Why the Pentagon's many campaigns to clean up its accounts are failing - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/investigates/pentagon/ <comment><USER2> Lots of comments below are accurate e.g. terrible gov't oversight, extremely large and complex projects, corporations responding correctly to bad incentives, corporations thriving off the complexity of govt contracting

However I will posit an additional layer to this...and it lies with the American people themselves. We just cant handle gov't officials and contractors making a ton of money. The real root of the complexity in govt contracting is FAR (Federal Acquisition Regulations) Which create the complexity to avoid egregious corruption and profits in the federal space. While on paper it sounds great...lets make rules that limit what corporations can make off of the government... what you actually get is tremendous waste. Redundancy, arcane billing practices and auditing, and huge bureaucratic RFP bidding systems that limit competition. A classic case in not doing a complete cost-benefit analysis.

The solution is not palatable to the general American public. Put up with some fraud and corruption in the federal government which would be offset by increased competition from the private sector (thus better products and prices). And dont kid yourself if you think fraud and corruption doesnt still go on...it's just more sophisticated.

<comment><USER3> IMO, the real solution is to let the government compete with the private sector on 'government' contracts. Basically, do an analysis on how much it would cost to do in house and then put the same contract up for bid. (aka a Sanity check) However, you need to add a companies reputation to their bid so if they say it costs X and they tend to be 30% over budget or have quality issues then you don't just accept X. With that said and done if someone can really deliver high quality and still make a 20% profit then let them.

<comment><USER4> The government's hiring process makes this impossible. They are too slow, the people who know what needs to be done are completely separate from the centralized offices which hire, and therefore the government only hires people based on arbitrary measures including keywords on resume, number of years in x industry, certifications from Craposoft and Orac-ket. They are fucking fantastic at hiring useless middle-management fucks whose only ambition in life is a paycheck and to stop using their brain when they leave the office (at 4:00 or 3:30 pm on a weekday)

Ambitious people leave in droves, because an organization run entirely on "other people's money" always steers towards complacency and lack of accountability, translating to ambitious people who care about delivering on- time being surrounded by people whose kid's softball game takes precedence over leaving customers out in the cold.

Anyone who has EVER dealt with the federal government in any fucking way knows that what you are saying would never work. The laziest people I have ever encountered in my life are in the Federal government. I'm a huge advocate for the environment, and my first dealings with the EPA made me want to cry. They are horrifically lazy at a cultural level. The DoD is fucking awful. Go to a military base at 3:00 PM on a Friday afternoon and watch as a traffic line builds up at the exit gates as the civillian workers go home 2 hours early, EVERY weekend.

<comment><USER5> There are some hard workers in government - you see many around DC. But I don't disagree that there are some lazy people in government - I have heard much worse about the EPA than you have stated for example.

The military is some of the hardest working but criminally underpaid.

The whole contracting system is broken - the amount of money government leaks there is criminal.

<comment><USER4> Military are not criminally underpaid. When you factor in housing benefits, pension, health care, education, etc, the military is a fantastic career option, which is why so many people join it. For a non-college graduate, it is absolutely the best career path you can take in the US.

When you get out, you have access to federally subsidized loans that nobody else gets, as well as the ability to have Tricare (ultra cheap health insurance) for the rest of your life. When you consider that less than 10% of active duty military will ever see combat, this is a bargain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> One aspect that's missing in these comments is an acknowledgement of the complexity of the projects which are the subject of defense contracts. The Pentagon and its contractors are literally at the edge of the state of the art in fields like aerospace. Very few companies have the expertise to even attempt to take on these contracts, and most projects have ill-defined specifications simply because nobody is quite sure what is technologically possible until the project is well underway. And nobody knows how much money will be needed up front. That's like asking Zuck in his dorm room: "how much money will you need to build Facebook as it exists circa 2013?"

I used to work at a company that did DOD contracts (in the wireless sector). In that area, what the DOD was playing with in the early 2000's is what VC- funded companies are playing with just in the last few years. For the work we did, there were no detailed specs because nobody really knew what was within reach. In response to the question: "what do you want?" the DOD's response is often: "what could we have?" Pointing at how much more efficient private industry is makes no sense. Take an example like Space X. They're a shining example of private industry, and are doing very innovative stuff, but they're treading a lot of the same ground NASA and DOD contractors did in the 1960's. Of course they're getting it done for a lot less money! They know what's possible, they have a general idea of what works. The contractors doing this stuff in the 1960's had none of that to work with.

Obviously the time is due for modernizing the accounting system. But it's important to realize that a lot of the mess dates from the Cold War, where keeping up with the Soviet Union was the priority, not satisfying the bean counters.

<comment><USER7> This is very well explained at the book moon lander, it's an amazing inside story of the problems they encountered during the design and comstruction of the modules. What has surpriced me is that the design effort was minor compared with the management and quality control. They had to multiply the budgets severaltimes to be able to correct unexpected problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The biggest problem I see in these articles is the insistence on using off the shelf systems. SAP and Oracle are always at the center of these deals, and they end up being disasters. If you have MULTIPLE billion dollar failed projects using COTS systems, maybe its time to step back and look at a custom system.

<comment><USER9> The root of the problem isn't using or not using COTS.

The root of the problem is the government keep hiring consultants they pay by the hour. They they act surprised when the consultants respond rationally to the incentives.

Or they agree to a fixed price contract where everyone knows the government will pay you more if you say you can't deliver and threaten to go bankrupt. Then they act surprised when the contractors respond rationally to the incentives.

The government needs to break projects down into smaller chunks, to mitigate the losses if a supplier doesn't deliver, you don't pay them, and they go bankrupt. Then they need to establish and enforce an incentive system where suppliers are punished, not rewarded, for failing to get the job done.

<comment><USER10> Or, the root of the problem is in treating these companies as too big to fail.

If the big companies were allowed to fail, that would develop a market for others to enter who could succeed.

With gov't contracting, it is unrealistic to leave aside the political connections the companies have. It is simply unacceptable to the political crony class to allow one of their own to fail.

<comment><USER11> > If the big companies were allowed to fail, that would develop a market for > others to enter who could succeed.

If the big companies were allowed to fail, maybe they'd stop underbidding on contracts to get them based on their reputation and smallest bid (knowing that there's no risk), and instead bid actual costing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From the article :

> _" The Pentagon alone has never been audited, leaving roughly $8.5 trillion > in taxpayer dollars unaccounted for since 1996, the first year it was > supposed to be audited."_

Wow - that means an average of $500 billion per year of taxpayer money unaccounted since then!

From reading the article, one distinct impression is that the real reason for failed accounting may be simpler and more troubling than all the other obvious ones : because it is so much easier to hide inefficiency, incompetence, and gross abuse/misuse of funds if there are no proper accounting systems in place. The freedom from oversight can be addicting. While there may be no grand conspiracy in place at the top to achieve this - the will to fix what is broken could certainly be weaker if it gives you the freedom to do as you please.

</comment><comment><USER13> Of course it's failing. Screwed up accounting allows for easier stealing and harder to pinpoint who/when/where money ended up.

<comment><USER14> "Who in their right mind would send 363 tonnes of cash into a war zone?"

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/feb/08/usa.iraq1](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/feb/08/usa.iraq1)

<comment><USER13> That's ridiculous! These wars are just fronts for money laundering & control of oil. It's only by coincidence that they can align some wars with some human-rights violation. Otherwise, they'll just make stuff up.

We need a revolution, there I said it. Go ahead NSA and add me to the watch- list. Nobody here doubts that you scan this site daily.

<comment><USER14> Well, there _might_ be good reasons for having that amount of cash - but you can't help wondering what the processes and systems there were for controlling what it was all used for..

Edit: This attitude by a US general doesn't exactly come across well:

Q: "But the fact is billions of dollars have disappeared without trace."

Oliver: "Of their money. Billions of dollars of their money, yeah I understand. I'm saying what difference does it make?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If its anything like what happens when Oracle or similar come in its this, they spent so much that it would be a waste to not keep spending.

That and the higher level people who started it, bought into it, put their name on it, are the last people who ever back down and are damn near not approachable by those in the trenches.

Seen it far too many times. Backing down cost reputation which is more expensive than money from someone else

</comment><comment><USER16> I couldn't imagine the pain involved in being attached to one of these projects for multiple years. I suspect most smart and ambitious people agree with me. So in the end, you add a lack of talent to all the other very real things that others have added.

</comment><comment><USER17> Did anyone read the first article? This is the third</comment>


Google letting spam sites live for $$$? - <AUTHOR>

I find it hard to believe google cannot differentiate between auto-scraping sites and original content sites with like 95%+ accuracy. <comment><USER2> Google for "pink contract". You'll find at least this:

[http://news.cnet.com/ATT-admits-spam-offense-after- contract-...](http://news.cnet.com/ATT-admits-spam-offense-after-contract- exposed/2100-1023_3-248067.html)

I recall, but can't find confirmation, that the old Uunet UUCP and usenet hub had "pink contracts", but denied them until irrefutable evidence surfaced. Why would Google be any different? As a publicly held corporation, the Google entity is what one could delicately call a "sociopath".

</comment><comment><USER3> The conspiracy theorist side of me thinks that Google doesn't want to get rid of all of the spam sites because they bring in revenue for Google through AdSense. The practical side of me says that even 95% accuracy wouldn't be enough with 200 million websites out there. A 5% miss rate is 10 million angry webmasters potentially complaining to Google and requesting manual reviews.

<comment><AUTHOR> It would be fine if google just increased the the threshold of it's p value for spam-status.</comment></comment>


Instagram photos reveal predictive markers of depression - <AUTHOR> https://epjdatascience.springeropen.com/articles/10.1140/epjds/s13688-017-0110-z <comment><USER2> TL;DR - If you post a lot of gray pictures of yourself with a sad face that nobody likes or comments on, you are probably depressed.

They used the color of the photographs, number of people in the photos, level of engagement, and happiness rated by Mechanical Turk to determine depression.

<comment><USER3> Wait so they didn't actually go back and see if the people they identified as depressed had a diagnosis of clinical depression?

<comment><USER4> What, you thought this was an actual scientific study?

<comment><USER5> It literally is a peer-reviewed scientific study. Middlebrow cynical dismissals are boring.

<comment><USER6> a peer-reviewed scientific study at the height of the replication crisis

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> And in 10 years, this will be a part of your Citizen Score.

I should burn this nickname and be more diligent about persona management. Or get off social media entirely.

<comment><USER8> > Or get off social media entirely.

Wouldn't that be a bigger red flag?

<comment><USER9> Red flag of what, though? Eg, I stay away from social media, and create burners for just about everything (rotating burners semi frequently depending on how many random details I post, etc) - so what am I an indicator of? I try to be a Ghost.

I'm sure a ghost is an indicator for _some_ things, but the majority of it is just speculation right? I have trouble thinking of how a lack of information about someone could be harmful as a _source of information_.

Now, I could see it becoming harmful in that I have to have some type of Citizen Score to apply for jobs, be accepted for loans, get insurance, etc etc. That's quite reasonable, imo. Yet, it's still _seems_ different than being a source of information, e.g. this person is unstable, or this person is depressed, etc.

<comment><USER8> > Red flag of what, though?

If your employer/government/etc asks you for your facebook/google+/instagram/snapchat/etc account and you say you don't have any, it might come off as being suspicious. As if you are trying to hide something. The same thing with your banks/financial institutes/etc.

<comment><USER9> Well I guess that's what I meant by information vs actually being harmful. I expect it to have negative effects to loans/employers/etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not just photos, but in general I've found that the people who are continuously posting how happy their lives are and how everything is great are most likely the ones who are utterly miserable.

I have been seeing a woman's posts lately who is going through a bitter, ugly divorce, and it's astounding how she represents everything publicly via Facebook when I know the full story due to a family member being involved.

<comment><USER11> Someone that is miserable is not exactly someone that is suffering from depression.

This research is for finding a clinical condition and make less expendable the cost of health programs, not to evaluate the life of others based just on opinions. Suicides are the second-leading cause of death among teenagers. But, some people are just "not a happy person". That doesn't mean that they are unhappy, sad or suffering from depression.

I really like this comics from Oatmeal that talk about that. [http://theoatmeal.com/comics/unhappy](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/unhappy) the essay that this comic is based t[https://outline.com/r6q4Ga](https://outline.com/r6q4Ga)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Would it be acceptable for Facebook to try to make you less depressed by changing what you see on your feed?

<comment><USER13> They do this, or at least have done this. If a "digitally depressed" person has exhausted all possible suggested friends, FaceBook proceeds to suggest friends that they assume will be sexually attractive to you, as an example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Would be great to have this as a service where you could analyze your own instagram feed for signs of trouble.

</comment><comment><USER15> Clippy, 2018: It looks like you're depressed, can I help you with that?

</comment><comment><USER16> 166 isn't really a representative sample, is it?

</comment><comment><USER17> User, it appears you are trying to upload a photo displaying negative emotions. Please upload a new photo expressing a happiness quotient of at least .75 as per terms and conditions.

<comment><USER18> It's possible and mutually beneficial to instead send that user targeted ads for therapy, suicide hotline etc...which is effectively what happens.

The cynical dystopian insinuation around technology, on a technology site no less, is getting old.

<comment><USER19> It's not about technology. It's about power, capital, and society.

We already know that Facebook/Instagram can manipulate your real-world emotions and thoughts by what it chooses to show you.

We also know that susceptibility to ads for different products varies depending on emotional state and context (pre 'surveillance capitalism' it was well known that you could get much bettter responses to aspirational products as the weekend approached, and to products like make-up on Sunday evenings as the work-dread sets in).

The question is, if you have a load of high-value inventory to shift, but your audience isn't susceptible to it, why not treat this as an optimization problem and make them?

It's the right thing to do for your shareholders, completely legal, and near undetectable.

<comment><USER18> _The question is, if you have a load of high-value inventory to shift, but your audience isn 't susceptible to it, why not treat this as an optimization problem and make them?_

Susceptibility to action is binary. If the audience isn't susceptible then they won't ever convert, or take action.

I'll never buy a Yoni Egg [1], and no amount of targeting or putting advertisements in front of me will cause me to make a purchase of one.

However there might be a world in which I would buy a box of feminine products, even though I am a man. For example if my daughter is sick or incapable of getting them for herself. In which case, a social or other network knowing that

1\. I have a daughter

2\. That she is sick

3\. What her time based need of these products is

4\. That there is a preference for a certain product in this category

5\. I can get the product cheaply or easily

Makes my life easier, by saying: "Hey [user] we see that you may be in a scenario that this particular product/service would be helpful right now"

Even though at that point I might not even know that I need to help get that when I go to the store because of social anxiety or embarrassment preventing from asking.

So yes, I believe in an all seeing all knowing AI god that will guide and optimize our behaviors. That is not a sarcastic comment.

[1][https://yoniegg.com/what-are-yoni-eggs/](https://yoniegg.com/what-are- yoni-eggs/)

<comment><USER20> Your example is laughably contrived, unrealistic, and so full of plot holes that my fingers would tire from typing all my thoughts out. By contrast, the very real privacy invasion damage that invariably occurs in the kind of world that you're advocating for is well documented, and dystopian in the extreme. The never forgetting Internet, the different insurance rates, the illegal files on every citizen etc. I want no part of such a world.

<comment><USER21> But we're in it right?

And it is a world where non participation might equate to a negative profile, so the bay we can do is understand the enemy and curate perfection, while engaging in a real way only when anonymous (so far as that can even be achieved).

<comment><USER19> It can be regulated against, more transparency can be enforced. Despite the enormous lobbying from Facebook and Google in the EU, I could imagine it happening there within five or ten years for example.

There's a real tendency on HN to get all Ayn Rand and forget we live in a society. In relative terms, this is a very new business model. Companies will push for more power, and they get it unless people push back. As people close to the problem, we need to see ourselves as responsible for influencing the discussion about type of society we end up with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Corrolary: Instagram usage makes you depressed!

</comment><comment><USER23> We used ML and assumptions like: "Group photos are an indicator of happiness" to guess if a person is depressed.

God help the millennials. The only winning move is not to play.

<comment><USER24> They didn't use that as an indicator of depression. All they did was pass into the model the number of faces in the frame. The analysis afterwards suggested that depressed people tend to not have group photos.

<comment><USER25> Shit, I don't have group photos :(

<comment><USER26> Do you also have the other markers?

It's not like a single marker determines everything.

It's not even like having ALL markers means one is 100% depressed.

It merely gives you a confidence score in the person being depressed.

<comment><USER27> On the other hand, if you do have all the markers, maybe you should step back and consider.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Sales book recommendation? - <AUTHOR> I've been working as a freelancer web/software developer for almost a year now; however, I feel that my sales cycles are long-stretched at best. I have no intention whatsoever to "blame the economy" (as it seems to be fashionable nowdays); I'll take full responsibility for this, and thus turn to the entreprenour culture blooming around here:<p>What books, blogs, or fundamental understanding has made the biggest impact on your sales, and bottom line?<p>(No cliches, please.) <comment><USER2> How to Win Friends & Influence People ([http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends- Influence-People/dp/06...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence- People/dp/0671723650)) - Seriously.

</comment><comment><USER3> * SPIN Selling by Rackman

* The Sales Bible by Gitomer

* Selling to VITO by Parinello

* Lead Generation for the Complex Sale by Brian Carroll

* <http://www.marketingsherpa.com/>

* <http://blog.startwithalead.com/weblog/>

* [http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=35771&trk=a...](http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=35771&trk=anet_ug_hm) This one is a linekdin group that sends out a good email news letter

<comment><USER4> If you had to pick just one?

<comment><USER3> If I had to pick one, I'd pick SPIN Selling as feverishaaron said. It's a lot more how to and broken down into steps. Selling to VITO is also step by step, but SPIN Selling approach makes more sense to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a freelancer in web dev and show biz and have done a lot of sales in that area. Brian Tracey's "Advanced Selling Strategies" is probably the best single book out there for individual one-on-one selling, especially if you also read "How to Win Friends and Influence People" 80% of reviewers on Amazon gave it 5 stars, and the rest 4. That's saying something for a business book!

I would also highly recommend finding good books on negotiation too. Balancing relationship sales with negotiation and estimation is IMHO the hardest and most far-reaching aspect of being a freelance web dev.

Iain Duncan

</comment><comment><USER6> I'll second a few that have been mentioned already:

* <http://blog.startwithalead.com/weblog/> (Brian Carroll's blog) * <http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Get-Real-Not-Play/dp/1883219507>

you can read more from Mahan Khalsa at: <http://www.ninetyfive5.com/default.aspx>

I found both of these very helpful in building my understanding of the sales process and for the tools they provide you with. The biggest shift in thinking they provided for me was that selling is about asking questions, finding a connection between what you're offering and what your customer is looking for and then asking for the business. They also showed me that selling is about focusing your activities on the right things to meet your goals, not just spending time "busy" selling.

</comment><comment><USER7> Are your rates public on your site? If not, I'd start there. If your sales cycles are long, there's nothing that will qualify leads faster.

If Brian Fling can do it, so can you: <http://www.flingmedia.com/contact/> (drop-down under New Project Request)

</comment><comment><USER8> The 100 Best Business Books of All Time has a list of 12 Sales/Marketing books on this page: <http://100bestbiz.com/more-on-the-100-best/>

The list as a whole is pretty solid.

<comment><USER3> Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith from the list is a good one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If I could choose one book on sales, it would be

Non-Manipulative Selling by Tony Alessandra.

This is a diamond in the rough among sales books. Many other books on sales, at least in the few that I've read and others I've skimmed, seem to be full of subtle and not-so-subtle psychological manipulation that always gave me an uneasy feeling in my gut once the conversation ended. This book is different. However, even if you believe in the "hard sell" philosophy, you should read this, since at the very least, you learn many tips to prevent negotiations from getting hostile.

</comment><comment><USER10> "Go for No"

Incorrect model: Success <\--- Me ---> Failure Correct model: Me ---> Failure ---> Success

More about the book:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=415531>

</comment><comment><USER11> Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion [http://www.amazon.com/Influence- Psychology-Persuasion-Busine...](http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology- Persuasion-Business-Essentials/dp/006124189X/)

The Definitive Book of Body Language [http://www.amazon.com/Definitive-Book- Body-Language/dp/05538...](http://www.amazon.com/Definitive-Book-Body- Language/dp/0553804723/)

+1 to How to Win Friends & Influence People

</comment><comment><USER12> Be sure to keep your mentality, don't adopt the sales mentality where you just try to make as many sales as possible. If you're not making enough, maybe you should charge more for services, while at the same time improving the quality of work. In web design and programming, I always put quality above quantity. If you do a great job, your service will sell itself by word of mouth.

<comment><USER5> This is totally true, with one giant caveat: how much you are worth will not sell itself. You will get referrals, but you need to make sure that you are negotiating properly or you can wind up swamped with work that you aren't charging enough for. Sooo, even if you feel like you have all the work you need, you owe it to yourself to do some sales reading. ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat by Michael Masterson is pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER14> The Richest Man in Babylon:

[http://www.amazon.com/Richest-Man-Babylon-George- Clason/dp/1...](http://www.amazon.com/Richest-Man-Babylon-George- Clason/dp/1607960664/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240163748&sr=8-1)

</comment><comment><USER15> The best I've ever seen:

[http://www.amazon.com/Cant-Teach-Ride-Bike- Seminar/dp/096717...](http://www.amazon.com/Cant-Teach-Ride-Bike- Seminar/dp/0967179904/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240094794&sr=8-1)

</comment><comment><USER16> Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm

Bosworth/Holland's Customer-Centric Selling

<comment><USER17> Crossing the Chasm is a good book, but as a sales book for a freelancer?

<comment><USER16> Definitely - if you don't understand the market, the motivations for purchasing, the product development lifecycle and so on, how can you possibly sell anything beyond brute force and willpower?

<comment><USER17> If you're selling your time, you are pretty much selling 'brute force' by definition, rather than a product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Highly recommend - Selling the Wheel!

</comment><comment><USER19> I have been sales for years - the books mentioned are good not great. If there was one that was my favorite out of the 200+ ones I read, "let's get real or let's not play" by khalsa. It is good for you for several reasons: 1\. based on consultative services not product sales 2\. the audio is hands down the best. It brought tears to my eyes that I had to learn by hard knocks what he shows you to do. 3\. it is greared to setup a win win situation and define precisely the value you are providing at the core of the business.

</comment><comment><USER20> Bob Bly.</comment>


Petition: Do not rename the default branch from "master" to "main" - <AUTHOR> https://www.change.org/p/github-do-not-rename-the-default-branch-from-master-to-main <comment><USER2> The Software Freedom Conservancy has proposed that Git should make the name of the default branch configurable.

[https://sfconservancy.org/news/2020/jun/23/gitbranchname/](https://sfconservancy.org/news/2020/jun/23/gitbranchname/)

This seems like a very sensible course of action and I would sign a petition to that effect. Further, does git init really need to create a default branch? Perhaps that step could be left to the user.</comment>


Ask HN: Can Crispr Be Used as Weapon of Mass Destruction? - <AUTHOR> So...I worry a lot. One of the things I worry about it is that CRISPR could be used a super weapon.
CRISPR (https://www.livescience.com/58790-crispr-explained.html) allows the "cut and paste" editing of the genome by packaging the cut and paste code in a virus that then is introduced to the host. The virus then alters the RNA/DNA after finding a match for the preprogrammed location it is to cut and insert DNA.
I worry that a state or non-state actor may find the genetic signature for an adversarial ethnic group and target that group using a genetic virus using CRISPR. So for example, the mechanism for infection could be a cold virus. The virus would simply cause the common cold in any non-adversarial group. If the virus detects that the host belongs to the adversarial group via some genetic marker it could do all sorts of terrible things to the genetic makeup of the host like cause sterilization, mess with hormone production, alter mechanisms that affect impulse control etc.
What worries me for this is that the weapon could be deployed and it would be impossible to know who deployed the weapon. A scientist could simply infect himself and walk through a busy thorough fair.
For all we know this has already happened.
Are my fears overblown or am I not appropriately understanding the science? Is anyone working on a counter to this? <comment><USER2> Bioweapons were possible and extant before CrSPR, even the ethnic targeting. CrSPR as a phenomenon has been known for 20years, it was talked about in the lab in a what if? steven king tone of voice. Only recently has someone chosen to start working it as a manipiulation technique. CrSPR is as powerful a discovery as the fusion bomb, and both hazards are compounded by occulted aspects. We are still just scratching the surface as far as understanding molecular genetics in vitro let alone in vivo. we are struggling to get beyond the standard model of physics and understand sub atomic structure, and high energy physics.

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

</comment><comment><USER3> Even if it can be used is it any worse than existing viruses?

<comment><USER2> it is worse in the sense that it can be directed for the purpose of pathogenicity.

natural virii have little benefit from killing the host, as transmission from live host to new host occurs best when the host is minimally inconvenienced.

Highly lethal virus kills hosts before they can contact other prospective hosts, and thus fare less well than a virus that gives you the sniffles, or makes you feel a bit tired.

with all this, Biowarfare is considered to be tacticly deficient, as there is reduced control, indiscriminate effect [in the present context] and drift of properties, as biological entities, change to accentuate survival in thier surroundings.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you keep your notes organized? - <AUTHOR> I was going to ask specifically of people who are project managers, but I'm curious to hear from anyone.
Quick background, I've been a project manager for 3 years now but I have moved into a new role where I will be overseeing multiple large projects.  So needless to say I have to attend a wide variety of meetings.  I currently don't have any staff (we will ramp up over the course of this year) and I'm just currently struggling to keep everything organized.
So I just wanted to know what people do to keep things organized, especially when you work on multiple projects.  I take notes but I'm wondering if it might make sense to have another notebook to transfer important items over to.  Or perhaps utilize some other tools (we have SharePoint, and I will be getting a tablet soon).  Curious to hear what people say.  I really just want to maximize my efficiency. <comment><USER2> I used to use Evernote connected to a Galaxy Note tablet that I could use to write handwritten things down. One day I reviewed some of these and decided they were way too personal to entrust to a 3rd party who didn't even have an encryption scheme. Also, when you sync Evernote to a new computer, it can download notes you would rather not have on every computer you want to use Evernote on.

I deleted my Evernote account. I now carry these tools everywhere I go:

* Fisher 400B Space Bullet Space Pen - Matte Black[1]

* Field Notes Pitch Black Edition[2]

The pen was a spectacular find. It is only a few inches long, which allows you to carry it in your front jeans pocket without discomfort. It is also heavy and a joy to write with. The notepad is a sweet goth black and slides easily into your back pocket.

DS Note [3] by Synology is a spectacular replacement for Evernote. It is an app that runs on their Diskstation NAS servers, so all the data is stored on your home server. You can import your Evernote account to it. I rarely use it, but it is incredibly full-featured. You just have to buy a Synology Diskstation NAS.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000WGD13U](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000WGD13U)

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GC5QTR0](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GC5QTR0)

[3] [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.synology.d...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.synology.dsnote&hl=en)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the info, I'm a big fan of the Space pen. Also been looking into Field Notes every since I got one through the Cards Against Humanity Holiday thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I use evernote to take "notes" and WIP stuff(this makes it searchable). Then I have trello boards with higher level planning. To stay out of the weeds I roughly use GTD/khanban/agile that I have made work for me. It took quite a while to get my system dialed in but once it clicked I easily got 40% more productive because of the gained focus on what I "SHOULD" be working on.

</comment><comment><USER4> org-mode

It makes it very quick to create new directories and files, each project has a directory with an index.org which has various sub-folders, combined with it's ability to internally link files and export as HTML and PDF it makes it easy to generate lists/todo's etc that can be shared with others.</comment>


Where is the pencil czar? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsweek.com/id/158752/output/print <comment><USER2> Clever that they picked pencils instead of some tragedy of the commons problem like basic scientific research.

<comment><USER3> Huh. The classic tragedy of the commons example I was taught in high school was about lighthouses. In college, I found out that nobody had tested this empirically except Ronald Coase, who found that lighthouses tended to be private and profitable, historically (this, of course, is not taught in standard economics courses; I only found out because I took a course on Coase).

And I don't even know about scientific research. I've talked to people at private research groups (e.g. Microsoft Research), and at major universities; the latter spend a lot less time doing research, and a lot more time delegating to grad students or hustling for grants. It is ironic, I guess, that the public servants spend their time in such bourgeoisie pursuits, while the capitalists are busy doing research.

<comment><USER4> Just to clarify, Coase wrote (in "The Lighthouse in Economics" in the 1970's) specifically on the case of lighthouses in the British Isles.

Lighthouses in England are maintained by Trinity House (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_House>) which is not in any recognizable way a private organization. While it operates with a large degree of autonomy, it is part of the UK government.

According to Coase, Trinity House funds its activities through "light dues" that are assessed on a per-tonnage basis to ships arriving at or departing from British ports. Assuming that there are never shortfalls or times when TH needs to draw on outside funds, then the scheme is self-supporting.

IOW, We're not looking at a bunch of hard-working libertarian lighthouse keepers each independently negotiating with ship captains in a free market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Next time you are browsing in a technical bookstore, I recommend Henry Petroski's tome on engineering w.r.t pencils: "The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance". I couldn't get through the entire book but its exhaustively researched.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's a classic piece of economics: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=304160>

</comment><comment><USER7> Very interesting, but the timing is a little awkward. The current disaster in the banking sector doesn't really speak to the brilliance of an unregulated free market, does it? (Or at least, there wasn't much regulation when the banks took greedy, foolish risks, but now that it's all gone south, guess what? Time for government intervention, by golly!)</comment>


Ask HN: What are the ways to utilize 6 months to land a job at Google/Facebook? - <AUTHOR> I completed my undergrad in May 2014. Being passionate about web designing, apart from designing College Tech-Fest websites haven't done any great projects so far. Not really a great GPA, Not well versed with the DS/Algorithms, really poor at Topcoder,Codeforces Hackathons. Undertook two Coursera courses, thought of like, i have done great after getting 90% and distinction in both of them but going through them once again after 6 months feels like I just mugged up those things and somehow managed to get those results just to show off. So Even Online courses just doesn't help me. To simply describe about me in one line, I'm a complete noob at everything,and i feel dejected.
Now coming to terms of technical background.. good at Cpp, Python, Javascript.. Not really a pro again, Just syntax, few library functions, no projects again.
What to focus on..? To get a good job..?? I am just going through all the possibilities/ways i have right at the moment. I would like to discuss these things with you people and please suggest me what would be the better choice. I love each of them
Option 1: Get good at Coding Competitions/Hackathons. Facebook HackerCup, Google Code Jam, Codesprints are the three things that will help me in getting my resume noticed by Top Companies. I am poor at DS/Algorithms, Gonna learn them
Option 2: Get really good at Web Designing, Design a portfolio of all my designs, blog about my design projects. Do Freelancing to earn few bucks, Build the resume. Then search for all the open FrontEnd positions.
Option 3: Learn Python, Javascript. Get good at them. ( I love both the languages). Learn Frameworks like Nodejs, Django and again repeat option 2, now i'm in backend too.
Option 4: Learn a Language, Do projects, Do open source, Wait for an oppurtunity
Google?Facebook? Yeah.. It doesn't matter if it is impossible or really a challenging task. Aim High,Set the bar even higher.. <comment><USER2> All of your options can be condensed to two words:

Learn. Do.

Which is exactly what you need to do, so go do it. I would just add one step: Show. Learn how to do awesome things, do them, then show them to interested people. You say you're passionate about design, so start there. Do a complete redesign of a site you use but don't like the design of. Post it on HN. People will notice and talk.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, My next thing on HN would be about "How I designed X" :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You sorta got into this with your last line, but why Google and Facebook? Are they simply only the names of companies you know off the top of your head? In other words, why wasn't Microsoft or Apple on the list? Or another great company?

>Not really a great GPA, Not well versed with the DS/Algorithms, really poor at Topcoder,Codeforces Hackathons.

Right, well, that's going to be a little more difficult then. I didn't see this the first time reading through.

<comment><AUTHOR> Google Interview is toughest above all, So just added about it. I want to set the bar higher, prepare for "Toughest Google Interview" and all other interviews wouldn't be too difficult to crack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Easiest way in is to enroll in a masters program, then apply for student internships. The hiring barrier for interns is much lower than for FTEs, and a good internship will almost definitely turn into a full-time offer pending graduation.

<comment><AUTHOR> As an Indian student, it is really a big burden for my family to support a masters program as of now. So, I dropped the idea of masters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You should probably get a job (any job) if you don't already have one. All the skills in the world don't equal work experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> If i would get one, that would be awesome. As i already mentioned above, i am a complete noob, and I don't think one would hire me with the skills i got right at the moment. 6 months around, i would like to change my fortune.</comment></comment>


State of the Common Lisp Ecosystem - <AUTHOR> http://eudoxia.me/article/common-lisp-sotu-2015/ <comment><USER2>
       The fact that it's built on Emacs is a problem, as telling a new user they
       have to learn Emacs before using SLIME (which is not strictly true) is a
       significant artificial barrier to entry.

Yes, it is true. It's ridiculous to expect a person new to a language to also learn Emacs. It is absolutely a significant barrier to entry.

<comment><USER3> It would be nice if there was something like DrRacket[1] for Common Lisp, or maybe something like Haskell for Mac[2] that was on HN yesterday[3]. You could package it with SBCL and a link to "Practical Common Lisp" and newcomers could be typing in code within 5 minutes.

I like using Emacs myself, but a lot of people find it intimidating. I know coders who are smarter than me, (vim using C++ finance programmers even!) and I can't persuade them to try SBCL/SLIME.

Emacsophobia may be irrational (I didn't find it hard to learn once I stopped expecting to use modern ui conventions) but asking people to face up to their misgivings about a product is a hard sell compared to offering something slick and attractive.

[1] [http://www.racket-lang.org/](http://www.racket-lang.org/)

[2] [http://haskellformac.com/](http://haskellformac.com/)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10114767](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10114767)

<comment><AUTHOR> > Emacsophobia may be irrational

I used emacs for about 10 years. Then I switched to vim, and I have no intention of switching back. It's not a phobia, it's a rational realization that modal editing fits well with how I do editing.

<comment><USER3> Sure, I meant in the sense that its seen as really obscure and hard to learn. A lot of people see vim in the same way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> And here I thought I was up to date on gamedev-related libs in CL... Thanks for the list!

At first look the list may look very opinionated ("use XYZ and just XYZ, forget about anything else"), but I understand the CL world has a bit of a discovery problem - it's often hard to tell e.g. which library is stable, and which is stabl-ish (e.g. made good enough for basic cases and then abandoned). Promoting top-of-the-line tools seems like something the community needs right now.

<comment><USER2> Gamedev? Do you mean the Graphics section?

<comment><USER4> Yes. I didn't know about CEPL and Varjo before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That is a really good writeup - thanks.

I started using Common Lisp in 1984 when Xerox rolled out CL as an update for my 1108 Lisp Machine. 31 years seems like a long time.

The Common Lisp community is great and with Zach's contribution of Quicklisp, most of the hassles of setting up a good CL dev environment are solved.

I especially liked seeing the two machine learning packages.

</comment><comment><USER6> I _just_ started making a serious effort to learn CL (finally, after having it "on the list" for over a decade) a few nights ago. I'd already been an Emacs user, but __not __an Emacs "power user". Still, it took me 20 minutes or so to get Emacs, SBCL and Slime all setup. Once it was all working, I just had to spend a few minutes learning a few key combinations I'd not bothered much with before (like how to move between frames, and then the Slime specific ones for compiling and loading Lisp files), and I was off to the races.

Now granted, I already knew my way around Emacs a little (emphasis on _little_ ), but I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to get up and running with that environment. And now I have even more motivation to truly master Emacs. Personally, I'm pretty happy with the state of the Common Lisp Ecosystem, approaching it as Lisp beginner (but not a programming beginner). _shrug_

<comment><USER7> Out of curiosity, how are you approaching learning it? Practical Common Lisp seems to be the most popular entry point for non-beginner programmers learning lisp.

<comment><USER8> I started with Practical Common Lisp, but found out Lisp-koans ([https://github.com/google/lisp-koans](https://github.com/google/lisp-koans)) support my flow of learning CL better, as I do some koans while commuting in the train :)

<comment><USER7> That's interesting; probably a learning-style difference, but the one time I tried a -koans (ruby-koans in this case), I found it to be a very inefficient way to learn.

<comment><USER8> To me currently the biggest learning curve in CL is that "how to use CL" e.g. list/vectors etc. and not "how do I use CL to solve X". To the former, koans are good way to get familiar with the syntax and how to use the language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd like to translate and repost this article, but can't find a license. Can you grant me the permission?

</comment><comment><USER10> Before this page, I've never seen anything defeat the Print Edit add-on for Firefox --- the last resort for reading something. Wow!

Can we have this in a nice, less ironic format, like, say:

      ((:domain "Web Development"
        (:subdomain "Back End"
         (:entry "Clack" ...)
         ...)
        (:subdomain "Front End"
          ...)
        ...)
       (:domain ...))

<comment><USER4> Lisp is magic :). Apparently things related to it also get enchanted.

EDIT: yes please for the easy format. Would gladly read it in Emacs, navigating it with Paredit :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "CLIM is interesting and was the last attempt to do any kind of research on how user interfaces should be built, but is not a viable option in 2015." -hmmm, what!?

Am I the only one left who thinks that gui widgets without a context (think qt, gtk) lead to inconsistent and inferior interfaces? If anything, since it is the _last_ attempt at GUI research, then we should continue from there. Or not, if we think that the Unity/Metro are THE interfaces...

<comment><USER7> No, but a working GUI is better than a non-working GUI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's a really great resource. With the usual CL directories, it's completely opaque which libraries are maintained and usable and which are out of data.

</comment><comment><USER13> For the GUI toolkits, don't know why CAPI was not listed? Yes it is LW specific but it is a worthy choice. I prototyped an entire 3D game scene using CAPI using the OpenGL 1 FFI they provided and it was very productive.

Of course CEPL then would have made it more fun, though I don't know if CEPL works with LW CAPI.

</comment><comment><USER14> I didn't find any information about commercial Common Lisp offerings like LispWorks and Allegro Common Lisp.

<comment><USER15> Of the things discussed in this post, the main area where I would seriously suggest a commercial Common Lisp system even for a newcomer, is if they are interested in GUIs, either on the development or runtime side. I can recommend LispWorks for those: it has a graphical IDE with graphical debugger, and a very nice cross-platform GUI library with native look-and-feel (called CAPI). I think compared to the open-source options, both of those will result in a lot less pulling out of hair. CommonQt is passable, but CAPI is far less of a hassle, especially for cross-platform deployment. The obvious downside is that LispWorks costs money and is not open-source, so is probably most attractive to people developing a commercial product. Also, in the case of using CAPI, you commit to LispWorks as your implementation.

<comment><USER14> The biggest issue I find, although I lack the experience to really validate it, is that those environments still provide an overall developer tooling experience that is way better than the open source offerings.

An evolution of the Interlisp-D/Symbolics Genera systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> I see Postmodern and Elephant mentioned frequently around the web - but not in this list. Are they no good?

<comment><USER16> Postmodern is very good, it just slipped my mind as I haven't used it except as a reference when implementing my own ORM.

But since Postmodern is Postgres-only, and is a very stable, maintained library (and I doubt the author has plans for the future, having mostly moved to JavaScript), it doesn't really fit into either 'future work' or 'consolidation'.

As for Elephant, IIRC it's no longer maintained, and I think the model it presents -- just serialize CLOS objects, with whatever backend -- is the wrong way to go about it. Most of the time, it's better to be aware that you're using SQL, or a JSON file, or whatever your storage is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'd love to see this breakdown for more languages.

<comment><USER18> Here's one for haskell: [https://github.com/Gabriel439/post- rfc/blob/master/sotu.md](https://github.com/Gabriel439/post- rfc/blob/master/sotu.md)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "I've never done any graphics programming, so my knowledge of this area is lacking"

cl-ply for example: draw and manage 3d polygon meshes.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is great. I've been out of the Common Lisp world for several years and stuff has really changed since.

CL-STMX is awesome!

</comment><comment><USER21> This is unreadable on mobile

<comment><USER22> It's unreadable on desktop too. What's with this new fashion?

<comment><USER23> I don't mind the visual style, but the author seems to have forgotten that some people use actual mice instead of inertial-scrolling trackpads.... using a scroll wheel goes nowhere fast on this kind of page.

<comment><USER24> Even with an inertial-scrolling trackpad it doesn't scroll well.

<comment><USER25> Works fine for me in Firefox on OSX, scrolling with a macbook trackpad. Maybe it's using something that doesn't work well cross-platform?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> sorry, but it's impossible to read this site.

</comment><comment><USER27> Wow, yes, dark theme huge letters, so simple, so nice, how most people get it wrong? And then... white wall of light almost gets me blind.</comment>


Profitable but poor, am I doing it right? - <AUTHOR>

I have recently released an iPhone app product that I am really proud of. So far it's been out for about 5 weeks and has consistently sold 5-10 units per day with no marketing behind it. I was wondering if this is a normal start or subpar for other iPhone app developers? It's generating income, although $15 a day obviously isn't going to retire me anytime soon. I plan on releasing some additional products soon but I wanted to ask some other developers their opinion.
Does advertising your iPhone app work on mass-market websites or is it better to advertise on other iPhone apps? Any additional marketing methods that you would recommend?
Did you find your app orders increased naturally over time as word-of-mouth spread or did it plateau and require marketing efforts on your part to increase order volume? <comment><USER2> Try sending promo codes to people who work at: TSR (or WOTC or whatever it's part of these days); Steve Jackson Games; Palladium (or whomever owns it now).

If Dragon Magazine is still around, send them a few promo codes too. Get involved in D+D discussion forums and (politely) plug your app.

Maybe $1.99 is too high. Maybe not. I can't really judge that. I can tell you, though—from experience as a developer and consumer of iPhone apps—that $0.99 is much more of an impulse purchase than $1.99 is.

Heck, maybe you can mark the app as "ON SALE! $0.99 for two weeks only! And use that as part of your pitch to the aforementioned companies, magazines and web forums."

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the helpful suggestions, I'm looking into them now. The 0.99 sale sound like a good idea to test the waters. I tried to price it on the low end compared to most of the competition.

<comment><USER3> I can't agree enough with the importance of trying to reach the taste makers in the industry. You may never reach them, but if you do, and you make a good impression, it can completely transform your market presence.

No reason not to try, especially when the cost of doing so is so low.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, worse case scenario is they ignore me and I lose nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> $15/day is not _profitability_. It's gross revenue. You incurred costs to develop the app (time).

That being said, it's a good start. Now spend a few hours promoting your app to review sites and other places. That won't hurt. Note how I didn't say _advertise_.

<comment><USER5> Sort of - if he hired an employee to develop it, then it'd be a cost but I don't think his time really counts here.

Opportunity cost? Sure. When reporting it to the IRS so they can get social security from what an equivalent employee would have cost? Yes. But I think most entrepreneurs would call that profit...and not count their own time (especially if it's nights/weekends).

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately if I counted my time I would be in the hole about 4-6k right now.

<comment><USER6> If you're considering this work/business then you count your time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some thoughts:

1\. You don't have enough reviews. Your app store search rankings will improve once an actual rating is computed. Give away some apps, or even make it free for a few days. Note that free apps == crap ratings however..

2\. The name: Was "dice roller" or "Die roller" taken? With the way the app store search works, the easiest way to get traffic is to have a name that has a high natural search volume. Basically, high search volume on google == high search volume on the app store (in my experience 1/10th-1/20th).

3\. Do a free version supported by iAds. The CPM there is still high, I'm seeing $10-$20CPM, and with 5-10 units per day at $1.99, you should be looking at 2-300 units for a free version easily. Might also increase sales of full version.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback.

1\. I will try to persuade some of my customers to submit app ratings. Unfortunately the ratio of purchases to review seems to be about 70 to 1, at least for this app.

2\. Dice roller was taken although die roller I think is open. I'll try to tailor the name,description, and keywords to more heavily trafficked related search terms. I did include some game names in the description which seems to help with search some.

3\. I have a free version with iAds waiting for Apple review now. I'm hoping that will help supplement the revenue and also drive sales to the paid version. $10-20 CPM sounds great. I'm from a web background and traditional website CPM is nowhere near that.

<comment><USER2> One way I've found to get more app ratings from users is to monitor the number of app launches and after, say, 5 of them, pop up a UIAlertView asking them to rate the app. Saying "OK" opens the App Store URL. Saying "no" prompts them once more later on, and then never prompts them again.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is genius! I never even considered implementing a suggestion into the app, seems like an easy way to obtain ratings as long as it's not too intrusive. I'm definitely including it in future updates.

<comment><USER2> If someone is willing to launch your app five times, they probably find it useful, and ought to be pretty willing to rate it highly. Or at least, that's the theory right? :)

<comment><USER7> I do this, but found it _tons_ more effective to open the "reviews" section of the app itself. Lower friction, etc.

I was actually thinking of releasing some code that does this - essentially it monitor the ratings an app gets and dynamically settle on the best time to ask for a review.

<comment><USER2> Can you say more about this?

<comment><USER7> Basically, to open direct to reviews, you want to construct an 'itms-apps://' url.

Then, rather than setting the "check at" interval to something fixed (which also works well), you can have the app check in the background what it should do.

So you can do things like: performSelector:withObject:afterDelay with a custom message after a custom number of starts, or a minimum number of starts after the app has been used for such-and-such a long time.

At the same time, you can monitor the reviews (frequency & stars) and vary over your stats over time. Unfortunately you can't straight A/B test at the same time, as you don't know who wrote which review, but you can A/B test if you separate them by time.

Hope that helps. Feel free to contact me directly: email@example.com

<comment><USER2> here we go: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3374050/url-for- sending-a...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3374050/url-for-sending-a- user-to-the-app-review-page-on-devices-app-store)

thanks for the pointer!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Have a sale on me for good design and geekery.

There are a few RPG based startups here. Consider tapping (pun absolutely intended) their audiences for reviews. RPG sites have ungodly poor monetization, so you should be able to get nice ad deals with them. They get it because gamers are poor, which bodes ill for you, but still...

SEO prints free money, in this and other niches. You should rank for iPad/iPhone dice roll within a week or two of trying for it. Might as well, right?

Get email addresses of prospects if you are staying in this niche! Next time you launch app, hit list with a blast email. App store dynamics are very sensitive to early momentum.

If you want to get better compensated for your time, I suggest making things for people who have money and enjoy spending it. Middle aged women in suburbia, for example.

</comment><comment><USER9> Sorry no wisdom here, but looks really polished, great design.

I even like the nod to the low AT&T signal bars. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> lol, sadly it's an actual screenshot from my phone. I'm lucky to get a bar or two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It looks pretty but there's already a bunch of dice rolling apps out there. Saved formulas does look cool though.

It might be worth it to take out an ad in a D&D mag or a site with high traffic.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true, there are quite a few dice rolling apps out there. This was my first time coding in objective-c so I wanted to keep the app concept simple yet still related to D&D.

I've started looking into the magazine ads and related websites recently although the minimum spend might require me to wait for a month or two since I want to try and keep this business completely self-funded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So one of the major cake mix companies spent millions of dollars developing a no-mix no-stir cake mix product that, though a great product, ended up being a terrible failure largely because buyers of the mix felt like they weren't doing enough work.

Even though this may be an apocryphal story (I can't find a link on Google), I think it illustrates an important point about user experience. As someone who has played tabletop games, physically rolling dice was an integral part of the game because it was, to romanticize it, the closest physical analogue I was going to get to actually slaying that diamond spider. Pulling out an iPhone to roll dice doesn't have that same appeal, and in addition, you are trying to supplant a long-standing ritual that is inextricably associated with tabletop games.

This is, of course, merely a possibility to consider. Personally, I would talk to more customers, if you haven't, or even test them out at local gaming nights and see what people are reacting too. See what other products gamers and DMs need -- after all there are over 20 million of them out there for D&D alone according to Wiki, which is a big enough market to make money out of. Maybe DMs would like a way to manage characters or stats, for example. Build a brand out of related, high-quality products in the process.

<comment><USER12> From a player's perspective I think you are right that part of the fun is physically rolling dice. If you run one of these games as a GM you might tire of the romantic dice rolling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Good luck on your quest!

You get 50 promo codes for each version of your app. Share them with everyone! Number of daily downloads for your app affects the ranking (as may other factors). Then, update your app often to get more promo codes.

There are forums on MacRumors and TouchArcade where you can post promo codes of your app -- they'll be downloaded very quickly. You can ask people to leave an honest review/stars (although most people don't tend to leave reviews after downloading.) FWIW, on MacRumors you'll need to create an account and log in to see the "Code sharing" forum. (<http://forums.macrumors.com/forumdisplay.php?f=136>)

To get reviews you should do what aaronbrethorst wrote and make a popup after N launches. The top apps (say, Angry Birds or Doodle Jump) also employ this technique.

</comment><comment><USER14> Trying to succeed in the App Store is a whole different world in itself.

In general advertising is tough for any $1.99 product. For this particular product I'd say it's even tougher. A dice roller is simply not a mass market product. So most of your advertising dollars are going to be wasted on people who don't care.

Asking sites for reviews and maybe even finding some D&D-type sites that would be willing to look at it and review it would be your best bet -- and just takes your time.

An ad-supported version may help visibility, but don't rely on iAds alone. The fill rates are not high enough. Alternatively, if there's a simple way to make a Lite version without giving away the whole thing, that can also be a way to get increased visibility.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is definitely a very niche product, possibly to my detriment. I'm in the process now of requesting reviews from the larger related sites. I definitely agree with the lite version, I have one waiting in the app approval process now. It has some of the functionality and an ability to upgrade within the application.

Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> You might find the cost _is too low_.

The app store will buy more copies of an app at 4.99 than at 1.99 sometimes.

Try a 3.99 price point for a few weeks and see if your sales drop off at all. Make sure you get a weekend in.

I suggest something like AppFigures/AppNanny to track the dailies.

</comment><comment><USER16> you are making some money from it, so you have to be doing something right. next there are a few options; \- develop and grow existing user base. \- create more apps. u have to decide which works best for you, i think marketing is over rated. unless i want to create a brand name which i want to keep, it can still pretty profitable focusing on the above 2 options.

but if u must market your app, make it worthwhile for your effort. e.g. i would give out coupons or version of my paid apps for users who give me feedback or ideas. it worked really well for me so far. i give something that they want, and if the idea is any good i can create something that solve a problem. that pays really well.

</comment><comment><USER17> Do you mind saying what the app is?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://bit.ly/axJcJp>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Perhaps (dare I say it) there just aren't enough table-top gamers left? It certainly seemed to be on a steep decline as I exited my teenage years :(

<comment><AUTHOR> It's sad but true, with MMOs and epic single player RPGs for the desktop and consoles available tabletop gaming is on the decline. I'm hoping to build some tools to help make tabletop gaming less about the math and physical book/paperwork management and more about the social and imaginative experience that is difficult to replicate in the video game space. All I have at the moment is a dice roller though :)</comment></comment>


Panic's Next Editor - <AUTHOR> https://panic.com/next/ <comment><USER2> Coda was one of my favourite apps when I first got a Mac. It was such a fresh experience when compared to the dry utilitarian stuff that was available on Windows at the time.

I believe that Panic will create a beautiful product and they have many supporters who will happily pay a license fee - I know I will!

But it's not going to be an easy ride. There's a lot to live up to here and they will need to have some killer features thrown in at the beginning.

The hardest part tho will be to make it an approachable tool that can hook the hobbyist but keep them on when they need more. I dropped Coda for a number of reasons, but it wasn't because it wasn't a great code editor.

<comment><USER3> What "visual CSS editor" are they talking about? I have Coda 2, and remember wishing it had a visual CSS editor like Espresso's.

Coda also suffered from persistent and potentially damaging bugs, like the failure of its project-files pane to open the "home" directory specified for your project when you opened the project. Instead, it apparently just showed whatever directory it last navigated to.

<comment><USER4> Coda 1 had a pretty sweet visual CSS editor, it was dropped in Coda 2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It looks promising. But I'm not sure what features it could add over VS Code for me. I also worry that it won't have the hackability of Electron-based editors. (Before anyone complains about Electron performance, I haven't had any issues in that regard.)

I do academic research on code editors.

<comment><USER6> Maybe I'm just an outlier, but as a front end developer, one of the _last_ things I want to do is spend time hacking my tool chain. What gets me excited is delivering new features and better UX to my users. Even a minute spent worrying about my development environment is a minute taken away from what makes me happy. Truth be told, my main complaint with VSCode and atom isn't really the non-native performance of Electron, but all the effort required to tweak, configure, keep plugins updated, replace outdated plugins with the latest and greatest, etc. Seems to be a microcosm of the entire front end tool chain these days. (First it was npm, then yarn, then back to npm; jasmine, no jest, now karma; LESS, SASS, postCSS; Babel, no webpack, what about parcel; etc.)

Even though my current work is all Vue and Angular, with a backend that's little more than a REST facade for MongoDB, I still find Coda to be the best development environment available, and I continue to use it all day every day. Considering how strongly Coda was originally tied to the then-dominant LAMP stack, I think that's a pretty strong testament to the product. (Or perhaps just a testament to my stubbornness.)

I won't buy the next version of Coda sight unseen, but it's hard to imagine what Panic might do that would keep them separated from my money.

<comment><USER7> What are you talking about? What tweaking? You just install extensions and they'll auto update. You only need to configure things when you don't like the default behavior. I haven't touched my VSCode configuration in ages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Figma has killed the whole 'native mac' benefit in my head. It runs faster than native competitor Sketch, and it does it on any platform, in a browser. Would be amazing to have that kind of portability in a dev environment. But I'm interested to see what they've come up with!

<comment><USER9> 100% agree, I would to see a Figma for code.

<comment><USER10> People already have VS Code running in the browser, so I don't think it's a stretch to see official support (or a fork) for highly responsive editing in the browser.

<comment><USER9> I meant using Web Assembly, not just web technologies: [https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load- time-...](https://www.figma.com/blog/webassembly-cut-figmas-load-time-by-3x/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's hard to take them seriously when they make claims like this:

> Twelve years ago we introduced Coda, the world's first web development > editor.

It's hard to come up a charitable definition of 'web development editor' (inbuilt css editor? browser preview?) that wouldn't likely cover Dreamweaver.

<comment><USER12> IIRC The first web browser (Mosaic) was able to edit websites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The hardest part will be keeping up with the rapid clip of today's web without the backing of an open source community writing extensions in JS itself. Supporting the babels, TypeScripts, and Flows of the world as they pop up with only an in-house team will be difficult.

<comment><USER14> They mention they're not trying to be the biggest code editor, and I think they have a fighting chance against Webstorm.

Also they can create a plugin system similar to Sketchapp that exposes a JavaScript API.

<comment><USER15> How can you have a chance against WebStorm by not being the biggest editor?

WebStorm _is_ IntelliJ Idea. It's a full IDE with capabilities beyond that of a simple code editor: code analysis (for multiple languages), smart refactoring (for multiple languages), extensive plugin support, an extensive range of support for anything from eslint configs to understanding things like "oh, it's an Angular app, let me help you connect all the pieces together", etc. etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I really liked Panic's products, but I really did not like their approach to dealing with a person they didn't like playing their video game (they used the copyright system to take down videos of a streamer playing their game, which is in my eyes a deep abuse of the copyright system).

I don't care for the person they targeted, but I care for the casual abuse of a system that is already hurting content creators.

<comment><USER17> > a deep abuse of the copyright system

Actually... [https://twitter.com/vanaman/status/906984704892477440](https://twitter.com/vanaman/status/906984704892477440)

<comment><USER18> Actually.. it's bullshit. If playing a game online infringes the game maker's copyrights, then playing a guitar online infringes the guitar maker's copyrights.

<comment><USER19> A guitar isn't a copyrighted work.

<comment><USER18> Its design surely is. Musical instrument making is part craft, part art.

<comment><USER20> Generally not, at least if it is produced in any quantity. Typically, they are protected by design patents and industrial design rights.

As an example, in Canada, if you produced less than 50 of an item like a guitar, you could copyright it. Basically this is intended to cover an artist making sculpture. If you are making it for utilitarian purposes to be widely distributed, you use the other methods in the law for protecting your designs.

<comment><USER12> How does that apply to music cd? More than 50 are made but still music conglomerates still abuse copyright.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm super excited by this announcement. Yes, I'm a Panic fanboy and have been since I first used Transmit over 15 years ago. I've long since moved away from Panic software – as the development process changed I didn't feel like their solutions were as relevant anymore. But that's what excites me about their announcement – they're admitting things have changed so much that an incremental release won't cut it, they have to go back to the drawing board. And when they do that, great things happen.

There's a lot of skepticism in the comments about the size of the undertaking and their ability to produce something significantly different in a crowded market. Isn't that what we all do to some degree? And I would argue they have a proven track record of doing that repeatedly (with some flops mixed in as well). Transmit didn't invent FTP interfaces, but the ease of use and speed were head and shoulders above the existing clients. They're getting some flack for their claims about Coda, but it really was a giant step forward over existing editors at the time.

One of the reasons I've always liked Panic is that they dog food their products and it shows. They have always been at the edge of web design and development (including the controversial margin on this page) and that comes from building and using an advanced toolset. Can't wait to see what comes next.

</comment><comment><USER22> > That's a fair question. Many of our competitors are free, and we really rely > on, well, revenue.

After a decade on Mac, I finally bought a Windows laptop. The think I miss most is the quality software. Apple users are willing to pay for software, so you have great apps like Scrivener, OmniFocus, Coda, etc. But the culture of "free" has overrun Windows, and for the most part, it's a disaster. There is no revenue potential in many areas of software, especially B2C software, and it shows in a lack of quality.

<comment><USER23> I also switched from Mac back to Windows recently, and am curious what you're missing.

Scrivener is available for Windows (though I use Hemingway.)

OmniFocus has many web-based alternatives...I use Trello, personally. (It's also a Windows app now!)

Coda -- well, there's Sublime Text, VS Code, or JetBrains' universe of IDEs.

This isn't a critique of what you said, by the way. I do think more info about what you're looking for would be great insight for the folks who read Hacker News -- some of whom might be willing to develop paid Windows apps if there's true demand in those areas.

<comment><USER22> Scrivener is a second class citizen on Windows (e.g. no version 3 yet.) The money is clearly on Mac.

There is really no good OmniFocus alternative on Windows. Most are too simple, or more focused on coordinating teams than having lots of tools for an individual juggling lots of things. E.g. Todoist (and many other web apps) doesn't have proper sub-tasks. Almost none has a proper review mode. MyLifeOrganized is really good, but it lacks the polish of OnniFocus. (Likely because it has a much smaller team than Omni, because Windows users aren't willing to pay.) Trello is great for what it does, but its calendar integration is an afterthought.

Stuff is a little better on the developer tool side, where there is still a willingness to pay for stuff like Jetbrains. VS Code though is a good example of how free products are worse (less features, Electron, etc.) than paid software (Visual Studio).

<comment><USER24> > Scrivener is a second class citizen on Windows (e.g. no version 3 yet.) The > money is clearly on Mac.

I wonder if they've ever published a breakdown on Mac vs. Windows users or if you're just making that up? They've stated they spend more on Windows development, although they evidently aren't getting enough out of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting that they chose to compete on Mac, instead of iPad, as they could have easily commanded the majority of the iOS market share. Coda had some of the best support for editing directly on remote servers, and this would fit the iPad usage model quite well.

<comment><USER26> There's already a Coda for iPad and iPhone.

<comment><USER27> iOS Coda is honestly, embarrassingly bad. It takes like 6 or 7 taps to start actually editing a document and it still doesn't sync files between devices. An app that is proud of how "native" it is doesn't support iCloud (or Dropbox, or any other syncing) in the year 2019.

<comment><USER26> I've used it for emergencies a few times, and you're right that it's a bit cumbersome to get going. But I've never had a problem with syncing between iPhone, iPad, iMac, and MacBook Air.

I'd also like it to use iCloud for sync. Panic explained a little bit about why it uses its own platform in a blog post I found recently, but it was kind of vague.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Not sure how they can claim with seriousness to have written the first editor for web development.

<comment><USER29> I thought this too. What about dreamweaver?

<comment><USER30> Did Dreamweaver support all stages of web development, including uploading to your server? I think that's what Panic is talking about here, how Coda was your one-stop shop for everything, including deploying your site.

<comment><USER26> My memory of Dreamweaver was that it didn't do databases or FTP.

It may have added those features later, but I only used it back when .shtml "sheetmetal" was the state of the art.

<comment><USER31> I consulted for clients in early 2000 that would use "publish" in Dreamweaver to FTP (and maybe even SFTP[1]) upload their site, from what I recall.

1: I don't remember whether it was FTP over TLS or SSH FTP. You might assume the former, but this was a very weird age for file uploads, and I remember being surprised more than once...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The real competition may be WebStorm.

<comment><USER33> I'm very partial to JetBrains IDEs. To me it's either a great IDE like the JetBrains products or a great text editor like emacs or vim. I never really understood the folks moving from TextMate to Sublime, to Atom and as of late VSCode.

Is it really the low barrier of entry that comes with free and low learning curve? We spend so much time as professional developers with these tools that dropping a few bucks on a IDE or spending some time developing good vim or emacs skills seems like a obvious investment. These lighter editors seem like a low investment, low return choice.

<comment><USER34> I don't think low learning curve has much to do with it (for most of us). I also don't think these light editors are 'low investment, low return' choices.

It's all part of a continuum. With Emacs often more on the side of IDEs, and Sublime more on the side of text editors.

For me and many others, text editors have been preferable over IDEs for all sorts of reasons, but we do like a lot of the features that IDEs offer. To some extent that's been solvable through plugins, but for many VSCode in particular hits the sweet spot of being a text editor that has a bunch of IDE- like features as first-class citizens on top of the many extensions available.

The success of VSCode really highlights why these 'light editors' are so popular, I think. Unlike IDEs, it doesn't offer you every possible feature under the sun in a confusing, often slow package and interface. But unlike Vim/Sublime/Emacs, it _does_ offer sensible defaults, and well-integrated 'core' plugins that most developers will want anyways. And through various plugins we get vim keybindings and many of the other features of IDEs too.

It's a bit like the framework/library discussion. The best approach is usually "it depends", but in my experience, for my editor needs, a minimal framework is the sweet spot. I don't want Rails, but I also don't want Express.js.

(I really want Phoenix, actually, but that's not relevant)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I applaud a new commercial application bringing competition to the editor field. But does anyone else think that building exclusively for Mac is a risky strategy? I'm a diehard Apple user and hope I never have to compute in an era when Apple still isn't producing Macs. But even I see the writing on the wall that Windows is becoming more and more developer-friendly, with VS Code and cross-platform Sublime vastly reducing the friction in moving from MacOS to Windows. Even if the new Coda was heads above the pack, I would be very reluctant to put money and learning/muscle-memory time into a new app that could easily go the way of Textmate after a couple of years.

<comment><AUTHOR> Walk into any coffee shop in America and you'll see every hacker inside using a Mac. One or two odd ducks will have some kind of nix ultrabook setup. Even here in SoCal you can go into a Philz and see 5 people coding on a Mac w/ VS Code and Slack open at some time or another.

So I don't think targeting macOS is by any means a bad idea. Based on the echo chamber that is HN you'd think everyone was jumping ship to Surface tablets and WSL but it's really not as common as you think.

<comment><USER36> > Walk into any coffee shop in America

I consider Dunkin Donuts a coffee shop, which drastically changes this picture.

<comment><USER37> I concur. Though anecdotal I catch a buddy of mine frequently when I drop by Dunkin in a rush and he usually is on a windows laptop watching some esport or getting in some MMO time before work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> "First web development editor" \- not by a long shot!

</comment><comment><USER39> I actually loved Coda back in the day. One of my coworkers still uses it a lot, but his entire workfow depends on editing code on smallish production sites via (S)FTP. I find that approach fatally flawed for modern front-end and/or not-so-small projects. I really wouldn't go back from my Webpack + Production CI/CD to editing live websites. Many of the performance improvements needed to achieve very fast websites these days depend on tasks that belong more to the CI/CD than to your local development environment. For instance the generation of critical CSS and webpack's production build, which is slower if it includes the JS and CSS optimizations. Finally, a deterministic (or as much as possible) process to upload the changes to production. I find Sublime Text better as an editor for that kind of front-end workflow and there's quite some good extensions I've favored throughout the years that don't exist in Coda. I'm curious and optimistic about this new Panic editor, let's see how it goes!

</comment><comment><USER40> I enjoyed Panic's polished applications since way back when but the way they simply drop paid for apps with an existing userbase due to "lack of revenue" (Status Board [1], Transmit on iOS [2], Unison [3] and Audion [4]) really left a sour taste in my mouth.

Transmit for iOS was a particularly big loss for me, so much so that I personally am going out of my way to avoid their products.

[1] [https://panic.com/blog/the-future-of-status- board/](https://panic.com/blog/the-future-of-status-board/)

[2] [https://panic.com/blog/the-future-of-transmit- ios/](https://panic.com/blog/the-future-of-transmit-ios/)

[3] [https://panic.com/blog/the-future-of-unison/](https://panic.com/blog/the- future-of-unison/)

[4] [https://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/](https://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/)

<comment><USER41> They also pulled original Prompt from the AppStore because, apparently, it completely impossible to rebuild it for the x64 target.

"Luckily" it was replaced by Prompt 2 that was basically the same thing slightly improved (but "rebuild from the ground up" for reasons unknown) that you had to buy afresh.

That was not nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Definitely looking forward to the release. Love Sublime and VSCode. But both still miss something.

<comment><USER43> Care to elaborate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I will buy it on day one.

</comment><comment><USER45> Love the syntax highlighting theme in the screenshot. Anybody know what it is called?

<comment><USER46> looks like material ui colos

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Reading between the lines, looks like they were paid for the name?

> And then, incredibly, a new Coda arrived on the scene — a reimagined > document at coda.io — and we reached an agreement to let them have the name.

And the email newsletter has a strong "last chance to buy" call to action so maybe there's a time limit on how much they can market around it?

Not saying this like it's a bad thing: a new name makes good strategic sense. If it also makes commercial sense because, so much the better.

Here's the new Coda name-holders: [https://coda.io/](https://coda.io/)

<comment><USER48> I've never heard of them before (coda.io). Seems like they raised a lot of money [0] and are generally competing in the space of airtable [1]. More surprising, coda.io is still free and has no pricing [2]. I get that they are in land grab, but I would be afraid to put my work on a platform that can come out anytime and charge essentially any sum of money.

[0] [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/coda- add7](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/coda-add7)

[1] [https://airtable.com](https://airtable.com)

[2] [https://help.coda.io/faq/pricing-for- coda](https://help.coda.io/faq/pricing-for-coda)

<comment><USER34> Not to mention that the lock-in is much bigger with Coda.io than it is with Airtable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> If my memory is correct, wasn't Microsoft Frontpage old when something like Coda appeared? Given I do not know what Coda is as compared to another all in one app for web development..

<comment><USER50> It was, as was Dreamweaver. Their point may be that those were WYSIWYG editors primarily, whereas Coda was a more pure "editor".

<comment><USER51> HomeSite and CF Studio where both more text based 'IDEs' and also predate Coda by a decade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Scrolling down that page seriously made me feel dizzy and nauseated.

<comment><USER53> I loved it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I've never heard of Panic. I've never heard of Coda. I don't develop on a Mac and I'll likely never be in their target audience.

But reading this product announcement gave me a real feeling for the genuine care and quality that these people put into their work that I'm curious enough to figure out a way to try their product. As banal as another editor might seem to some, the care of craftsmanship that this post exudes is refreshing.

<comment><USER43> The post feels good because it is mostly just smoke and mirrors. They're talking about a lot of problems and offering no products or solutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Coda was my primary editor up until around 2011 when I switched to Sublime Text. The built in FTP/SFTP transfers was a really big time saver and key feature. Things have changed quite a bit since then in the editor landscape, curious to see what comes.

I primary do DevOps today, and I think if their new editor implemented some DevOpsy features could be huge selling point. Remote SSH and running commands, terminal integration, git integration.

<comment><USER56> Ssh, terminal, git integration etc sounds precisely like what vscode offers to me.

Good luck to them, but I don't think vscode is doing well because it is free. It is genuinely a very good editor.

<comment><USER57> VSCode is a good editor, but it's very much in the JS-camp of stuff sort of works once you've fought through configuration and dug through SO.

Also it's manifestly un-Mac-like in noticeable ways. For example it's hard to know if I've saved a file, because Command-S doesn't highlight the menubar, no matter how many times I press it. Basic Mac features, MIA.

I'm ready for something that just works, so you'll find me camping outside Panic's digital store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> VS Code has some good features and rapid iteration but it is slow. Slow to start, slow to render pages when you switch tabs.

Sublime Text may not have BBedits ability with massive files but for 99% of the time it is lightning quick and rock solid.

As such, I think a natively coded Mac editor could nail the requisite speed but also enjoy some novel features beyond the spartan default environment of Sublime.

I'm looking forward to it.

</comment><comment><USER59> Until an editor starts integrating some of the features of aneditor that Gary Bernhardt talks about here[0] I won't believe any talk of a "new" or "next step" editor.

0: [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/a-whole-new- world](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/a-whole-new-world)

<comment><USER60> Nice, but I think I can raise you. That talk mostly seemed pretty predictable (though I incorrectly guessed gfx via sixels[0], not a(nother) terminal emulator). If your interest _was_ piqued with that parent video though, prepare to have your mind blown with this[1], who's thesis maybe similar in the sense of "stop _just_ simply working". Bernhardt seems to be saying don't be afraid to take time and think deeply and "go deep", while Victor is explicitly saying make it count by way of targeting with intention what's important to you. A sort of "fight the good fight."

[0] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixel](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixel)

[1] [https://youtu.be/PUv66718DII?t=625](https://youtu.be/PUv66718DII?t=625)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Happy to hear from Panic about this. I used to use Coda all the time and loved it. I can't be sure that I will switch to using whatever this new thing is, but I'm confident that it will be lovely, as nearly everything Panic makes.

Somehow the letter feels very defensive, like someone accused them of being hopelessly behind and having no chance to ever be relevant again.

</comment><comment><USER62> I'm really curious to see how they will compete with VSCode. I hope they'll let us make plugins for it.

<comment><USER63> I believe it was possible for Coda, so optimistically I would hope so.

<comment><USER64> Coda does support plugins. (So I hope Thing After Code does, too!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Using Coda since 1.0 all day every day. 'Next' also looks great.

</comment><comment><USER66> Doubling down on a mac only editor seems super weird. At a time when Apples actions seem like they are de-prioritizing the line, Panic are going all in?

It would seem a better investment to make the go to IDE-y thing on iPad Pro.

<comment><USER67> Panic's experiences on iOS have been somewhat unsatisfying: [https://panic.com/blog/the-future-of-transmit- ios/](https://panic.com/blog/the-future-of-transmit-ios/)

It seems that (at least up to January 2018) the market for (relatively expensive) pro apps on iPad is just too small.

<comment><USER68> Depends on the pro apps.

In the age of iCloud, Dropbox, and 200 other services and alternative ways to move stuff, why would one want to use a FTP client (like the Transmit above) on the iPad?

The market for FTP clients is small enough on the desktop...

(Heck, I'm a developer, I have a Transmit license since 2006 or so, I work with dozens of remote machines, and seldom ever use it. It's either sftp on the command line, or something like an Ansible wrapper etc).

<comment><USER69> Transmit on iOS is not only a FTP client and I never used it for that. The integration into the iOS share sheet with SSH file transfer support is perfect for me and I use this all the time. Are there any reliable alternatives that are still actively developed?

<comment><USER68> Yeah, I know, I have a license for it on OS X. It also does SCP/SFTP/S3 and others. But in the end it's still a pretty limited offering, for special cases (geeks wanting to use the iPad for administration or development, for example).

Not the kind of mass market app the general iPad users would buy en masse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> I'll tip my hat to Panic for the humility and respect towards existing Coda users by going with a new name. I'm not sure how many those amount to today, but it's a kind gesture.

</comment><comment><USER71> transmit gang

</comment><comment><USER72> Very excited about this. Let's see if they can beat Sublime :)

</comment><comment><USER73> Sooo, native apps are `hyper responsive` these days, made me LOL.

</comment><comment><USER74> One question: Is there any way to drop a file in the project, when clicking it, the editor will open new tab, which is the terminal ?

I'm using VScode, i don't know if there's an extension for that yet.

<comment><USER43> I don't understand the question or its relevance to the post. What are you trying to do?

<comment><USER74> I want to open new editor tab as a normal terminal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Hopefully they will support the LSP.

</comment><comment><USER76> Even if I don't plan on using this anytime soon, competition is always welcome.

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm sure their products are great, but what kind of hubris and/or complete lack of historical perspective do you have to have to write this with a straight face:

"Twelve years ago we introduced Coda, the world's first web development editor. It put the tools you needed to make a web page together in one app, and nobody had ever done that before."

</comment><comment><USER77> Am I the only one who is made extremely uncomfortable by the bizarre diagonal margins on the linked page?

<comment><USER78> Haha, it's a little skewed.

        section {
          transform: skew(-2deg);
        }

<comment><USER79> Clever with the <section>'s gradient border-image. I love collecting these sorts of stylish landing page gimmicks.

<comment><USER80> Do you have a link to some more?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Yes please! Let's drop this electron crap once and for all.

<comment><USER82> I'm not a developer but I use an advanced text editor (Notepad++ on Windows, Geany on everything else) for the little bit of webdev I have to do at work and on side jobs. I've tried every Electron based editor out there, for all the major platforms, and they are always so damn slow and unresponsive compared to a native app.

<comment><USER83> Same here. And yet, nobody I've worked with over the past 2 years feels Electron based editors are slow or unresponsive. I'm not just talking about kids who have never used anything else, either. Some of these people have been programming since the 80s.

It's like some people are sensitive to latency and some aren't.

I've also been told it's impossible to tell the difference between 60hz and 144hz. I can tell. I know this for a fact because my hackintosh will occasionally "forget" and switch my monitor back to 60hz when I wake it up from sleep. I notice immediately.

<comment><USER82> I'll admit I feel the difference more on my work machine (i5-2400, Windows 7) than my home workstations (i5-6500, Antergos Linux and Slackware Linux). It's definitely there though. Slack is another offender; we use it at work and our few remaining Core 2 machines and AMD A10 machines are brought to their knees with the Slack Electron app. Those users tend to launch it in a Chrome or Firefox window and leave that running.

I can also pick up on different refresh rates, and I was extremely sensitive to it on CRTs back in the 90s and early 2000s. I had to run at least 75Hz on a CRT or I'd have too much "shimmy" in the image and would get a headache in a few minutes of work. 60Hz on an LCD doesn't typically bother me unless its grey-to-grey response time is poor, and produces ghosting. Even with that I don't seem to get headaches from LCDs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple begins buying carbon-neutral aluminum - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-aluminum/apple-buys-first-ever-carbon-free-aluminum-from-alcoa-rio-tinto-venture-idUSKBN1Y91RQ <comment><USER2> Not such a big deal.

Aluminum is made with carbon-free energy in Canada where they have huge hydroelectric dams.

When I think about high-tech electrodes, however, I wonder if the Aluminum- style production process could be extended to Titanium and some similar metals.</comment>