What's New in macOS Big Sur: Human Interface Guidelines - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/overview/whats-new-in-macos/ <comment><USER2> I have to be honest and go completely against the crowd here - but I think the UI updates are very good. They make the two OSes look cohesive but in a tasteful way. The extra padding in all of the UI is the only thing that I chafe at a little bit, it feels unnecessary. I really don't think they're going to put out touch screen Macs.

So I'm not sure what there is to get upset about. I don't see any big functional changes in the OS aside from reworking the notification center UI a little- and I like this new version more. It's already been confirmed that they aren't locking down apps to the app store or anything like that.

It seems like people think that because they're taking design cues from iOS they intend to lock it down like iOS and they're transferring that fear into dislike of the new UI itself.

Apple knows that a large percentage of the people who buy its computers are software engineers and if they ever do fully lock their computers down in that way they'd be ceding that marketshare entirely, along with catching quite a bit of heat for it in the press. Maybe eventually that calculus is worth it to them but I don't think that's what this is a step towards. I think they just want users who are fully plugged into their ecosystem to feel like it's a cohesive experience across platforms and this achieves that.

<comment><USER3> Well that and the fact that tech website users basically complain about every UI change. Hacker News is full of people who think XFCE is the height of desktop experience. This is fundamentally different than apple's core fan base who seem to like any change just for the sake of change.

<comment><USER2> I agree, any change will be frowned upon. It just annoys me that I feel like they're drawing the completely wrong conclusions.

Apple was the company that dropped the headphone jack from their phone, shipped a laptop with only USB-C ports etc... they don't shy away from making big controversial decisions if they feel like it's good for them.

If Apple was going to do this to MacOS, they'd have already done it. They wouldn't be spending years tip toeing towards it like people seem to think.

Instead, they've rolled back some really unpopular changes like the crappy keyboard in their laptop, they just shipped a new Mac Pro that is clearly designed for professionals. This chip transition _will_ result in Apple's laptops having better battery life, specs and heating than any other laptops available on the market. It won't even be close.

Additionally, they're actively trying to bring a huge swath of developers who currently only develop for their mobile devices into developing for the Mac. If they were trying to turn Macs into something for college students to watch Netflix on they wouldn't be doing any of this.

It's insane to me that people can see a UI refresh as a sign of doom while ignoring that Apple has actually been investing in the platform quite a bit more than they were a few years ago.

<comment><USER4> I still don't understand how anyone with hundreds of billions of dollars ships really crappy anything. Like do hundreds of people just pretend that a crappy keyboard isn't garbage or is it so siloed that most people never get an opportunity to register an opinion?

<comment><USER5> The keyboard isn't that bad. It had reliability issues which suggest a failure of their stress testing, but it wasn't somehow obviously broken when it shipped

<comment><USER6> The 2019 MacBook keyboards are ok. The ones before were worthless. The ones in 2005 had jitter resulting pro keyboards in double key presses rendering them also total garbage.

<comment><USER7> I am typing on a 2017 MBP keyboard that never broke. While I generally share the criticism it is neither garbage nor worthless. These unnecessary juvenile hyperbolisms are so boring.

The keyboards had a higher fault rate and many other issues and Apple has corrected its mistake, albeit 1-2 years too late from a consumer perspective. That's all there is to the story and the only semi-relevant competition to MBPs was STILL just ThinkPads and XPS, even with the main input device being significantly worse than previous iterations.

<comment><USER6> I eventually threw away my apple keyboards from 2005 so they are literally garbage.

Regarding the 2017 keyboards, I'm not even talking about the fault rate. They had no escape key and the key travel was too small so it was like typing on a touch screen.

<comment><USER8> > and the key travel was too small so it was like typing on a touch screen

No, no it's not really.

It's all about preference and tolerance. I bought my Mum an 'old' Apple USB keyboard (i.e. similar to the pre-2017 laptop keys) when her PC's existing KB broke, as I liked mine very much. Being a life-long touch-typer, she just couldn't get on with it, because the travel was too little for her. She's now very happy with a KB with mechanical (Cherry) key switches.

In contrast, I prefer the older Apple KBs, but can get on perfectly well on my 2017 MacBook Pro's KB; and it's not like a touch-screen at all.

<comment><USER6> >No, no it's not really.

Then maybe I only used broken ones with no perceptible key travel whatsoever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Virtually all of these changes reduce contrast and differentiation between controls while simultaneously decreasing information density. All bad news for people who work on their computers for a living.

<comment><USER10> I like borders on my buttons to know what is a button and what isn't, this feels.. backwards...

So much has to be inferred from the way things used to be, makes it harder to argue that it's the "simpler" operating system designed for Humans with a keen eye on UX design..

FWIW I also think the flat UI on iPhone (which has been prevelant for >6y now) is a horror show.

Steve Jobs famously once said (while working at NeXt): "There are two kinds of people at Apple: Those that want to push computing forward, and those that want to be the Sony of computers.. and the Sony guys are winning"

<comment><USER11> I remember the transition from iOS 6 to 7. It definitely initially looked modern but I still sometimes have difficulty distinguishing between a label and a button.

<comment><USER12> Another common issue is the lack of scroll bars or other UI hints like shadows means it's often impossible to know when/if you can scroll.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For the last few versions of iOS, MacOS has felt somewhat old-fashioned, lacking things I've grown to really appreciate on my phone and iPad like the Control Center. I'm glad that is now coming to MacOS. This feels like a much- needed facelift.

I'm glad is isn't a polished XFCE, there are a lot of options for people who like this sort of thing already, just run Linux. In its current state, Linux on the desktop is definitely not for me, but then, I like the touchbar (as a software engineer, even), I like their new keyboard better than the pre-USB-C one (the butterfly one was terrible though), I'm fine with four TB3/USB-C ports, I don't miss MagSafe much. I like not having to bother with a myriad settings, because the defaults are usually just fine and most things can't be fine-tuned anyway.

Big Sur seems to be a really interesting spin on a desktop iOS that embraces and extends the security and UX concepts from iOS, but for keyboard/mouse and without being so locked-down and constrained. From what they've shown so far, I like it.

Now please have iPadOS become more like MacOS – that would be terriffic.

<comment><USER14> I expect that MacOS 11.2 will _be_ iPadOS.

<comment><USER15> strong disagree. MacOS and iPadOS will take cues from each other, but they will remain fundamentally different. MacOS for the old-timey folks who want root access and to be able to browse the file system, iPadOS for people who like having all for that abstracted away from them a-la iOS. neither is right or wrong, just caters to different kinds of people who prefer different ways of working.

<comment><USER16> IMO you vastly overestimate the care Apple has for "old-timey folks who want root access." They will remove your usecase in due time, when they decide to merge the two(MacOS and iPadOS).

<comment><USER17> They could have done that at any point in the last 10 years. They're not going to. "Operating systems" are the bit that makes the hardware work for the software, and because the hardware of "computers" is different from "portables", they'll continue to get different OS for a LONG time. Apple make mac-, i-, iPad-, tv- and watch- OS. That's five different OSs. The "bringing together" of macOS and iOS has nothing to do with unifying the OS over the hardware: it's about unifying the experience of interacting with digital representations of physical reality. Need a surface for displaying 2d media? Here's a "window" or an "app". Need to write a message to your friend? Here's a surface that accepts typed characters or your handwriting. Need to write some code? Here's a surface that accepts text and has some editing controls. Etc.

What's much more likely is that they'll find some new form factor of sensors and projectors (keys, screens, pointers, loudspeakers, data i/o) that does away with "computers" and "tablets" entirely. And that'll have its own widgetOS.

EDIT: punctuation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Larger rounded corners, taller toolbars, and more padding within sections all further reduce the amount of actual content you can display. If you look at most of the before/after screenshots, there's clearly less information delivered within the same amount of screen space. That's nice for a touch interface perhaps, but it's counterproductive for a computer.

And making toolbar buttons all monochrome outlines does make toolbars have a more consistent appearance, but that actually makes finding the button you need more difficult. The differences are what we notice, and later what our brains automatically key on when we need to actually use the interface.

Less than half of these changes are arguably worth having. The rest seem like marketing saying, "We need to be fresher, guys!"

Using a new interface can be fun because of the change, but that fun quickly wears off. Then we're left with the realities of the interface. That Finder window is going to be much less useful in the real world with real file/folder names that are longer than 12 characters wide.

This is a UI for casual users. It might be good for grandma, but it's less good for people who need to get work done.

</comment><comment><USER19> Two observations regarding the former title bar:

* Putting the title (folder name) before the controls introduces a fundamental instability, much like OS X did with the menu bar by placing the named app menu before any other menus. Also, the amount of available space for displaying a longer title/file name seems limited.

* It seems, the proxy icon is gone. I can't see which element could bear the functionality in place. The title is already editable, making it dragable as well might be too much. Is this the beginning of the end of the drag-and-drop paradigm? (Notably, it doesn't suit touch interfaces well. Many aspects of these changes seem to prepare "touchability".)

<comment><USER20> The proxy icon is still there, it seems you have to hover or click to show it though.

<comment><USER19> So discoverability is finally replaced by the "Ahhh" paradigm?

<comment><USER20> That's been the trend for a while, but in the case of the proxy icon, the types of interactions you could perform with it were mostly undiscoverable and unknown to a lot of users. You had to actively explore the way the UI worked to figure it out, but I can't say I'm a fan of the change either.

<comment><USER21> > in the case of the proxy icon, the types of interactions you could perform > with it were mostly undiscoverable and unknown to a lot of users.

That's a good point I hadn't thought of -- I _love_ the proxy icon. I'm glad it's still there, but this kind of feels like Apple is implicitly saying, "Look, for the ten of you who knew what this was, you still do it, but we're just hiding it from everyone else, sorry."

<comment><USER20> It's easy to take every UI change as an affront, particularly when somebody changes something we liked. Just from what I've seen though, it appears the goal is a simply a more space efficient UI. It's not a bad goal, even though I still want to beat them over the head with the Dock which functioned better under NeXTSTEP than it ever did under Mac OS X, and the stoplight isn't doing anyone any favors over the Mac OS 9 window controls.

I guess I shouldn't be fighting the wars of 20 years ago though. It is what it is, and since the goal seems to be to rebuild everything in SwiftUI eventually, maybe the Dock will finally be reconsidered in the next few versions when they get around to it.

<comment><USER19> The problem is, it seems to be not so much about space efficiency, but about streamlined appearance (e.g., there's now less horizontal space and fewer controls are shown at once), which translates to low semantic contrast, wich again translates to lower work efficiency. And it's the latter, which causes most of the criticism, as not all users want to trade personal time and usability for looks (or prettier printouts of the UI).

<comment><USER20> I'm not going to defend Apple's work on this front, it's just they decided to consolidate the title bar and toolbar to free up some vertical screen real estate pressure and they're leaning hard on these slide animations to hide some of the UI elements so as to not overload the toolbar/titlebar thing. That to me looks like a botched attempt to make it more space efficient, although I do at least like the bit with the search bar.

John Siracusa has a different theory though, and having had time to go through and examine to changes in the HIG in more detail, I'm inclined to agree. The spacing and layout and sizing appears to make Mac OS XI more "touchable", i.e. we should expect Macs with touch screens at some point.

<comment><USER19> I can also see, why this is not a bad choice for touch interfaces.

However, at the same time, this also illustrates, why it may be not that great a choice for a WIMP interface: the kind of "intimacy" related to the specific mode of interaction is essentially different. Where contrast and too much of variety may be irritating for a touch interface, it may be already too low in contrast and information density for a WIMP GUI. On the other hand, visual grouping (and semantic collapsing of groups) is much more important for the more remote WIMP interface, whereas touch already is much more locally focused. Generally, treating them both the same isn't a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> bjelkeman-again More transparent, low contrast menus, and not much colour to help you navigate. I must be getting old. What accessibility features do one use to make the UI clearer without becoming butt-ugly to look at?

<comment><USER22> I'm sure the usual reduce transparency and increase contrast options will still be there.

<comment><USER23> Yes, but color is such a helpful distinguishing feature that contrast can never make up for it disappearing. I can squint until I can't distinguish any of the symbols and still tell which is which when they are colored.

<comment><USER24> Which menus generally have color as an element in Mac OS today that don't in the new Mac OS? Serious question—I can't find one.

<comment><USER25> [https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface- guideline...](https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface- guidelines/macos/overview/whats-new-in-macos/)

Command/Ctrl + F for: "align different subsets of toolbar items"

The pictures above the paragraph that phrase appears in exemplify the problem perfectly. One certainly looks nicer, being all uniform and monochrome, but the other provides visual feedback that is far quicker to parse than text or hieroglyphics.

I have to explain to my 70 year old aunt why I won't be updating her Macbook to Big Sur, because she'll never be able to cope with this change. Yeah, she's 70 and not that great at all this, but that's exactly who this interface should be for. We can bitch and moan but we'll deal, because we have to. At 70 years old you just want your fucking email to work and you want to know what buttons to click on.

Apple decided to add depth to the glyphs on the Dock, but no where else apparently. I'm so fucking tired of this flat monochrome bullshit.

<comment><USER26> The state of accessibility (as a design goal; as, finding the point where it critically improves the situation for some, yet is beneficial for everyone) in tech is generally awful.

It's sad that this doesn't look like it's a priority to Apple.

My only hope is that I'm wrong, that the affordances are actually more than OK once you use it, and that they've done loads of usage testing and found that it works better for the majority of people, as well as those with greater needs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Well, if it isn't my old favorites: low contrast, no affordances, junk in the title bars and so little difference between active and inactive windows it's nigh impossible to spot.

I wouldn't mind it so much if it wasn't that every sucker and his dog will take this as definitive proof that all the bad UI fads of late are actually good.

</comment><comment><USER28> > But what should we call it ? Well, if you're a student of MacOS, you know > this question can only be answered by Apple crack marketing team. Their drug > fueled minibus driven quests have yielded some great names. [...] We can't > responsibly continue to inadvertently lead our competition to copy these > methods when they clearly can't handle the trip

Was that guy actually on acid when he introduced the name ? This was so out of place compared to the usual Apple tone. At least I had a good laugh

<comment><USER29> That text seems not to be there now?

<comment><USER30> I think the quote is from the keynote itself. Here's the timestamp: [https://youtu.be/GEZhD3J89ZE?t=4250](https://youtu.be/GEZhD3J89ZE?t=4250).

<comment><USER31> For some reason the CC is out of sync, it's couple minutes earlier [https://youtu.be/GEZhD3J89ZE?t=4122](https://youtu.be/GEZhD3J89ZE?t=4122)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Loss of affordance, density and contrast. Why do designers hate these 3 things? It's pretty, yes.

<comment><USER33> Apple's original human interface designer says that

Apple has "razor-sharp focus on a user many of us often fail to even consider: The potential user, the buyer", ignoring the needs of people who already paid their money.

[https://asktog.com/atc/the-third-user/](https://asktog.com/atc/the-third- user/)

<comment><USER26> It seems short-sighted to ignore the person who has used a product or service, loved it and keeps loving it, and will persistently recommend it to others during its lifetime. It's hard to think of a better marketing channel when it works at scale.

If that's the way they are thinking about "the potential user," all they're saying is "we'd prefer to do our marketing ourselves, please; don't go around recommending our products."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The integration of tall title bars with toolbars is really reminding me of Gnome 3 here.

<comment><USER35> I'd pay for a well engineered macOS 11 theme for GNOME. Perhaps when GTK4 is out end of this year with support for blurred transparency shaders. Though I got to say Adwaita improved a lot recently.

<comment><USER36> I'd pay for a decent macOS keybinding theme for gnome, any price. Who gives a damn about the look, app marketers?

<comment><USER37> Heck, figure out how to let me use macOS keybindings on _Windows_ and I'll give you a medal. The need to use (non-idiomatic, clumsy) Windows shortcuts on my MBP's keyboard is the reason I don't use Boot Camp.

<comment><USER38> autohokey is your friend

<comment><USER36> Sadly, auto hot key does not allow rebinding the native toolkits keybinding schemes, at least not without per-app significant effort or removing things like readline bindings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's not enough that the windows are getting bulky. The thickness of the frames is _inconsistent_. Look at the screenshots

\- Some of the windows look like they look now (Safari, Maps, ...) [1]

\- Settings are skinnier [2]

\- Finder is bulkier [2]

I might be a bit autistic in this hurts my eyes.

[1] [https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-introduces- maco...](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-introduces-macos-big- sur-with-a-beautiful-new-design/)

[2] [https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface- guideline...](https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface- guidelines/macos/overview/whats-new-in-macos/#app-accent-colors)

<comment><USER40> Those look fairly consistent to me, especially if you consider how window toolbars used to work pre-Big Sur.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I really wish there were consistent title-bars. Windows 95 nailed this. It's really nice to immediately know where to click to move something out of your way.

<comment><USER42> There is so much that Windows 95 got right that the snoots coming out of design college with funny haircuts have been trying their darnedest to get wrong.

<comment><USER43> Much of it was built on the foundation that was CUA.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access#Descrip...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access#Description)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It looks like iPadOS, so instead of adding more functions to iDevices, it seems like we'll be seeing more "dumbization" for macDevices :-(

<comment><USER45> Genuine question: Have they removed any features that make it less functional? There seems to be this belief that if it looks closer to iOS or iPadOS, then its "dumber" since in the past those product lines have been less capable than the Mac.

<comment><USER46> Every time I get an update (iTunes, iMovie, and now macOS and Finder) they make the minimum size of icons / thumbnails / UI elements larger, making it impossible to see as many on the screen at a time. Would you accept your code editor doubling the font size, making it possible to see only half as many lines of code?

Being able to see content is a feature.

Every new update brings more uniform, less visually distinctive buttons. When we went from black and white silhouettes of the original Macintosh System to colourful, pictographic icons of the Mac OS 9 era it was obviously an improvement in usability. Now we're back to monochrome silhouettes again.

Being able to find UI elements quickly is a feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Didn't see anyone mention this, but one of the main reasons for making macOS look more like iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS is because at some point we will be able to run apps written for the other systems natively in macOS. Seems like an obvious move, why is everyone so surprised? It just means less duplicated interface code for multiplatform products.

<comment><USER48> Which isn't necessarily a good thing. They totally butchered the Mac Mail.app by shifting it to iOS UI paradigms. It used to be great; now it's barely usable. Now they're just making it easier to do the same and dumb down all the other apps out there for desktop users by replacing them with dumbed down iOS versions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> It seemed one of my favorite features – the draggable document icon next to the window title – was removed, but it appears on hover. Phew.

</comment><comment><USER50> For a second i thought I was looking at a Windows 10 mail app screenshot...

[https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface- guideline...](https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface- guidelines/macos/images/windows-views_2x.png)

</comment><comment><USER46> I think the reduction in usable space for content is so egregious that I am quite sure I will not be upgrading—ever. Too bad: I was looking forward to ARM.

</comment><comment><USER51> Wait macOS 11, not 10.16.

I assume this is a breaking change then?

<comment><USER52> Pretty fitting, since Steve Jobs said OS X would last 20 years, which is exactly this year.

<comment><USER53> I was re-watching that old keynote and its great when things like this line up.

I like that this time they lined up design changes + hardware -- and that this time _hardware_ was the reason to bump the version.

Like, we saw Intel transition in 10.3-ish, no more Rosetta in 10.7, entirely new design + Swift in 10.10, Catalyst and SwiftUI (brand new frameworks) in 10.15, but new design + ARM was the push for 11.

I like this trend of hardware being the "major" version bump but now I'm curious what kinda space-age paradigm macOS 12 will be breaking. "real" 3D touch? Brain-computer interfaces? I can dream, okay?!

<comment><USER54> >"real" 3D touch?

anyone else remember tactus technology?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> The previous, and still ongoing, thread about this is [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23603852](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23603852). I'm not sure whether to merge the threads or let this one start fresh (another comment about this is [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23605260](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23605260)).

<comment><AUTHOR> I think they are slightly different as this one is focussed purely on the UI/UX differences whereas the other is a more general "what's new" in terms of features etc. Happy for you to do what you think best of course!

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I don't particularly care about the GUI...

most of my time on my Mac is browser (Chrome), terminal, and Electron apps. Even my IDE is just Electron.

The new Finder and menus look ugly, but frankly, in the age of Electron everything, the OS UX doesn't matter that much, as every app has its own one, reimplemented in JavaScript and React.

Slack still looks like Slack in Big Sur, in Catalina, in Windows 10.

<comment><USER57> I, for a change, would pay money for MacOS _native_ Slack app.

<comment><USER58> Perhaps the Ipad Slack app running as native? I think we're going to see Catalyst improve the MacOS experience greatly.

<comment><USER56> Have you tried the JIRA native app, ported from iOS?

It's horrible. It's fast, unlike the web app, but otherwise horrible

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> It's a pity that most of this is about the visual, rather than the functional. The first Mac OS guidelines were as much about form as about function, with the latter being more important.

Modern-day Apple is focused on form, neglecting function.

</comment><comment><USER60> Why such fascination with rounded corners?

<comment><USER61> [https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_...](https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.txt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> My 2015 mbp can finally stop notifying me of software updates.

</comment><comment><USER63> For what it's worth...

My 2013 MacBook Pro Retina Finally bucked the kicket, so I'm waiting for the new ARM based range with the new OS before I make any decision.

</comment><comment><USER64> This is such a great UI guidelines document. This should be taken as a reference by every design and frontend teams.

</comment><comment><USER65> I can't read the faded items in the drop down menu as displayed with that background image.

</comment><comment><USER48> The HIG used to be all about how each guideline contributed to usability. I don't see even the slightest nod to usability in this document. That's telling.

</comment><comment><USER66> The full length top-to-bottom sidebar is a big improvement on MacOS and IPadOS. The full with titlebar was never optimal for wide screens.

</comment><comment><USER67> I guess Microsoft is doing design better than Apple now? I mean similar HIG was introduced in Windows 10 in what 2015?

</comment><comment><USER68> It's beautiful, I love the blur effect and the colors and the rounding it's all gorgeous.

<comment><USER69> Windows 7 really nailed this about 10 years ago now.

But design is all fads, so sadly it wasn't allowed to last.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Design consistency is great. But imo, it's too friendly and too many colors

</comment><comment><USER33> > Throughout macOS 11, windows adopt visual touches that recall iOS > interfaces.

Is this an OS or a wine-tasting?

> use an increased corner radius

What was wrong with lower radius? Were Apple designers too ignorant to try larger radious in the past?

> Within an alert, most content is center aligned.

center-aligned paragraph text? It's 90s HTML throwback!

</comment><comment><USER71> Can't wait for the 'tech support' calls from my older parents / relatives because of all the changes...

</comment><comment><USER72> Are we going back to skeuomorphic, please god yes! I've been so saturated of flatness, it's boring!

</comment><comment><USER36> Lmk when they enforce these guidelines for their own apps

</comment><comment><USER73> I guess this will piss off a lot of people.

</comment><comment><USER74> Skeuomorphism here we go again

</comment><comment><USER75> <3

</comment><comment><USER76> Oh my gosh I wish they'd have stopped with Rhapsody, to tell you the truth. Constantly redoing the UI while leaving basic functionality at a very bare level is really not doing it for me any more. Apple has moved against power users several times in the past in more aggressive terms but always having a fresh look in the UI is just a pointless exercise.

Consistency is much more important especially when reaching the phone- and tablet-raised crop of people who don't really know how a computer works nor do they care. Same with many people, they simply need a computer for their various duties. A more tech-oriented person will never have problems adapting to even radically different UI paradigms and degrees of chrome but less techy people will.

Add more functionality to the OS, fix the ancient packages, do SOMETHING for the more advanced users, Apple. Please?

</comment><comment><USER77> The title is misleading as it implies everything new in macOS, when the linked page is limited to human interface guidelines. Perhaps this should be retitled something like "What's new in MacOS Big Sur (UX|HIG|Human Interace Guidelines)"?

<comment><USER55> Good point. We've narrowed the scope in the title above. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Holy shit, it only took almost 40 years of personal computing for "human interface guidelines" to stick. I have begun believing boomers who tell me how much Microsoft fucked their business, by forcing them to use shitty software.

</comment><comment><USER79> It seems like these new Macs might as well be phone with a keyboard in the way they treat their software and "pro" consumers taking away options when screen real-estate exists to empower the mouse user.

Wake me up when they use less glue to hold their computers together : (

<comment><USER80> I think you're right - by leveraging everyone who has now learned to create apps for iPhone and suddenly empowering them to create for Mac, too, we're going to see a flood of underwhelming iPhone apps on desktop.

But that's exactly the catalyst you need to motivate the more capable of that bunch to cut through the noise with powerful applications specifically tailored to desktop — and a very healthy App Store for desktop begins to emerge (just like the one we have for iPhone now). But faster, because now there are so many people who suddenly know how to create for Mac.

<comment><USER81> One must not forget that AppKit is pretty awful compared to UIKit. It is much easier to accomplish things with UIKit. SwiftUI helps though and will end up being the way of making cross platform apps

<comment><USER40> > AppKit is pretty awful compared to UIKit

Well…

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> Too late, don't care. I no longer trust Apple with my work. Ask me how many times I've re-installed macOS Catalina on my mid-2013 MBA since it came out? Ask me how many times I've had to restore my MBA to an earlier TimeMachine snapshot (local thank god) because the Apple Mail app shat itself unrecoverably while copying several thousand emails from one mailbox to another. Ask me how many more stories like that I've got. And to think, I'm an IT professional with 35 years in the industry and been an Apple user since 2004, having had a deep knowledge of many an operating system (including flirting with Linux in between Windows 2K and iMac (I'm aware one's an OS and the other's HW).

The marriage is over Apple. We're headed for divorce and no promises you make now will convince me to stay. I'm leaving. In reality, it's been over for awhile, but of course, having invested so many years in this relationship, it's been hard to make the mental leap needed to let go. Well - now I'm there. While I'm sure your new hardware will indeed be magical with industry leading battery life and performance, that performance is only as good as the OS that runs on it. Who cares if you get an extra 6 hours battery life, when I have to restore from TM yet again and walk away overnight while 200+GB of storage gets re-installed? I loved you, and will think of you fondly from a distance. All the best.</comment>


Significant R&D Increase Suggests Apple Is Working on Something Big - <AUTHOR> http://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2015/5/3/significant-rd-increase-suggests-apple-is-working-on-something-big

<comment><USER2> No sir. The magician with the Midas touch is gone. Therefore, Apple has to become a normal company i.e. Spend a lot on R&D, gain little immediate returns but can't cut the budget because their future depends on it.</comment>


Americans Are Putting Billions More Than Usual in Their 401(k)s - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-04/americans-are-putting-billions-more-than-usual-in-their-401-k-s <comment><USER2> I'm not planning on Social Security being around by the time I'm old enough to tap into it, and I'm also not planning on having any kids to bail me out when I go senile, so yeah I'm putting a lot into my 401k. I think a lot of people my age (turning 30 next week) are feeling the same way, so I wonder if it's younger workers driving this trend.

<comment><USER3> > "I'm not planning on Social Security being around by the time I'm old enough > to tap into it"

You need to change that attitude or your complacency will allow politicians to take it from you. The fact is you pay ~16% of your paycheck into social security and medicare, it is designed to be like a pension. It is not an entitlement, it's your money.

<comment><USER4> It is not your money, it is a tax on income like any other. The Supreme Court established in 1960 (Flemming v Nestor) that contributions to Social Security are not your property and the government has no obligation to ever pay you benefits regardless of contribution. People have had this entitlement revoked in practice, though the targeting tends to be selective for out-groups and not a substantial fraction of the population.

The government strongly encourages belief in the myth that Social Security is something other than a welfare tax with no implied obligation to the taxpayer because that notion makes the tax much more palatable than the reality.

<comment><USER5> Yes. I wish more people understood this.

The other one nobody seems to want to talk about or understand is Medicaid. People think they are getting health insurance (or whatever they want to call it) when, in reality, they are accumulating debt with the government and a debt most states are required, by law, to collect.

This is one of the huge problems (outside of costs and lies) I have with Obamacare. The claim is that millions of people now have insurance when, in reality, millions of people were shoved into Medicaid and are accumulating a non-trivial financial obligation with the government. To say this is dishonest is probably cutting it short.

[https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/eligibility/estate- recover...](https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/eligibility/estate- recovery/index.html)

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure why you're saying that using Medicaid is equivalent to accumulating debt with the Federal government. Medicaid is health insurance.

It's true that Medicaid will seek reimbursement for procedures that should not have been covered, but that's not different much different than what happens when a private insurance company refuses to pay a benefit. The hospital is free to pursue the person directly for the balance they owe.

<comment><USER7> If you use Medicaid, you're expected to first deplete almost all of your financial resources to pay. It's not unusual to even have your home become an asset that will be eventually taken by the government.

<comment><USER8> After ACA this is no longer true in Medicaid expansion states.

There is no asset test, and there is no paying back benefits if you are under 65 when you took them.

Medicaid expansion is quite literally the best insurance that money can't buy.

In CA, for example, a family of 4 earning less than $33,500 gets MediCal [1]. If you just want free coverage for the kids, you can earn $64,600. [2]

[1] - [http://www.dhcs.ca.gov/services/medi- cal/Pages/DoYouQualifyF...](http://www.dhcs.ca.gov/services/medi- cal/Pages/DoYouQualifyForMedi-Cal.aspx)

[2] - [http://hbex.coveredca.com/toolkit/renewal- toolkit/downloads/...](http://hbex.coveredca.com/toolkit/renewal- toolkit/downloads/2016-Income-Guidelines.pdf)

<comment><USER9> ACA is likely about to be repealed.

<comment><USER8> And maybe that's a good reason why it should be.

A progressive tax system should not be paired with a regressive subsidy as massive as ACA. It adds up to nearly a 100% tax on the first $60,000 of income for unhealthy / chronically ill families, and a 60% effective tax rate for healthy ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For self employed, it is even better. You can put up to 54,000 for 2017 [0]. If you are self employed and can afford to do this, do it. It usually splits in 2 parts:

\- Employee portion: $18,000 that you can put as an employee.

\- Employer portion: Up to 25% of W-2 wages.

The total of the 2 above cannot exceed 54K for 2017. One more thing, you can make contributions for employer portion until the calendar year end which is March. So even for 2016, you can still make the employer portion if you were enrolled in a self employed 401K. Another thing is that the employer portion can be shown as an expense of your business as well.

If you use Fidelity or Vanguard, stick most of it in an index fund and you have the S&P 500 returns by doing nothing.

I highly recommend any self employed to read this IRS publication.

[0] [https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/one- participant-401k-pl...](https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/one- participant-401k-plans)

</comment><comment><USER11> Even though I'm doing all the right things like maxing out 401k etc., I can't help but feel that I will regret it later.

It feels like everyone grew up hearing the same thing (people are poor planners, people go broke in retirement) and now as adults have vowed that will never be them.

The problem is that now everyone thinks this way - index funds are on the rise, people are saving into their 401k, I can't help but think that I should be zagging here when everyone is zigging. Unfortunately, however, I can't figure out what that other thing should be.

<comment><USER12> I've been feeling the same way. Having millions of people and billions of dollars blindly dumped into index funds leaves me uneasy. Many view index funds as a "7% return machine". The conventional wisdom is "buy and hold", blindly, regardless of what the market does, what companies fail, or who you're investing in. Most 401k users probably couldn't name more than 10 stocks that their fund is comprised of. Stock markets assume people buy stocks because they believe in some fundemental value of the stock, and have thus done analysis to believe so. When markets are composed of people who don't adhere to this philosophy... I'm not sure what happens next. Having such a large mass of investors who are not thinking rationally about their investment seems like a recipe for disaster, but I'm no economist.

REITs, small-cap funds, international stocks, and perhaps commodities seem like the best choices if you're looking to diversify. The reality is if everyone's investment behavior precipitates a large collapse, pretty much no sane investment strategy is going to do well. Diversify, hedge your bets, and just stop worrying about it. That's the conclusion I've come to, anyway.

<comment><USER13> The whole point of index funds is to insulate yourself from a single company failing. What happens when 1 of the 500 S&P 500 companies even declines is that it is substituted for with another, stronger company. Index funds are not static, they just sometimes appear that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> FWIW "Billions of dollars" should be considered in the context that 1 million people * $1,000 = $1 billion. The US is ~300m people. So, this headline is something like "1/3 of 1% of the US is putting an extra $1,000 in their 401k recently" (really more like 1-2% of the _workforce_ but the point remains)

</comment><comment><USER15> Am I the only one that is scared of 401ks? It sounds nice: put your money into an account tax-free, let it grow tax free over 30-40 years. When you retire, you have this nice large fund to pull money from.

My biggest fear is that in 30-40 years the US government and/or 401k funds are so poorly run that they tax 50/60/70% of the income (withdrawals) out of the 401k to sustain theirselves. Lots of people tell me "that won't happen" but when I study history, I realize that the only people who think that are ones who have never lived through a major war. Wars = higher taxes. To me, putting money in a 401k is trusting that everything will be ok for a long time to come, and it's just hard to justify that the way history books show the cycles of war.

It scares me so much that I'd rather pay the taxes now, and invest as I please.

Edit: as omouse mentioned, that is my other fear. That through technology and healthcare innovations, as well as the government recognizing the need to "adjusting" the retirement age, how do I know I will get my 401k at 65? What if it is 85? That's too risky for me :/

<comment><USER16> You don't quite understand 401ks. You can choose either contribute tax free (traditional) or have tax-free growth (Roth). You can't do both in the same account.

This doesn't change the fact that the rules may be changed at some point, but given the ridiculously low limits on 401k contributions anyway you might as well put some money in one. Worst case scenario is you wind up paying taxes on t anyway, but then again you might not.

No matter how you slice it you won't wind up paying _more_ taxes than you will if you pay them now and invest without any tax sheltering.

<comment><USER13> Nitpick, but both a traditional and Roth provide tax-free growth. A Roth allows tax-free distribution is what I believe you intended to say.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's interesting when the 401k was introduced it was meant to be one leg in a "three-legged stool" for retirement planning.

Those three legs consisting of pension, social security and savings when it was introduced.

For people in the private sector that is now a two-legged stool as pensions went the way of the evening news paper and indemnity health care plans.

Its interesting to note that law makers in Washington DC all have pensions and indemnity health care plans. Only the best for them. I've often wondered at how different things would be if they were subject to the same health care and retirement options as the rest of the population.

[http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/09/three-legged- stoo...](http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/09/three-legged-stool- retirement.asp)

[http://financialanswers.com/page.php?b=24549975-0&c=1027](http://financialanswers.com/page.php?b=24549975-0&c=1027)

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder what percentage of 401k contributors has an IRA. General rule of thumb is to contribute enough to 401k to get maximum company matching and max out your Roth IRA contribution first. IRA is generally preferred because you can choose your own fund (e.g. Vanguard) and has more flexibility in certain situations. By having both pre-tax (401k) and post-tax (Roth IRA), you would be also diversifying your tax liability in your retirement.

<comment><USER19> One problem with the Roth IRA is the income phase out limits. If you're single, if you AGI is >117K, you can only contribute some percentage of the $5000 allowed for the Roth. If you're >132K, you can't contribute anything. For a married couple, those limits are 184K/194K. Granted, you can reduce your AGI by contributing to a 401K first, which allows you to take $18K off the top.

I know this doesn't affect many, but for the high-paid tech crowd, these limits right around the point in your career where you want to be pumping in money.

<comment><USER20> Those are still pretty high limits, well above the median tech salary even in the Bay Area. If you're in "income phase out" territory you're probably not worried about your retirement.

The thing I don't like about Roth is that you're contributing with post-tax money during your prime working years--the time when your taxes are probably as high as they will ever be. Especially true as a tech worker where your salary plateaus in your 20s. I'd rather save pre-tax now, and then pay taxes later when I'm 60 and back in the lowest tax bracket.

<comment><USER21> My issue with the Roth is that I don't trust the rules to remain the same in the future. I pay taxes now, before the money goes in, with the promise of tax-free withdrawals. I fully expect that money to become taxable on the back- end at some future time. It might be a lower rate (like capital gains today) or be income-based, but that pot of $ will be too tempting to ignore, I fear.

<comment><USER16> So worst case scenario is that you wind up paying the taxes you'd have paid if you didn't use the Roth? Not really a reason to not use one when it's only a possibility and not a certainty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> More money enters when the market is hot. I expect the contribution percentage closely mirrors the price of the S&P. The graph doesn't show the 2007-8 crash but I'd also expect contributions dropped at that time, also providing a depressed baseline for the current gain. Of course, people would have been better served by contributing after the drop, and one could also be nervous about record dollars chasing the market now at its highest point.

<comment><USER23> along these lines, note how many news stories etc are currently touting the power of stock indices and index investing. given a shiller pe of ~28, i'd say most are in for a very rude awakening (again and forever).

[http://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe/](http://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe/)

<comment><USER24> Solely discussing stock valuations without also considering bond yields is a little misleading. With interest rates so low on a historical basis (albeit now possibly picking up), higher stock pricing is expected and isn't necessarily "overpriced"

A good recent discussion of this: [http://brooklyninvestor.blogspot.com/2016/11/bonds-down- stoc...](http://brooklyninvestor.blogspot.com/2016/11/bonds-down-stocks- up.html)

<comment><USER25> I'm not sure where that guy is getting his data, but I think the average stock market P/E when 10 year treasury rates are in the 4-6% range is more like 19. But maybe he's looking at 'forward P/E' or something.

[http://qvmgroup.com/invest/2013/06/22/sp-500-pes- versus-10-y...](http://qvmgroup.com/invest/2013/06/22/sp-500-pes-versus-10-yr- treasury-rates-from-1957/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If they take away my social security... I want my payments back.

<comment><USER27> If they cancel some welfare program (like free lunch for poor school kids), do you want your money back that you paid into the program while it existed?

What sense does this make?

<comment><USER28> Not the best comparison. Besides being a requirement, you pay into social security based on the assumption that you'll get benefits when you're older. If you paid for 20 years and then the program went bust and you didn't receive anything, I think you'd rightly feel ripped off.

<comment><USER27> > you pay into social security based on the assumption that you'll get > benefits when you're older.

No. If you think this is how social security works then you have been tricked.

Social Security is a welfare program for old people.

A better analogy is if you paid for free lunches for kids, then you have a kid and also become poor, but they cancel the program, you'd feel ripped off.

The reason it doesn't intuitively feel the same way (even though it is) is because middle class people have a much higher chance of ever becoming old than ever becoming poor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Say what you will about government incompetence, but the idea of tying things like my retirement and healthcare to my employer just sounds terrible.

Also, auto-enrolling people into 401K sounds kinda like... ya know... social security.

<comment><USER30> > Also, auto-enrolling people into 401K sounds kinda like... ya know... social > security.

Companies auto enroll people into 401(k) programs because of participation requirements. For "highly paid employees" (i.e. executives) to be allowed to contribute to a 401(k), there requires a minimum level of participation from the rest of the workforce at the company. The easiest way to do so is to auto enroll people on day one.

<comment><USER31> > For "highly paid employees" (i.e. executives)

Highly Compensated Employees are not just executives. Anybody who makes more than $115,000/year qualifies, which applies to a lot of engineers. Also, anybody who controls more than 5% of the business qualifies, whether or not they are an executive, and regardless of their salary.

<comment><USER30> They'd qualify but I'm pretty sure when the law was first written it didn't have them in mind. It was specifically to prevent top level executives or business owners (>=5% of company) from creating 401k plans for only themselves.

<comment><USER31> > They'd qualify but I'm pretty sure when the law was first written it didn't > have them in mind. It was specifically to prevent top level executives or > business owners (>=5% of company) from creating 401k plans for only > themselves.

Even if that was the rhetoric used when creating the rule, I'd be very skeptical of assuming that was the case, rather than it being motivated by a desire to increase tax revenue, as a lot of these tax rules are designed to do. $115,000 is a really low threshold to use to define "executive" \- many blue-collar workers make far more than that.

(And furthermore, the rule still does not prohibit highly-compensated employees from contributing; it just requires them to pay taxes on the excess of the permitted amount.)

<comment><USER30> > 115,000 is a really low threshold to use to define "executive" \- many blue- > collar workers make far more than that.

Quantify "many".

$115K/year comes out to an hourly rate of $57.5 (assuming 2K hours). Even factoring in overtime (1.5x) or double time (2x), I doubt a significant percentage of people make that much at a blue collar job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> If the employer does any matching at all, a 401(k) is a no brainer in most cases.

</comment><comment><USER33> Anyone else around here that does not have a pension account?

On the basis that technology will have changed the economic system (for good or worse) in such fundamental ways so we either have greatly expanded life span, "free" handouts such as basic income, or major financial busts that have wiped out most pension savers.

<comment><USER34> I would ask the inverse: anyone around here _have_ a pension account?

When I joined my current company I was given an option to join the pension (maybe the last year it was offered to new people??). I didn't take it for a couple reasons:

      1. figured I probably wouldn't be here for 30 years (!!!!)

      2. Stories of rampant pension mismanagement scare me off. (Reasonably sure it wouldn't happen with my employer, but...)

<comment><USER35> Just to clarify on #2, it doesn't even have to really be in your employer's control. One of the biggest sales targets of mortgage-backed securities prior to 2008 were pension plans, they were AAA-rated securities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm counting on basic income being a thing when I retire.

<comment><USER37> Basic income will come with a corresponding increase in prices for consumer goods across the board. As demand for everything beyond the most essential staples goes up, prices will be adjusted upward until supply is able to satisfy new demand.

Even if you're right, you will still want to have saved some money.

<comment><USER38> Yes a price increase is a first order effect of demand increasing. In capitalist economies demand is great because of the second and third order effects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Headline is shameless click-bait. Percentage change is much more valuable than absolute dollars. From the article: "An increase in retirement savings of 0.6 percentage points [from 2010 to 2015]".

<comment><USER40> Reading is fundamental. 0.6 on a rate of 6.2. That's roughly 10%. What would you do if your savings was 10% larger?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Having a somewhat paranoid personality, I find myself wondering if auto-enroll and (especially) auto-escalation - which my job has - are designed with the employee's well-being in mind, or just a ploy to prop up the stock market?

<comment><USER42> Honestly, which do you think is most likely? 1) Your HR department is part of a nation-wide conspiracy to prop up stock market prices. 2) Your HR department is trying to help their employees be properly prepared for retirement.

<comment><USER43> 3) HR don't give a fuck, and are just told to do the thing the business wants to do because it is incenivized to do so.

The benefit to the employees and ability for HR to feel positive about their position in the role are arbitrary. The employees could also suffer when business wants to do something that negatively impacts them, and HR can be used to carry that out too. e.g: Switching to a shittier health plan to save money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> 401k is such a scam, you get a handful of high fee funds to invest in. Wall Street thieves billions of dollars, all sanctioned by the government and encouraged by the financial advise industry.

Employees should only contribute to a 401k up to any employer match. Beyond that put your money in an IRA.

<comment><USER45> My 401k has _better_ funds than I could ever get in my IRA. Yes, many 401k's have terrible fund choices but by no means do _all_ of them fall prey to that.

Also, if you're maxing out both your IRA and 401k limits, even if you have a lousy 401k, you now have tax-advantaged dollars that you can roll over to Vanguard or Fidelity when you change jobs.

<comment><USER46> It sucks that we have to use our employer's 401k vendor. We should be able to have our 401k contributions sent to any valid 401k provider like Vanguard/Fidelity/etc instead of only being able to move it when we switch jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> With more money chasing after the same quantity of equities, I would have thought the market prices would have been going up. But they've been essentially flat over the past year. Even though firms have been buying back their stock. There must be another reason why they've been stagnant.

<comment><USER48> S&P 500 is up 20% in 2016... not sure what you're talking about.

<comment><USER49> S&P 500 gained approx 9.5% in 2016

<comment><USER48> Ah you're right, I went in a bit later than the start of the year, looks like it took a dive a bit and then went back up. So I'm up ~20% following the S&P500, just not for the full calendar year.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Brilliant business idea: whiteyboard.com - <AUTHOR> http://blog.karolzielinski.com/brilliant-business-idea-whiteyboard-com?sms_ss=hackernews <comment><USER2> Title smells of "great-because-I-thought-of-it" bias...

What's brilliant about it? Does it exist? How big is it, how sticky is it, where can I buy it, and for how much, does it bubble up like adhesive lettering, does it stick to itself, does it crease when I fold it, how is better than a sharpie and a window, etc etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't want to write why I recommend to buy this product, because I simply don't want to recommend buying of this product. I didn't buy it earlier, so why should I recommend to buy it?

I just wanted to pay attention to the great business idea, not great product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We have this at my office and I'm not a huge fan. Mostly because the little air bubbles are really annoying and nearly impossible to avoid. The surface also doesn't clean up that well. Very much prefer ideapaint - <http://www.ideapaint.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> it's really good to know that. thanks a lot for an information.</comment></comment>


What's New in Edge Rails: Nested Model Mass Assignment - <AUTHOR> http://ryandaigle.com/articles/2008/7/19/what-s-new-in-edge-rails-nested-models

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty new to rails (well, 3 months?), but when I saw this post last night, it was the first time I had said "Wow, that makes sense!" to a new feature.

The old way was horrible, it felt like a hack!

</comment><comment><USER3> Daigle's edge rails reviews are probably my favorite content of all the rails blogs I subscribe to.</comment>


Masonry Construction Robot in Disguise - <AUTHOR> http://edgylabs.com/2016/10/03/masonry-construction-robot/ <comment><USER2> It looks like it leaves roughly 1 cm holes between bricks. Why?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure why. Initially, I thought they were going to fill it out with some material or something but apparently they don't. Also have concerns about the strength of the overall structure.</comment></comment>


The New Brave Is 22% Faster - <AUTHOR> https://brave.com/new-brave-22-percent-faster/ <comment><USER3> I hear a lot of praise for Brave but I don't really get what's so great about it and the fact that it's cryptocurrency-related triggers all kinds of red flags and make it difficult for me to heed the praise. Are the fans genuine or do they have a vested interest in pumping BAT?

Trying to be a little more constructive, can somebody explain what's so great about it compared to Firefox? Because as far as I can tell it's just yet another Chromium derivative with built-in ad blocker, I don't really see what's so novel or exciting about that. Also AFAIK the source is available but it's not technically under an Open Source license?

Then of course there's the whole BAT thing which as far as I understand it replaces ads with... other ads but it's cryptocurrency based so it's better somehow? I never quite got that.

So what am I missing here? Why is Brave better than Firefox + uBlock origin?

<comment><USER4> Just blocking ads with ublock solves the problem of annoying ads but leaves the problem of website revenue.

Ads solve the problem of how to fund websites without subscriptions but create the problem of annoying ads of no relevance.

Google and Facebook mitigate the problem of annoying adverts by trying to make them relevant. That comes at the cost of their constant surveillance without permission, and use of that information to try to "influence" people's opinions in unrelated ways.

The big lie of recent years has been "we value your privacy" followed some details of how "we" don't.

BATs try to solve all of these problems by placing control of personal information back with the user.

If I give you a cryptographic representation of my interests you can serve me ads without having to know the intimate details of my life. You only need to know how to deal with the token.

What's more I can compartmentalise my interests by sending different tokens at different times.

Google could get involved in this sort of research but I suspect that their interests go far beyond just serving ads.

<comment><USER3> >If I give you a cryptographic representation of my interests you can serve me ads without having to know the intimate details of my life. You only need to know how to deal with the token.

>What's more I can compartmentalise my interests by sending different tokens at different times.

I'm really perplex. People who care enough about their privacy to make use of something like that are probably those who don't want ads or tracking at all anyway. The rest of the population obviously doesn't care.

I personally can't imagine ever willingly enabling ads in my browser. You want me to pay for your service? Then ask for my credit card number, I may give it to you. If you prefer to beg for me to turn my ad blocker off then be my guest but I won't do it.

The idea of installing Brave, curating several "tokens" containing my interests and selecting what to send to which website is frankly preposterous to me and of dubious value for the advertisers.

<comment><USER5> Well you should maybe think about the content creators. If they live off the ads then you just killed their living. Bat is about micro transactions - <USER2> load Brave with 20usd and leave it to distribute money. It is actually great usecase for crypto. I doubt you want to be giving out your credit card to sites you read and micro transaction services would also invade your privacy by paying for you. All crypto is not bad and BAT is pretty legit in my opinion.

<comment><USER3> I refuse to accept that ads are the only way for content creators to make a living online. It's not the first time that the cryptocurrency crowd sees a problem and thinks "clearly the blockchain is the solution here". Except that behind buzzwords and vague assertions I fail to see a coherent big picture of how that's all going to work. Instead of giving me Internet Fun Bucks to watch ads, how about you let me pay for your service?

I pay for Spotify, I pay for Memrize, I pay for Tarnsap, I bought a Fontawesome subscription last friday, I used to donate to a couple Patreons. I donate punctually to FreeBSD, Wikipedia and a few other open source projects. I want to support people who offer services that I use. I don't want to prostitute my private life to do it.

If content creators don't want my money but insist that I should let them spam me with ads and share my private info with third parties then it's their problem, not mine.

Life is too short for me to curate "cryptographic interest tokens" in order for advertisers to serve me content that I don't want to see anyway.

Some cryptocurrency projects wanted to develop a cheap and easy micropayment system. That seems a lot more interesting to me although that probably can't work as long as the "currency" part of "cryptocurrency" remains more aspirational than practical.

<comment><USER6> >. I want to support people who offer services that I use. I don't want to prostitute my private life to do it.

You don't have to, just don't opt-in for Brave rewards (aka ads), and fund your tipping wallet with your money (you can as of today) and voilà !

You'll have:

\- No ads, no trackers

\- You contribute toward content creators with your cash like you do with Spotify/Netflix using a built-in wallet in your browser

\- A fast and privacy-first browser

<comment><USER3> That does sound a lot more like something I would use. Do the Brave folks get a cut of that money or is it completely peer-to-peer using a cryptocurrency network? If it's the latter what's Brave's business model, they just have a whole bunch of BAT and bet on them gaining value through adoption and deflation?

Making it easier and faster to transfer small amounts of money online is definitely something that needs improving but unfortunately so far cryptocurrency-based solution haven't really managed to solve the problem, mainly because speculation makes them a pretty terrible currency. That's a tough problem to solve.

<comment><USER6> >Do the Brave folks get a cut of that money or is it completely peer-to-peer using a cryptocurrency network?

No, they don't take a cut if you fund your wallet directly and use it to tip the content creators.

>If it's the latter what's Brave's business model

Here is how they make money, just pasting my comment from below:

By default, ads are blocked, but users of Brave can opt-in to have privacy- friendly ads from the Brave network displayed on websites they browse.

Brave get 30% of the revenue from those ads, and the users get 70% of the revenue as BAT tokens

Users can then use those BAT tokens to tip the websites they like that signed up as Brave publishers (see a list here: [https://batgrowth.com/publishers](https://batgrowth.com/publishers))

So the Ads / Get paid to browse part of Brave is 100% optional and opt-in, many people think it is mandatory

>Making it easier and faster to transfer small amounts of money online is definitely something that needs improving but unfortunately so far cryptocurrency-based solution haven't really managed to solve the problem, mainly because speculation makes them a pretty terrible currency. That's a tough problem to solve.

Yeah, I'm kinda fascinated about Brave's model, I'm wondering if it will be the first cryptocurrency-based solution that make sense to me

<comment><USER7> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_\(web_browser\))

Brave intends to pay content publishers 55% of the replaced ad revenue. Brave Software 15% Brave ad partners 15% Browser users 15% of the revenue.

So roughly 30%

<comment><USER6> Thank you for correcting me! I wrote the numbers that were on top of my head

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I see this browser as a skin on top of Chrome, much like Opera or (now) Edge. Hearing that it's 22% faster tells me it had a 22% overhead over the Chromium rendering engine.

What am I missing? I'm struggling to see serious innovation on display here - and I read TFA. The article is 99.9% a discussion on testing methodology, and not an analysis of the changes to Brave's core which may have resulted in the performance improvements.

As far as I'm concerned, Chromium released a more performant rendering engine and Brave merged it into their branch.

<comment><USER9>
        What am I missing?

They replaced Muon (their Electron-fork) with straight Chromium. Brave is now 22% faster than it used to be, if I read TFA correctly.

<comment><USER10> Oh. I wonder if this post had gained as much attention if the header was "Brave is now about as fast as Chrome".

<comment><USER11> I mean, if you consider the adblocking, tracker blocking, etc, then it's faster than Chrome, and may have been even before the switch (citation needed on that though). That stuff takes a long time to load, even on Chromium.

So the idea is that they've always been loading fewer things (so it's faster in that aspect), but now the speed of loading the same content is better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really don't think they're giving this a fair treatment.

From what i gather, they switched from Muon which looks to be an Electron that uses later versions of Chromium. This version also had a custom UI written entirely in web technologies.

They're comparing that to their new version based directly on the Chromium code base + some privacy related patches. Their UI changes are now mostly relegated to a bundled extension so it looks and feels like Chrome.

It seems they could have dug a bit deeper to find out where the speed up actually came from. The chromium build system is incredibly complex but very specially tuned to produce maximum performance for a specific configuration (Google Chrome Branded Release). When you go in trying to use bits and pieces of Chromium as dynamic libraries, things can go south rather quickly for performance. It could also mean that GPU acceleration or sandbox configurations differed between their modified Chromium versions they're comparing here. Was LTO enabled on both builds?

Either way, It feels like they're taking claim for developing some browser performance increase of what is in all likelihood solely attributable to the Chromium project.

</comment><comment><USER13> Well, the one thing I see on HN is that people are crazy about Firefox, and I see where they are coming from. And I agree too that Firefox separates itself from the rest by setting higher moral standards, but on the same hand Brave is a good browser, atleast on Ubuntu 16.04 Brave performs way better than Firefox. Using firefox has given me frozen screens quite a number of times, they really need to improve their resource management process. However, in the meantime we should not undermine the engineering effort being put into it.

</comment><comment><USER14> I thought brave was going to become the privacy/security browser but they seemed to push that to the side while Firefox rapidly filled that niche in the past year at least for privacy. I just don't get why I'd use brave over Chrome, they renamed a lot of options just for the sake of differentiating, which makes it unintuitive at times.

<comment><USER15> until recently i tried using firefox to quarantine social media and google but the persona extensions would break all the time, leaving me to reconfigure things over and over. Is there another way to quarantine now?

<comment><USER16> There are container plugins. There is a Facebook one and a Google one, but I'm using a generic one that lets you create containers for any website you want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Been really happy with the new Brave so far. Made me able to drop my the last Google application on my computer.

Only thing that bugs me is still having to resort to either Firefox or Safari on mac when on battery, since Brave keeps the dedicated GPU in use after navigating to anything that activates it (a Brave Helper process seems to keep it active in the background).

<comment><USER18> Have you tried killing that process manually? If it improves battery life, contact Brave support and ask for a configurable timeout.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> What I love about Chrome and what I have not seen in any other Chromium-based browser is the inline translation feature. It allows you to translate a website on the fly (even websites that require a login). Sadly, Brave does not have this feature neither.

<comment><USER20> Very true. I use Firefox these days but have to switch over to chrome when I need to see pages translated.

I live abroad so it's fairly often I have to interact with pages in another language.

<comment><USER16> There are Firefox plugins for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's still morally bancrupt, hijacking ads and replacing them with their own, then holding the money hostage until the actual creators give in to whatever cut this software-enabled protection racket demands.

It also does nothing against the fear of a Chromium monoculture, since it's just yet another reskinned fork.

Very "Brave", indeed. Kinda telling when you have to come up with the laudatory adjectives yourself.

</comment><comment><USER22> How does Brave make money? My understanding is that their entire purpose is to block tracking and ads, but those ads is how a lot of places fund their services.

<comment><USER6> By default, ads are blocked, but users of Brave can opt-in to have privacy- friendly ads from the Brave network displayed on websites they browse.

Brave get 30% of the revenue from those ads, and the users get 70% of the revenue as BAT tokens

Users can then use those BAT tokens to tip the websites they like that signed up as Brave publishers (see a list here: [https://batgrowth.com/publishers](https://batgrowth.com/publishers))

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's unclear from the title and the first paragraph what it is actually 22% faster at doing. Deep into the first paragraph, the article finally reveals that the new version has 22% faster 'load time' but to me it wasn't immediately clear what the loading time meant. Is it startup time or time to load a site? What site did it load?

I wish engineering articles such as this can be more to the point instead of being ceremonial.

</comment><comment><USER24> Perhaps I've become a bit of a cynic but I find it hard to imagine a well funded company without an exit plan.

I applaud BAT and hope either it or a successor works out to make it clear how we pay as users.

I expectation (or fear/disappointment) is that if Brave and BAT become widespread it will merely just form a new ad serving network with a different group collecting transaction fees.

</comment><comment><USER25> The article is a few months old, they now use chromium 71.x in the dev version described in the article (still faster).

</comment><comment><USER26> I stopped using Firefox when they hijacked my browser by installing an extension I did not approve (the one about Mr. Robot). Moved back to chrome for a bit and finally moved over to Brave. For the most part, it feels like I'm using chrome, although a lot of sites break because of the built-in ad blocker.

<comment><USER16> You threw the baby out with the bathwater.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Anecdotal -

Switched from Chrome => Brave. So much faster and no more fan freakouts. Love it.

<comment><USER28> That's probably just placebo since Brave is built on top of Chromium.

<comment><USER29> The adblock probably blocks bloated ad scripts that slow down the browser and use up power.

<comment><USER28> I doubt that the parent is talking about the out of the box experience.

Installing uBlock Origin takes less effort than installing Brave and probably does a better job at blocking ads than Brave, as it is the most aggressive ad- blocking engine available right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I love Brave, especially its tab into Tor functionality. I even integrated { content => BAT } payments for my website!

Been minting some genuine crypto thanks to Brave!

<comment><USER25> > I even integrated { content => BAT } payments for my website

What have you used to implement that?

<comment><USER31> With brave you can make money as a publisher here [https://brave.com/publishers/](https://brave.com/publishers/) Essentially, people browsing with brave who have put some amount of money in a wallet will disburse at the end of a cycle some funds to each publisher based on how much attention they spent on each site.

<comment><USER25> Yeah I know, but he seemed to imply that he was using some sort of paywall based on BATs, I was interested in that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The article mentions the speed, but a difference that I've observed is that the newer version consumes significantly less CPU and memory.

</comment><comment><USER33> Just decided to give it a try.

I think this is my new browser.</comment>


Troy Price, Iowa Democratic Party Leader, Resigns over Caucas Debacle - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/us/politics/troy-price-resigns-iowa.html <comment><USER2> Title is misspelled, should be "Caucus".</comment>


Flash Crash caused by single trader - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-22/mystery-trader-armed-with-algorithms-rewrites-flash-crash-story

<comment><USER2> Title is a bit disingenuous, don't you think? Directly from the article: "Sarao didn't cause the flash crash single-handedly, authorities say"</comment>


I'm creating a newbie guide/course on using Alibaba. Topics to Cover - <AUTHOR>

I am releasing a crash course on using Alibaba. I submitted it earlier but didn't ask, What would you like me to cover in it. http://alibabacrashcourse.com/
My team and I are finishing the crash course up but still have time to address additional things.
Would love to hear them. Cheers <comment><USER2> One thing I would like to know about Alibaba is how to best distinguish between good and bad suppliers. One of the criticisms levied upon Alibaba is that there is no way of knowing which of the suppliers can be trusted and which are not even close to being set up to carry out the services they are advertising. How does one best approach the problem of due diligence when using Alibaba?

Most product pages I have seen on Alibaba are confusing. It's not clear what the product is, what the price is including shipping, and what the end-to-end process for me will be including how defects and returns are dealt with. What strategy do you recommend for approaching this problem?

One product I searched for was custom playing cards. I was thinking of ordering 100k decks or so, with a custom design printed on the front and back of each card. A lot of suppliers on Alibaba are listed in this niche. So I thought, great, I have a custom request -- I want to design the front as well as the back -- so I should be able to do a request for quote and send it to all of them, right? Wrong, there is no standard form I can send out to all of them, I have to contact each of them individually. I also wanted to know how much it would cost just to buy the cardboard boxes that playing cards come in, but again it seemed I would have to contact each supplier separately which struck me as a suboptimal process. Any thoughts on that, I would love to hear.

Also I would like to know how samples work. If I request a sample of something relatively expensive, does the supplier eat the cost of the item or do I have to pay for it? I assume I have to pay for the shipping. Are there any ways within Alibaba that I can fill out one form and get a bunch of samples sent to me, or is this something that I have to set up supplier by supplier?

Which product categories offer the best savings versus what would be available in, let's say, the United States?

What tips can you share on shipping?

I have read that Alibaba is not the best website for outsourcing manufacturing to China. However I have not come across strong viable alternatives. What are your thoughts on the competition? Specifically it would be helpful to know if there is anywhere online that you know of where suppliers are vetted for legitimacy and integrity, as these are routinely cited in forums as problems for Alibaba.

I signed up for your crash course. Thanks in advance. Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Got you covered on all angles.

Good and Bad Suppliers Samples Shipping

all covered. Thanks for your thoughts

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Case studies? Step by step tutorial on buying and selling things of diverse quantities, types and origins?

Or maybe pitfalls and common scams and how to avoid them?

<comment><AUTHOR> I did interviews with 3 entrepreneurs who explain everything they did.

A exporter

and a factory owner

I got you covered buddy :-)</comment></comment>


ShedWool offers Free online staff scheduling - <AUTHOR> https://www.shedwool.com <comment><AUTHOR> ShedWool is a cross platform platform for managers to schedule their staffs online with web and mobile apps, for any industry, for free. Currently in the Telluride Venture Accelerator Program, with hundreds of users, ShedWool is in open beta and getting ready to scale! Check us out, and see how we're saving companies $$.</comment>


The Forgotten Social Network - <AUTHOR> http://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/01/11/the-forgotten-social-network/

<comment><USER2> While we're looking through previous 'could have been facebook' social networks, I remember receiving invites to sixdegrees.com <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SixDegrees.com>

This old article from 1998 is worth a look: <http://www.dougbedell.com/sixdegrees1.html>

Social recommendation: "You can get a movie review from Siskel and Ebert, but wouldn' t you rather hear it from friends you trust?" he asked."

Value in data: "In exchange for traffic at its site, Six Degrees sells advertising on the site and its demographic information compiled from member questionnaires."

The wall: "Logging in brings users their own personal bulletin board, where only their first-degree circle may post messages. A powerful internal search engine lets users locate those with similar interests, contact Six Degrees members worldwide and spin out from their sphere of influence. "

You can speculate about why it didn't get further. I would speculate the network of people online regularly just wasn't dense enough for adoption, it didn't have the viral hook of signing up to view photoss, and the dense clusters (universities) to grow the network out from.

Still, they were thinking far ahead of the game.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not to take anything away from these guys... but big chunks of what constitutes a "social network" like Facebook go back many more years than this. Go back to the 1980's (at least) and look at folks dialing into BBSs with dial-up modems (acoustic couplers, even!) and phreaks using telco loopback test circuits to set up illicit conference calls, etc. The idea of an online "social circle" was very real back then as well.

</comment><comment><USER4> "In addition to the Facebook component, Steamtunnels also featured a restaurant guide, events calendar, bulletin board, online radio stations, a textbook price comparison feature and maps of Stanford's physical steam tunnels on campus, the founders said in a recent interview with The Daily."

This is like comparing web portals to Google.

</comment><comment><USER5> "The founders say that they would have kept trying much harder at the Facebook component if they knew how huge a similar site would become."

Everyone would be a millionaire with the benefit of hindsight.

<comment><USER6> Totally, but there's also a good chance the interview went like this:

Reporter: "So knowing what Facebook has become now, would you have stuck with it?"

Founders: "Of course!" (laughter)

Article: "The founders say that they would have kept trying much harder at the Facebook component if they knew how huge a similar site would become."

<comment><USER7> Everyone sounds more nebbish when translated through a reporter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The problem was that they did something unethical: They mass-published pictures of people who didn't approve of it. Facebook.com didn't do that. (I won't get into how many unethical things they DID do, though.) They also published the entire student list as well.

Yes, both of those things were publicly available. But much like Google Street View, the fact that they're public doesn't necessarily mean they are easily obtainable, and so people object.

<comment><USER9> Are you sure? I believe Zuckerberg's diary described him doing precisely that when he first got the ball rolling at Harvard (which seems like an appropriate stage for comparison vs the Steamtunnels guys.)

<comment><USER10> Can you provide the reference to his diary? Just curious about it.

<comment><USER11> I love the age when you can ask that about a living 20-something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Archive.org has some stuff for steamtunnels.net, but it's pretty thin for 1999:

<http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://steamtunnels.net>

[http://web.archive.org/web/20110112002443/http://www.steamtu...](http://web.archive.org/web/20110112002443/http://www.steamtunnels.net/)

Too bad - it would have been fun to explore the remnants of this site.

</comment><comment><USER13> More information on the Steamtunnels / Facebook guys' story has been archived here: <http://steamtunnels.org>

</comment><comment><USER14> I remember using a social network called Bolt back in '98. People act as if the Internet and social networking is some new thing, it's not.

</comment><comment><USER15> someone at my high school ran a "social experiment" website called petridish.net back around '98; he didn't have proper backups, and one day it lost a significant chunk of itself. Yet another "also-ran".</comment>


'Game of Thrones' Will Shoot Multiple Endings to Prevent Spoilers - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/14/arts/television/game-of-thrones-multiple-endings-hbo-casey-bloys.html <comment><USER2> According to Wikipedia[1], in season 6 every episode cost an average of $10 million - lets say they're shooting 2 alternative endings for a cost of $20 million.

For the same $20 million per year they could hire a team of 100-200 security engineers (realistically couldn't even use that many effectively) and still have enough left over for some snake-oil vendor trash products.

Instead they do this. If they get hacked again what's to stop the hacker from leaking all 3 endings?

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_Thrones#Conception_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_Thrones#Conception_and_development)</comment>