the center of the screen, because the details didn't fit in view.

</comment><comment><USER41> I use Total commander for these things on Windows, it already has queuing and the replace dialog does have more features ( <http://flint- inc.ru/Temp/over_dlg_3.png> ) but this looks cool too and I like the histograms :)

</comment><comment><USER42> While I like the improvements, I am a little disappointed that they are not implementing parallel/multi-threaded copying. It might not be something that a majority of users would need, but it feels like it should be something that should be natively supported by the OS.

<comment><USER43> What do you mean? It showed two batches being copied in parallel. If anything, they should do less in parallel and rather queue up jobs between same disks.

<comment><USER42> Yes, you can have multiple copy operating running in parallel but the way Windows works, the files themselves are copied in serial order (within an individual copy operation). Whereas with tools like RichCopy, you are actually copying multiple files in parallel.

See here for example; [http://msinetpub.vo.llnwd.net/d1/keithcombs/blog/images/Rich...](http://msinetpub.vo.llnwd.net/d1/keithcombs/blog/images/RichCopybulkfilecopytoolreleasedgetither_11531/RichCopy_thumb.jpg)

This is incredibly useful when you need to copy folders with a lot of (smaller) files. Think pictures, music, etc.

<comment><USER44> I'd be interested in seeing benchmarks that demonstrate an improvement when doing this. I'd expect that the average case is slower due to increased disk contention.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Dear Microsoft: take this

[http://blog.codesector.com/category/code-sector- software/ter...](http://blog.codesector.com/category/code-sector- software/teracopy/)

clean it up a bit, build it into windows

Thanks

</comment><comment><USER46> Great, but I wish they'd fix this first: <http://goo.gl/KzQBG>

<comment><USER47> Don't use url shorteners here. The real url is [http://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/forum/windows_7-f...](http://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/forum/windows_7-files/windows-explorer-expands-folders- inappropriately/50a81b05-da98-4d55-821d-55ffbbd0e998)

<comment><USER46> Thanks for that... Hadn't noticed HN automatically truncates long URLs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Love the x220 in the video.

</comment><comment><USER48> Ugh. So, instead of tackling something like auto-queuing of copy operations to prevent disk thrashing, they did the 'hard' work of adding a pause button and some silly bling. Incidentally, if that conflict-resolution dialog doesn't provide mouse-over image enlargement/preview, I'm going to instantly hate it.

<comment><USER49> Yes, from their example ("pausing" one task speeds up the rest, and graphs show speed progress "hills and valleys") it can be concluded that they let copy tasks run in parallel instead of queuing the files. That's practically a guaranteed way to produce more fragmented disk layouts. Well done, current MSFT programmers.

You understand what's going on in MSFT when the blog post ends with the line like "All of this adds up to building a significantly improved copy experience, one that is unified, concise, and clear, and which puts you in control of your experience." A clear example of managerspeak -- adjusted to sound good among other managers not to mean something.You see even from where the battles for "bling" come.

<comment><USER29> Out of curiosity: what operating system does automatically queue separately initiated copy operations? Wouldn't it be quite confusing if some copy operation just wouldn't start at all before some other - possibly very time consuming - operation was concluded?

<comment><USER50> Linux. It doesn't queue individual files,but it does schedule disk blocks to minimize seeks and maximize throughput. Look up "elevator algorithm " and "Linux IO scheduler" for more detail.

<comment><USER51> Windows does this too, of course. Any modern OS does.

[http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/f/7/af7777e5-7dcd-4...](http://download.microsoft.com/download/a/f/7/af7777e5-7dcd-4800-8a0a-b18336565f5b/Priorityio.doc)

<comment><USER50> I'd be surprised if it didn't. Then again, I was rather surprised that Windows XP's throughput dropped massively when I started copying more than one file at once, so it seems that it didn't do a good job of it.

<comment><USER52> sciurus did say modern which XP is most definitely not.

<comment><USER26> XP is pretty modern in relation to elevator seek. It's been used since the 70's, at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I'm very excited for Windows 8 and these posts are a big help in that (as well as what I perceive to be a great opportunity for the Windows platform across phones, tablets and desktop).

Maybe Microsoft will actually do this correctly instead of implementing it like Nautilus, where the copies aren't queued and thus happily trash the disk (hell, even the pause feature is quite welcome).

<comment><USER54> I've noticed that the OS X shell does that too (not queue copies that have the same destination device).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> From the comments here, it seems that I will still need TeraCopy when Windows 8 comes around. That's a bit of a bummer, but I can live with that.

Seriously though. TeraCopy does just the right thing and is one of those "must have" Windows additions, despite the ugly-looking UI.

For those interested: <http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.php>

<comment><USER55> Unfortunately TeraCopy appears to be abandonware, as it hasn't seen a new version for nearly a year, and no real attempt has been made to deal with its terrible network copy performance under Windows 7.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> So, almost as good as Teracopy?

</comment><comment><USER57> This was my 9th grade cs project.

</comment><comment><USER58> How many other experiences at Microsoft are referred to as "copy Jobs"?</comment>


The Origin of QWERTY - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2016/03/15/the-origin-of-qwerty/ <comment><USER2> What is interesting to me is that when adapting the keyboard to other languages, they often didn't attempt to change the layout for the keys used most in those languages. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY#International_variants](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY#International_variants) I guess this makes sense in terms of international standardization, but it also to me seems to be a good argument for "no one thought this through very hard before adapting it."

<comment><USER3> On a german keyboard Z and Y are switched, and all the punctuation character are all wrong. So much better to program with a US keyboard than a german one!

<comment><USER2> Haha, that does sound deeply annoying. But makes sense given German words. I really don't know which is better, to standardize or personalize...

<comment><USER4> It's kinda like adjusting the seat position in a car. If you could have each individual user's preferences saved somewhere and applied to every car/computer when you sit down to use it, then personalization wins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pretty interesting history, and a compelling theory. Although, I don't think we'll see the end of articles like these until someone digs up a direct reference. Here's a direct reference from 1875:

[https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=patentimages.storage.goog...](https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/pdfs/US207559.pdf)

Amazing what's online these days. Unfortunately Sholes doesn't explain the origin of QWERTY in that patent. Does any? How about a copy of Scientific American at the time, or other publications, books, or journals that now may be scanned and online?

The theory mentioned here is that QWERTY was influenced by telegraph and morse code. It's from this paper:

[http://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~yasuoka/publications/PreQ...](http://kanji.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~yasuoka/publications/PreQWERTY.html)

I don't see a direct reference there either.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use QFMLWY which according to [http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?full_optimization](http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?full_optimization) is even better than Dvorak and Colemak. It helped me greatly reduce my wrist pain. Once you get used to it, you immediately feel how it requires much less effort than QWERTY. Drawbacks are that it replaces nearly all keys so takes some getting used to. I went cold turkey (ie. simply stopped using QWERTY) and it took me about a month. Another drawback is that I'm now slow to type on QWERTY and others can't use my computer unless they change the keyboard layout. So it's not suited very well for when you do a lot of pair programming, for example. I'm really happy with it though, since I mostly work on my own. If anyone wants to get started, I can send you instructions for how to configure each OS (Windows, Mac, Linux) for that layout.

<comment><USER7> I love how the last line of your reply reads like an advertisement from the 1800s: 'for useful information on configuration of this amazing keyboard layout for each OS (Windows, Mac, and Linux), reply by mail.'

That being said, Linux please.

<comment><USER6> There you go: [https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xipilk620vvmd7x/AAAzukU8JoZRARZ0T...](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xipilk620vvmd7x/AAAzukU8JoZRARZ0TIciXXZua?dl=0) :) I used it on Ubuntu

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A long time ago, I ran an amateur experiment that applied an evolutionary algorithm to the problem of keyboard layout, using a simple function of finger motion across a corpus of English language text and source code. The best- performing evolved layouts all had the common vowels on the home row's left side and the common consonants on its right side. So I stuck with Dvorak for my own use, since it's easily available everywhere.

<comment><USER9> Hi! Why did you take it down?

[http://www.klausler.com/evolved.html](http://www.klausler.com/evolved.html)

I wrote about it in 2002

[http://lumma.org/microwave/#2002.07.09](http://lumma.org/microwave/#2002.07.09)

(I learned QWERTY in 1991, switched to Dvorak in 2001, and never looked back. Which is good because switching cold-turkey caused extinction of my QWERTY ability.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I use Dvorak because _default_ installations of most OSes carry it, including Linux, Windows, MacOS, ChromeOS, and Android. I realize there are potentially better alternatives but it would then become a pain if you have to use someone else's machine.

<comment><USER11> I'm curious about using dvorak on smartphones, isn't QWERTY is more suitable for use on smartphones due to larger distance between most used characters? dvorak tends to clump them and would make more chance to mistake on smartphones, doesn't it? (i used qwerty and dvorak before on android, now using MessageEase fulltime and dvorak on computers)

<comment><USER10> I think the distance makes little difference on phones especially with 5-inch and larger screens where it's reasonably easy to peck accurately.

What's most important is that the phone layout matches what you use most frequently on computers. If you use Dvorak all the time on computers it's a lot more convenient for your memory if your phone layout matches that as well.

<comment><USER12> I would disagree. When typing Danish on a phone I started realizing how many different words differs by a single neighboring keystroke on qwerty in Danish and how this is actually a big cause of typos.

Qwerty really does shine on a smartphone, for English.

<comment><USER10> But that's because you can also touch-type in QWERTY, correct? For someone like me who only learned Dvorak and never learned QWERTY to begin with, it's a chore to hunt for all the letters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you're interested in exploring alternative layouts, I have some references here: [https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes/blob/master/keyboa...](https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes/blob/master/keyboards.org#alternate- keyboard-layouts)

<comment><USER14> I recently switched to the programmer dvorak keyboard layout and haven't looked back since. I switched in December and purchased keyboard stickers from Amazon ([http://amzn.com/B00IPGZC54](http://amzn.com/B00IPGZC54)). I also practiced on Keybr ([http://www.keybr.com/](http://www.keybr.com/)) for about 2 hours a day until I had practiced 20 hours. Luckily I was on vacation so I didn't have to worry about how I would work. After my initial 20 hours of training I had already reached 30 words per minute which was suitable for getting back to work. I now type at a blistering 70 words per minute compared to the 50 words per minute I would reach on qwerty. In my personal opinion though, most of the speed comes from the practice I have done on Keybr rather than the switch in keyboard layout.

<comment><USER15> I always read glowing reports from switching to Dvorak, so here's my experience:

I switched to the Dvorak keyboard about 5 years ago. Previously, I typed 110 WPM on QWERTY, and while learning Dvorak my WPM rose quickly from 10 to 70 WPM, but remained there. I now type at about 80 WPM, but even with practice I have not been able to regain my previous speed. I can switch to Qwerty, but my WPM has gone down too -- it's about 80 WPM now.

I realized that I had been achieving 110 WPM because I had unconventional hand positions (I never learned to type "correctly", so it just developed). Learning and staying with the "correct" hand positions brought down my WPM. Previously, my hands flew around the keyboard, but now they're mostly stationary on the home row. The positive outcome of this is that I can now use non-traditional keyboards such as the Kinesis, where I cannot move my hands around while typing.

I don't regret going to Dvorak because of the great comfort it brings to my tired hands, but I do miss the speed from time to time.

<comment><USER16> Is there really a need for blistering-fast WPM? Outside of transcribing/typing up documents (and how many people really do that anymore?) is there any real point to it?

I don't know that I manage more than a sentence a minute - the limiting factor there isn't my typing speed, it's thinking through and editing what I'm going to say. Programming, it's probably on the order of 10-15 characters a line, and unless I'm doing mindless boilerplate, that line takes a minute or two to think through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I find that while I love the variation of keyboard layouts and keyboard types, what really slows me down in the composition. I'm trying to say that for me the real bottleneck is having something to say rather the speed of getting it out.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm using NEO2, which is pretty solidly researched</comment>


Show HN: Cross-Platform System Dashboard Using Flask and Freeboard - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/minimaxir/system-dashboard <comment><USER2> Great stuff! Looks useful and I love seeing Flask used in more projects.</comment>


Confessions of a Fake News Writer - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/notes/book-recommendations-best-book-to-read/confessions-of-a-fake-news-writer/2111686775714843/ <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18102055](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18102055), since this one is a plagiarized rip-off posted by a spam account (now banned).

</comment><comment><USER3> Original looks to be at [https://medium.com/s/story/confessions-of-a-fake- news-writer...](https://medium.com/s/story/confessions-of-a-fake-news- writer-62d8c3d28c1b)

Can you see the irony here.

<comment><USER2> Thanks! Yes. A mod saw this and changed the URL from [https://www.facebook.com/notes/book-recommendations-best- boo...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/book-recommendations-best-book-to- read/confessions-of-a-fake-news-writer/2111686775714843/).

Edit: a better solution is to move the comments to a submission of the actual article; see above.</comment></comment>


Let's Encrypt: an automated certificate authority to encrypt the entire web - <AUTHOR> https://weekly.statuscode.com/link/83805/f827899058 <comment><USER2> acme.sh a master class in bash and a pretty damn good let's encrypt certificate processor.</comment>


What Is the Weird Black Cube on the Sun in This New NASA Image? - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxq45w/what-is-the-weird-black-cube-on-the-sun-in-this-new-nasa-image <comment><USER2> A nit pick, I guess, but it's a square, not a cube.

The edges are interesting. I wonder what part of the image processing results in the irregularity. Some kind of interpolation, I'd guess, but that's pure speculation.

<comment><USER3> I don't think the edges are all _that_ interesting. The stair-stepped appearance is just what you inevitably get when you rotate a square in low resolution without antialiasing.

<comment><USER2> Now that you point it out, that seems to be the case. The fuzziness around the edges (the east and north especially) threw me off, though that could probably be put down to compression in the image that was used as the source for the crop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Borg Cube.

Sorry, I have to say that.

:)</comment>


Ask HN: Database Change Management - <AUTHOR>

I'm curious about how other people use and live with databases, specifically the types of tools they use around their database to simplify work with the database. For background info, what database(s) do you use, and what is the scope of your project? What kind of tools do you use to manage change with your database (implicit or explicit schema, server deployments, etc.)? What kind of "generator" tools are you using (thick- or thin-ORM, data access layers, whatever)? What pain points do you still experience? Thanks! <comment><USER2> We created a system for database changes so they are part of the continuous integration process. With each build, all the database patches are applied. It took some time to create a set of rules and processes for this, of course. At this point, it's worked well for several years and makes it so all databases are consistent. Whatever patches are run during development are the same as those released on production.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.liquibase.org/>

Works great for us. 200+ Billions rows on Oracle.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've also recently found flyway (<http://flywaydb.org/>). Seems similar, with the added bonus of not doing everything in XML.</comment></comment>


Campus Recruiting - From the student perspective - <AUTHOR> I just received an email from a company I talked to in late January, they had asked to schedule an on-site then, and never got back to me. Now, apparently, they want to know if Thursday, 3 months later, is still a great day for me to drive an hour north and interview.
While I politely declined, and notified them that I had already accepted an offer somewhere else, this got me thinking of exactly how many companies suck at university recruiting.
I'm a Junior at UCSD, so this post is mostly regarding on my experiences looking for an internship; though obviously, this is relevant to recruiting new grads as well.
I intend to shed light on this topic from the perspective of a student, and discuss how CS students find, apply to, and evaluate offers. This is a perspective I haven't seen covered here or anywhere else, and seeing the cluelessness in university recruiting displayed by some, I'd say is needed.
Firstly, its important to note that the candidates you want working for you probably have offers already, or won't have problems getting other offers as well. Right now, the market is firmly in favor of the developers. So it's your best interest in making the process easy and efficient.
Finding Prospects:
There are ways the vast majority of students find opportunities. In order from best to worst, they are, career fairs, on campus recruiting events (info-sessions/tech talks), and the CS mailing list.
Career Fairs are great.
You get personal contact with a recruiter or an engineer, get to hand off your resume, and it doesn't take too much time on my part. If you have a booth at a career fair, you can either staff it with recruiters, or staff it with good engineers.
Obviously, one costs more than the other, but if you intend to give technical interviews to perspective candidates on the spot, do it with your best foot forward. Do not bring your B engineers. I distinctly recall with one "career fair screen", where I was tasked with writing a function that found how many levels deep a binary tree went. I wrote
int depth(node in){
if(in == null)
return 0;
int l = depth(in.left);
int r = depth(in.right);
d = l > r ? l : r;
return d + 1;
}
The engineer interviewing me said, "how does that work?". I explained it to him. He then followed up with "You can't do it without a stack, it's gotta be wrong!". I figured this was a test, so I talked to him about the call stack, and confidently defended my answer. He shook his head at me and said, "alright, this is over", and motioned at me to leave.
I've shared this story with quite a few people, and we've had a good laugh at the expense at that particular company.
On another note, one of my friends talked to this company, did the initial screen, talked to the manager, and was hired on the spot. While she is indeed competent, please don't do this. If you hire candidates by "gut feelings" without an extensive technical interview, it makes me wonder how stringent your hiring standards are.
Do not have HR people ask technical questions. The only technical questions HR people ask are trivia questions with easily verifiable answers, and these are irritating, pointless, and a total crapshoot in terms of signal to noise. If you must screen out some candidates, use the face time to talk about projects or membership in engineering organizations. Note that this will have a substantially worse signal to noise ratio than having engineers on-site.
Make your booth visually attractive and interesting; handing out cool swag is a great way to make people drop by when they otherwise would not. Obviously if you're Google, or Facebook, people will drop by your booth anyways, (though google always has great swag). If you're a small startup, you might be ignored if all you have are two people sitting at a table.
I firmly believe if you can afford the investment ($750), you should buy a booth at a career fair. This is especially important if you are a smaller company, as there exists a "Halo effect" at career fairs, because Google, MSFT, and other big name firms are there, you might be able to get in touch with students who would otherwise ignore you.
Infosessions are on campus recruiting events that generally involve renting out a room, and giving a presentation to a large group of people. I consider these inferior to career fair tabling, because they cost more, and demand a larger time on my part than merely hitting up your table.
If you are a startup, don't bother. Not only are they expensive, if students have not generally heard of you, only the ones desperate for work are likely to show up.
Companies often try to get around this by offering free food. I'm not sure this improves your signal to noise ratio substantially. You now have the hungry and the the desperate - though, I would bet that | hungry ∩ talented | > | desperate ∩ talented | is true.
A side not about offering food: please have healthy options available. While its true that some engineers will eat just about anything, there are those of us who do not eat junk food. Some of us treat our body like a product, and know our bodyfat percentage precisely. (11.9%). We'd go to your infosession, but we'd rather be having a healthy dinner.
The CS mailing list is the cheapest of all the options, if you want to recruit from UCSD, just send out an ad to firstname.lastname@example.com. Please note however, many people filter out anything sent to this mailing list, quite possibly because of the sheer amount of garbage that comes through it. Its free, and takes you about 5 minutes.
Please define exactly what you're looking for, where you're located, and if you're a name that isn't generally recognized, tell us what level of funding you have.
Half the ads that come across the mailing list are business majors looking for a gullible "co-founder" to work for pennies. If you come across remotely like this, I'm pressing the delete button.
Part 2: Interviewing Candidates.
You now have a stack of resumes, you might have filtered some out at the career fair or info-session where, hopefully, you took advantage of face to face contact to screen out people.
Depending on your process, you might either rent out a room and hold interviews on campus, or go to a phone screen. Whatever you do, do it promptly. Nobody likes waiting around, and if you want to perceived as agile, you better do recruiting in an efficient manner.
As for the actual content of the interview, much has been said about this, and I'm no expert on interviewing. But, its important to remember that a college student likely has far less interviews under his belt than a professional, and is therefore, far less confident during the interview.
Please take extra time to get to know us before springing the technical questions. I know when I first interviewed, I failed two technical screens that were dead simple, because the interviewer jumped into the technical questions and I panicked.
Today, after going through enough interviews, this wouldn't remotely be an issue. I'd be very comfortable jumping immediately into technical questions. Keep this in mind especially if you are interviewing candidates early in the season (early fall and winter), for interns, there is a good chance this is the first technical interview they've ever done, and are likely nervous and jittery.
Do not ever do a panel interview. I don't know why companies ever bother with this. It puts the prospective under even higher pressure, and wastes even more engineer time.
As for the content of the interview? The usual goes. Make the questions challenging, fun, and exciting. They should test me to my limits. Do not make them require any form of specialized knowledge, anyone who has taken a basic data structures and algorithms course should be able to pass them.
Students do gossip about the interviews, and if your interviews are fun and challenging, I'll recommend my smartest friends to apply to your company. If your interviews aren't difficult, I'll be recommending my friends who are hard up for jobs to apply.
Some examples of companies who I've greatly enjoyed speaking to, are, in no particular  order, Cloudera, Quora, Palantir, and Campfire Labs. I've recommended all these places to my brightest friends.
Making the offer:
Do not lowball. While it may be tempting to think of us as naive college students, and try to see how low of an offer you can get away with, understand the internet does exist, and that everybody knows the going rate for an internship or job. If you lowball, I'm going to negotiate you up to an acceptable market rate, but you've already damaged your reputation in my eyes.
If you give me a good offer, I'll negotiate anyways. It never hurts to try.
If you're a startup, doing open source work, or have a particularly compelling vision, you can get away with less monetary compensation than otherwise. You probably know what you have to offer.
Make the offer fast, and please don't try the exploding offer. If I tell you I have an interview coming up, and just somehow, you need an answer 3 days before that interview, I'm going to almost immediately decline your offer. The students you are after are going to be the ones who won't have issues getting offers in other places, and we know this.
Most of us, (or at least the ones you want), have a very well developed sense of ethics. We want to be fair to you, and we expect you to be as fair as possible to us. Remember that by using a shady negotiating tactic on one of us, the story will be shared among our friends as well - and this might end up making it far more difficult to recruit the talent you want.
In closing, I'm no expert at recruiting, and my suggestions should probably be taken with a grain of salt. But I'd like to give my perspective as an undergrad, and I hope some of these suggestions are of use. <comment><USER2> Good point with regards to the exploding offer. I know a bunch of engineers from school who have been left with a sour taste in their mouth for certain companies for not being given reasonable time to assess their offers.

If you are extending offers mid school year for a job starting in 4, 5, or 6 months, issuing an almost immediate deadline for response doesn't help the process; it just ensures that you pissed off a qualified candidate who will almost always will question their choice & that you will have to interview more people.</comment>


Internet Archive raises National Emergency Library: 1M free books no waitlist - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/internet-archives-national-emergency-library-has-over-a-million-books-to-read-right-now/ <comment><USER2> This is a big deal

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks @sayhar! specially given so many libraries across the country are currently shut down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> legally, how are they able to do this with books that aren't public domain?</comment>


5 Lessons Startups Can Learn From Star Trek: The Next Generation - <AUTHOR> http://www.irishstu.com/stublog/2013/05/09/5-lessons-startups-can-learn-from-star-trek-the-next-generation/

<comment><USER2> Astute observations but did anyone notice the typo in the third paragraph?

Lame.

<comment><AUTHOR> You obviously don't understand the subject matter</comment></comment>


President Obama Launches New Pro-Competition Initiative - <AUTHOR> https://promarket.org/the-white-house-acknowledges-the-u-s-has-a-concentration-problem-president-obama-launches-new-pro-competition-initiative/ <comment><USER2> I can't dispute the lack of competition on set-top boxes, but cable companies and local telcos are prototypical examples of monopolies created by government regulation. The problem in this particular area is a result of government neglect in an area that it chose to regulate.

The actual issue brief [[https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/page/files/20...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/page/files/20160414_cea_competition_issue_brief.pdf)] reads a lot better than the linked article and does admit that government policy is significant cause of anti-competitive behavior.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR>
      > The first action in Obama's new initiative is to open the market for set-top cable boxes

I couldn't help but jump for joy at the thought of these things being replaced with something half way usable.</comment>


Show HN: Home Buying List – list of stuff you need to do to buy a house (in CA) - <AUTHOR> http://www.homebuyinglist.com <comment><AUTHOR> I recently bought a house in California and had to endure a pretty un- organized, stressful, unclear and unknown 30 day journey to get there. I kept asking all of the involved parties for a clear roadmap, checklist, etc but none seem to have a good one that covered the process end to end so I figure I would put one together now that I am done with the process.

I plan on updating and adding more to this soon but am looking for early feedback on the set up of the site, navigation, clarity, etc.

Any early feedback would be great!

[http://www.homebuyinglist.com](http://www.homebuyinglist.com)

THANKS! Hussein

</comment><comment><USER2> In checklist mode, yellow text on white background is hard to read.

<comment><USER3> ^ Agreed. Damn near impossible if you are old and have eyesight issues.

Related: The link on the landing page above to "checklist" in the sentence saying you can check out the checklist version does not show as a link. I had to move my cursor across it and look for the hover mode to appear indicating something was clickable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, fixed :) (and thank you)

<comment><USER3> Better -- I can read the list -- but I actually do not like the stark blue- white/white-blue color scheme. It is hard on the eyes and glaring.

Off white, like #00000f, might work better to cut the glare. I am medically handicapped and frequently run a fever. When I am feverish, I will just close the browser and not use a site this bright. It's blinding.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, sorry to hear that. Interesting perspective tho, I changed the colors but not sure you mean to say: #00000f that is on the black side.

<comment><USER3> Er, maybe that should have said #fffff0. Whoops.

Edit: Yes, that doesn't make me cringe. Much better.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Back yards vs city parks - <AUTHOR> http://scripting.com/stories/2010/11/09/benSlivkaAndBackyardsVsCit.html

<comment><USER2> An approach that works rather well here in Edinburgh is private shared gardens - the owners of properties in an area have a large shared garden with controlled key access. Everyone pays fees (I think ours are about £200 a year) - which is a bargain as far as I am concerned, especially as we have neither the time or the skills to look after a garden properly!

You can see about half of our shared gardens here:

<http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/gr9iFLntf8dAesyBFxUSnQ>

[NB not my picture]

</comment><comment><USER3> NYC has backyards, if you consider that NYC consists of 5 boroughs. Most of the backyards (and houses) just are not in Manhattan.

</comment><comment><USER4> So something that's been bugging me lately about NYC. Why isn't Park Avenue adjacent to the park?

<comment><USER5> I've wondered this myself. Turns out Wikipedia has the answer:

"Park Avenue was originally known as Fourth Avenue and carried the tracks of the New York and Harlem Railroad starting in the 1830s. The railroad originally built an open cut through Murray Hill, which was covered with grates and grass between 34th and 40th Street in the early 1850s. A section of this "park" was renamed Park Avenue in 1860. In 1867, the name applied all the way to 42nd Street. When Grand Central Depot was opened in the 1870s, the railroad tracks between 56th and 96th Streets were sunk out of sight, and, in 1888, Park Avenue was extended to the Harlem River."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Avenue_%28Manhattan%29#His...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Avenue_%28Manhattan%29#History)</comment></comment>


Making svn accessible to non-software fields - <AUTHOR>

we're still brainstorming about our project and currently one of the proposed components is a  front-end for users to initialize,manage, and access their own svn servers with click-drag-drop ease to allow anyone needing to collaborate to easily harness the power of svn. Mostly looking to get some feedback from the bright folks who hang out on this forum. Also if anyone's interested in taking part, or just wants to talk about it.. drop me a line at seiji.t at gmail <comment><AUTHOR> The genuine goal of the project is to simplify the process of mass collaboration. The command-line junkies can use it as a tool to seamlessly extend certain parts of the project out to the public. Artists without any collaboration or development experience, scattered around the globe, can within a minute set up a virtual studio to collaborate on their animation project. It could be used by high school kids to create a digital scrapbook. There are tools available to do all of these things, but I think it is still a lot more difficult than it should be. I've seen many projects with potential vaporize simply because it was a lot of work just to keep all the pieces together.

</comment><comment><USER2> I think it's a good idea, however I think you'll find there are two types of people, commmand-line junkies that just svn everything anyway or people who don't understand/care about version control.

That said I'm a middle ground svn'er and would love to see something like what I think your getting at.</comment>