Undiscoverable UI Madness - <AUTHOR> https://birchtree.me/blog/undiscoverable-ui-madness/ <comment><USER4> This post requires that users ignore the most prominent and longstanding discoverability feature of the Mac: the omnipresent top menubar.

1\. Scrollable windows flash their scrollbars when focused. This bit of bad UI was imported from iOS. Unlike iOS, it can still be turned off: Click the Apple menu -> System Preferences -> General -> Show scroll bars.

2\. File menu -> Quick Look.

3\. Every action in that context menu is available in the File menu.

3a. Holding the Option key works in the File menu as well, but this change can also be made from File menu -> Get Info -> Open with.

4\. This actually bad UI was, again, taken from iOS.

5\. Go menu -> Enclosing Folder.

Nearly every example is solvable with single clicks in the always-visible, literally spelled-out menubar, as they have been for 30+ years. They are therefore eminently discoverable, contingent on a user giving a thought to trying in the first place to discover them. The one or two examples where this is not true are direct iOS tack-ons that do not respect the platform.

What this post is doing is mendaciously pretending that power-user shortcuts, some more or less discoverable than others, are the only way to perform these operations which can actually be accomplished by reading and clicking. The attempt to equate the Mac's discoverability with iOS fails once that is pointed out, since in the latter those mystery-meat gestures truly are the only way to execute them.

<comment><USER5> Good ux designers don't inject their opinions. They observe the data and adjust accordingly.

<comment><USER6> Good UX designers would also never conduct a user study with a sample size of 3.

<comment><USER7> While 3 is a bit on the low end, user studies are not required to have large sample sizes. You're not trying to estimate what percentage of users are running into a particular issue, but only which issues many users run into. Whether it affects 10% or 30% of users does not really influence whether it should be fixed.

More on this: [https://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-to- test-w...](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-to-test- with-5-users/)

<comment><USER6> And this is why the field of design gets shit on so much. Jakob Nielsen might have a PhD, but he's much better at PR than he is at conducting actual research. It's mind boggling to me that people will still quote his opinion pieces 20 years later as if there was any actual science behind them.

There's a few other fields that happen to conduct a lot of studies around human behavior. It turns out, there's actually an established process for calculating the confidence level of your findings:

[https://www.calculator.net/sample-size- calculator.html](https://www.calculator.net/sample-size-calculator.html)

Is 3 or 5 better than nothing? Sure! But don't trick yourself into thinking your findings actually mean anything because a Danish dude drew a graph 20 years ago.

<comment><USER7> So again, a large margin of error and a low confidence level are fine, because it doesn't matter if in reality, 80% of your users run into something rather than the 60% that came out of user testing. In fact, we don't care about the specific numbers at all. All we want to know is what things are unclear to many users. Often, you test a design on five users, and _all_ five of them miss the same thing - that gives you plenty of confidence that you'll want to try something else there.

User testing is not a statistical test, and it's not a way to learn about human behaviour (so indeed, in that sense it doesn't "mean" anything); it's to give insight into your designs. I'd highly recommend everyone to take part in conducting user research sometime, as it will quickly become obvious just how easy it is to miss "obvious" things in something you're closely involved with, and how you need to have just few people interact with it to find out which.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The difference between macOS and iOS isn't about discoverability (although, in one important area macOS far more discoverable that iOS: multi-tasking). The problem with iPadOS is that since all the expert controls are hidden, and there's no such thing as shortcuts or right-clicking on iPadOS, it means doing anything useful with iPadOS requires using many slow gestures in succession.

macOS, with a combination of Bash, AppleScripts, and system-wide third-party utilities like Keyboard Maestro and LaunchBar, provides extraordinarily efficient ways to do powerful things, whereas doing anything on iPadOS is like being stuck in quicksand. Just the minutia of navigating the OS with only Apple's provided gestures is so slow and clumsy that I wouldn't bother to do anything complicated with it. It just takes so much _effort_ , it's exhausting. So neither OS is great at discoverability, but only one OS can be used efficiently by a proficient user.

I'll say it again and again: The measure of a platform is not how easy it is to use for it's weakest users, it's what it's more proficient users are able to accomplish with it. Until Apple takes proficient users seriously, iPadOS will be nothing but a side dish, because no one will use it to make anything that anyone else would ever want to emulate.

[0]: [https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/](https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/)

[1]: [https://obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html](https://obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html)

<comment><USER8> I'll add the best thing Apple could do to fix iPadOS is make the developers working on it bootstrap[0] it. E.g., by running some version of Xcode on it (or CLI tools until they have Xcode working). Those developer would then fix it right up.

I contend that iPadOS is so sluggish to use because it's a compile target from a real machine that developers respect and work on, not a machine that those developers take seriously itself. That Apple is pushing a platform so hard that their own developers would never use for their work is everything you need to know about using an iPad for productivity. Sure, there are other tasks you can use a computer for besides programming, but sorry, programming is _the_ task for computers, everything else stems from it.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping_(compilers)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping_\(compilers\))

<comment><USER9> I think of the iPad like a car. It does a few things well... but I would never use one car as the means to build another. My computer(s) function much better in those roles.

<comment><USER10> +1 Good product design is as much about what a product _doesn't_ do as what it does. Jobs was very good at that. The current design committee… not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If there's one area where macOS has lagged behind Windows for decades, it's in making all menu items accessible using the keyboard by default (not forcing the user to go to Settings and setup a shortcut, which is very nice). In Windows, pressing Alt and then the underlined character in a menu name and then a submenu name would be the easiest way to get to things without even knowing any other shortcuts. On the Mac, many menu items don't have shortcuts attached to them. To get to the menu bar using the keyboard, you have to hit Cmd+F2 and then use arrow keys to navigate — it's useful when you can't use the mouse or trackpad, but it's highly inefficient.

I'll list just one example of not having default keys for menu options. In Preview, you can adjust the size of an image from a menu option. But that specific menu option, among others, does not have any shortcut. If you need to access it via the keyboard, your choices are to use Cmd+F2 and then crawl around or go to Settings and setup a shortcut for it (playing around to avoid conflicts with any system wide shortcuts).

<comment><USER12> Are you aware that you can search the menu from the help area? Or just cmd- shift-?

<comment><USER11> Late reply, but that's still very slow and cumbersome compared to hitting Alt and then a couple of keys on Windows.

I can give more examples. The default on Mac, for a very long time, has been to not allow tab to navigate all controls in windows and dialogs (the default is only text boxes and lists). This has to be changed by the user in System Preferences.

Another point on keyboard support is how it's missing on macOS in certain places. An example: Download a DMG file of an app that's already installed (say you're doing a manual upgrade), open it using Cmd+Down Arrow, and then copy the app into /Applications (let's assume the keyboard is used for this entire flow). If your user account is not an administrator, you'd get a dialog to authenticate first, and then another dialog in response to the fact that an app with the same name is already there in /Applications, with options to Keep both versions, Stop the operation or Delete the older version. On macOS Mojave, I find that this dialog cannot be navigated using the keyboard at all (hitting tab or space or Enter does nothing)! The trackpad is the only way to respond to it. I have never seen this kind of behavior on Windows dialogs, whether they're from an application or from the OS (for UAC or other permissions).

<comment><USER12> If I go by my family, I don't think using purely keyboard is something normal users would be doing anyway. So it is possible that they simply have not found it necessary to add as default (I say this as someone who uses a lot of keyboard, and custom shortcuts).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Decades long user of Apple devices, and a long time developer, and I learned a few things from that article. Have designers lost sight of the fact that 99% of people use their eyes when working with an interface? You cannot simply hide the simplest visual cues and expect people to find out about them accidentally, or via a video or article like this.

My biggest gripe at the moment is the photo sharing option in the latest iOS. The 'Copy' or 'Send To' options used to be immediately in front of you as buttons. Now, they are hidden below a 'swipe up' menu that resides off screen. There is not even the simplest hint that you can swipe up, and it took me literally weeks of using the new iOS update to discover that purely by accident.

Why not have the visual clue by having the top bit of the first menu option just showing at the bottom of the screen? That at least gives me as the user looking at the screen the idea that "Hey, there's something that goes off screen here - maybe I can swipe up a little to see it better...Ooooh - <USER3> is a whole menu hidden down there!".

UI/UX Designers - STOP designing screens that look cool on your Dribbble, UpLabs and Behance portfolios and start designing screens that give people hints as to how the interface is to be used. Please.

<comment><USER14> In addition to having buttons halfway off the screen, the share sheet could at least have a scroll bar like every other scrolling view.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Good post - these features are quite undiscoverable, and I only figured them out because I did them accidentally one day or someone showed me.

Someone at Apple made the determination that "looking simpler" was more important that UX discoverability, and so hid some features under Ctrl/Command clicks.

A worse offender is "Command+Shift+." for showing hidden files - they don't even have a menu item anywhere for it, it's either you know that hidden files is a thing or you don't, and there's no way to discover it by clicking around and paying attention.

While I still prefer macOS to Windows, I agree that Apple could do a bit more to make these hidden features more exposable. E.g. why not let a click on the folder name show you the folder path, why require a "Command"?

<comment><USER16> That's one thing that baffles me about MacOS. There is a lot of powerful stuff hidden behind keyboard shortcuts but there is almost no way to find them. It seems a colossal waste of energy to first implement them but then making it very hard to find them.

On iPadOS it's very similar. Sometimes I get two apps on the screen by accident but I have no idea how I did it and there is no way to find out how to do it if you don't do an online search. Good old drop down menus were actually good for something.

<comment><USER17> Is that a macOS thing, or just a conceptual problem with keyboard shortcuts?

IMHO macOS does a pretty decent job of discoverability for shortcuts as they'll be listed there in the menu.

 _edit:_ originally I doubted whether Windows does this or not. It does! Somehow I missed this despite using Windows every day...

<comment><USER18> Windows programs absolutely do show shortcut keys in their menus.

[http://homepage.eircom.net/~pcengineers/kbguide.html](http://homepage.eircom.net/~pcengineers/kbguide.html)

This is in addition to access keys (also explained in the document above), underlined letters you can type to instantly navigate the menus and select even the items for which no shortcut is defined.

<comment><USER17> My bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A good UI can only ever have a limited number of discoverable actions. You can try to make a button for everything, but no one is going to try all the buttons, much less remember what they mean.

So you have to pick which actions are most important, and make _those_ easy to discover. QuickLook is a wholly essential feature. So is navigating up a level—it's very useful in some instances, but the back button does the same thing 90% of the time.

For the rest, what matters most is that the actions are never activated accidentally†. This last point is, IMO, where iPadOS fails the most.

*

However: it is worth noting how far the Mac has fallen in the past decade. Snow Leopard had persistent scrollbars, that were big and blue so you couldn't miss them. Finder's toolbar had a button for activating QuickLook. And of course, the notification center didn't exist yet.

There's a pattern behind all these changes. Scrollbars were modified to match iOS. The QuickLook icon was removed to make room for a share button that mimics iOS. The design of notification center was basically ripped from iOS wholesale.

So yes, I agree that _iOS_ has UI problems.

——————————

† Unless the user can instantly parse _how_ they accidentally triggered the action. If you can turn the accident into a learning experience, that's fantastic.

‡ It's still there, but disabled by default. So in terms of discoverability, it might as well not exist.

<comment><USER20> Practically speaking, Notification Center already existed, it was just called Growl. Everyone I knew with a Mac had it loaded, and Apple adopted the API whole-cloth for Notification Center, for compatibility reasons.

<comment><USER19> Yes, but Growl had a _very_ different UI from notification center.

<comment><USER20> By now, yes, this is true. When it was first released it was just Apple- flavored Growl.

I don't find myself using most of what's been added. I routinely forget that there's a drop-down with all the stale Notifications in it, and other than the evening Do Not Disturb which turns on automatically, I forget (sometimes to my detriment) that I can activate it manually.

<comment><USER19> Other than the addition of Today widgets (aka Dashboard except worse), Notifications Center really hasn't changed much since it was released.

Here's what it looked like in Mountain Lion, where it was first introduced: [https://512pixels.net/projects/aqua-screenshot- library/os-x-...](https://512pixels.net/projects/aqua-screenshot- library/os-x-10-8-mountain-lion/#jp-carousel-16160)

And here's Growl: [http://growl.info/images/screenshots_images/RollupWhileAway....](http://growl.info/images/screenshots_images/RollupWhileAway.png)

<comment><USER20> I stand corrected!

I just remember switching over at some point and not really noticing. Messages still made a small noise and slid in from the top right; some would disappear, some wanted me to click on them.

Like I said, I barely use the panel, and thought (thank you for the correction) that it was a later addition.

<comment><USER19> Ah, you may be thinking of Lion, which had _notifications_ but not _Notification Center_. Notification Center is the name of the panel specifically, and that came one version later in Mountain Lion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > None of this is meant to say macOS is garbage or anything like that.

I think an OS as prolific as macOS having such shit UX kind of implies it is garbage though.

The year is 2020 and macOS still doesn't have a location/address bar in Finder.

Basic native UI interfaces still completely lack keyboard controls.

Window snapping is still non-existent.

I understand Apple strive to be different, but lacking these basic features (among many others) makes macOS have an arguably inferior workflow to Windows or Linux/BSD DEs.

Excluding these things are not unique and quirky subjective design choices Apple can continue get away with. They are baseline expectations for a workstation computing environment to meet, which macOS does not. The way I see it, macOS is increasingly falling behind in UX. Not only have Apple failed to make their own improvements and innovations; they've failed to keep pace with Microsoft and the Open Source community.

Posted from my 2019 MacBook Pro

<comment><USER22> > The year is 2020 and macOS still doesn't have a location/address bar in > Finder.

⌥⌘P

> The year is 2020 and macOS still doesn't have a location/address bar in > Finder.

System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Use keyboard navigation to move between controls

> Window snapping is still non-existent.

Not completely: you can do two windows side-by-side, and resizing windows now makes them snap to each other and edges.

<comment><USER21> > ⌥⌘P

Those are breadcrumbs, not an address bar. Note the fact you cannot type or paste a path into it, as is a core feature in practically every file manager in every other OS. There is no apparent difference to breaking this convention, beyond impairing users' workflows. Finder also has the "Go to" dialogue, but again, it is a functionally inferior solution.

There is absolutely no good reason for these design choices other than to "be different for the sake of it" at the expense of good UX

<comment><USER22> How is "Go to Folder" worse? Finder just splits the two actions up…

<comment><USER21> Unlike address bars in other OS file managers: \- Finder Go To does not provide suggestions/completions (unless there is only one single match in the current folder, it'll complete the name of that) \- Finder Go To does not respect the current directory (it always uses `~/Library`) making relative navigation tedious \- It's an entirely separate action and UX flow for absolutely no good reason

In any other OS one can open the file manager, press Ctrl+L and start typing a path, pressing tab at any point to get contextual completion suggestions.

<comment><USER22> I'm not sure what you're using (⇧⌘G, right?) but mine does all of those things. It gives me multiple suggestions if there is more than one match, and it lets you enter a directory in your current path if you just type that folder's name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> IMO Apple has really lost its way in terms of genuinely good UX. The UI might be "pretty" but in terms of actual usability it's gotten just frustrating at this point. The amount of complexity they require from their users now, memorizing swipe gestures, complex keyboard shortcuts, and strange incarnations is just sad. Good design is simple!

<comment><USER24> These things have been in Apple ever since the original Macintosh. In that case it was 'one mouse button, so simple'. Except to make the system usable as other systems with multiple button mice, they added a whole load of keyboard shortcuts mimiced how the multibutton mice worked, which ended up being far more complicated than just adding another button to the mouse.

<comment><USER10> Citation for that?

I'm fairly sure they got rid of all those other buttons because for the majority of customers they created more confusion than power back then.

Also, speaking as a power user who's also a southpaw, I've got more than a few choice words for many of the multibutton mice I've had to use over the years. Apple's late ADB mice were lovely in the hand and completely unprejudiced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The author is conflating discoverability of features, with discoverability of different ways to activate certain features.

So, for example, everyone knew how to view a PDF. It's just that the author disallowed the most discoverable method.

They all knew how to right click, in the most discoverable way (trackpad), it's just that the author insisted they use the magic mouse instead, or know about ctrl+click which no one ever uses. That the magic mouse is a usability disaster is a whole other issue, but that's unrelated to OS X.

I havent used OSX in a bit, but the default app thing should be something that you can do through settings (at least Windows 10 makes it very easily discoverable that way). Apple, however, has always done a terrible job with default apps (for example, requiring users to change their default Browser, Mail app, etc through Safari, Mail.app and so on).

The Do Not disturb thing is ironically an iOS UI pattern that Apple has completely unnecessarily brought to the mac.

So are the invisible scroll bars. Mac OS X's scroll bars used to be easily visible (and more functional, because it immediately gave you an idea of the size of the view as well as allowed you to click anywhere on the bar and jump there directly).

Fundamentally, OS X has well described, discoverable and recommended UI patterns that cover all these cases. iOS and iPad OS don't. It's unfortunate that Apple has decided the HIG isn't needed anymore, but that's more of an Apple thing, than an OS X capability thing.

<comment><USER26> You can right click on the Magic Mouse perfectly fine (just click on the right side), I don't get it why they couldn't do it?

<comment><USER19> This is disabled by default, you need to go into System Preferences to enable it.

I work in an office where everyone has an iMac and a Magic Mouse, and this is a common annoyance when coworkers ask me to come over and help them with something. I'm so used to being able to right click, and I can't on (many of) their machines.

<comment><USER26> Why don't they enable it?

<comment><USER19> So, one coworker in particular tried enabling right click after watching me always attempt to use it on her machine. She turned it off a few weeks later.

She couldn't get the hang of right click on the magic mouse. She would right click when she meant to left click, and be unable to right click when she did want to. Despite watching her, I wasn't able to figure out what she was doing wrong. The gesture works perfectly for me.

Of course, Apple could resolve all of this by putting two buttons on their mice...

<comment><USER27> I personally find the magic mouse to be the most frustratingly annoying Apple device ever made. I want to love it. Functionality wise, I think it's fantastic. I even agree with the charging port on the bottom in the latest iterations.

I just find the shape and form of it to be so horrible to use for any period time, that no matter how much I try to love it and use it, it just ends up giving me physical pain in my hand and I revert back to my 10 year old Microsoft mouse. I don't understand how anyone can use it for any reasonable length of time.

<comment><USER28> For me it's just the opposite – it's the one mouse that seems to fit my hand and my anatomy just right. Feels as natural to me as using a mouse can possibly be. Other mice force my hand into this typical holding-a-mouse gesture that gets crampy and exhausting pretty quickly. I don't really know what exactly makes the difference for me, but my hand posture looks completely different when using a Magic Mouse, in a way that (most?) other mice would be to irregularly shaped, thick, large for. No definite idea, but it's a great reminder of how much such things can vary between individuals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I have been observing something similar recently, but related to other technologies. People claiming they are good at Excel, but can't do a vlookup or a pivot table. People using 5% of the power of an IDE. People not realizing that if they are able to use a web-based tool at work, they could (probably) also access it remotely.

And these are just the things I have noticed in the past week.

We utilize just a tiny percentage of options that are available to us, barely enough to get the basics of out tasks done. But we are completely oblivious that there are probably better/hidden/power tools available in the software we are already using that could help us achieve our tasks much more efficiently.

Interestingly, most people probably don't care about it, or are so oblivious of their lack of knowledge that they don't even search for better ways to do things.

It's hard to blame thought. Improving this state requires a mentality of continuous active learning, where you don't just wait for someone to show you how to do your task better, but to constantly expand your knowledge into areas you don't even think you need to improve. However, most of us usually have "better things to do" than reading software manuals.

<comment><USER30> I think part of this was that in the past, computers and software were new and novel. People had no comparative experience, so training had to be provided to fully explain what you could do & how you could do it.

Compare to today where most people "learn" by immersion - you have to use Google Docs or Excel for your school work, so you adsorb just enough to get your work done without really understanding the fundamentals or the more complex or non-obvious features, since you weren't taught systematically or comprehensively.

Then you "know" Excel, or Word well enough to get by - but don't know that you are barely scratching the surface of it's capabilities, or don't realize that being more competent with the tool will make you more capable and productive. And thus the motivation/opportunity isn't there to invest that time and effort.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's a shame there's no standard contextual key one can hold that overlays all the keyboard shortcuts, swipes, clicks, scrolls, etc that are available in the currently displayed UI. Ideally, every window that has hidden UI stuff would have a little indicator in the corner that means "hey, there's something weird you can do here, hold down the 'explain-o-tron 3000 key' to get a hint".

While one can argue that UIs should be immediately understandable, it doesn't seem possible to pull off such a feat in many cases. Keyboard shortcuts are particularly problematic, as an always-visible list would take up too much space in most cases.

<comment><USER32> Windows used to be very systematic about putting an underscore on letters that could be used with alt accelerator key; but this seems to have been phased out.

I think the only thing I've seen with a "hold key for instructions on everything" was strategy game Rise of Nations.

<comment><USER18> Underlined letters for access keys are not shown by default anymore, but they can be brought back:

[https://winaero.com/blog/underline-access-keys-menus- windows...](https://winaero.com/blog/underline-access-keys-menus-windows-10/)

<comment><USER33> They are still shown as soon as you press Alt. Which makes sense, since if you don't know about that, you can't use the underlined letters anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I don't get why there's not continuous validation from apple for UX. Can't they just pay random users to do some tasks and continuously monitor whether they are able to do it?

Something like: how satisfied are you with x,y,z and then let them try to do task 1, task 2, task 3.

Just track these metrics and try to improve the UI according to this. It seems like the designers just live in a bubble without feedback from the users, this seems especially crucial during and after a redesign.

Maybe a small popup in apples own apps, like music. Something like: Want to use apple music for free for one month? Just answer these short questions and complete a few tasks! These things don't need to take longer than 10 minutes.

Even a small sample size could provide meaningful and statistically significant results.

</comment><comment><USER35> The hidden scrollbar trend is maddening to me, why hide such an important element? I just tried one of the latest Ubuntu Unity/Gnome/whatever it is versions (I normally use XUbuntu) and saw that the scrollbars are hidden there too, which is crazy. How is the user supposed to know whether they can scroll?

<comment><USER36> For what it's worth you can turn them on permanently in the System Prefs under "General" > "Show Scroll Bars".

<comment><USER35> That's very useful, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I love using MacOS now that I'm used to it, but it really is a disaster from a basic UX point of view. Even just installing applications on MacOS is wacky, and it makes me wonder how Macs got their reputation of being easier to use than Windows computers.

<comment><USER38> Surely using the app store, or dragging an app to the applications folder is more sane than every program needing a installer program to put all the files in the right places?

<comment><USER19> > Surely [...] dragging an app to the applications folder is more sane than > every program needing a installer program to put all the files in the right > places?

Yes. It was more sane, when:

1\. The Applications folder lived on the Dock, so users actually knew it was there.

2\. Many applications (much more than today) were distributed via DMG's with instructions that an app should be dragged to the Applications folder.

Without either of these things, a lot of users end up just running an application from their Downloads folder.

Worse, doing it the _right_ way involves on a non-trivial number of steps. You have to (1) open the Finder, (2) navigate to the Applications folder, and (3) then drag the app from Downloads into Applications.

<comment><USER20> Of all the numerous and growing usability problems with macOS, this isn't one that's ever occurred to me.

Applications is, by default, in the Favorites bar of Finder. Which is where a user would find the Download folder, granted that Applications is lower in the list, but...

Second, a significant number of programs are installed from the App Store now. Of those that aren't, it's still quite normal to open up a DMG and have two icons: the application, and a link to the Applications folder. Often with a bit of icon magic so the application points at the folder.

Some applications still use an installer, in which case the app lands in the Applications folder, again.

Is this really a problem? I've been using OSX for far too long to be in a position to tell...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The party line at Apple is that right click (and everything in there) is for power users only, and that you should be able to do everything a user reasonably needs with only one button. I think this is a reasonable approach, but it seems that it's breaking peoples' ability to transition from user to power user.

The other Finder issues, however... well, it's become clear that Finder has become simpler and simpler in an attempt to make the computers more accessible.

Did you know: you can turn scrolbars on by default? A lot of common macos/finder complaints can be addressed by toggling settings, but it'd be nice if there was a single "pro mode" button, or something.

<comment><USER40> Pretty presumptive to assume all "pros" would want scrollbars turned on and all non-"props" would want them turned off.

UIs are complex and can't serve the needs of every kind of user by default. That's why there are options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I've been using macOS for about 10 years after 20 on the nameless platform.

1\. Get KeyCue or something like it that tells you (almost) every keyboard shortcut within any application by using the accessibility API.

2\. Turn on that accessibility mode option where it makes it possible to cursor through multiple-choice modal dialogs.

3\. What I find maddening is AppleScript. It's incredibly powerful except for three deficiencies a) an inability to introspect applications to find their nouns and verbs b) the lack of complete AppleScript documentation c) they fired the AppleScript guy. You could do a lot in it if you only knew the syntax and how to call things. AppleScript needs a minor UI overall to show what possible keywords, operators, nouns or verbs could be used during contextual code-completion.

4\. macOS (and iOS/iPadOS) support most *NIX Ctrl- shortcuts within text fields. Ctrl-k to kill to EOL, Ctrl-a go to beginning, Ctrl-e go to EOL, etc.

5\. Assign keyboard shortcuts to speed-up common actions (both system-wide and within particular apps) that don't have hotkeys by default, like Command- Shift-, to open Settings.

6\. Get BlueToggle & AirToggle to bounce BT and WiFi.

Bonus for iPad/iOS: use the triple-click accessibility feature set to only the Magnifier (with no zooming) with the darkening filter to get a darker display at night.

<comment><USER22> > an inability to introspect applications to find their nouns and verbs

Script Editor, press ⇧⌘O, then click on the app you care about.

<comment><USER10> That's static documentation, aka "AppleScript dictionaries", which isn't _quite_ the same thing as true introspection. In combination with Script Debugger's live object model browser it's pretty powerful, but also all the more frustrating as you run into common limitations: missing or incompete details, ambiguous definitions, incorrect information, and so on.

Unfortunately the original designers left Apple before the whole system was adequately specced and documented or thoroughly field-trialed, leaving both app developers and users to make blind guesses as to how things should work, and duct-tape over the shortcomings as best they can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've been using Mac OS, Windows and Linux (multiple distros) for over 20 years.

To me Mac OS always had the worst UI experience. I can understand why people like it: it is clean and looks good. But clean and good looks doesn't make it good.

Windows has been good on average.

On Linux it depends on the distro and the version of the distro a lot.

Overall I think Ubuntu has the best UI experience at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER43> A few days ago I discovered I could rotate PDF pages in Chrome's PDF viewer with Ctrl+[]... by pressing it by accident.

How the heck anyone was supposed to know that, I have no clue.

<comment><USER16> I once rotated the screen on my Dell laptop by accident and couldn't figured out how to get it back to normal. Took almost a day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> As a user mostly use windows. I always find the ui discoverable of mac problematic. I really have no idea why do they like to hide most used things like move file, show hidden under keyboard shortcuts and don't have a option to force them permanently show up. As in windows, they are either already show up or exist in some obvious item like `setting` and you can toggle things here. You rarely need google to find out what's going on. But has in mac you need to press random keys here and there is no obvious visual indications that you can do so. I really curious about how mac user before google exists find them out. Or they simply not?

<comment><USER45> > I really curious about how mac user before google exists find them out.

Before Google existed, software came with manuals. You buy software in a fancy box, but within the box there's not just a CD/floppy disks, there's also a large tome of written material teaching you how to use it. You would sit down, read through it, and learn to use the software.

It is more of a testament to humanity's decreasing attention span that users now demand UIs to be discoverable without reading anything.

Take a look at someone's discovery of the original Macintosh user manual: [http://www.peterme.com/2007/08/27/thoughts-on-and-pics-of- th...](http://www.peterme.com/2007/08/27/thoughts-on-and-pics-of-the-original- macintosh-user-manual/)

</comment></comment><comment> why-oh-why Here's the thing: you can't have 1000 "discoverable" actions, there's no place for it.

Correction: you do have 1000 discoverable actions, but you discover them in the menu bar.

What you found out with this article is that users are bad at knowing things, because there are too many things to know. I know all of those actions and their keyboard shortcuts, but I still have to occasionally "google it."

Either you have iOS 1.0 where everything is clear and easy to do — because there's very little to do — or macOS, where each app has dozens of features but can only surface some of them.

This is non-news.

</comment><comment><USER46> As I'm not much of an iPad user, I'm not sure how well I've understood the recent onslaught of criticism it has seen, but I thought it was more about gestures that are hard to execute even if you know them, and UI modes that you accidentally can get yourself into with no clear way to exit?

Most of these examples seem like things that are nice to be able to do if you know about them, easy to execute, but not much of a problem if you are oblivious to them?

</comment><comment><USER47> Good test and I think the results would also apply for most people dealing with Finder. I'd like to add that the right click context menu on any file or folder is huge, I can't imagine that from the 20 entries (on my machine) more than 4 are used by 95% of all users.

So here is a poll: What are the entries you use commonly from the context menu and more interesting which of them haven't you used once?

<comment><USER48> I frequently use a couple of services on the menu to diff two files (but most people don't have the diffing tool installed).

"Open", "Open With", I use frequently. "Compress", "Rename" and "Get Info" come in handy now and then.

I've never used (before now, to see what it did) "Make Alias", "Share", or "Use Groups". Not sure I've ever used "Duplicate".

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> It is interesting how newer interfaces tend to be seen as worse. (Windows 9x/XP vs Windows 8/8.1/10 or Mac OS current version vs previous version)

On the other hand, there is no reason that desktop websites should have navigation hidden under a menu.

Now let me waste 10 minutes trying to find out how to show "My Computer" on the Desktop in Windows 10...

</comment><comment><USER49> The single click mouse is the dumbest peripheral to have ever been invented, and I'm literally using right now (at work). They say less is more but this unnecessarily forces you to use a keyboard, and at times I've had to unplug the keyboard just to find myself in bad situation needing to right click.

<comment><USER50> Pretty sure clicking on the right-side of the mouse has activated secondary click by default all the way back to the Mighty Mouse (2005), no? Even if not, it's one checkbox to enable it. You don't need a keyboard to right-click, that's absurd.

<comment><USER49> Not this one. It does have a pseudo touchpad on top to use certain gesture commands but sacrifices the second click. Maybe the decision was to prioritize the touchpad on top, but alas bad decision although not unusable.

<comment><USER51> Every Apple mouse sold for at least the last 5 years can do a right click. You may have to configure it.

<comment><USER49> I found, it was a configuration and it was turned off. _shrugs_

<comment><USER10> Considering the nature of this forum and its inhabitants, in combination with the topic at hand, there is very rich irony in this.

Nevertheless, it does _prove_ the point: whether power user or punter, Poor Discovery Bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> A couple more really odious offenders in MacOS-

1\. Needing to hold the option key when right-clicking in order to even see an option for moving a copied item. I don't mind the use of copy->move instead of Windows's cut->paste but why does it have to be hidden? This is surely one of the _basic_ operations you want to perform in a file manager!

2\. Needing to right click and select "open" in order to run an unsigned app for the first time. This is a counter-intuitive and pointless ritual - <USER3> should be no difference between double-clicking and selecting "open" from the context menu. If Apple wants to ban unsigned apps they should just do it, instead of hiding a workaround behind a trivial trick that the unsophisticated users Apple is ostensibly trying to protect can easily discover by accident.

<comment><USER53> As for 1, I imagine it's because Apple doesn't want the destructive actions front-and-centre. Not only that, but macOS has always encouraged/preferred the drag-and-drop pattern for file management — it might be something with which you or others agree but that's the paradigm they're backing, for better or worse.

Copying-and-moving might be a basic operation if it's something to which you're accustomed, but it's such second nature for me, and I'm sure others, to just open a new Finder window or drag to a Stack.

I agree with 2. The way they do it now is far too heavy handed; give us a prompt to choose to run the app for the first time, possibly with an administrator password prompt. I haven't _really_ had a problem with Apple introducing restrictions with Gatekeeper but that one is simply _annoying_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I've been a (generally) happy Mac user for more than 25 years, but I am still of the opinion that the command line is more discoverable. At least man -k will surface all sorts of commands whose own man pages may suggest other search keys. The mac's "Help" menu bar item is much less useful in this regard (of course it will surface menu commands and highlight them when you mouse over the response). And even then it is mostly only an interface to the menu bar options themselves -- vague questions like "how do I X", much less "click on a pixel in you image to Y" are pretty much unanswerable through this interface.

And despite what I said about man -k, let's not get into the parlous state of Apple's man files.

</comment><comment><USER55> > and telling them that they could by hitting Cmd+up arrow ... was deemed the > most hidden thing thus far.

That's one of the oldest and most uniform/predictable ones, though—Cmd+up means "navigate out"; Cmd+down means "navigate in" (which translates to "open" for documents and "launch" for apps.) It perfectly lines up with movement within the (implicit) tree that backs the spatial-navigation metaphor.

When Safari was introduced, we also gained Cmd+[ to universally mean "navigate Back" and Cmd+] to mean "navigate Forward." These tend to be recapitulated lately by left/right swipe gestures, but not all the time. You can't swipe in Preferences.app, but you _can_ Cmd+[. (And you can Cmd+up, too!)

</comment><comment><USER56> I created this to help discover shortcuts: [https://twitter.com/randomshortcuts](https://twitter.com/randomshortcuts)

And [https://www.randomshortcuts.com](https://www.randomshortcuts.com)

</comment><comment><USER57> _That 's_ how you turn on DND...

Frustratingly, if you "x" all the notifications, there's still no hint that you can scroll to see night shift & DND toggles.

I still have to think really hard every time I want to move my cursor to the beginning or end of an edit line on OS X.

<comment><USER46> You can also option+click the notification center icon in the menu bar.

<comment><USER58> That's it. I give up programming and going back to Barista.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I have been saying for years (since OS 9) that Apple UIs are nowhere near as intuitive as their reputation would have you believe. The worst part is, because Apple does this bad stuff, everyone else thinks it must be a good idea and copies it.

</comment><comment><USER60> Some of these are esoteric keyboard shortcuts for things that are possible to do in a less-undiscoverable way. Others, like right-clicking on the trackpad and scrolling without a visible scroll bar very quickly become second-nature when you start using a Mac, because it's impossible to navigate otherwise. Only the "Open With" case is really valid, because even the non-keyboard way of doing it (again, not mentioned in the article) is really fairly esoteric: [right-click] > "Get Info" > [select application for this file] > "Change All..." to apply to all files with this extension.

</comment><comment><USER61> Years ago Macs used to all come with a cheatsheet of keyboard shortcuts and other hints. Before that there was a guide program with every Mac showing how to interact with the OS. Now you get nothing, nada, bubkes.

<comment><USER62> [https://support.apple.com/guide/mac- help/welcome/mac](https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/welcome/mac)

Something similar to this actually loads up in Safari when you log into your Mac for the first time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> This is the reason why I prefer Windows, but of course I grew up in Windows and use it daily.

It doesn't help all the icons for command, option and ctrl are all these hyroglyphs.

</comment><comment><USER64> The Finder in particular has been neglected for so long. Many of these "features" are artifacts that are indicative of a long-standing need to rethink the Mac OS user's relationship to the file system. The problem is that Apple's instinct is to eliminate complexity, which is why iOS lacked any file system in user space until the Files app was added as a kind of begrudging concession.

</comment><comment><USER58> He didn't make it to the final question: _how_ would you re-find an open window of some app and bring it to front as active window?

<comment><USER30> [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204100](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT204100)

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> _While here, I right clicked on a PNG file and asked how to make that file type always open on Photoshop instead of Preview. None knew you had to hold Option while using the "open in" option._

Probably because there's a selection drop down and a big button in the Get Info window with a label that tells you it does this exact thing

</comment><comment><USER66> I did not know holding option in a right click menu had so many useful features!

Also, on command clicking the title bar to go a folder above: my memory is probably failing me but I seem to recall when this was announced there was an arrow or some such, or highlighting.

<comment><USER67> It works on almost any menu; not just right click context menu. XCode for example, is much more useful when you realize you learn that half of the menu options you really want are hidden by holding down the option key.

The WiFi icon has an insane amount of information if you option click it for example... (most of the system ones do)

Holding option in menus, settings, or while clicking the status bar is easily the most underused and under-documented feature of MacOS... (maybe after removing annoying shit with launchctrl).

Edit: totally didn't see the two other posts with exactly the same tip, ha. Maybe not so underused -_-;

<comment><USER66> I have seen it on the system bar, very useful there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Speaking of undiscoverable:

"Tap all the things, slide all the things' is now the de-facto modus operandi for figuring out how to use mobile apps.

It feels like we made a huge step backwards in UX and are leaving behind generations of users.

</comment><comment><USER69> > Apple's mouse only has a single click.

it has way more than just single click...

</comment><comment><USER70> The common element in design trends is to minimize analogies that were previously made really obvious because users already know them by now. This has resulted in a constant iterative design that's led to the flattening and hiding of every major UI element. It's not because of malice or anything, it's just that for designers who already know and are familiar with the system, it's redundant to keep displaying things users already know.

In general, it's fine for users that are already familiar with the system. If you've been using macOS since it was Mac OS X (or even earlier), and you used every version from then to now, then the system is probably totally obvious. The catch is that we stopped "teaching" users things from scratch. So there's a ton of users who feel like the current user interfaces are totally obvious, while users who are just now entering an ecosystem find themselves completely lost.

I've advocated for this a lot privately, but I think it needs to be said more prominently: interfaces need to grow with the users on an individual level. Maybe you want to reach some kind of eden where no control is highlighted and the entire interface is flat -- so be it. Just make sure that you start users off with a very 3D interface with obvious affordances before you start changing things up. Maybe this sounds ridiculous, but it's basically the only way to teach a brand new user how to use a computer system from scratch.

I help my mom and grandparents out all the time when it comes to technology. They aren't dumb. They just don't follow every design change, take every OS update, or buy new devices every year. They know how to close windows, resize windows, and deal with windows. But when the iPad ships things like three and four finger gesture systems that have no obvious way to discover them, of course they look clueless. Similarly, when a button doesn't look like a button (but it did in three design languages ago and has just slowly removed all of the button-like features), they don't know that it's a button. Again, it's not their fault: they just haven't followed every iteration of the design language to know why or how things have changed.

The key UI element that Superhuman gets right that everyone talks about is its ridiculous obsession with teaching keyboard shortcuts. Every time you click a button instead of using a shortcut, the confirmation tells you "yes, that worked, but also here's the keyboard shortcut to do it faster next time." Maybe something like this would help?

Whatever the case may be, users who don't know things make the industry look inscrutable and unfriendly. Heck, it makes people leave platforms because they think they're unfriendly, when they've actually just been optimizing away all of the affordances.

</comment><comment><USER71> A "research" with only 3 users? Meh.

</comment><comment><USER72> It wasn't always like this. MacOS about circa system 7 through 9 were excellent UX-wise. OSX has been a slow, gradual degradation of UX over the past decade or so.

</comment><comment><USER73> I knew all these _pats self on back_

</comment><comment><USER74> macOS is bad in terms of discoverability, but iOS or whatever they call it nowadays is ridiculous.

I have a brand-new iPhone I bought for testing websites, and I use a beat-up Motorola just because iOS is so frustrating to use.

Apple needs some design lessons, Microsoft has been doing such a great job with Surface devices that if they could make Windows just a tiny bit better people I bet a huge percentage will switch.</comment>


Darpa hunts airplane-like spacecraft that can go Mach 10 - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/darpa-hunts-airplane-spacecraft-can-go-mach-10 <comment><USER2> Why do they want that? To drop (atom-/vacuum-)bombs on their daily changing targets? Or to be able to tell customers it can kill anyone from space in 5min on any place on earth.</comment>


An open source song I'd like the NSA to hear - <AUTHOR> http://www.nospoilersallowed.com

<comment><USER2> Another classic @dn0t original. For more awesome-sauce:

\- [http://www.mobypicture.com/user/djangocon/view/15309104](http://www.mobypicture.com/user/djangocon/view/15309104)

\- [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abld18bYEUc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abld18bYEUc)

\- [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx6OFqHi2d0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx6OFqHi2d0)

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't worry - they already heard it while you were making it.

</comment><comment><USER4> This should be conferenced into all twilio calls.

</comment><comment><USER5> @drivebyacct2: FYI, you seem to have been hell banned about 3 weeks ago.

</comment><comment><USER6> Matt Damon's skull gets sprayed in The Departed? lol

</comment><comment> grey-area Love the logo.</comment>


NASA has mapped the universe - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/news/wise20120314.html

<comment><USER2> The sky is not the universe. NASA mapped(took pictures of) the infrared sky. Sensational title aside, it's a pretty awesome and humbling accomplishment. Plus, being NASA it's all in the public domain.</comment>


Attracting a Technical Co-Founder - <AUTHOR> http://agileleague.com/2012/11/attracting-a-technical-co-founder/

<comment><USER2> I'm considering taking on a technical co-founder for my company, PicDigest. I've gotten it this far, but for it to become than it is I need someone to take the majority of the technical burden off myself (since I only started learning RoR in May).

Thanks for this post. This was timely and helpful for me.

<comment><USER3> Fuck needing a technical-cofounder.

PicDigest looks very cool, which means that YOU are already a technical founder.

It's your baby, your burden. Bring in other people as you need them, but looks like you are good as you are.

Feature request: let people create digests from timestamped private storage (dropbox, s3 etc.) so people that aren't instagramming/facebooking hipsters can still use it (maybe something like Zapier would help you).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> technical dude here: this is true. I don't need an idea, I don't even need somebody who can talk to audiences. usually I work with non-technical people and I rip their idea to bits, iterate it and generate entirely new fields of opportunity. I am often amazed at how these people completely pass up these ideas because they think they are the idea people and they are just looking for a tech-gorilla. we have an inbuilt aversion to people who are just looking for an implementor. somebody who thinks they have the ideas and they just need somebody to flesh it out.

I need somebody who is eternally optimistic and understands how to lead us and care for us as we go through the challenges of meetings and presentations. somebody who can help keep the team focused. somebody who understands hard work and what some of the team is going through.

I was just talking with somebody earlier about the tendency for programmers to be a bit pessimistic. its a good trait because we can see problems and threats/failures very easily. that's very useful.

also we can see through bullshit very quickly and in a way financing and business is about Building a Really Good Bullshit.

the positive side to pessimism is mentioned in this classic book:

[http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/06/28/learned- op...](http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/06/28/learned-optimism- martin-seligman/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I am also currently looking for a technical cofounder, solid article</comment>


Ask HN: Jobs in Romania? - <AUTHOR> How is the startup scene in Romania? Either Bucharest or Timisoara? Salaries? I have an MS (from the US) and I'm wondering what my quality of life would be relative to the US. <comment><USER2> I'm a Romanian dev living in London. The tech situation in Romania is quite decent, there are a few good companies to work for, some established (Adobe, Fitbit, Bitdefender), some startups (UIPath, Taxify). Most of the market is outsourcing or offshoring, though, a lot of it for Western European traditional companies (think Mercedes, Bosch, Deutsche Bank etc).

Salaries are very small compared to American ones, but very good compared to the local cost of living. You can expect to make around $1500 to $4000 monthly, after tax. A nice apartment in central Bucharest is $550 to rent, $150k to buy (can be either half or double this depending on the area). The cost of most services is very low, a beer in a restaurant is $2 or less. You can afford mostly anything as a dev, as long as it's not imported.

The state encourages the tech industry by allowing tech workers not to pay income tax (flat 10% normally). You still have to pay social services, which is about 30% of the gross wage. Public transport is not the best compared to Western Europe, but far superior to anything I've seen in the US (lived in Seattle for a bit). The metro in Bucharest is quite good. Other public services (healthcare) are not that good overall, but you can find good options in Bucharest.

In my opinion education is excellent up until high-school, while universities are not so great. I would much prefer that my children study in Bucharest rather than London. You'll find many who disagree on this topic, though.

There are very few expats in Romania, so you'll really have to make an effort to integrate and learn the language. Most young-ish people do speak decent English though, and we are very welcoming to foreigners. Our language is not very difficult, it's very similar to Italian.

I think Romania is especially good if you want your own startup, because cost of living and salaries are low in absolute terms, and the state mostly leaves you alone if you pay your taxes, as opposed to e.g. the French bureaucracy. For micro-companies (revenue less than 1M euro) with more than 1 employee, you pay 1% tax on revenue. You can fund it on your own, and there are also a few local VC's, Radu Georgescu being the most well known.

<comment><AUTHOR> >In my opinion education is excellent up until high-school

In your opinion how much does the specific high school matter overall? (For those who don't know Romanian education allows to apply for any higher education example arts to polytechnics if you pass the exams, unlike french education) Being meritocratic there is competition to be able to get into the best ones.

<comment><USER2> > In your opinion how much does the specific high school matter overall?

It's the only thing that matters. Go to a top high-school (there's 1 or two in most important cities, 4-5 in Bucharest) and you'll probably have good to excellent teachers (and some bad ones) and smart, motivated classmates. Go to a bad one and...you won't.

Yeah, I think it being meritocratic is the most important part. For context, you have to pass a math and literature exam at the end of 8th grade and you get assigned to a high school based on your score and your preferences. Everyone prefers the same high-schools.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for answering

>For context, you have to pass a math and literature exam at the end of 8th grade and you get assigned to a high school

But what if someone failed miserably, does one still try to switch collective or choose a more humble mediocre one?

>based on your score and your preferences.

And failed to even get to choose on your own preference (computer science) so you are stuck (electrical engineering) because of failure. Is it worth it to do a switch?

Edit: see I am at a dilemma for the past 9 months in between deciding to stay or just switch highschool to a National College. So far I didn't took any action because thinking that it doesn't matter that much and being far too late for that.

<comment><USER2> > But what if someone failed miserably, does one still try to switch > collective or choose a more humble mediocre one?

I don't know. I've never seen someone switch and do well, but that doesn't mean it can't happen.

> Edit: see I am at a dilemma for the past 9 months in between deciding to > stay or just switch highschool to a National College. So far I didn't took > any action because thinking that it doesn't matter that much and being far > too late for that.

Think about the future. What university do you want to study at? What grade do you want to get on your baccalaureate? Do you need the skills a better high school would give you (e.g. CS)? The name of your high school won't matter, just what you do afterwards.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much, so happy I could find someone to discuss on this topic.

>What university do you want to study at?

Polytechnics at Bucharest , but there is competiton there and my teachers do not make me do hardcore exams at school like at a National College

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Lots of western companies have software development shops in RO. Not just Bucharest but also B-Tier cities like Iasi or Cluj. Salaries range widely from 1k to 4k USD, so not in any way comparable to the US. On average, depending on company, tech stack, experience etc. i'd say wou are looking at 1,5-2k USD.

</comment><comment><USER4> > I'm wondering what my quality of life would be relative to the US.

Likely more affordable if you're drawing US based compensation. Check out working remote via Toptal > www.toptal.com/</comment>


How typography affects conversions. - <AUTHOR> https://blog.kissmetrics.com/how-typography-affects-conversions/

<comment><USER2> Nice article, although I was expecting something a bit more quantitative than qualitative</comment>


Obama to reporters: 'I don't see Snowden as a patriot' [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/08/09/obama-news-conference/2636191/

<comment><USER2> "I called for a thorough review of our surveillance operations before Mr. Snowden made these leaks. My preference, and I think, the American people's preference would have been for a lawful, orderly, examination of these laws. A... lawful, fact-based debate."

How could we possibly have a fact-based debate without knowing any of the facts?

<comment><USER3> Nope. My preference is for whatever discussion and debate proves most truthful and transparent. Having all these documents in the hands of Greenwald and Snowden means that the have no choice but to participate honestly or risk being outed as liars.

If they really wanted an orderly, lawful examination they should already be in the process of indicting James Clapper for perjury.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Of course he has to say this, how else is he to response? But In reality what defines being "patriot" doing what you believe is right for your country? Then Snowdown is a patriot.

<comment><USER5> > But In reality what defines being "patriot" doing what you believe is right > for your country? That is a very loose definition. By that definition, every > soldier including William Calley [1] is a patriot.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Calley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Calley)

<comment><USER6> Labeling somebody as a patriot should not be seen necessarily as signalling approval.

I would not hesitate to label anyone in the military who _enlisted_ [1] for _non-selfish reasons_ [2] a patriot. I think it would be inaccurate to claim otherwise.

[1] Somebody who was drafted _may or may not_ be a patriot.

[2] Reasons that I would consider 'selfish' for these purposes include _" I wanted to see the world"_ or _" GI Bill"_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I donated money to Obama's 2008 campaign and voted for him twice. Now, my honest opinion is that some of his statements are outright lies. Saying he called for an orderly examination of privacy issues seems flat out wrong given that his administration has been trying to keep things hushed up. He comes off as trying to deliberately confuse and mislead the public. Open government - ha!

I am so disappointed with Obama. I think that history will be very harsh in judging him.

</comment><comment><USER8> That line wasn't an accident and that's the most disgusting bit about it.

Come on Mr. Obama. I expect better from you. Gandhi and Mandela were charged for all kinds of things. Lets not start making that the bar. I wouldn't want to start calling all those classy dudes on Wall Street patroits now.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't see the government as very patriotic either.

</comment><comment><USER10> My transcription of an interesting part of his talk:

""I don't have an interest, and the people of the NSA don't have an interest, in doing anything other than making sure that where we can prevent a terrorist attack; where we can get information ahead of time, that we're able to carry out that critical task. We do not have an interest in doing anything other than that. And we've tried to set up a system that is as failsafe as far as we've been able to think of, to make sure that these programs are not abused.

But people may have better ideas. And people may wanna jigger slightly sort of the balance between uh, the information that we can get, vs. the incremental encroachments on privacy that if haven't already taken place might take place in a future administration (or as technologies develop further).

And the other thing that's happening is that as technology develops further, technology itself may provide us some additional safeguards. So for example if people don't have confidence that the law, the checks and balances of the court, and congress, are sufficient to give us confidence that government's not snooping. Well, maybe we can embed technologies in there that prevent the snooping regardless of what government wants to do. I mean there may be some technological fixes that provide another layer of assurance. And so those are the kinds of things that I'm looking forward to having a conversation about."

\-- Obama

</comment><comment><USER11> I see Obama as a false hope.

</comment><comment><USER6> Presidents seem to generally be rather piss-poor judges of character.

<comment><USER12> I'd say presidents are generally better judges of character than the vast majority of the populace, given their position. It's fun and often therapeutic to assume that government officials and politicians aren't as smart as _us programmers_ , but an overwhelming amount of evidence generally points to the fact that U.S. Presidents are, if nothing else, incredibly intelligent.

I'd also generally say that my (and likely your) first-hand knowledge is incredibly lacking, as I have never actually met any Presidents.

<comment><USER6> I'd say the general population is not the bar we should be holding people to, particularly not high-ranking politicians. Not by a hell of a long shot. I mean congratulation, they are better than a group of people in which racism, sexism, and various other forms of bigotry are still massively prevalent....

You don't need to meet a president to hear what he has to say about people. Presidents are often quoted you see...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So we were supposed to have conversations about things we didn't know anything about?

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't see Obama worth a Nobel price. Maybe they will give one to Snowden next time.

</comment><comment><USER15> Shocking. </sarcasm>

I saw this a mile away. Anyone who didn't call this should work on improving their judge of character.

Snowden is a patriot.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow.

</comment><comment><USER17> One of the things you'll notice in everything that Obama says, is how he ties everything to an emotional response. His rhetoric is that of one who is using suggestive language to sway the public - and he is a master of it - but once you recognize it, it just makes you ill with simply how often he invokes the tactic.

Emotions can affect behaviour, especially in those who don't have a good filter, which is a majority of any human who is poorly educated, especially about themselves.

Obama is a true political propagandist and absolutely nothing he says should be believed - and it should be listened to with caution. It is better to read his words than to hear them as you can more easily filter out his suggestive emotional tone, and spot his key phrasings.

This is several years old... but there are many people who have stated what I stated above. This is a 67 page writeup on his method of suggestive language.

[http://exopolitics.blogs.com/files/obamas_use_of_hidden_hypn...](http://exopolitics.blogs.com/files/obamas_use_of_hidden_hypnosis_techniques_in_his_speeches.pdf)</comment>


Make Money with Short URL Service adf.ly - <AUTHOR> http://www.insidethewebb.com/2010/04/make-money-with-short-url-service-adf-ly/

<comment><USER2> Heh, I think a 301 redirect (like tr.im and bit.ly use) that passes on (some) Google juice is _much_ more valuable than $2.20/CPM.</comment>


RESTful Web Services with Haskell [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.dropbox.com/s/91fi0u6w3jwsip5/Lambda-Lounge-Kansas-City_RESTful-Web-Services-with-Haskell_Andrew-Farmer.mp4

<comment><USER2> The author, Andrew Farmer [http://www.ittc.ku.edu/csdl/fpg/users/andrewfarmer.html](http://www.ittc.ku.edu/csdl/fpg/users/andrewfarmer.html) , is the author of Scotty, [http://hackage.haskell.org/package/scotty](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/scotty), a wee haskell lib for restful services (and the focus of the linked talk)

He's also the primary hacker on HERMIT, [http://www.ittc.ku.edu/csdl/fpg/software/hermit.html](http://www.ittc.ku.edu/csdl/fpg/software/hermit.html), which is a toolkit for adding custom user optimizations to GHC and a tool kit to experiment with compiler passes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Video is incomplete, stops at 15m in.

<comment><USER4> Video is just a sample, there is a download button provided for the complete video.</comment></comment>


Are kids helpful and, if so why? - barry-cotter https://www.palgrave.com/gp/campaigns/childhood-and-youth/lancy-on-the-helpfulness-of-children <comment> barry-cotter If you want to learn more about this David F. Lancy's book, The Anthropology of Childhood, is excellent.

Very short version Children everywhere desperately want to be helpful, to be productive members of society with a useful role. They learn what to do and how to do it with very, very little in the way of explicit instruction and for almost all skills in almost all societies none.

Schools and formal instruction are a product of literate societies and schooling, both teaching and learning are unnatural behaviours that absolutely have to be taught.

[https://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-Childhood-Cherubs- Chatte...](https://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-Childhood-Cherubs-Chattel- Changelings/dp/1107420989)

<comment><AUTHOR> > They learn what to do and how to do it with very, very little in the way of > explicit instruction [..]

> [..] both teaching and learning are unnatural behaviour that absolutely have > to be taught.

Something isn't right.

<comment> barry-cotter Teaching and learning in a classroom environment. Lessons. Children and people more generally learn by observation, making attempts at relatively simple tasks and increasing the range of tasks they're competent at and can do well. Learning how to do things in practice with bugger all theory.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Teaching and learning in a classroom environment. Lessons.

My bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> _Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal_ covered this:

[https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-fundamental-equation](https://www.smbc- comics.com/comic/the-fundamental-equation)

<comment><USER3> I don't get the punchline about the y-axis starting at negative 10 billion

<comment><USER4> the joke there is that the utility of children is a) constant over their lifespan and b) negative 10 billion to start with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 14-30month old want to help, but are not useful. You doing it alone goes much faster then you doing it with kid. Also, they loose attention quick and change activity. 3 years old wI'll pick apples and will loose attention in 10 minutes or sooner. So you can't really use them.

They also loose natural interest in activity (cleaning) pretty much when they learned it enough to be useful. It is interesting as long as it is challenge I guess.

Kids learn simple activities this way, but they won't learn complicated ones. That is why all larger civilizations had tutors or schools for those expected to do non-simple work (read not poor).

<comment> barry-cotter Indeed, that's why no one ever learned how to hunt, gather, smith, knapp flint or make pottery before the rise of literate civilisations.

The first appearance of anything resembling schools in the historical record are for scribes in Mesopotamia, about 5,000 years ago. Many very complicated things have been and continue to be taught through the apprenticeship model, otherwise known as be useful to me or get out. It doesn't make sense to take an apprentice unless you're going to get some advantage from it so the learning generally proceeded slower than it could have if instruction was the sole aim.

Activities as complicated as architecture, engineering sufficient to build cathedrals and aqueducts and painting and sculpture sufficient for the renaissance were taught in this manner.

<comment><USER5> They did not learned to to hunt, gather, smith, knapp flint at the age of three nor sooner. They learned that at later age, when they could be actually useful. The article is about small kids. My comment is about small kids too.

Also, parents or elders would explicitely teach you, even if you was aprentice of something more complicated explicitely teaching was there. It was not based merely on observasion and wish to be useful alone.

Moreover, it make sense to take apprentice that is not useful - when his parents pay you.

<comment> barry-cotter > Kids learn simple activities this way, but they won't learn complicated > ones. That is why all larger civilizations had tutors or schools for those > expected to do non-simple work (read not poor).

No reference to age, claims that all non simple skills were learned from tutors or schools.

If you read _Anthropology of Childhood_ hunter gatherers really don't do explicit instruction in anything resembling structured lesssons, ever. Children and adolescents watch, imitate, beg to be left to do things and occasionally get maybe five minutes of an explanation that amounts to "That's wrong, do it like this." And that's really, really rare. Farming is very far from being simple or easy work and no peasants taught their children how to farm, they got them to be useful where they could, as they could.

There's a certain amount of explicit instruction in apprenticeship but there's a hell of a lot more practice and observation than explicit and deliberate information or skill transfer.

<comment><USER5> Peasants did taught their children to farm and craft to the extend that was possible. There is a lot of knowledge captured in sayings (at least in my language) that rhyme for better recall. When literacy started in region, farming advice and hints written into book are first usages of it. It is that useful. Writing changed farming, effectively.

This kind of learning had definitive limits. Great example of it is Russia which had feudalism longer then west and had large illiteracy rates. When literacy started to be a bit more common, before WWI essentially, the way they farmed became way more effective - they used much less effective methods before. The style of learning you describe happen to coincide with low effectivity, poverty and social problems.

The reason apprenticeship learning could be based on observation only is that the amount of knowledge to learn was smaller. Landlords and aristocrats had tutors and teachers - because you won't learn that by observation only. You don't learn history or math or chemistry either.

You don't learn reading like that (there are only few exceptions).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are some very cute videos of some of the "kids helping" research: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-eU5xZW7cU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-eU5xZW7cU)</comment>


Ask HN: What can a nerd do with fiber connection? - <AUTHOR>

I was wondering what would a nerd/hacker do with a 50mbps bandwidth? I'm accepting answers from "participate in a DoS" to "create a bandwidth-hog gadget". <comment><USER2> Have an unpleasant encounter with the sharp end of a "fair use" restriction, it looks like. ;-)

Really, though, 50Mbps is not uniquely much - outfits like 100tb.com have been selling "lots of bandwidth" for a long time. This sharply limits the number of unexplored options you'll have.

That said, there are always open-source projects looking for additional mirrors.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, you could do some serious analytics by being subscribed to tens of thousands of RSS feeds, or random searching for strings in news stories or comments to identify origin points more effectively.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's cool, that would gather lots of significant data to build dictionaries, play with hadoop, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have 60 megabit for about 40 euro/month cable, it did not change anything except choosing 1080p when possible on youtube ... you get used to it ...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another thing came to mind: building a proxy server in a SaaS model. Dangerous, but could be u$eful.

</comment><comment><USER5> Porn, obviously. Thought 50mbps is a bit slow for fibre?

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha. Despite being slow, it's the best price/bandwidth relation we have in .br.

Check it out (US$ 1,00 = R$2,00) 100mbps (cable) for US$200: <http://bit.ly/fioh8k> 50mbps (fiber) for US$25: <http://www.livetim.com.br/>

<comment><USER6> Makes me miss Europe. I had this in Sweden for ~40/month <http://www.speedtest.net/result/595054175.png>

<comment><USER5> I am in the UK and pay more than that for 4mbit down and 1mbit up. Dont really need anymore if I am totally honest, except for downloading distros.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tips on finishing a game - <AUTHOR> http://www.graphic-buffet.com/2012/01/finishing-a-game/

<comment><USER2> This is a total rip of this article: <http://makegames.tumblr.com/post/1136623767/finishing-a-game> without any attribution.</comment>


Show HN: EnGrip – Document online learning for your professional growth - <AUTHOR> http://www.engrip.com <comment><USER2> It currently shows "Error 403 - This web app is stopped".

Cached website (with broken styling):

\- [https://web.archive.org/web/20170524092125/https://www.engri...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170524092125/https://www.engrip.com/)

\- [https://web.archive.org/web/20170625113108/https://www.engri...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170625113108/https://www.engrip.com/)

Actual extension:

\- [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/engrip- extension/m...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/engrip- extension/mmglbdoopeimbdhemfkhkinddmkkdlch?hl=en)

\- [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/engrip- tracke...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/engrip- tracker/?src=search)

I still don't quite get what it does exactly, and why would i want to use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello, Application is working now. A minor issue with Azure hosting that got fixed now. The main purpose of EnGrip is to turn every day learning experiences into a shareable knowledge profile. You can refer to our 3-minute pitch for more details: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_C45944onA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_C45944onA)

Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "You need to install EnGrip extension - a browser button to capture your online learning." \- No, thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Please note that we do not capture any of your browsing activity without your consent. What data reaches our servers is completely under your control.

<comment><USER3> You say so. But why would I believe you? And how would I know you are competent enough to not mess up my privacy by mistake? And how would I be sure this would not change in the future? Even browser extensions that start out harmless often get bought for the purpose of spreading malware.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good questions. I will attempt to answer them as well as I could.

1\. But why would I believe you? Because I personally don't like any software doing this without my knowledge. But again my personal preferences are not something that everyone has to believe. The browser extension can be read by any techie with an exposure to javascript. So it is out in the public space that could be confirmed by a few people.

2\. And how would I know you are competent enough to not mess up my privacy by mistake? : To be honest I don't have an answer for this. "To err is human". However data security is always a priority for us and will continue to be so. We will put in best of our efforts to safeguard the data of our users.

3\. And how would I be sure this would not change in the future? : Any change, if it happens, will be intimated to the users first. Only if they accept the corresponding change will be applicable to that particular user. Definitely done through setups and default option would be their original choice, not the new implementation.

Also if a user decides to leave our application, we are building a feature where they can take a backup of their data captured using EnGrip extension so that they don't lose any data. After all, data is valuable.

Hope that helps.

Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is a link to the 3-minute video that talks about the idea behind the product and future direction at a high level.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_C45944onA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_C45944onA)

Thanks.</comment>


Show HN: Portal – A new data browser for Clojure to navigate through your data - <AUTHOR> https://djblue.github.io/portal/ <comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/djblue/portal](https://github.com/djblue/portal) \- link to the source and usage instructions.

</comment><comment><USER2> Awesome!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> looks awesome

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


This is how Google will collapse (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.asianentrepreneur.org/this-is-how-google-will-collapse/ <comment><USER2> Is Google really in this dire a position? I find it hard to believe.</comment>


An email-powered social network that could disrupt Facebook and LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/uhuro/lets-reboot-social-networks-e60fe25d6984 <comment><USER2> Ironically this is almost exactly how it was done in the 90's. Listserv is patented apparently, but there were a few different discussion list methods available at the time. They were all pretty similar in operation, and the differences mostly amounted to maintenance. If I recall correctly, Smail had a super-easy way to manage discussion lists.

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

Several lists still exist. They're just not as common today as they used to be. I subscribe to some mailing lists for Lisp, NetLOGO and Artificial Life - all subjects that were pretty typical topic areas for 90's mail lists.

<comment><USER3> > Listserv is patented apparently

not patented, but trademarked (the "T" in USPTO), so it's just the name "Listserv", see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISTSERV#Trademark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISTSERV#Trademark)</comment></comment>


Android ICS source code pushing now - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/android-building/msg/c0e01b4619a1455a?pli=1

<comment><USER2> Please don't sync yet, it's currently in a mixed state. The 'repo for-all git push' is still running and will take some time to complete, so if you sync now you'll get some parts with Gingerbread and some parts with ICS.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for all the work you've been doing to bring this to us.

<comment><USER2> I'll pass it on to JBQ and Shawn among the people who did the actual work :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also interesting is that it has the Honeycomb source too. I wonder if it is as ugly as some have claimed it to be.

<comment><USER5> No it's really clean.

load_bin("prop_screen_driver.bin"); load_bin("prop_touch_driver.bin"); load_bin("prop_3g_driver.bin"); fpga_main_loop();

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would love to see this on Github.

<comment><USER7> You probably don't. The AOSP is hundreds of individual git repositories. android.kernel.org and the "repo" tool are the only sane way to deal with them.

<comment><USER6> Or at least an easy way to browse through the source on the web - rather than having to dload it and have some special tools to allow me to read it.

I probably won't be doing anything with it, but very interested to see what it looks like.

<comment><USER8> Special tools in the sense of "shell prompt" and "text editor" you mean? I don't disagree that being able to browse a big source tree on the web is a good thing, and useful in many circumstances. But I continue to be depressed at the level of fear that command line tools elicit in modern developers.

<comment><USER9> I'm guessing he's referring to the "repo" tool mentioned above.

<comment><USER8> You actually don't need repo to check out individual trees; git works fine. And repo is really easy, there are "paste this in" commands on the AOSP site, after which you never need to look at it again if you don't want to (just git pull individual trees).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Air pollution may be 'key contributor' to Covid-19 deaths – study - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/20/air-pollution-may-be-key-contributor-to-covid-19-deaths-study <comment><USER2> It's interesting if you look at the map of NO2 in China, it is highest in Hubei. Likewise if you look at Europe, no place has nearly the level of N02 as Northern Italy. If you look at the US, it's by far highest in New York City.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, it will be very interesting to see how this plays out over time, but there does seem to be a consistent correlation. This might enable us to target responses and resources more effectively.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The study mentioned is here: [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896972...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969720321215)</comment>


Amazon RDS to support Oracle as well as MySQL - <AUTHOR> http://aws.amazon.com/rds/oracle/

<comment><USER2> Does somebody actually see use cases for using Oracle RDS with new applications? Or is this mainly to support migrating existing apps to the AWS platform.

<comment><USER3> Migrating.

There's a lot of companies with licenses and who have been scaling vertically and are approaching their max. The traditional ROI race means that they did their planning to minimise their licensing costs whilst maximising their hardware usage... basically companies plan for just what they need and barely leave themselves 10% for growth.

What then happens is that when they look like they're going to exceed their 10% spare capacity, they're faced with disproportionally high costs to continue to scale vertically by adding RAM or CPU when the box may already be maxed or not be able to meet demands.

Where this helps, is that Amazon can extend your LAN over a VPN to include an Oracle instance hosted by them. They can take away your capex and turn it into an opex in which you weren't paying for unused spare capacity. They can also liberate you from that expensive capex cycle.

It's a good thing, but I doubt anyone is going to be building new software this way, especially amongst the HN crowd (unless this really is 1998/1999 again).

<comment><USER4> Oracle's list price for enterprise edition is $47.5K/cpu. These days it is not so easy to find a hardware upgrade that competes with that in price...

<comment><USER3> No-one pays the list price. At least, no-one I ever worked with paid the list price and I've worked with a lot of companies that use Oracle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why not PostgreSQL?

<comment><USER6> I assume this is part of an Oracle deal (hence why you can now use both Oracle DB and MySQL); regardless, wouldn't it make more sense for Amazon to roll-out support of MSSQL before PostgreSQL as (I'm guessing) it's more widely used?

<comment><USER5> MSSQL being more widely used than PostgreSQL makes no sense to me; but regardless, it would have made more sense to pick PostgreSQL over MySql in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is nothing about the pricing in there I wonder how different is that going compared to MySQL</comment>


Instagram sued over contract changes - <AUTHOR> http://www.france24.com/en/20121224-instagram-sued-over-contract-changes?ns_campaign=editorial&ns_source=twitter&ns_mchannel=reseaux_sociaux&ns_fee=0&ns_linkname=20121224_instagram_sued_over_contract_changes <comment><USER2> Yet another repeat of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4963838></comment>