It's open-source, so no worries about a company shutting it down, and it handles a lot of the stuff you're asking for. It’s designed for organizing and managing research photos, but it has features that fit archival needs pretty well.
Open and future-proof: Metadata is stored in JSON-LD, so even if Tropy disappears, your data isn’t locked up. It doesn’t modify your files either, so your originals are safe.
Flexible metadata: You can assign custom dates (even imprecise ones like "circa 1920" or a date range) and add other metadata fields to fit your needs. It’s not tied to EXIF or file timestamps, which is a big plus.
Related files: Tropy lets you group multiple images (e.g., front and back of a photo or parts of a large scanned image) into a single "item." Relationships are preserved, and you can see them all in the same context.
Search and organization: It’s way better than just dumping files into a folder. You get tags, categories, and a solid search interface to make your archive usable.
That is actually a really good suggestion! Thank you, I did not know about this project, and it is quite close to what I'm looking for. Perhaps I won't have to write all of the software myself!
I was there the week before, I was with a group of students on our way to the Niagara Falls and we stopped there for a snack. All I remember is that there seemed to be very little preparations made at the time, and that it was mostly a bunch of old hippies selling handmade sculptures made out of Coca-Cola cans. We later saw the pictures of the aftermath in the local papers and TV. Quite unreal. It was my first trip to the Americas and that visit plus getting to watch The Phantom Menace before it was released back at home were the cultural highlights of the trip (spent mostly upstate NY).
I like that scenario. But wouldn't AI just explode the verbosity of patents instead? The value of the humans' word count might go down, so they write less (less billable hours), but what they right is what is fed to the AI to generate a verbose patent, so there the patent is more valuable. This is assuming the value of a patent is in its chances to (a) be granted (it is not missing any relevant background or caveat), (b) stop competitors (it is hard to make sure it is not infringed), and (c) be upheld if challenged (it is complete and correct). This is where society needs to step up and legislate so these new tools are not abused and the value to society takes precedence, so patents are concise and help make inventions known and understood.
> Any halfway-competent engineering manager knows she should spend more of her time with her top people, because anything she can do to improve their performance is that much more impactful for the business.
I guess the point is that to improve their performance the best managers can do is "get out of their way", not "spend more of her time" with them.
Yeah, that's my point though -- that's a common belief, and it doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
Consider some common scenarios:
If you have a tech lead who's cooking up some new architecture, some new idea, whatever -- it's valuable to both of you to spend time together on it. The manager can make connections to work going on with other teams/customers, can help pressure-test the business reasoning for particular design choices, and can help line up the right people to work on it alongside the TL. Meanwhile, the TL benefits by having their design strengthened up front and getting connections to the right people, without having to spend tons of time meandering around the business.
By contrast, a junior engineer isn't going to benefit from a doubling or tripling of the manager's time. Their work is straightforward. The manager's only job is to ensure they have good tickets, make sure they have a nearby mentor in a mid-level/senior engineer, and then get out of the way.
Tying back to the article, the top/senior people are exactly the ones who are going to be doing new and creative things, so they -- and therefore the business -- benefit the most from the manager's time.
I'm not sure you understand what it means to be a senior engineer.
A senior engineer can generally do every single role involved in the process, from PM all the way down to developer. They often don't because they don't have the time to fill 3 or 4 roles, but they _can_.
One of the roles they can fill is manager and reaching out to others in order to coordinate and facilitate work amongst others.
A senior is _not_ a junior who can program faster or better. A senior is someone who has a much broader set of skills than a junior.
Exactly getting top people improved would take a lot and mostly would get in the way.
Getting lower performers to higher level should take less effort to achieve nice results.
Also low performers need to be controlled because if they don’t show signs of improvement it requires quick decision to let them go. You don’t let go your top performers unless they are really shitty people or done something really bad.
If I were considering an electric car, which I'm not, I would probably look at maps that presumably exist on the Internet before I'd trust random spottings on my part.
Why can't the journals share reviewers? Once the reviews are in, the editors decide if they want the paper in their journal, and if more than one does, the authors get to pick. Obviously it would be a bit more complicated with revisions, etc. but it would be an improvement over the current system.
It's open-source, so no worries about a company shutting it down, and it handles a lot of the stuff you're asking for. It’s designed for organizing and managing research photos, but it has features that fit archival needs pretty well.
Open and future-proof: Metadata is stored in JSON-LD, so even if Tropy disappears, your data isn’t locked up. It doesn’t modify your files either, so your originals are safe.
Flexible metadata: You can assign custom dates (even imprecise ones like "circa 1920" or a date range) and add other metadata fields to fit your needs. It’s not tied to EXIF or file timestamps, which is a big plus.
Related files: Tropy lets you group multiple images (e.g., front and back of a photo or parts of a large scanned image) into a single "item." Relationships are preserved, and you can see them all in the same context.
Search and organization: It’s way better than just dumping files into a folder. You get tags, categories, and a solid search interface to make your archive usable.
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