skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Lean is taking a process and stripping out everything that is not necessary -- thereby making it lean.

Practitioners will take that a step farther and claim that there is some irreducible set of activities that somehow guarantee results.

It's been my experience that such practitioners commonly overstate their case, thereby creating an opportunity for dissapointment with folks like the article author.

This is a never-ending treadmill: some great guy jumps into agile or lean, has a few good projects, and suddenly is an expert on it. So he writes a book with his "prescriptions" Some folks buy, some folks balk. There are videos, seminars, folks who "get it", folks who do not, etc. It just goes on and on.

Please don't take that as cynicism on my part, because it's not meant that way. I think it's up to the people who are serious about this to decide if they want to work at a meta level -- understanding the concepts that are being applied and feeling free to include or toss things -- or if they simply want a recipe book.

If you want a recipe book, good luck to you. There are a lot of them out there, and more will be coming in the decades ahead.

I don't mean that in a snarky way. I am eagerly looking forward to where the agile startup movement is going because I think it's going to have an immensely positive impact on all kinds of things. But if you don't understand which questions to ask, as this author did not, you will never be happy with the answers. This author had a poor model of the problem he was trying to solve. This model will continue to prevent him from being satisfied until he changes it.
too lazy to write it, but you could easily write a ruby script which writes a C program to a file. The ruby script loops to 1000. the C program is around 1000 lines long, prints one number per line. the ruby script compiles and runs the c script. problem solved?
If the only thing the others at the galactic congress laugh at us about is our usage of pi instead of tau, I reckon we'd be doing pretty well :)
> the application of brute force instead of skill

The application of brute force is a skill, if you were successful with it. It shows you had the good judgement to apply the right kind of brute force to the right problem, and then the persistence, and the confidence in yourself, to see it through.
Excellent point, but if you are packet sniffing your boss maybe that file has some merit =)

My only point is that it's not the huge deal that the community is making it out to be.

Anyways, this is the last time I attempt to go against the hive-mind.
Will google do your laundry? Just curious :)
More information I was able to find.

http://www.quora.com/Jason-Putorti/How-You-Can-Support-Start...

https://www.votizen.com/issues/startupvisa/

Sounds like a good way to do this.
Agreed. But this then essentially translates into a "jobs for founder visas" scheme for relatively larger companies that can afford to immediately hire 3 American candidates.

This will, therefore, probably mean a deluge of applications from across the globe and the consequent generation of several more US jobs (which works out great for everyone).

Only I'm not too sure we should then call it a 'Startup' Visa.
Twitter by the Numbers - 460,000 New Accounts and 140 Million Tweets Per Day
this is interesting, but what about timezones?
Big scale:
Trying to move out to California and work as a software engineer at a start-up or one of the big companies. I am a sophomore in college on the east coast, any advice or suggestions?

Small Scale:
Become a better rock climber
Perhaps it is not a huge deal to you but I personally find it very disconcerting for a company that had always claimed up until now to encrypt all communications and storage.
90/9/1
A damned good question
If I screw up the paperwork on my end, the bank slaps me with 20k in legal fees at the drop of a hat. Just for reference.
That only works for so long, When your kids get up at 6 and go to day care at 8 you want spend that time with them so you get into work at 9, after breakfast.

When your kids go to bed at 7 you want to spend time with them before that so you head home at 5:30 and miss diner.

Being feed lunch is nice though:)
College Grads, High School Dropouts and Long-Term Unemployment
Show HN: Keyword Tool to Find Available Domain Names
Accidentally linked to the comment form. Sorry about that. If anyone knows how to get the URL updated, let me know. It's a great read.
I don't really see where this post says private profiles are the same thing as private buzz posts.
I wrote this keyword tool to help find a domain for a new project I am working on.

I thought it turned out decent enough, so I'm releasing it, hoping others will find it useful.

There are tons of these domain keyword tools around, here's why I built this one:

- Wanted to check the best keywords first, then fallback to less popular keywords

- Handle plural/singular keywords gracefully (like greatguitar.com, guitargreat.com, greatguitars.com, but not guitarsgreat.com)

- Use WHOIS rather than DNS to determine availability (more accurate, but slower)

- Simple to use

- Fast

There's still a lot to do, but in the spirit of release early and often, I'd love some feedback on this.

Do you find this useful?
True, but you are now setting up a false dilemma. The point is not that arbitrary units are hard, nor that any 2 are relatively harder. It is that a consistent unit that is not arbitrary is easier than the arbitrary ones, and usually involves quite a few useful "symetries" (by which I don't mean real symetries, but conceptual linkages).

As for why people think degrees is easier: it is simply because common usage of degrees makes the concept familiar to learners. I totally agree that teaching trig in terms of radians first would be much better.
Are the world’s megacities too big?
That works as long as it's a simple dependency tree like I was talking about and there is a single cut with that property. It's pretty likely you'll have convergent nodes (like changing a datatype's interface late in the game) and there's no simple cut that can let the thing compile.

I mean, sure, this can all be manually avoided, but I still think that having GHCi "compile as much as typechecks" instead of stopping before loading any symbols would be nice.
Is there anyway that you can specify a particular image, by entering the url of the image, for example?
Which is fine in private, but I would hope that you—as a true friend—would also defend them against unwarranted personal attacks from strangers.
Ah, you got my point.
>No it doesn't. You can talk about upper bounds on average case running time.

Hmm. At first read I agreed with this, but now I don't again. A bound is a theoretical limit. If certain inputs to a function cause it to exceed your "bound" then your "bound" isn't a bound.

I do now agree that "big O" applies to average case - not that I ever intended to deny that average case analysis is a thing; it was just a question of terminology. I think the way to resolve what btilly said with the Wikipedia quote I gave is that the "usually" in "big O notation usually only provides an upper bound" gives rise to the common misconception.

>The function under consideration can be any function, best case, worst case, average case, or any other function.

Could you clarify this? "Average case" describes a class of inputs, not a function. Perhaps I'm just experiencing a parsing error.
Timing and perfect set of early users.
Quantitative Updates on the Fukushima Reactor from Japan's Nuclear Safety Agency
1. Don't do it regularly. It gets tired real quickly.

I second this. It's not sustainable. On any given project, have a maximum amount of this allowed. If there's more, then there's something wrong.

At one company I worked at, sales guys felt insecure and kept on asking for more features in a hurry, before the next client meeting. This should've been looked at as a symptom. In retrospect, we should have asked why the sales guys felt so insecure and went on from there.
DHS chief Napolitano: Algorithms a big key in solving security, Big Data puzzle
Actually, Montreal is worth checking out as well - from both a quality of life and start up point of view. Culturally, it's a remarkable place to live, and in terms of starting a company, there is a wide base of both talent and angel/seed/VC money at play here. Other areas I would consider are Waterloo (more suburban but close to UWaterloo and RIM, which are Canada's two best talent pools) and Ottawa (also a great place to live and experience Canada at its best).
The power of culture - Why Japan will prevail.
sounds pretty close to what git does ... only with pubsub
This might not be the most delicate thing to say, but
maybe you feel this way because it's true?

A cold, hard slap from reality wouldn't be the worst thing to receive- it'd at least give me a point of reference to define my abilities.

Try a controlled experiment. Do something on your own,
so you know it's all you.

This is so bewilderingly straightforward I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner. Thanks.
It's because of the intense competition between Canada's phone providers.

Unfortunately the intense competition is limited to the golf course - the rest of the time they are free to fix charges, limit services and ensure that their friends in government keep out any competition
Very, very well executed idea, with one exception: hashbang URLs. Really? Reaallly?
They'll also laught at the west for seeing chess as the ultimate intellectual game instead of Go.

While the Baroque rules of Chess could only have been created by humans, the rules of Go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe, they almost certainly play Go. - Edward Lasker
Taking colour hint out of photos should not be a copyright infringement (although lawyers can prove otherwise).
Embryonic development of a bat
But we do judge doctor's based on a universal standard. They go through medical school, which contains subjects we expect them to at least be familiar with. Over time, formal learning in courses fades, but there is still a core of medical knowledge that we expect any practicing doctor to have. I'm suggesting that the basics of algorithms and data structures is that core for developers.
As I hope the post you replied to shows, I'm looking for configurability at the programmatic level, not at the end, end user level. Are you saying that is going to suffer too?

Considering Canonical is currently committed to bolting Unity on top of some version of Gnome, that version is going to have to be configurable enough for such purposes. Hopefully that will be the main line of Gnome.
Big-O, little-o, omega -- yes, these are all familiar, but never heard this notation be referred to as Bachmann–Landau.
By "unimaginably bad" I meant the earthquake+tsunami disaster scenario. This is now the unfortunate baseline against which the nuclear issues are, perhaps, the most significant remaining unknowns. Reading again what I wrote I see it was ambiguous.

There is only one worst-case scenario, so although I very much agree that the information coming out of Tokyo Electric Power Co. and the Japanese national government is inconsistent, that doesn't mean new "worst-case" scenarios become possible.

This is an interesting question.

Repeatedly we've seen commentators and outside observers saying "this can be no Chernobyl because...". But the situation at Fukushima-Daiichi is still very dynamic and many questions remain. These cores still have a lot of energy left to dissipate and thus each still seems to have a life of its own.

As much as we would like to know the current state of the reactor cores and all the possible paths they could take, the picture emerges that those officials in charge of the mitigation efforts don't have a perfect picture either.

Whether there are multiple worst case scenarios, or there is only one that we can't see clearly yet seems to be a philosophical question about a highly physical phenomenon.
I am officially switching from kuler to colorapi!
I used to be a paid Mixpanel user with several accounts. I liked it but it bothers me that you guys don't break the mold any more than traditional analytics did.

Why can't I just choose any random set of events as a funnel and view the breakdown that way? I want to mix and match events on the fly and see how they perform based on past data. I don't always guess the user path correctly, why not help me?
Algorithms for the Masses
Agilewords: Simple, Collaborative Document Review
IMHO, it is in the best interest of the US to let rich people in. They have a big potential to invest or consume.
The questioner specified "voluntarily." I believe those answering interpret that as "without increasing compensation."
Yes, we have just launched the beta version of our website called Skillendar http://www.skillendar.com

It's an availability finder for skills/ services worldwide that mimics flight/hotel booking websites; the search results are rendered on a Calendar interface; hence the name Skillendar short for 'Skills on Calendar'

Skillendar, on one hand, is a free online skill /service finder and booking system that helps you find a skill or service in your locality based on the availability and customer ratings of the providers. On the other hand, Skillendar provides a platform for both individuals as well as businesses to publish their skills or the services that they provide.

Moreover, Skillendar helps you publish your personal interests and hobbies and attract potential clients to earn extra income over your evenings and weekends
GrowlVoice - Google Voice Client for the Mac
The Curse of Tim Ferriss and Why Living Abroad Ain’t Always the Answer
Instead of:

Sign up and we'll send you ideas every few weeks at random intervals.

---------

How about:

Sign up and we'll keep your romance spontaneous by randomly sending you ideas every few weeks.
Etsy users irked after buyers, purchases exposed to the world
Not-so-short links about web performance
You probably aren't our target market (people new to Git) - but we are working on Git UI for OSX aimed at making the most common commands easy to perform. http://gitmacapp.com/download
R.I.P. Microsoft Zune, 2006-2011
Check out status.net and the most popular instance of it: identi.ca, the web ui isn't pretty but a refresh is coming with the 1.0 release and I use a CLI client to connect to it anyway.

the worst thing about it is that it maintains API compatibility with Twitter.
Well, the thing is, I'm more ok with the government giving punishment than I am with with the general public doing the same. At least in theory, they are supossed to give a punishment that is fit for the crime.
And while it's true that it's not unconstitutional to be cruel, it's still, well, cruel.
We don't need more Startups. We need more Finishups
You don't want a professional, you want a slave, in the strictest sense of both words.

You want a person to work more than you are willing to pay them. Recognize this fact and I think you'll find the answer to your question.
This is a great article, which restates the obvious, the people are lousy at understanding 'risk'.

Time, after time, after time. Every single study on every single metric shows that energy from Nuclear power is the safest and cleanest source of energy we currently know about, and yet the 'risk' boogie man is always at the forefront.

And in a weird way, by stopping implementation of power plants, we have sort of 'frozen' the perception of the risk based on experiences from the 70's. Have you ever compared the safety of a car you drove in the 70's with a car you drive today? Any different?

How do we 'grow up' past our 20th century fears and step up to save people, the planet, and our sanity by taking a more 'grown up' view of the risk / benefit analysis of nuclear power?

I really give Bill Gates credit for putting significant funds into the travelling wave reactor concept. He's looking at being able to take advantage of a safe way to generate power and consume left over waste products. How cool is that. But we have to get past a collective fear that the idea has the words 'nuclear' and 'reactor' in the title.
5. Pay them with overtime or comp time.

I'd suspect that this works best if it's the workers choice. At the same job, depending on circumstance, I was paid off with both comp time and overtime, and its surprising how different I felt the experiences were.

I definitely liked having the time off, but I generally squandered it since I was still decompressing from the extra work (I should note that, in this job, comp time generally came from working through the night - literally midnight to afternoon - on a Friday night leading into a week on call, then followed by the comp time). During a crunch time on another project, 60+ hour weeks weren't particularly rare, but we were paid overtime (at our regular rate).

I definitely preferred the paycheque over the time off, unless I could quickly bank enough time to take a full week off.

I think the choice comes down to your personal situation. Younger, single folks - like I was then - are probably much more likely to want to work through the pain in exchange for "extra" cash. Married folks, particularly those with kids, are probably much more inclined to take the time off to be with their loved ones. It's very much a personal choice, and I think an employer that understands that and treats the situation accordingly will get a lot more loyalty and respect from their workers than would an employer who paints everyone with the same broad stroke.

That said, I seem to recall reading - in Peopleware, I believe - that workers who push past 40 hours a week need the time to compensate, and I believe that they need to have more time than they worked to recover. I'd have to read the book again to be sure though.
> I lost 20 pounds on Seth Roberts's fixed-point diet (aka the "Shangri-La diet") and gained 10 of them back after the diet stopped working, but it's ridiculously easy and works better for some people than others.

I've heard that said about every Capital D Diet Plan. I have a hypothesis about weight loss which is that it's actually simpler than many people make it out to be. Your body basically has inputs and outputs when it comes to food. If you want to lose weight and/or trim up, you need to either decrease how much food goes in, or increase how much your body burns as energy or turns into new/replaced body cells. That's pretty much it. The overwhelming number of people with weight problems (assuming exceptions are folks with genetic disorders) are just people who are eating too much for what they're body is doing, or, doing too little with their body given the amount of food going in. The type/mix of food matters too, but that's also a no brainer -- don't eat junk, but if you do, eat as little as you can and spread it out with healthy/efficient stuff -- and if you do eat more junk, then you better work it off more to compensate.
Internet Explorer 9 Released, Available to Downlaod [Microsoft]
Kinect Hack Shows How You'll Wave at Your PC
It costs more than XCode 4 and I saw some people here complaining about having to pay 5 bucks for it. Just sayin'.
This was going to by my question, is brute force a skill? Who is better off,

Y = person who can brute force a problem, and solve it 100% of the time but takes Z amount of time/effort to do so

X= person who can elegantly solve a problem quickly W% of the time, but gives up very quickly if problems arise

when does

Y * Z < X * W

and

Y * Z > X * W

(solve for all variables)
come to Dallas! the scene is really starting to pick up.. http://launchDFW.com
Someone occasionally going against the "hive-mind" is important, and it only costs some karma.

(I do think you're wrong here, "but I'll defend to the death" etc.)
:) I just spent 30 seconds looking at the comment form, thinking maybe some tip from the book guided the implementation of the form!
I think the difference is that Japanese disruptive firms can engineer things like planes, ships, cars - US disruptive firms enable you to play games about birds on your cell phone.
I don't understand this move. Virtually every ASP.NET programmer I know has a Zune and absolutely loves it. Almost universally, they consider the Zune to be one of the best gadgets they own.

Microsoft is making a big mistake here.
Having the buttons on the left also screws up my favourite window border theme (Crux) because the window title gets shifted right to make room for the buttons, with the result that the end of the title does not line up with the colour transition in the title bar.
Doesn't SSL caching, or even just leaving the connection open, take care of the performance issue?
Researchers show they can hack into cars wirelessly
He was already quite famous by that time, he'd done nearly 30 movies before that.
How to provide pump power at Fukushima
http://affiliateprogram.1800flowers.com/
>Historically untrue, and still not true for OSes like Windows NT (modern versions x86 and Itanium only), MVS (z Series only), and, of course, Mac OS X.

It's nitpicking, but MVS was developed in the mid-70s to run on the s/370, before the zArchitecture was developed.
Not surprised. The future of media players is definitely going to be split between smart phones and the $30 bottom end.
iPhone + Moleskine + pen = win
That's a very good point. I will take that on board. Thanks
Color Snapper isn't required to make Mac apps and hasn't been free for the better part of 10 years (more if you count the Project Builder era).
IPods and iPhones banned in the Gates Household
I think the proposal is an interesting one. This really is one good step in cleaning up the issues with visas in this country. People that want to come here, start companies, and build the economy should be encouraged. Those that come for school, get an advanced degree and want to start something should be allowed to as well.

What isn't clear to me would be a scenario, say, where two foreign nationals want to work together to start something under this proposed program, would they need 2x the numbers? Also, "three new American jobs", are those visa eligible or not?

The second area I would like to see addressed is the whole of the H1-B process, specifically for "filling jobs where there is a shortage of talent". The economy is in the shitter and there are people qualified that are having a hard time finding things -- maybe due to age, location, or possibly needing to brush up on skill sets. I don't know what the right approach here is, but it really needs to be cleaned up to encourage training and hiring of those not needing a visa. I've worked with many of the job-shops (Wipro, GlobalLogic, etc) where the amount being paid for "talent" often was much higher than what hiring locally would cost with similar or worse quality.

Balance is needed. This proposal is a great start and maybe adopting something like the Canadian point system would be an interesting follow up for the non-entrepeneurial crowd.
Too bad the general population is not a majority of ASP.NET programmers.

Not sure what you don't understand about the move, though. Simply put, the thing just isn't selling. Maybe it's the terrible marketing, maybe it's the choice of verbs to describe the functionality ("squirting"... really?), maybe it's fact that PlaysForSure couldn't play on it, maybe it's because the software delivered a sub-par performance (at least in the minds of consumers) versus iTunes.

Or maybe it's all of that, combined.
I don’t know a single person with a Zune. Did they ever release them outside the US?

Edit: looks like they did, but in software form only
They already have almost the same leverage: "Agree to our terms ... or lose your business". Competition among investors would probably prevent this from becoming a big issue.
Well, that's due to rigorous standardization. Think about the speech codecs etc. used in mobile telephony. It's not like a phone number gives you anything more than an IP address does.
Very cool site, did you guys do any market research that you could share? Who do you think are your biggest competitors?