Blizzard Lays Off 600, Including About 60 Developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamespot.com/news/blizzard-laying-off-600-6360584 <comment><USER3> The key is the last line of the press release.

          The accounting charges associated with Blizzard's reduction in workforce are not anticipated to be material to Activision Blizzard, Inc. and were included in the 2012 financial outlook that was provided on February 9, 2012.

I worked at 2 BigCo's while they went through layoff periods. What people don't know unless they've worked at a BigCo is that a significant number of its employees are interchangable or in some cases just dead weight. For every department of 10-20 people, there are 2 or 3 that have the bulk of the knowledge and do the majority of the work.

There is a lot of hassle with firing a single employee at a BigCo, even if that person contributes very little, is a detriment to the team, or is abusing corporate policy. There is however an upside to getting rid of a bunch of people at once, especially when it is around the time of the anual report, and it mitigates a lot of the downsides you have when firing just one person.

Except in the cases where an entire department was eliminated, I would say about 85% of the people who were let go during a large layoff were not really a surprise.

<comment><USER4> I personally worked with two of the people who were layed off today, and am friends of friends with others. This isn't a 85% unsurprising day by any means, it's a serious cut back of the support department (worldwide) because management built up too much capacity while the GMs built tools that allowed serious increases in productivity, the biggest of which was essentially automating the process of recovering hacked accounts (I can't begin to describe how many people have their WoW accounts hacked, and recovery used to take hours in the early days).

<comment><USER5> Are you saying these people voluntarily built tools that effectively made themselves obsolete?

<comment><USER6> Happens all the time. If you are either very good or a bit naive, or both.

<comment><USER7> If you're good, you're only on the receiving end of layoffs if times are really bad.

Best piece of advice I ever got:"If you don't make yourself replaceable, you can never be promoted, either".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is most likely 550 community and customer support people and 50 internationalisation developers. Blizzard is doing really well and has multiple games coming down the pipe.

WoW's fluctuating subscriber numbers reflect the natural state of a 7 year old game that is in a down period between expansions, so I'm not worried about that. Instead what I think is going on is that they've spent so much time growing their staff to accommodate WoW, the new Battle.net and new projects like Diablo 3 and the unannounced MMO project that they've come to a point where they've decided to take a good hard look at who's working for them, how they can optimise their workforce, and how they can cut down on the bloat.

It's likely a matter of reducing overhead and improving internal communications as opposed to any "bad news" that they need to get rid of people in order to keep the ship afloat.

As the CEO says, this is something that happens when you grow a lot: you need to make some changes every now and then. Instead of viewing this as a cutback, I'd view this as a fundamental step towards stabilising themselves as a developer that handles multiple projects simultaneously, whereas before they really operated in serial.

Taking 600 off the top of 4700 employees still leaves them with over 4000 people working for them, which is about as many as Nintendo employs, to give you an idea of what kind of sizes we're talking about in the games industry.

<comment><USER9> Why do it in one shot like this? Why not lay people off incrementally?

<comment><USER10> I've been in a situation where the company was laying people off incrementally over the span of 18 months. I hated going to work, didn't give a shit about the company, and I was not unique or alone in that opinion. If you have to lay people off, do it as quickly and with as much dignity as possible.

<comment><USER11> sounds like a big IT company

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find these sorts of events fascinating. Blizzard does have quite the money machine with WoW. Even a paltry 10.2M subscribers, assuming the adjusted monthly income per subscriber is $10 that is $102M/month in revenue from that franchise.

The interesting bit is that to make that count they really need a good operational plan with respect to their infrastructure.

I got a peek at their infrastructure early on because the company where I worked (Netapp) was trying to sell them filers for their Oracle instances which were running the game. And the game is essentially a ginormous database being updated constantly based on player actions. What we saw was a very complex (and expensive) infrastructure which was clearly built expediently. I would think that over time they would have been working to refine this to something more manageable (and cost effective).

Ultimately, there is a 'killer' persistent world infrastructure architecture for this sort of traffic. Would be a good research topic for a thesis I suspect.

<comment><USER13> It blows my mind that the word "paltry" would be applied to WoW's subscriber base. It dwarfs even its biggest competitors by an order of magnitude!

<comment><USER14> That depends on who you consider their competitors. WoW worldwide is about 50% of the MMORPG market. It will be interesting to see how SWTOR fares in that space. Almost up to 2M subs already,

However if you consider the larger online gaming market I would consider WoW's main competitors the likes of Zynga. Farmville alone has 28.4M monthly active users.

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure I would consider WoW (a game with a monthly subscription and a 20+ GB client) to be a direct competitor with Farmville (a free-to-play game with a browser-based client). I suspect that they appeal to very different audiences.

<comment><USER15> You would only be partially correct. See this report we did at Raptr:

<http://blog.raptr.com/2011/09/27/zynga-report/>

Specifically, ~20% of WOW players also played a Zynga game, and ~30% of XBox players also played a Zynga game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I know it's naive, but it wasn't until I read this article that I started to think of the WoW programmers as human beings, as opposed to some universal geometric constant about the WoW universe.

I would like to see a documentary filmed inside of the WoW studio, if it's at all possible. Like, it could be really Serious Business, which would be hilarious, or it could be a more relaxed-artists type of story, which could be a fun romp. And maybe we get to see a sysadmin saying, "those are the Legacy Systems, they're from the Early Days, basically the entire World of Warcraft is held together with duct tape and a prayer." It would be great, man.

<comment><USER17> FWIW, I've seen one of Blizzard's hosting cages. It's more like "held together with hundred dollar bills and big fat DC power cables"

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I look forward to the companies that will be spawned by ex-Blizzard folks

<comment><USER19> Yep, hopefully now we won't have to wait a decade for a better version of Diablo.

<comment><USER20> That's what I thought, till I played Hellgate. Man that was a disappointment…

<comment><USER21> If you haven't already, give Torchlight a try - Mac/PC/XBLA and only $15.

<http://store.steampowered.com/app/41500/>

<comment><USER22> Looks interesting. On first glance it does appear similar to Trine though: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trine_(video_game)> Which I wasn't a big fan of... anyone know if that's the case?

<comment><USER23> Torchlight is a highly overrated Diablo 1 clone. The game has barely any story. The side quest system literally repeats "Kill the monster on level 5" "Kill the monster on level 10" "Kill the monster on level 15" etc.

The game has some okay graphics and the loot system is decent. If you enjoy looting corpses for a slightly upgraded item over and over in a noxiously repetitive manner then I say go for it.

Five people in my office bough the game. I played it on very hard and beat it. I was the only person to reach the end despite everyone else playing on normal difficulty.

I beat the game out of spite. I never felt so angry at a game before but my sheer hatred of it drove me to finish.

I guarantee most positive reviews come from people who did not finish the game. It's just not fun after the first 10, 20, 30, 40, infinite floors in the same dungeon.

<comment><USER24> I enjoyed it a lot. Sure it's not a AAA title - but it's good, mindless fun. Especially given its extremely appealing price point. (And, yes, I haven't finished it.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not really sure what to make of this…been a Blizzard fan since ToD, saw Blizz growing, merging, corporated, massive growth…

3 Major Projects in the Pipeline, 1 Untitled Project, and it lays off 600 people? It's a money printing machine with it's stranglehold on subscription based MMO (as opposed to freemium), I'd hate to think they're laying off people to appease the shareholders and maximize profit.

<comment><USER25> Technically, it's 2 major projects: Diablo 3 and the new MMO Titan.

Starcraft 2 and WoW are in more of a maintenance cycle with the expansions coming out this year. Neither probably need as many developers as the new projects at this point.

The layoffs are probably due to WoW losing subscriptions over the last few years, and Diablo 3 nearing completion. The majority of the 540 non-developer positions are probably level 1 support or low level IT related positions because they don't need as much support personnel. The developer positions are most likely contract employees for Diablo 3 that aren't getting their contracts renewed.

<comment><USER26> SC2 and WoW expansions are still major, MAJOR projects, believe me. Calling it just maintenance really does a disservice to the amount of work that goes into these things. For Blizzard, this applies doubly so. I expect that Heart of the Swarm is a bigger project that most studios can dream of, in all manners - technology, art and design, production, distribution, marketing, and all the other attendant features that go with modern game development.

<comment><USER25> I'm not arguing that the WoW and SC2 expansions not major projects.

I'm saying that compared to the new projects(D3 and Titan), the overall personnel allocation is smaller for Heart of the Swarm and Mists of Pandaria.

The development effort on those isn't on a new codebase(unlike D3 or Titan). They're adding new features and reworking game systems in the expansions(especially with the WoW expansion, where they're completely rewriting basically every class), but the overall effort required to complete those isn't nearly as much as what they need for the new MMO.

<comment><USER26> Oh sure, the new MMO will definitely be their biggest current project, and D3 is a little bigger than HotS, but probably not by as much as you think.

In fact, when you've got a game as big as WoW, making sure that everything you add plays well with all the existing pieces is a mammoth undertaking - <USER2> would probably be easier if it was a new game! As you pointed out, these aren't simple 'Here's 4 new areas with some new enemy models expansions, these are major reworkings of large game features.

Although I've never worked on an expansion, from all the games I have worked on those kinds of things are definitely not simple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> _The company's massively popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game has struggled in the past year, slipping to 10.2 million subscribers through the end of December._

I'm not sure "struggled" is the word they were looking for there.

<comment><USER28> Without Googling for statistics wasn't WoW peaking around 13mill subscribers?

A ~20% decline is seemingly quite a massive hit if you ask me and would definitely warrant a few layoffs.

<comment><USER27> Sure, subscriptions may have declined quite a bit, but I think it's a bit silly to call the game "struggling" considering it's position in the market.

<comment><USER29> If you have a look at how player numbers have declined for any other mmo, their numbers are amazing. Can't forget that WoW come out in 2004, the life span of most games is measured in months.

The game doesn't hold people's interest indefinitely, even of it is a lot longer than most games and probably most people who would want to try the game already have. Also competition is way higher than it was in 2004.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Remember, John Staats (designer for WoW, lead designer for their next gen MMO code named titan) was let go in November.

[http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/11/07/rumor-senior- titan-d...](http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/11/07/rumor-senior-titan- designer-laid-off-by-blizzard/)

There was rumor that it was more than just 1 lead designer was being cut, but nothing substantial.

I don't think those 60 developer staff were just "QA people" etc.. I bet they killed or scoped down the whole project.

</comment><comment><USER31> Those 10% are related to game development, but that doesn't mean they're developers. I would guess that it's more likely to be slightly more "disposable" roles like testers.

It still sucks though. It seemed like Blizzard was just printing money.

<comment><USER32> They're presumably winding down some parts of Diablo 3 development and maybe even Heart of the Swarm, so it could just be that they don't expect to be doing as much in the near future rather than simple cost-cutting.

<comment><USER33> They still have the upcoming Titan game and another unannounced game that they are hiring for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I was under the impression that this sort of churn happened at all game dev companies when projects were nearing completion. Typically they are roles like QA, writers, and designers that may move to other projects or not.

<comment><USER35> You are correct, but it's still fun to speculate wildly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This seems like an appropriate enough place to put this: The Diablo 3 beta? Not that good. I put thousands of hours into D1 and D2 but have zero desire to keep playing the D3 beta.

Also it sucks to hear about the lay-offs.

<comment><USER37> > I put thousands of hours into D1 and D2 but have zero desire to keep playing > the D3 beta.

I'm not sure I understand this comparison at all.

Keyword at the end there, "D3 _beta_ ". No one expect you to spend thousands of hours into a _beta_.

<comment><USER36> The reference to my time spent with D1/D2 was to make the point that I _like_ Diablo. I've put about 2 hours with the D3 beta and had to force myself to finish it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Damn, I hate hearing about layoffs. I work in a close-knit team of developers and testers, where each of one us is an important contributor to our company's goal, and it impacts our productivity tremendously when someone leaves.

Maybe I'm naive, but I would happily give up any yearly bonuses and possibly even a slight pay deduction (as a single guy I don't have many expenses) in order to keep a fellow teammate from being laid off.

I'm sure not everyone agrees with this line of thinking, and there must be some legal mumbo jumbo out there that prevents this from happening... Anyways, I'm sure those laid off developers are talented, and hope they'll rebound quickly to a greater opportunity.

<comment><USER39> There was a time where a company I worked for was having to downsize for a second time. They were planning to keep me on, but cancel the software project I'd been leading.

I talked them into letting me the severance package and I went looking around elsewhere. I relocated for a better salary in a bigger city and the company I left was able to retain a couple of other staff (including a single mom!)

I don't want to make it sound like I was more noble than I really was -- it was the right move for me at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This doesn't seem that surprising to me. Blizzard took on millions of new customers fast, so they went on a hiring spree for support staff. 5+ years ago it was not unusual to take 2-3 days and even over a week to get an issue resolved. Now even more than 12 hours is a busy day. I'm sure they have streamlined their support systems behind the scenes and just don't require as many employees, even if they kept their peek subscriber levels.

</comment><comment><USER41> "Blizzard went on to note that its development and publishing schedule has not been impacted by the staff cuts. "

This is easy to say when your publishing schedule is, as it has always been, "When it's done".

<comment><USER42> Oh, but Blizzard does schedule, of course, it's just that following that schedule is often not their #1 priority. Look at this from back in 2010

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/10/leaked-blizzard-roadmap- sho...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/10/leaked-blizzard-roadmap-shows- release-dates-for-pretty-much-everything/)

(Diablo 3 has already deviated from that, of course) However, even if the cuts are not going to cause schedule changes, that doesn't mean they do not reflect scope changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> It is ironic that the same big companies who are laying off hundreds of people, actually are hiring constantly - they have hundreds of open job postings, even with the similar titles.

</comment><comment><USER44> This is interesting, I knew one of their main sources of revenue (World of Warcraft) wasn't doing as hot, but still had over 10million people, which at 15$ a month subscription, is nothing to scoff at. The 60 developers is the most interesting, they have a lot of in the queue for them (D3, Starcraft 2: expansion, and Titan (their next MMO), Im guessing they either weren't pulling their weight or this has something to do with Diablo 3 being almost complete.

<comment><USER45> I believe less than half the 10 million pay the $15 a month typically charged in North America. Many accounts in China are linked to internet cafes, which charge peanuts by the hour to their customers.

Still, the 4 million or so North American and European monthly accounts still makes it huge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Presumably the era of "printing money with WoW" is over, then?

<comment><USER47> I wouldn't be so sure. First off, they list 10.2M as the current subscriber base, taken times a conservative estimate of $13/mo (the every 3 months plan, IIRC) and that's over one and a half billion dollars a year. Second, they are rumored have a new MMO in the pipeline - suppose everyone that ever tried WoW returns to dip into that bucket. I think that, on the contrary, the era of Blizzard printing money is still going strong.

<comment><USER48> I don't know if $13 is conservative. $9/mo is the most expensive plan available to me. Presumably in places like China people pay by the hour and therefore way less than that.

<comment><USER49> Where do you live?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> So who was laid off if not Game Masters in WoW? Can someone from the inside comment on this?

<comment><USER51> So it's been confirmed that 200 of the jobs going are here in Ireland where Blizzard have over 800 staff.

<http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0229/blizzard.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> seriously non of those emps could be fit into 102 positions here: [http://us.blizzard.com/en- us/company/careers/directory.html#...](http://us.blizzard.com/en- us/company/careers/directory.html#region=Americas)

</comment><comment><USER53> Well, they must be getting ready to Diablo 3 then.</comment>


Cat sitting on keyboard crashes lightdm - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/1463112 <comment><USER2> Such dedication to solving bugs is to be admired.</comment>


What's with this anti-directory structure movement? - <AUTHOR> http://www.osnews.com/story/26220/What_s_with_this_anti-directory_structure_movement_ <comment><USER2> From the article: _I have honestly never seen a single person have any issues with directories, nested or no, and as old as the concept might be, the people I interact with seem to be able to handle it just fine._

Twitch.

The author's clearly been interacting with different people from the ones _I_ know. 80-somethings who didn't grow up with computers frequently get hopelessly confused by directories. The philosophy professor who's been using a Mac since the mid-80s is a bit harder to explain. And then there was the time I got called in in the early 90s to fix the office PC used by a succession of secretaries -- running MS-DOS -- and discovered they'd saved something over 2000 Word Perfect files in the root directory because _none_ of the temps the company had employed over a 12 month period had ever heard of directories.

In my experience many casual users (for values of something like 10%-50% of computer users these days) simply do not "get" hierarchical storage at all; they find it as baffling as predicate calculus. Hence the desire of some software vendors -- who are trying to provide machines that _anyone_ can use without training -- to move away from it, at least on the user's side.

<comment><USER3> I don't know. I think that at a certain point people have to accept that there are just some things must be learned in order to operate a computer. It would be nice if computers could just read the mind of the user, but until then, the user must learn some things about how the computer operates. Folders, I think, is one of those things.

In the end, _some_ knowledge is required. If we remove folders, then that knowledge will change from "What is a folder, and where did I put that file?" to "What is an application, and which one did I use to create that file, and how do I get that file from one application to another?" (Think word processing program to email attachment.)

Either way, the end user _has to learn something_. We can continue dumbing down concepts and interfaces with the noble goal of making it easier for the people who just don't want to understand how computers work (let's face it, learning basic folder manipulation isn't hard, especially with Google--or a manual or family member, for those who can't even use Google), but there will _always_ be a lazier person, and eventually we'll end up dumbing things down until they become useless.

Maybe the better solution is to have a better "Home" folder concept. I don't know how it is in OSX, but in Windows the home folder is a confusing collection of sample files, folder-spam from other apps, and "library" views that masks the entire concept, but only sometimes. Fixing that mess and making it more like, say, a Linux home folder (/home/acabal/videos/) would be a good starting point without losing the usefulness of folders altogether.

<comment><USER2> * I think that at a certain point people have to accept that there are just some things must be learned in order to operate a computer.*

That statement encapsulates an ideological outlook.

I, personally, agree with you. (I happen to have a CS degree and used to work in the industry: _of course_ I agree with you!)

However, purely pragmatically, a lot of people _don't_ agree with that position. They no more want to know how their computer works than they want to know how to adjust the ignition timing on their car. Yes, in principle they could learn that stuff; but they consider it to be a waste of their valuable time, for which they have other priorities.

By way of an analogy: we're in the position of 17th century puritans asserting that _of course_ everyone must learn to read so they can read the Bible for themselves and interpret the word of god directly. (While a large chunk of the audience at the time disagreed strongly and wanted to leave that to the priests.)

That's how things are for a large chunk of the general public, whether we want it to be so or not. And as computer use becomes a universal, pervasive element of society, we're going to run up against it increasingly.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't compare learning folders to learning car ignition timing. That's more like learning about inodes--something that's interesting but irrelevant to anyone but enthusiasts.

I would instead compare folders to knowing that your car's oil must be changed. (Who doesn't love a car analogy?) You can survive without that knowledge, and you even can pay others to do it. But it's very simple stuff, and at the very, very least, in order to (successfully) own a car you _must_ know that the oil has to be changed every now and then, if not by you then by someone else. It's a matter of fundamental knowledge of the tools you're using.

If you want to live without that knowledge, then it's your own fault really, because it's not hard to learn and every car ever made uses the concept. It's in the manual. If you don't want to learn it, are too lazy to, think it's too hard, or have different priorities, then that's cool--but don't expect car makers to put effort into molding cars to your whims, because it turns out oil is pretty useful in a car.

If a person was born in 1870 and decided to buy a car in 1930, well, it's up to them to learn that cars need their oil changed. Age is not really an excuse, nor is being born to a different generation.

In either case, you're right: the general public will continue to be too uninterested to learn basic computing principles. (And again I mean _basic_ , like files and folders.) But ruining it for the rest of us isn't the way to fix that.

<comment><USER4> It's the users own fault? Really? We make products for the users, and they never do anything wrong – and it's never their fault.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, but the buck has to stop somewhere. For example, if a handful of users can't figure out how to use a mouse, then do we replace all mouses with Wacom tablets because they're so "inelegant" and "unintuitive" to a few people? No, because it turns out they're very useful for most people who get it.

Do they require practice and a certain (very small) amount of domain knowledge? Yes. Is that a bad thing, considering how useful they are? No.

"The user is always right" isn't an ultimate mandate. The customer isn't right if they come in to your store and demand everything for free. Likewise a driver isn't right if he doesn't want to figure out which pedal is "stop" and which one is "go". You must have a certain small amount of domain knowledge to use the complex tools you're given, and dumbing things down for the lowest common denominator is a Sisyphean task because there's always a _lower_ common denominator just under them.

<comment><USER4> Touch screens replaced mice with something that feels more natural.

<comment><USER5> > Touch screens replaced mice with something that feels more natural.

Oh, yeah? Show me the data you have that supports your statement.

<comment><USER4> People are buying and using touch devices, and they claim it's easy to use.

<comment><USER5> People have purchased enough touch devices to _replace_ mice? Is using a mouse a weird thing to do nowadays?

<comment><USER4> No, but it's an evolution – mice is still needed for power users and pro apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I see people struggle with folders, it's these two things:

\- System, Application and Settings storage folders that the typical user really shouldn't have to see in the first place

\- Predefined directory structures like "My Documents" that the user didn't create themselves. Especially when apps crud things up even more with subdirectories with files the user didn't create themselves and can't edit themselves (on my Mac I have "EyeTV Archive", "Final Cut Pro Documents", "iChats", etc... these should be hidden in Library folders until the user exports them). The Desktop is among these. Storing files on the Desktop shouldn't be possible.

If when new users got a computer, the only storage visible was a completely blank home folder, I think a lot of this confusion would disappear. It's not nesting of folders per-se that's the problem, it's that there's a ton of shit there from the beginning that the user has no idea what it is, where they are right now, and where their document will go. When the user created everything themselves and applications don't save documents go into special folders by default, I think a lot of that confusion is gone.

In this world, users who don't understand folders won't create them, and so they won't be confronted with the complexity. The "app silo" model could be emulated by app open dialogs only showing files created by the app itself by default.

Personally, I hate the app silo model. I like having a folder per project with all the related files in it. If I'm working on a report, I want to be able to quickly get to the text chapters, the graphs, my data sources, etc without jumping between apps so much.

<comment><USER6> Followup: Anyone confused by hierarchical folders is going to be just as confused by a database model with tags and saved searches.

<comment><USER7> Maybe, but I guess ideally, the user would want to be able to say: "open my 2008 tax report" or "send Jack the photos of my trip to Paris this year". This fits more closely to a Spotlight-like search plus actions, a direction that Apple is clearly moving to.

Sure, things are imperfect now: Spotlight search does not catch everything and Siri often messes up. Coming from hierarchy-oriented interfaces to documents, it sometimes feels like throwing your data in a dark pit, where it is impossible to retrieve it again. But if they can nail this stuff correctly some day, we surely have come a long way!

In some cases it almost works perfectly already. I never put e-mail in IMAP folders anymore, since Mail.app's search functionality allows me to find stuff quicker and more effectively.

<comment><USER6> I agree that good search is essential and helps a lot with not needing to organize stuff anymore. Making good sense of automatic metadata (with photos, stuff like geotagging and iPhoto's Faces) will help even more.

But there's still often a need to browse, and I haven't seen many successful implementations of tags yet, so I'm still skeptical that it's much more intuitive than folder. I know Gmail does it well, but I rarely use their web app, and not many email clients support it. Meanwhile I've never seen anyone use tags in, for instance iPhoto.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This all boils down to several salient points:

1) Nobody, not even 90-year-old computer newbies, has trouble understanding hierarchical folders. There could not be a more natural concept of organization. It corresponds to a box inside a storage box inside a closet inside a room inside a house inside a neighborhood, etc. It's just every level is called a folder. Saying that "x" group of people "can't understand" that is just insulting to them, frankly.

2) People who use a flat directory to save 1000's of invoices on a computer which is only used for that, who do not understand folders -- that's fine. This doesn't prove folders are non-intuitive. They just don't _need_ to understand folders, because the job doesn't require folders. The moment their job does, someone can explain it to them, and they will get it, the same way they get that paperclips go in the box on the shelf in the closet.

3) The original Mac OS (say, up to System 6) did a great job of making folders understandable. They were physical icons, physical window locations, they were easy to use. The Open/Save dialogs could be a bit confusing, and still are -- there's definitely room for improvement there.

4) Modern OS's do a _terrible_ job at making folders understandable, because there are drive directories, often hidden, and then multiple user folders, and their Documents directories, and then things _outside_ their Documents directories (like Desktop, Downloads, etc.), and fake folders that show the content of multiple other folders, etc.

5) So people are rightly claiming that folders are a mess and confusing. Yes they are, on modern OS's. But the problem is not with the concept of folders, it's with their back-assward modern implementations. So don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and claim that folders are bad. Instead, the solution is:

6) Modern OS's and apps: stop trying to organize our damned files for us! Stop auto-creating "Downloads" and "My Pictures" and "My Skype Photos" and "My Virtual Machines" directories. Just stop it! Instead, give each user their own home directory, have it be _empty_ on a new computer, have every application open/save things in it by default (including downloads), and let the user organize things gradually as they see fit. And don't let anyone but a power user ever get outside of this directory.

(And ideally, stop allowing users to put documents on their desktop -- it just confuses things and nobody has ever come up with an intuitive way to integrate that with the concept of user folders (my desktop is _inside_ my user folder, what?). Documents on a desktop is an outgrown metaphor that just nobody seems to have the courage to jettison.)

<comment><USER9> You are missing the point here.

Just because you understand something in real life does not by any metrics mean that you understand it on a computer.

You grew up with computers for you it's secondary but you learned it.

Someone who have never used computers before do not understand the metaphor.

So no it's not insulting them.

2) Folders are non-intuitive if they aren't learned. There is no natural transfer of understanding between putting documents in a folder physically and then using your moves to drag some icons around. You assume there is, but there isn't, it has to be learned.

5) What people complain about is that it's not the web. They just want to click a link that takes them to where they want to be taken. Of course folders are a mess and confusing cause most data is a mess an confusing.

6) I am pretty sure that it actually works.

I think your understanding of how normal users think is probably as inaccurate as it could probably be.

<comment><USER10> >Folders are non-intuitive if they aren't learned

This is the second time you've used the word intuitive. I'm not sure if you don't understand what it means or if you just misspoke twice.

Something _is_ intuitive if it doesn't need to be taught/learned.

<comment><USER9> I am well aware what it means. And you need to learn what folders are on a computer and what it means to put something into them.

In other words it's not intuitive. People don't understand it in one context just because they understand it in another.

Or let me put it another way.

Nothing is intuitive, you have to learn it which renders the word in this context useless.

<comment><USER10> I'm not taking a stand either way on if they're intuitive, I've been using a PC for far too long to even try to think about it.

But what you just said is the opposite of: " _Folders are non-intuitive if they aren't learned_ "

It would have made sense if you'd said: "Folders are non-intuitive because they must be learned".

<comment><USER9> And yet you seem to understand what I am trying to say.

Fine with me.

<comment><USER10> _Only_ because you wrote a bunch of other stuff that gave it context. Stubborn much? That statement, on it's own, says the opposite of what you meant. I don't know why you're arguing with me about it.

<comment><USER9> I am arguing with you about it because it's worth arguing about.

There is such a thing called intuition. It just doesn't transcend the way the OP claimed it would.

Intuition is something you build via experience. It allow you to navigate even things you haven't been exposed to before. As long as you understand the basic premise of the context.

The general consensus and then point of the OP was to say that understanding the metaphor is enough to make you navigate two different paradigms just because you understand one of them and use metaphors to connect them . I.e. you can use intuition from one of them in the other. This is simply wrong and is not given at all.

Which leads me to say that intuition is learned. I.e. it's not some linear concept where everything fit together, but rather it exists de facto disconnected underneath the metaphors and concepts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A directory structure is too restrictive, much like Java and C++ inheritance. Cluster and search based file access is way more flexible and fluid, but we haven't had a good UI or overlay onto traditional filesystems yet. Think of Go's interface model, but for files.

Imagine you have a file that is a vendor-provided html template. Does it go in vendor/ or templates/? vendor/templates? What if you want to find out all the templates in use by the system? Document that somewhere and expect a newhire to 'just know' where you store the fragments of your templates?

Sometimes there really _isn't_ a parent-child relationship between data, modeling it like that is always true seems very 1980s.

Perhaps Rob Pike can sum it up better than I can:

"My late friend Alain Fournier once told me that he considered the lowest form of academic work to be taxonomy. And you know what? Type hierarchies are just taxonomy. You need to decide what piece goes in what box, every type's parent, whether A inherits from B or B from A. Is a sortable array an array that sorts or a sorter represented by an array? If you believe that types address all design issues you must make that decision.

I believe that's a preposterous way to think about programming. What matters isn't the ancestor relations between things but what they can do for you."

<comment><USER12> Again, these two are not mutually exclusive. You can store your files in a tree structure, yet unify various nodes by tags or index of concepts.

For example, if I store my photos by Year/Year-Month/Day/

and I'm interested in pictures of my son in the last year, it does not mean these pictures have to be all in the same flat one year folder. It is doable today in spotlight

$ mdfind -interpret "kind:image name date:>1/1/2012"

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think the other point of view, the anti-directory one, is well reflected in this review of OSX: [http://informationarchitects.net/blog/mountain-lions-new- fil...](http://informationarchitects.net/blog/mountain-lions-new-file-system/)

The most notable saying is that "As soon as we have more than a handful of notions, or (beware!) more than one hierarchical level of notions, it gets hard for most brains to build a mental model of that information architecture."

Here is my ranty answer:

<comment>~

My god. Who the HELL are those guys to be so dismissive of human brain?

I have a kid, he is learning ten words a day, and this little boy is not a genius: It is a normal human being in formation. He is also playing a lot with my old legos, and he is communicating better and better in two very different languages. I can tell you, dear "Information architects" that he can already handle more than one hierarchical level!

I have worked in normal companies before. By that I mean companies were people have meetings, get bored by many slideshows every week, and use excel spreadsheets daily. In this kind of companies, geniuses are not the norm. And all of these people, all of these common "brains" could handle easily "more than one hierarchical level".

So, dear "Information architects", please keep your stinky morgue to yourself.

Human brain is the most wonderful thing that can be observed in the world. Its capacities surpass anything we (human brains) can modelize with our other tools. A kid of 3 years is much better in all what matters than a computer. We, normal human beings, won't let you grow a new generation of lobotomized humans for whom it is "hard" to build a "mental model" with "more than one hierarchical level".

Post-scriptum: After a mandatory proof-reading, I sit there and I wonder: maybe my legitimate anger against your aristocratic hauteur did blind me of a better explanation. The "brain limitation" you are attributing so kindly to "most brains" is just your own problem, maybe. Then your are not as cynical as it seems. But then I repeat: of any of my colleagues, old and young, clever and stupid, ubergeek or almost illiterate, all could handle a f __king tree structure for their file. Thanks for considering them (a bit).

<comment><USER14> My God, what is it about this topic? Is there something about geeks that makes them think a mastery of nested folders is a validation of their manhood?

There are other, and probably better, organising principles than hierarchical directories. It is not anti-directory as the original author so witlessly claims but a search for better, easier to understand, alternatives. Something which Apple have repeatedly done, and by so doing made a lot money in the process.

<comment><USER12> Trees are so yesterday. I think we should move to cyclic graphs for our filesystems.

<comment><USER15> Don't worry, with the magic of symlinks anything is possible!

<comment><USER12> Yes indeed :D.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is a flaw with directories and hierarchical storage and it's not their conceptual complexity.

Gmail made a move away from folders and it's one that I've embraced.

1\. It's easy to spend too long manually organizing things into folders. It's the kind of relaxing, busy-work we can fall into to avoid the hard stuff we're supposed to be doing.

2\. There are many arbitrary ways to rearrange hierarchies and no clear limit for how deep they should be. Many of us with slight OCD-ish tendencies can fall down the rabbit-hole here.

3\. It's manual work that the computer should partially be doing for us.

There are ways to mitigate these problems. Multiple views of the same structure, tags instead of folders and easily accessibly, instantaneous search can teach us to be less dogmatic about our directories.

I very rarely need to use tags/folders with my email now. Search works for me 90% of the time. It's only special tasks such as doing my tax returns or tracking a particularly complex bunch of emails where I might use tags. I think my file system is probably an order of magnitude more complicated and there is less automatic metadata with files (my file system doesn't know what project a file is related unless I tell it whereas you can tell a lot about an email just using from/to/cc fields.)

At this point I was hoping to end on some kind of conclusion but I can't think of one.

<comment><USER17> The ways something can be abused are not arguments against proper use of it.

"It's manual work that the computer should partially be doing for us."

I disagree, partially ^^ Tags, or where something is located; both can be part of the content.

The cool thing about folders is, if you don't want them, simply don't create them... but don't take it away from those who do themselves more good than harm with it, please :/

<comment><USER18> > The ways something can be abused are not arguments against proper use of it.

While true, the rate at which things are abused appears to be highly correlated to how convenient or user-friendly they are, or how well they solve the problem they are supposed to be solving.

Just looking at how many people have desktops crowded with every document they ever opened, or how many computer-illiterate friends and relatives have asked me how they should backup or transfer their files to and from other computers, because they don't even know you can actually get to them by other means than the 'open file' dialog in their Word Processor, signals to me that many people don't really think organizing files using folders is something they need or want.

<comment><USER19> It seems to be two different arguments happening. One is that the hierarchical structure is outdated and/or broken. The other is that people aren't using it correctly (or at all).

I'd agree with the later but I don't see it as a reason to get rid of file structures for those of us that do use them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think at some point Apple will sell us "folders within folders" as a gorgeous update that took so long to really get it right.

<comment><USER21> and patent it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's a refreshing view. I fully agree. I hate it when a music player do not allow me to browse my clean and deep directory. I detest the fact that apparently no Picture manager is letting me to see my 10 years of photos in the hierarchy of my choice, that I implemented patiently in a directory structure.

And to the many comments right here that argue that people have hard time dealing with directories, I have one question: Did you ever work within a normal company (I mean, the kind of company where you have people in suit or tailleur doing ppt and excels)?

I have, and I can tell you that the most stubborn HR assistant will have his or her files almost neatly catalogued in a hierarchy, and most of the time they will be able to find the "2001 report on office expenses" directly from the hierarchy.

Granted, most will not use a clever and consistent naming convention for files, allowing to sort them properly (eg. all files prefixed by year). And that is a problem. A problem that the hierarchy solves properly, by the way.

So, I would bet the Apple/Google "no file" movement is a dead end. Worse, it is a trap. Check who will benefit from this move: Users? No. Advertisers? Maybe. DRM corporations? Certainly...

<comment><USER22> > DRM corporations? Certainly...

How so?

<comment><USER13> Well, if you do not have any mp3 or video files on your hard drive anymore, if all of that is in the cloud, then it will be much easier to enforce copyrights (and censorship, and surveillance, by the same way).

<comment><USER22> Ah, I had assumed you were making an argument against all approaches to data management which do not use a directory-based approach rather than just online ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I had to stop reading at "I've never met a user who has trouble navigating nested directories."

My experience tells me he is in the 'tech guy' bubble. As someone who volunteered helping city kids use computers, had a 'business' fixing people's computers, and has a dad who teaches a free computer class at a library, and has worked tech support, I say with some confidence that the silent majority of people don't understand folders at all.

You have to be a tech savvy, middle to upper middle class person with relatively high motivation before you stand a chance of understanding folder structure. Exceptions abound, of course, but then again most 9-5 working, intelligent people struggle to organize their data in folders even though they fit my demographic of people with a chance to understand.

<comment><USER24> I stopped reading at the same point. There are people confused by everything about computers.. if he hasn't met one confused about folders, then he doesn't have the experience to write his article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Maybe it started with music playlists. My digital music collection is largely in the same folder structure as it was 15 years ago, but every music player wants to make a library based on metatags, which in theory makes sense, but then just adds the problem of giving everything suitable metatags. Building your own file structure based on your own needs just seems easier and simpler.

<comment><USER16> There's nothing wrong with tags for music libraries - just that ID3 and the tooling around it sucks - especially genre handling, the artist/performer distinction and the inability to handle my own arbitrary grouping that doesn't correspond to any release information.

I love apps that allow me to easily switch between using tags and using my own folders.

<comment><USER26> Can you recommend any of the apps?

<comment><USER27> The rather excellent Foobar2000 for Windows has a library view that lets you switch between folder structure and tagged properties (album, artist, genre etc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The original article wasn't very good, but this response is even worse. It appears the author is lacking any form of creativity to think beyond the idea that folders are the only paradigm for ordering files that could possibly work.

In practice, if you forget about system files and such, I'd estimate 9 out of 10 people have all their documents in a single flat folder, which they only access through their word processor or whatever they use to open them. They have all their pictures and video in a tool that organizes them into albums and such without them having to deal with folders. They have all their music in a program that keeps them in a library somewhere, which they never manipulate on the file system level. And so on. Or (also very common) they just dump everything they touch on their computer on the desktop. This is not because making folders is 'too complex', but because users can't be bothered to come up with hierarchies to order where there files are 'stored on the file system' or whatever, they just want to make their changes persistent and be able to quickly find their files later.

For the vast majority of people, folders are an anochronism. It's not that they are 'hard' or 'complex', but they are simply not essential, and actually quite limiting for file management. The whole idea that the artefacts you create or consume are best structured as a tree really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Especially not if you want to have all your data available on multiple machines which may have wildly different file systems such as desktops and mobile devices.

This doesn't mean we should all have big piles of files with no ways of structuring them, but it doesn't mean folders are the epitome of file management either. A database-like file system with powerful search options could definitely be much better. From an end-user perspective, organizing files by the applications they can open them also seems to be a pretty good idea to me. Attaching metadata and tags to files so you don't have to superimpose them using a tree-like structure would be a huge improvement.

I'm not saying that what Apple is trying with iOS and now OS X is so great we should all hail it as the future of file management, but personally I think they are moving in the right direction. Ideally, end-users should be able to operate their devices and get to their files without even knowing it has something as abstract as a 'file system'. Just sit down, get the file you want using whatever criterium makes the most sense for finding it, manipulate it, and have the same file available on every other machine. I think this is the vision Apple has, but it will take lots of time to get there.

Also, people mailing files to themselves to get them on their iOS devices literally has nothing to do with how the iOS file system works. Folders or no folders would not make any difference.

<comment><USER28> Your thought process is precisely how vendors like Apple are arriving at this conclusion. The problem with it is that you are assuming that your users are blithering idiots without any actual work to do.

The oh-so-quaint folder metaphor directly correlates to how humans do things in the physical world. I put my winter coat in a closet. My winter scarf, boots, hat and gloves are also in the closet, but in a box on a shelf.

My system may not be the same as yours, but it works for me. Dumping my winter stuff with all of my clothing on a pile, and affixing a blue tag on it to represent "winter stuff" isn't improving things. Installing a database-backed clothing management system like you would find at a dry cleaner in my house solves my organizational problem, but introduces alot of complexity and overhead.

Let's be real here. The reason that Apple is doing this is that have had success in delivering a dumbed-down API that makes their life much easier on phones, and prevents pesky third party software developers from doing dangerous things like allowing applications to talk to each other. They've decided to bring this innovation to the general purpose computer.

<comment><USER29> Shoes are simple. But where did you put the backup debit bank card? To the "finance" stuff? Or to the "plastic card" pile? Where to put spare photos for documents - near the foreign passport cause you'll surely need both of them next time? Or to the unsorted photos pile? Where should we put spare screws from a new shelf - on that shelf or in the toolbox with other screws? Etc. etc.

This is why directories are getting old - they allow only one tag for a file - the folder name. New systems, like iTunes and others are introducing concept of advanced tags - you can find the same file in the Author "dir" in the Genre "dir" in the Type "dir" etc. They aren't perfect yet but they are being refined all will be dominant in the future.

<comment><USER30> Which is why it'd be nice if filesystems supported labels. I'd keep the directory structure, but I want to be able to apply the "2004 vacations" label on a all files in a given directory. Then you can add other particular labels to some files.

I don't want to have to manage labels separately for iPhoto, for Picasa and for all the possible image viewers that I'll use in the future.

<comment><USER31> Yes, yes, yes. I've been fighting photo management software for years when all I want is the ability to tag files.

<comment><USER32> Windows have had that for _years_ now.

But I guess since Apple haven't done it yet, it doesn't exist to hipsters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Some people can handle directories just fine. But, a lot of people simply do not grasp the concept. For many, many years I have been trying to explain hard disks, folders and files to family members. They simply don't understand the concept. Opening a folder and double clicking on a file to open it and a program to read the file starts: they do not understand it.

For these ordinary users of computer appliances the iOS way of handling files is simply a blessing. You use an application to do something, to write a text, to listen to music, to communicate. Applications that can interact with each other, will interact with each other. Simple.

For an ordinary computer appliance user it is not necessary to be confronted with a file system. Just as a lot of other technical details are hidden from ordinary users.

<comment><USER34> maybe they just don't want to learn?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> > The article I'm about to link to, by Oliver Reichenstein, is pretty terrible

Funnily, I liked linked article more (better written, also easier to read). Although I partially agree, partially would argue with both.

I think hierarchy-less approach, properly designed and implemented, would work OK for most users. Folders just look like the most basic and generic way for organizing stuff, which isn't necessarily the best, and probably deserves optimization for particular use cases.

However, take for example cases when computer is used for production—say, DTP or video/photo editing. If you take away the freedom to organize files hierarchically, it would impose certain restrictions on the workflow. The "genericness" could be an advantage for more complex use cases.

</comment><comment><USER36> I wonder if others have scaled back on the "meaningfulness" of file names. I name a lot of my files (and directories) 01, 02, 03, etc (with suffixes according to meaning) and then I have a local README file that lists the contents of each of these.

I find it this scheme handy for scientific work in which the files are often multiple attempts to solve a problem. It saves me from writing file names like "solution" and "solution_method2" and "solution_method2_with_bug_fix" etc. The README format gives me tons of space to write comments (and cross-reference other work), while the filename, incrementing from version to version, is a sort of diary stamp.

This works for directories too. I tend to go only 2 directories deep on a given project. The top level is for the task, e.g. a calculation or a figure for a paper I'm writing, and the second is for a sequence of approaches to that task.

With this scheme, I focus on README files and not names in a directory tree. Colleagues who have tried this have found it weird at first, but then tend to prefer it to the "informative name" scheme they grew up with.

If databases were more convenient, I could imagine doing all my work with "flattened" filenames in a single directory. I think that's what apple are moving toward, but they are thinking of application-specific work, so the application deals with the databases. I prefer the README/filesystem structure because it lets me use tools like grep, etc.

</comment><comment><USER9> Intuition is learned.

 _Something is intuitive not because it's universally understood but because we have learned the meaning of it from a holistic point of view. This requires lots and lots of experience and, for that matter, trial and error._

Metaphors are only meaningful in retrospect.

 _Don't count on the physical-looking button to be intuitive just because it's a metaphor from real life. Once you tell someone what a specific element means, they will most probably understand it, but not because of the metaphor itself._

There are no Bablefish in UX

 _Designing products and services is like speaking French. Not everyone understands it. Comprenez-vous? The noob might pick up a word here and there, but they aren't, by any metrics, comfortable with participating in the conversation._

This all leads to the following conclusion:

 _Intuitive interaction is for experts, not for noobs Understanding something intuitively really means that you understand it holistically. If you understand it holistically, you can fill in the gaps. This doesn't mean you shouldn't make your design intuitive or improve on it—not at all. Just understand that you are doing it for the natives._ not for the noobs.

[http://000fff.org/anatomy-of-a-noob-why-your-mom-suck-at- com...](http://000fff.org/anatomy-of-a-noob-why-your-mom-suck-at-computers/)

</comment><comment><USER14> The article linked to is a witless rant. The article he is reacting to is actually pretty good.

As is commonly the case with people who don't understand what they are talking about, the author is confusing policy (I want to organise my stuff) and mechanism (use folders and sub-folders). What is undeniable is that we need a coherent way to organise our stuff. What is wrong-headed is assuming that hierarchical directories are the best, or the only, way to do so.

</comment><comment><USER37> Apple's attempts at making "seamless" user experiences can be frustrating, especially on edge cases. For example, in Garageband instruments are stored in special files down a ways in a directory tree in Application Support. It happens that files get corrupted, but access to the file is so abstracted that the source of the trouble is not apparent, as it is a directory not intended to be accessed by the user. It's an attempt to hide complexity from the user but it makes it hard to trouble-shoot, or to perform actions outside of the expected.

The area that does boggle my mind in terms of a flat structure are complex multi-media authoring environments. Where different files and types are used to assemble a larger work.

My main principle as an audio engineer is that I have to know exactly where each file in the project lives in the FS. If I'm not sure, the scenarios in which projects, or parts of projects get lost happen more frequently.

Not to mention that a given project uses many files of different types, and can have 10s or 100s of thousands of files. Automatic file management seems like a recipe for disaster, especially as it won't work perfectly.

I don't get it.

</comment><comment><USER38> One opinion, repeated a zillion times, does not make an argument; it makes a rant.

I see only a few arguments in this text:

\- the author does not think nested hierarchies are difficult. If he added "for nerds", I would agree with him.

\- the author equates having limited nesting with the 'data silos' situation on iOS and (from what I read in reviews), in slightly lesser sense on Mac OS X Mountain Lion.

\- claiming that the mouse is hard to use because it provides "indirect manipulation". That may seem so, but the human brain is exceptionally good at transferring motor skills between modalities. For example, anybody who can write can write with his feet, nose, car, or whatever, and the handwriting will (except for the quality of fine motor skills) be recognizable as yours (<http://www.ebaumsworld.com/jokes/read/211551/>)

\- equating having limited nesting with vendor lock-in. Proprietary file formats are fine for doing that. I do not see why you would need to do anything more.

<comment><USER17> "the author does not think nested hierarchies are difficult. If he added "for nerds", I would agree with him."

Imagine you badly need to go to the bathroom, and the only building nearby is a huge hospital... will all the complexity hidden away in the various sections, rooms, and the patients themselves, delay your quest for the toilet even one second?

Also, the brain can only keep a bunch of things in mind at a time,no matter how they're presented. When complexity crosses the threshold, we group stuff together. And we also do this with a flat list, in some way or another. Reality and our concept of it is very deeply nested, but since we only handle a bunch of abstractions at the same time, that's fine.

With folders, you have something that is explorable. You can _still_ search, but if you don't have folders to begin with, you can _only_ search -- and anything you don't think of searching for is either lost forever, or can be seen only as part of a huuuuuge list.

IMHO it's regression alright, no two ways about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The article is a bit of a rant, but it resonates deeply with me. The single- level of nesting is obnoxious. The spotify app allows a flat list of playlists --just the one level of nesting. Now that I've got a couple hundred albums in there, it has basically become useless, and I just have to search to find everything, which is _not_ what I want to do.

Hierarchical structures are how we see the world. Tagging and search is not sufficient. File systems give us the illusion of a "place" that a file lives. A single place. Like my socks are in a drawer in my closet, they are always there. A given music file is always in /home/steve/Music/<artist>/<album>/track.foo. That's where it lives. I can find it, even if I have 10,000 albums. My tax documents are in /home/steve/Documents/personal/taxes/2011/ . They exist there. I can auto- backup /home/steve/Documents and I know that those documents are safely backed up. I won't lose those things.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm all for any easier file organization system as long as it's portable between systems, allows a large number of files to be locatable and usable immediately after being plugged into a system (i.e. without a lengthy indexing process), and doesn't make it difficult to share files between users in a network (e.g. a Samba set-up in an office). I don't know if there can be any such system that doesn't become as "complex" as the current folders-in-folders way of doing things. Most of the systems I've seen assume that I only access the files from this device and I'd never need to copy them to external storage or share them with another user not necessarily using the same kind of system as I do.

Maybe a hybrid system, like the one being done in GNOME, where you have the traditional underlying file system present, and a separate indexing program (GNOME documents) that enables searching by content, context, date modified, etc would be best.

</comment><comment><USER41> > Vendor lock-in

Well, duh! Obviously that's what it is about when "apps" don't want to tell you how they store their data. MS Office has been doing that very successfully for more than 20 years now. And removing the abillity to actually locate the data would make it even easier to tie the user to the app and plattform.

</comment><comment><USER42> I don't think changing the way we structure our files is that bad an idea, although the iOS version of it isn't really great. Folders are basically a way of grouping files of a similar topic/concern together. Files can belong to many topics/concerns, but they can only belong to one folder. I'd really love it if we evolved the folder concept to a concept of tags, where the organization is very fluid and dynamic.

Example(example folder structures):

* I could put an anime movie file under /Media/Video/Movies/Anime or /Media/Video/Anime/Movies

* Same for an anime tv show: /Media/Video/shows/Anime or /Media/Video/Anime/shows

If i could tag the anime movie as "Movie" and as "Anime", i could just pick and choose which way i want to view it:

* All movies?

* All anime movies?

* All anime?

<comment><USER43> Google Docs used to do this. Folders weren't really folders, they were tags, and it was horribly confusing.

<comment><USER44> I could see that being confusing.

If something appears in two tag-folders, is it because it has both tags, or because it is two different versions or copies, with different tags?

<comment><USER43> Exactly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The giveaway phrase here is:

"... instead of having your own structure, tailor-made for you because you created it in the first place ..."

Non-geeks don't have the time, interest or inclination to catalogue and curate these sorts of structures.

The list that the author gives of everyday items that are easy to use ("cupboards, Tupperware, boxes, closets, pockets, wallets") all have the common property that they are not recursive, and that you can easily figure out their contents at a glance, something that is impossible to garner by looking at an opaque list of directories.

While there are some good points here about the problems of files being siloed in apps on iOs, the directory structure is a ux disaster.

<comment><USER17> > "Non-geeks don't have the time, interest or inclination to catalogue and > curate these sorts of structures."

Define non-geek then. Unless you mean "people who have too few items to need organization", I think that's wrong. I've met plenty of not super bright people who had for example a perfectly organized garage or apartment. I dare say it has nothing to do with geekyness. There's even tidy kids.. they cannot even program a computer, they cannot reach the cookie jar like I can, but they can and do organize the stuff they care about, in ways they care about.

> "The list that the author gives of everyday items that are easy to use > ("cupboards, Tupperware, boxes, closets, pockets, wallets") all have the > common property that they are not recursive"

What? You can put tupperware into a box, and put that into the cupboard. Usually, this is located in a house which is located in a street, which is in a city. And so on. The levels of nesting, nobody counted them.. but most everybody navigates them just fine.

<comment><USER4> Geeks = super bright people? Nice pat on our backs. I just came to say that you can put tupperware into a box, but I think most of the time, people just put stuff in one box. Your street and city metaphor seems out of place in this discussion.

<comment><USER17> "Geeks = super bright people? Nice pat on our backs."

Don't put words in my mouth. "not super bright" is an euphemism for, uhm, simple people. Since I don't know how the poster I replied to defines geeks, I simply took an example from people I know that are 100% not geeks by their definition, whatever it may be.

"Your street and city metaphor seems out of place in this discussion."

How so? To me it seems like pretending people can only understand one level of hierarchy flies flat in the face of daily experience. You pretend the tupperware exists in isolation, it doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I think android has the approach to filesystems write. Each app has there own dedicated folder for internal usage and is hidden from the user (actually, the user cannot access it at all unless the specific app provides a method because of sandboxing, but that is a different issue). There is also a file structure where apps can read and write any data that the user might want to share between apps, devices. By convention, the files are organized either by type (image) or by app, however when the user wants to move them, or open them with a different program, this option is left available.

</comment><comment><USER47> It's not so much that folders are counter-intuitive. The problem with them is that they impose a single, arbitrary structure on files that could be organized in many different ways. For example, you could have folders like AllMyImages/ or AllMyCatImages/ or CatImagesJuly2012/ but there's no way to anticipate what will be the most useful directory structure for all future situations. It would be more flexible and useful to have indexes over the files that let you dynamically organize your content according to attributes such as contains-cats, date, is-image, author, etc.

</comment><comment><USER48> One of the many reasons to hate Apple. I don't understand why supposed geeks can get behind a company that willfully puts draconian protections to keep you from using a computer like a computer. No USB port? No useable FILE SYSTEM? Emailing files is a pathetic hack for a poorly designed device. And "simplicity" is not a saving grace, there is NO REASON to not allow this sort of functionality except to force everyone to use horrible iTunes. People can defend Apple all they want, but no one can give me a valid user-centric reason for those decisions.

</comment><comment><USER49> To me, this is about choice.

If a computer has a file system that is accessible to the user and supports files and hierarchical directories, then users can choose to use it or not. If they want to use directory hierarchies then they can. Or if they want to store all their files in one place and rely on applications to present filtered views or search (not necessarily even in terms of files) then they can.

If the file system is not accessible or doesn't support hierarchical directories then you have no choice. This is not an option that interests me.

</comment><comment><USER50> If OS vendor would like to switch to using metadata or tags to organize documents, allowing just two level directory structure could be the first step.

Documents in root would end up having no tags at all and the folder name would be used as the tag for those stored in folders. Obviously you could also do this with complex directory structures, but then the tags would become quite long.

Metadata/tag based systems don't necessary exclude the complex folder structures as we have seen but having both can make things complicated.

</comment><comment><USER51> I think that isolating data and applications into their own directory on a PC makes total sense.

But there was something that I read to do with organizing your email inbox into folders which is sort of related. A study found that people who organise their inbox into multiple sub-folders don't get any benefit at all compared to those that have just one big inbox; when they want to find something, they just sort by 'from', 'date', 'subject' or do a find text.

<comment><USER52>
      I think that isolating data and applications into
      their own directory on a PC makes total sense.

Only if you're starting from a position where there is only one kind of application to handle one kind of data. But as a counter example to that, the entire philosophical underpinning on unix is that stuff should be plain text so it can be easily handed between different programs.

I can just imagine the day when I try and pipe the output of one command into another and an ascii paperclip pops up in my cli to scold me for trying to use cat's 'data' with uniq, or something. I shall keep a cyanide pill handy in my desk drawer for such an occasion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I dont want applications to be file-managers and hiding where my files really are. Files+directories is a very intuitive, powerful, and low-abstraction concept --- directories and files correspond directly to inodes. Thus the file-system and users' view of files is the same. Tagging etc can easily be accomplished by using extended attributes (like in the BeOS Filesystem), but apparently no one wants to use extended attributes.

</comment><comment><USER34> i would like to see the anti-directory people put forth a basic cms that works this way. everything is tagged, no folders. or however they're saying they want it to work.

then give this to an enterprise. hell PAY them to use it. see what the results are.

since you're all ui/ux experts 'they're using it wrong' will be an unacceptable response to anything that happens.

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit So... Apple doesn't want people to write code on their OS anymore? I can't think of many languages that would not suffer from a lack of folders. I don't care about all the other crap being discussed. There will always be people that have a hard time with XYZ.

</comment><comment><USER4> There seems to be alot of the comments here pointing out that the users are dumb, or they "just have to learn" – really? Aren't we the ones that should design solutions that are easy to understand, and easy to use?

<comment><USER54> It's a single basic thing users absolutely must learn. It's a foundation designers use to build their solutions upon. Every tool requires some prior knowledge to use it. You cannot use a spoon until you learned how to use it.

Hierarchical structures are natural to humans. Books with volumes and chapters, organizational structures, administrative hierarchies, etc, etc.

I defy the idea of people who "don't get" directory structure. It.. just cannot be real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I come across a great counter-example to directory structures every day. I make 32-bit, 64-bit, debug, and release builds of my product. How do I organize them in a tree? Which distinction is "higher-level"?

</comment><comment><USER56> I read somewhere that Apple uses hard links to directories for time machine.

<comment><USER14> It is one way to avoid storing duplicates, which is important for a versioned backup system. If you're smart enough to avoid loops then it is a reasonable thing to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> There's a huge difference here between Mom, Dad and Uncle Fester using a computer and professional or business users.

The first set of users can be either lazy or oblivious to the idea of organizing their data --directories or databases, it doesn't matter. It's a pile-o-stuff and they really don't think far beyond that. For this class of users making it super-simple is a good idea. You sort of have to protect them from themselves.

I know doctors who have absolutely no clue as to where their stuff is stored and have zero interest in investing fifteen minutes to learn the basics of directory structures and file management. Zero.

The second set of users, the pro's and business users --to generalize-- are a different story.

Take the case of a company that designs physical products. Each project is likely to live inside a directory structure segregating and organizing areas or work such as: mechanical design, schematic, pcb layout, bill of materials, design calculations, documentation, embedded firmware, FPGA code, cost calculations, marketing materials, packaging design, manufacturing, specifications, etc. In turn, each of these categories will rightly have its own subdirectory structures when and where it makes sense.

The above per-product directory structure is also likely to be completely replicated as product releases and revisions require. Not everything can be handled by Git-type version control systems. In fact, in product design there are very good arguments for complete design duplication during iterations or to mark release (as shipped) configurations. Different subject.

This second use case cannot be served well with the iOS app-centric sand-boxed model. A product directory structure with thousands of files can have a number of applications access these files. There will not be a one-to-one correlation between applications and a lot of the files in the design.

Similar use cases can be found in other businesses where the end-product might not be a physical product design. Research projects, financial reports, publications and other work product is likely to require a number of different file types that may or may not come together to form a single deliverable.

Again, the iOS sand-boxed model fails to support this use case because it forces a per-file-type or per-application separation of files and does not permit or provide the ability to organize disparate file types into projects according to context.

Put another way: If you are Lockheed you don't want the F-16 and F-117 mechanical design files mashed together into one folder simply because the same CAD system is used to open then. You want them to live within their corresponding project stores and within a sensible directory structure that organizes work according to relevant criteria. For example, the wing mechanical design directory might also contain a set of directories with aerodynamics data whereas the mechanical design directory for the seat has not need for such data.

I see that the Windows approach seems to work well for the first type of user. If applications use it correctly (some don't) everything gets dumped into "My Documents" and other predefined folders. Users would occasionally add sub- folders of their own.

The second set of users generally has the presence of mind and knowledge to "roll their own". Using my own patterns as an example, I don't think I own a single computer (Mac or PC) that does not have a separate "Data" drive where projects are stored within their own directory structures and according to their own needs.

There's another twist to this, which is a far less common use case: I happen to run more than one business. There's zero justification for my Photoshop files from business #1 to be stored in the same location as those of business #2 on the same computer. Each business has its own root directory from which to organize the corresponding files.

<comment><USER58> I couldn't agree with this more.

In a corporate environment it would be an absolute nightmare to organise files without a well maintained hierarchical directory structure. Folders often need to contain files that are used in a variety of programs (spreadsheets, text documents, presentations), so trying to tie the directories and files to each application would ruin this system.

It would also be a disaster for sharing files with other people. If someone gives me a usb stick with 1000 badly named files, with 1 level of folders – what do I do? If I dump them in directly with mine, it's a huge mess. And I can't nest it inside a folder.

I can see many disadvantages to taking away folders, and can't think of a single benefit to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Great topic and one that has been bothering me. Can somebody answer the following question - when I have a PDF opened in app-1 in my iOS device and there is an export/share button in that app which allows me to open that PDF in app-2, does that sharing end up creating two copies of my PDF on my device? If yes, then isn't this app-as-a-silo model a little inefficient?

</comment><comment><USER59> I think computer scientists need data points before making proclamations like "most people don't like folders".

<comment><USER12> Most computer scientists are fuming with rage when sociology majors pushing strings at Apple are telling them to hide the filesystem from the users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> > I have honestly never seen a single person have any issues with directories, > nested or no...

This is completely off. I've seen people not being able to "get" the concept of folders and files even after months of demonstrations... They simply forget, don't understand, can't use. Especially in the context of drives, devices, memory cards, etc.

And those people are large in numbers, the non-computer crowd. Probably at least 30% of the general population.</comment>


Notch Playing Ludum Dare [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.twitch.tv/notch/ <comment><USER2> Love watching this. It makes you realize that the process of discovery and trial/error during programming is universal to everyone and what makes you feel sometimes stupid should never stop you carrying on. Also shows the celebration of the minor successes ('yeah! it's working'), followed by the 'what the... ?' is something even the greatest experience.

<comment><USER3> I can't help but think of how much money this guy has and how he's still at it, hacking away and streaming his program-a-thon. Seems like a good role model not only for creative programming but also surviving success.

<comment><USER4> 'surviving success' is one of those good problems to have...which makes it, in some ways, a non-problem. surviving failure is a lot more impressive.

<comment><USER5> Success scares me far more than failure.

<comment><USER6> depends on how much you enjoy food i guess

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://www.twitch.tv/georgebroussard](http://www.twitch.tv/georgebroussard)

Also worth a look. One of the main guys from Apogee / 3D Realms / Duke Nuke'em.

<comment><USER2> Also great to watch - very different approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Listening to notch umming, ahhing and changing stuff at random in a desperate effort to get his program to work makes me feel so much better about my own (similar) programming process.

<comment><USER9> I remember feeling the same watching a lisper (who I always assume being uber flawless gurus) being confused about something trivial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Watched it for about a minute and got a great quote: "everything sucks about this language".

So yeah,

 _Everything sucks about Dart._

-notch

<comment><USER8> Funnily enough he was referring to the fact that doubles are proper nullable objects, the inverse of a common reason for people saying that Java sucks.

<comment><USER11> Do people really say "I wish that all my doubles were actually Maybe<double>s, which could cause my program to explode at any arithmetic operation?" I have never heard this complaint.

<comment><USER12> What I want:

No object/primitive distinction, but you have to explicitly make objects and methods nullable, and the dereference operator is null-safe. (You use the dereference operator on a null object, you get null. You use the dereference operator to call a nullable method on a null object, you get null. It is a compile-time error to call a non-nullable method on a nullable reference where the compiler cannot prove that it won't be null. Pure functions are implicitly nullable.)

It is a compile-time error if you assign a nullable reference to a non- nullable reference and the compiler cannot prove that it won't be null.

I've also had an idea for what I call a "pseudo-statically typed" language: instead of checking types at compile time, it checks that you implement all functions called on the parameter at compile time. Public variables are just syntactic sugar for getX/setX, operations are just syntactic sugar for addX/subX/etc. If you define a method with an input type of X, the compiler checks that you only call methods that are defined in X, and then replaces the type with the methods actually called.

But nullable "primitives" can actually be useful occasionally, for caching, for example. Having a separate boolean flag works, but can be inefficient (you can store null internally as NaN with a specific payload, for example, whereas a boolean flag generally requires at least a byte, more with alignment. This also allows easier atomic updates.)

<comment><USER13> Kotlin seems to do exactly what you want.

<comment><USER12> No checked exceptions, which for me is a dealbreaker.

<comment><USER14> No checked exceptions is a deal breaker for you for a programming language? What kind of deals are you making?

<comment><USER15> One with the programming underlords.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Notch his success has nothing to do with being good at programming. It's about being creative and able to create good game play.

Because he programmed game play routines a lot and dealt with everything involved (i.e graphic rendering and such) more than the average Joe it looks like he is a good programmer because he just shakes it out live on some streaming website. Those concepts are language-agnostic and you can remember them.

<comment><USER17> Anyone who could make Minecraft by himself is at least kind of okay.

I recommend you build a game of similar scope before saying stuff like this.

<comment><USER18> To me, your comment is a strong implication that Notch is a gifted programmer. If you meant "at least kind of okay" literally (he is better than average), then feel free to ignore me. Otherwise, read on.

I know tons of people, myself included, that have coded something of similar, if not bigger scope than Minecraft. The only difference between Notch and everyone else is that Notch ended up creating a game that became extremely popular. It is a combination of skill and luck. Thinking it is all skill, and even worse, thinking that you are "gifted" because of such a happenstance is very unhealthy.

<comment><USER19> > _I know tons of people, myself included, that have coded something of > similar, if not bigger scope than Minecraft._

Pics or it didn't happen. Merely writing something with an equal or larger amount of LOC doesn't count.

<comment><USER18> Then what does count? Download count? Net monetary gain? Fame?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'd have a hard time writing code knowing someone is watching me, judging every step. I'm so used to the cycle of making something that passes the tests -> refactor loop, and the code produced in the first iteration is so bad compared to what it will end up like.

<comment><USER21> If not caring about being judged were a tangible resource, and I had larger reserves of it, I know I'd be more successful. Fear of judgement makes me do all kinds of dumb things, and often subdues me into inactivity. It's something I'm working hard to combat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This new title is absolutely ridiculous.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, I would love to hear the reasoning behind the title change.

<comment><USER24> I'm guessing whoever changed it doesn't know what Ludum Dare is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm a really big fan of having inspiration like this to start learning a new language. I'm happy he choose Dart over Java for a change of pace.

<comment><USER26> Isn't Dart an easier language to work with than JavaScript. Notch is probably being practical and thinking long term. At 100,000 lines of code, you want the "cleaner" language.

<comment><USER27> Java != Javascript

<comment><USER26> What does Java have to do with what I said? His current web project wasn't going to be written in Java. Why bring it up?

<comment><USER28> The comment you originally replied to was pointing out that Notch usually writes in Java.

<comment><USER26> Hmmm. I guess the question is why he chose Dart over JavaScript for the web? He must have had another reason for going with the web other than to try something different than Java.

<comment><USER29> The Dart editor is Eclipse-based, so the IDE at least is familiar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Just spent about 5 minutes watching him program and test a game... Can't watch anymore, do people actually enjoy this sort of thing? I think its more fun to program than to watch someone program...

<comment><USER31> I've spent a lot of time pair programming, and my normal tolerance for pure watching is 10 minutes or so. I think that's pretty typical; seasoned pair programmers have a lot of tricks to make sure control shifts frequently so that people don't get board and mentally disengage.

That said, I really enjoyed watching this stream for a while, and will come back later. One of the best parts of pairing is picking up tricks. Watching Notch work on the graphics was _amazing_. I've never done video games with modern tools, and seeing how somebody quickly iterates, always coming back to a running demo to see how it feels was great. In 90 seconds he added snow.

As somebody else mentioned, it was also great to be reminded that even legends are human. He's constantly making little mistakes, trying little experiments, being puzzled by something. If anything distinguishes him from the people I've paired with, it's his cheeriness in the face of adversity.

Also, I love this bit I just heard: "Does Santa shoot? Does Santa _shoot_? No. I think Santa swings his mighty sword. A sword? Yes. Santa wields a sword." It's so easy to think that well-tuned games spring full-formed from the minds of their creators, but real creativity is like that: continuous exploration and experimentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> He just scrapped the whole game he had been working on for 6 hours (it was some kind of endless runner in a 3D forest setting) and started on a new one.

<comment><USER32> He scrapped that too and is now back in the forest :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> For anyone wondering, the theme for this ludum dare is "You Only Get One"

</comment><comment><USER34> This reminds me of my LOVE for the fact that programming is just as much (if not more so) an art than it is a science . :D

</comment><comment><USER35> Finished game source code: [http://test.notch.net/ld28/ld28.dart](http://test.notch.net/ld28/ld28.dart)

Finished game: [http://test.notch.net/ld28/ld28.html](http://test.notch.net/ld28/ld28.html)

<comment><USER35> The Ludum Dare 28 page: [http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum- dare-28/?action=preview...](http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum- dare-28/?action=preview&uid=398)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The concept of streaming such a thing is great. Except that twitch.tv seems to be for gamers and windows only. And I can't find any description on their website of how to download and run even the Windows software that would stream the video.

<comment><USER37> If you're interested in streaming more general programming, check out twitch's sister site, justin.tv - more specifically the new Creativity category ([http://www.justin.tv/directory/creativity](http://www.justin.tv/directory/creativity)). We have a bunch of awesome people doing live coding already, and we're very interested in helping more people get started. Feel free to email me - firstname.lastname@example.com - if you need any help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> [http://www.twitch.tv/dvcolgan](http://www.twitch.tv/dvcolgan) <\-- this guy is using VIM and CoffeeScript to make a game...

I now find CoffeeScript scary... and I use CoffeeScript...

</comment><comment><USER38> For some reason, I really like having these live streams (both the Notch one and the George Broussard one) on in the background when I'm programming. Something about hearing other people hacking away helps me get in the zone, and periodically checking the video helps me get re-motivated if I happen to lose focus.

I'd love a site like Twitch but specifically for coding sessions (seems to me like Twitch is primarily for gaming sessions?).

</comment><comment><USER39> How do you skip or remove the opening commercial?

YouTube ads skippable in 3 seconds are more or less OK, but these run for whooping 1:30 with no option to skip. That's _really_ pushing it.

<comment><USER40> Why would you? Running a video streaming service is hardly free. It is only like 30 sec of advertisement.

If you really wanted you could use an ad blocker.

<comment><USER41> I'm surprised there's people here that don't.

<comment><USER42> I don't -- I put up with ads because it's the way people online who produce content get paid.

Sure, a lot of people take advantage of spamming ads, but if it bothers me enough, I just wont revisit their content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It looks like Java, classes, super, static, the editor shows the little red error decorations so you can quickly resolve a new edit and test. This looks like Java? Maybe DART is worth giving a try.

<comment><USER5> OK, I can't go to the Marketplace in Eclipse and install it, Strike 1, Perspectives are removed (HUGE) Strike 2, the entire Window menu has been removed Strike 3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is great, for all the reasons everyone has said so far.

Like to pair with people ? [http://www.pairprogramwith.me/](http://www.pairprogramwith.me/)

</comment><comment><USER44> Anyone know which steaming music station he is listening to?

<comment><USER45> So far he's been alternating between.. di.fm's Electro House channel: [http://www.di.fm/electro](http://www.di.fm/electro) .. his own Autechre playlist, and the latest Boards of Canada album.

If it sounds like upbeat ravey house music, it's electro house. If it sounds like a headache waiting to happen, Autechre. If it's pretty dreamy stuff, Boards of Canada.

<comment><USER46> Thank you so much!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'm enjoying popping in and watching for a couple minutes here and there. Interesting watching how progress happens.

</comment><comment><USER48> All I see is "totally stuck! BRB". How long has it been there?

<comment><USER49> About 15 minutes since your post. I guess you have to take breaks when you program for hours straight.

<comment><USER48> Looks like he went out to get himself some chicken :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Seems to be having trouble deciding on a game to build.

<comment><USER51> The theme this time, IMHO, is not very easy to pick a standout idea to work on. Almost everything you can make will fit that theme, and thus, is hard to create a unique or fun one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Love the sound of his keyboard.

<comment><USER32> I think he uses Das Keyboard.

<comment><USER53> I believe he uses a Das at work(saw it mentioned in a story about Mojang a while ago) but he mentioned on stream that he's currently using an old IBM Model M.

Both are nice mechanical keyboards with a wonderful sound though :)

<comment><USER52> Is there a reason why one would prefer a Das keyboard over a Model M?

<comment><USER54> Native USB, choice of switches, appearance, full NKRO. I would be fine with a Model M myself, but those are at least a couple distinct differences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> He's now off-line

</comment><comment><USER56> [http://test.notch.net/ld28/ld28.html](http://test.notch.net/ld28/ld28.html) -> Notch's game. Runs like garbage on my firefox though

<comment><USER57> According to twitter, upgrading to FF 26 fixes it.

<comment><USER54> I'm on FF25– the framerate is fine _and_ it's heating my apartment. Win win.</comment></comment></comment>


The case of the 500-mile email - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html? <comment><USER2> That's hilarious! One thinks of a lot of possible hangups with email (delivery delays, spam filter false alarms, etc.) but rarely maximum range.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a great story, but I'm not sure that I'm buying it. The conclusion is what bothers me; he says the timeout was three milliseconds and proceeds to convert 3 millilightseconds to 558.85 miles. So what's the problem? The packets have to go there _and back_ in 3 milliseconds. This means that the 558.85 miles is for the round trip, meaning that any places more than, say, 250 miles away should have had issues. For me, this destroys the premise of the whole article, since it contradicts things he said throughout.

The idea, though, that something like this could feasibly happen is certainly true, and made for interesting reading.

<comment><USER4> <http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail-faq.html>

<comment><USER3> Ahh, I stand corrected. Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My units doesnt have millilightseconds. :(

<comment><USER6> If it's because you're on a Mac, I recommend <http://www.finkproject.org/> \-- but I hear MacPorts is good too: <http://www.macports.org/>

Either one gets you a modern GNU Units.

<comment><USER7> or you can do 3 milliseconds * c</comment></comment></comment>


How to Go into Production with MongoDB – Top Ten Tips - <AUTHOR> https://severalnines.com/blog/how-go-production-mongodb-top-ten-tips <comment><USER2> Step 11 - realize you should not have used MongoDB and transition to Kafka, Redis, Cassandra, MySQL or Postgres.</comment>


Too much sleep linked to a greater risk of disease and death, study finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/04/health/sleep-duration-linked-to-death-and-diseases-study-intl/index.html <comment><USER2> This is just _survey_ data with no objectively-measured details, apparently.

"Excess" sleep is often associated with _low quality_ sleep, which is often associated with other negative health factors such as obesity, shift work, sleep apnea, etc. Cause and effect are conflated here.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sigh. Risk of death still 100% no matter what you do.

<comment><USER4> Risk of death in the next _x_ years is not, nor is risk of death before age _y_. That's what the headline is referring to, although I didn't check the paper for the actual time period used.

<comment><USER3> It actually refers to deaths per 1,000 per year over a nearly 8 year study period. People who slept more or less than 6-8 hrs/night died at a higher rate. So the article refers to an actual "risk of death" during the study period. More worrying, though, is that the headline implies causation: more or less sleep = increased risk, whereas the body of the article back-pedals and says people who are sick sleep more, so there's just a correlation.</comment></comment></comment>