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smiler

1,185 karma · joined August 20, 2009

mail [at] smiler dot me dot uk
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smiler··on The Arduino Uno Q is a weird hybrid SBC
Combining a Linux capable CPU and MCU is not new or that weird... I think a Cortex A9 and Cortex M4 appeared on a combined SoC on the IMX6 platform around 10 years ago.

Plenty of use cases in embedded!

smiler··on Microsoft 'retires' Azure IoT Central in platform rethink
I think my company was told a year ago to not use IoT Central as it was going to be deprecated.

They also made ThreadX open source a few months back. Be interesting to see what else happens in the IoT area for Microsoft

smiler··on What's SAP?
I integrate into SAP for manufacturing and the users can certainly do every transaction they need to do to account for cost and shipping product and keep finance / supply chain happy.

But yes, to actually plan and run their manufacturing area, that's where the software I write comes in... as well as a ton of spreadsheets :)

smiler··on What's SAP?
The cost/implementation of SAP is so big that the decision to use it can only be signed off at C-Level.

Any company who is looking at SAP is likely doing business in the US - Sarbanes-Oxley means CFO and CEO have to personally sign off on the financial accounts and are criminally liable (am sure it's the same in other countries).

SAP at it's core is all about financial control. SAP sell SAP to CEOs and CFOs by telling them it will provide strict financial controls to their company and avoid them personally going to jail / paying huge fines. It's an easy sell

smiler··on Xamarin now free in Visual Studio, and Xamarin SDK being open-sourced
It wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft buy Jetbrains
smiler··on Microsoft Shakes Up Its Leadership and Internal Structure
He was already there.. he's continuing in the same role
smiler··on Apple Acquires FoundationDB
Can you link to Brewer's article please...
smiler··on Apple Acquires FoundationDB
Are you using SQL or ?
smiler··on Why One Programmer Doesn’t Do DevOps Anymore
Sounds good. Does your company hire remote? :)
smiler··on UK developer working on replacing heavy aircraft windows with smartscreen panels
Considering that people like to sleep on planes and the flight attendants / cabin crew will get people to close the blinds / dim the cabin lights as quickly as they can, this will never take off.
smiler··on A "Hacker's" Guide to the Bay Area
Joe! Using American lingo already I see :)
smiler··on What happens after Yahoo acquires you (2011)
And thirdly, Yahoo did not force any of these companies to sell to Yahoo. Yahoo made an offer and they accepted.
smiler··on A Year of MongoDB
What did you not like about raven?
smiler··on Ruchi Sanghvi, Dropbox VP, testifies on immigration reform [video]
Personally, being British, having looked at the sheer diversity of jobs in the US job market for software developers, the UK job market really doesn't seem that exciting.
smiler··on Manchester City Council
Yup. Click on "Council Tax" on the homepage... then "Can't find it? Other council tax services"... then "See your council tax band" (Rounded red button)
smiler··on I made an example app to show how Google map URLs should look
Not every solution has to work for every country. This would be very nice for the UK and our address system works great.
smiler··on Tableau files for IPO
I've used a few BI tools and it blows everything else out of the water - this is the first tool I've come across where I feel like end users could actually create the reports they want with it.
smiler··on Trying something new with Github. Help make my US holiday awesome?
I think crowd sourcing should be for gaining knowledge you don't have yourself. It should not be a replacement for being lazy - you can google tour dates for all those bands and comedians yourself - you don't need others to do that for you.

And also, you might want to spell San Francisco correctly :)

smiler··on Show HN: Mealmatch - end hunger. Check out our mobile web app
One of the founders is a friend - very interesting social enterprise idea
smiler··on Why are payment forms so complicated?
Yes you're right - this post has no discussion of what governments might require of a business from a legal standpoint
smiler··on Show HN: the remote-only job board called HireThere (a weekend project)
You cannot search for "c#" - it strips the # out
smiler··on UK Court of Appeal rejects Tesla's appeal in BBC/Top Gear case
Someone correct me if I'm wrong (IANAL) - but in the UK it is "loser pays" - ie Tesla will be liable for the BBC costs.
smiler··on I give permission for IBM [...] to use JSLint for evil.
Was this a subtle reference to IBM and their involvement with Nazi Germany?
smiler··on Apple Increases iPad with Retina Display to 128GB
Because plenty of people just use the iPad for e-mail and surfing the web so they don't need more than 16GB.

I have a 16GB iPad 1 still going strong - I barely use any apps outside of the ones preloaded [exceptions being Twitter, Facebook + Kindle].

When I travel, I load on a few movies / tv eps and I watch those. When I travel again, I just swap them out. I do the same at home. 16GB is ample if you're happy to swap content on & off your device.

smiler··on A conference for all those who Write the Docs
Can anyone look to good guides / examples on technical writing [for those of us who are developers who have to also write docs from time to time]
smiler··on Adioso is reinventing travel search. Check these never-before-possible searches
Do people actually need these kind of searches when they book travel? I don't know about anybody else but my life is pretty scheduled and the dates I can go on holiday are fairly fixed and planned months in advance. Research of where to go is done with my wife on tripadvisor and looking through brochues.

Ebookers / Expedia search is pretty easy - pick the dates, pick the location, compare prices.

I just don't see the need for these kind of searches

smiler··on This robot serves up 340 hamburgers per hour
Especially as if you had these machines, you would have to have at least 1 on-site engineer at all times (most likely two) to be able to fix / correct them when they go wrong - who would cost you $50 / hr.
smiler··on Basecamp Personal
free can't stay free forever without someway to collect money
smiler··on Taking payments online in Europe in 2013
Corporate clients and people with plenty of disposable income - i.e. good people to have as paying customers!
smiler··on Ask HN: What's in your bag when meeting clients?
I'd add network cable to your list, I now always carry a 10m one as you can guarantee if you do need to plug in, often the switch / hub is not nearby
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