thisjustinm

Exactly. This is all about getting to root causes.

I learned this working in a manufacturing environment for several years the was implementing the Toyota Production System and all the things that are a part of it like Kaizen, Kanban, etc.

After I left I thought it was too bad that all that good process was locked into the manufacturing world. I've seen it creep in more and more, often under the classification of UX with understanding user flows and actual problems of usability on a site (another area where asking why 5 times is very helpful to get to the root of a user's feedback).

I've also seen what I call "kanban flavored agile" be one of the most effective engineering processes for environments with ever changing requirements who don't need the rigid deadlines of sprint-based planning. When I saw it in manufacturing it was all about "just in time delivery" meaning a factory could easily switch production lines when suppliers missed deliveries (or delivered defective goods) or a machine broke down, etc. Which when you compare to the sorts of things that happen most every day in a typical software organization doesn't sound all that different.

There's a lot of discussion on here about stupid consumers vs evil corporations, etc. As is often the case, the blame lies with just about everyone involved to some extent. The US government choose to promote a low fat diet with it's original nutrition guidelines in the 70s [4] which led the public to demand the food companies to produce low fat everything in the 80s and into the 90s. It's now emerged that there was little evidence to support the health benefits of a low fat diet.

When you remove fat from food it becomes unpalatable unless.... you add sugar. Thus the increase in added sugar in just about everything which has helped to contribute to the rise of obesity and metabolic syndrome and all the diseases that come with it from diabetes to fatty livers, heart disease, etc.

So who's to "blame"?

The government in some ways, even though they seemingly meant well when recommending low fat diets (they're just now beginning to recommend reduced sugar and ease up on fat warnings).

Food companies in some ways who seem to have known about sugar's addictive properties and engineered their food to keep you coming back for more rather than keeping you healthy [3].

Consumers in some ways for not reading labels, exercising more, reducing portions, etc. But who could blame you when the government and the food companies were trying to convince you that what you were eating was good for you? (unless you had time to dive into the research yourself but let's face it, that's not an option for 99% of people)

One of the best explanations I've read of not just why sugar (fructose to be specific) is bad for you (in the quantities Americans but also most of the world eats it at) is the book "Fat Chance" by Robert Lustig [1]. You can also get a glimpse into his arguments via his youtube lectures [2].

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Fat-Chance-Beating-Against-Processed/d...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

[3] http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/food-cravings-engineered-by-in...

[4] http://time.com/3702058/dietary-guidelines-fat-wrong/

> 1. Make this "HN selects startups which get invited for YC interviews", i.e., a feeder into the existing system. Essentially, use HN to supplement the network of YC alumni who help out with the application-filtering.

I'd actually like to see the winners bypass an interview stage. As discussed on the previous results thread I think this is an opportunity for YC to shed any biases in their interviewing process and see what the results are.

Are there biases in the YC community that will come into play? Surely. Are they different biases than the YC interview process? That's why we experiment.

Wouldn't it have been a great experiment to see if a company Kevin didn't like did well in the batch?

If the point was to experiment I think YC missed out on a big opportunity.

I know there are places where that truly is a requirement to employment but I've twice successfully negotiated (once at a startup, once at an ad agency) those clauses out of my contract and I highly suggest others at least try to.

It resulted in a few awkward conversations with HR / legal but I stood my ground and insisted that them owning my entire life was unfair and said I was happy to have them own my output during work hours but nothing more. If they don't come around I'd consider it a red flag.

And this is a perfect reminder that if you allow some crazy input in your system you will eventually get someone who inputs something crazy.

Had Apple properly validated the input and accounted for this case or disallowed it entirely they could have avoided this.

Don't mean to troll but there are two sides to every issue like this: blame the user or blame the developer.

Hacker News homepage on day 1: http://oldweb.today/nsmac3/19991202212008/news.ycombinator.c...

Both sides in this debate, those in favor of "traditional" ads and those in favor or digital ad have a point but I think where things are going lies somewhere in the middle which will end up irking the zealots on either side.

The big egos of traditional advertising will be upset because not everyone on earth will have seen their latest "big idea." This is due in no small part to overall media fragmentation which digital (or the internet) but also cable have played big parts. When that Coke ad aired in 1971 how many channels were there? Maybe 6? Of course a large portion of the population was going to see your ad.

And on the digital side they'll have to accept that measurement isn't the be-all-end-all. Between crazy amounts of fraudulent data and the simple fact that creativity and "brand awareness" are really, really tough to quantify they'll have to concede that sometimes the traditional thinking around creative work and "big ideas" will need to win out over analytics.

Source: worked for several years in advertising on the creative side and then on the tech side (and part of the problem is that those two departments are, well, departments but that's a story for another time...)

I use uBlock Origin [1] along with the EFF's Privacy Badger [2].

Hard to say how well it really works for privacy without really digging in to exactly what private info I'm leaking across the web but I haven't seen an ad in ages.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa...

[2] https://www.eff.org/privacybadger

For more on segregation and the effect it has on school performance see these two recent This American Life episodes[1][2].

[1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/t...

[2] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/563/t...

I spent 7 years (02-09) working for Kodak in their Windsor, CO manufacturing plant. It was an incredible lesson in [not] taking risks that I'll never forget.

The writing was certainly on the wall about the digital photography revolution when I started but nevertheless every year the story was the same as the losses continued to mount: "Digital continues to eat into our film business faster than we have predicted. We've accelerated our plans [to switch to digital] for next year."

Meanwhile, in the middle of all that I remember picking up the WSJ and reading an interview with Netflix's Reed Hastings. They had just debuted streaming and were fielding questions from reporters asking if they were worried about cannibalizing their successful DVD business. Reed's response was "We have to obsolete ourselves before someone else does."

I cut the article out and hung it in my office at Kodak with that quote highlighted. It was pretty well faded when I finally took it down, laid off as a part of another "digital transformation" restructuring.

How do you define browse?

To me browsing would include all the JS stuff we have now plus all kinds of things we haven't dreamed up yet. Call me old fashioned but I'm all for continuing to move the web forward.

There will be vulnerabilities in native apps, there will be vulnerabilities in web apps or, put more simply, there will be vulnerabilities.

Patch 'em up and charge ahead.

I recommend "Soft Skills: A software developer's life manual" by John Sonmez

http://www.manning.com/sonmez/

If you're just starting out and your experience thus far has been python / django then I'd say go for the .net job.

While .net itself may not be "cool" you'll benefit a lot from diving into an entirely different language, framework and ecosystem. Plus, it sounds like you may get some good mentorship, which is invaluable when you're starting out.

Bottom line: don't sweat the .net - dive into a different stack, spend a few years learning its way of doing things and then see what you want to jump into next.

Been using Kinesis Freestyle 2 Mac[1] & bluetooth variant along with a Kensington Trackball[2] for just over 3 years and I'll never go back. I switched keyboards one week and then switched to the trackball and started using my left hand for the mouse the next.

Overall it took a week to feel comfortable with each and another week after that to be back up to my previous typing / mousing abilities (the week where both were new was particularly amusing - I could barely highlight text at first). Now I can switch between standard keyboards and right or left handed mousing / trackball / trackpads with ease.

Background: At my last job I developed tendonitis in my wrist after some particularly grueling work weeks using the Apple wireless keyboard and trackpad. I think the trackpad is what really did it - the flexed position it encourages your wrist to be in really couldn't be ergonomically worse.

[1] - https://www.kinesis-ergo.com/shop/freestyle2-blue-mac/ [2] - http://www.amazon.com/Kensington-Orbit-Trackball-Mouse-Scrol...

"Spotify's resurgence in the iPad chart began on the day of Tidal's launch last week, suggesting that in spite of its criticism of the app, Tidal ultimately just increased public awareness of Spotify."

Kayne West also deleted all of his tweets that mention Tidal [1]

[1] http://www.ew.com/article/2015/04/22/kanye-west-deletes-tida...

It's more important to choose to go from no password manager (and most likely less secure passwords) to using a password manager. Whether you use LastPass, 1Password, Dashlane, etc is more personal preference.

I've been using Dashlane http://dashlane.com for the past year and it works great across all browsers, iOS, Android, etc. Similar to other services it gives you a "security score" across all passwords to let you know if you're using insecure or repeat passwords and also reminds you to change your password when a service has been hacked.

Step 1: the creators should release the files necessary to 3D print the bust

Step 2: thousands of little versions of the bust begin showing up around the country

Step 3: ...

GovCode helps you find US Government open source projects at https://www.govcode.org/

You can filter by language and see open issues.

"Right now, the happiest thing I can think of is driving my daughter to school and swim practice."

Ironic but nonetheless understandable statement coming from an executive of a driving service.

We dove into this at work (where we make a lot of flash and HTML ads) and it took a 40k flash ad and made it into a 100k HTML add that also required the nearly 500k swiffly.js file to run.

So it's a start but it's not magic nor replacement for a competent human just yet.

I was surprised when HN didn't show that the URL had already been posted but thought maybe somehow I was the first person to post about it. Looks like my URL has a trailing slash and that passed the filter.

Anyone else see a few "Anonymous Animals" show up as viewing your docs in the last 24 hours? Every time I've opened up one of our private docs in the last day there's also been an anonymous animal shown as viewing it, which is a bit concerning.

Another common name for these boards is "shower board."

One thing I noticed with the one I previously built was that different color / brand markers made a big difference in how easy it was to erase.

IIRC red and black Expo brand were the hardest to erase while green Expo would wipe clean even after a couple months (we left a couple of test marks on the board once we realized color made a difference to see how each fared).

So true. And being second best with a very friendly syntax often makes it a first choice.

Today I learned two things: there are very few Applebee's in Los Angeles and with people like Mr Lazer-Walker in the world we're all gonna be just fine.

I like this concept but think about how the user at the FCC will perceive this. When your internet is slow who do you blame?

1 - The site, i.e. "Yahoo must be getting a lot of traffic today."

2 - Your ISP. ie. "Comcast must be overloaded in my area right now."

3 - Your equipment. i.e. "Maybe I need to restart my wifi / PC"

And then, somewhere way down that list you maybe, just maybe think - "I wonder if there is an organized effort by a small group of developers to set up their sites in such a way that my particular IP here at the FCC is having its speed throttled."

I agree that we need to spread the word about what is at stake with Net Neutrality but I'm not sure if this is the best way.

I've been using an Ikea standing desk [1] off and on for a year and a half but most recently all day for the past two months. I definitely feel better overall (energy, alertness, etc) vs sitting. I have a trackball mouse and Kinesis Freestyle 2 keyboard in addition to a raised external monitor and laptop stand for ergonomics. The first two weeks my legs were very tired at the end of the day but now I'm used to it. I have a padded mat and use a chair to kneel on to switch up my posture and shift weight throughout the day. Now that I'm adjusted I don't think I'll ever go back to sitting.

1 - http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Ikea-Standing-desk-for-22-dolla...

I worked alongside industrial engineers at a Kodak manufacturing plant that applied the Toyota Production System to their operation over the course of several years (once you start you're never done, thus continuous improvement, etc) and the results were dramatic (in a good way). I liken it to "industrial UX" as a lot of the observational techniques and ways of getting to the true root cause of issues are not too different than what a UX person would do for a website. Personally, I still use what I learned whether it's laying out my kitchen or my desk at work to maximize my own efficiency.

http://glossi.com is disrupting one of the last pilars of 20th century media - the magazine. Glossi allows anyone to create a beautiful digital magazine that can be viewed on any device through our browser-based WYSIWG creation platform.