HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

nwhatt

347 karma · joined August 10, 2016

https://github.com/nwhatt https://www.redoxengine.com
submissionscomments
nwhatt··on The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint (2006) [pdf]
I once had a great presentation about this very topic!

The presenter gave us both the Tufte book and a detailed handout.

The idea is that you use the PowerPoint like you would an overhead projector, details that would otherwise be on slides are better as a handout that people can read/annotate as they want.

This was part of a summer REU and focused on academic talks, and this all falls apart in a remote setting - but I think there are ways to capture the essence of this style on Zoom.

nwhatt··on Humans can't endure temperatures and humidities as high as previously thought
Here’s a great explainer about what Wet-Bulb Globe Temperature measures: https://youtu.be/S7X4DxjO0Qk
nwhatt··on You Can't Buy Integration
It's not really clear if this advice is for within the enterprise (a company that maintains so many systems they spend millions to integrate them) or at the edge (a company that needs to integrate with multiple third parties). I can see the argument for the intra-enterprise work being valuable, but at the edge I'm less convinced.
nwhatt··on New York Public Library ends all late fees
Another classic Seinfeld plot becomes irrelevant.
nwhatt··on SAML Is Insecure by Design
Minor nitpick: sign in with Google and Facebook don’t use SAML, they use OAuth and OpenID Connect. Leading with those as an example undermines the authors later points.
nwhatt··on Show HN: Csvbox.io – CSV import button for a web app, SaaS or API
Very cool idea.

I recently gave one pass at a Jira CSV import and went with the API instead.

Excel is the ultimate no-code solution.

nwhatt··on Updated Concept of “The Surgical Team”
Mythical Man-Month isn't trying to say "surgical teams work well - let's apply that approach to software". Instead, it's an analogy to explore Fred Brook's thoughts on 10x programmers and "building systems with as few minds as possible". Brook's attributes the idea to Harlan Mill's paper "Chief programmer teams, principles, and procedures" - which I can't find online, but I'd be curious how Mills treats the analogy.
nwhatt··on Coinbase to go public on 4/14
If I were to invest $100 in some allocation of Coinbase stock and Bitcoin - what should the ratio be?
nwhatt··on We Don’t Use Docker
I think you're pointing out the double-edged sword that is Docker; it's very easy to run and experiment with new technologies, even ones you might not be organizationally ready for. The "local" kafka that you used for a proof of concept is now AWS MSK in production.
nwhatt··on “ISO obstructs adoption of standards by paywalling them”
Healthcare has long been the same way, HL7 was paywalled ($1000+/yr membership until 2012).X12 is still in the thousands for membership.
nwhatt··on eBird: A crowdsourced bird sighting database
I find it frustrating that Merlin and eBird don't integrate as well as one would expect
nwhatt··on Ask HN: How do you maintain your medical record?
The industry more broadly is moving towards OAuth.

https://bluebutton.cms.gov/

nwhatt··on The Cruise Origin
I wonder how long it will take the average Bay Area commuter to find an adversarial driving pattern for this.
nwhatt··on Unencrypted patient medical information is being broadcast across Vancouver
Where do you see that coming? If anything we will see HIPAA stay as-is and get things like CCPA to deal with as well.
nwhatt··on “Once-in-a-Hundred Year” Sightings of Bamboo Blossoms Reported in Japan
Possibly one of the best Nova titles ever - "Rat Attack" follows this phenomenon: https://www.pbs.org/video/nova-rat-attack/
nwhatt··on Go to Statement Considered Harmful (1968) [pdf]
"I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras."

- Alan Kay

With Alan Kay putting it into context here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11796926

nwhatt··on Resilience engineering: Where do I start?
I love small concise mini-syllabi’s like this. Just give me the big papers and set some context.
nwhatt··on Pluralsight will acquire GitPrime for $170M
I did a trial in 2018 and liked the product a lot. There were some simple metrics like "does a developer commit code every business day" and "how long do your PRs sit waiting for review". Other more complex things they produced from the git log were statistics about churn (how often you touch the same code), and new code vs. refactoring vs. bug fixing.

Overall, I thought they handled the "you can't make metrics for developers" type objections fairly well. To get everyone on the dev team engaged and thinking about their metrics seemed like too big of a hurdle given the cost per seat of GitPrime.

nwhatt··on Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote
This is a great sentence:

> We are doing this to situate product development closer to our customers, improve our ability to tap the 99.74% of talented engineers living outside the metro areas of our first four hubs, and further our mission of increasing the GDP of the internet.

nwhatt··on ‘Star Citizen,’ a video game that raised $300M but may never be ready to play
I'll peek at people playing star citizen on Twitch from time to time. It seems like the game crashes a lot, and it takes forever to get into actual action (like getting your ship and leaving the atmosphere takes like 10+ minutes), but the game has come a long way.

https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Star%20Citizen

nwhatt··on Rare and strange ICD-10 codes
Animal was removed from the base Patient resource spec in r4.
nwhatt··on Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea
May be of interest to some: In recent years healthcare has adopted centralized PKI in the Direct project. https://www.directtrust.org/
nwhatt··on Froebel’s Gifts
As always a great story. The part about Milton Bradley mass producing and eventually exploiting Froebel’s gifts will stick with me.
nwhatt··on Google Cloud Healthcare API
Here's Google's MLLP code: https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/mllp
nwhatt··on Death by a Thousand Clicks: Where Electronic Health Records Went Wrong
Part of the problem with UX is also the fact that large customizable systems like this push a lot of the "design" down to the IT staff responsible for maintaining the software.
nwhatt··on Can you buy your own train?
"Trains not boats" - my new startup mantra
nwhatt··on AirPods
I embraced airpods early because I had the opposite problem: my corded headphones would get caught by a dog leash and pull my $1000 phone out of my pocket.
nwhatt··on AirPods with Wireless Charging Case
$80 for the standalone case. $200 for a new set.
nwhatt··on Thousands of New Millionaires Are About to Eat San Francisco Alive
Option 2 can involve working remotely, working for a Midwest startup, etc. if kids or retirement aren't appealing.
nwhatt··on A Japanese Love Hotel
I loved staying in love hotels when a hostel was not convenient. A king size bed and all you can watch Starcraft, usually with a PC Cafe next door (breakfast, lunch, dinner).
Page 1 of 4Next →