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The Thirty-Percent-Cut Edition Monday, August 7, 2017

Financial Times Returns To Apple’s App Store After Six-Year Hiatus, by Jack Marshall, Wall Street Journal

Since 2011, Apple device users have only been able to access the FT’s full range of content via its mobile website. The FT decided to invest in its web offering rather than a “native” iOS app partly because of Apple’s requirement to be paid a 30% cut of any subscription revenue generated from apps in its App Store, according to people familiar with the matter.

The new iOS app will therefore only be accessible to existing FT subscribers. New readers won’t be able to purchase subscriptions from within the app itself, but must instead do so from the FT’s website before logging in.

Return To TextExpander, by And Now It's All This

I returned to TextExpander for two reasons. First, I have an iPad and want to do more writing on it. I didn’t realize how much I relied on expansions—even those that don’t run scripts—until I didn’t have them. TextExpander is the only solution that works on both the Mac and iOS. That’s the main reason, and probably the obvious one.

Less obvious is the second reason: TextExpander is much better at creating new snippets than Keyboard Maestro is.

A Googler's Anti-Diversity Screed Reveals Tech's Rotten Core, by Ian Bogost, The Atlantic

These reactions to the screed are sound, but they risk missing a larger problem: The kind of computing systems that get made and used by people outside the industry, and with serious consequences, are a direct byproduct of the gross machismo of computing writ large. More women and minorities are needed in computing because the world would be better for their contributions—and because it might be much worse without them.

Stuff

ScreenFlow 7.0, by Agen G. N. Schmitz, TidBITS

Telestream has released ScreenFlow 7.0, a major update to the popular screencast recording and video editing app that adds a number of new features that boost options for creativity and reduce some repetitive tasks.

Kosada's Vuo Lets You Easily And Interactively Create And Mix Audio, Video, And 2D + 3D Effects, by Aaron Lee, Apple World Today

Aimed at media producers, VJs, interactive artists, and media-making non-programmers, it enables users to interactively create and mix audio, video, and 2D + 3D effects.

Develop

Take Naps At Work. Apologize To No One., by Tim Herrera, New York Times

In a study published in Nature Neuroscience, researchers tested subjects on their perceptual performance four times throughout the day. Performance deteriorated with each test, but subjects who took a 30-minute nap between tests stopped the deterioration in performance, and those who took a 60-minute nap even reversed it.

“Naps had the same magnitude of benefits as full nights of sleep if they had a specific quality of nap,” said Sara Mednick, a co-author of the study and associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside.

How To Build A Rumor, by Michael Lopp, Rands In Repose

Rather than stress uselessly about the source of the rumor or how it propagated, start by taking the time to reflect: What possible truth could be contained within the rumor? What unanswered question is this rumor trying to answer? It’s about you, so what is the organism asking?

Your journey of self-reflection on this a particular rumor is a test. I’m not you, I don’t understand your culture, and while I know contemplating, digesting, and understanding this rumor is rough, I know you need to discover what, however inefficiently, the team is telling you.

Notes

Inside The World Of Silicon Valley's 'Coasters' — The Millionaire Engineers Who Get Paid Gobs Of Money And Barely Work, by Julie Bort, Business Insider

"Resting and vesting" is when an employee, typically an engineer, has an easy work load (if any job responsibilities at all) and hangs out on the company's payroll collecting full pay and stock. Stock is often the bigger chunk of total compensation for a senior engineer than salary.

Once she was in rest-and-vest mode, this engineer spent her time attending tech conferences, working on pet coding projects and networking with friends, quietly developing an idea for her next gig, a startup.

She realized that her manager let her "rest and vest" to keep her quiet about the problems with that acquisition, so she had time to find her next thing. Had he terminated her immediately, she would have been incensed. "Everyone knew I had a big mouth and would speak out. He figured, 'Hey, it costs us next to nothing keep her happy for six months,'" she said.

Bottom of the Page

When I am stuck in Sudoku, I am really stuck.

(And I can't click on any buttons to get any hints, because... well, I am doing this on a physical book. Imagine that. I've bought a physical book in the year 2017.)

~

Thanks for reading.