Atom 1.0 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.atom.io/2015/06/25/atom-1-0.html <comment><USER2> Congrats to the team for reaching this important milestone.

I'm a Sublime license holder, but I use Atom as much as I can, because the more open source can win, the better.

However, yesterday I was doing some complex regex's (porting a random sql dump file into a seeds.rb), and Atom kept dying, whereas Sublime was pretty much instantaneous.

I'm not doing the usual "Atom is slow" drum beating, but saying some undertones of the announcement make me worry a bit. I hear discussion of things like Electron and "social coding" as the future, and I'm hoping that means that no one considers 1.0 to equate to the core editing experience being finished. It's not, and I hope the Atom team continues to iterate before moving on to new features.

Being able to open files larger than 2MB isn't sexy, but it's necessary. Having to hard-kill my editor because the save dialog is trapped on my other full screen session that it won't let me get to deserves more than a "but it's open source" response.

tl;dr congrats team and your core users want the best editor possible over bells and whistles

<comment><USER3> Sorry for side-jacking this comment - but which version of Sublime, may I ask, and what OS?

I'm using Sublime 2 on OS X and large files + regular expressions are generally a cause for pain.

Do you have any default settings changed like disabled document preview or similar?

The only thing I generally feel is a _champ_ at regular expressions + insanely large files on OS X is TextWrangler/BBEdit. In fact, I keep TextWrangler around specifically for the large file excellence experience which I (currently) don't receive on Sublime Text 2.

<comment><USER4> Upgrading to Sublime 3 can't hurt...

I don't have issues with large files on OS X.

<comment><USER3> Is the beta stable enough to use regularly?

<comment><USER5> Yes, I would say it is quite stable. In fact, in the ST blog it says: "Sublime Text 3, while still technically in beta, is the recommended version of Sublime Text to use." [0]

[0]: [http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime- text-3-buil...](http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime- text-3-build-3080)

<comment><USER3> Thanks :) I'll give it a whirl!

EDIT: WOWOW

Major difference! Definitely sticking with 3!! Thank you :D

 _Extremely_ fast in comparison to 2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow... just downloaded the windows installer version and it autoinstalled itself wherever it chose fit, without questioning, it installed shortcuts on the start menu, placed itself on an already bloated contextual menu on several file extensions as an Open option, instead on "Open with...", etc.

I usually install software on my user folder on the work laptop, as I don't have enough priviledges. This time the installer worked, but why override the questions to the user, like install location, etc.? There's a standard for Windows installers, why did they ignore it? Not cool.

<comment> steve-howard I don't know if this has changed, but when I tried Atom and didn't like it, I discovered that there was no uninstaller. Hooray for deleting context menu entries by hand in the registry.

<comment><USER7> One of the first things I've noticed after trying out the new release, very annoying.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the heads up, I was about to try Atom but I'll wait until this is fixed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The killer feature of Atom to me is the ease with which it can be extended (via packages) and the openness to community contribution on core features. That's not a knock against any other editor (some of which share similar characteristics in this regard) – it's just what draws me to Atom.

It's super easy to hack on and contribute to.

<comment><USER10> It's the Cycle of Bloat.

        1. Develop tool. It's small and fast and minimal! Woo!
        2. It's easy to modify because it's so small! Woo!
        3. Look, there's a budding ecosystem of packages! Woo! (Let's
           not talk about the fact the packages exist precisely because
           the original product wasn't big enough.)
        4. Oh dear, some of them conflict, a lot of them suck. Well,
           here's some winners, let's pull them into the core. Now the
           base system is that much better! Woo!
        5. Repeat 3 and 4 a few times.
        6. Crap, this tool is all bloated and slow. I'm going to go
           create a small, fast, minimalist solution!

Repeat indefinitely.

See also: "minimalist web framework", "minimalist Linux distribution", "minimalist programming language".

<comment><USER11> Do people believe that having access to packages and add-ons makes an editor (or whatever else) "bloated and slow"?

First, whatever you don't use, it's not even loaded in memory.

Second, bloated is all about having tons of options you don't need or use. Not about adding stuff you DO need piecemeal.

Third, bloat is mostly a UI thing, not a "number of add-ons" or "too many lines of code" thing. Programs don't get slow because they are "bloated" with extra code (if it doesn't run, then it has 0 effect on their speed). They get slow because they are badly programmed (e.g. loading one big text file all at once in memory instead of having a paging system).

The availability of tens of thousands of packages hasn't made Emacs "bloated", much less Vim or ST. Or even installing those packages doesn't make those editors feel bloated.

Whereas something like Eclipse was bloated from the start -- because it was a very heavy design with tons of abstractions layers, ton of built-in options and visual clutter etc, created on a GCed language with frequent stops on larger codebases etc. That's even without any third party plugin added, just the Eclipse Java SE core packages.

<comment><USER10> "Do people believe that having access to packages and add-ons makes an editor (or whatever else) "bloated and slow"?"

... no? Hate to dismiss your entire message that way (I mean that seriously), but...

People appear to be assuming a great deal more universality than I could possibly have implied, since I don't believe it's a universal problem anyhow, and never addressed scope. It's just a cycle that definitely exists in some domains.

It's gotten to when I see something described as "minimal" I tend to just roll my eyes and move on. Especially when combined with accusations, veiled or otherwise, that something else is "bloated", which at this point I tend to just assume is a meaningless feeling word with no real technical content. Yes, that includes when used in the context of "cycle of bloat"; this is a cycle endlessly recurring, yet has very little technical content. Mature text editors are, to a first approximation, all the same. (Yeah, there's some differences, but, meh.)

<comment><USER12> Well I hate to also semi-dismiss your message, BUT when certain add-ons are essential to using a tool like Atom it makes it slow and bloated.

For example I use vim, and when I tried Atom I threw on two Haskel add-ons and my system was unusable. Then I removed the add ons and my 7 year old desktop on OpenSUSE just lagged away. I than went to my other old desktop all in one and that lagged away just at typing (This was a month ago) and adding anything to Atom slowed down so much that typing was lagging let alone any feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Congratulations GitHub and Atom team!

Atom is my favourite editor for coding in, and it just keeps getting better.

I introduced my team to it today (pre 1.0 release, this is a nice surprise) and they were surprised by how pleasant the experience was - just a few minor hiccups. We've tried a bunch of editors and usually stick with Sublime because it's easiest to use while pairing, but I think that will change now.

Sorry for the tough HN crowd, you can never please them.

Here's to Atom 2.0 <3

<comment><USER14> Hear, hear! Well done, GitHub! This will be an invaluable resource for the software development community for years to come. Congrats on 1.0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've gotta say, honestly, I'm preferring Visual Studio Code over Atom simply due to the fact that it seems MUCH more stable and lightweight. Atom is very visually appealing, and I'm a fan of the project, in general, but it constantly freezes up and crashes on me. I think I'll be sticking with VS Code & Sublime.

<comment><USER16> Funny, as VS Code is based on Atom.

<comment><USER17> VS Code is not based on Atom - it's built on Electron, the app framework Atom is also built on, and uses some of the same Node packages Atom developed.

<comment><USER16> Electron was extracted from Atom and was originally named Atom Shell. I don't see your point.

<comment><USER17> Electron was also not extracted from Atom - it was always extracted as atom- shell. It was just rebranded as Electron. Atom ≠ atom-shell.

<comment><USER16> Maybe we aren't speaking the same language. Here's what it says on electron.atom.io:

 _" Initially developed for GitHub's Atom editor"_

So what are we talking about?

<comment><USER18> "for" does not equal "as part of".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I find it to be a bit depressing that software bloat has advanced to the point that we have text editors plagued with performance issues.

<comment><USER20> Thirty years ago people complained that GNU Emacs needed 8 megabytes of RAM.

<comment><USER21> "Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping"\--Seems quaint now, doesn't it?

<comment><USER22> A little, but at least it could open an 8mb file, not to mention a 2mb file...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I made the switch yesterday not knowing 1.0 would be released today, and I am seriously psyched. Their Vim bindings are now good enough, and there are tons of tweaks you can do to make them better (which will inspire more people to contribute). I found a few bugs here and there related to installing / removing packages (just checked and 1.0 fixes them), but nothing major, and was able to migrate my mammoth .vimrc configuration file over over the course of an afternoon, with everything I need having already been developed by the community. Super fast, too.

Also! I was able to create the colorscheme of my dreams in about 15 minutes, thanks to to the dev tools integration.

<comment><USER24> What are the main advantages that atom gives you over native vim?

<comment><USER25> None.

Atom's installer is a huge download, and the editor is much slower ... It also consumes much more memory and written in coffeescript. Takes a long time to start up ... just a few things on the top of my head.

It's a great initiative though so that's already a good point.

<comment><USER23> I just timed it and it was less than 5 seconds. I would suggest giving 1.0 a spin before you judge.

<comment><USER26> Thats still a long time for a text editor though. Sublime, Vim, gedit, etc are all instantaneous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Eh. Why is 1.0 out already? Keyboard layouts which use AltGr are still broken.

E.g. I can't type '@', '\', and 'µ'. Yes, I can't write metadata annotations or escape some characters.

<comment><USER28> I'm running Atom 0.116.0 on Xubuntu and AltGr works perfectly fine. My keyboard layout is Norwegian.

<comment><USER27> Norwegian with Sámi has a lot of collisions. With the regular Norwegian layout, the only collision should be µ (M + AltGr).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I really want to like Atom but it's such a pity that they went for CoffeeScript instead of plain ES5/ES6.

<comment><USER30> That's really only a problem if you're contributing to the core, right? You can write your own packages in JS, and if you're just a user of the editor I don't see how that matters.

<comment><USER29> Sure, but it's not the same, on one side I'd like to read the core and hack it on my own terms, on the other I'd feel more comfortable writing packages if I could just read the core and see how things work under the hood. I'd like it to be a "hackable editor" as it touts itself, but as it stands right now it's a "hackable editor if you are comfortable with CoffeeScript".

<comment><USER31> It will take you less than a day to learn to read CoffeeScript if you are familiar with JS.

<comment> chris-at Coffeescript is a very polarizing language. Most people appear to either love it or hate it vigorously.

[https://discuss.atom.io/t/why- coffeescript/131](https://discuss.atom.io/t/why-coffeescript/131)

<comment><USER32> CoffeeScript was released in a time when ES6 wasn't yet a thing as far as most developers were concerned. It was also a time when JS saw a huge influx of new developers coming from other languages. CoffeeScript itself draws heavily from Ruby (and some Python), which explains why it was rapidly adopted by the Ruby community and became part of Rails (just like Sass replaced CSS).

When I first revisited JavaScript after a long time writing Python code, I was quite fond of CoffeeScript because it let you pretend you're not actually writing JavaScript and because it enabled a lot of idioms that didn't exist in vanilla JavaScript.

CoffeeScript is decidedly not an extension of JavaScript. It doesn't build on existing JavaScript idioms and just add syntactic sugar (partially because many idioms of modern JS simply didn't exist at the time and there was less consensus about them) -- it substitutes idioms from Ruby and Python and implements their syntax, all the way down to changing how variables are declared and how the equality operator behaves.

CoffeeScript is written for programmers who understand JavaScript but don't want to write JavaScript when creating JavaScript code.

Thanks to Babel.js ES6 (now ES2015) is now a thing. Most of the new things CoffeeScript brought to the table for JavaScript programmers are now satisfied by the language itself or syntactic extensions supported by Babel. There is a well-understood and well-defined class syntax, there are arrow functions and tons of syntactic shorthands like method literals and object/array destructuring. What's more, because these are now officially part of the language, Babel itself just serves as a stopgap while we wait for the JS environments to catch up.

Outside its original use case of allowing Ruby programmers to avoid writing JavaScript, CoffeeScript is obsolete and (at least in terms of hype and momentum) dead. It has outserved its usefulness and has given way to more specialised languages (e.g. ClojureScript) and Babel.

It's unsurprising that Atom core is written in CoffeeScript if you consider that GitHub is and always was predominantly not a JavaScript company but a Ruby company. It is heavily invested in the Ruby world and CoffeeScript is part of the Ruby world more than it is part of the JavaScript world.

I'm not sure whether CoffeeScript's role in the Ruby world will change anytime soon, but outside that microcosm, it has become irrelevant and is quickly fading into obscurity. It served a useful purpose at the time and it has certainly influenced the development of ES6 but other than allowing Ruby programmers to avoid writing JavaScript it's just no longer worth bothering with.

Also note that at the time everybody was trying to replace JavaScript with new languages (which were either supersets of JavaScript (like TypeScript), shared a common subset with JavaScript (like CoffeeScript) or did something else entirely (like ClojureScript)).

Babel is part of a general movement towards unification. Babel out of the box has support for JSX and type annotations (which are already just defined in terms of extensions to JS). Google's AtScript has been redefined as an extension to TypeScript (which in turn seems to be moving towards redefining itself as an extension to JS). I think this is a far more productive development than everybody trying to create their own compiled-to-JS language from scratch.

In a nutshell: I don't hate CoffeeScript, but I consider it a major smell when evaluating libraries and projects. If it's written in CoffeeScript it might as well not be written in JavaScript at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I had initially dismissed the whole thing as folly as JavaScript is really stupid, but I had someone install Atom the other day and came to learn that it is really quite an impressively great editor these days.

The ease of finding and installing themes and plugins is unparalleled.

Considering trying it for a week or two as my daily driver (with vim mode, of course.)

</comment><comment><USER34> Atom is the ONLY editor which cannot handle my keyboard layout properly so I can't write brackets :D ([]) I reported it on the first day when the alpha came out, still no fix for this. Let me put it this way: I CAN'T WRITE BRACKETS IN A TEXT EDITOR. LOL

<comment><USER35> I can't use half the keybindings in my spanish keyboard lol.

<comment><USER6> I'm on a spanish keyboard and it works for me {çñ¬#%|ª}, etc. so there might be something that you can do!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I am loathe to install something like Atom with a 4MB limit on file size and 80 MB install size when Sublime Text does the same or better in a 8 MB install package with no limits.

<comment><USER37> Do you really do your work on a computer where an 80MB install is a problem? No argument on the file size limit.

<comment><USER36> Yes, I program on a netbook. I find the resource limitations useful in writing programs that are very efficient. I do mostly scientific programming, so if it runs on my netbook, it flies on my cluster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Just downloaded and opened Atom for the first time, and I have to admit the look and feel is amazing! Fantastic job to all those involved!

However, one thing that stands out to me, the file size of Atom.app is 203MB!! How in the world can a text editor be that large? Compare that with MacVim, which is about 27MB.

<comment><USER39> What problem does the extra 176MB present to you when you likely have 256+GB of disk storage?

<comment><USER40> This kind of reasoning is exactly why we have even more bloated, crap software these days

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I am a paying customer of Sublime Text, but I will give Atom a try. They both seem really similar feature-wise, but Atom is open source, something I care about. Also is based on web technologies, which is really cool (although I've heard it's not so fast).

<comment><USER42> I would concur with all of that. It's very similar to sublime, to the point that I can't really justify switching. If you care about open source that is a compelling aspect, though.

It pains me to say this as a JS dev, but I think basing it on web tech was a mistake. It makes the app slightly, but noticeably, less responsive. Just recently they posted a big long thing about getting scrolling to be fast. I dunno, I feel like if such things are an issue in 2015 you may have made a mistake.

<comment><USER43> What did they get out of that decision anyway? There was a moment in the blurb film where the narrator says, "Atom is based on JavaScript - so it's easy to use!"

What? I don't get the value proposition.

<comment><USER44> The primary purpose was to make it easily hackable - since the whole thing is JS (actually CoffeeScript) and webviews, creating views and stuff is as easy as making a website.

That said, I think I care more about performance. Sublime Text is just unbelievably rock solid.

<comment><USER45> _> creating views and stuff is as easy as making a website._

Making websites is a huge pain in the ass though. Why would I _invite_ the DOM into my life?

<comment> drew-y Honest question, what is wrong with the DOM? I'm a self trained web developer so I don't really know anything else and I'd be interested to hear what the better philosophy is.

<comment><USER45> Manipulating it is very slow, because of the way it is designed. It is not intended for building dynamic GUIs, it's for laying out text high quality text, once, on pageload. This is the other problem, the box model (even flexbox) is just not suited for designing GUIs.

So few websites are pure text these days, you inevitably end up needing loads of GUI widgets and the DOM is simply not suitable for laying them out in a sensible way. It takes ages, and css layout 'rules' are so hard to predict. You shouldn't have to be a guru to just put some fucking boxes in a row.

Try building a desktop app using any mature constraint-based layout system, and you'll see what I mean.

This is how java does it: [https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/layout/visua...](https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/layout/visual.html)

As you can see, pretty much every css framework is actually a hacky attempt to replicate a GUI layout pattern from 20 years ago, and you have to turn backflips in order to convince the DOM to do it performantly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> For anyone wondering, Python indentation of new lines inside lists, tuples, etc. is still broken ([https://github.com/atom/language- python/issues/22](https://github.com/atom/language-python/issues/22)). However, it looks like hitting tab at least allows you to manually indent the line, which is a passable bridge until it works properly. Auto-indent will completely remove any manual indentation, however, which seems like something that should be fixed.

</comment><comment><USER47> Is it still limited to only editing files < 2 Megabytes? For most people that is not a showstopper, but it may be for some.

<comment><USER48> No, recent patch increased the limit to blazing 4 MEGABYTES!

<comment><USER49> People editing files longer than that are certainly in the minority.

<comment><USER50> Of course, but if you find yourself in one of these instances of editing a large file (search and replacing database dumps is a common use case for me), you'll be disappointed. It's easy to argue that should be left to command line tools, but ST3 actually does a pretty good job at this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> i have been using it for 3-4 months now and its getting there each month. Sometimes the plugins fail but this could be because of the rapid development cycle of atom. On the positive side, its a good text editor, easy interaction, plugin install super easy. A downside is that its not easy on your ram though. Consumes more than what vim would do. But overall, if you need a modern editor, this is the way forward.

<comment><USER52> How well does it support other languages other than JavaScript? Will I be able to do mobile Android and iOS development at some point, or Haskell, Go, etc?

<comment><USER53> I regularly work on Go projects with Atom using the go-plus[0] plugin

[0] - [https://atom.io/packages/go-plus](https://atom.io/packages/go-plus)

<comment> irq-1 Looks like it's not working just now:

        Searching packages failed: atom.io is temporarily unavailable, please try again later.

Also, install Mercurial before the go-plus package. See "Missing Tools" near the bottom of the page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Have they fixed the sluggishness ?

The installer is almost 10x times as large as the sublime text installer.

Please leave "web technologies" where they belong.

</comment><comment><USER55> I don't know why, but is very slow on my computer and I have 8Gb of RAM / i3 This message appears everytime [http://i.imgur.com/hTZixD8.png](http://i.imgur.com/hTZixD8.png)

<comment><USER56> Slow on mine too, even scrolling. Sublime, on the other hand, is super fast.

However great the community might be, this is a flawed concept. Native apps are better for certain things today. This is one of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Congrats!

I started using Atom a year ago, but at that time it was very unstable and the performance sucks so I switched back to Vim.

This 1.0 still has something to pine for: some of the essential packages are still not updated for the 1.0 API (vim-mode, etc), and when processing large files it still slows down significantly, but as they say, it's now a good foundation to build upon.

<comment><USER58> I get the impression that the large file issue isn't ever going to be fixed. Every time there's an update to Atom posted here on HN, and I ask about it, I get down voted into oblivion. It's a bummer too - I love the interface, I love the package, but the refusal to address opening large file makes it a non- starter for me. (No, I don't want to have two separate workflows for reviewing log files and writing code).

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I was lucky enough to get a key to use Atom when it first came out. I was not very impressed at the time, with its limited capabilities, so I ended up switching to Brackets for a while.

Later in my search for an editor that handles EJS, I rediscovered Atom. It really has improved since it first started. AFAIK, Atom and Sublime are the only editors that handle EJS. I also use Atom to edit JS, JSX, gradle, and FTL which work well as well. Still I stick to IntelliJ for most programming languages since I haven't found a way to get code completion, reference jumping, etc to work on Atom.

Very impressive work from the Atom team and the contributors!

</comment><comment><USER60> I so desperately want to like Atom (and Code), but I have a window refresh issue with it ([https://discuss.atom.io/t/display-does-not-refresh-when- focu...](https://discuss.atom.io/t/display-does-not-refresh-when-focus-is- taken-off-of-atom-win7x64/15589)).

This issue is still present in the current release. It seems like a minor annoyance but when it happens it really kills my productivity.

</comment><comment><USER61> I still haven't given Atom a go. Is it worth switching from ST3?

<comment><USER62> No, it still fares very poorly when matched up against ST3 (or Textmate 2, or basically any high-quality native editor). It is slow slow slow, and has lots of little quirks which are clearly a result of the wacky way they decided to build a text editor.

 _BUT_.... it is way, way better than it used to be. I keep it installed and use it from time to time, to let it update itself and see how it has grown.

It clearly has momentum, and computers clearly are getting faster... probably one day the slowness of it won't matter. But it still matters today -- Atom is noticeably slow on the fastest Mac notebook you can currently buy.

<comment><USER63> Sorry be that guy who posts his specs and disagrees... :-)

Running on a stock mid-2011 Air w/ 4GB Ram plus a Thunderbolt display. If it was slow, I would have switched or upgraded my machine sometime ago.

Things that are slow to me are waiting for node-sass to compile on save, server-side code reloading, npm installing... and so on.

<comment><USER64> It highly depends on your usage pattern.

I usually have one long-lived instance of an editor for the project/thing I'm focusing on, but I also frequently fire up "temporary" instances for one-off editing jobs, from the terminal.

The difference between, let's say, "subl ." (launch Sublime Text in the current directory) and "atom ." is staggering: Sublime Text starts _instantly_ with a boatload of plugins; Atom starts nearly instantaneously but then takes around 5 seconds to become usable, without plugins, after repeated runs.

(Speaking of specs, I'm on a late 2013 Retina MacBook Pro, 16 GB of RAM)

<comment><USER63> Yup, that is totally where it is slow. Would be great if they could nail that.

I must be more tolerable to that startup time, perhaps I've even become used to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Congrats! I still prefer emacs but perhaps not for long (I use both day to day)...

<comment><USER66> I use emacs but might try atom when it's a true replacement possibility. How can I know it's crossed the threshold?

<comment><USER65> I'm really looking forward to emacs-like tab behavior and also now that the rate of change will slow down we'll likely see the best quality extensions rise to the top and stabilize a bit.

Also looking forward to seeing Facebook's fork of Atom for React...

<comment><USER67> I would have switched off of Emacs for some things ages ago if not for the broken behavior of the TAB key when editing text in what seems like _every other editor_. No, I do not ever want to insert a \t literal. Never. Ever. And if I do, I can do it with a more ponderous key sequence. But I never do. On the other hand, I need to indent a line to the correct tab stop perhaps a BILLION TIMES A DAY.

Emacs has the benefit of decades of Huffman coding for its keystrokes, and I appreciate that.

<comment><USER68> > Emacs has the benefit of decades of Huffman coding for its keystrokes, and I > appreciate that.

Huffman coding, emacs, keystrokes, ...

what?

<comment><USER67> The most commonly used functions in Emacs are assigned to the shortest key bindings.

<comment><USER68> Ah, that totally flew over my head. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Maybe something worth pointing out..

I wanted to download this but after clicking every link I still hadn't seen a way to do it anywhere...

Obviously if I go to the homepage now the first thing I see is a big download link, which is great.

I think a 'download' link on the site though would be good since if anyone links ANYWHERE else it's hard to find.

<comment><USER69> Also.. installing on windows, it just says 'installation failed, contact the author'.

No idea where I'm supposed to look to find the installation logs, doesn't tell you where they are...

<comment><USER69> ...defaults to install to AppData??

How do I get rid of this crap now?

No entries in the Windows Programs listing. IMO They really need to think if this is a 1.0 ready release for windows...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> It's only fashion. There're no hard facts why someone should prefer it to vim, notepad++ or sublime or even a proper IDE like a Jetbrains product or Visual Studio.

<comment><USER71> Correct

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> I tried atom, the only thing I liked about it was design and color scheme, the rest are superior in sublime text, so I just went ahead and created a theme/color scheme for sublime which matches atom (1). Atom is laggy, even basic file navigation using arrows can be slow sometimes (and I have a latest retine macbook pro).

But the biggest issue for me is a battery usage, it reduces my battery usage on RMBP15 by 2 hours compared to sublime text, I am mostly working from remote places and having a good battery usage is vital for me.

[1] - [https://www.evernote.com/shard/s21/sh/cc73487c-08c9-4937-ac6...](https://www.evernote.com/shard/s21/sh/cc73487c-08c9-4937-ac69-8070c9b253f5/6b957b0938a218f0/res/3d36bb47-b576-4df4-9f92-2d2e8a696b66/skitch.png)

<comment><USER73> > [https://goo.gl/tF6M4C](https://goo.gl/tF6M4C) – this goo.gl shortlink has > been disabled. It was found to be violating our Terms of Service.

\----

For what an isolated anecdote is worth, I originally switched from Textmate to Sublime because I preferred Sublime's default colour scheme. Not for any trivial reason like features or "being in active development".

<comment><USER72> First time I tried to use google shortening service and it let me down :) Not sure what kind of violation they've found in a code snipped to showcase a color scheme

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Seriously, creators of Atom, what feature did you not find in any of the current text editors that you had to built one. Let's have a editor in every language!!!

</comment><comment><USER75> Both emacs keybinding emulation packages are sub-optimal. One misses C-p, the other misses C-e, both basic editor movement commands. Not impressed.

</comment><comment><USER76> I have this way of picking technologies where I will try a bunch of them at the same time and naturally gravitate to the one that works best for me. After using Notepad++, ST2, and Atom I feel that Atom works best for me. I rarely have to use Google to find out how to use some features and it's reasonably snappy.

I do need to give Visual Studio Code a fair shot. Heard a lot of good things about it.

</comment><comment><USER77> I remember when Atom beta came out I was turned off because it (presumably) didn't run on Windows(my workstation at the time).

Then I remember trying to give it a try once again a few months ago but gave up because I've heard so many horror story about performance issues.

Now I'm willing to give it yet another try because of vim-bindings and performance issue improvements. Is it at workable state?

<comment><USER78> > Is it at workable state?

I would say so. I've used it as my primary code editor for several months now and really enjoy it. Yeah occasionally you can tell it's a web app running on the desktop but only because opening projects or large files is kinda slow (also an occasional JavaScript error but I haven't seen those in a least two months) but beyond that it works very well. Very speeding on my MacBook and my HP Spectre.

The plugins are the best part and the primary reason I use it.

<comment><USER77> I see. Thanks for the input; I'll give it a try.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> I wrote a small guide to set up Atom for web development:

www.developingandstuff.com/2015/04/setting-up-atom-for-rails-development.html

</comment><comment><USER80> what's up with name reuse these days. atom (the syndication format) may be on the verge of becoming obsolete, but it's also forgotten and irrelevant already to warrant a name reuse?

<comment><USER81> Is anyone really going to be confusing a text editor and an outdated rss format

<comment><USER82> How is it outdated? Atom is absolutely everywhere and there's no replacement, or a need for it.

<comment><USER81> I suppose I meant the concept of RSS or whatever is itself outdated/unused to most people

<comment><USER82> That might be true for the classic case of following blogposts, but it's used under the hood all over the place. I'd call it one of the few absolute wins in standards on the web. It's ubiquitous for its use-case.

<comment><USER83> Even for following blogposts, what better alternatives exist? Genuinely curious here -- I read about how RSS/Atom is obsolete all the time but I still use them with feedly to follow blogs and news sites and don't see a better alternative.

Twitter and Facebook tend to produce too much noise in my experience to work as an alternative. I have an aversion to reading email newsletters, and they also get lost under noise.

Sure, most people don't use feeds, but even after the demise of Google Reader I reckon they still work just as well as they ever have and are the best way to keep up to date with blogs and provide yourself with a constant source of interesting reading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> With the following Atom community packages, I basically have a Rust IDE: linter, linter-rust, build, language-rust, racer

</comment><comment><USER85> So where do I get that nifty terminal they were using in the video?

<comment><USER86> It's here at CodeConf!

[https://gist.github.com/jssjr/018717ddcb81b76e1829#file- img_...](https://gist.github.com/jssjr/018717ddcb81b76e1829#file-img_4044-jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> The site is severely hammered right now. I'd like to try it again to see if the performance issues have improved.

<comment><USER88> Downloads are also available from [https://github.com/atom/atom/releases/tag/v1.0.0](https://github.com/atom/atom/releases/tag/v1.0.0).

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Huge milestone! Congrats.

And in case you're wondering about the video, well, its this 50 year old documentary "The Home Of The Future: Year 1999 A.D.": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RRxqg4G-G4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RRxqg4G-G4)

</comment><comment><USER90> woo! awesome work. I use atom for everything now.

        ...but realizing the full potential of Atom is about more
        than polish. We're considering questions such as: What
        does super deep git integration look like? What does
        "social coding" mean in a text editor? How do we enable
        package authors to build IDE-level features for their
        favorite language?

O_o you what?

Things I'm interested in ---> A hackable, fast, extensible editor.

Things I have no interest in at all ---> 'Super Deep' github integration, 'social' coding in my text editor.

Dont get me wrong, atoms a great piece of work, and making it extensible for building custom tooling is really great, but what _on earth_ are you talking about?

I hope this is just 'and now we're going to make some plugins' talking...

</comment><comment><USER91> A lot of people complain about the slowness of the Dom/JavaScript backend, but I see a lot of potential for some really cool things, like integrated juPyter notebooks, semi wysiwyg rendering of latex and markdown and maybe drawing rendering trees or other creative things.

<comment><USER23> Honestly, its not slow anymore between their React integration and this: [http://blog.atom.io/2015/06/16/optimizing-an-important- atom-...](http://blog.atom.io/2015/06/16/optimizing-an-important-atom- primitive.html). Feels ~95% native.

<comment><USER92> They dropped React a while ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> It's nice that they provide a .deb, but a signed repository/PPA would be really great.

</comment><comment><USER94> I always liked the Winamp approach: ship a core system with a base set of plugins, and implement new functionality via new plugins. The base system almost never changes, and version updates are simply a new payload of plugins.

Why do the best plugins need to be added back to base? Why not just keep them separate. Believe it or not Firefox was originally written in this fashion, but right around the time they added built-in spellcheck, new functionality started appearing as additions to the base system as opposed to browser extensions. Why?

</comment><comment><USER95> Is it possible to use atom right in the browser, rather than in a separate app? I know facebook engineers have an in-browser editor.. is this atom or something else?

<comment><USER96> Are you talking about [http://nuclide.io/](http://nuclide.io/) or some other editor?

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> Pretty cool intro vid. A breath of fresh air from the typical startup/product videos I encounter everywhere. I'm excited to see how this progresses. The development appears to be extremely active, with frequent + quality updates. Spotted the new-ish Office Code Pro[1] font in use too...

[1][https://github.com/nathco/Office-Code- Pro](https://github.com/nathco/Office-Code-Pro)

</comment><comment><USER98> I'm surprised that in their vision for Atom GitHub doesn't mention integrating Atom as the webeditor for GitHub.com. I always assumed it used web technology so it could form the foundation of a online IDE integrated closely with GitHub.com It will be interesting to see if this happens and what Koding, Nitrous.io, Cloud9, CodeAnywhere, Codio and CodeEnvy will do. At GitLab we currently have no plans in this direction.

</comment><comment><USER99> Downloaded it and added Facebook's Nuclide plugin suite but many things seem to not work. the mercurial plugin doesn't appear to function at all and frequently the config section where you list installed plugins just seems to hang, without loading anything. I'll stick with Webstorm (favorite) and Brackets (favorite "Atom like" editor) and vim (favorite command line). Atom seems too buggy to me.

</comment><comment><USER100> Can anyone explain to me why startup speed is such an important factor for them?

I really can't get my head around it. It's such a non-issue for me.

I care so much more about general performance post-startup. I wouldn't even bring startup speed up as an issue as long as it's in the few-seconds range, which it always was for me using Atom.

</comment><comment><USER101> I have to say amazing job to the team. My reason: last time I looked/was regularly using Atom the generic memory size was around 100mB if I remember correctly. I just checked with 1.0 and the memory size has now dropped below Sublime Text 3.0 (~70mB) to ~60mB. (OS X.10)

<comment><USER102> Seems to still be north of 100mb on Windows machines perhaps?

Same project and files open in ST3, 30mb.

I may be reading it wrong though; task manager is reporting ~30mb for atom , but there's ~100mb of background processes for atom shown as well.

<comment><USER101> Interesting, maybe they made the tabs more chrome like breaking each into separate processes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER103> Cool video and great copy-writing.

The editor still seems crude though. The new install used some old packages from a previews install that I though was uninstalled!? It also called home to report a bug without asking for permission. Then it froze after I had uninstalled the old package.

</comment><comment><USER104> Go To Matching Bracket taking almost 2 seconds in atom, happens instantaneously on vim/sublime.

</comment><comment><USER102> Ok I gotta ask.

Is there no recent files menu? Or am I just missing where they placed it?

I do like the find/replace UI compared to ST3, but the lack of a recents menu and it choking if I accidentally click a large file just aren't making me feel the need to swap to this.

</comment><comment><USER105> alias mate="atom" \- old habits die hard.

<comment> rkuykendall-com I still keep TextMate 2 around for simple text processing.

Atom treats everything like a project, which is great for projects, I don't mind my project taking 5 seconds to open, since I rarely close it. But for a little note, a copy-paste bin, or a quick regex? Textmate 2 is instant, better at larger files, and has the best find-replace window of all my editors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> I am really tempted to give it a try but I am already all setup with Brackets and I am having a hard time understanding what are the benefits if I make the switch over Atom. I will surely give it a try a some point!

</comment><comment><USER107> Have they resolved the long-standing performance issues present for the last six months? I've tried using Atom numerous times, but the longer it runs, the less stable it gets.

<comment><USER108> I'm brave/a masochist. I've been using it since the very start. It has come very, very far—performance especially.

</comment></comment><comment><USER109> Nice, this is the first thing i start in the morning, use all day and close at the end of the day. I'm using Atom with monokai and linter and love it.

That mid century video is hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER110> I think Atom could still have better performance. It wouldn't hurt to have performance tips for package developers too (maybe it has, and I missed them).

</comment><comment><USER111> I like Atom, was using for few days and I'm quite happy, also seems much like Sublime Text experience when first launch after Textmate "dies"

</comment><comment><USER112> Is there anyone with a BGR subpixel-order monitor who has been able to configure Atom (or VS code for that matter) to do the right kind of antialiasing?

</comment><comment><USER113> What is this? I can't even tell. A text editor?

<comment><USER114> Uhh... go to the main page ([https://atom.io/](https://atom.io/)) and it says right there "A hackable text editor"

It's github's text editor. It runs on "electron" which is a framework for making desktop apps. It uses node.js and Chromium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER115> [https://atom.io/](https://atom.io/) is down, btw.

</comment><comment><USER116> Just tried to install Nuclide and Atom complained about atom.io being unavailable. Guess I know why now.

</comment><comment><USER117> Off topic Does anyone here use Light Table? If so - what do you think of it compared to atom?

</comment><comment><USER118> I still cannot search for whole word expressions in directories without using RegEx, bummer.

</comment><comment><USER119> Broke the default font, ugh! Anyone know how to get the old font back?

<comment><USER17> Just add Inconsolata to your Font Family in Settings. If you want the old font size and line height too, set those to 16px and 1.3, respectively.

<comment><USER119> thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER118> They should do a LOST remake of that Atom Youtube Video ;)

</comment><comment><USER120> Congrats to the Atom team:) what happened to rAtom?

</comment><comment><USER121> I'd rather write vimscript than coffeescript.

</comment><comment><USER122> I had assumed this was browser-based, but upon visiting the site I see there is an installer. Can this editor run in a browser? If not, what's the point?

<comment><USER123> It does run in a browser of sorts ([http://electron.atom.io/](http://electron.atom.io/)), just not the browser, you're using to read this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER124> How do anyone run tox from atom editor?

</comment><comment><USER125> can it handle files larger than 2MB yet? :P

 _Incredible_ promo video though!!!

</comment><comment><USER126> The absolute disregard for any thanks for the Chromium team in the announcement is disgusting and a slap in the face to the foundation this editor is based on.

</comment><comment><USER127> What is it?

<comment><USER128> -_- a text editor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER129> I'm sure there's a few problems with this software, just like others. After reading some of these FWP, and the whining...I dunno, man. There are people throwing acid in the face of girls on the other side of the world, and you're all complaining about having to go into the registry and manually remove context menus.

I don't know anything about Atom, but I'm willing to bet there's really nothing this software is doing that prevents you from sleeping at night.</comment>


Social Browser Flock Shuts Down - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/12/social-browser-flock-shuts-down/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

<comment><AUTHOR> Rockmelt stands alone now. <http://www.rockmelt.com/>

I wonder how much of this was a result of attempting to rewrite, moving from Gecko to Chromium.

</comment><comment><USER2> Never saw the appeal of this. Surprised that they lasted this long.</comment>


Is the Internet Left Leaning? - <AUTHOR> http://andrewsplastic.tumblr.com/post/14387806370/is-the-internet-left-leaning

<comment><USER2> "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Colbert_at_the_2006_Whi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Colbert_at_the_2006_White_House_Correspondents_Association_Dinner)

</comment><comment><USER3> Younger people are usually left-leaning. Since the older generation probably aren't hanging out on Youtube and Facebook, they aren't there to like or unlike a video.</comment>


Ceglia v. Zuckerberg returns, with a bang - biglaw representation, lots of email - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/52829931/cegliavszuck

<comment><USER2> This is a testament to how skilled lawyering can make a difference.

Original complaint: Cast primarily as a claim against Facebook seeking a court declaration and judgment that Ceglia was the 80% owner of FB. Claim founded on a breach of contract. In essence, a claim by an independent contractor that, for breach of a $1K contract, he is entitled to claim half of what a young kid promised to give him forever after relating to the subject matter of that contract. Result: an inherently flaky claim that can readily be ridiculed as opportunistic and defeated on a variety of legal grounds.

Amended complaint: Cast as a series of claims against Mark Zuckerberg only (the _sole_ claim against FB as a company is a technical one that seeks to bind it concerning any judgment declaring that Ceglia has a 50% stake in anything granted or promised to Mr. Zuckerberg). Claim founded on the idea of a general partnership as an association of two or more persons to carry on business as co-owners for profit, with the theme being that one partner misappropriated for his own use and profit assets belonging to the partnership and must now account to the wronged partner for 50% of those assets, both as originally constituted and as enhanced over time. Result: a claim that may or may not be valid, depending on how the evidence eventually plays out, but which is _potentially_ credible if the evidence of a true partnership sticks.

In switching the claim from one primarily against FB as a company to one against Mr. Zuckerberg alone, DLA Piper has put it on much firmer ground and has created possible winning chances for its client. How it will likely play out will no longer be determined by one knock-out punch from FB but, instead, in the trenches, with hand-to-hand fighting over every piece of evidence and every fine legal point. That is a decidedly bad turn for Mr. Zuckerberg.

The case remains problematic at several levels, not the least of which may be statutes of limitations grounds on the new theories (New York lawyers can assess this).

Before we cheer too loudly for Mr. Ceglia, I would note that I have seen many, many situations over the years in which a less-than-attractive "money guy" does indeed exploit founders at the formative stage and the contract here appears to fit within that mode - in essence, a lifetime claim against a founder concerning the subject matter of an engagement in exchange for a token money contribution. Whatever one may think of Mr. Zuckerberg, this is utterly repulsive and will serve as a drag on Mr. Ceglia's case throughout.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking about this in the light of our conversations about this (and other suits) over the last year - reading the two complaints side-by-side is quite a study in contrast. The amended complaint seems (to my amateur eyes) to build the case from the ground up rather than the top down, and invite the court's opinion rather than peremptorily demanding its acquiescence.

 _in essence, a lifetime claim against a founder concerning the subject matter of an engagement in exchange for a token money contribution_

Which do you think is worse, from a court's point of view - the long and predatory-seeming delay in filing the suit, or the insultingly low initial 'investment' of only $1-2000? It would sure have a different feel if Ceglia had put up even $10,000, which most people would agree was 'real money.' $1,000 or $2,000 is such a puny sum that MZ can truthfully say it wasn't even enough to buy food for the lifetime of the relationship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The emails are pretty remarkable. I never really trusted the Winkelvoss twins, but these direct emails are pretty damning and seem to corroborate the twins' story. Looks like no matter what happens Ceglia is going to be a very rich man.

<comment><USER4> ...unless they're fabricated.

<comment><USER3> see as he's represented by such a prestigious law firm i find that highly unlikely.

<comment><USER4> Well, if it's so prestigious, let's just award Ceglia the shares now! Oh, but wait. Facebook's legal team is prestigious too, and is advancing the idea Ceglia's evidence is phony. Do we simply award the victory to the more prestigious team?

Even top lawyers can be duped by their earnest-seeming clients and plausible- looking fabrications.

Especially if Ceglia did engage in some real email with Zuckerberg (that said something else), it would be possible for him to create plausible-looking email records with alternate text.

Right now I think it's too early to judge whether that's likely or unlikely. The whole process will ultimately determine the relative credibility of the evidence and testimony.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr Remember Paul Ceglia, the guy who popped up last year with a lawsuit claiming he had given Mark Zuckerberg $1000 for 50% of Facebook back in 2003, and had a contract to prove it? Not many people were convinced, and the story sort of fell off the radar, even though parts of his case seemed persuasive.

Well, now that the Winkelvii* have had their claims rejected, Ceglia is back...and represented by DLA Piper, one of the largest and most solid law firms in the US. His amended complaint, filed yesterday, contains a large number of emails purported to be discussions between himself and Mark Zuckerberg about ownership of Z.'s stake in Facebook. Besides the (abundant) entertainment value, it seems this suit just might have legs after all. Back to the typewriter, Aaron Sorkin - looks like we might have a franchise here!

* I just love saying that.

</comment><comment><USER5> Journalists get paid to muck through legalese like this and translate it into something readable:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-lawsuit-paul- ceglia-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-lawsuit-paul-ceglia-new- evidence-2011-4?op=1)

<comment><AUTHOR> I have to admit to a bias against BI...Blodget's tone grates on me. Plus I actually like reading through legalese, rather than the abstracted version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Even if he had 50% at the beginning, wouldn't he be in the exact same situation as Saverin?

Diluted to hell by subsequent rounds of investment, and ending up with .1-1%. That'd still be an ENORMOUS amount of money, but there's no way he has a claim on 50% of the _currently issued_ shares.

<comment><USER7> No.

The argument is that all of the material produced as a result of the agreement is property of the General Partnership, of which Ceglia owns 50%. Therefore, the entirety of Facebook, Inc. would be part of this partnership.

Eduardo Saverin only got a stake in Facebook, Inc., not the partnership, which it's unclear if he even knew existed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> DLA Piper means some smart people are starting to believe Ceglia. How likely is it that folks like Kip Hall <http://www.dlapiper.com/kip_hall> and other partners at DLA would take a case like this as a pure troll?

<comment><USER9> Either that or the slim chance of payoff combined with huge payout made it worth pursuing. If nothing else it means some lawyers get to have their name attached to a litigation suit with Facebook's name on it. Even if they fail they can use it on their resumes. As can the company for seeming willing to tackle big challenges.

This is all devil's advocate stuff mind you.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Even if they fail they can use it on their resumes. As can the company for seeming willing to tackle big challenges._

DLA Piper is one of the largest and most powerful law firms in the US, and routinely represents clients such as Wall Street securities firms in multi- billion dollar suits. I think you should click the link above and have a look at the existing resume before making such silly remarks...this is not an up- and-coming law firm in need of wider exposure.

 _pun intended_

<comment><USER9> My comments apply to small and large firms. They especially apply to ambitious law firms and lawyers. I imagine DLA Piper satisfies those. This is about money; DLA Piper isn't doing this out of a sense of justice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Surely it is about the money, but the link above suggests that litigation against Facebook will only marginally enhance the partner's reputation. What I am driving at is the idea that mere involvement in a high-profile action is insufficient benefit to justify the reputational risk, unless there is a better-than-even chance of success. I don't see how a senior partner at DLA Piper would want to jeopardize their good name if there were any risk of a court dismissing the suit as frivolous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> " _I have recently met with a couple of upperclassmen here at Harvard that are planning to launch a site very similar ours. If we don't make a move soon, I think we will lose the advantage if we released before them. I've stalled them for the time being..._ "

pretty interesting quote from zuckerberg. couldn't this have implications regarding the winklevoss case?

<comment><AUTHOR> I wondered about that; I haven't read the opinions in the Winkelvoss case yet, but my guess is that any bad faith on MZ's part had already been established (so that this new information wouldn't materially alter things in the other case). It seems very likely that attorneys for Ceglia were waiting on the outcome of the Winkelvoss case before filing their amended complaint and revealing additional information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is obviously a "troll" case that is getting undue attention and credibility by DLA Piper's representation. To prevent these type of cases in the future, we, as entrepreneurs, should not give business to DLA Piper and other firms that take on cases like this to make the point that this is not ok.

That DLA Piper has taken on the case doesn't mean that the claim is credible. It only means that they deemed the case credible enough that Facebook likely will try to kill the case with a big settlement and DLA Piper will get a large chunk of that because they probably represent Ceglia on contingency basis.

The bigger problem is that by taking on the case, DLA Piper has made the claim appear more credible not only because of their skillful lawyering, but also because of their reputation. But the fact still remains that this is a "troll" case. Zuckerberg built Facebook and implemented his idea to make it big, and it's rather unfortunate if the outdated "general partnership" business structure could be applied to an internet company in this way.

It appears that while DLA Piper can use its reputation to make the case more credible, the fact that the firm took on a "troll" case doesn't affect its reputation, though it should. When a small law firm that is struggling for its survival takes on questionable cases that is one thing, but DLA Piper has a choice even in a bad economy.

</comment><comment><USER12> Probably not going to land in the jurisdiction of the People's Court :-).

Now me? I'd say "Ok so $3B, we'll give one to the lawyers, one to the taxman, and the third one we'll just keep for ourselves. And we'll call it a day and put this nasty bit of business behind us."

But that's just me, a billion post-taxes and legal fees would pretty much cover any eventuality short of Armageddon :-). If the providence of the email chain can be validated well, I'm sure the DLA Piper's are thinking they are looking at a potential billion dollar payout so they may be willing to commit serious resources to insuring that level of rigor is done.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you read through the eMails, it's hard to dispute Zuck pulled a fast one.

So it looks like Ceglia has a good claim on 50% of Zucks share of Facebook:

""By virtue of his 50% ownership interest in the General Partnership, Cegliais entitled to receive 50% of the total equity interest in Facebook, Inc. received by, and promisedto Zuckerberg, including, but not limited to, stock, stock options and restricted stock units.""

</comment><comment><USER14> If they have the actual e-mails, then Zucker will have to pay. It's clear that he gave 50% to Ceglia but never disclosed the success of the site.

Cegila for his part must be really naive.

<comment><USER15> ... or really smart for not accepting his $2,000 back and diluting the partnership.

<comment><USER16> Even if he'd given back the $2k, he'd still have a case if he was coerced with false information, wouldn't he?</comment></comment></comment>


The Myth of Prodigy and Why it Matters - <AUTHOR> http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=2026

<comment><USER2> Really good actually, give it a read. The last time I offered a summary of an article to the community I was voted to -4, so this time I'll just say: worth the read.</comment>


iOS (iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS) Spec Chart page has been updated notably - <AUTHOR> https://blakespot.com/ios_device_specifications_grid.html?v=6 <comment><AUTHOR> Look at the insane cache jump on the latest SoC, the A13. 28MB SRAM cache!!!</comment>


U.S. Intelligence planned to destroy WikiLeaks [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://wikileaks.org/file/us-intel-wikileaks.pdf <comment><USER2> The actual content of the report does not support the conclusion in the headline and description. The entire extent of the supposed "plan" is the obvious suggestion, in passing, that finding people who leak sensitive information would deter others from leaking sensitive information.

So what's the story here? That U.S. military intelligence knew, in March 2008, that Wikileaks was posting classified information that presumably had inside sources, and that this might be threat to OPSEC/INFOSEC, and that _shockingly_ someone who works in "cyber counterintelligence assessment", wrote a report about it. Utterly mundane.

<comment><USER3> I agree except the utterly mundane. It's mildly interesting to see how the government does threat analysis.

The wikileaks summary on the first page implies that the government actually tried to carry out a contingency plan to get rid of wikileaks (and that it "appears the plan was ineffective"), which is beyond silly. Surely wikileaks of all organizations would understand that these sorts of _analysis_ documents, enumerating even the mildest threats and then pinpointing potential weaknesses and then basically trying to get permission to investigate further (probably unsuccessfully but who knows) are a dime a dozen (not implying you should ever pay for one if offered).

The word "planned" in the phrase "planned to destroy..." has a very different meaning in the context of government contingency planning than common usage suggests. In most contexts a plan to do xyz implies a course of action the organization intends to take. The US government, at least, generates layers and layers of "plans" that it never intends to act on, or knows that the probability that they'll need to be acted on are very remote. For the most part then the actual dispatch of some combination of plans are left up to non military elected officials.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fascinating. The document states that "Several foreign countries including China, Israel, North Kora, Russia, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe have denounced or blocked access to the Wikileaks.org website."

Whoever wants to put the US on that list is no patriot.

<comment><USER2> _Whoever wants to put the US on that list_

Who is that? The document makes no such suggestion.

<comment><USER5> I think he meant that the US shouldn't strive to be a country opposing Wikileaks like those others. Not the best company to be in.

<comment><USER2> Ignorance is a woefully inadequate form of counterintelligence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You're all donating to wikileaks, right? Over here: <http://wikileaks.org/>

<comment><USER7> Didn't realize they were limiting the information they release because of monetary concerns. Definitely a worthy cause to donate to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The document is, as might be expected, fairly uninteresting. The main take home messages are:

a) The US DoD classifies Wikileaks as a "threat", or potential threat.

b) This seems to be primarily because troop sizes/equipment/movements might be or have already been leaked. Such information may give the upper hand to potential enemies.

c) There are some complains about material on Wikileaks being inaccurate, or edited in such a way as to give a misleading impression of events (a fairly standard complaint).

d) They propose trying to out/scapegoat/make an example of anyone who is identified as a wikileaker in the hope that that this will deter openness in government, although so far it seems that they have been unsuccessful in this endeavor.

e) Wikileakers seem to be a fairly competent bunch, adhering to security best practices in the handling, anonymising and release of documents, but may still be vulnerable to cyber attacks of various kinds.

</comment><comment><USER9> Anyone know if there could be legal repercussions for a US citizen reading this, should they have a way to track the IPs of the readers?

(I'm absolutely clueless when it comes to anything related to security clearances, but considering some of the stuff that is illegal in various parts of the USA, I wouldn't be surprised if simply reading a classified document is considered illegal.)

</comment><comment><USER10> The server didn't respond for me, so here's a Coral Cache link:

<http://wikileaks.org.nyud.net/file/us-intel-wikileaks.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER11> By the logic of the report, the New York Times should have been shut down or marginalized when Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers>

Maybe a better response by the government to Wikileaks would be to ignore it as a specific source of leaks, and instead:

a) Ensure that what the government does is legal and moral, and if the government cannot always be forthcoming with the public it is at least not lying.

b) Assuming a), tighten up control of classified information.

c) Be a strong enough government that it can withstand the occasional leak.

d) Stay the heck out of my internets.

Edit: added "by the government" in intro to bullet list.

<comment><USER12> I think the NY Times articles leading up to the Iraq war made up for it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> <http://wikileaks.org/#us-intel-wikileaks> gives a summary

this seems odd, given that cryptome has existed for years.

<comment><USER2> The summary is grossly misleading. For instance, it characterizes the mention that China, et al. block or could disrupt Wikileaks as "justification" for a "plan", but it is in fact listed as background information _about_ Wikileaks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Weighing in after 21 previous comments just to add that the one other conclusion I'm willing to at least move toward here is that Julian Assange is prone to dramatization.

</comment><comment><USER15> Instead of treating WikiLeaks like a threat, why not use it as a tool for feeding misinformation to specific targets?

<comment><USER16> That very observation is included in the "Key Judgements" section.

"The Wikileaks.org Web site could be used to post fabricated information, misinformation, disinformation, or propaganda and could be used in perception management and influence operations to convey a positive or negative message to specific target audiences that view or retrieve information from the Web site."

<comment><USER2> In context, that appears to be more of a concern that such tactics could be used _against_ the US. In the "Intelligence Gaps" section, for instance:

"Will the Wikileaks.org Web site be used by FISS, foreign military services, or foreign terrorist groups to spread propaganda, misinformation, or disinformation or to conduct perception or influence operations to discredit the US Army?"

Similarly, although there is mention that Wikileaks could potentially be hacked to find information about the identity of the leakers, in the context of this report they seem more concerned that _others_ will do this to identify potential sources:

"Will foreign entities attempt to conduct CNE or CNA to obtain information on the posters of information or block content on the Wikileaks.org Web site?"</comment></comment></comment>


Functional Koans (in Erlang, Clojure, F#, Scala) - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/relevance/functional-koans

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to ericlavigne in the Ruby Koans thread for the link. I'm learning Clojure currently, and thought this deserved a submission.</comment>


Finished working on a comprehensive how to for launching your iOS app - <AUTHOR>

Worked with 2011 Apple Design Award Winner Jeremy Olson. The How-to is here: http://startupplays.com/plays/market_and_launch_your_iphone_application_like_a_pro<p>I'll be giving away (5) for free just let me know what app(s) you're working on! <comment><USER2> If you're still giving them away, i'd love to give your how-to a try. I've made 10 apps so far, they're all handy utilities i thought would be useful, and when i speak to people about them most people agree they sound useful, but i struggle to do marketing and as such make very few sales.

If your how-to is successful, i'd be thrilled.

You can see the apps here: <http://apps.splinter.com.au/>

You can get in touch: chris.hulbert at gmail

</comment><comment><USER3> Clickable: [http://startupplays.com/plays/market_and_launch_your_iphone_...](http://startupplays.com/plays/market_and_launch_your_iphone_application_like_a_pro)

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd love to have one, I'm working on a little app game for kids. Here's a screenshot: <http://i.imgur.com/Hg9Io.jpg>

PS. Not sure if you're with startupplays.com, but a few screenshots of the files or projects in the play would go a long way. Pictures are worth 1000 words (and help to sell!).

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm working on Voice Call & SMS reminders application - <https://justremindit.com>. Free copy will be helpful to learn how to market your iPhone app :)! Email: aditya [AT] justremindit.com

</comment><comment><USER6> This looks great! I'm in the process of building an iphone app for my shopping site (<http://giniji.com>). It's a photo sharing app specifically for product photos.

<comment><AUTHOR> very cool. Sent you an email with a token!

<comment><USER6> Thanks a lot! Checking it out now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I actually saw this in my email this morning, wanted it, but can't afford it right now. I'm just in the idea phase right now, but would still appreciate a free pass.</comment>


The hunt for dollars to build the $64B bullet train - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-bullet-train-cash-20161224-story.html <comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure the people calling it a boondoggle are correct. Obama included $3B in the 2009 stimulus package for it back in 2009. Not a single yard of track has been laid.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/us/high-speed-train-in- ca...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/us/high-speed-train-in-california- is-caught-in-a-political- storm.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article)

[http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/263782-obama- high-s...](http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/263782-obama-high-speed- rail-stuck-in-station)

The project is hoped to finish in 2029, which is 12 years from now.

For comparison, China build the Qinhuangdao–Shenyang line in 4 years (approx half the SF->LA distance). The cost was $1.9B, which is less than what California has already spent.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qinhuangdao%E2%80%93Shenyang_H...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qinhuangdao%E2%80%93Shenyang_High- Speed_Railway)

Here in India, we've built an entire city Metro system for about $6B. That's twice what it cost California to explore the idea of maybe someday laying track, or what it costs NYC to build 1-2 miles of track.

If we are serious about transit, we will figure out how to get the costs under control. Anyone who talks about finding $64B and 12 years for what should be a $2-4B railway in 4 years is fundamentally unserious.

If we want transit in the US we need to fix the insane cost problem. Anything else is sheer folly.

(Incidentally, anyone mentioning purchasing power or worker costs doesn't know what they are talking about. Paris, Hong Kong, Spain and Singapore are all wealthy nations with costs far closer to India and China than to the US.)

<comment><USER3> > Not a single yard of track has been laid.

True but misleading. Actually laying track is the cheap and easy final part of construction; building the viaducts, grade separations, etc., and doing the other construction which prepares the route for track to be laid.is the time consuming, expensive part, and plenty of that has been done and is being done in the initial segment.

> Here in India, we've built an entire city Metro system for about $6B.

Which is a very different problem than a regional transit system. And, in any case, acquiring right of way is cheaper in India, due to land prices.

> That's twice what it cost California to explore the idea of maybe someday > laying track

California's done a lot more than explore the idea of construction.

> Anyone who talks about finding $64B and 12 years for what should be a $2-4B > railway in 4 years is fundamentally unserious.

Anyone who thinks that a statewide high speed rail system in California should be $2-$4 billion dollars in 4 years is fundamentally unserious.

<comment><USER4> > California's done a lot more than explore the idea of construction.

That's irrelevant. There is no planned path, just patches and the project is going to be scaled back to an absurd degree (or sold off, which is basically the same thing).

> Anyone who thinks that a statewide high speed rail system in California > should be $2-$4 billion dollars in 4 years is fundamentally unserious.

The project start, Prop 1A, was for almost 10 billion in 10 years (procedurally discussed, not legislatively enforced).

Much like Federal budgets and projects, anything extended beyond the current administration's term limits means it's someone else's problem. Putting people on Mars and this project, should become a reality about the same time.

<comment><USER3> > There is no planned path

Yes, there is a planned alignment for the entire system (and not just the LA to SF "Phase I" for which most of the cost estimates and timelines usually discussed apply, but also the Sacramento to San Diego "Phase 2".)

> just patches

No, even if you are referring to the context of the initial construction, that's not true; it's directed with a clear plan of a specific segment for initial operations between Silicon valley and the Central Valley.

> and the project is going to be scaled back to an absurd degree

Pure speculation; it's true that there is uncertainty, largely political in nature, about funding for the portion beyond the part that is supposed to be operational in 2025. But there's also plenty of time to resolve that.

> The project start, Prop 1A, was for almost 10 billion in 10 years

It was a $10 billion conditional bond authorization (one of the funding challenges has been meeting the conditions in that bond authorization) which was very explicitly not expected to cover full construction cost of the system (nor was there ever a 10 year timeline.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love public transit, but there is no doubt that this is in fact a boondoggle that shouldn't be built. That money should be used to expand commuter rail in LA and SF, or better yet, implementing BRT. When we have driverless cars on the horizon, and the possibility that the hyperloop could work out, sinking what will likely turn out to be $100 billion into yesterday's technology makes absolutely no sense.

<comment><USER6> Hyperloop, if it ever gets built, will be at least 10 times more expensive than this. Building a 500 mile vacuum tube is not easy. The hyperloop hype is very unfortunate because it will prevent us from having a proper functioning train in the hope of some pie in the sky project that will probably not happen with the present technology.

<comment><USER7> Worse yet, Hyperloop would move 1/20th the passengers, to the tune of only 1000 people an hour. Hyperloop is horribly inefficent, and has worse right of way needs & engineering costs compared to High Speed Rail, not to mention the lack of existing talent to build it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really hope this project gets built. It will be such a huge boost for California. In the longer term it will be completely essential and people will wonder how the state functioned without it.

It would massively increased the bay area's effective commuting area too.

<comment><USER9> How is it essential? It does nothing for the real transit issues in California, which is urban/suburban commuter traffic. There is no particular need for high speed rail between SF and LA - that need is served by air travel and the 5.

<comment><USER10> And who wants to commute to Bakersfield?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Our culture is incapable of building anything meaningful without extortion pricing.

<comment><USER12> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig)

[http://bensommer.com/blog/big-dig-big- corruption/](http://bensommer.com/blog/big-dig-big-corruption/)

There's a mix of ineptitude, poor/non-planning and some shady deals. With larger projects, more waste is essentially inevitable because of the number of moving parts and limited communication paths.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if the approach/partnership taking place in Texas will have better results.

[http://www.texascentral.com](http://www.texascentral.com)

"Texas Central will deploy Central Japan Railway Company's (JRC) "N700-I Bullet" high-speed rail system based on their "Shinkansen" system that has been refined over more than 50 years of operation into the most reliable, comfortable and safe high-speed rail system in the world."

I remember when the $10 billion bond was passed in California and now over 10 years later, it seems like it was all spent on politics instead of progress.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why is everyone so obsessed with high speed rail in countries like the UK and the US where local transport is what needs fixing.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's a pity that the United States didn't embark on a concerted effort to build a high speed rail system back in the 1950s and 1960s, when we had more money and a smaller population. And fewer lawyers. Instead we wasted a couple trillion (adjusted for inflation) on Vietnam. Think what we could have done with that money not to mention thousands of lives saved.

It seems to me that California's highway problem is one of simple over crowding. Even if they built ten high speed rails between SF and LA, it would probably not make much of a difference, and I'm not even talking about the issue of needing a vehicle once you arrive at LA central terminus. Trains carry hundreds of people; let us say, a few thousand at any given time might be carried on high speed rail cars, but this is a tiny fraction of the millions of motorists clogging the highways 24x7 all up and down the coast.

I see no solution to California's clogged highways other than to siphon some of the population off to neighboring states that are vastly less populous. Perhaps this will happen naturally as technology makes it easier to disperse workers over broader geographical areas. It seems to me that huge cities are a legacy thing anyway.

Probably the next big thing will not be speeded up 18th century iron horses, but electric long range buses and self-driving cars that will safely and quickly negotiate the computerized traffic grids of the future.

California ought to spend a few billion on embedded markers and sensors in its roads that self-driving vehicles can access; probably this will be a much better investment in the long run.

<comment><USER16> Although I agree with your conclusions it's worth considering that Japan's bullet trains run 2000 passenger trains both directions every 3-5 minutes (<<1min delay) on their high traffic corridor.

That is very conservatively (2 passengers/car) 1000 cars every 5 miles with on 125ft spacing equivalent to a perfectly functioning 10 lane freeway.

More realistically (1 passenger/car) 2000 cars every 3 miles on 250ft spacing is equivalent to a 60 lane normal freeway.

For the air travel equivalent (much lower latency, but higher cost) you would need 1000 full 737-900 every hour (8000/day) compared to the total number of flights on California on a busy day, 3000.

If you build it, will they come?

<comment><USER17> While that density is impressive, Japan is the only place where that density happens. Here in Korea, we generously run a train only every twenty minutes on the Seoul-Busan corridor. I would argue that this is much higher than what is likely to be attained in California, as both Seoul and Busan have well- developed public transit infrastructure and a comparatively low rate of car ownership, which reduces the burden on riders at both ends.

(Even ignoring the TSA, 6B in ridership fees to be made up, and general messiness of American commuters.)

So now your 1300 passengers, generously, are spread out over 20 miles of freeway, instead of three.

(2600 passengers/20 miles) * (1 car / passenger) * (250 lane-ft/car) * (1 mile/5280ft) = 6.1 lanes.

Now, that was assuming one passenger per car. Add a single bus per mile-lane (seated passengers only) and this drops to four lanes. With self-driving cars and more busses, you could safely add only a single dedicated self-driving car lane and a sigle dedicated bus lane in each direction, and still have room to increase "ridership". For the price, I think that is ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Back in the day, you could get from Berlin to Moscow and back in less than five years. Today, that's not enough time to get from LA to San Francisco.

<comment><USER19>
      Back in the day, you could get from Berlin to Moscow and back in less than five years.

Like the German army in 1941-1945?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been hearing about a bullet train for 30 years.

</comment><comment><USER20> well, the good thing about that staggering out-of-your-mind price tag (which, trusting to and believing in the process, i suppose will grow even more in the coming years :) is that it provides an opportunity for the R&D for alternative transportation options. That has potential to make CA and specifically Silicon Valley a leader in the transportation innovation too. By efficiently building such railroads at $4B a piece China effectively stripped its own innovation houses of such an opportunity :)

</comment><comment><USER21> popup warning

</comment><comment><USER22> One way to get the money is to enforce the law and send the illegal immigrants in California out of the country. Governments city and State and other governments spend billions of dollars for K-12 education, health care costs, and even college education for illegal immigrants.

Take the savings and invest it into bonds for the high speed railway.

</comment><comment><USER23> As a California usually in favor of all sorts of new technologies and futuristic projects, I am totally opposed to building this train system. The air travel infrastructure is already in place and could work even better with an investment of a fraction of the $64B. Airplanes don't need expensive rails to ride on in the sky. What's better about getting into a coach of a train and rolling on the ground over getting in the coach of a plane and flying through the sky? Let's stick with what is and what works and spend the money on desalination plants, wind farms, solar plants and a smart electrical grid.

<comment><USER24> If you think the existing air travel infrastructure was built in its entirety for "a fraction" of $64B (in 2016 dollars), I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.

Most of the cost of air travel is hidden in places you don't think about, and might surprise you if you knew how much it added up to (or how much tax money -- in the US, around $300 million per year currently, and around $9m/year of it in California -- goes into subsidizing unprofitable air routes in order to keep airlines flying them, for sake of maintaining connectivity).

<comment><USER10> Per your numbers 64B / 9m per year = 7 thousand years California could continue subsidizing those air routes for the cost of the track. Can't you see the disparity in cost?

<comment><USER24> That's to keep service on a few routes that get direct subsidies. That's not the cost of running the entire airport and air-travel infrastructure in the state, which _also_ runs on a lot of direct or indirect taxes. And it's not the cost of building out that infrastructure in the first place.

And I suspect that when you add it up you'll find that $64B is not much money compared to what having a well-developed air-travel network costs, and in fact this sort of argument is precisely the point people make when they argue for building out better rail service along major corridors: the cost seems steep when someone presents you with the bill up-front, but we routinely pay and have paid bills just as high or higher for things that we'd now yell and scream about if they got taken away.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


SnapChat being used for insider trading? - <AUTHOR>

http://www.newser.com/story/171132/jim-cramer-hints-snapchat-helps-insider-trading.html Jim Cramer tells the Feds about Snapchat: "My daughter and I Snapchat. OK, it disappears in three seconds," Cramer said. "Can the bad guys Snapchat, 'Go buy Leap Wireless' at 3:45 on Friday and get away with it, because you don't have the technology to stop it?" <comment><USER2> If anyone is using snapchat for insider trading that is extremely careless, I don't have time to find the article but there was a post here on HN about how to recover all the old snapchat images on the phone.

<comment><USER3> This may be what you're mentioning:

[http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/yes-you-can- recove...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/yes-you-can-recover-dead- snapchats-and-heres-the-video-proof/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Link: [http://www.newser.com/story/171132/jim-cramer-hints- snapchat...](http://www.newser.com/story/171132/jim-cramer-hints-snapchat- helps-insider-trading.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> If you want to keep something a secret, using a pgp encrypted message would be far safer than SnapChat.</comment>