CookWithMe

Honest question: How does one send a Do Not Track header request to a mobile app? One does not interact with a mobile app via HTTP (although the app may use HTTP internally) and can therefore not send HTTP headers...

Or, is it in your opinion, a law written by someone who does not have sufficient technical understanding to find the correct wording, and now the law applies erroneously applies to mobile apps?

At the TC Disrupt Europe hackathon, there was one team that build a hardware/software hack to crowdsource radioactivity data / warnings. Basically, a Geiger counter attached to your computer that sends readings to a server.

I think it was a really cool hack and one of my favorites, but it didn't go anywhere with the jury (I guess no business model and all :) ).

http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/26/open-radioactivity-warning-...

http://techcrunch.com/video/open-radioactivity-warning-syste... (Video)

Do you run xctool / Travis CI on OS X servers or have you found a way (or at least tried) to make it run on Linux?

App optimized for iOS 7 != App only runs on iOS 7

In most cases, the developer just has to recompile the app and include iOS 7. Of course it get's a lot more tricky if one wants to start using new APIs introduced in iOS 7, and that's why most devs will drop support for older versions.

In addition to the itinerary, it also depends on your planing. If you want to be very flexible, it's most likely cheaper than buying a long-distance ticket at the station/in the train.

If you want to plan and book your trips ahead of time, it may well be that, with early booking discounts, it's cheaper to book ahead of time. This would also allow you to reserve seats/a table, which I'd recommend if you travel with kids.

Also note that in Germany, and maybe in other countries as well, kids < 15 years travel for free with their parents if noted on their tickets.

If you travel a lot within one country, you may also want to check their frequent traveler programs. E.g. in Germany, the DB sells cards that give you 25%, 50% or 100% off of the ticket price. The 25% one can be ordered for a duration of only 3 months and costs 19 Euros, so it should pay off quickly! Note, however, that it is an subscription that you need to cancel.

Enjoy Europe :-)

I was really excited about the coach bus lines - until I took a trip with one. Did you take a (longer) trip with one yet?

In an IC(E), I can open my 13" Laptop and work fine, even if the person in front of me lowers their seat. On the particular bus I was riding, the table was just too small. Plus, the bus has much more unexpected movements than a train, I couldn't even look on a tablet screen for too long without feeling some travel-sickness. It was a very long, very boring ride.

The WiFi, btw, was a joke on the autobahn. It was working a bit in the cities...

Also, the trip took more than an hour longer than was planned, and the traffic on the autobahn was absolutely fine (I did the same trip with a car a couple of times). Driving into the cities took lots of time, but again the traffic probably would have looked the same any other average day.

It definitely is cheaper though...

> This company faces the problem that customers often complain about a lack of clarity about the process and insufficient quality of the produced websites.

> The department has understaffing and the requests are piling up. The waiting times are very high and there are many complaints.

Sounds like they just paved a new road IN hell, not TO hell...

I'd research the person via the provided name and/or email and then use your gut feeling to ask a question that is a) interesting to the recipient and b) shows you've put time in and this isn't a random mail.

E.g. you find the person on LinkedIn and find out the company they're working for is in an industry you don't know well. Tell them that you've researched they work in that industry and that you'd like to know what specific problems they're facing and want to solve in order to know how to improve your software.

  scala> "5" + 5
  res0: java.lang.String = 55

Don't use print in the REPL...

> Python gives me a TypeError. And so does Common Lisp. I was expecting the same from Scala

  scala> val i:Int = "5" + 5
  <console>:7: error: type mismatch;
  found   : java.lang.String
  required: Int
       val i:Int = "5" + 5
                       ^

You can easily get a compiler error, if you enforce the type. The inheritance of Javas "I'll call .toString on anything" is definitely not something I'll defend, but it's much less of a problem than it may appear. To do anything interesting with that "fake" integer, you'll have to call a method that only accepts integers - and the compiler will throw an error then. E.g.:

  scala> math.max("5" + 5, 5)
  <console>:8: error: overloaded method value max with alternatives:
    (x: Double,y: Double)Double <and>
    (x: Float,y: Float)Float <and>
    (x: Long,y: Long)Long <and>
    (x: Int,y: Int)Int
   cannot be applied to (java.lang.String, Int)
              math.max("5" + 5, 5)
                   ^

> To get back to Home from any app, swipe from either side of the screen.

I don't think it's a great idea to reserve the "swipe from side of screen" gesture for the OS. Especially the left-swipe is used in many apps to reveal a menu, which is a UI-pattern I like a lot.

Anyway, looks interesting, would love to try one out!

> We were building a complex and big management system

Sounds like long sales cycles + probably a longish period between "sale" and "integration done, workers trained, in production" (which may be the point when the cash starts flowing...).

> My idea is to finish the MVP and giving the project the opportunity to find another client without expending more money.

I don't know the specific market you are in and the technical ability of the persons you are trying to sell to. It may be that a finished MVP vs. a 60% done MVP doesn't significantly improve the chance of a sale. It may be that for the sales process, slides-only or a 5 min click demo are enough to convince the client of your technical ability and the discussion will move on to other topics.

Apparently this has worked before, and the owner may be looking to replicate that before investing further time into building the MVP.

Sales is tough, really tough, and may be the far bigger problem for the startup. A finished MVP doesn't necessarily make this easier, sadly.

> When the domain version of the name is available

When did that ever happen?

For every prototype I have build, I (or we in some cases) spend days looking for good name-domain combinations.

In my experience it is a real pain to find a domain worth buying for a specific idea, let alone 3 per day.

I wonder if they've put "Cathedral" into the HN-search, got some cathedral and bazaar-discussions, and concluded the royalists hang out on HN... after all, why would tech-folks talk about cathedrals otherwise, right?

While I think the idea in general is very good, it does not guarantee "continued operation" at all.

Firstly, the user has to invest a massive effort to get the whole infrastructure running and host the service themselves. This is a major hurdle for a non-technical user, and even for a technical user it may actually be quicker to migrate to another SaaS than to set everything up...

Secondly, your license does not guarantee that the users will also be able to export and re-import their data. You should a) add that to your paragraph and b) have that code ready. A simple DB backup would contain the data of ALL users... and, in case you have to shut down, you may not find the time to write export/import functionality.

Anyway, good luck with your SaaS! Let's hope you won't need the clause ;)

Congrats on launching! Will take another look when I'll be in London again.

If it's "only" you who submits these reviews, you could make it more personal by adding a paragraph of text with a non-objective description. Would also help to separate your USP compared to Happy Cow.

I know a vegan blogger who wrote posts about the places she visited in towns, and people like those. It's easier to compare/trust the reviews of a single person vs. the reviews on happy cow that are written by many different people.

Using the NDK [1], an Android app can already run C/C++ code. If Google really wanted to phase out Java (where did that come from anyway?), the biggest task is to port the whole SDK, especially the UI, and not to run C code.

[1] http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html

We are now in the 'Trough of Disillusionment' of the Hype Cycle: 'Interest wanes as experiments and implementations fail to deliver. Producers of the technology shake out or fail. Investments continue only if the surviving providers improve their products to the satisfaction of early adopters.' [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle

I just had a look at the updated pricing.

If my memory serves correctly, the same limits for storage and # of connections were in place before for the non-dev databases (starting with 50$). I don't really care for the connections, but a 64 GB storage limit can quickly become a problem for some apps, while 400MB of RAM is perfectly fine to serve the hot data...

Edit: To put this into perspective: If an app would generate 400MB of data per day (the last 24 hours would fit into the cache completely!), the app would run out of storage after 160 days...

Glad you are asking, these are enforced in Germany as well. I personally witnessed police waiting behind traffic lights to catch cyclists running a red light, stopping cyclists who ride on a pedestrian-only path and checking for proper lights at night. I think they also check for drunken riders, although I have never witnessed that personally.

Cyclists get fined, and they can even loose their driving license (for cars).

These checks are not too-frequent (neither are those for car drivers), but they exist.

a) The way you stated it implies that it is ALWAYS an accident, never a crime.

b) The article claimed so.

> “We do not know of a single case of a cyclist fatality in which the driver was prosecuted, except for D.U.I. or hit-and-run,” Leah Shahum, the executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, told me.

For those questioning whether having and enforcing laws that protect cyclists may help:

In Germany, drivers are obligated to look back over their shoulder when they make a right-turn to make sure they don't run over a cyclist. This law is being actively taught, checked during the driver test, and enforced.

In Poland, a similar law was passed only 2 years ago. Driving a bicycle in Poland is considered more dangerous than driving one in Germany - cycle trip guides (that run through both countries) specifically mention that one should be much more careful around crossings and cars turning right in Poland.

Berlin, where I live, is quite close to Poland, so there are often polish drivers around. I'm careful in general, because there are enough inattentive German drivers... but once they've seen me because they've overtaken me, they will make sure not to run me over. Polish drivers, on the other hand, expect that the cyclist will give way in certain situations (i.e. they make a right turn across a bike lane) - because they have learned it that way in driving school and it works this way in their home country. Luckily, it always worked out, but I had several very close encounters with Polish drivers.

So, yes, having and enforcing laws to protect cyclists do help and increase safety.

(I may add that I don't hold a grudge against Polish people - in fact, most I've met are more easy going and less grumpy than the average German :-) I'm glad they passed this law recently and I'm sure the situation will improve in the long term).

If a child gets run down by someone who didn't see him...

...an investigation will be launched to find out whether it was an accident (i.e. child did jump in front of car) or a crime (i.e. driver was texting, easily could have spotted child).

Similarly, an investigation should be launched if someone runs down a cyclist. Could be the cyclists fault (i.e. running a red light) or the drivers fault (i.e. running down a cyclist on a cyclist lane where the driver should take care not to run over cyclists...).

The Android Market, erm, Google Play Store, has made the switch to Google + reviews only as well. As far as I have noticed, this switch has not improved the quality of comments (although the quality was never as bad as with Youtube).

One observation: This is indeed a problem for web development, but a non-issue for mobile development. Whether iOS or Android, one guy just clicks "New Project..." in their IDE and pushes it into a git repo (one may have discussions at this point whether to use a public github or a private bitbucket repo...), the others pull it and everyone is ready to go.

That said, teams shouldn't only form around ideas, they should also form around technologies to avoid endless discussions. Also, be open to work with a new technology and ask others if they want to do pair programming with the newbie being the observer/navigator. I did this once. After an hour or so I felt I could provide valid input. Also, pair programming is a really good way to get to know another person!

Small companies (ten people or less) are exempt from some of these laws, but if a startup grows to a certain size it's not exempt.

They are, however, less of a problem for a startup then they may appear.

While a company can't easily fire employees who've been employed for many years, new employees who turn out not to be a good fit can be let go within 3 to 6 months.

Furthermore, it's much easier to fire people if your company is not making profit. A lot of the laws intend to protect jobs that would be cut to increase margins (e.g. outsourcing, hiring younger/cheaper workers, ageism, ...). If you can proof your company is financially in trouble, then this is enough reason to let employees go, and you don't have to proof they did something wrong.

Work hours, as required by law, are usually ignored by startups (though one could argue that this is not a good thing...).

Parental leave is a IMO a good thing, besides that career-driven employees who would want to work in a startup will not take a 3-year leave.

> The amount of talent that I need for the problem that we're trying to solve

NumberFour has an incredibly high turnover of talent, both from what I anecdotally hear from people who workED their (apparently no one sticks around for longer than a year...) and when looking online at their ratings: http://www.kununu.com/de/be/berlin/in/numberfour1

So, if you you want to emigrate to Berlin, please do so, but be aware that there are great and ... not-so-great companies here (like everywhere else).

[Disclaimer: I shortly considered applying at NumberFour, but quickly dismissed it ]

My first thought was "why don't they use Akka"?

> Akka has no true lightweight threads (the actors are actually callbacks)

Would you care to elaborate? I'm not too familiar with the internals of Akka, but they definitely don't use "heavyweight" threads (which I assume are threads that are 1:1 mapped to OS threads).

Also, I didn't get "the actors are actually callbacks". Yes, there may be callbacks involved internally (why not?), but there is a big difference whether I am sending a message to an actor (which may be processed at any time) vs. calling a callback (which is immediately executed on the very same thread that I'm running on).

Sorry if this sounds dismissive, but I'd really like to learn why you choose to implement your own solution, because you've obviously put some time into evaluating what is out there.

> The founder of Softbank, Masayoshi Son, shared with Paananen that he has a 300 year vision for reshaping entertainment, and a plan of how to implement it.

With $1.5B in the bank, he can spend $5M a year for 300 years without going bankrupt. Nice runway!

2 years ago, in my last semester at the university, I volunteered at doing an intro-course for first-semester computer science students. Basically, we made sure they transitioned to the university learning style and they've got some student instead of a prof to talk to. Each student had to prepare a talk on a relevant topic.

One of the things we talked about was career options. Imo, first you want to do a broad search, and then you want to dive into specific careers. I.e. a computer science student could get into software development, system administration or consulting. If development sounds most interesting, she should learn about the differences between several technical areas (frontend/backend) as well as company types (software shop/IT dep in larger corp/agency).

One of the students picked up a book on career options for computer science students and did a 30 min talk. I wasn't really happy with the book and shortening it to 30 min didn't really help, but oh well. But it definitely broadened the horizon of most students. They either didn't have any clear picture of a job, or they knew one or two types of jobs because someone in their social circle happened to have that particular job.

If I had given my student(s) your MVP, it would have most likely failed. With 3 random jobs displayed, it's not broad enough to lay out different career options. Plus, job ads, especially for software developers, teach you as much about being a software developer as a car commercial teaches you about driving a car.

To finding "a better career", I'd still recommend my students a book that tries to list most major career options, and tries to objectively name (dis-)advantages of each job. Job ads, no matter how well done, are a terrible first place to start the search.

That said, I think you've found a problem that currently isn't solved very well and I'd look forward to the next iteration of your MVP.

What you are looking for is an "object recognition" algorithm. These algorithms take one or multiple images of an object (e.g. your little statue) and then try to locate it in another image.

Generally, they are computationally expensive, so performing them on a video stream, especially inside the browser, will most likely not work, even for rather low resolutions.

I have some experience with the SIFT algorithm. Takes some time to grok it as the algorithm consists of several sub-steps.

You may want to look into OpenCV, they have a couple of algorithms implemented.