Hacker News Reader

dirkdkon Google Chrome doesn't even like HP's security certificate (using SHA-1)

Well apparently HP doesn't know how to update their security, or doesn't care

the big question is of course about self selection: how many nonwhite, female and non-Stanford entrepreneurs would like to apply for YC but don't because they think their chances are basically zero?

dirkdkon What happens when you install the top 10 download.com apps (HTG)

glad to be on Mac OS X!

dirkdkon What Factors Indicate Your App Will Be Successful

Make that 99.9 %. If charging money, publishers use in-app purchases

dirkdkon Stellar: 0 to 1M signups in 37 days

Great work!

dirkdkon Trends: Uber vs. Lyft

I grew up riding my bike in Amsterdam, it was there my main method of transportation, as it is here in SF. I never ever wore a helmet in Amsterdam, but here I do.

Main reason: not my driving capabilities, but car drivers that don't think about cyclists, whereas in Amsterdam they do. Opening their door next to the bike lane? Looking to their right hand side when turning left? Using their turning signal, especially when taking a right turn at a red light?

Second, roads are obviously way more laid out for cars and not for bicycles. Four way stops are a pain. Roads with no designated bike lane means you are passed by cars that actively have to avoid you, while driving 3-4x as fast. Traffic lights leave too little time between one side turning red and the other turning green.

In the Netherlands, if you hit a bicycle with your car you are automatically responsible. That will make you more aware of bikes.

I always compare the advent of bicycles to snowboarders entering the slopes over the last 30 years that were ruled by skiers. Different ways of moving, where the new people are seen as the odd ones. Yes to dare to enter you have to love a bit of adventure and sometimes bend the rules, but it is mostly perception. We just have to get used to each other and work it out

dirkdkon TestFlight Owner Burstly Acquired By Apple

OK, my main question to Apple is still, please get rid of the 100 device limit, such a pain that Testflight or any other service didn't have a workaround for. Enterprise licenses is still an uncertain thing to do

dirkdkon Former Motionloft CEO Jon Mills Arrested By The FBI

Well, with so much focus on news about tech companies worth billions, do people become too optimistic and blind for sheer con artists?

dirkdkon The Path Not Taken by Simple to Remake Finance

It kind of makes me sad. Banking in the US is soooo outdated (paper checks?), and banks themselves together with government seem not able to come up with better ways of organizing this industry.

Let's hope somebody takes Zac's advise and goes for it. I hear a couple of just dudes got $16 billion, that sounds like enough to start with.

dirkdkon Show HN: Luna Delivery – night packages for London

Wow, nice ripoff. Making me as a European really proud.

dirkdkon T-Mobile CEO: “This industry blows,” biggest carriers offer “horseshit”

Did tethering on the unlimited plan work on your iPhone? Only a couple of months ago I switched from $60/2.5Gig to $70/unlimited and suddenly tethering didn't work anymore

dirkdkon Hackathons are really bad for starting (or funding) companies

Yep, when starting a company the demand question should be the first one you are trying to answer. Awesome product!

dirkdkon Hackathons are really bad for starting (or funding) companies

Yeah, I have started to avoid certain events. The Dreamforce hackathon with the 1 million dollar prize for instance looked way too much like a marketing gimmick for Salesforce so I declined. AngelHack is becoming more of a company launching program. I just want to write some code with new tech and meet fellow developers and designers

dirkdkon Great Developers Know When (Not) To Refactor

always up for debate, refactoring. Any size codebase can be rewritten, made more elegant. The important part here is to do it on the job and not wait too long. Personally I like to make sure my method names are up to date, so that they need no comment and really reflect the intent. And if things become unwieldy, just completely rewrite parts.

btw article could do with a tl;dr section :)

dirkdkon Salesforce hackathon comes under attack from devs

hackathons should go back to what they used to be: great events to try out new technology, and meet up with fellow engineers while having fun

dirkdkon How to set up a mail server on a GNU / Linux system

Can I ask the obvious question Why? Email (IMAP/SMTP) is so standard, there are lots of companies out there that do it better and cheaper than you yourself can do. GMail (Google Apps for business) and Fastmail.fm are the 2 names I always recommend.

Another factor to consider is how you will keep your SMTP ip-addresses from being blacklisted. Companies like Mailchimp and Sendgrid spend a lot of time and effort on this. With your own very low volume, it takes only a couple of persons to mark your email as spam and suddenly all mails sent from your domain end up in in spam folders, no matter what DKIM or SPF settings you have configured.

Only reason I would see is when you want to keep your email away from the NSA and therefore out of the USA (Fastmail is Australian based btw http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/10/07/are-overseas-based-...). Keeping your server out of the USA will not mean that your email will never travel through the USA, where the NSA can still access it, as SMTP is very cleartext between MTA's.

dirkdkon What happened to "HelveticaNeue-Italic" on iOS 7.0.3

it crashes BBM and the SFGate iOS app http://www.imore.com/blackberry-working-bbm-fix-following-io...

dirkdkon Fairfax strikes $4.7-billion deal to buy BlackBerry

Blackberry has $2.8 billion in cash in the bank, so price is $1.9 billion. Not bad for a huge set of patents

dirkdkon CodePath launches free Android/iOS evening bootcamps in SF

I agree that being up front about the business model and making it understandable is important. It will let people know there is no catch, but also see what value one will get out of the program

dirkdkon Should have hired a tech co-founder

hire and co-founder is a contradiction

dirkdkon Ask HN: Need a referral for good lawyer for E-2 visa

http://www.minamitamaki.com/practices/immigration/

They are good and affordable.

See my story at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6168431

BTW E2 visa should be one of the easiest to get. Just make sure you have over $100,000 for investment.

dirkdkon BlackBerry puts itself up for sale

main asset that Blackberry has right now is BBM, their messaging infrastructure. I fear the hardware and BB10 operating system will not make it

dirkdkon Don't Comment Your Code - Write Better Code

+1 I like to refactor just names of variables and methods, instead of writing comment what it actually does.

dirkdkon My O1 Visa Story And How It Almost Killed My Startup Mobtest

I'd say that is common knowledge, changed the language a bit. Hopefully I don't need my immigration lawyers not anymore for a while, but my second one is also great!

dirkdkon Bjork Brings Biophilia to Android With a Little Help From Apportable (YC W11)

congrats Collin, Zac and others! Awesome technology, perfect for porting non-standard UI apps from iOs to Android

dirkdkon Get Rid of the App Store’s “Top” Lists

Both Apple and Google should take app engagement instead of pure downloads as the main metric to base these top lists on. As Marco says, pure downloads becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, easy to game and does not expose you to new interesting apps.

http://blog.mobtest.com/2013/05/app-engagement-is-a-much-bet...

dirkdkon Ask HN: Raising my rates as an offshore dev

working with offshore devs is really hard. You might be as smart as somebody that is worth a $100, but your being so far away is going to make you less effective hence worth less money. Or offer to come to the US on a visa that is really hard to get and work the first 3 months from their office before you go back home.

dirkdkon Why a veteran web developer finally turned to OS-native apps

One should be able to compile a web app into a downloadable package, with capabilities to run the app completely offline. Until that web will always be second best to fully native. Performance is getting close enough though.

dirkdkon How should I behave as a developer in a project that's headed for failure?

Dont be a negative force in the team. No technology exist outside of a business context.

Be proactive, take control: cut the project up in parts and focus on those that you can deliver in time. Ever heard of agile?

dirkdkon Gmail: Introducing Actions in the Inbox

yep, thought that too. As Exchange has an easy way to send calendar invites