The power of a whiteboard - <AUTHOR> http://www.agile-software-development.com/2009/03/power-of-whiteboard.html

<comment><USER3> I remember being somewhat underwhelmed when interviewing at a Hedge Fund where they had leather seats decorating a beautiful inlaid wooden table, and not a white board on the whole floor - reminded me of Feynmans comparison of Princeton versus CalTech..

Apparently at Caltech they had a cheap accelerator, but they got great results, because the physicists knew it inside out and tinkered on a daily basis.

I did spend a year doing what Id describe as 'guerrilla white-board driven architecture' where we basically argued hammer and tong for three hours a day, putting ideas up and tearing them down. So every module and code interface was nutted out in detail and usually simplified. It seemed to keep a team of 12 developers focussed on building the same thing. A smaller wb was used to keep a simple list of what the teams working on. Backed up by an open Plone intranet this brought us to delivery. Probably more suited to medium size teams as in game dev. Part of the success was having done a prototype beforehand.

Whenever I see a w/b covered in those cute little pink and green post-it notes, my reaction is that they are embracing agile too rigidly - that the focus is 'process' not action. Its not a white board if theres nowhere to write, right?

So I think the main benefit is simply that the board, being blank, beckons you to draw whatever idea is bouncing around, which you then have to explain...

<comment><USER4> Great writeup. I have a whiteboard in my bedroom so I can visualize ideas. There's something about putting it on the white space that makes them easier to edit and play with.

<comment><USER5> With loose blank A4 pages and a pencil you don't have to stand up. In my experience, it works better if it's paper printed on the other side picked from the recycle bin.

<comment><USER6> I find for brainstorming with myself, regular paper (or and roll 11" wide - <USER2> found a few for free and they last FOREVER)is best, but with a bunch of people the whiteboard works better.

I am somewhat hampered on the whiteboard by my incredible lack of drawing ability, but it still works out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I talked early NetApp into covering all the side walls of the main conference room with whiteboard.

One of the interesting behaviors that I noticed that no one else seems to have commented upon is that the level of activity around a large expanse of whiteboard is related to overall mood.

When things are going well, folks are drawn to whiteboard, looking for interaction and information.

When things are going badly, they'll avoid it.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've had a similar experience. We do use some software tools to help us with the process, but I would feel very comfortable managing a moderately sized team doing Agile development using nothing but a whiteboard. It's still my teams go-to tool when we need to create ad-hoc lists of "this is the critical list of defects to fix prior to the release" type of lists, as well as hammering out architecture decisions.

That said, I now have one member of my team who is remote full time. That has made it a little less useful. We use Skype and a Logitech webcam, which helps him to be able to see the whiteboard, but he can't really participate in the drawing and writing. I'd love a two-way digital whiteboard, but alas those are fairly pricy.

If anyone has worked with teams like this (majority of the team on site, one or two remote), I'd love to hear suggestions on how you've overcome these problems (if in fact, you have).

<comment><USER9> I'm kind of lucky in that I can watch dozens of teams simultaneously. So I've seen various combinations.

Here are some ideas:

\- Open line. Teams leave a VOIP or regular phone line open on a PolyCom in the middle of the room on both ends. If the equipment is good enough, this gives you some ambient noise from both sites.

\- Open cam. If you've got the bandwidth, use it. An open cam, especially one that can be controlled over the web (not that anybody uses it, but heck, its cool) lets both sides keep an eye on what's going on. You can make use of an old spare notebook to do this if you like.

\- We're all in standups together. If you do a morning coffee or standup or group breakfast or whatever, the remote folks are part of that too. Lots of time the most critical information gets discussed in the most relaxed informal venues.

\- VR. I've got two teams that are using Virtual Reality for team colaborative space. While they're using Second Life, I guess you could use anything like that. I have lots of comments on this idea, but I'm saving them for a blog entry :)

\- Adapt. Don't be afraid to try something and then throw it away. I don't think there's one answer that fits all situations, so the critical factor here is the creativity and adaptivity of the teams involved. Try some ideas you think are good and see how it works. Heck, try some ideas you think suck and see how it works. Lots of times our initial estimate of how much something is going to help or not is way different than reality.

Hope that helps some. Drop me a line if you'd like to hear more pontificating :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great article, spot on. Given the high-tech nature of my (our) work, I find it amusing that whenever people ask me, "what software do you use to track X" or "how do you manage your tasks efficiently" I just say, "I use a whiteboard."

And it works too.

</comment><comment><USER11> I almost read it as "The power of a white beard". Which sounds appropriate in the software industry.

Anyway, a whiteboard is not just great for software development. It's good because it makes it easy to share thoughts among participants. It helps to encourage participation, visualizing of concepts, and the very act of writing down ideas also helps the writer to build his/her own idea more concretely.

When we build up our office in my last workplace, I made sure we had writable glass surfaces for our walls in the conference room. I'd wanted it on our tables too, but thought it would be quite dirty. Everyone who came to our office liked and used it.

When I was shopping around for standalone whiteboards, I was surprised to find a few variations, other than those whiteboards that you can attach a printer, save to flashdrives, auto-erase, there was a kind (not a "board" anymore, but it served as one) where you stick 2-3 attachments onto a normal wall and used a special pen for drawing on the wall. You had to have a projector and a laptop for it to work. You can draw with the pen on the wall, and the software will capture it onto the laptop, projecting it onto the wall, pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER12> At ThoughtWorks Chicago nearly the entire perimeter wall interior surface is floor-to-ceiling whiteboard wallpaper.

It's magnificent.

</comment><comment><USER9> I liked the article -- full of good advice.

My only nit is the author's bold-facing every fourth word or so. It got distracting.

One of the harder things to do in a large company when introducing agile is to get people back to the whiteboard. Large non-agile teams are so used to having their own electronic tools and document templates that when you ask them to work "without a crutch"? It's like speaking in Klingon.</comment>


Ask HN: Low-code platform startup - Feedback Request - <AUTHOR> Hello friends,
We will be launching our startup https://www.getfastcode.com in a couple of months.
fastCode helps professional web app developers significantly reduce the time it takes to develop a web app. We are currently supporting Spring Boot on the back-end and Angular (and Angular Material) on the front-end. The community edition will be free.
I would love to get your feedback on whether you think that fastCode will be useful to you and for what use cases.
Thank you very much for any feedback you can provide us. <comment><USER2> How would one build fastCode on fastCode? In other words, how would you build your own platform on your own platform?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great question!</comment></comment>


What is your phone telling your rental car? - <AUTHOR> https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/what-your-phone-telling-your-rental-car <comment><USER2> With 185 rental days and counting this year I had my fair share of these kinds of situations.

I made fully resetting all electronic systems in the car as much as possible (which sometimes ends up being not at all) a ritual before returning cars.

Some cars offer a master reset (such as Ford with their SYNC system), some don't (such as BMW's iDrive). Some cars can have their multimedia systems reset but retain some information about the paired phones and some history as fragments on their SD card (such as the Nissan Maxima, where the multimedia system also malfunctions by forgetting all settings between power cycles if no SD card is present, make sure you check before you pick one up).

But in 95% of cases people don't give a damn and I would get a car that has all the previous customers' data in it. Phone logs, Navigation history, sometimes even contacts and text messages. I think it's scary.

</comment><comment><USER3> They really need to have a "rental car mode" in the infotainment center that provides a good UX for not leaking user information.

I've seen TVs with a "kiosk mode" option that do things like disable channel switching.

My most recent rental car (a Dodge Caravan) had a USB port on the center console that mounted the phone as a USB drive for media playback.

<comment><USER4> At the very least, there should be a mode to charge via USB while disabling the data pins at the hardware level

<comment><USER5> This is why I carry around a 'USB condom' (in particular, a PortaPow FastCharge) for use whenever I want to charge from an untrusted USB port.

<comment><USER6> That's a fantastic analogy

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This reminds me of the privacy concerns surrounding printers/copiers, which can hold onto sensitive data after you or your organization are done using them [1].

This also begs the question of how secure these "infotainment" systems are in the first place. Physical access to individual cars' data histories is relatively limited, but if these connected machines are remotely accessible then the resulting attack surface might be scary.

[1] [https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business- center/guidance/cop...](https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business- center/guidance/copier-data-security-guide-businesses)

<comment><USER8> > Physical access to individual cars' data histories is relatively limited, > but if these connected machines are remotely accessible then the resulting > attack surface might be scary.

Cars are already beginning to be connected to the internet. Just wait a few years; they'll fall victim to the IoT epidemic soon enough.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, the Jeep hack last year ([https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers- remotely-kill-jeep-hig...](https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely- kill-jeep-highway/) ) got into the infotainment system over the cellular network.

They've made the network side of the attack a lot harder than it used to be, the vehicles are no longer visible to anyone with a Sprint cell phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I discovered this the first time I had to rent a car from my dealer. There were about 12 other phones connected in, and my phone would have ended up with all of their contacts if I hadn't thought to disable contact sharing. (Fortunately the Mazda UI asks before doing that.)

I went through that list and un-paired every phone, and cleared out the contacts list in the entertainment center. I also informed my dealer of the issue, and I hope they are a bit more mindful of it going forward. Cars are basically designed to only ever be used by one or two people at a time, so this isn't a huge risk for most owners, but for rentals it's kind of a privacy risk.

<comment><USER11> I generally clear everyone out in a rental as well. I should start letting the rental company know, thoug. That's a great idea.

Fortunately, Android asks if you want to sync contacts, to which I always reply "No". It seems like that should be the default with an option to enable specific cars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Should be more appropriately titled "What is your phone telling the next rental car driver"

<comment><USER13> ... "and the rental car agency and everyone they share data with."

<comment><USER12> TBH I doubt the rental car agency cares. They would rather not deal with it since their business is renting cars. Any word that gets out that they even use that data without your permission is going to be very bad press.

But on the other hand, for corporate espionage...if I know a certain company's employees rent cars from a certain location...I'd be poking around.

<comment><USER13> > They would rather not deal with it since their business is renting cars.

Every company's business is collecting data on their customers. It's very widespread.

> Any word that gets out that they even use that data without your permission > is going to be very bad press

I disagree. Word on such behavior gets out all the time and few people care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Maybe doing charging through a data connector wasn't such a good idea after all.

We need more dumb inductive charging. And no, the charger does not need a data connection.

<comment><USER15> Random thought: couldn't one start making charging cables that only had power/ground pins present (but were still shaped like the apple/micro usb connectors)?

<comment><USER14> Yes. They're called "Charge Only Hardware Firewalls", and they are way overpriced.[1]

[1] [https://lockedusb.com/](https://lockedusb.com/)

<comment><USER16> There are cheaper options than this, but mind: Those aren't completely trivial devices. They have to negotiate to get more than 100mA(?) and for that negotiation there are two protocols: Apple's and, I think, Samsung's, (which is used by everybody in the Android world nowadays) And the negotiation has to involve both, the supply and the device. Cheap devices sometimes only negotiate with the device and then draw too much electricity out of the supply, which can be damaging.

<comment><USER17> The non-Apple protocol is Qualcomm Quick Charge: [https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon/quick- charge](https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon/quick-charge)

<comment><USER16> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> When I pair my Android phone with a rental car via Bluetooth, the phone asks permission to share contacts and messages with the car (of course I deny them). Are folks saying that sensitive data is still shared in spite of this access control? This seems like a problem with Android / iOS rather than the car.

<comment><USER19> _" This seems like a problem with Android / iOS rather than the car."_

Or with the user who unthinkingly allows their phone to share contacts without considering the possible ramifications.

Most users are accustomed to just saying "yes", like when an app asks them for permissions, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I never thought about it, but it would make a lot of sense that since both Android and iOS ask for application permissions, the same would happen for a Bluetooth session.

My guess is that it's not done because receivers were never supposed to handle missing data for something that shows up in device capabilities.

</comment><comment><USER21> I had a similar situation using a replacement phone whilst mine got repaired. A factory reset had been performed, but the Android OS still contained some quite sensitive WhatsApp sent images, including personal photos and even a credit card balance screenshot.

Businesses need to get more savvy in this area.

</comment><comment><USER22> A dongle[0] can be connected to the car's aux port, giving a nice wireless solution (and bypassing the phone's usually terrible amp)

[0]: [http://www.ebay.com/itm/Wireless-Bluetooth-V4-1-3-5mm-AUX- Au...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Wireless-Bluetooth-V4-1-3-5mm-AUX-Audio-Stereo- Music-Home-Car-Receiver-Adapter-/281993125798)

</comment><comment><USER23> I really want a setting for the phone to block all sharing with other systems. No prompt "do you trust?", just a blanket setting that I dont want to trust any system.

There's no longer any reason to tether the phone back to your Mac for backups or updates, so why is the phone so eager to share data? All of that can be accomplished with iCloud authentication.

</comment><comment><USER24> Which is why I never sync my phone with it or use the onboard GPS.

I'm honestly surprised that leasing agencies have not implemented some sort of a wipe procedure even if it's not a forensically secure wipe when a car is returned.

That said I once picked up a car at the airport that had someone's passport tucked into the overhead sun protector shade thingie.

</comment><comment><USER25> Given this is by the a US federal agency, it's interesting to me how the US federal consumer protection agencies never look at how much data the federal, state, local, etc. governments leak on the average person; for example, federal citizen identifiers reused as consumer identifiers, that is SSN numbers.

<comment><USER26> "Reuse" of SSNs is not a 'leak' of privacy by government. They're not the ones giving SSNs to whomever asks.

<comment><USER27> By creating a system whereby everybody can be assumed to have a certain unique identifier, they put people in a situation where they can be made to divulge that number of various private purposes.

For instance, if a drivers' license didn't have a unique number, then stores couldn't be tempted to demand said number when processing a return.

It's akin to the difference between naive full disk encryption, and a true steganographic filesystem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I have seen other people's trails on rental cars and I've always wondered why would they connect their phones to basically what is an unknown system, exposed to just about anyone.

Maybe I'm just weird. Never had any reason to connect my phone to the car, not rental nor my own. I make phonecalls from my... well, phone, not the car. I use my phone's Google Maps if I need to refresh my memory to get driving instructions. I don't have music on my phone either. It seems that being a bit ignorant to new technology does pay off at times.

</comment><comment><USER29> My phone isn't telling my rental car anything. I turned bluetooth off.

<comment><USER25> At the very least, it's telling them you turn off Bluetooth.

<comment><USER30> Are you saying the car has a mechanism to catalogue different drivers without bluetooth?

<comment><USER13> Wifi MAC address or other identifier is one method.

<comment><USER31> I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, some 2015 Chevys have the option for built-in wi-fi (4G LTE) making MAC tracking a legitimate concern. Granted, the rental isn't getting contacts/texts/etc like this article is talking about, but your rental could guess at the number of passengers or determine how long you spend parked outside of Starbucks based on how long it sees Starbucks wi- fi (assuming the vehicle doesn't have GPS), etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've been doing these security steps every single time since rentals got bluetooth. Every rental unless it's brand new has dozens of people's contacts and other data in it.

</comment><comment><USER33> Trying to load this page consistently crashes my Safari tab. Anyone else?

</comment><comment><USER34> Hopefully nothing since I don't connect it via anything.

<comment><USER35> Exactly, why would I sync my anything to something that isn't mine? That's like checking your bank account from a kiosk.. All the NOPEs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> you humans are so funny. you think you still have privacy. that ended in 2008.</comment>


Ask HN: Which continuous integration/deployment solution do you use and why? - <AUTHOR>

I am the co-founder of www.shippable.com and we're trying to understand what people value the most while choosing a continuous integration solution.
Our hypothesis is that it's complexity, speed, and price so we're focused on making our product super simple, fast, and cheap.
But just wanted to get additional thoughts from folks here-
- Do you already have CI set up? - What were the top 3 reasons for choosing your existing solution? - What value prop will attract you enough to switch?
Thanks!! <comment><USER2> Jenkins. Main reason is usable and simple interface and ability to integrate with your coffee machine if you want to. Go looks interesting, maybe next time I'll take a closer look, but jenkins instances I've set up years ago are still there and work just fine.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, shippable has really great prices, will try it today.

PS. Using jenkins because price (most of cloud CI has price about a cost of not bad VPS at DigitalOcean, for example).</comment>


Ted Ts'o is a rape apologist and why this matters - <AUTHOR> http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/18505.html

<comment><USER2> Questioning some well-thrown-about statistics about rape does not make Ted Ts'o a rape apologist. In no way did his email question the veracity of victims' claims, but rather the numbers that were drawn out of anonymous surveys and espoused as hard data.

He is guilty, however, of going against the feminist narrative, and that in itself can be harmful to attracting educated women to open source. I'm not sure he needs to apologize for his claims, but linking to the MRA rant was not in good taste.

<comment><USER3> Rape is rape, period. Trying to question statistics by redefining what rape is according to your own criterion is, by any sensible definition, being a rape apologist.

Using expressions like "going against the feminist narrative" when talking about rape is not usually a sign of objectivity on such matters.

<comment><USER4> A computer is a computer, period.

There are two billion computers in the world today. What did I just tell the average person? The average person probably believes I said there are two billion laptops and desktops in the world. The misdefinition takes place in the mind of the receiver of this information, and it's unavoidable. So in order to not be accidentally deceptive - or to prevent other people from accidentally deceiving themselves, it may be responsible to inform them of what a "computer" is.

Ts'o's argument is that yes: in this case, it is the responsibility of the deliverer of such information to try and eliminate the receiver's own misdefinition, and that the absence of such an attempt is deceptive.</comment></comment></comment>


Trump campaign says it can track your phone - <AUTHOR> https://mashable.com/article/trump-campaign-beacons-privacy-policy/ <comment><USER2> A "small Bluetooth radio transmitter" that can be embedded on a website? Somebody's got some 'splaining to do.

</comment><comment><USER3> To turn off on my Galaxy S9:

Settings-Biometrics-Location-GoogleLocationAccuracy</comment>


NCache (In Memory Data Grid) for .NET Developers, Made 90% Features Open Source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Alachisoft/NCache <comment><AUTHOR> Community is most strong part of Software innovation and I am glad companies building on Microsoft stack are following the pack and becoming open source.</comment>


We Are Living in a Failed State - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/underlying-conditions/610261/ <comment><USER2> "We can learn from these dreadful days that stupidity and injustice are lethal; that, in a democracy, being a citizen is essential work; that the alternative to solidarity is death."

</comment><comment><USER3> I think many are still in denial (corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public), or are self-centered, narcissistic, or too selfish to realize our problems as a country.

"...not to prevent the coming disaster, but to profit from it." Do they know something we don't? Maybe its just corruption?

Is this an attempt to further the gap btwn the rich and the middle class/poor?

<comment><USER4> I think it it more difficult than this. The constant refrain on HN is that this is all politician's fault, the media's fault, it's about partisanship, etc. It's always a blame game.

Of course there is a connection between the selfish, decadent, incompetent at democracy citizens that Americans are, and its leadership. And immediately the cognitive dissonance ensues, no one wants to take responsibility. They'd sooner adopt nutty conspiracy theories instead. That's how bad the brain hurt is upon being confronted by a central point of democracy: the correctness of blaming the citizens for the problems of society. And non-participation gives no free pass, it is the path to an illiberal society.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Boloney.

 _Failing_? Perhaps. Failed? No.

Or, more cynically, there's a lot further to fall...</comment>


Munchery Is Trying to Reinvent The Personal Chef, And Early Signs Are Promising - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/04/munchery-is-trying-to-reinvent-the-personal-chef/

<comment><USER2> At my shop in Raleigh, NC, we order lunch delivery once a week from a local, home-based cook for _$8/person_ (sandwich, side, drink). It's our favorite day of the week now, and one of our most productive because everyone eats together in the office or the park next door.

Its so much healthier, cheaper, and easier than any other option. She just emails us the menu on Monday morning and we all pick what we want and email it back. Couldn't be easier.

Point being: I think a lot of people want to buy this, and would if only it was easy to connect with local cooks (a friend referred us to Thao, or we'd have never known about her). ZeroCater is a great idea as well, but I really like the aspect of buying home cooked food from a local person vs. a restaurant because its cheaper, usually healthier, and its the closest thing to getting a home-cooked meal from my Mom.

(Sidebar: anyone in Raleigh, do yourself a favor and check out Thao Beck at <http://www.lunchboxnmore.com/>. Just shoot her an email and say you'd like to get the menu next week and she'll take it from there [or email me and I'll be happy to introduce you]. I can't recommend her highly enough, especially for companies. Here's a couple favs I had to photograph: <http://imgur.com/a/v80kd>)

<comment><USER3> Don't want to detract from your recommendation but just piggyback on the price remark - the guys in my office buy sandwich supplies at the start of the week and do four days worth of two sandwiches each. $10-12pp for the week. It's pretty social too as everyone preps and eats together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> the sort of casual home-based cooking for others as a small enterprise works well in india (any big city where people flock for work has tons of people working to keep them fed). however, in the usa i believe commercial kitchen requirements would make it a very high-overhead enterprise.

<comment><USER5> I came across something about this a little while ago, specifically the Dabbawalla/Tiffin[1] industry in Indian cities. The organisation and effectiveness of the system is quite astounding, especially given how ad-hoc and decentralised it all is. I can't seem to find the original article I'm thinking of, but there's one by the NY Times[2] that looks ok.

My recollection seems to tally with the WP numbers, with hundreds of thousands of deliveries a day, with less than 1 in a million mistakes, despite a multi- party transport network and widespread illiteracy (no written addresses!)

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala>

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/business/worldbusiness/29...](https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/business/worldbusiness/29lunch.html?_r=1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is awesome, I can't believe it took me this long to hear about it. Too bad, since I'm moving away from SF in two weeks. Gah.

There is a _gigantic_ market for "tasty, healthy, delivery" that is almost entirely untapped right now. I've been trying to pull it off myself (mostly ordering LOTS of veggie dishes and mixing in with the stereotypically absurdly-sized meat dishes that delivery is known for, and spreading over multiple meals).

Best of luck to these folks.

</comment><comment><USER7> For anyone else wondering what "mofo" is (see the article's screenshot of the daily push notification), its full name, Mofongo, shows up here: [https://www.munchery.com/menus/mofo-with-shrimp-marinara- sau...](https://www.munchery.com/menus/mofo-with-shrimp-marinara-sauce)

It sounds pretty good, too. The abbreviation caught me off guard though.

Edit: Mofo is actually a spin on Mofongo, not necessarily the same.

</comment><comment><USER8> This looks great, and while I feel the market for local, healthy dinner is large, the price points are too high. $18 - $20 is very expensive. I don't think I've ever paid over $15/person for takeout and even those times are infrequent.

It's a well-executed idea, just really expensive right now.

</comment><comment><USER9> Are there any legal issues here? Aren't these chefs acting as a restaurant and wouldn't they need a license?

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed there are. Our chefs have business licenses, ServSafe certification, and food reseller permits.

Regardless of legality, there are food safety issues. I wrote about how the traditional peer to peer doesn't work for food: <http://blog.munchery.com/2011/11/pro-to-peer-a-new-paradigm/>

<comment><USER5> It seems like there's a much greater scope for casual/ad-hoc delivery than production, based on the safety/certification issues. Of course, there are still potential risks with poorly trained/equipped transport workers letting your food get too warm|cold|stale, etc.

I was thinking a little while ago about how we're almost at the point of making the digital timer pizza-box from _Snow Crash_ a reality -- or in my scheme, something more useful, like a data logging thermometer.

It might be a little clunky still, but if you established some sort of ongoing service, an upfront purchase/loan/amortised lifespan device might make it practical to have a little temp + humidity + realtime clock with bluetooth/nfc comms to talk to your phone when your food gets delivered. And you have a solid audit trail if anything turns out dodgy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looking forward to you delivering in Mountain View! Our office is stoked.</comment>


Sitting on a gold mine, doing nothing - <AUTHOR> http://swombat.com/2011/5/19/born-again-entrepreneur <comment><USER2> It's understandable that people enjoy sharing their passions and what works for them with the world, but pushing everyone else to do the same is wrong.

Different people want different things in life. And that's what makes the world such an interesting place.

</comment><comment><USER3> In general I think that something as difficult and complicated as starting a business is a bit of a self-selecting outcome. It's like being a doctor, it takes years of effort, you have to make some significant sacrifices, and it's a bit of a gamble.

Most people don't have the stomach to become a doctor, lawyer, Congressman, Supreme Court Judge, professional athlete, business owner, etc. That's perfectly fine.

Knowing is half the battle.</comment>


Lisp as an Alternative to Java (2000) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.flownet.com/gat/papers/lisp-java.pdf

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8446368](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8446368)

</comment><comment><USER3> > Prechelt compared multiple implementations of the same task by multiple > programmers in order to control for the effects of differences in programmer > skill.

It would be interesting to compare these programmers' salaries as well. I think that a lot of companies would still make a completely rational decision to stick to Java after such an analysis.

<comment><USER4> Rational, yes. Prudent, no. As a corporation, developer salaries is not where you want to be trying to save money in your budget, because having your software produced by low-quality talent is cause you to spend much more money on maintaining poorly designed and poorly tested codebases in the long run. Hence why it's 2015 and we still have people working in COBOL, and writing Java code that interfaces with it.

And several of Paul Graham's essays mention this--using a language other than Java (or C++) can actually be an advantage in hiring because those are languages that many people learn _just_ to get a job, so the quality of the candidate base is lower on average, whereas if you're hiring for a Lisp hacker, you're going to get applicants who are genuinely passionate about programming. Then you also get the benefit of Lisp being a more expressive language that's faster to develop features in.

<comment><USER5> Doesn't the result of this argument rest on empirical evidence more than anything?

There must be some point at which the salary/talent tradeoff doesn't make sense. Take a team of half a dozen developers each with a million dollar salary. They'd be the best of the best, sure, but it's probably not the best deployment of resources.

Alternatively, consider a team of dozen unpaid interns. They're also probably too expensive.

Figuring out the correct mixture of talent and money is a hard problem, and companies are built on getting that right. And although it might be a good ego-stroke to think "expensive awesome programmers provide a lot more value than cheap competent programmers," it needs evidence, and the evidence for it probably varies in different contexts.

<comment><USER6> There are plenty of worse things to rest on besides empirical evidence. Indeed, it is a shame that empirical evidence is not more heavily weighed, for some of us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If anyone wants to read either of Lutz Prechelt's papers, see the original C/C++/Java [1] and the Perl/Python/.. followup [2]. I wish the program sources were available, if only to see if any of the Perl submissions are as readable as Norvig's lisp [3].

[1] [http://www.ebhakt.info/dl/Comparejavaandc_D9F7/compare_java_...](http://www.ebhakt.info/dl/Comparejavaandc_D9F7/compare_java_c.pdf)

[2] [http://page.mi.fu- berlin.de/prechelt/Biblio/jccpprtTR.pdf](http://page.mi.fu- berlin.de/prechelt/Biblio/jccpprtTR.pdf)

[3] [http://www.norvig.com/java-lisp.html](http://www.norvig.com/java- lisp.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> How good was Java's JDK 1.2 JIT? Probably not good.

<comment><USER9> Jit came with 1.3.1 if I recall. Of course the real question is if lisp is that good why aren't more people using it? Including the people who know about lisp and java?

<comment><USER10> > _if lisp is that good why aren 't more people using it?_

Rewrites being uncommon, companies use the language that they started in. Start-ups use hyped languages that are considered good for the job in the current environment, in order to attract interest and inspire trust in their judgement.

Languages that were frowned upon can go back into favour; JS did. However, it only did so thanks to both the success of the platform it was on and a functional language committee. Lisp has neither, and is therefore unlikely to rise to fame.

If a company made a platform which recommended Lisp, and if a language committee rose to modernize the language and stifle innovation, it would start getting hype. I cannot see the future, but it seems unlikely, regardless of its technical merit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One word. Clojure.

<comment><USER12> Two words. Android Runtime.

<comment><USER13> n*2 words: I don't get it?

<comment><USER12> Java works on Android Runtime (ART). Clojure barely works on dalvik, let alone ART.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I tried to like LISP many times since the 1980's when I was experimenting with it on the side, it just did not click for me like C/C++/Java/C#.</comment>


The iPhone XS faster than iMac Pro on the Speedometer 2.0 JavaScript benchmark - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1043277162676072449?s=09 <comment><USER2> Speedometer is not really a "Javascript" benchmark, it's a browser benchmark, all the actual "heavy" lifting is DOM operations.

It's absolutely useless as a benchmark for hardware, because it's testing wildly different codebases. Safari on iOS is not the same as Safari on Mac OS. DOM performance on iOS Safari has always been remarkable compared to Desktop/Android browsers.

It's pretty sad to see an entire thread of clueless people (including DHH) talking about how amazing the hardware advances are when it's all software.

<comment><USER3> It is pretty damning of the software though.

<comment><USER4> I mean mobile software has had a lot more motivation to be efficient due to battery usage. Additionally it's a lot newer than most desktop browsers so it can learn from older mistakes. Firefox's recent work has effectively shown what rewriting browser components can do for performance.

<comment><USER5> The latest Firefox still scores worse than Chrome on this benchmark (on my PC at least).

As much as I'd like to believe it's just really great code I'm inclined to believe it's not doing the benchmark in the same way. We're talking a mobile phone pulling a few watts getting a significantly higher score than my 5 GHz i7 with a 1080 accelerating the drawing regardless of which browser I run.

Something is whacky and it's not just "it's a lot newer than most desktop browsers". Could be some relaxed timing from what the spec requires, display rules not being followed exactly, prewarming the engine with the benchmark, or some other deviation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>