skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I have an anecdote about daily stand-up meetings. The project I was on had its tasks written up in Excel spreadsheets, planned up to 2 years in advance. The management discovered, after seven years, that things were not being done that should be done.

So they implemented daily stand-up meetings at exactly 8:50 am, including every single person on the development team, as well as all the testers. The natural politicians on the team immediately pivoted towards writing down every bullshit thing they did during the day, so they could recite them the next morning as evidence of productivity. Incidence of scheduled meetings that would require at least one of the seniors to be present exploded.

Every single one of those damned meetings was scheduled for 10 minutes, and lasted at least 30.

The stand-up is not the problem. Incompetent management is the problem. Management fads won't do anything to address the underlying deficiencies. The actual problem with that office is that smart and unethical developers are leading the incompetent managers around by the nose, using the very process and metrics that the managers had created to hide their lack of development knowledge.

As a result, the senior developers assigned themselves the privileged tasks that sound important but don't actually require much work, assigned the grunt labor to juniors, and gamed every last one of the management metrics to make sure everyone on board with "the program" gets paid until the gravy train runs off the cliff.

So naturally, every last line of that code base is DailyWTF candidate material. The management does not understand technical debt, so the seniors issued them high-interest loans from their own bank.

This is not the fault of the developers. It is 100% the fault of the managers that allowed that toxic creature to take root.

So with respect to the question post, I suggest that the "slow" employees may actually be testing their new manager's capability to manage them. This is particularly relevant if any of them have ever worked for another company.

Assume they are trying to establish their own slack margin, so that they can safely read HN every morning, or some other equivalent time-waster, without falling behind on assigned tasks. If so, implementing a daily stand-up will only confirm that you are a management novice that can be manipulated.

Just establish a tough, but fair, work standard, and check to see if the "slow" guys speed up in response, or continue to struggle for more hours. For the former, you will need to court their favor by assuring them that good productivity will not be punished. For the latter, you will need to continue their education by sharing the knowledge and experience you and the faster developers have acquired during your careers--but subtly, so as to not embarrass them before their peers.
The doctor who published the paper positing a vaccine autism link was a fraud that has been stripped of his license to practice medicine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield

That's the publication process failing to catch the fraud, not science being wrong.

I guess there are probably other things that happened, but that one person is a source of an awful lot of the nonsense we see today.
You are either from Switzerland or Luxembourg, right? Maybe move to Berlin? There are a lot of English-speaking startups here, and you can eventually pick up some German as well. Learn say some Ruby on Rails / Javascript by building a website and then apply to jr. positions. Software development requires effort and time. You cannot just build something serious without years of learning and coding.
Too volatile and does not really solve the problem. You need to establish credit, be able to write checks etc. Bitcoin is not going to fix that.
There are situations where you should convince people, there are situations where you must mandate a decision. Whenever personal freedom produces large negative externalities, the law must mandate behaviours.

These mandated behaviours should be such that freedom is restricted by the minimum needed amount. As an unrelated example: smoking is not prohibited; Smoking in closed public spaces is.

For vaccination, I believe the sweet spot of mandated behaviour is to mandate vaccination of children participating in large public groups. Children that go to public schools must get vaccines. Children playing team sports must be vaccinated.

Parents then maintain the freedom of not vaccinating their kids, but must abide by the rules that prevent those kids from being a menace to the rest of the population.

Note that this is only needed because vaccines rely on "herd protection". If vaccination coverage drops, vaccine efficacy drops precipitously. The effect is very pronounced. 90% coverage is much less effective than 99% coverage. Not vaccinating a child poses a risk for the child, but also poses a risk to all other children he/she is in regular contact with.

P.S. A lot of other discussions may arise: Government prohibitions tend to be slippery slopes; Children should be somewhat protected from their own parents; Should groups be allowed to skip vaccination altogether?. These are secondary issues, irrelevant to the main decision that is: Mandate vaccination for children that are members of larger groups, so that the group maintains disease protection.
Amassing debt (either technical or financial) is not a part of any lean methodology.
I wiped your profanity and spittle off my screen.

I haven't seen anything like this here in the UK. Is it a US thing?

BTW, I wasn't advocating for or against in this GNOME argument. I am entirely an observer and was highlighting the arguments made by both.
I'm gonna download this app. I would be shocked if this functionality wasn't integrated into future versions, on an opt in basis.
Refactoring with Equational Reasoning
I think your irritation is justified, it would have been better to not make that comment. Sorry.
I have a Bluetooth enabled hearing aid, and this guy is spot on with everything. I started off with an analog hearing aid -- when it broke, you took it in and got it fixed. Nowadays, my hearing aid syncs with my iPhone, syncs with my computer, remembers where I've manually set the volume and next time I'm there, re-sets it for me. My hearing is better than it's ever been -- but now when things go wrong, I often don't know. It's very frustrating.

But it's getting better every day. I have hope and optimism.

I recently gave a talk about hearing loss, and one of the things I said was that hearing aids make us practically cyborgs. If a hearing aid can help me with my profound hearing loss, imagine what we could do for hearing people -- make your already fantastic hearing even better? Sounds like a win/win to me.

I'm excited about the future -- but I also keep in mind that wearables pose many problems, just like this author pointed out. If we can solve those, we're well on our way to cyborg-hood...
If they're provisioning fiber lines and not documenting loss, doing OTDR, etc they're doing it wrong. It should not have gone live and handed to the customer without passing a fucking smell test.

edit: my past experience with CenturyLink was always great -- they provided us with extremely detailed documents of the provisioned line with loss, bandwidth tests, etc.
I find the opposite. I'm fairly new at a company, and worry about not looking bad. Sometimes, things stall. The next morning, I can explain where I got stuck, and get someone who the group trusts involved. If it's a hard problem, and the best programmer gets bogged down as well, I look okay. If they solve it in 10 seconds, I'm unblocked. Either way it's way more comfy than sitting on it for a week wondering when I'll get in trouble.
This Week in Data [February 6]
So would you consider SpaceX to be a service company and not hardware? They build rockets to deliver stuff for customers. I think defining whether a company is a HW company is too narrow. If you need to build HW to build a business of serving customers, or need to build HW to sell to customers, you need to build hardware in either case.
In my experience, the only people who send text messages this way are the parents of children who have a cell phone. Text abbreviations were used at a time when typing on a phone was difficult, but now that we can use our thumbs to type (or swipe) fully expanded words on a virtual qwerty keyboard, most people have abandoned the kind of spelling you're displaying.
Soooo... Strap a code editor component on the front and call it Hypercard 9000?
Except it was science which told them vaccinations were dangerous and caused autism in the first place. Now of course the scientific position has (rightly) changed, but we have to explain when it wasn't correct before, and is broken now.

That's 100% false. The scientific consensus has always been that vaccines are safe and effective, and do not cause autism. One individual paper that said otherwise was an outlier, and was relatively quickly debunked.

It's important to differentiate between a single paper written by a scientist, and the scientific consensus, which is what the bulk of scientists agree is right. It's not that the consensus is never wrong, but it is wrong a lot less often than a individual paper is wrong.

The consensus on vaccines has never changed and to desribe it as such is misleading.
The stuff paradox: Dealing with clutter in the US
Cool, this looks like a lot of fun! I'm preparing my youtube->mp4->mp3 chain right now so I can try it out on Jets to Brazil's "Chinatown." (It goes youtube-dl.exe then ffmpeg, but I hated the shifty windows 7zip program b/c it tried to install a new browser, so I'm using Cygwin's 7zip to decompress windows ffmpeg and cygwin is updating everything under the sun, including emacs...).

BTW, the reason I want to do this is to transcribe the vocal part of the song into sheet music. This will work way better when the vocals are separated. I'll let you know how it goes, thank you.
I would also point out that the iOS software for my iPhone is really, really basic and unsophisticated. I'd love to figure out how to hack it myself and write my own software. I guess I should learn Obj-C first... ;)
Probably worth noting that shooting without "ears" can still leave you basically unable to hear anything for a good while depending on the firearm, shooting environment, etc. It's not an instant ear-bleeding rupture but it's still VERY loud and will cause significant hearing loss with little repetition.

Side note: I'm always curious how soldiers/SWAT/HRT/etc. are able to hold normal volume conversations. If they're wearing ear-protection, how do they listen for potential threats and assailants? If not, how do they not shout all day long every day?
At least you have to be physically present to steal or lose cash.
Ah I hadn't thought of that about the flamewar. I use both languages (now mainly C++ as I don't need to use PHP for the stuff I am writing anymore).

You're right about them using the right tool for the job - their entire HipHop etc. (whatever it is called now) creations to convert PHP to C++ and run a C++ web server are a good indication of this. Good point!
Haha, very true. That is one reason I like underscores: you can distinguish between setup_instance, set_up_instance, and set_upinstance. Or maybe set_up_upinstance. In context, it probably wouldn't matter unless you have both "setup" and "upinstance" types running around.
If you have to reach back to Tuskegee to discredit government health standards like vaccination, hand washing, seat belts, etc., you're probably stretching a bit.
MyInterview 2.1 is out and I wanted to get some feedback from the group
Normally, I would be the first to mention that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. But in that case I'll say: I will hit with whatever works. Be it sarcasm, legislation, or graphic photos of people with vaccine-preventable diseases.
Anxiety (founder thoughts)
Yes but there isn't a good strategy to convert people who actively hold opposing viewpoints.

Satire and even sarcasm can help sway the undecided, if they're done tastefully- and the undecided are the people everyone cares about swaying.
It's too bad that you can't separate virtual dom, the innovative part of React, from the rest of React which has its warts. They should receive credit for coming up with the idea, but there are better, more reactive frameworks using virtual doms now. React shouldn't win simply because they were first and have a big company behind them.
An account executive? If you wanted to spend more time writing code, and less time getting bogged down with contracts etc. Plus, as a service provider myself, there will be dry spells. Having someone pounding pavement will help to smooth that out and continue to help your grow in the good times.
Start shooting: http://funscript.info/

Have you given CoffeeScript a try? Bloated code size and interop issues are essentially nonexistent. Poor runtime performance is a non-issue with most C2JS languages because, well, they're compiled.
Virtual DOM is an implementation detail of React for web.

Its true innovation is its declarative component model.

You are missing the point of React.

https://medium.com/@dan_abramov/youre-missing-the-point-of-r...
I don't see the world as flat out, good or bad programmers. So I don't see myself as a good programmer or a bad programmer. It is highly dependent on what skills you ask me to use.

I will gladly admit i am not good at lots of things in software. But I know what i am good at.

Don't ask me to build slick User Interfaces for example, but I can build a reliable distrubuted fault tolerant backend if you want. I'd imagine Linus might not be that good at building slick angular apps, but you don't judge him on that.

I care about being able to thrive in my role, doing good productive quality work, and getting well compensated for that.

I am not ego maniac how likes to think he is awesome 1% programmer. I have realistic ideas of what i am good at, and try to find positions that use them.
He seems to have not actually understood game theory, from my watching.
> the mess of HTML and CSS get in the way of frameworks instead of helping them

I totally understand where the author is coming from, and do agree... BUT there is a flip side to this, which is that HTML and CSS enable us to come up with and implement totally unique designs and interfaces. The lack of standard layout and complex "widgets" is definitely a pain in the ass, but it also enables a lot of unique-looking websites and designs. It's kind of a pet peeve of mine when platforms/CMS's try to output markup instead of just providing data to the view layer... they are always outputting the "best practice" (if lucky) at the time they were built, and then a year or two later you want to do things a different way and you're stuck.

So I'm super excited about React.js and love the simple mental model with flux etc., but another part of me also worries that one can't dictate the markup exactly the way one wants because it has to be recognizable to the virtual dom as well (or the iOS view in native, or whatever other front-end React will output to).
Maybe someone with more React.js experience can enlighten me about this though? (I've only dabbled).
Hmm, OK, I'm guilty of having the biases and preconceptions that he's describing. However, even after reading through his post and some of the articles he linked to, I didn't see anything that really changed my mind.

Even knowing that there are smart people at Facebook and Twitter using PHP, I just can't shake the connotations that those 3 letters have in my mind. I'll try to keep an open mind, but lord it ain't easy.
Hacker News on Friday is always the worst.
Construction is a popular programming metaphor.
And if you convince the large amount of uninformed people that anti-vaxxers are ridiculus, then it's easy to pass laws that mandate vaccination for schools, it's harder for anti-vaxxers to get a platform on TV.
So, satire is a vaccine?
What about asking the kids that were recently exposed to do a public service campaign and visit the homes and families of other anti-vaxxers so that they can see the effects of MMR "in the flesh"?
> These are notoriously inaccurate.

Actually, if you pick the correct app they are surprisingly accurate: http://scitation.aip.org/content/asa/journal/jasa/135/4/10.1...
I have a friend that uses Titanium a lot, so yes, I only know of it second hand.

The lack of a function/reactive componentized UI paradigm forces you to work with native objects (the views) a lot. React can optimize how much it touches the bridge because you don't interface directly with the UI. From what I've seen, Titanium can't do nearly as good of a job as that because it's like the DOM. You touch the UI in several places and it needs to always talk across the bridge.

I never said it doesn't run JS on a separate thread. React performs layout on a separate thread, providing the flexbox layout algorithm.

EDIT: It's all of these little details that can make or break something like this.
Web development involves a little creative effort and a great deal of repetitive, tedious work. While sedentary, it requires heavy physical exertion to sit still the whole day. It is usually a low-prestige, low-power role within an organization. It does not require much academic education. I would like to be elitist, but what drives me is despair.
Bankrate: Mortgage Rates Hover at Lowest Levels Since May 2013
Bad sarcasm surely causes narcolepsy.
Canadian Supreme Court allows doctor-assisted suicide in specific cases
BitShares does solve, or try to solve the volatility problem (with BitUSD) but that Blockchain is not big enougth yet, and credit is also not happening at the moment.
I think one problem would be how much can we legally restrict from society someone who isn't vaccinated? Can work places restrict this (especially ones like hospitals and the like)? What about government jobs? What about health insurance companies? Life insurance companies? Public transportation? Flying? What about the government-subsidized/provided health care? Can they mandate vaccines?

They're free to roam about our society as they please (within reason).
This is a colossally bad idea. As a Chicagoan I can tell you unions only cause more problems. They make damn sure that patronage and favor systems rule, not meritocracy. That you can't fire terrible people and that all promotions are done via just seniority. That's on top of the eventual corruption, dues, and worse outcomes and being run circles around by non-union shops.

> but I'd prefer that over arseholes like Jobs et al making wage "agreements".

Under existing law this is collusion and illegal. The real question is why the, ironically, union-friendly Obama administration didn't crack down on this with an iron fist? I think Obama's DOJ needs to be held accountable here. Its clear they let Jobs become an untouchable man and this attitude hurt a lot of people's lives, moreso than anything Gates did and he was nearly destroyed by Clinton.
> That's not an unreasonable position, but consider this counterpoint: in the long run, there is more danger in people thinking it's sometimes okay to break laws, than in allowing whatever conduct was going to inevitably happen.

It seems like the problem is you've got one of these: Low false positives, low false negatives, simple laws; pick two.

To which some people are going to say that we shouldn't have simple laws, but that's really not a good alternative. Even if the law says exactly what you want (which is Hard), the administrative burden of following and enforcing laws that complicated can exceed the benefits.

So if you're stuck choosing between false positives and false negatives, the libertarian position falls out pretty quickly. Because in order to provide deterrence and account for less than 100% enforcement, the penalties for breaking the law are generally much higher than the societal cost of the crime, which means that the government convicting a good person has a much higher societal cost than the government not convicting a bad person. In other words, the laws should err on the side of things not being illegal.

But you're applying this to government action. And there are certainly things government officers can do that justify removing them from the general population and to which the same principle applies. But we have another alternative in this case, which is to remove them from the government. The burden for firing government officers should be a lot lower than for putting them in prison, which means we should reasonably do it a lot more aggressively when there is even the slightest hint of misconduct.
Doesn't that link contradict your point? Only the verb version contains a space.

setup
noun
...

set up
verb (adverb, mainly transitive)
...

That said, I agree with you regarding prescriptivism vs. descriptivism.
It does come off as elitist, and I think he could have communicated a great deal better. I agree that your identity shouldn't be wrapped up in some particular technology you use, but you also shouldn't have to prop up your identity by trying to insult others.
From what schools, from what companies?
The study is really saying that getting these factors "wrong" hurts a company's marketing and bizdev.
If my boss would just let me devote 3 hours a week to whatever I want then I would never checked HN the other 37...
A different perspective from some of the siblings: it keeps conversations fairly localized and thus a bit private. Beyond a few feet, and even with shouting it will distort and muffle the actual contents of speech in my experience.
If it's not grammatical, why does it compile? My compiler rejects lots of errors, but not this.

Maybe the problem is that the OP thinks that the rules of English apply to computer languages.
I'm not saying it was a consciously intimidating atmosphere, or that I felt judged. You're right, standups shouldn't feel intimidating. But depending on how they're structured, they can be. The standups I've taken part in felt more like a time to update management on what you're working on, not a time to get help.

They usually had far too many people involved. I think that's a standup problem, not an attitude problem. It's hard to speak up amidst 10-20 people (much less when they're all brilliant developers) when the whole room just wants to get down to work. It just doesn't feel like the place for issue-specific discussion.
I'm less than 50 and I remember how life was (Italy here). When I was little some children had polio and couldn't walk properly, I didn't know why at the time. Luckily they were the last ones and luckily I was vaccinated. However I had both measles and mumps, not a big deal but maybe only because I was little or because of proper treatment. I think every child at school had them sooner or later and all of them came back to school. We were the last ones not to be vaccinated against those diseases.

As an adult I got vaccinated against hepatitis, cholera, yellow fever, typhus, tetanus etc (I travel around the world on vacations). No consequences. Vaccination for me is an obvious choice. I can think that measles is easily survivable but I won't expose a child of mine to polio. Get all the vaccinations they offer you, it's a good investment.

However, if you don't live a problem you don't really appreciate it. Example: talking with people born in the mid 80s, it was impossible to convince them that there was a real concern about nuclear war at the time they were born (remember Reagan, Brezhnev, Andropov, the Star Wars shield?) Obviously nobody was going to fire missiles, they say. Go read the newspapers, watch the movies, etc I say. No way.
> We need to think of a better way to convince parents to vaccinate their children than hitting them with sarcasm.

False dichotomy -- we need to think of all the ways...
I don't know what you mean by "declarative component model", can you explain?
My personal theory is privacy. With a crashing din of music, your voice carries about 1-2 feet, which makes it easy to ensure only the right person or people hear you talking.

It allows you to be in a social setting while keeping your conversation private.
Another $40m to be invested in growth stage startups in Iceland