Vesper, Adieu - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2016/08/vesper_adieu <comment><USER3> This latest shutdown inspired me to write a blog post in response[1] when I first heard about it. Although the reaction is understandable, it's a shame that developers feel compelled to adopt a scorched earth policy when they no longer wish to (or are no longer able to) support their products. These indie apps are often marketed as beautiful, wholesome alternatives to grimy corporate or open source software, but how could I possibly rely on these products for essential tasks like note-taking if they're just going to disappear out from under me in a few years? The idea that software has a lifespan controlled by the developer is, in my opinion, toxic to the market. It's just one of the many things pulling the App Store down, and one of the many downsides of living in a walled garden.

As time goes on, and as I see more and more apps simply disappear off the face of the Earth when developers deem them no longer worthy of their time, I find myself switching over to software that's either backed by large corporations or open sourced, regardless of how clunky it might be compared to "designer" alternatives. My hope is that we soon find a way to collectively monetize the latter. It's simply awful that an app can just "pop" and take so many years of developer and user time with it.

(None of the above is meant to blame Vesper or even comment on the sustainability of the app economy. It's just my sad reaction as a user and, um, app enthusiast. And props to Gruber for the introspective and humble post- mortem.)

[1]: [http://beta-blog.archagon.net/2016/08/21/tool-reliance/](http://beta- blog.archagon.net/2016/08/21/tool-reliance/)

<comment><USER4> They should open-source the backend (and hell, the front-end, too). That way you could self-host, or someone else can provide hosting.

<comment><USER5> This. I'm surprised this is the only comment on here suggesting this. It's the most obvious way to gracefully sunset an app.

"This isn't making us any money, it's costing us money to maintain. If you still depend on it, here's the tools that will allow you to continue to depend on it"

<comment><USER6> They'd need to continue paying for their font license.

"The biggest factor is that we have recurring costs: the sync server and the licensing fees for Ideal Sans, Vesper's typeface."

They'd need to continue paying for their font license.

<comment><USER7> The font is not cheap either*. When you can barely get people to pay $0.99 for a industry leading app, how on earth can you justify paying so much $$ for a font. I mean switch to the closest google / open source version and call it good enough.

[1] [http://www.typography.com/fonts/ideal- sans/overview/](http://www.typography.com/fonts/ideal-sans/overview/)

<comment><USER8> It's $300/year from what I can see. Not free, but if you think it's a valuable part of your design, a small cost, unless you just don't have a viable business in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The whole pricing/platform debate seems like a red herring.

> _Brent took a job at the excellent Omni Group in September 2014, and from > that point onward the writing was on the wall. We could have, and probably > should have, shut Vesper down a year ago. But we loved it too much. Or at > least I did._

> _I even cheat, personally, and run Vesper on my Mac in the iOS Simulator_

1\. There was only one developer in the company.

2\. That developer got a day job (quit).

3\. Gruber and the musician partner are stranded with an app they can't update and a Mac app they can't finish on their own.

Gruber clearly loves Vesper. He runs it in the freaking simulator. I really doubt _he_ needed to see huge financial returns to keep at it.

It sounds like the real lesson is: It sucks when your technical cofounder quits.

<comment><USER10> For a guy who opines all day about Apple, the fact that he can't maintain a pretty simple iOS app is telling. If you really care about the app and your users, you read the damn docs and get to work. I taught myself in less than six months, and my app is free. Although I don't have much time, I still keep it running out of respect for my 50 thousand or so users.

This especially annoys me after their enfillade of blog posts about best practices for UI and pricing of Vesper.

<comment><USER11> This is true, but I was glad to see Gruber put his money where his mouth is and spend some time in an app developer's shoes.

<comment><USER12> But did he really? Did he have a development role in Vesper? Or was it just project manager-ish?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I made the jump to smartphones late, and I've always used Android, so I missed out on a lot of what iPhones bring to the table. However, I have owned an iPad mini since 2013, and got a few games and (vaguely) 'productivity' apps for it, all free ( _EDIT: nevermind, I paid for Angry Birds_ )

But reading contemporary accounts of what Vesper was [1][2], it sounds a _lot_ like yet-another-notetaking app, like Evernote, and lately, Google Keep, albeit one with nice typography and pleasant UX. I sympathize that the price pressure on mobile apps is intense, but could it be that it just didn't offer a compelling enough value, or differentiation from better-known competitors? Perhaps the question is, is there truly space for a dozen different apps that on the surface appear to do the same thing?

[1] [https://www.macstories.net/reviews/vesper-review-collect- you...](https://www.macstories.net/reviews/vesper-review-collect-your- thoughts/)

[2] [http://drippler.com/drip/best-note-taking-apps-iphone-and- ip...](http://drippler.com/drip/best-note-taking-apps-iphone-and-ipad- evernote-drafts-vesper-and-more)

<comment><USER14> Agree 100%. I use the built-in Notes app on iOS with no problem. And it has a macOS app. Gruber is overthinking it -- his app simply wasn't compelling.

<comment><USER15> Keeping in mind, when Vesper was originally released, Notes was pretty kludgey, but it was dramatically improved. So, I halfways agree with you - Vesper became _less_ compelling after Notes got it's major rework.

I still use Vesper as my preferred "really quick" note/scratchpad taking client, even though I'm an Evernote Plus subscriber, and basically run my entire life off that App.

I think that's the major problem for Vesper - the top end of note-taking is owned by tools like OneNote/Evernote, and Vesper was never going to be able to compete in that market. People are happy to pay $30-$60/year for a world class, secure, multi-platform note taking app, but probably not willing to pay that much for a scratch-pad note taking app, when the built in one is free, and syncs well across platforms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Stuff like this is why I try to avoid apps that operate their own syncing services. If Vesper had used some kind of file format you could just keep in your Dropbox, and used that for syncing, all the developers would need to do is stop paying for the proprietary font in order to have zero operating costs.

Obviously you can't avoid all problems this way (Apple and Google and Dropbox sometimes change their APIs, or discontinue them, e.g. Google Reader), but it goes a long way to building confidence that even if the company fails, people can continue to use the app.

<comment><USER17> So what would be a good way for me to implement sync nowadays if I also want to have a web app?

<comment><USER16> You could use the Dropbox API with oauth. The same files in Dropbox can be used to sync the web API, phone apps, and desktop apps.

You could also roll your own solution with S3 or something like that. The point is that you will be using fairly common and popular services which aren't likely to go away anytime soon, and aren't operated and maintained by yourself.

You could also take the approach 1Password does: operate your own sync service, but allow users to use Dropbox or iCloud instead. The onus is on them to make sure the files are in the right places, but they effectively have total control over the files, which a lot of people like.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Ultimately, what we should have done once we had versions of the app for > both Mac and iOS is switch to a subscription model. Make the apps free > downloads on all platforms, and charge somewhere around $15/year for sync > accounts. That's where the industry is going.

I'm not sure how realistic it is to expect users to pay a subscription fee for productivity apps like this. There's been a ton of backlash whenever developers, even small ones, announce subscription pricing (see 1Password[1] and Pushbullet[2]). I get the impression users are starting to feel nickel and dimed every time one of the apps they use switches over to a subscription model and they start looking for alternatives instead of being willing to pay the subscription cost. Simultaneously, obviously maintaining a sync service has a recurring cost and there needs to be a way for the developer to cover those costs, otherwise you end up in this situation where you simply have to shut down.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/4vziyr/1password_lau...](https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/4vziyr/1password_launches_3mo_subscription_w_web_access/)

[2] [https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/3t5mrb/pushbullet_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/3t5mrb/pushbullet_pro_499mo_or_3999year/)

<comment><USER15> Evernote does well, because it offers ongoing value for that subscription fee. That's the key - are you offering a lot of value? If so, then subscription fees are fine. If not, then you feel like you are being nickle and dimed. Other obvious candidates (some of which don't charge) for valuable subscription are Economist, NYT, WSJ, gmail, whatsapp.

And then there is that third class of App, the ones where subscriptions don't offer much value, but honestly, we use the apps so often, we're happy to pay to support them (Overcast, Tweetbot, MyFitnessPal are ones I would put in this class)

<comment><USER19> I'm not sure Evernote is actually doing that well. I find their product useful but they did lay off about 20% of their workforce and closed 3 of their offices.

They're also facing stiffer competition from Microsoft with OneNote and this year's Evernote importers for both Windows and Mac they released which seems to be quite popular, which they might've made worse themselves by clamping down so much on their free users and the relatively limited data quota's on any of their subscriptions. 6$ a month is a lot of money, for barely 3$ more I can get a full Office 365 subscription including a truck ton of Skype credits and a TB of storage with OneNote providing a fair amount of the functionality Evernote provides. I wonder how long people will continue to be willing to pay for it, especially considering it doesn't seem to be evolving much as a product.

<comment><USER15> The people that I know who use Evernote, basically use it for _everything_ \- Taxes, Accounting, Receipts, Note Taking, Journaling. For those people, $72 a year is nothing. It would be nice to see a bit more development in the product, but in the core of the product -things like searching.

Agreed that Office 365 is a serious competitor to Evernote, but the existing dedicated customer base of Evernote is unlikely to go anywhere. Kind of like those people who paid AOL dialup fee's for 10 years after the Internet came online.

Exit might be to just sell off the business/customer base to Microsoft, and have them all folded into Office 365 - until then, I'm happy with what they offer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _In hindsight, I am now convinced this plan was fundamentally flawed. The market for paid productivity apps for iOS is simply too difficult._

When even a stalwart Apple partisan like Gruber will concede this you know things have gone horribly wrong in the iOS app market. The bulk of the blame here lies with Apple and their stewardship of the app store. They can push the iPad as real productivity device all they want but until they do something to make selling anything but games on the appstore worthwhile they're wasting their time.

<comment><USER21> Is it really just the iOS App Store though? People expect everything to be free nowadays: news, email, productivity apps like Google Docs, games. Don't think you can pin this problem on Apple.

<comment><USER22>
        > People expect everything to be free nowadays

It's less that I expect things to be free, au contraire. It's more that it's exasperating to have all these many, many minor services that most of the time are not vital to me each ask for money individually.

Imagine you were sold a car not as one, but piece by piece. Need a steering wheel with that? A seat belt? Another seat belt? Oh you need a rear bench too? Another tire, maybe? A few more screws? Brake light too? Or the OS: Would you pay for calc.exe? For the file explorer? The desktop manager?

To me the main problem is that there are way too many minor pieces instead of a whole.

How about - and this is wishful thinking since it would require several big companies to work together, individually it would not help much - if there was ONE big service subscription, let's say $199 annually, and I can use _everything_ (apart from enterprise stuff, that's more). Every piece of software - and also media! - out there. The system checks what I use and how much and distributes the money to the people who made the software and the media.

What those people who think "capitalism!" forget is that the whole process of _purchasing_ is heavily loaded, psychologically. The more individual purchasing decisions, the more you cut it into pieces, the less people buy. The paradox of choice. Decisions decisions! So many more options to make the wrong one! You cannot make the decisions more and more numerous and expect humans to follow into the "perfect market society". "Buying" has a price in addition to the money.

The current system favors those who can offer larger packages. If we had a system and organization who could organize for everyone getting paid from a lump sum and remove the psychological obstacle), this would greatly reduce the disadvantages of smaller players and lead to a much more even playing field. So having a "government" and a "tax" would actually be _good_ market capitalism. The decision would not be "do I buy this" but "do I _use_ this" (but with payment!).

This is especially for things that are not essential, when having to make the decision may (and does) prevent a sale. Since we _do_ have a lot of free alternatives this is what most people turn to.

When it comes to news there's an additional problem: Who reads just one news source? I read very few articles per newspaper, but a lot across many very different sources. There is no payment model for that even if I wanted to.

.

I first came up with the idea while thinking about how open source projects could be paid. An additional thought is that this increases "market activity" by lowering the entry requirements: No need for a full business organisation, pure developers don't need to become (as) business savvy. If they can assure there stuff gets _used_ that automatically leads to income. Also an opportunity to ensure successful projects don't stop, because there is a stream of income associated with heavily used projects - and that without a sales and marketing department. Now this is really just a very rough thought, I saw no use in refining it since I can't make it happen anyway.

Imagine github had a payment model. In this case it wouldn't be so much for "use" as for "support". Imagine people pay a lump sum for library support, and money gets distributed to people creating code and patches and answering support questions. Something that won't ever happen except on a tiny scale driven by very few people when people have to give voluntary contributions to individual projects, the threshold is just too high. This includes merely _knowing_ that the threshold is high, it's self-reinforcing: You know that library doesn't make the developer any money, so you know unless it's a really big package picked up by industry and supported by thousands of people it will probably die within a year even if it looks good and is good quality.

Now going wild (me and my ideas):

I think if we want more _capitalism_ we need to make the entrance easier. Selling something is HARD these days. I say "these days" because I don't think it was so hard 50 years ago when there was less stuff (and more optimism among the populace too?). If basic income is too controversial, how about starting small with such a project? It has the advantage that following this proposal you know that people receiving money actually _did_ something useful, and it would get people paid who today go without, and it would benefit individuals much more than corporations.

I think we need something _big_ , keeping capitalism but tweaking some of the basics for the changed environment we live in. We need to keep incentives to "do something". I see more chances for this to both be accepted and to actually succeed compared to universal basic income.

<comment><USER23> > How about - and this is wishful thinking since it would require several big > companies to work together, individually it would not help much - if there > was ONE big service subscription, let's say $199 annually, and I can use > everything (apart from enterprise stuff, that's more). Every piece of > software - and also media! - out there. The system checks what I use and how > much and distributes the money to the people who made the software and the > media.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your point, but there is some irony in suggesting bundling app services together when the HN crowd (me included) is so vehemently opposed to bundling in other media, e.g - cable television.

<comment><USER22> The bundling you are talking about is to create an oligopoly - bundle some things to the exclusion of all others. I think that's very different to my idea. It's something else.

Bundling is more top-down, this is more bottom-up. Bundling is decided by "politics", and this is what you get. In my scenario everything ("the whole world") is included, it is not just a bundle made by someone. And there is raw competition below that layer: People's actual usage determines who gets paid. This also avoids the issue of market distortion (and therefore wrong signaling) of software and/or content that is paid for but not actually used (recent headline: 37% of Steam games that were purchased were never played).

Traditional bundling takes away control, my suggestion is supposed to actually give us _more_ market, at least in _my_ obviously limited and individual mind.

One thing that needs heavy thought and tweaking is the level of granularity. Looking at the two extreme ends:

\- World government, all income goes to it and underneath is that proposal. ( _It would not be "communism" though - money is still there and distributed depending on use._)

\- The other extreme: You buy everything piecemeal, even more decisions as today, see care example. Both are obviously extreme.

The optimum is not "somewhere in the middle", it's n-dimensional space, not a linear one.

<comment><USER23> It's hard to counter what you're saying because you keep editing your comment :) There was even something about Universal Income for a while there! (edit - sorry - I may be getting confused with your parent comment which mentions it)

Suffice to say, whether you're suggesting bundling (a la cable), or now something that seems more like Spotify (revenue share depending on usage), be aware that a market, by definition, will be driven by market forces, and every player will act in their own best interests. You can try very hard to make it very egalitarian with regulations, but the power players will always come out on top.

<comment><USER22> I only _added_ , I didn't remove anything. The UBI stuff still is there - <USER2> the top comment. Note that I'm not voting for or against it, I merely mention it for comparison. I also clearly mark that section:

        > Now going wild (me and my ideas):

You write:

        > now something that seems more like Spotify

No it doesn't. What I speak of _does not exist_.

As for your second paragraph, I have no idea what possible connection those trite generalities have with anything I wrote. It seems to me you just like being argumentative, or you like reading into other people's ideas. I don't have the feeling that your response is a response _to me_ \- but to what happened in _your own head_ when you read my comments.

        > egalitarian

This supports my suspicion that you actually respond to yourself, i.e. to the interpretation in your head, instead of my comment. "Egalitarian" isn't part of my comment or idea.

<comment><USER23> My apologies. I was just trying to understand your point. I've obviously failed. Let's move on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Vesper had one market - Daring Fireball readers.

Ultimately the only people who can differentiate between "Generic Notes App #138" and Vesper, are people who have been trained to care about details that most people don't care about, and that's a very small market. Most people care far more about the fact that an app syncs to Dropbox, or lets you set a background picture, than one that animates screen transitions in exactly the right way.

I'm sad to see another indie Apple-ecosystem developer close down, but I saw this coming as soon as Vesper was announced, and I'm not in the least bit surprised. Unfortunately too many of the Mac/iOS old-school community go for the "I know best" \+ waterfall development approach, rather than trying to figure out the product-market fit. I say this as someone who has worked in both an old-school Mac OS company, and startups who have been far more agile.

That's what you get when your app design/development philosophy is based on Steve Jobs.

<comment><USER25> This is one of the most annoying things about the Apple ecosystem. People have heard that Steve Jobs was proven to know better than everyone most of the time. They've heard that Jobs didn't care what was popular, he _just knew_ what people would like before they even realized it. Apple fanboys like to fancy themselves similarly.

I don't think the myth was true for Jobs and I definitely don't think it's true for Random Apple Fanboy #2,764,241 (and yes, John Gruber is included in this, though his number may be slightly lower).

It's really irritating when developers approach their audience as sheep to be led rather than customers to be pleased.

<comment><USER24> I wouldn't say that Gruber et. al treat their users as sheep, I think Jobs was infamous for taking it 'too far'. I think it's just that the level of thinking about design that Apple puts into things is neither necessary nor sufficient for a successful product, but it is treated as such by the old-school Apple developer community.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Pardon me while I go off on a bit of a rant. I've played with Vesper and it is a fine app. It is also the perfect example of the power of the web.

There isn't anything that Vesper is doing that can't be done on the web. You could even write Vesper as a single-page app, and use a ServiceWorker with Firebase or PouchDB or whatever to run the sync. The infrastructure to do all this is very, very easy to do on the web.

This is not rocket science-- this is how far the web has come in a very short time. The UI could absolutely be the same as the iOS native app and while you might have a bit of scrolling hesitation on the interface, it would be perfectly accessible.

Suddenly you're on every mobile device, Android, iOS, iPad, desktop, whatever. The absolute hardest and most time-consuming endeavor would be to get the Stripe account set up for the one-time "in-app" payment to get sync working.

John and Brent and Dave made a fine app in 2012, but I would certainly hope that the next Vesper starts out life as a web app.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, I don't think I've ever used a web app that feels anywhere as good as a native app. You can feel it in every interaction.

You say "a bit of scrolling hesitation". I say that... and janky button taps... and broken back/forward navigation... and browser chrome always getting in the way... and random divs constantly getting selected along with text... and mistakenly-tapped links taking me who-knows-where... etc. Plus: if the developer decides to shut down their web app, it's actually _done_ , forever, with no recourse.

<comment><USER26> What you're seeing are apps that aren't optimized for mobile. Once you start moving application logic, network IO, and anything that doesn't involve the DOM off the main rendering thread via a cached ServiceWorker, mobile web app performance jumps by an order of magnitude.

Every single performance issue that you're talking about can be seen in native apps; check Twitter, for example, or Facebook. There is a definite lag there caused by the network sync being front-and-center. That's unavoidable, but for an app like Vesper where you're not looking at a huge data transfer, running the sync in the background is absolutely viable.

<comment><USER27> Your "very, very easy" proposal just got a little more complex. For instance, ServiceWorkers only work in Chrome and Firefox, which means no iOS support for your web app.

I currently work on a web app written with AngularJS and PouchDB. We're constantly facing issues that would have been easy to deal with in a native app.

I'd argue it's just as hard writing a good web app as writing a good native app. It's just a different set of challenges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm the sole developer of InstaPDF ([https://instapdf.com](https://instapdf.com)) and have been so for 4.5 years. It's a completly self funded project that I am working on in my spare time. Even then, my cost do not exceed $35 a month.

However the things I've learnt during building and maintaining it have been invaluable and helped me in so many other projects.

I don't get how running a sync server or adapting the product with in-app purchases would require too much time. When it is a labour of love and you still use it every day - why shut it down? Is he going to reverse his decision once it gets all the attention with the news of it shutting down? How can it cost so much when all it does is sync text? Why not hook into CloudKit for sync?

These are questions I would much rather prefer that he addressed

<comment><USER29> As mentioned elsewhere, the developer left. I think we developers tend to forget how seemingly simple things to us can be real barriers for others.

<comment><USER28> I don't think the developer left - he's a part owner. He wrote a whole blog series about sync. Here's his latest entry about Vesper: [http://inessential.com/2016/08/21/more_notes_on_vesper](http://inessential.com/2016/08/21/more_notes_on_vesper)

With all the effort going to export - he could have added CloudKit.

<comment><USER30> And here's the link with the complete series about syncing [http://inessential.com/vespersyncdiary](http://inessential.com/vespersyncdiary)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> >the sync server and the licensing fees for Ideal Sans, Vesper's typeface. We're losing money every month.

Okay, what's the cost/benefit for buying a custom font for an app? I'd never even have considered it as something I should do.

<comment><USER32> Honestly, I'm blown away that 1) people would pay monthly for a custom font and 2) that someone who loves their work so much would see their app close before scrapping the custom font to lower expenses in an effort to salvage the app.

I feel like this is a statement about iOS development in general; that perceived design is more important than the continued functionality of an app.

Or, maybe I'm just reading it wrong and the custom font was a one-time purchase.

<comment><USER33> _someone who loves their work so much would see their app close before scrapping the custom font to lower expenses in an effort to salvage the app._

I don't think that's strange at all. The look and feel of an app -- especially a simple tool like a notes app -- is a large part of what makes it valuable. There are many people who don't care, but they were never going to pay for an app in a category that has so many free alternatives. Those who are willing to pay are exactly the sort of customers who are delighted by the attention to detail that is exemplified by using a custom typeface.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There is a lot of price pressure on iOS apps, people expect them to be free or at least under $2. At that price you need to sell a lot of apps to make a profit, and probably very few apps reach that level. I've tried the opposite, selling a higher priced app and accepting the much lower sales numbers, and I think it has resulted in a better return than going low cost, but it's still not earning enough to grow. I do look at the prices that desktop apps get with envy, so maybe it is time to go back to that market? The idea about designing for mobile first though, that makes a lot of sense.

John mentions having to redesign for iOS 7, but the reality that there are many of these events that mean that you have to keep developing. New iOS versions, new screen sizes, WatchOS, (tvOS), new input methods, updating UI, all add up to quite a bit of work just to stand still feature wise.

I think the days of making money on the App Store are gone.

<comment><USER35> Price elasticity also depends a lot on the type of app and marketing. I've seen the sales numbers for an app where increasing the price from $0.99 to $1.99 and ultimately to $2.99 had corresponding drops in sales where the revenue was actually kept the same. This app is very popular through word-of- mouth and blog recommendations which is the key. If you're relying on sales through search results and rankings it might be more price-sensitive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Would you not build a web version first? I mean, you can use that on both a phone and a desktop.

While I'm reading this I can't help thinking that this is a great example of a bunch of developers who are more interested in building an iPhone app and are using a product idea as as excuse to do so.

But hey, if you don't try you certainly fail. I have been there too. Live and learn.

<comment><USER37> > Would you not build a web version first? I mean, you can use that on both a > phone and a desktop.

And provide an inferior experience on both. I'm just one user, but I would have been reluctant to buy it.

<comment><USER38> Agreed. I think the only web "app" I've bought, ever, is Pocket Casts' web version. (It was nine bucks and saves me a bunch of battery life--easy decision.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It is interesting to me how someone who is so knowledgable about Apple could make such basic mistakes about his own app strategy. Lots of people make apps that are not popular but Gruber is someone who has seen them all come and go and yet he built something that was just not compelling.

<comment><USER40> This project always felt to me like him wanting to prove that the App Store was still a place for the classic sort of high quality artisanal app you associate with the Jaguar to Leopard era of OS X (or the first 12 months or so of the App Store before it started the race to the bottom).

Think it's time for even die hard Apple fans to accept that the App Store is now the same low quality garbage dump of low income crapware that for many years they claimed the Android ecosystem was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Nice app, but he nails the issue with not having a desktop app. I guess mobile first cannot mean mobile only (yet?). Lots of other Markdown-enabled note taking apps that work with Dropbox that allow you to use one app on mobile and another on desktop. I like nvALT on desktop and Drafts or 1Writer on iOS.

</comment><comment><USER42> > In the pre-iOS 7 era, building an iPad app was like building a second app.

You know, it's funny Gruber was bitten on the arse by this when he was amongst the people who flung poo at Android on tablets for not forcing people to rewrite applications for the tablet form factor.

</comment><comment><USER43> Does it strike anyone else as weird that one of the two costs driving them out of business was the licensing costs of a font? Jeez man, I think good design is important too but make a compromise somewhere.

Also, fixed cost sales vs unbounded maintenance costs is just a doomed business model from the start.

<comment><USER44> It doesn't surprise me only because I've followed Gruber's blog over the years: he's a typography and font geek in the same way that many of us are tech geeks. The use of a licensed font was a design conceit on his part but hardly fatal at $300/yr. The ~$3,600/yr for servers seems pretty high for what they're doing, but again far from fatal. What likely doomed them was that the market of discerning customers is much smaller than they estimated (yes, even in the Apple ecosystem) combined with a large number of competitors (especially at the crucial price of 'free'.)

Expenses didn't drive them out of business, the lack of revenue did. Sure, they could have switched to a free/built-in font and saved $300 and maybe switched to a cheaper hosting provider and maybe saved $1-2k... then what? At best they're now keeping an additional $1-2k per year (split 3 ways), for now, from an app that they need to keep running on the platform and backend services to keep going 24x7... there's better ROI to be had working the drive through window at a local fast food restaurant.

Your point about one-time revenue vs. ongoing expenses is valid, but that can be fixed via new products / subscription pricing down the line. However, before that happened it sounds like they determined that they lacked the customer critical mass that would make it worth putting any more effort into it.

<comment><USER43> Yeah, I think that's what sat weirdly with me—the article felt like a 'it was bleeding me dry!' kind of thing, but I have a hard time seeing how that could be the case with those kinds of expenses. It feels more like a "this isn't fun anymore" kind of shutdown.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The author states "I'm a firm believer that you always need some good luck to succeed. We would have been luckier, timing-wise..."

This is probably not a good thing. Video by Louis Rossmann: "Believing in luck compromises the influence we have over our own life."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q6hpsGjcIo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q6hpsGjcIo)

<comment><USER33> I play poker, and if there is one thing poker has taught me, it's that success is almost always a mix of skill and luck. In the short term luck dominates skill. In the long term it's the other way around. The kicker is that bad luck in the short term can preclude the long term skill effect from kicking in, because if you go bust you can no longer compete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Is there really a market for a note-taking app, that cost $20 on the desktop?

That sounds quite difficult to market and sell, when there are many alternatives, like Evernote, or OneNote that are close to free.

<comment><USER40> The hope is the take advantage of his blogger presence to sell the idea of a well designed, trendy, premium to his audience.

I'd say a $20 desktop note taking app is an easier sell than a $10 iOS note taking app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I really like open source projects for certain things, especially these productivity apps that may bring their little twists and design flair but ultimately end up holding a ton of user data. I'm pretty sure Vesper users would love to be able to easily move their data to a less beautiful (bye Ideal Sans!) but still functional alternative right now, without a massive conversion/migration process.

I ran into this with todo.txt on Android. The flagship app ([https://github.com/ginatrapani/todo.txt- android](https://github.com/ginatrapani/todo.txt-android)) was basically abandoned, but it is open source and some time ago was forked into what became an active--and better--alternative ([https://github.com/mpcjanssen/simpletask- android](https://github.com/mpcjanssen/simpletask-android)).

</comment><comment><USER48> > The biggest factor is that we have recurring costs: the sync server and the > licensing fees for Ideal Sans, Vesper's typeface. We're losing money every > month.

The costs of running the server I can understand, but if the app had value then surely changing the font to a similar but free alternative would not have made customers stop using it?

</comment><comment><USER49> I find this part somewhat surprising: _" iOS 7 was introduced at WWDC 2013, just a few days after we shipped Vesper 1.0. [...] So we spent the summer of 2013 not building a sync system, but rather building an iOS 7 version of Vesper."_

Didn't they know, before the launch, the look-and-feel of iOS 7? I don't believe Apple would have launched iOS 7 without telling developers beforehand the changes required to make their apps compatible with the look-and-feel of iOS 7.

Disclaimer: I'm not an App developer (either iOS or Android). Please correct me if I'm wrong.

<comment><USER50> WWDC is the developer launch event, so that's the first time any non-apple developer would have seen the new UI.

It generally isn't released to the public until september-october ish.

<comment><USER40> Although to be fair it was just a visual refresh they honestly didn't have to redesign anything. They could have built the sync system then redesigned.

Rather than shipping then starting a rewrite just days later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "I can't prove that, of course. I could be wrong. But I'm pretty sure I'm right."

Daring Fireball in a nutshell.

<comment><USER51> That he allows for the possibility that he's wrong? Yes, it's a good trait to have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I think commenters are missing the most important lesson from this story, which is that most businesses fail. Even if the product works great. Even if it finds it's intended user. Even if the team is completely committed and sticks with it for years on end. (And even if you have free access to one of the most popular websites for your target base.)

Entrepreneurship is hard, and the big success stories everyone likes to focus on are always the exception.

</comment><comment><USER53> I read [1] a few years ago about an idea for using IMAP as the storage/sync backend for a notes app.

Added bonus of the notes I write are in my mailbox so no worries about a company shutting down and losing my data.

[1] [http://www.haystacksoftware.com/blog/2013/10/please- build-a-...](http://www.haystacksoftware.com/blog/2013/10/please-build-a- mimeimap-backed-note-taking-app/)

<comment><USER40> Isn't this how Apple Notes worked until recently?

<comment><USER54> Yes. As well as the Reminders functionality.

<comment><USER55> Reminders sync using CalDAV, not IMAP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> My take on a better path (of course, hindsight is 20/20, right?):

(a) free iOS app (b) paid sync service _with open API_ (c) let other people build web+MacOS+Linux+Android+whatever apps (d) free artisinal, handcrafted MacOS app

Also, could have skipped the complexity of building sync infrastructure by using Firebase.

Also, I know using an inferior font would pretty much invalidate everything that made Vesper Vesper, but it's painful to see a recurring cost there…

</comment><comment><USER57> > the licensing fees for Ideal Sans, Vesper's typeface

Ideal Sans, $199 (currently on sale): [http://www.typography.com/fonts/ideal- sans/characters/](http://www.typography.com/fonts/ideal-sans/characters/)

Lato, Free: [https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Lato](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Lato)

</comment><comment><USER58> > With "Vesper" we were thinking things like beautiful, smart, clever, strong. > In the end, the name was more apt than we knew, because it also carries > heartbreak.

That was sad and beautiful. I shed a tear after reading this. Man, this guy _can_ write!

<comment><USER59> Is that a Bond reference? Apparently Vesper is also the name of a cocktail? I've only seen it as meaning "evening" (in German I think it typically refers to a cold dinner).

<comment><USER60> Both cocktail and this [http://jamesbond.wikia.com/wiki/Vesper_Lynd_(Eva_Green)](http://jamesbond.wikia.com/wiki/Vesper_Lynd_\(Eva_Green\))

<comment><USER59> That explains it. I've kinda been in denial that there were any Bond movies after Brosnan so I thought this was more of a 70s era Bond reference than '00s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> The conclusion that building an iOS app second as an enhancement to a pre- existing offering matches my own.

If you want your App to be more then just another lottery ticket, it needs to be _additive_. It needs to augment a pre-existing product.

If you look at your phone now, how many third party apps are _app first_ products (besides games and camera apps)?

Here's my list: Instagram, Waze, HeartRateFree, Uber. 4 out of 72 apps.

</comment><comment><USER62> Not sure if anyone is still reading this, but I wrote a helper to get your Vesper notes into Trello: [https://rajington.github.io/vesper- trello/](https://rajington.github.io/vesper-trello/)

</comment><comment><USER63> There are so many cheap hosting solutions, I do not understand why he does not keep this project as a hobby project in a kind of zomby state.

All the clients will be very sad that their (paid) application stop working.

<comment><USER64> From the article, he still has to pay for font licensing.

<comment><USER65> Gruber later mentioned on Twitter [1] that in some months they're paying more for servers than they're spending on the font in an entire year. (The font licensing is $299/yr [2], suggesting server costs around $3600/yr.)

[1] [https://twitter.com/gruber/status/768302562030202881](https://twitter.com/gruber/status/768302562030202881)

[2] [http://www.typography.com/apps/](http://www.typography.com/apps/)

<comment><USER66> Curious. You should be able to run an (evidently not that popular) text sync service on a Hetzner box for a fraction of that price. I wonder what was costing them $3600.

<comment><USER67> I'm not certain if it's still the case, but Vesper Sync was originally written using Azure Mobile Services.

[https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Windows-Azure/Learn-how- Vesp...](https://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Windows-Azure/Learn-how-Vesper-built- offline-sync-using-Azure-Mobile-Services-)

During many Azure ad spots on The Talk Show, it had also been mentioned that Vesper used it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> He says he would have made more money with desktop apps but I think people buy even less apps on the desktop appstore. I download apps on the iOS appstore all the time and sometimes even purchase iOS apps (including Vesper), but I would have never bought vesper if it was a Mac app (I wouldn't have bought it even if it was $5, but he's saying he would have put the price at $20....)

<comment><USER69> I agree with you that I am, for some reason unknown to even me, more likely to spend $20 in increments on things I will never use on iOS than I am to spend any amount on the Mac App Store.

On that note, however, Mac Apps do seem disproprotionally more expensive for similar functionality but that is a different topic.

<comment><USER40> Mac apps, even without any updates usually run on the OS 8 years+ later

Same can't be said for iOS apps. It's just a much better investment.

<comment><USER69> Is that really still true? I know most apps I use have either required purchasing an update or have simply been replaced by OS functionality.

And there's something about committing to a Mac app when you're not sure if, in a week, one you like more will be available as opposed to iOS apps, which are basically disposable.

Of course all of this is tempered by my desire to support the products I use and the people who develop them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Anyone want to estimate the monthly server/font licensing costs?

</comment><comment><USER71> Relevant: [https://twitter.com/nternetinspired/status/76762763342105804...](https://twitter.com/nternetinspired/status/767627633421058048)

<comment><USER72> [http://daringfireball.net/preferences/](http://daringfireball.net/preferences/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Why did they target all the apple devices? What drives a decision like that?

Don't you want to target the largest demographics first? I would imagine there's a ton of Linux and windows and Android users?

<comment><USER74> Maybe you want to target the most profitable demographic?

<comment><USER75> iOS stopped having this privilege a few years ago. Android and iOS are about equally profitable these days.

And even if they were not, you will get about five times as many users on Android than you will on iOS, there are many ways to monetize these users once you reach such a volume.

Part of the failure of Vesper was due to Gruber's infatuation with Apple (on top of the fact that a note taking app is just not that compelling enough in 2016).

<comment><USER18> > Android and iOS are about equally profitable these days.

This is really only true for games, i.e. Candy Crush is not terribly different on iOS vs Android so it makes sense that the revenues are similar. But if you consider paid productivity apps, iOS sales still dwarf Android sales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> However, something called "VSEPR" is impossible forget: "valence shell electron pair repulsion" theory. Ah, high school chem ...

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

:)

</comment><comment><USER75> What's fascinating to me is that despite claiming hindsight and knowing now what went wrong, Gruber still completely fails to see that not even considering developing the app for Android was certainly a factor in the failure of his product.

I'm not saying that their app would have succeeded, just that you're pretty much doomed from the start if you don't develop for both markets these days.

Besides, making a whole business on a note taking app in 2016... seriously.

This is what happens when you let emotions drive business decisions: failure.</comment>


Scoble Declares 20's vs. 40's Age War - <AUTHOR> http://www.sproutly.com/2007/08/01/scoble-declares-war-on-the-20s/ Scoble's Top 10 Facebook Apps vs. TechCrunch's Top 10 Facebook Apps <comment><USER2> young = time but no money older = more(ish) money and less time. i still see facebook as something people fool around with in their dormrooms, a kindof tv/DVD kind of thing - if you want to sell to this demographic, sure facebook is king. i just don't see any utility to it for the older set (who incidently, are not without disposable income of their own...)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill."

      -- someone, no doubt old and treacherous</comment>


From Poop to Potable - <AUTHOR> http://www.gatesnotes.com/Development/Omniprocessor-From-Poop-to-Potable <comment><USER2> Singapore implemented a system a few years ago called NEWater [1]. It's a little different from the one in this article: NEWater centrally collects waste water and filters it until it is drinkable. No burning, no electricity generation (rather, NEWater consumes electricity). But it shows that not only will many people use or even drink such water, they will even go on tours of the plant where it is made [2].

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

[2] [http://www.pub.gov.sg/water/newater/visitors/Pages/default.a...](http://www.pub.gov.sg/water/newater/visitors/Pages/default.aspx)

<comment><USER3> This technology is so cool and so crazy that I wonder if it takes a ton of education to be comfortable with the idea that it works. I would guess these guys would have better mileage selling the product to environmentalists in California than going directly to third world locations. Let America be the bleeding edge for stuff this advanced - "eat our own cooking", to use a choice phrase. We are already consuming much of the world's resources - we can be a model for how to do with less, rather than asking the other guy to start.

I read a disturbing article on Bloomberg last year about toilets - India has a project to build toilets and try to get villagers to use them, but they won't. Bill Gates says the world doesn't have the resources to build toilets and plumbing - perhaps he is worried about a second order problem - there might not be the desire, or education is so backwards that we need to solve that first.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-03/india-s-toilet- race...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-03/india-s-toilet-race-failing- as-villages-don-t-use-them.html)

I still can't get this line out of my head:

"About 800,000 Indians worked as feces removers in 2008, often carrying excrement in baskets on their heads, an occupation that causes them to be excluded from parts of society."

Imagine almost a million people carrying shit in baskets on their heads.

<comment><USER4> One thing that really blew me away was my brother talking about his time working in Western Australia, and when he was in a bar bathroom there an Aborigine came in, didn't know what to do, so took a shit in the corner of the room.

When you're not used to something, your actions will seem strange, but toilet training a kid isn't easy, so what seems natural to us now, really wasn't too natural at one time.

<comment><USER5> No, that's not the reason. I have come across many rural towns in Australia where business owners will not let Aborigines use the toilets, or demand a fee. That is why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I worked an internship where we were testing 'toilet to tap' in south florida. For the most part it was effective and not too price with RO (Reverse Osmosis) + MBR (Memebrane Bioreactor) but the hardest problem (lol) was Viagra, quite literally. Getting pharmaceuticals out took so much energy with the process that the economics of it just weren't attractive enough.

</comment><comment><USER7> How do they remove Voc's from the water? Does it need a carbon filter? Does it remove leftover medications found in feces?

<comment><USER8> Yeah that would be my first question. Hormones(like the ones used for birth control) frequently fail to be filtered out by regular sewage plants and have an effect on the environment. I wonder if this would deal with them too?

<comment><USER9> A simple gravity-fed, activated charcoal filled pipe with a germicidal UV LED final stage can remove and destroy everything, AFAICT. (I searched: ultraviolet hormones water purification.) I found some good guides searching, water carbon filter instructables. Sand and rock prefilters may also be important depending on sizes of filtration targets.

We should also note: if we want these technologies, we need to develop and deploy them by and for ourselves. This man will only lift a finger for humanity if it brings his hand closer to our necks.

<comment><USER8> Then please spend few billion dollars of your own money, or try to raise that much if you feel inclined to do so, while I support the man who is already spending money on those issues instead of complaining on HN......you might think whatever you want about Gates, but the money he is spending is helping people. Period.

<comment><USER9> Maybe you are too young to remember how his empire behaves toward people who help themselves. Look into his past if you want to understand what he values.

Pointing out a solution that anyone can build for less than a quarter of a day's worth of work should give you some indication about what's possible without extravagant numbers of currency units extracted from people through lies, manipulations, and other self-degrading acts.

Hopefully, this site, being for hackers, is where we can dismantle our broken systems and build sustainable ones in their place. Ideologies are systems too, just like water purifiers.

<comment><USER8> "Look into his past if you want to understand what he values."

Jesus, I held some views 2 years ago that I wouldn't identify with now, and you want to look at what he did 20 years ago and say he still has the same values?

And I am all up for dismantling broken systems,but there is nothing broken about him spending his fortune on helping the poor. If you can build things like this in a quarter of a day......have you considered helping out yourself? I mean if you went to India yourself you could be building over a thousand purifiers per year, that should help, no?

<comment><USER9> "The tiger cannot change its stripes." (One can't change one's essential nature.) More importantly, a guise of philanthropy is an understandably effective front for profoundly immoral conduct.

Without going into detail, if you look underneath thin, shiny, white veneers of people with exploitative, corrupt histories, you'll find worse in their present day actions. Today, a fortune can be useful for "shaping public opinion". A thoughtful person with a good memory can see past a fake smile and a Blah Blah Foundation name by reading about what is happening in this world through reports by self-directed journalists who work for reasons beyond currency units.

Yes, I am a helper. And, I do appreciate your push to do more and to ground this discussion in practicalities. People around our planet need water purification today; and we may need simple, effective tools as well if winds shift.

<comment><USER10> > Without going into detail, if you look underneath thin, shiny, white veneers > of people with exploitative, corrupt histories, you'll find worse in their > present day actions.

I would be more likely to believe you if you did go into detail. What exactly has Gates done in the past year or so that you object to? Or two years, or any reasonable definition of "present day"?

<comment><USER9> * [http://www.geekwire.com/2014/teachers-protest-gates-foundati...](http://www.geekwire.com/2014/teachers-protest-gates-foundation/)

* [http://techrights.org/2014/08/11/rich-at-public-expence/](http://techrights.org/2014/08/11/rich-at-public-expence/)

* [https://www.popularresistance.org/protesters-want-gates-foun...](https://www.popularresistance.org/protesters-want-gates-foundation-to-stop-investing-in-private-prisons/)

* [http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/12/gates-foundat...](http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/12/gates-foundations-24-most-egregious-investments)

* [http://www.thenation.com/article/181342/how-gates-foundation...](http://www.thenation.com/article/181342/how-gates-foundations-investments-are-undermining-its-own-good-works)

This is only a small part of a bigger story.

<comment><USER11> These show that the Gates Foundation is 99% invested in Coca Cola and Walmart, and the remaining 1% in minor investments in fast food, energy, and private prisons.

If we held things like that against people, we'd have to hate every person alive, every company ever formed, and most charitable/non-profit organizations, because way more than 1% of our everyone's voluntary income and/or spending comes from or goes toward companies like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It would be interesting to see the Omniprocessor used to treat animal waste from factory farms in the US. They are a significant source of multiple forms of pollution in the states and contribute to some nasty algae blooms.

I also wonder how the heavy metals in the solid waste can be or are mitigated.

<comment><USER13> That is an interesting idea. Putting one of these plants on a dairy farm for instance could cut down on waste significantly. The machine would take the animal byproducts and provide water and electricity that could in turn be used to power the farm and hydrate the animals. It could close the waste cycle quite a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Could such a system exist on the ISS at a miniature scale? Obviously a candidate for the Mars journey and settlement. Processing and incinerating shit for rich and poor.

Makes you wonder how sewage treatment could one day hold massive profits.

<comment><USER15> For extrasolar travel, efficient reuse of sewage would be a requirement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I love pilot plant proof of concepts. The video didn't give any numbers but this pdf has a bit more information: [http://wastewaterinfo.asia/sites/default/files/downloads/S6-...](http://wastewaterinfo.asia/sites/default/files/downloads/S6-03-Shrestha.pdf)

<comment><USER17> Thanks. Did anyone see an initial CapEx budget range? Also, OpEx ranges for ongoing lifecycle maintenance by year?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The Omniprocessor sounds a lot like the Zimmerman wet oxidation process, which involves oxidizing sewage at high temperature inside a pressure vessel. The process is exothermic, so apart from the energy cost to get it started, you don't have to input more energy. What you get is pure water mixed with mineral ash, which is suitable for use in fertilizer. The process also tends to demolish most toxic chemicals, though it can't do anything with substances like heavy metals. (I read about this in _Colonies in Space_ by T.A. Heppenheimer in the late 1970's, when my dad brought back that book as a gift for me from a trip to New York.)

If the Omniprocessor can accomplish the same thing without high pressure hardware, it would indeed be an advance. The Zimmerman wet oxidation process dates from the mid 20th century.

</comment><comment><USER19> _" Through the ingenious use of a steam engine, it produces more than enough energy to burn the next batch of waste. In other words, it powers itself, with electricity to spare."_

Score. We should have the park service install these systems near campgrounds to provide revenue neutral services to the campers. I have this idea of electric "trucks" driving to the camp grounds, swapping out the current waste bucket at the toilets for a fresh one, then driving back to process it and recharge.

<comment><USER20> > revenue neutral services

Just because they don't require power doesn't make then revenue neutral... You still have to consider things like maintenance (which includes keeping someone on-call to deal with the maintenance issues, whether on-payroll over via service contract).

<comment><USER19> The article pointed out all of the ways these things actually generate more value than they consume. They create water, they create electricity, and they dispose of sewage. The park service pays for water, the park service pays for sewage removal, and it pays for electricity (somewhat, gas for vehicles more commonly).

So the budgetary exercise to run here is to take the cost of running the septic system as it is today, and the cost of running it using one of these gizmos and trying to exploit its benefits, and then doing a lifetime cost comparison to compute the internal rate of return on the park service funds.

I note that this is the first sewage treatment system that I've read about that actually provides net energy output. Energy consumption is usually the 'hidden cost' of most of these systems. Or water costs. This produces excess energy and water, so someone in the park service should run the numbers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This technology seems almost too good to be true. It's simple, it's deployable, it's self-sufficient. What kind of emissions does this produce? It says they're within U.S. standards, but is that a high standard? How can it burn at such high temperatures without some additional fuel source? While this technology is incredible (and important for developing countries), how much of what they're disclosing about it is true and what damage might it do in the long term?

</comment><comment><USER15> In case anyone missed how NYC deals with it:

[http://www.vice.com/video/you-dont-know-shit- full-185](http://www.vice.com/video/you-dont-know-shit-full-185)

</comment><comment><USER22> It will be interesting to see if this works in implementation.

I remember when I was younger the UN Dropped pink bottles of food to the Masai.

The Masai men didn't like the feminine implication and refused to consume.

Will be curious to know how this is marketed to the people.

<comment><USER23> why would the masai consider "pink" a girl color? isn't that a western cliché?

<comment><USER24> Wikipedia suggests that pink clothing, even with flowers, is not shunned by warrior male Massai.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maasai_people](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maasai_people) (the clothing section).

I do know that food-aid packages had to change colour because they were the same yellow colour as bomblets dropped in cluster bombs, and these were killing children.

[http://www.refuseandresist.org/newwar/111701clusterbombs.htm...](http://www.refuseandresist.org/newwar/111701clusterbombs.html)

> General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, addressing > the similarity between food aid packages and cluster bombs said, "It is > unfortunate that the cluster bombs - the unexploded ones - are the same > color as the food packets."

> "We have dropped flyers that show the pictures in the proper language > explaining why you want to go to one and you don't want to go to the other. > We hope that helps."

(That's not satire. He really said that.)

[http://www.monitor.net/monitor/0111a/copyright/afghanfoodbom...](http://www.monitor.net/monitor/0111a/copyright/afghanfoodbombs.html)

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2912617.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2912617.stm)

Food aid packages changed to a sort of pink colour.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Now we can be astronotes on earth:-)

[http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/behindscenes/water...](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/behindscenes/waterrecycler.html)

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm less worried about poop than I am about drugs—someone's taking chemo, and all of a sudden so are you (at a fraction the scale, but still).

</comment><comment><USER27> "Hey Bill, eat shit!" \- FOSS enthusiast "Ok I will, using proprietary technology!" \- Bill G

</comment><comment><USER28> Bill gates is surely making a big difference in the world. Probably more than he did with windows.

</comment><comment><USER29> I smiled when I thought about how homeopathy advocates would view this.

</comment><comment><USER30> Holy, uh,...

</comment><comment><USER31> The true added value of the price of a Windows license

<comment><USER32> That's an interesting point. Assuming that the Windows monopoly imposed hidden costs on the public in the First World, to what extent does Gates' philanthropy offset those costs? If it hadn't been funneled to Gates (and eventually, his foundation), where would it have been used? If the public had known during the antitrust "Micro$oft" era that Gates would donate most of his fortune to fighting disease in the third world, would attitudes have been different?

Unfortunately, I don't think it's possible to know the answers to these questions, but it's an interesting door to open.

<comment><USER33> Assuming Windows instead generated gains of historic proportion to the public in the first world, by consolidating a fractured ecosystem down to a dominant standard, helping to generate mass public adoption of computing, and in doing so driving productivity through the roof, then what Gates is doing is still one of the greatest things any human has ever done.

People often assume that if it weren't for Windows, something better would have existed in its place. I regard that as a fantasy. Windows was 85% good enough, cheap enough, and easy enough to use for its time. There's a perpetual and immense bias against Windows in hacker circles, but that says nothing of the non-hacker users that voluntarily made Windows successful. Microsoft didn't wake up one day with a magic monopoly, users voluntarily chose their software over other options for a decade before their monopoly position was finally in place.

<comment><USER34> Agreed.

Microsoft is criticized for not being innovators, instead just regurgitating ideas pioneered by someone else. There's truth in this criticism, but we can also view it differently. Microsoft's success was in figuring out how to commoditize the bleeding edge tech.

For example, I remember early in my career the industry trying to argue out CORBA standards, something that never achieved any widespread acceptance because the perfect solution they were after was endlessly being debated, and so complex. But Microsoft cut through that Gordian Knot, and put out their own DCOM technology. DCOM didn't achieve all the goals of CORBA - not by a long shot - but it put a viable object brokering technology into the hands of every developer, a fundamental requirement that the CORBA folks couldn't achieve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Rainwater arrives on location, cost-free, and pure && You can turn poop into valuable manure through composting :: 0 fuel costs, 0 waste, 0 overly complex machines with 0 "exciting business models".

<comment><USER35> It doesn't everywhere, and not reliably. You might not be aware that the US west coast is looking at a possible megadrought.

Your approach is fine for a rural compound, but doesn't scale for urban environments.

<comment><USER9> Last month there was a record rainfall..... 6-10 inches in urban areas.

Perhaps these pieces of wisdom could offer some guide:

"When it rains it pours"

"Get it while the gettin' is good."

"Waste not, want not."

To me, rainwater capture can apply anywhere with a roof, a sky, and a mind to build cisterns.

<comment><USER36> California already has a massive system of rain water capture and extra-large cisterns we call reservoirs. The smaller the cistern the more expensive per gallon it is.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Those working remote, do you use your own laptop for work? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> From the job listings (remote) that I have seen in recent months, a lot more companies are getting comfortable with hooking up remote employees with company gear.</comment>


FuncUnit and Cucumber – a perfect combo for frontend testing - <AUTHOR> http://retroaktive.me/blog/funcunit-and-cucumber-a-perfect-combo-for-frontend-testing/

<comment><USER2> FuncUnit is an interesting concept to me because oftentimes I find little value in Unit Tests and great value in Functionality tests, yet the path of least resistance to implement Functionality tests is usually Unit Testing frameworks.

</comment><comment><USER3>
        > while allowing non technical stakeholders to write
        > feature definitions.

This is why we can't have nice things.</comment>


Scaling SongPop to 60 million users with App Engine and Google Cloud Storage - <AUTHOR> http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2013/02/scaling-songpop-to-60-million-users.html

<comment><USER2> Wow - imagine scaling to 60 million on AWS/someone else. Doable, but would be a non-trivial engineering challenge.</comment>


Nobel Peace Prize 2013 : OPCW - <AUTHOR> http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2013/

<comment><USER2> A bit disappointed by that price. I mean, what's the rush? Why not wait for next year, when the OPCW will have at least started the job?

Last time the price went to someone before he actually did something, it didn't turn that well, so why try again?

It's not like there is a lack of possible nominee.

<comment><USER3> peace prize always had political connotations,unlike the other nobel prize categories.Remember it was given to Obama just after he became the president

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Already shared at : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6532140](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6532140)

<comment><USER2> Appear as empty/non-existent thread to me, even after deactivating Hacker News Enhancement Suite.

is it just me?

<comment><AUTHOR> same here</comment></comment></comment>


Do you strive to understand your tools, or simply "make it work"? - <AUTHOR> http://kylewritescode.com/post/10163606803/do-you-strive-to-understand-your-tools-or-simply-make

<comment><USER2> I consider a tool that requires me to dig too much inside its internals a bad tool, and a tool I can't start using, even if in a very inefficient way, after reading 2 minutes of quick start, a tool that is not good for me.

The problem is that learning to build/configure/use XYZ is almost always a wasted effort, it is not like learning a new algorithm that will be useful knowledge for decades, so if the effort is too big I consider it wasted time.

Examples of tools that are not easy to master but that I'm trying to learn well are vim (it's 15 years I use it), and git. Both tools pay back a lot, and in the case of git it is hard to learn not because it is hard per-se, but since you are learning general concepts about distributed VCS, so it's not a wasted effort.

</comment><comment><USER3> I dig as deep as necessary to make things work cleanly, and generally no deeper. (The exception is innately fascinating topics, like compilers.) I can't _stand_ kludging around aimlessly until things work, but I can't read the source of every library, either.

At the moment, I'm trying to build a drop-in blog engine for Rails 3.1, which involves reading a fair amount of source code. But I need to wrap this up today and start on a different client project tomorrow, so I can't afford to dive _too_ deeply.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, I take the same approach. The world is not black/white, hacks/optimal. There is a balancing act to be had, including balancing time spent against future issues from that solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can ask these same questions about a lot of things we use every day. Do you have deep knowledge of how your car works, or just a superficial understanding of the basics to keep it running? How about your refrigerator? Household plumbing? Your computer? And how deep is "superficial"?

Another question to ask yourself is, "If it breaks, could you fix it?" And what is fixing it? Swapping parts, fiddling with function params, without knowing exactly what went wrong at a deep level? Paying someone to fix it for you? Is it "understanding" to know whom to pay for what repair?

I believe it is possible to have a thorough understanding of every aspect of every tool we use, but this would tend to limit the extent most of us would build up from it, as time spent learning these fundamentals is no longer available for deriving from them. If we assume humans have limited time and capacity for understanding what already is, it's by necessity that we use certain inventions as black boxes in order to build from them.

Or maybe the question is, "Should you be able to build your own toaster?"

[http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toast...](http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toaster_from_scratch.html)

<comment><USER6> The difference between appliances and tools we physically use and programming tools is that the abstraction for physical tools is necessarily as simple as possible. Cars being one of the most complex tools we interact with, it still has a very basic and well defined set of abstractions to learn.

Software tools on the other hand have a way of spiraling in complexity. We're so good at using physical tools because this simplicity allows us to learn their use on an unconscious level, ie. muscle memory. The take home here is that we need to radically simplify the programmming tools we use. Unfortunately the trend towards frameworks rather than libraries is moving in the wrong direction.

<comment><USER7> In the context of the tool analogy, you're right: we should pick libraries and not frameworks.

However, many software projects are complex machines---and like real world machines they're made of parts.

It'd better then to have a framework because the framework assures you that all these parts ought to work together, or at least have been designed to a certain abstract standard.

Imagine building a car but rather than being able to order Ford-fitted parts or Toyota-fitted parts, you'd just get generic parts that you then have to machine yourself in order to make work. Every part, every screw, everything. It'd take tens times as long as if you only had to machine rare parts (e.g. a 1965 engine block to fit a 1973 model frame).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For me, it depends on the tool. If I think the tool is internally cohesive, and the underlying reasons for its behavior are sound, I'll learn about them it and try to figure out its behavior.

If I think the tool is a sloppy stack of hacks, I don't care how it works --- I actively avoid the nightmare. I don't want to spend my time figuring out which bad decisions, bugs, and corner cases made it behave in a certain way.

<comment><USER9> I think you make an excellent point.

Tools that are "internally cohesive" reward the effort put into learning them.

Knowledge gained learning one function of an internally cohesive tool can often be applied to others, opening up new functionality and encouraging you to learn more about the tool.

This way your understanding of good tools tends to grow organically instead of the jarring pile of rote-learning that a kludgy tool tends to require.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have found that I ALWAYS try to learn as much as I can to have a fully intimate understand of the tools that I use. However, I have also found that this has more often than not been a huge disservice to myself.

For example, yesterday I got fired from my employer on my 90th day for not being productive enough. I can't fault my employer because I understand his perspective. He needs employees that are productive. I spent most of my 90 days learning the tools and EXACTLY how they work, without much to show for it. This was my fault. I spent too much time learning.

This is true with many things that I learn on my own as well. For example, in the last few days I started teaching myself Kohana PHP framework. If some of MY applications are going to be using it, I want to know exactly how it works and everything about it. I want to be an "expert" at everything, but I'm not quite sure how realistic that is.

I think I am going to try to change my ways to only learn enough to "make it work". If the tool is worthwhile to use over and over again, it is inevitable to develop an intimiate understanding of the way it works over time. I think it is more important to be able to have awesome products to show for the time you invest in your tools.

<comment><USER11> Yep... i know. it's kind of an information addiction. I have been there still working through it. but one thing i have found useful is trying to be aware of what am doing moment by moment. Rescuetime.com has been a great help in summing up my activities and gives me pointers to avoid things not to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Understanding your tools in detail is a great way to differentiate yourelf. I make it a point to understand my working subject matter in great detail. At one point in my career, I did a lot of telecom consulting. Work ranged from voice network design all the way down to troubleshooting. I could have done my job by simply being a "phone ringer" (someone who just calls someone else to solve problems), but I found that by understanding the technologies in detail, I could discern fact from fiction when dealing with third-parties. This made me extremely valuable to my clients. I don't think I worked with a company that didn't float me a job offer at some point.

Bottom line: Understanding your tools in depth allows you to differentiate outcomes that will be opaque to less knowledgable competitors.

</comment><comment><USER13> Depends on how much respect I have for the tool.

The TCP/IP stack: strive to understand it.

Random Java SOAP abomination: get in, make it work, get out.

</comment><comment><USER14> Even the most trivial of applications today will depend on an incredible amount of carefully crafted, clever to genius code (operating systems, databases, compilers, VMs, ...). I'm always deeply humbled when I think of all the engineering smarts and effort that went into the stack I'm working with every day.

There's no chance in hell to understand all the tools. It's quite possible to understand the concepts and general principles these tools are built around (i.e., all the stuff you get taught in a proper computer science course), which I think is what one should thrive for.

Note that even understanding the concepts will not even nearly equip you to (easily) understand and re-implement these tools, there's a lot more to any properly crafted tool than just the rough concepts.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think this is an important indicators of whether you should be an entrepreneur or a software developer. The best developers are fascinated by the processes that animate their work; sometimes they can't dig down all the way given time constraints but I find that they (and I) could happily analyze (and ideally rewrite) the entire gordian knot of a complex system.

Entrepreneurs have a totally different profile. Instead of the "how" and "what" of the project, they focus on the "why" and the "who cares". Will this project be valuable? Should I pivot this idea? Who is my first customer and what do they want?

These tendencies don't coexists very well -- they both want to be priority 1 in my mind. While I've been writing code, polishing scripts, reading kernel code, and accumulating my 5000 lines of emacs-lisp hacks, my friends chose different routes and started small businesses or pursued influence and high salaries. Now I'm a super-wonky developer and they're much better at sniffing out the real value in the world. Each of us has our place and on some days I'd rather be them. Somehow though, and somewhat mysteriously, when it comes time to choose I'd rather be rewriting the low level than pursuing meaning at the high-level.

</comment><comment><USER16> If you don't understand how something works, you will never understand why it stopped working.

Lesson #1 from my car hacking hobby.

<comment><USER17> Just out of curiosity, what kind of car hacking? I used to do a bit of Honda ECU hacking. It was a lot of fun.

<comment><USER16> these days I'm driving a 1989 YJ wrangler. it's a hilariously impractical vehicle (not off roading yet), but it's unbelievably fun to work on, despite being carbureted. everything's just so accessible and simple.

before this I was all over the vws (1.8t, tdi, and then an idi), with all the usual vw stuff (especially diesels. I love diesels).

I think my next step will be either a subaru (track car), or a honda/bmw (just a get-around car).

I'm pretty limited tho since I live in Ottawa and have no garage. ask me if I've looked into starting a garage co-op here, and I'll tell you terrible insurance related woes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I ussually make it work first, then slowly begin to understand the tools through working with them.

I'm of the school that in many things, if you have to teach someone how to use it, you've done it wrong. Let the user learn by doing.

Probably can't apply to everything, but we should work as had as we can to try to get there.

</comment><comment><USER19> Not only do I like understanding my tools, I build my own tools. I find abstractions and go after them whenever possible. There is always an upfront cost to this but the end result is a cleaner system.

The understand-your-tools side builds the tools that the make-it-work side uses. The feedback between both sides is important for improvement. The success of the make-it-work side helps to quantify the value of the ideas coming from the understand-your-tools side. It's unfortunate that these two points are often treated like opposing sides.

</comment><comment><USER20> For me, it's kind of the default state of mind, building models of reality, and I can go as far as doing it unconsciously. Just a few hours ago I was in a friend's office talking to him about 3D models and through no conscious decision of mine I started twiddling around with a perforator. The point where I realized what my purpose had been was when I broke the flow of the conversation with the complete non-sequitur, "oh, now I know what that twiddly part on a spring does - you pull it and lock the perforator making it more compact".

I know other people that do that too. For some of us, the immediate reaction to a new thing is "ooh, shiny, how does it work? Let's run some experiments." The scientific mindset is useful, I think, no matter what you wish to exploit.

</comment><comment><USER21> I had never considered it. I can't 'make it work' without understanding it, so I consider it a non-issue.

I mean, I suppose minimal projects could get completed, but I never work on minimal projects. Mine always have edge cases, and that requires knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER22> I would love it if documentation facilitating understanding was available for general technologies. Learning how != learning why. For example, I have many times tried to learn CSS and it would be _great_ if anyone would care to explain in broad terms what the theory behind it is. Why choose the primitives that they chose, it CSS 'turing complete' for layout? If so, why? Who came up with it? The same goes for many technologies. I would like to have some history, a theoretical backround, and the improvements that the tool tries to solve.

</comment><comment><USER23> Powerful tools require a good understanding of them to get the most out of them.

The _best_ powerful tools don't require an in-depth understanding of them to get started (think git, rails or Linux). But mastering them over time will make you better by orders of magnitude than the copy-pasters with no fundamental knowledge of the tools they use every day.

The trick is in figuring out which tools are good, and which of them you want to commit to.

</comment><comment><USER24> If I can reuse the knowledge gained by understanding it, I go for it. In understanding, I can reduce complexity, or at least try, for future users.

Also if I find something that is complex, e.g. OAuth, I try to preserve the sources of information I used to reach a decent level of understanding for maintenance purposes.

If I'm just doing something quick and not worried about future usage, I just make it work.

</comment><comment><USER25> I strive to understand the proper way to use the tool to make it work, most of the time I don't really care how the tool works as long as I understand the best and most efficient way the tool was indented to be used.

If later I have a strong desire to understand how it works I'll dive in, but most software tools I don't care to know.

I don't really care about the detail inner workings of my car.

</comment><comment><USER26> A lot of time these two options go hand in hand.

That said, a lot of the tools I use at work are built by myself or my team. I trust them, so "making it work" is enough for me, especially because I don't always have the time to understand everything 100%.

If I'm doing something as a hobby, I try to understand it, because time isn't really a factor there, and that's the fun part, right?

</comment><comment><USER27> For bowling, the underlying is basic physics, something that is never going to change, never go away.

For technology or tools, the underlying specifics are going to change insanely fast, so if you are learning it, you will need to unlearn soon (and learn something else).

So should you learn internals of libc? STL? JVM, bytecode? rt.jar? .NET CLR? V8 JIT?

</comment><comment><USER28> I try to understand as much as I can. Recently, I tried to deploy a rails app without capistrano (the manual way). But, People are saying, like why are you even doing that?

I don't know. I want to know what is going on? Know it first, automate next, thats what I try to do most of the times.

</comment><comment><USER29> Why it's very useful for developers to learn assembler, know computer at hardware level, know how instal Linux From Scratch, compile their own webserver/db/etc, sysadmin stuff.

Know that first. Then, if you choose, go use turn key systems/hosting environments.

</comment><comment><USER30> Yes, we did! That is why we love Erlang but not Node.js, Lisp/Scheme instead of Java, Python3/Ruby instead of PHP, C but not C++, Postgres instead of MySQL, postfix, but not sendmail, Emacs instead of Eclipse, vim in terminal window and never use mc! ^_^

</comment><comment><USER31> This seems like a false dichotomy.

We all just want to make things work. Oftentimes with programming, having a better understanding of your tools helps you become better at "making it work."

</comment><comment><USER32> I know this is cliched, but it /should/ just work. It should be easy enough for the end user to have a basic understanding of that tool.

</comment><comment><USER33> when I am working on my own project I try to dig as deeper as as I feel like. If I am a working on a client project I try to dig only as deep as I need to (with limited success)

</comment><comment><USER34> I find there's a lot of hand-waving that goes on when you initially learn something.

Just the other day I was talking to a friend about learning programming. I said to him that I'm quite capable of teaching someone who knows the basics of programming more as long as there's the initial foundation to build on but I'll be damned if I know how to teach someone who doesn't know how to program at all how to program.

I don't even know how _I_ learnt to program. I was a kid at the time and I guess I basically just typed in programs from books and then played around with them. I guess this model largely follows the idea of _direct instruction_ [1]. It's one reason I like Zed Shaw's _Learn Python the Hard Way_ [2] because it starts by just saying "type this in... actually type it don't copy and paste it" because for beginners this approach actually works (well).

One thing I find interesting is that many non-programmers I know are afraid to just start pressing buttons and messing around with stuff to get the computer to do what they want. They want to know how to do it before they start. I think this fits in with the theme of direct instruction as I've learnt the behaviour of doing something without knowing exactly what will happen. Without this willingness to try (fail) your ability to learn seems to be incredibly impeded to the point of being near-impossible (IMHO).

To bring this back to understanding your tools I would say I follow this pattern:

\- If I can, I'll learn just enough to get by;

\- I'll slowly accrue new techniques and knowledge as time goes by and I use it (studying this kind of thing without _needing_ to use it is virtually useless for me); and

\- For things that are most key to what I do I'll expend time and energy delving deeper into them but this applies more to languages, APIs, frameworks, platforms, etc than it does the tool. The tool is, after all, a means to an end not an end in itself.

For me I've found learning tools to follow a fairly similar pattern to learning (human not computer) languages: I can try and memorize things all I want but I seem to have this base rate at which I will accumulate "instinctive" knowledge that is a function of how much I use something with very little variation up or down.

YMMV.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_instruction>

[2]: <http://learnpythonthehardway.org/>

<comment><USER35> You may be interested in "The Camel Has Two Humps": <http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper1.pdf> and other work by Saeed Dehnahdi: <http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/>

He thinks that only about a third of the populace can learn programming at all, and that may be the difference between teaching someone who knows the basics of programming vs teaching programming to a non-programmer.

<comment><USER36> That paper has done a lot of damage.

I also think that if you write a paper like that, that it should include a lot of qualifiers as to what you think you've discovered and what research might be done in order to validate/disprove your findings.

Broadly binning a large part of the population as far as a fairly basic ability is concerned (the ability to instruct another entity, which is the essence of programming) based on some extremely flawed tests is not the way science should be done.

Try the 'test' they give to people on a population and then try this test on another population of similar size and observe the difference:

      move 10 to a
      move 20 to b
      move contents of b to a

The fact that programmers use '=' in a way that non-programmers would never use it should not be part of any 'aptitude' test. That's just syntax and it would give anybody with even a cursory knowledge of programming a huge advantage. Even just the assumption that statements are to be executed in a particular sequence greatly affects the outcome of tests like this and you may have to specify such a thing up-front if you expect people to be on a level playing field.

Note that I'm not saying that the conclusion of the paper is wrong, I simply object to the hidden assumptions behind the design of the test. Removing those assumptions would be pretty tricky thing to do with 100% accuracy, and in the end the conclusions reached in the paper might still stand (but I doubt that they would be the same in magnitude).

<comment><USER37> But the predictor _isn't_ whether the testee gets these problems right. The predictor is whether the testee uses a _consistent_ mental model for the problem--that is, someone who interprets "a=b" as "move contents of a to b" will end up programming as well as someone who does the converse, but not someone who picks and chooses without being sure.

<comment><USER36> Yes, I read the paper.

Try coming up with a 'consistent mental model' that works with random execution sequences.

Then try again for one that works backwards. And so on.

At best this test determines which people are going to be 'easy' to teach programming. But just like sales start at 'no' teaching starts when the subject is having problems, not when it's easy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Has this guy disassembled and come to understand the inner workings of the drill he used? Because that's the deep tool knowledge in this analogy, not the insight into the interaction between hole position and ball/player performance.</comment>


f.lux for iOS WITHOUT jailbreaking just got released (official) - <AUTHOR> https://justgetflux.com/sideload/?ref=hn <comment><USER2> This is such awesome news!!! It was the sole reason I last jailbroke my phone.

They're even letting people install it from source so you get it before it gets on the app store: [https://justgetflux.com/sideload/](https://justgetflux.com/sideload/)

<comment><USER3> It won't get on the app store, it uses a private API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> f.lux is awesome, wasn't even aware it was available for phones. Apparently it's not on android but there's Twilight for android which does the same thing and I just tested it out and it's pretty good!</comment>


Military cut off the Internet in Sudan as they kill and rape protestors - <AUTHOR> https://www.iafrikan.com/2019/06/13/sudan-internet-shutdown-military-army/ <comment><USER2> IP over HAM radio is one possibility.

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

This is a kind of thing that decentralized network protocols are good at. I could see a matured Telehash used here, or something like it.

[http://telehash.org/](http://telehash.org/)

<comment><USER3> So you believe military won't come for you the moment you start transmitting?

For all it is, wi-fi meshes seem to be more plausible as at least you've got a plausible deniability of why you kept the AP running.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Which makes me wonder - in the absence of the internet (e.g., disaster), what are good methods for organizing and disseminating information over a large area both electronic and non-electronic?

<comment><USER5> Mesh networks have already been used in protests to coordinate rebel operations. Apps like FireChat[1] allow non-technical users to set up their own meshnets that others can join within a certain radius. Theoretically, user devices can then act as repeaters/routers and extend the range of the entire network until it covers very large areas.

In places like Cuba where the Internet is really slow, users resort to "sneakernets" which consist of thousands of flash drives spreading through roads and towns with other users downloading and uploading media (like music, news or movies) as they pass along. While the ping is atrocious, it gets the job done ;)

As for non electronic methods: posters work well, as do pamphlets. In WWWII the Allies would use bombers to drop leaflets to spread propaganda as well as alert residents that their town was about to be bombed, so they had time to collect their belongings and get out. Of course these methods require an absurd amount of manpower compared to e.g. making a Facebook post or launching a WordPress site, which really makes you appreciate the power of modern communications platforms.

I would argue that in the absence of the internet, the best method for organizing and disseminating information over a large area would simply be to restore the internet if possible, or just restart it otherwise. Since ARPANET was built with nuclear war concerns in mind, all of the protocols we got out of that already account for decentralization and sudden node introduction/disconnection.

[1] [https://qz.com/922010/meshkit-the-tech-behind-firechat- can-s...](https://qz.com/922010/meshkit-the-tech-behind-firechat-can-send- messages-and-music-without-the-internet/)

[2] [https://boingboing.net/2018/05/03/inside-cubas-massive- weekl...](https://boingboing.net/2018/05/03/inside-cubas-massive-weekly.html)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where do your peers hangout online? - <AUTHOR> I'm currently looking to hire and know of a few dark corners of the internets that I can look to for recruiting. As I sat and thought about it, there are likely lots of places I don't yet know about. I think those of my ilk mostly lurk in Reddit, somewhat in HN, but mostly are following the same blogs that I am (though I don't want to do recruiting there).
Do you know where your communities are? How did find them? Are they discoverable?
Where do you go when going the extra mile trying to recruit? <comment><USER2> Presumably you're not just hiring, but hiring for some specific role. I would look on GitHub to find contributors to major open source projects that you either use directly, or which overlap with your stack. Find the experts and reach out to them. As long as you're not lowballing and have a real, interesting project to offer, they'll probably at least be open for a chat.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're hiring in general am I'm also hiring for a specific role. Thanks for the GitHub suggestion. Yes, we're offering real market salaries across the board.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That's a pretty invasive question don't you think?

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you elaborate on why you think it's invasive? I don't think it is. I'm curious where people who do things similar to you hang out. It could be as simple as "reddit" or "hn". I'm not looking for people's street address or mother's maiden names here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What are you recruiting for?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's an Azure developer/engineering position. We're looking for someone with existing experience to give us a new perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> twitter, mainly.</comment>


Show HN: Who are your website users?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.smart-ad.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is our background:

The main problem we often hear from our customers is how can we get user information from our traffic? Or how can we get their profile or mainly how can we get their email?

Basically that is a hard thing to do. After hours of brainstorming we found out that you have to give something extra to users after they are willing to leave their email. So we created Smart AD Coupons Platform where websites owners can easily create coupons and attached them to their website. Main idea is that users have to leave an email before getting coupon code.

We tested first on our website and we got 1email from 35 impressions, actually we got a new client that day, giving him 15% discount on our service. Good thing to know is that you have to be backup 'ad with Google Ad Words or you needs huge website traffic. It will not work with small traffic.

On the long term you can get a huge email database, so you can easily communicate with your users eventually potential customers.

With these results we did some push on our technology where you can find out more here: www.smart-ad.com</comment>