bontoJR

I was wondering from where this number is coming from...

Me too.

I think Google is taking a lot of wrong decisions in terms of strategy. I really liked Material Design and how they tackled the UI discrepancies in their products, but on the Android world this is just a mess. If you want it, you need Lollipop that is just the 5% of the Android world. Can a developer ignore the 95% of the Google Play store? NO.

Then they ported Google Apps, it was nice, but Google Apps wasn't requiring a real re-style, but a better integration with apps and with their services too. Nope, we got a new UI.

It looks like they are prioritizing things that people are not caring now, at least, not so much compared to other things...

> I think that for some time now Google's services are mostly crap.

It seems a common feeling that is spreading during the last year... Already discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9074704

I don't think is ignorance, but I think is mostly a lack in a better solution to compare with. I mean, if you have something that works great (in any field, not just tech), you take it as yardstick. If you don't have a real super-nice-outstanding solution to compare with, you will be always ok with what's coming, even if it's the worst implementation ever made.

I agree with 90% of the points in the article, but I also know that others have implemented similar solutions and only fews have, instead, tackled the same problems with a different, better implemented, solutions.

Anyway, the most annoying example is Skype, I really hate the "oh it looks like is a Live Account, redirecting..." flow, it's annoying.

Very nice story, I have just one question: why did you guys not look for fundings or apply to something like Y Combinator?

Also, I know there are a lot of other similar stories around the US. I would really like to find and ear something similar in an European country, in the hi-tech industry: a small startup doing a good job, with a tiny but prepared team, being lately acquired by a larger competitor. Is there any similar story based in the old-continent?

Reactive Streams are just interfaces meant to make interconnection and usage of different libraries easier and faster. The document is meant to avoid the well famous "similar library, different names for same concepts". There's nothing more than that.

In the same page you can find a list of compliant implementations like AKKA or RxJava, so you can easily check out one of them and see how they are implementing these concepts under the hood. The general purpose is good, it makes the switch from framework X to Y easier with the declared goal of provide a standard for asynchronous stream processing with non-blocking back pressure, but, as said before, there's nothing more than that.

About the production, well, some of the listed libraries are widely used, so I guess there are a lot of people actually using this concept in production.

Then, if you want to go further, you can search for Duality, that seems an evolution of Reactive Programming and Reactive Streams.

Yes.

...and one thing that can also happen is, when discussing a secondary solution, a third one can come up that is even better.

It's a nontrivial task, I wouldn't waste too much time in trying to prove that someone's code is complex. I tried in the past with the result of being appointed as "lazy" or "basic" developer. I heard arguments like: "if you think this is complex then you are not so good" or other very unnecessary arguments.

Don't prove he's writing complex code, it would be interpreted as "being wrong", but instead prove that you can come up with easier and cleaner solution. Write your own, test it and then propose it to the original author, see if he can admit that your solution is cleaner, easier to understand and easier to handle. I did this few times with very good results on feedbacks.

I agree. AKKA is doing the same in the JVM. Letting an app to crash doesn't mean "crash the whole system", but just a process. It's very handy when dealing with a lot of parallelism and asynchronous code, sometimes is better leave a process to crash instead of trying recover it with error handling. Obviously is not always the case, but for some processes, the crash and a later recover by the system is a better solution in terms of performances, system state and logic.

> Start-up funding raised is much lower than in the US.

> The number of US. and European start-ups is comparable. However, European start-ups only raised 23% the amount raised by their US. counterparts.

This is the second biggest problem we have in Europe, we cannot compete with startups experimenting new markets with 2-3 even 4 times the financial power of an European one.

> Early-stage exit valuations are much lower than in the US.

> Early stage exits are valued 16%-20% the amount of the US. counterparts. Comparatively lower funding for latter stages and fewer buyers, relative to the US.

This is the biggest problem, we cannot solve the first one, without giving to investors a real opportunity to exit. We continuously miss this point, no exit means no money, how an investor can put money on something the exit is very difficult?

> when it stabilizes - sure

Thanks. I think I will definitely try to write a push server on it, maybe it's something that can help to stabilize the system and it can also act as a good test base.

I was wondering if this can actually handle a whole push notification server. Do you think that it can be handled?

It was more a financial question honestly, I know the split was btw Bethesda and Valve, but I can't justify why a 75% should go to Valve and Bethesda. That's the key point, I can understand the 30% of Valve, it's actually a samilar rate of other stores/platforms, but what's the financial necessity of the publisher? I mean, the game has been already released, it's making money and mods are usually a very high sales pusher (if well made, e.g. Counterstrike for Half Life). Why keeping 45%? I can't see any financial justification for such a higher rate, I would understand a 10%, max 15%, but no more.

I don't really get why giving only 25%?

I mean, as a service I don't see any high cost to justify a 75% retain fee. The idea was definitely great, but execution was very poor. I would have been furious with them if I was a modder investing time and, sometimes, money to only get 25% on the price I was deciding for my mod.

This was a huge failure at so many levels... I hope they learned from this lesson.

Definitely a good habit, I think more than the 50% of Github users are not English as mother tongues, so it's good to polish documentations, or like in this case, long texts. I always accept pull-requests for grammar improvements.

> Having control of the iPhone market is not considered monopolistic.

...and in an hypothetical lawsuit this will just turn in favor of Apple.

You're right and being 20 and more years old, it has so many optimizations that are making the JVM damn fast. Scala takes advantage on many of these optimizations and results are impressive. I think Java as language is failing in the implementation of new concepts, being quite late compared to other languages not running on the JVM. If C# will improve the general performance and stability of CLR, already having the best IDE ever made, they can easily compete and even win against the Java-World.

P.S. I worked with Java (now only Scala) and C#, so I have experience with both languages/envs.

Good point, I will remove that parts, it makes sense!

One of the best posts I ever read about Startups and failures. I personally have an history about it, I never found interesting to share what I have faced in the last 3-4 years trying to bootstrap an Hi-Tech business in Switzerland.

With your post, you gave me the inspiration to write about it, I will definitely share what I passed so, maybe, I can avoid the same thing to someone else.

I am not ashamed about failures, I failed so much time in my life, but on the other hand I succeeded in some other case when it was completely unexpected. Only people that try can fail, who doesn't try can only live in the world full "what if I had try...".

I hope you can find a new, successful project and apply what you learned!

Edit: Typo

> Data by the commission shows that 41% of these EU enterprises don’t make use of any digital technology.

Technologies for these industries are everywhere, if they don't want them, will a digital European market change this? I don't think so...

> The first pillar of the plan: breaking down barriers in cross-border online activity. Differences between contract law, taxes, consumer protection and copyright laws among member states inhibit trade, the strategy says.

This is a good move, but still there are barriers in scaling: different languages and cultures.

> The commission also says it will work to remove the technical and legislative barriers that hinder the free flow of data within the EU.

This is interesting, I would really see how they will manage to achieve this without annoying France and other countries with mass-surveillance systems.

> Another pillar of the strategy: regulate a level playing field for companies and services in the same market.

In a nutshell: instead of promote European startups offering similar services, they want to fight AirBnB, Google, Apple, Uber and Facebook. We need step forwards, not fights.

It's a kind of half-baked program, still no better opportunities for investments, no better regulations for acquisitions (best exit strategy possible driving to more investors) and no program to motivate investors in putting money in the Hi-Tech market, but instead, EU will fight American companies.

This is, probably, the most absurd part in the whole article. It's a kind of: "we are a private company, we are big, so we don't care about rules".

This is extremely dangerous as behavior, anyway, the judge decided to proceed I am curious to see what will the outcome be.

Just tried 3-4 sites with no luck, alls giving back: "Got an HTTP 302 response at crawl time"

Anyway, the new design is very nice!

This is a current trend, I don't see a problem to have closed source, Microsoft built an empire with closed source-code and solutions, nobody complained with it. Now we are in the sharing economy era, so it makes sense to open when possible.

The big 3 problems in Europe are the lack of investors a "Siliconvallish" mind, the lack of a certain amount of money for so called "experimental" technologies and REAL exit-strategies opportunities.

Why I pointed these 3 factors? Having a right investor believing in hi-tech and experimental products, you get the money to start is also someone that bring the right kind of network. With the second factor you can scale, scaling in Europe is VERY expensive (different languages, VAT, cultures, etc...) and the amount of money required is very high. The third factor is required to get the first and the second one, we don't have a working acquisition schema. Investors are too scare to put money on hi-tech in Europe just because exits are REALLY difficult. In the Valley, if your company has a great product, you can end up bought after just 6 months, in Europe this is extremely rare.

That's point of view, I would real like to get some statistics about it and write an article, if you know a good and reliable place where I can find some valid data, they are welcomed.

I always say, if you want to replicate the Valley you need to steal Valley's investors, but I don't see any valid reason for them to leave... :)

In Europe we have this hope to find/create a Silicon Valley to compete against US. The problem is, we simply can't. We don't have, as well said before, the "Siliconvallish" investor. We can keep trying, but it's a culture problem, we need to change that, then maybe we can try to compete.

Silicon Valley is not about ideas or just tech-companies, is about investors and culture. In Europe experimenting is very very difficult, I worked on a project involving big data, predictions and very advanced live stuff that at the moment are hot in SV, but in Europe investors look not interested or ready to support this field. Another huge problem is the poor ability of European investors in following the tech-trend. 6 months ago I did a presentation about a product I was working on, looking for fundings, it was for one of the biggest VC/Incubator (focusing on medtech, green energy and hi-tech) in Switzerland and at the of the presentation I have been asked by the president what "a phone notification is" and "what is bluetooth LE", so I spent my QA time answering basic questions about the current technology instead about the product I was working on. I know not all European VCs have a similar mindset, but the general importance order for an European VC is: intellectual property protection, amount of money required to release, high market barriers looking for no short-term competition and, lastly, shipping time.

An American investor doesn't care too much about competition, as long as the company provides a far better service (with a clear real advantage) this is not an issue, IP is important, but only if the product gains traction and goes mainstream (so it means $ that mean patents), the amount of money as well is not an issue, with so many VCs you can manage to get all necessary fundings if the product is valid, so what really matter is entering in the market as soon as possible with something that is good enough. These are just few examples I faced, but there are many other differences...

I truly liked your point. Just one tiny detail: you don't really look to be against OS per se, but against the current movement that is basically pushing to open everything and do stuff that nobody really need.

I was thinking about funding projects (f.e.) like Grails, recently left alone by Pivotal and rescued by Apache. I am against funding blindly too, but my point is to fund projects that already have defined a list of features, milestones and delivery time.

The general goal of the Internet.org project is honorable, it's a huge step into the future, giving to everybody an internet connection. Now, I have few concerns with timing and the modus operandi:

1. Facebook is actually working with governments in countries where poverty rate is extremely high, corruption is everywhere and the outcome is a logic so broken, that I can't see any advantage. They will have access to Facebook, but not to drugs, medical help or water.

2. Each country has a list of available services for free, this will discriminate some of others and, IMO, this is clearly against net-neutrality.

3. I am scared to see a company like Facebook (would be the same with Apple or Google) collaborating to expanding internet in the world, it looks like they are taking the chance to address all these new markets using the financial power they benefit.

They are all concerns based on opinions and assumptions, I hope to be proven wrong and that Facebook is doing it for a good, open world.

First step in the wrong direction.

I honestly bought my first Mac reading his review of Tiger and that OS was so great that I decided to switch from Gentoo to a Mac, buying a Macbook.

I guess the right stays in the middle. We have to make drivers more responsible with cyclists, but on the other hand cyclists have to play following rules. I don't think is always drivers' fault or vice-versa, we should evaluate case by case, but admit that sometimes, some cyclists, are even more dangerous than cars for pedestrians, is not crazy. I saw bike-couriers in London, NY and even here in ZH completely ignoring signals, jumping on sidewalks, avoiding kids with emergency maneuvers. I am not pro-drivers or pro-cyclists, but we have to find the right balance to share streets.