Why do people buy MacBook Pro retinas, given their relatively high price? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-buy-MacBook-Pro-retinas-given-their-relatively-high-price?share=1 <comment><USER2> I'm not an Apple hater, I use a MacBook Pro at work (funnily enough, either SSH remote linux server or running Linux VM through vagrant), for my personal machines I run 100% Linux. It is solid hardware, but I think the OS is becoming a hindrance to me as a developer. It seems like every iteration closes yet another door on the underlying UNIX base, making it harder and harder to get things working, Homebrew helps but seems like it needs more and more workarounds and often breaks with esoteric conflicts. Nowadays I just use OS X as a VM shell, so I might as well be using Windows. I don't use any Apple "apps", I never touch their cloud because of all the horror stories I've heard, and I fear in a couple of releases the OS is just going to be completely locked down so I'll have to move to Windows at work to get work done. The hardware is definitely the best in class, but the software is becoming unusable to me as a developer. I hope it means more linux usage but I'm not delusional and know that desktop linux is basically just a niche and probably always will be (which saddens me greatly). I think it's a shame Apple has taken this direction.

<comment><USER3> The hardware is "best-in-class"? I keep hearing this, but the specs and personal experiences just don't match up with it. Their devices are, and have always been, way underspecced, and they pull stupid crap like abusing the case as a heatsink (because they're too cheap for fans?), soldering in RAM and gluing in batteries (seriously, WTF?), and using proprietary connectors for everything.

Their software is a trainwreck, their hardware is even worse. Why on earth do people give this company money?

<comment><USER4> Because Jobs hated the sound of spinning fans supposedly.

The macbooks are not the first in that regard.

Various Apple products over the years have had problems with overheating because of this.

Supposedly one variant of the AppleII has a service recommendation of lifting and dropping it on to the desk. This because the lack of fans would make the logicboard buckle from heat, unseating some chips.

I do believe a certain Cube was also fanless, and had trouble keeping itself cool. Never mind that it had a power switch that would be flipped by a stray piece of paper...

<comment><USER5> If I have to agree with Jobs on anything, I'll start w/ the noise of spinning fans.

<comment><USER4> I find them a necessary evil.

This because you only get so much cooling passively, and you only get so much computing done pr unit heat (something that even mobile phones are discovering).

End result, you can only compute so much on a passively cooled system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My story about this;

I made the mistake (in my personal opinion), based on the advise of a friend, to buy one recently. Insanely expensive and I really don't like it as much as the much cheaper Air; it has worse battery life (I had Apple check it twice and there is nothing wrong, just 'my usage pattern'; I use the same software on the Air and on my old X220 and get better battery life on both; on the X220 _far_ better), the screen has staingate[0] which my local Apple store said they wouldn't replace for free (going to try different ones now). And it feels slower; it's objectively (tests) faster, but for my subjective performance perception it's slower. It often pops the beachball which I never see on the Air and it runs hot doing nothing but web browsing. Again, Apple checked it twice.

[0] [http://www.staingate.org/](http://www.staingate.org/)

<comment><USER7> Just my 2c, my experience has been the exact opposite in regards to subjective performance. You may want to try a fresh install and reformat, sounds like something is off. My coworker and I were issued the same model Mac, and he had issues and I don't. Reinstalled his OS and things are great for him now. But, to each their own; certainly not trying to say your opinion is invalid.

<comment><USER6> I have tried... And my Apple store tried as well. For my usage pattern there is no rescue apparently :) I'm not that mift about it anyway; I use it for compiling + testing iOS apps and compiling + testing cross platform apps. And for everything else I use my X220. I would never recommend the MBP, I would recommend the Air any day. But I would give it this context; I know some people who love their MBPs. Especially designers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why do people buy anything on the high end of the market given its relative high price?

Price is not the only criterion. In fact for socially aware people it might even be a positive -- signaling you do well to others etc. This is not just a shallow thing for personal showing-off: in its general application (ie. not just in laptops), how you look and what you use can have quite an impact on your opportunities and connections.

But it's not like competitive products with smaller prices are just as good in every aspect either.

What actually happens is more like this:

Some cheaper competitive products are as good or even better as MBPr for the basics of computing (raw CPU/GPU), and some people think "computer" and automatically assume that CPU/GPU is all that matters (whereas most people, gamers aside, totally underutilize them).

But they fail to see where those cheaper products fail for someone who can pay for something pricier. E.g. in ergonomics (e.g. the mag-safe power adaptor, multi-touch trackpad, magnetic hinge, illuminated keyboard, etc), and some of the most important factors for laptops you carry frequently: construction (sturdiness), weight, thickness and battery life. Being able to run OS X (and Windows/Linux), and the nicer industrial aesthetics and lack of BS (intel inside stickers, OEM crapware, etc) don't hurt either. And MBPr's monitors frequently review as the best of the competition too (plus, they were the first to introduce hi-dpi screens, at least mass market).

Besides, when you get to the higher end Dells, Sonys etc, and add all the features and trimmings to match 1-1 those MBPr (including the "details" mentioned above), you end up with similar, or even higher in some cases, prices.

So it's down to what you value.

For raw CPU/GPU you can build something cheaper.

For variety/freedom/reuse (build-your-own-with-whatever-parts-you-like too).

But for ergonomics and laptopy-concerns, those Apple laptops are pretty much where it's at, and if you find something comparable (high end Dell, Sony, whatever) it will have a comparable price.

<comment><USER3> > Some cheaper competitive products are as good or even better as MBPr for the > basics of computing (raw CPU/GPU), and some people think "computer" and > automatically assume that CPU/GPU is all that matters (whereas most people, > gamers aside, totally underutilize them).

So what is it you're paying so much extra for then?

> mag-safe power adaptor

Can't say this has ever been an issue for me, and even they seem to be killing this off.

> multi-touch trackpad

Standard feature on any recent laptop.

> magnetic hinge

Huh?

> illuminated keyboard

Quickly becoming a standard feature, but if this is important to you then you probably shouldn't be spending that much on a laptop anyway.

> construction (sturdiness)

LOL.

> weight, thickness and battery life

Not an issue in the real world.

<comment><USER8> > _So what is it you 're paying so much extra for then?_

All those other things. I'm not using my CPU at anywhere near 100% 24/7 to care about its speed that much. But I do use the keyboard, trackpad, carry the weight, etc, every single day.

> _Can 't say this has ever been an issue for me_

Well, good for you. Yanking the cable has been an issue for me, and several million others besides.

> _Standard feature on any recent laptop._

Yes, but with a crappy implementation. There's really no comparison.

> magnetic hinge

Magnetic close "lock" mechanism for the display, as opposed to some protruding hinge.

> _Quickly becoming a standard feature_

Yeah, everything is "Quickly becoming a standard feature". But I've had it, and other things, for a decade or so on my Macbook Pros...

> _LOL._

Yeah, because sturdiness is not a thing to ask from your laptop.

> _Not an issue in the real world._

Perhaps weight, thickness and battery life are not issues in the real world that _you_ live in.

Oh, and premium quality HW. E.g. check the first response in TFA.

<comment><USER3> > Yes, but with a crappy implementation. There's really no comparison.

Very subjective. Apple's setup UI and default settings both leave a hell of a lot to be desired.

> Magnetic close "lock" mechanism for the display, as opposed to some > protruding hinge.

Oh, that. Standard feature...?

> Yeah, everything is "Quickly becoming a standard feature". But I've had it, > and other things, for a decade or so on my Macbook Pros...

This is 2016, not 2006.

> Yeah, because sturdiness is not a thing to ask from your laptop.

No, but the a MBP is not the thing to ask for sturdiness in.

> Perhaps weight, thickness and battery life are not issues in the real world > that you live in.

The weight and thickness differences aren't significant. The battery life difference can be, but is rarely an issue. Road trips, I guess...?

> Oh, and premium quality HW. E.g. check the first response in TFA.

Yay, circular reasoning...?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Because it runs the software I need to use on the only operating system that seems to run it and it does so with the fewest problems of any hardware I've tried. The price is almost line noise compared to the value produced using the equipment for me. (It's like wondering why use a $50 chisel when you can get one for $1.. if you're doing a lot of work with the chisel, just get the $50 one.)

<comment><USER10> At work we have a bunch of Windows and Mac laptops. The Windows laptops are constantly needing something. Either hardware repair or having software issues of various types (for some reason, often the wifi drivers). The Macs... never once have we had a problem with any of them.

For me, I just got fed up with Windows and Windows laptops. The bloat. Windows itself (I dropped off at Windows 8, I just hated it). I had used every Windows version since 3.1. Both at home and work I use Linux for all my server needs, but for my home base, macOS is fine. I never upgrade it until it hits 10.x.4, and by that point, it's rock solid. I use a product called FastX for reconnectable SSH sessions to my home and work Linux machines, where I do everything in GNU Emacs, even email. I've been using nmh + MH-E + some filtering software I wrote myself. I've accumulated 30+ years of Emacs tweaks and that environment is as about as productive as I can make it, for what I do.

My son recently wanted to play Windows games (Steam) on his Mac, so we installed Windows 10 via bootcamp. I was impressed with how easy it was to install and how fast Windows was on his new 2016 Macbook.

Compared to all the Windows laptops out there, I think Macbooks are an incredible deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Some people buy new cars, some only buy used. Some people think a night out at the movies is absurd given their relatively high price, yet pay for a paper newspaper rather than just an online subscription which others might not. While I generally agree with the Quora answer, the answer to "Why do people buy X given X is expensive?" is generally "Because it's worth it to them" or "They have to."

<comment><USER12> Isn't the real question "why do people buy it, regardless of the price, even though the hardware and software stack isn't capable of providing a fluid experience at that resolution?"? I haven't used a Retina macbook, but I find it hard to believe Apple would sell a macbook that isn't responsive in typical use cases.

<comment><USER7> The only retina Mac I've seen with occasional responsiveness issues was the very first generation, which got much better with updates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For me it's mostly because of build quality (keyboard, casing, screen, feel, ...) and a functional pointing device.

No other laptop I have used has a useable trackpad and most have a keyboard that is unusable. The only other laptop I have ever used with a pointing device I liked was the Thinkpad nub.

Also, everything seems to "just work" when compared to using a Linux. Sleep/hibernate, syncing with my iPhone and iPad. It's nice not worrying or having to tweak this only to never be satisfied with the end results. I remember spending hours and days trying to get things working sometimes. I expect some would argue the everything "just works" statement, but for me I have not had any problems of note.

I have not tried a Thinkpad + Linux in years or the Dell alternatives I have seen. I'm really eyeing a Thinkpad 460p and want to put Fedora on it and give it another try.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you use something to earn money price doesn't really matter that much imo, especially if you earn multiples of the price per month. I wouldn't really recommend spending MBpro money for just casual usage.

When I bought mine after some consideration last year it was the only laptop with a 16:10 screen, IPS panel, better than 1080p resolution, 16GB of ram, faster than SATA SSD, good battery life, light, decent keyboard, just all around a great device, the only missing option I would have liked hardware wise is a matte panel instead of glossy.

Alternatives I considered at the time were the Dell XPS 13 Dev and Lenovo 450s/440s which both were 16:9 and with less than 16GB of ram. I think there are still no other comparable options that come with a 16:10 screen out there even today.

OSX is not my OS of choice (it's still a lot better than having to run Windows) but battery life and scaling is worse on Linux, also if you do your development using Vagrant and Docker the OS is not much of an issue.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why doesn't anyone sell good hardware other than apple?

<comment><USER4> They do, but rarely via consumer channels.

The internals of macbook pros can be found in B2B offerings from HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer, Samsung, etc etc etc...

<comment><USER16> Dell m3800 for example...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What notebook computer is as durable and has as good a keyboard / touchpad / display?

The keyboard and touchpad in particular is why I can't leave. It's ergonomic.

</comment><comment><USER18> "Do you remember how much the Microsoft Visual Studio used to cost? I don't even know how much it costs today (the free version of the MS compilers come without the IDE)". Actually VS Community is free with the IDE. This post is outdated.

<comment><USER19> I think you missed "used to cost" part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wow that's a really solid answer, and I have to agree with it 100%. Also never knew about the motion sensor. Would explain how it survives just about anything. Nice find!

<comment><USER19> > Also never knew about the motion sensor.

That's a nice thing about Apple, you find interesting awesome stuff that increases subjective value of a product for a customer.

iPhone 6 being water-proof was not in the ads. Was really cool to find out mine survived being in the sea for couple of minutes when I forgot to put it out of the pocket. (Don't risk it though, there are plenty of youtube videos if you want to see it for yourself :)

<comment><USER3> > That's a nice thing about Apple, you find interesting awesome stuff that > increases subjective value of a product for a customer.

The motion sensor has been a standard feature in all laptops for over a decade. It'd be like advertising that it has a flat screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> They buy the best components, yet I still have to buy a charger every six months and it's my 3rd bluetooth keyboard that dies on me. Same for the iPhone headset.

<comment><USER22> iPhone headset ... Is the cable breaking down, or is it (sorry, have to ask) earwax impeding the sound? The EarPods in particular seem to get a coating on their protective mesh that needs to be removed.

<comment><USER20> Such an awkward question to ask but I've saved more than a few friends from throwing out earphones because of it. You'd never even know it was there unless you knew to lift out the mesh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Because most other hardware of similar grade is sold via B2B channels.</comment>


HN Idea: Filter The Internet - <AUTHOR>

The Problem: There is just so much trash on the Internet. And what's trash to me, isn't trash to you. In fact, most things I find trash are very popular.
Take the Trending Now box from Yahoo.com: Ghostbusters 3 (don't care), Jwoww (I'm intrigued), Fox Stars in Danger (don't care), Zimmerman sues NBC (don't care), Norv Turner fired? (don't care), Brooke Burke cancer (don't care), LeAnn Rimes pills (don't care), Anchorman love interest (don't care) and NFL rule change (don't care). Of the top 9 things, I care about zero of them.
High level idea: I wish there was a way for me to filter out topics and all websites I went to would automatically remove things I have explicitly stated that I have no interest in. Hunny Boo Boo? Gone. Jersey Shore? Gone.
Possible solutions:
1) Browser extension: There might be something you install which knows how to filter the most popular sites of the internet. It wouldn't be perfect since site owners would be constantly changing their code and the extension builders would be in a never-ending catchup game.
2) Protocol level communication: It would be nice if the browser could send a blacklist of topics that the user wants to ignore and hopefully the site would implement a way to filter those out on their own system.
Why process of elimination instead of process of inclusion? If you just say what you like, the Internet becomes boring. We want to be exposed to new and interesting things that we didn't know we'd like.
Money: I don't know how to make money with this. <comment><USER2> I don't know how you would do it but (a) if you could do it seamlessly and without user interaction, and (b) you could get it publicly known as an option that people could "Ask your ISP if they support this feature" type of thing, you'd have something. I can see this as an ISP-level play:

1) You, Mr. Big Data, don't have to serve as much data through your pipe b/c you can strip it out prior to sending the page

2) You also give your users the ability to come to your website more often. They'll be updating/adding their filters. They won't want to switch ISPs b/c they are locked in to using your filtering system.

It's a big data play in that case which means VC money and big deals with big companies. It would work if you could do it fast enough though.</comment>


Inventor wins Microsoft appeal  - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/inventor-wins-microsoft-appeal-20110107-19iwf.html

<comment><AUTHOR> refer to this article, _"Aussie inventor's $445m Microsoft windfall wiped out"_ ~ <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=851971></comment>


Spotify and the Art of the Playlist - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-21/spotify-is-perfecting-the-art-of-the-playlist <comment><USER2> I wish there was some way to feedback that discover weekly has gone off at a tangent. Can I 'reset' it?

After Bowie died I listened to quite a lot of his back catalogue over the next month, I then found my discover weekly had been taken over by 70's prog.

I've heard similar things from people who have let friends or family use their account, or made a 'bad' playlist for a one-off event.

Really I want to 'delete my history' for a couple of weeks - private browsing requires foresight. Maybe it's not possible given how the 'musical taste' data gets hashed? In that case I'd take a full reset!

<comment><USER3> I've been there. You can't reset it, but Spotify now has a function in the right-click menu named "Create Similar Playlist"; it replaces the current playlist with one that contains the same number of songs, only different, similar songs. As far as I can tell, it uses the same logic that Discovery Weekly does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For me the Discover Weeky playlist is probably the biggest innovation in recorded music distribution since the beginning of commercial music distribution. I've found a couple of artist that have become all time favorites that I very well might never have heard of (Anekdoten from Sweden and Motorpsycho from Norway, the Scandinavians seem to be the only non-English cultural family that get rock)

It completely bypasses the music distribution industry's gatekeeper behavior. This is previously unheard of, because the labels have a lot at stake, wherever there is a natural interface where music can be presented, they quickly move in and start to use money to control the playlists. I'm pretty sure Spotify's charts are heavily influenced by music industry shenanigans at this point.

<comment><USER5> back in the days last.fm had similar functionality, at least I discovered many artists that are my favourites now there.

But I'm struggling with Spotify Discover: \- Discover Weekly includes tracks that I have listened to before on Spotify. At first I thought it is a bug, but then I read somewhere else that it is a feature as somebody thought that people like hearing something familiar among new songs. Well, not me, but, OK, let it be. \- there is no option to ban tracks or artists for life in Spotify \- there are many independent and not so independent artists on Spotify with questionable quality (to my taste)

Combining all 3 above, in my Discovery Weekly I get tracks that I absolutely hate and I have to skip them. And they come up again and again as there is no way to tell Spotify - please stop delivering this track/artist to me. In last.fm I encountered cases where it suggested me artists that I absolutely hated. I could see how it was similar to my other favourites, but apparently the algorithms did not see why I should hate this. At least last.fm allowed to ban those tracks forever. It still did not allow to ban artist so I had to ban all tracks for that artist (as the algorithm still suggested other tracks by the artists whose tracks I had ban before). In addition, it is true that distribution industry is/was gatekeeper to many artists, but at the same time it saved me from all the low quality music that I am exposed to in Spotify. Instead now I have to spend my own time to filter that out (which generally applies to all information in this age).

Overall I would have better experience in Spotify if there was this ban feature. Although there are feature requests about banning songs, Spotify is not rushing implementing this. Then I'm left thinking if Spotify is worth it and should I cancel my subscription.

<comment><USER6> The way you tune Discover Weekly is by saving the songs you like, and skipping the ones you don't. If you save a track to your library or into a playlist you've made it won't appear in future Discover Weekly playlists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a huge fan of the Discover Weekly playlist. Most of the time it is so good that you can get in touch at least with 2-3 new songs. Sometimes I also have a lucky day where nearly every single song matches my taste but was unknown to me. This is a really great example of what algorithms can do. But it also proves that more is not better. If I imagine the playlist would be refreshed every day as planned or a list of 100 songs instead of 30- I wouldn't use it anymore. It simply would be to much to progress each week. The current amount is perfect to start a working week and I do so since that playlist started.

<comment><USER8> Same here! Monday morning and a fresh playlist waiting, that's a good start of a new week. Friends that I know have music taste not too far from mine share their Discover Weekly playlists as well, so I can switch between them throughout the week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I recently cancelled my streaming service subscription for music and shifted back to my vinyl collection (which I've been digitalizing for office listening) and buying cds. Yes, it takes me more time to get the music I want to listen, but I spend more time and effort listening and exploring what is going on in the music scene. This actually made me more connected to the music I'm currently listening, because every purchase is worth something and before buying I tend to read reviews and articles about the artists who produced the music.

For me, the best playlists are the ones written by the long-standing institutions, like Hardwax[0], Berghain[1] and Resident Advisor[2].

[0] [https://hardwax.com/](https://hardwax.com/) [1] [http://berghain.de/](http://berghain.de/) [2] [https://www.residentadvisor.net/](https://www.residentadvisor.net/)

<comment><USER10> I'm currently thinking about transitioning back to good-old MP3s. I'm not a digital hoarder but I like the idea of small, local collection of music and films I like.

Unfortunately I'm on a laptop with a small amount of storage, so maybe a NAS type of thing?

<comment><USER9> We have a NAS at home with two big spinning disks in a RAID array and I store all my stuff there in a flac format, which is easily packed to mp3 if needed. Also I'd give a big recommendation for [http://stylejukebox.com/](http://stylejukebox.com/) as a cloud backup and a way to stream the music you own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For some reason Spotify playlists, even those supposedly tailored to my tastes, never quite played music I actually enjoyed. When I tested out the Apple Music trial a whole new world was suddenly opened up, of playlists that actually played stuff I liked. That's the only reason I have stuck with Apple Music and its lack of Linux support and buggy Android app.

</comment><comment><USER12> Discover Weekly is great. I have a playlist with 800+ songs thanks to it. Unfortunately, though, Spotify fails to shuffle play them correctly. I always get the same 100 songs :(

<comment><USER13> Same thing happens on all the streaming services I've used. It's infuriating, they always promote certain artists even if you have a playlist with 10k+ songs. I can't think of any other reason (besides saving a few bucks in the distribution, caching side).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> While Spotify does a great job in marketing, I think that in reality, YouTube and SoundCloud recommendations are by far superior to 'Discover Weekly'.

<comment><USER15> Hardly. YouTube always recommends me the same stable of 50 or so videos.

<comment><USER16> YouTube Music is a separate offering and with its own music recommendation algorithm

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> At work I listen to a lot of OK music that doesn't bother, but I'm really interested in things too difficult to hear in the background.

Spotify weekly went downhill at some point and I wonder if it just feeds back in to itself when I listen to it at work.

<comment><USER18> I used to archive each weeks playlist for later listening, and I think that started making weekly feed into itself. Still, even though I've encountered bumps like this along the way, it eventually self corrected and got better

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> How does this compare to Google Play Music? I'm considering starting a music subscription and Spotify doesn't seem to offer as much for the money.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't understand how this would work? Does the algorithm detect similar sounding beats?

<comment><USER21> > At a certain point, Spotify contacted Perry's music manager to explain how > the service had transformed his client from autoworker to house music > luminary in months. It was simple: It had a lot to do with Spotify's music- > recommendation technology. The company keeps track of what you listen to. > Then it uses algorithms to see which other playlists contain the same > songs—and other songs that are on those lists but not on yours.

<comment><USER22> Although Release Radar apparently does analyse sounds as it doesn't have the playlist history to access.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Collaborative json data model design tools? - <AUTHOR> Title kind of explains it all. I'm looking for essentially a Google Drive for json data modeling that I can use with a team to iterate on API request/responses formats. Would need syntax highlighting, versioning history, maybe comments too?
I think I could use a gist for this, or a whole repo with each one in there as a single .json file, but curious if there are tools out there specifically for this.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I've used Swagger before. I'm not sure it fits the bill for what you're looking for, but it has a few nice parser tools that produce good documentation and even a working API UI wrapper. For versioning, there's just a DSL format that is plaintext, so you can get diffs from there.

[http://swagger.io/](http://swagger.io/)</comment>


Show HN: Gid Fid, for those who love food - <AUTHOR> http://gidfid.com/#/ <comment><USER2> I recommend reading this

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is there anything unique about this site that should make me want to use it? Why should I use this over even /r/food?

<comment><AUTHOR> I missed out the whole point of why I put the site together. Thank you for pointing that out. It's basically a place for you to share what food is left in your kitchen and get recipe ideas. More info - [http://gidfid.com/#/about](http://gidfid.com/#/about)</comment></comment>


More emphasis on trains in Europe to replace flights - <AUTHOR> https://back-on-track.eu/more-emphasis-on-trains-in-europe-to-replace-flights/ <comment><USER2> I really don't get why trains can be so expensive and what we need to do to fix that.

To an extent, flying is just way too cheap. I mean, I was looking at a roundtrip london/barcelona just last week, it was $25. By train I'm looking at at least 10 hours, likely more like 15, and $300.

Both the $25 and the $300 just seem wrong. Flying is way too cheap, but I also don't get how $300 per person is competitive against something like a bus or shared car. The economics of trains should be able to be better than just about anything.

<comment><USER3> Because politics. Trains are very national in the EU and even after this many years that still gets in the way of effective train based transportation. Plus heavy rail is flat out expensive to put down and maintain and the cars are and engines themselves all contribute the initial cost of establishing a line as well as maintenance. Then the kicker compared to airline travel, you cannot simply reroute a train. It is stuck to its rail line, as in you cannot simply move a train to service a route that needs it now.

You could tax the airline industry into the ground but it will not fix the reality that trains simply are not flexible, similar to how light rail in cities is not ideal for the majority of cities that employ it; for many city transportation systems light rail eats away a disproportionate amount of the budget impacting bus availability as well - it is a money pit

A previous financial times article [0] explains some of the political problems but far too many still do not understand the logistical side of rail lines.

[0][https://www.ft.com/content/e77dc48e-7894-11e8-8e67-1e1a0846c...](https://www.ft.com/content/e77dc48e-7894-11e8-8e67-1e1a0846c475)

<comment><USER4> Privatized trains are worse, in the UK they've just given the go ahead for a $140 billion high speed rail project, HS2.

A decade ago we build HS1, a 67 mile track between London and the Channel Tunnel, for a total of $7.6 billion ($112m / mile).

HS2 is longer but its 330 miles of tracks will cost $400m / mile.

The project costs make absolutely no sense: London is a special weird place in the UK where everything you build is twice as expensive as in the rest of the country. Considering most of HS1 was in London and most of HS2 is outside of London, this budget makes absolutely no sense.

What makes the whole thing even more insane is that the endpoints are not connected to the rest of the infrastructure. You have a 30 minute trip between HS1 and HS2. So if you're travelling from Birmingham to Paris you'll have to switch trains in London. For the money they're spending on this it's crazy that you're not getting it.

<comment><USER5> My understanding is that basically HS2 is massively over-specced compared to HS1. It wants high throughput and extremely high speed (80-100mph faster than HS1). I guess you could probably shave a few tens of billions off just by slowing the line down a bit - using ballast rather than concrete slab and such.

See: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51415590](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51415590)

The only other thing I'd add is that Euston is easily within walking distance of St Pancras. But given all this already extraordinary cost it seems like you might as well connect St Pancras and Euston HS lines and have the odd Eurostar service run from Birmingham.

<comment><USER4> The Euston - St Pancras thing is OK if you're commuting for work distance wise - it's just adding 15 mins to your journey when it should be 30 seconds.

For travellers who don't know London, who have to lug around baggage and small children it's a massive pain.

It's well worth the effort to connect it. It would already be way better even if you had to switch train in one station.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think an issue for trains is a lack of an international unified system for routing, timetabling, booking, ticketing, labelling and so on. Planes are the same everywhere. Flight number, gate number, time, and destination, everything available in English. Easy. I can catch a plane in Japan no problem. When I fly into a foreign city and try to take the train into the city it's always a whole big mess. Inconsistent systems for referring to routes, express trains, stopping trains, multiple ticketing options, travel cards, peak and offpeak, is my train at platform 9 1/4 or 9 3/4, often no reservation system, announcements and signs not in English, no help available. Each city seems to go out of their way to do things completely differently to everyone else. Busses are even worse than that.

<comment><USER2> This so much. My biggest gripe with trains is that I am never able to actually get the logistics right.

I can hop on google flights and book a multi-city trip, I get a single price, and it's basically going to steer me towards roughly the cheapest option, within a set of parameters (e.g. trip time) that I can set.

With trains? Just nearly impossible. You get directed to different websites for price/departure/arrival/amenities information. It becomes a logistical nightmare to plan anything. When booking flights you sometimes get directed as well to multiple sites, but only for final booking, not the search stage.

And then indeed, the websites are not in English.

Or they have pricing which requires a national discount card which you don't have and can't get online, and makes the trip otherwise extremely expensive.

Or you can book your train ticket, but you have to pick up the tickets at the station, which gives anxiety because googling half of these options gets you to forums which say the ticket service is closed until 10AM, while your train arrives at the station with the service at 8AM, and the next train (for which you need to pick up the ticket) leaves at 9AM. And the only reason you know this, is because of some underground travel forum with 3 posts in the past 5 years about this train station.

Or you can only look up train tables online, but you can't even reserve tickets online, you have to buy at the station, but they can get sold out, and you're looking to buy tickets for a summer trip in 4 months, so there's literally just no way to plan any other trips or hotel reservations because you have no clue if you can be on that train, until in 4 months.

And then you have to go to a travel company which literally sends employees to buy a hundred tickets in bulk, then resells them online to you at a huge markup. But these are just 3-man companies that come and go, lots of scams, lots of markup, and they may sell only some tickets, but not others, meaning to plan a long vacation by train, you're depending on lots of these little companies.

At that point I just think, screw that, I'm just going to browse on google flights and be done with planning in 1 hour, it's cheaper, no anxiety, no stress, no dependencies, no scams, lots of insurance and assurance, all in English, mostly through reputable companies with normal UI/UX design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a European I love this.

Not only because it's better for the environment but I really like trains. They are confy, fast and cheap. There's no need to pay extra for your baggage, you just hop in with your stuff, take a seat, read, watch a movie, listen to a podcast or sleep for a while and you're already at your destination.

<comment><USER8> They are not that comfortable. Sure you've got slightly more leg space than Ryanair, but difference is minimal. The only train I've really ever liked was Amtrak, but unsure whether I was somehow upgraded to their premium seats. Taking Canadian train after that was a torture.

Also they are much more expensive. Which makes sense as tech itself is legacy. The cost of maintaining, lack of competition (especially with buses) is killing them.

Honestly I don't see how we can't replace trains with electric buses...

<comment><USER9> I don't know which trains you took but here in europe even the less costly trains (regional trains) are far far far more comfy than any ryanair airplane (saying this as a 193cm man), especially if you want to stand up often or just want to have more than two bathroom every 150 people. If you take a fast train the experience is not even remotely comparable, they are more spacious, cleaner and offer more optionals. Yeah they cost more but not really a lot more. If you have to put some extrabaggage the ryanair airplane is gonna be the loser even in the cost side.

Also, personally, I prefer trains even just for the fact I have not to lose 2 extra uncomfortable hours between checkin and security checks.

<comment><USER8> As a 187 I hate pretty much every piece of transport (even most cars miss my femur length)...

I used to travel Southampton to London a lot (that's like 150km or so). IIRC renting a car used to be cheaper.

<comment><USER10> At 200cm, I will choose trains whenever possible. Aeroplanes are a nightmare for me.

<comment><USER11> I'm 196cm and airplanes are actually not as bad as fellow tall people always complain. I think I might have relatively short legs for my height.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Glad that they're working on it, right now flying is just cheaper on many cases. Need to go from Zurich to Paris? The TGV Train will cost you almost twice as much as a short direct flight. Berlin to Munich? Also cheaper by plane. Being a student with a limited budget, this very much affects my decision.

<comment><USER13> Thing is, not only it is cheaper, it is much more effective regarding use of time.

Zurich to Paris just takes too long by train, and doing night trains isn't always an option.

<comment><USER14> 4 hours isn't that long, is it? plane cannot beat that by much

<comment><USER15> Especially when you account boarding, navigating the airport, having to show up at least half an hour before the flight, security checkups... All time- consuming tasks related to boarding the actual aircraft that you don't have to go through to hop on a train.

<comment><USER13> No, you have to run like crazy hoping not to lose the connection train, being stopped in the middle of nowhere without any information, stuffed into wagons without air conditioning and possibility to open the windows, cramped with more passengers than available seats, without any place to stuff luggage, out of order toilets,....

<comment><USER16> The train from Zurich to Paris is a TGV with included (mandatory?) seat reservations, air conditioning and plenty of bag space.

<comment><USER13> TGV is the exception.

German trains pack as much people as possible and occasionally you can consider yourself lucky if you manage to reach your seat, if the wagon is still available to start with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is an easy promise to make but remains empty without mentioning the difficulties of such undertaking. Europe has the most splintered incompatible mess of a railway system in the world. They barely managed to run high speed trains between fairly local and established big cities (Paris to Amsterdam). Then there's the problem of routing and adding stops. With a plane you can almost always get a direct flight or a single transfer inbetween. With trains you end up stopping several times wasting energy and time at stations completely irrelivant to you. I applaud the effort and hope it comes to fruition but i'm sceptical wether this is going to be a terrible political undertaking or a well thought out plan for inter European travel.

<comment><USER18> It's also the only place with such amount of trains. It is quite involved of making the infrastructure, and still it's managed. From april onwards you can travel from Amsterdam to London for 40 euro in 3 hours. There's a lot to align. Doesn't take away from the things that could be improved. Trains from Amsterdam to Germany stopping in small towns doesn't help.

<comment><USER19> Do you mean Utrecht and Arnhem or those on the German side? Or are you talking about using regional trains? I feel like the worst thing about the route is the lack of High Speed Lines but on the other hand these regions are densly populated so it does make sense to stop at some places.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Last weekend, I took the night train from Briancon to Paris, step in at ~21:00, step out at 07:00 the next morning. My first time in a night train, pretty surreal but pleasant experience. I had to take a semi connecting train from Paris to the Netherlands (where I live), so it would be so awesome just to wake up on destination.

I'm considering if it's a good idea to tax air travel inside the EU to help the trains move forward. I believe air travel is not taxed at all. The resulting money could be spent on climate change reducing policies.

<comment><USER21> While I like the idea of traveling by train, and I even took a night train from Munich to Budapest in the past, but on that specific route I had to share my cabin with a guy who just got released from jail a day earlier so I was not pleasantly relaxed. The fact that the cabin only had 2 bunk beds and I was pretty much isolated from other passengers and I had no way to keep my money and other important things in a safe, made me worried a lot.

The big advantage of air travel is exactly this, you don't need to spend much time in the actual plane. And the passengers are by definition under full-time supervision by other passengers, so stealing or attacks are not so easy to get away with.

Having said that, I would still prefer to take the train when it's possible. Central railway stations are usually pretty much in the best locations of most European cities, where the connections are really good.

But there is one more thing that even the article mentions: > In general, there is strong demand for reliable and frequent services between large cities

I second that: even in Germany the I.C.E is notorious for the delays and the poor passenger experience. So there is a lot to improve for the rail operators.

<comment><USER20> > While I like the idea of traveling by train, and I even took a night train > from Munich to Budapest in the past, but on that specific route I had to > share my cabin with a guy who just got released from jail a day earlier so I > was not pleasantly relaxed. The fact that the cabin only had 2 bunk beds and > I was pretty much isolated from other passengers and I had no way to keep my > money and other important things in a safe, made me worried a lot.

>The big advantage of air travel is exactly this, you don't need to spend much time in the actual plane. And the passengers are by definition under full-time supervision by other passengers, so stealing or attacks are not so easy to get away with.

There are also drawbacks to air travel that you're not mentioning. I was in a sleeping segment with 5 other people and felt more safe than in an airplane. The important thing though is: we need to cut down on carbon, and travel by train is an important way to do it.

<comment><USER22> > travel by train is an important way to do it.

Traveling less is even more effective.

With all the debate about transport modes, it still boils down to distance - the emissions per passenger kilometer of all powered modes of transport are within one order of magnitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As a former weekly train traveler, I fully support this. Plane travel has become a loathing, humiliating nuisance that absolutely nobody is excited about (sometimes not even airlines, considering the kind of service they provide).

</comment><comment><USER24> As someone in the UK, this won't happen until they lower the prices by a tenth. It's insanely expensive and not feasible depend on it.

It's so bad that the train companies themselves ask their employees use flights instead of the network railways to save costs. They're all owned by european governments, so they have no incentive to make things cheaper in the UK.

</comment><comment><USER25> Aviation only makes up about 2% of total global C02 emissions. Hardly even worth worrying about. Results will be much better if resources are focused on the big emitters (road transport, electricity/heating, and manufacturing).

<comment><USER26> _Aviation only makes up about 2% of total global C02 emissions._

Because the majority of humanity has never flown at all. What fraction of your CO2 emissions came from flying last year?

<comment><USER25> Fair point, though I don't see any major problem even if air travel was to increase by 2 or 3 times, so long as we make significant reductions in other areas.

I took 6 flights (~3,000km each).

I would start with the immediate implementation of a tax (10%?, 20%?) on all new ICE vehicle sales. Revenue from this tax would be used to subsidize the purchase of EVs.

<comment><USER27> At approximately 1000 kg COeq per 3000 km trip[1]. Your budget for the whole year was 2300 kg.

[1] [https://www.atmosfair.de/en/offset/flight](https://www.atmosfair.de/en/offset/flight)

<comment><USER25> Where is 1,000kg coming from?

I looked up one of my flights (actually only about 2,400km) using that calculator and only got 230kg (83kg of C02 and 173kg of "contrails, ozone formations, etc."). This flight was on a A321neo.

<comment><USER27> I took a random 7000 km flight and extrapolated. Sorry if that ended up off by such a large martin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Cross border rail travel is a mess. We had online booking of flights across countries and airlines since forever, and thousands of booking sites seem to be able to hook into the booking backends like Amadeus and provide multi hop booking. Doing the same for train travel isn't nearly as easy. This should be priority one.

The second priority should be cost. Train travel should never be more expensive than even low cost airline tickets. Within the EU this would seem fixable by taxing and subsidies to just move money from air travel to train ticket subsidies. Tax funded subsidies is a clumsy instrument but it's needed.

<comment><USER29> Trainline.com does this very well in (north west?) europe, IME. Across borders and different providers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> We should mandate that aviation fuel is 10% carbon neutral. And then steadily up that fraction yearly. How they satisfy that is up to them - synthetic fuels generated using solar/wind, biofuels, or whatever. The point is that we're not going to be able to replace liquid fuels for long-haul aviation, so we both need to factor in the increased cost of carbon-neutral fuels and at the same time provide a market that stimulates investment.

For many routes, if we did this, aircraft would perhaps not be price- competitive with rail. So be it.

<comment><USER18> We should mandate taxes are paid on fuel, they dump fuel before landing. Which has a worse impact on the greenhouse effect.

<comment><USER30> They don't dump fuel, except when they need to land in an emergency and don't want to risk landing overweight. This is a tiny fraction of the greenhouse effect caused by aviation, so taxing it wouldn't make any real difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I am a big fan of rail travel within Europe but I have to admit that at times it feels like playing on hard mode. I live in Switzerland now and travel to London somewhat often. Here's a list of things that have sucked by train:

* French rail strikes this winter caused:

a) my Zurich to London TGV to be cut short (it started from a later station), 3 days before departure b) my connecting Eurostar to be cancelled, so I had to no-show the TGV and cancel the Eurostar to fly c) my return Eurostar was not cancelled, but d) my TGV was, 4 days before travelling, so again I had to cancel the Eurostar and the TGV and fly e) I filed claims for the disrupted/cancelled trains. Eurostar refunded me immediately but I waited 7 weeks for a reply from SNCF before calling them a few times to get my refund

Sure, strikes affect other modes of transport but the hassle here was the amount of coordination I had to do to fix my travel.

* I booked a Zurich -> London roundtrip on oui.sncf but later needed to change my return. I called SNCF because the site wouldn't let me change the ticket online. SNCF told me they couldn't change my Eurostar -- I had to call Eurostar for that, then call SNCF again to change the TGV. They didn't know what would happen to the fare. I gave up and bought new single returns. Next time I'll by Eurostar tickets from Eurostar and TGV from SNCF.

* Changing trains in Paris is a nuisance. It's not hard (2 stops on the RER) but it adds significant extra time, particularly on Paris -> London where there is passport control. I've taken bikes from the UK to France a lot and hauling them on the RER sucks.

* It's often pricier, at least for Eurostar. The TGV prices are often cheap (from €29 Zurich->Paris) but Eurostar gets expensive fast unless you book way in advance.

Travel within Switzerland and the surrounding countries is great but in general making long trips with connections between systems is harder and problems have greater consequences. There's no form of alliance or easy rebooking or anything like that -- a lot of problem solving is down to you.

But! When it works travel by train is relaxing, enjoyable (for me), can be more convenient (less bag hassle, train stations generally central), not to mention less bad for the environment.

</comment><comment><USER31> Trains can't replace flights. You can't get from Munich to London in 2 hours with a train. Trains are often much more expensive than flights too.

<comment><USER32> Going from Brussels to London is great with the Eurostar. It's fast, you can walk around to the bar, and don't have to show up too early.

So it depends, but obviously there are cases where they do offer a better alternative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you are travelling inside of one country, France or Germany for example, it's great. However, if you want to take the train from Barcelona to Milan, it's 11 hours and 40 minutes. If you fly, it is 1 hour and 40 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER34> Well, High speed trains don't run 300 km/h. At least not in Europe. Most of the time they run slightly above 100 km/h. Source? Experience.

We would need a European infrastructure project for:

* major new transnational lines

* separation from passenger and cargo lines

* self coupling/decoupling wagons

And when you are on it, build some Thorium reactors to power them.

Relevant:

[https://www.thelocal.se/20200116/sweden-reveals-plans-for- ov...](https://www.thelocal.se/20200116/sweden-reveals-plans-for-overnight- trains-to-several-european-cities)

[https://www.cargobeamer.eu](https://www.cargobeamer.eu)

</comment><comment><USER35> Central and South Europe have a shitload of mountains. Traversing them will be a total pain as infrastructure to build for high speed rail.

North of the alps and south of the Scandinavian is doable, but a lot of that territory is Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.

You have a natural corridor that can connect france with finland - which maps nicely with the hanseatic league territories. But from Athens to Amsterdam there is no way to build competitive train service compared to flights.

</comment><comment><USER36> It all comes down to cost vs convenience. I don't think rail is the answer long term. Trains are generally slower and less comfortable than air travel. Not to mention often similarly priced or more expensive.

I'm more excited by the prospect of electric/hydrogen powered regional air travel. IMHO that is what will start to make a real difference.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm not sure if I can even take a train from Helsinki, Finland to anywhere else in Europe. There's a sea between Helsinki and most of Europe and the track gauge is only compatible with Russia.

<comment><USER38> Happily there's a world wide web that'll help you inform yourself.

Or I can tell you: You have to take the train to St. Petersburg and change there. Going to someplace like Paris you'd have to change one more time, and of course the trip would be long.

<comment><USER37> Does that mean that if I want to get between two cities inside the Schengen area, I need to get a visa?

<comment><USER38> Probably, at least if you really want to go by train all the way.

You can find other weird routes if you try, too. Teheran to Bangkok by train is a weird one. You have to go west via Istanbul, then northeast to Moscow, then take the Transsiberian, then south through China, finally westwards to Bangkok. All possible but very convoluted and hardly something you'd do in order to reach the destination.

In one way it reminds me of some friends of mine who went on a trip around the world for two months — on one airline ticket. The ticket was to New Zealand and back, with quite a few longish stopovers. Not the itinerary one would choose just to get to New Zealand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Taxation of air travel alone might not be a solution in my opinion.

The thing is, you have to make trains an actually viable solution for people (speed, comfort). High speed all across the Europe would help a lot.

</comment><comment><USER40> Sure, if you fly Düsseldorf - Stuttgart (companies do such things often), by all means switch to trains. For most of us it's not a reasonable alternative. My usual flight takes around 2 hours (7 hours door to door) but the train takes 16-17 hours including e.g. a two hour wait for transfer at 2 AM. The train also costs about 3 times as much. The climate's fate is not based on my 4 flights per year, so I refuse to have flight shame. Pushing the guilt onto normal people from industry is an appalling thing. (like fix your dripping tap, you're wasting fresh water... Ever heard how industry deals with water?)

</comment><comment><USER41> If trains can be as cheap as flights then there will be no need to coerce people to choose flying over train through carbon footprint arguments.

</comment><comment><USER42> Ppl can only commute maybe 2 hours max. High speed rail between big cities a few hundred kilometers away may work to replace planes?

</comment><comment><USER43> This [0] 13 year old article seems relevant to the discussion. Night trains should get much more love from Europe!

[0] [https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2007/04/High-speed- trains-...](https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2007/04/High-speed-trains- planes-on-wheels.html)

</comment><comment><USER44> Public transportation is eventually going to have to replace both cars and planes. Yes, it will cost a lot. Yes, it probably wont make profit. This is fine, it's a moral duty we have as a society and at the end of the day railways are far safer than roads. In the long run a densely populated city benefits tremendously from trains, as seen in any major city.

<comment><USER6> > Public transportation is eventually going to have to replace both cars and > planes.

...but commercial airline planes are public transportation.

<comment><USER44> No, public means public owned and operated by government, ie: not private.

<comment><USER6> No, in the UK, for example, the busses and trains are owned and operated by private companies, not the government. But no reasonable person would call them anything but public transport.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Quantum Thermodynamic Revolution - <AUTHOR> http://fqxi.org/community/articles/display/202

<comment><USER2> Is FQXi legitimate? When I go to this page, or the essay context ([http://fqxi.org/community/forum/category/31424](http://fqxi.org/community/forum/category/31424)) linked the other day, it looks … weird, somehow. (I compare it to the Simons Foundation's Quanta Magazine ([https://www.quantamagazine.org](https://www.quantamagazine.org)).) My opinion on a matter like this is hardly conclusive, but I thought an expert out there might be able to set my mind at ease (or else corroborate my unease).

In terms of the leadership, I know that there are (ahem) differing opinions on its founder Tegmark ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Tegmark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Tegmark)), but the names I recognise on the Scientific Advisory Board listed at the wiki page ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundational_Questions_Institu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundational_Questions_Institute)) seem eminently reputable.

<comment><USER3> They are a funding source for mostly very reasonable research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also posted 3 weeks ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9634442](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9634442)</comment>


Show HN: Pedant: Linting for English texts - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/decagon/pedant <comment><USER2> Cool project. I've been collecting a list of automated tools for editing [1], which originated at Bell Labs with The Unix Writer's Workbench [2]. Rather than start from scratch, if you want to stick with JavaScript you might consider contributing to Titus Wormer's ReText [3]. Otherwise, we'd love for you to join us in building the Python-based Proselint [4].

1\. [https://github.com/amperser/proselint/blob/master/research/c...](https://github.com/amperser/proselint/blob/master/research/comparison/tools.csv)

2\. [https://www.princeton.edu/~hos/frs122/unixhist/text.htm](https://www.princeton.edu/~hos/frs122/unixhist/text.htm)

3\. [https://github.com/wooorm/retext/blob/master/doc/plugins.md](https://github.com/wooorm/retext/blob/master/doc/plugins.md)

4\. [https://github.com/amperser/proselint](https://github.com/amperser/proselint)

</comment><comment><USER3> Did anybody bother to look into the source at all? This is a roadmap without the first sod!

</comment><comment><USER4> will this be able to catch stuff that grammarly cannot catch?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it catches a few things that Grammarly doesn't catch (or have to pay premium to view) like missing the closing parenthesis, or forgetting a period at the end of the sentence (I'm using Grammarly on mobile; it's possible that I didn't see the error.) We have a ton of cases still to add, and since it's entirely focused on punctuation and small details, we hope it should catch more than standard grammar checkers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very nice.</comment>


41% of US employees know what their company stands for - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/SoapBoxHQ/status/1184094515382108161 <comment><AUTHOR> Gallup article: [https://www.gallup.com/workplace/267014/one-employee- questio...](https://www.gallup.com/workplace/267014/one-employee-question- leaders-afford-ignore.aspx)</comment>


Awesome but Useless - <AUTHOR> http://awesomebutuseless.com/ <comment><USER2> Love the title! Sadly, it describes so much these days.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm a hacker at heart and love to get under the hood, pull things apart, and put them back together. But the more I do this, the more I hear this little voice in my head say, "Wait a minute. Sure it's cool, but what's the point?"

I have started using an approach that satisfies both my need to hack and my desire to be useful: I try to hack not the stuff that I find interesting, but that which my customers do. It took a little while to get used to (who cares about past due orders when I could be playing with HTML5?), but I have been pleasantly surprised. Grokking someone else's stuff may not lead to many happy dances, but it sure is fun watching someone with money to spend do a happy dance of their own.

<comment><USER3> > "Wait a minute. Sure it's cool, but what's the point?"

Learning.

<comment><USER4> >Learning

Learning is of course awesome. It's the entire point of life. We are all here to learn.

But, excessively doing things solely for the sake of "learning" is actually doing a disservice to yourself. You should do things with tangible applications to real people besides yourself, too.

There are a lot of preliminary or experimental avenues to explore, but once you find a handful with promise, my advice would be to try to follow those more deeply and apply the principles you learned to something with direct applicability.

What you'll find is that by turning an experiment into a product, you've actually learned a lot more than you ever thought that little idea could yield up. You'll gain not only depth but also breadth as you explore the implications of that product in various fields, gauge peers' reactions to the product and marketing, and attempt to develop your idea into a repeatable, profitable boon.

Tinkering is really important for a lot of reasons, but endless, exclusive tinkering results in a very superficial knowledgebase. I recommend that everyone follow several of their promises tinkers down the rabbit hole and see what comes out of it. I recognize that this takes effort and commitment, but I think you'll often be surprised at the results.

<comment><USER5> If it had a reason it wouldn't be a hobby.

<comment><USER4> That makes no sense to me. Is there some obligation that all hobbies be useless? One of my hobbies is contributing to open-source software. That's useful, right?

<comment><USER6> A => B /= ~B => ~A

<comment><USER7> Sorry, maybe I'm misreading your notation, but are you saying that modus tollens isn't a valid argument? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_tollens>

<comment><USER8> I think he's using a logical implication notation "|=". as in: A => B logically implies that: ~B => ~A

He just decided to use "/=" rather than "|="...so it looks weird...

<comment><USER7> Ah, I'd read that as "does not equal", rather than "implies". Thanks pilgrim689.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless." -- Oscar Wilde

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call the work displayed here art, but I do agree that it can be admired on it's own merits.

<comment><USER11> Defining art is difficult; but something created to be admired on it's own merits is certainly a candidate. I'm comfortable calling recreational hacks art.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't know why, but I find it extremely difficult to work on stuff that I don't think will someday become useful or profitable. I think this is what differentiates a lot of hackers out there. There are the hackers who create for the pure joy of it; they love to learn, create neat things, and don't like to worry so much about the viability or marketability of their creations. Then there are the hackers who do it solely so that they or others can profit from it.

We need both - the former are the toolmakers and typically push the tech in new directions that become practical later on. The latter are the tool-users and take what's been learned from the tool-maker's efforts and apply it to the real, functioning world.

</comment><comment><USER13> "Candy doesn't have to have a point, that's why it's candy"

</comment><comment><USER14> The success of this post on HN suggests there's a niche for "awesome but useless" style collections. That said, sadly this site hasn't been updated since May 22. My pinboard account suggests there's been many awesome-but- useless things created since.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is like 10 HN posts in one. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER16> I could be wrong but I think that's what people thought of experiments with electricity a few centuries ago. I don't think things are useless if you learn something and / or if it's beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER17> I like the list, but some entries are disappointing. Like playing mspaint.exe as audio - didn't we all do that when we were 14? I know I did.

<comment><USER18> No, we were busy getting laid.

<comment> the-cakeboss I wasn't doing either at 14...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm working on a startup. My to-do list accumulates tasks faster than I can take items off it. In fact, between starred emails, pen & paper, smartphone apps, web to-dos etc I'm accumulating to-do lists faster than I'm getting through them. I sleep 2 or 3 hours a night. I have no time for friends and my girlfriend is mad at me. I'm in a constant state of stress and anxiety. I can't figure out if I'm on the verge of success or a good for nothing mess.

Do I really have time for AwesomeButUseless.com? Why, of course I do :)

<comment><USER20> Despite the fact that HN is run by Y Combinator, not everyone here is a startup founder.

<comment><USER19> Think you are misinterpreting a bit. I just thought the URL was funny enough to make a joke about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Produce no code that you do not know to be useful or believe to be awesome. A mantra to live by?

</comment><comment><USER22> If it's awesome, it's not useless.

<comment><USER23> Exactly.

You could use the techniques you saw in awesome CSS3 or WebGL demo.

You may get inspired by these demos to do something different.

Even simple looking at stuff (if it's not awesome enough for you to check out at how it's done, or you're not a programmer) at least refines your understanding of possibilities of different technologies, that kind of knowledge we use often without noticing it.

Hell, a post with playing paint.exe as audio data might give an idea for a killer 8bit chiptune dubstep track!

They say that even watching TV might be useful, depending on how you're doing it. (Can't remember the source, ironically.) So, we shouldn't be quick at labeling things useless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The js PC emulator is pretty awesome.

</comment><comment><USER25> Regretsy for hacks?</comment>


Was Social Media a Mistake? - <AUTHOR> http://tracinskiletter.com/2018/03/16/was-social-media-a-mistake/ <comment><USER2> Not at all.

Someone was going to do it.

The mistakes are:

Failure to educate people better on the dynamics of speech. The idea of,"right to not be offended", comes to mind. We don't have a shield in the First Amendment for good reason.

Agency in conversation. We control our end of things, and we control our responses too.

So often the goto is righteous indignation. So many other tools are available. Humor, disregard, honest engagement... A lot gets escalated way too easily. Very favorable risk reward ratios result in mega drama, lots of butthurt.

Doesn't have to be that way.

Weighting of things isn't done well in a lot of cases too. A clown gets at us, and we allow that, instead of calling the laughable as such?

Norms. Social media could be used more to understand others better. For those who embrace doing this, it's pretty awesome. Perspective is out there. A world of it for the asking. Near free... such an opportunity wasted.

Had the software come with better norms, the hard work in all this, our social media problems would be much less, maybe non problems.

The biggest, in terms of "fake news", seems to be the idea of conflating opinion and advocacy into "news", now a bludgeon. Evaluating these things is part of the cost of being connected.

People are ill equipped, and often appear to have some expectation of there being trusted, work free, sources that they can count on.

Those don't really exist. For profit news, and the education problem I first mentioned, combine to render many people, too many people, victims of some kind, rather than critically minded enough to navigate things.

Technical solutions have their place, but also costs. One being dissent all to easily marginalized as toxic, propaganda, fake, whatever flavor of the day is.

Most of the problems are human ones. It's gonna take a generation or two for new, better norms, education (when we start digging deep on that one), to take root and begin to turn things around.

I just hope we don't lose frank, real expression, citizen reporting, advocacy and other vital things along the way there.

At times, I feel a Disneyland type Internet is our doom.

Hate the thought of all that. I've met and interacted with awesome people, had some of the best, raw, real conversations ever online, and the idea of it all being rendered safe?

No pain, no gain kids.</comment>


Ask HN: Just launched my start-up here's my plan, what should I change? - <AUTHOR>

First off, apologies if I posted this wrong, I didn't see anything in the guidelines about how to use the Ask HN part of the site.
I just launched my start-up www.zaloot.com.
It's a completely free odd-job marketplace. The way it works is users post jobs and take bids. Both employers and employees get rated and reviewed after each job. Higher ratings and better reviews should mean more money for employees and less cost for employers.
Our plan is to essentially begin by leaving it open to all users, but focusing our energy on our area (NY/NJ). We hired an SEO company that will begin work in September to do a local campaign for that area. We'll be walking around introducing ourselves to local businesses and communities.
Any suggestions? My research on here showed that there's been a few posts on building a two-sided marketplace, but none really answered these questions, if I missed them, my apologies, please link them.
Thanks <comment><USER2> I like the idea. I don't think your question is wrong. However, you might consider stating your question more precisely. That way HN can give you more precise answers. Do you have a technical related issue? Or do you want HN to comment on the usability etc…?

What comes to mind immediately is that might consider to not open the site to all users for a simple reason: quality content. If you cannot provide sufficient people who offer jobs or hire, people might quickly get frustrated with your service. As you already planned: start with one area you can learn in and master that, Maybe you manage to create buzz in the region. You probably know Taskrabbit already. They do it right: one region after the other: <http://www.taskrabbit.com>.

</comment><comment><USER3> Random ideas:

Modify a bit your site to put some links on the main page letting users (and google) find some common jobs faster. You can identify other services doing something similar and get some ideas from them (i.e fixr.com or myhammer.co.uk)

Posting jobs easier. One screen with the job and the sign up form would be easier for the 'employer' would get you more sign ups and more jobs, something critical for your business. Some websites generates the password automatically, some doesn't ask for the name ... anyway this is up to you.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like a cool idea... Off-topic but I run a meetup group called NJ Startups and would love it if you joined! <http://www.meetup.com/njstartups/>

<comment><USER4> There's no cost or anything like that... Just trying to build a startup community in NJ.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Getting service providers is the easy part, they'll always be open to new ways to make money. The hard part is getting users signed up to buy the services, so I'd recommend that you focus on that side.</comment>


Marta, file manager for macOS, goes beta - <AUTHOR> https://marta.yanex.org/marta-goes-beta <comment><USER2> The file manager seems to be closed-source[1], does anyone know of any good open-source alternatives ?

[1] [https://github.com/marta-file-manager/](https://github.com/marta-file- manager/)

<comment><USER3> While I think downvoting this comment is unfair, it should be noted that if you care about your OS and tools being open-source, you probably shouldn't be running OSX in the first place.

I might even suggest running Linux. Oh my :)

<comment><USER4> This all or nothing mentality doesn't often end up being useful in practice. For example, try doing some deep learning on Linux with CUDA without installing closed source NVIDIA drivers. The important detail is who provided the software and in this case most people are going to trust Apple or NVIDIA significantly more than a small third-party software developer they've never heard of.

(FWIW many of us tried running Linux as a desktop OS but found the UI and driver situation to be abysmal so it continues to just power our servers)

<comment><USER5> Linux is actually good now for desktop use. I install it (= Fedora or Antergos w/ GNOME) on everything now and it just works(tm).

Not a single thing has been broken across two modern PCs and a laptop.

<comment><USER6> Question is "good for what?"

It simply doesn't have the polish, or flexibility that I'd need to effectively stay on it for long. I always end up spending longggg times customizing things only to feel little integration, little support, and a lack of decent third party software. Sketch is Mac only. Spotify barely has a Linux client. Certainly no photoshop, medocire native email clients, zero IM that integrate with any networks I use (sms/iMessage), etc etc. Yes there's lots of options as a webpage, but that's a shallow substitute.

If you happen to need only the stuff that's available, and your workflow is largely CLI-driven, then it's probably fine. Otherwise it's macOS for me.

<comment><USER7> Spotify on Linux == Spotify on Mac == Spotify on Windows == Spotify on the web.

It's an electron app.

<comment><USER8> Is it an Electron app now? Last time I poked around on macOS (admittedly, about a year ago), it didn't look like an Electron app to me, but it most definitely was using a web view of some kind.

<comment><USER9> It's not Electron, but it is Chromium.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Perhaps this is a bit off-topic, but I correctly guessed from the domain name and later, the contents of the page, that [1] the author is Russian, and [2] the file manager resembles the layout of FAR, another file manager of Russian origin and seemingly very popular among them.

In short, what is it with Russians and this type of file manager? It's a very curious association.

<comment><USER11> Norton Commander (and its clones, such as Volkov Commander, DOS Navigator) was very popular in ex-USSR — almost every computer running DOS (the majority of PCs in ex-USSR back then) had nc running as the main user interface to the PC, and was introduced in most computer education courses in the 90's.

<comment><USER12> I always found it amusing that in Chasm: The Rift (a midlate-90s FPS for DOS made by Action Forms, a Ukrainian game developer), the computer monitors had Norton Commander running:

[https://i.imgur.com/63dPueK.png](https://i.imgur.com/63dPueK.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Forklift[0] Does a very good job of being a stable and reliable double pane file manager with connectivity such as SFTP, S3, GoogleDrive and nice built in things like batch rename and file transfer queues.

[0] [https://binarynights.com/](https://binarynights.com/)

<comment><USER14> Didn't see any mention of SCP -- do you happen to know if that is or is planned to be supported?

<comment><AUTHOR> Please file an issue :) [https://github.com/marta-file-manager/marta- issues/issues](https://github.com/marta-file-manager/marta-issues/issues)

<comment><USER14> My question was regarding the ForkLift app but happy to file one for Marta!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >Marta is a dual-pane file manager. Most of the time you work with two directory panes placed side-by-side. This allows you to do the basic file operations such as copying or moving files in a fast and efficient way, because you can see both source and target directories, and you can copy or move files directly, without copy-pasting it.

Just in case, it could be categorized as a OFM (Orthodox File Manager):

[http://www.softpanorama.org/OFM/index.shtml](http://www.softpanorama.org/OFM/index.shtml)

What started it all is the Norton Commander for DOS.

<comment><USER16> If you're interested in a little history: [https://fman.io/blog/dual-pane- file-manager-history/](https://fman.io/blog/dual-pane-file-manager-history/)

<comment><USER15> >If you're interested in a little history: [https://fman.io/blog/dual-pane- file-manager-history/](https://fman.io/blog/dual-pane-file-manager-history/)

Thank you, though I knew most of those info as - unfortunately - I was there, in the sense that I was in my twenties when NC came out, I practically started my computing experience at work using NC and I couldn't imagine doing some tasks without a dual pane filemanager, and when the NC was killed by Symantec I mourned the loss (and quickly found some decent alternatives, the one with the most "NC feeling" being IMHO DN - Dos Navigator and later NDN - Necoromancer's Dos Navigator).

As a side note, what not everyone knows/noticed, 7-zip it is also a (almost orthodox) dual pane file manager, very handy to manage, besides files residing on mounted filesystems also those inside archives (obviously) and those inside disk/disc/drive images, such as .iso, .img and similar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't like that file operations are controlled by F1-F8 keys. This UX is unfriendly to macOS environment. Most users' F-row is in media keys mode by default, so you have to hold Fn otherwise. And I'm not even taking into account the Touch Bar.

<comment><USER18> It's not really unfriendly for developers though, who I would expect make up a decent proportion of the intended audience, and who surely all have the 'Use F1, F2 keys as standard function keys' set.

As for the Touch Bar, yes, that's a problem with the standard keybindings (and is also why I'll probably only be a macOS/Marta user for a few months, as I'll never buy a laptop with a fake keyboard).

But settings to the rescue! Cmd-shift-p & 'open default keybindings' reveals that they're all configurable.

<comment><USER19> > and who surely all have the 'Use F1, F2 keys as standard function keys' set.

I develop for several different platforms on macOS, and have never felt the need to enable that setting, because I've never encountered any macOS software that required the Fn keys in this particular non-idiomatic way. Even macOS IDEs stay away, tending to map things to complex key-chords instead.

<comment><USER18> IntelliJ.

<comment><USER20> It takes quite a bit of tweaking to get JetBrains IDEs to work like other macOS applications. Even AppCode has some issues there.

<comment><USER18> I guess it's a matter of taste whether you converge your familiar environment around the OS or your primary tools. I tend to do the latter (keeping IntelliJ, emacs, Chrome & shell use more-or-less consistent across platforms). I have more faith in my ongoing relationship with those tools than with a particular OS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> On a first look, this looks fantastic. Just what I've been waiting for. Time will tell -- I have thought this about a couple of other file managers, but irritations have always eventually surfaced to drive me back to Finder.

The ST-style command palette alone makes this worth a decent evaluation.

First-run experience was a bit odd - Marta opened up with both panes empty, and all actions unavailable. I had to go to Go->Volumes in each pane and select a volume to show up. That's OK, it's a beta. Seems great so far.

</comment><comment><USER21> I just tried it and I really liked it. It looks very promising. I applause author's statements about its business model ("The goal for me is to create the best file manager for Mac, not to become rich.").

I have tried everything, from Double Commander, to Forklift,Pathfinder and fman.

I was fman user for about a year (OSX) but it was slow and the quick look (with plugins) was unresponsive and crashed all the time so I cancelled my subscription about one month ago and I was in search for a minimal but powerful dual panel file manager with keyboard functionality.

Thanks for making this, it looks like TotalFinder (which I am a user since the beginning) for power users. Especially the tabs functionality

<comment><USER16> Sorry you didn't have a great experience. I'm working on fman 1.0 with literally 10x better performance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is really excellent. I used to use Altap Salamander when I was more of a Windows user, and it became one of my most indispensable tools. I've tried most of the Mac commander-style clones (Forklift, Pathfinder, fman, Nimble Commander) and found them slightly off for various reasons. This one really hits the mark for me in terms of functionality, usability/feel, performance, and predictability. And the Sublime-style command palette makes it even better. Excellent job!

<comment><USER23> Try Double Commander.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What does this app provide that Finder doesn't? I see something about a background operation queue, which Finder does, archive support, which I have a QuickLook plugin for, and gadgets, which I can accomplish with services.

<comment><USER25> If you've ever used Total Commander or even Windows 7+ native file explorer it's very hard to go back to or use Finder. Keyboard shortcuts, tokenizing/detokenizing file paths, opening in terminal, searching within files, search for duplicate files, bulk rename, plugins, and more.

Whenever I have a new Mac I spend a couple minutes customizing Finder: adding things like the Path button, showing the Path bar, showing the Status bar, etc. I get that it's supposed to be simple but it's surprising to me that such basic things aren't in the starting configuration.

I do love the spacebar preview though :)

<comment><USER26> > I do love the spacebar preview though :)

This. It's the biggest pain point I have with using Windows Explorer. As a Mac user, it's pure muscle memory to select a file and hit the space to look at it. Once I'm on Windows, I feel the whole computer is broken because of this one missing feature.

<comment><USER27> wow - I'm sitting here with my dual screen iMac setup, never knew about the spacebar! Thanks! lol :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Looks interesting. I'd love to see more screen shots. Is there a gallery somewhere? I poked around the site a bit but didn't find one. Tthough perhaps I just missed it. Been known to happen.)

<comment><USER29> I agree, more screenshots would be great to get an understanding of the product before trying it. Though I really like the design of the website (and the current screenshot), it gives me a good feeling about the software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Marta looks super nice, but I very hesitant to replace native Finder. I wish Apple would do a complete rewrite of Finder and update it, instead of bolting on these iOS type changes and new applications.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can use both :) Some of my friends use Finder for simple things like opening the downloaded file, and Marta for advanced file operations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Over a 100 comments from the Show HN a couple of weeks ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13921364](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13921364)

<comment><USER31> That post is from "Mar 21, 2017", i.e. last year :)

<comment><USER28> Oh, my :) Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Marta was inspired by (my) [https://fman.io](https://fman.io) [1]. Marta's author criticises that fman doesn't feel native enough because it is also available for Windows and Linux. (It's based on PyQt.) What you get in return however are a more vibrant community and plugin ecosystem in Python.

[1]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13921631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13921631)

<comment><USER29> Also from Marta's author in that thread:

 _" The development of Marta started the long before I knew about fman, so it's not any kind of imitation."_

 _" I don't think we are the direct competitors. fman is a completely another project with its own strong and weak points. I tried fman and didn't like it because of numerous reasons, but it's my own opinion."_

Two column file manager interfaces have been around for a long time, fman certainly didn't invent it. Marta seems to draw more influence from Midnight Commander / Norton Commander, with the function key reminders at the bottom of the window. The breadcrumbs and tabs in Marta remind me more of Panic's Transmit, and those UI elements aren't in fman. There's elements of the standard Mac finder in there. It is definitely not a clone of fman.

I think that was a really unfair comment, designed to get traffic to a competing product.

<comment><USER16> Also from that thread:

> This is eerily similar to fman

> I was about to ask if this was some form of re-release

So it's not just me who thinks the similarities are uncanny.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I would love vim keybindings for this. It's much more intuitive than Finder.app's keybindings, but I hate leaving my home row.

<comment><AUTHOR> The default bindings are just a de facto standard for double-pane file managers. But all key bindings are configurable, and you can set them to whatever you want in the configuration file. Check the documentation [1] for more information.

[1] [https://marta.yanex.org/docs#key- bindings](https://marta.yanex.org/docs#key-bindings)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Nice! I like it and see potential. Was quite disappointed of all the OSX file managers so far and I think I've tried them all.

After staying for a bit with pathfinder I'm back to finder. While not super decent it still doesn't get into my way too often.

Something more advanced would be welcome though and I would even be willing to pay for it, given it suits my needs. That means though I rather wait for v1.0 because I miss quit a lot of features / ui usability in the current state.

Make it the Sublimetext of file managers and you have a customer.

</comment><comment><USER24> So, I see a plugin API for this, as well as a sample Swift plugin: [https://github.com/marta-file- manager/HelloWorldPlugin](https://github.com/marta-file- manager/HelloWorldPlugin). How are you making this work? As far as I know, creating plugins in Swift is a bad idea because trying to load two of them with incompatible runtimes (a likely possibility, since Swift doesn't have a stable ABI) would cause bad things to happen.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, until Swift introduces ABI compatibility, this is definitely a problem, as both Marta API and a plugin need to be built with the same version of Swift.

Depending on the Swift release roadmap, I'll postpone 1.0 until the release of Swift 5, or make the API ObjC-compatible.

I also have plans for making a "lightweight API" (possibly in Lua). It will support only the subset of features available in the "full API", but if that would be sufficient, nothing prevents it from becoming the "right" way of writing plugins for Marta. (In any case, Swift API won't disappear).

<comment><USER24> > both Marta API and a plugin need to be built with the same version of Swift

As far as I'm aware, this isn't a problem, since your communicating between the two using the Objective-C runtime, which is resilient to the underlying ABI because it essentially overlays its own. The issue arises when you have two _plugins_ with incompatible versions of Swift: in this case, each will load its own standard library, which will lead to conflicts since for any given function in the shared library one of the implementations has to "win out". This will cause at least one of the plugins to be unable to interface with the standard library correctly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The queue thing is something I've always wanted for Windows. Probably for the last 15 years I've wondered why they have't added this and made it a default.

<comment><USER35> What? Windows 8 introduced this - and it's better than what's shown in the Marta screenshot.

[https://images.techhive.com/images/idge/imported/article/itw...](https://images.techhive.com/images/idge/imported/article/itw/2012/02/09/winlin-01-290-100517043-orig.png)

<comment><USER34> Your screenshot shows exactly what's wrong. I want a queue.

<comment><USER36> Teracopy has this feature. It's not a file manager, just replaces copy/move operations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Just downloaded the beta. Saturday morning. The time I opened the app. I realized I have Emacs dired. I don't need this... Sorry. The UI does look good.

</comment><comment><USER38> I would like to try to use this as default manager for things like `open .` and `reveal in finder` actions. `defaults write -g NSFileViewer -string org.yanex.marta` did a pretty good job with some things but others still don't work.

Is there any way to set it as default?

</comment><comment><USER39> I haven't fully tested yet. But I like double pane FM. Thanks for your app. Why you still leave copyright year to 2016 to 2017? Shouldn't be 2018?

<comment><AUTHOR> Forgot to update it, my shame! :) Will be updated in 0.5.1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> On a related note, I highly recommend Midnight Commander midnight- commander.org

</comment><comment><USER41> this is so nice. love the app already!

\- feature wise, it's not as good as forklift yet but the performance, ui (personal preference) are much better.

</comment><comment><USER42> Pathfinder is a great file manager for Mac: [https://cocoatech.com/](https://cocoatech.com/)</comment>