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asplake

4,204 karma · joined March 28, 2013

Author, Wholehearted: Engaging with Complexity in the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation (2025) agendashift.com/books/wholehearted
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asplake··on Client-side QR code generator with SVG output
With SVG you can render directly on the page, no extra file involved.
asplake··on Four Stages of Competence
I’m surprised that this page lacks a criticism section. Models of staged development are not without their critics.

With any such model (maturity models for example) I always look for what is supposed to drive the transitions between stages. Often that is more interesting than the model itself.

In this model, a key driver seems to be “analysis”. Some contexts are less susceptible to that than others. Perhaps the ability to recognise that situation counts as analysis, but that’s not clear here.

asplake··on I've built my first successful side project, and I hate it
Agree with all of those, and such a business has B2B potential also. That describes mine pretty well. And while I’d love to make more B2B sales, I hate dealing with purchasing departments. Dealing mainly with professionals definitely has its upsides.
asplake··on Intel sells stake in chip designer Arm Holdings
Let Intel and ARM be Intel and ARM. Investors can diversify or hedge without Intel’s help.
asplake··on Entangled Photons Maintained Under New York Streets
They’re measuring individual photons, right? I’m old enough to remember modems slower than that. No doubt they will get faster, but what if they were used only for (say) key exchange?
asplake··on What is the ideal chapter length? (2023)
(In fiction)
asplake··on Maximal min() and max()
Oh totally! It has the information to do it both properly and efficiently.
asplake··on Maximal min() and max()
Also a demonstration of how much work other compilers do for you behind the scenes.
asplake··on Django 5.1 Released
I like the querystring feature. Before I write my own, does anything like this exist outside of Django for other Python-based projects? I use Flask, with jinja2 of course for templating.
asplake··on Bril: An Intermediate Language for Teaching Compilers
“I want students to feel the pain of working with non-SSA programs before the course introduces SSA. This frustration can help motivate why SSA is the modern consensus.”
asplake··on CrowdStrike CEO: "defect in a single content update for Windows"
Should CrowdStrike themselves not follow a canary deployment model?
asplake··on German Navy still uses 8-inch floppy disks, working on emulating a replacement
8” after 5.25” would have been a downgrade I think? I was glad to see the back of former (the latter too of course, but a bit later)
asplake··on Google is (not) bringing Fuchsia OS to Android devices
Right. And Google isn't a democracy either (nor should it be). The numbers on the winning side might be small. But as you say, “it” is what it does.
asplake··on Kanban vs. Scrum: What's the difference?
It slightly sets my teeth on edge to see the work items in Kanban referred to as “tasks”. The goal isn’t only to minimise wasteful multi-tasking locally, but to see deliverables flow through to the point of customer impact as smoothly as possible.

For me, the Zen of Kanban in product development is to work the board from right to left, working backwards from a "done" that means "someone's need was met" [1], stickies staying on the board until the learning is accounted for. You just don't get those senses of impact and learning if you think in tasks, and when tasks are managed at an unnecessarily fine granularity, I would consider it dysfunctional.

For what it's worth, I'm the author of Kanban from the Inside (celebrating its tenth anniversary in September) and Right to Left: The digital leader's guide to Lean and Agile (2019).

Edit: In case I am suspected of being anti Scrum, the reverse is true. Scrum done well can be truly great. Moreover, Scrum and Kanban are highly complementary to each other – they not only work in different ways, they do different things. As the article eventually acknowledges, there is no either/or here.

[1] agendashift.com/done

asplake··on We must seek a widely-applicable science of systems
> How does the body react to imbalances in some internally-relevant biomarkers?

How systems regulate themselves (and also perpetuate themselves) is the question behind cybernetics, and in the organisational context, management cybernetics. The problem generalises way beyond biology. The information theoretic and control implications are fascinating.

(I’m writing a book on the subject; ping me if interested)

asplake··on Europe's solar power surge hits prices, exposing storage needs
> On the flip-side, the power market is now seeing a bigger gap between low and high-priced hours, increasing the incentive to invest in storage, he added.

Seems like the system is working

asplake··on Sheaf Theory Through Examples
> Sheaves are mathematical constructions concerned with passages from local properties to global ones

Sounds interesting. Could someone elaborate on that?

asplake··on Lambda Calculus Interpreter
Thanks. A page with examples would be really helpful. The default example (if that what it is) or the shared example would be much more interesting with some context. Or a Show HN, if that’s what’s happening here.
asplake··on Lambda Calculus Interpreter
It seems to scroll forever. Does this example terminate? What would be an easier example to try?
asplake··on "AI-powered" has become a red flag
A Google search does that well enough for me on its own
asplake··on Apple M4 iPad Pro OS Has New Security Exclave for Camera and Microphone Activity
Thanks! That option did not exist when they released this feature.
asplake··on Apple M4 iPad Pro OS Has New Security Exclave for Camera and Microphone Activity
On Mac it drives me nuts that you can’t turn the recording indicator off. When you’re recording a presentation it’s not at all what you need.
asplake··on Pre-Work for Setting OKRs
OKRs as the summary of a strategy conversation (not a “visioning” session) that actually happened, in the words of those who will do the work, fine. In most other scenarios I would proceed with extreme caution.
asplake··on L(O*62).ONG: Make your URL longer
Or: how to ruin hckrnews on mobile (Safari, anyway)
asplake··on Stop Using Discord
Circle?
asplake··on We're Watching Facebook Die
Their user activity metric includes WhatsApp. Isn't that a bit desperate?
asplake··on Scientists Found a Paradox in Evolution; It May Become the Next Rule of Biology
What’s new I think would be the generalisation and its acceptance as a rule.
asplake··on Ask HN: What's the best book you've read so far in 2024?
Also a brilliant audiobook series narrated by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith who some here may recognise from the first Earthsea book.
asplake··on Ask HN: Why do you all think that Htmx is such a recent development?
Perhaps it’s less the individual techniques, more the clarity of its underlying model. The book is worth the read by the way.
asplake··on Write Plain Text Files (2022)
There are more charitable readings of that article. Did it specify an encoding?
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