TipsForCanoes

The two things every IT person now needs, a USB-C cable tester[0] and a USB Charger tester[1].

0. https://www.pcworld.com/article/3014680/your-usb-c-cables-ar...

1. https://www.fnirsi.com/products/fnb58

This "research" has no controls, no blinding, no quantitative data. The historic work mentioned all come from a time when there was no reliable way to confirm that someone was actually asleep. The recent research is full of weasel words like suggests, seems like, appears to, with no actual hard facts to measure and review.

So called Sleep Learning systems have been around for over 100 years but to date there is no rigorous suggesting that any of them work for acquisition of new information and/or skills.

I'll never understand HN's fascination with obvious pseudo science.

I think it's because the complexity of the tasks varies, and it's also difficult to predict this complexity.

I don't know what that means in relation to the Kanban methodology.

What I'm looking for is something like, "my manager attempted to improve our cycle time by introducing limits on the number of tasks that can be in each state on our board. When a limit is exceeded, we are expected to take a predefined action to help clear the bottleneck that caused the pile up. It doesn't work and we still have bottlenecks and have not improved cycle time or efficiency."

If all your manager is doing is putting arbitrarily limits on WIP columns, that's unlikely to accomplish much and thats not Kanban. This kind of limit is only beneficial for the person who starts too many tasks without finishing them. The Kanban methodology is about team efficiency, not individual task limits.

edit: typos

Could you do me a favor and just explain what you found not to work?

I'm curious exactly what you found not to work. How was your manager using the WIP constraints and triggers, that you didn't like?

I ask because in my experience the main 2 reasons are either a manager who doesn't understand the kanban methodology and uses it incorrectly or that it simply doesn't benefit the workload of the team trying to use it.

"WIP" does not work

Such a bold statement when you must know that countless people have a very different experience. Kanban the team methodology is about process efficiency and avoiding bottlenecks.

WIP limits are triggers to redirect resources to the bottleneck is that causes the pileup. Example: If there is pileup of PRs needing review, that is the trigger for devs on the team to stop making new PRs and switch to doing reviews.

Kanban is certainly not the best methodology for all team tasks but where it fits it works very well.

Sadly, for a lot of teams "we are doing kanban" means nothing more than "we are using a task board with columns" or worse "we have no constraints or flow controls and do everything ad hoc."

The fundamental idea behind Kanban was WIP Constraint Management.

Unfortunately, so many people have been doing cargo-cult agile for so long that now the word "kanban" means 'task board with columns' to most people.

It should not be possible to put 200 items into a column on a Kanban board unless the team is actually shown to have the capacity to work on them without causing a bottleneck.

Can you show the capacity and flow management parts?

Why Zip drives dominated the 90s, then vanished almost overnight

This is such an odd take to me.

I sold and supported computers in the 1990s. Outside of a few industries, such as desktop publishing, Zip was not popular. The vast majority of computer owners never owned a Zip drive, unlike a floppy or soon to be CDROM.

In fact, I sold far more QIC-80 tape drives for backups than Zip drives.

Zip also didn't vanish overnight, it simple never caught on with most people. However, in the industries that used them, they hung on for a while.

Banner says "custom tees, delivered at cost" but then the preview page shows a price that is double what I get going to their drop shipper directly (printful). No detailed product info on shirt type or quality. No company info. Hard pass.

For anyone interested in a deep dive, I recommend the book Vision or villainy: origins of the Owens Valley-Los Angeles water controversy.

I have been using this software continuously for close to 20 years. My desktop doesn't feel right without it. Thank you Bill Wilson!

You're not wrong if you adhere to the Bible.

Tipping appears nowhere in the Bible. However, the practice of fair and honest trading appears many times.

I know a few people who work in food service and make close to 6 figures with tipping. Without tipping they'd be at or close to minimum wage. Of course they are in favor of tipping.

One friend shared with me in detail how she plans and practices every customer interaction to maximize tipping. The more I learn about this the more the restaurant industry feels like a scam to me.

For example, if someone orders a mixed vodka drink, she will ask "do you want that with Absolut or Stoli?" two of the higher priced vodkas they offer. She won't even mention that you can also choose the well vodka for much less.

She also told me of another trick she often uses, especially with large parties on busy nights. When she first goes to the table she will ask "has anyone been by yet? No? Oh this isn't my section but I'll be happy to take care of you since you've been waiting..." Only it really is her section. According to her this always results in higher tips because it gives the impression that she is going out of her way.

My reaction to this and the escalating tip expectation has been to pretty much stop going out to restaurants. Instead, I've learned to cook and host dinner parties. I enjoy it so much more (and I refuse any attempt to tip me ;)

I think this could be solved with two small legal changes.

1. Abolish lower minimum wages for so called "tipped" workers and raise it to a fair value.

2. Make it illegal for any business to solicit tips.

If a customer wishes to tip then they certainly can but no business should be allowed to pressure you (and just asking is pressure) into paying more than the price they are listing for an item.

One of the reasons often given for why one must tip in US restaurants is the rampant wage theft in that industry.

In law the restaurant must make up the difference if tips fall short of the minimum wage but, we are told, wage theft is so common that most restaurants simply don't pay it. Some will even fire staff for falling short on tips.

Why are we supposed to just look the other way while we tip to support criminal wage theft?

Fair and honest pricing would remove a huge enabler to this wide spread criminal activity.