skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hard evidence? No. And I'm not even saying that Germany has that much more (or more per capita) than some other countries.

It's just an annoying trend that I've noticed (and I'm not the only one, cf. links at the end). Don't get me wrong, there are many interesting startups, especially the smaller ones. But for a time there was an alarming trend of just taking an US product, and creating a German version of it. And then not keeping up with the original.

Of course it's never easy to say where you'd draw the line between copycat and competitor. Xing and Linkedin might be the latter, but StudiVZ and facebook? Quite often there's not much valued added besides the translation (myvideo vs youtube), and once the original gets a German localization…

The problem for me is that I'd actually like some German equivalents of some US apps (e.g. netflix, okcupid, mint), but I'd prefer if their implementors would add some passion to it. If you don't restrict yourself to German-language internet, some things often look rather familiar. And, as I said above, quite often that means that there's no excited (and exciting) company behind it, and so nobody will introduce interesting features in the future – or at least keep up with the interesting features of the original.

Who's to blame (assuming this is no figment of my biased imagination)? Hard to say. Maybe because there's no breeding ground for new ideas comparable to SV or NYC here (although Berlin might be there or almost), maybe because local investors are more risk-averse and if you show them something American that already has lots of customers/members…

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,779869,0...

http://venturebeat.com/2008/10/22/the-german-start-up-scene-...

http://www.thewavingcat.com/2011/09/03/defending-the-german-...

http://siliconallee.com/startups/2011/08/09/editorial-founde...
Have they finally fixed the pin header defect in their boards or is it institutionalized at this point?
Ah, the Eric Shcmidt defence: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
[Photo] These geeks are now members of the parliament of the State of Berlin :-)
jballanc didn't say you can't guard against privilege escalation. He said, assume you can't. The point is subtle but important: given limited resources, you should allocate the majority of them to keeping the hacker off your system in the first place.

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to compare and contrast the entirely different use cases between a shared hosting server and a desktop machine running OS X.
If you're turned off by that, then you're probably not going to like his other books. Snow Crash, in particular, is even further along the spectrum of self-indulgence and geek wish-fulfillment (although I personally like it for what it is.) I'd recommend you go read a subtler author.

But if you want to give Stephenson a second shot, I suggest Diamond Age.
That's what happens when the flash memory wears out, but really SSDs haven't been around long enough for anyone but the most intense users to wear out the flash memory of one. Instead the problems people have run into are in other parts of the SSD - mostly firmware.
Here's the message I'm getting: "We realize you didn't like the fact that we separated the two delivery methods, so we're separating the companies to make it more clear 'why' we're doing it."

I hate to be a jerk about this, but I really do not care why you're doing it. As a customer, I hate it. I really loved how I could manage my streaming and DVD queues through one website. Based on water cooler chat, lots of other people feel the same way.

Trust me, Mr. Reed. We hear your reasoning loud and clear: Netflix first, customer second.
Its probably over the top, but combined with the HTTPS fiasco we have seen, you dont even need Google to be evil, just someone with a compromised HTTPS certs.
It could probably be argued that needing this plugin is actually a symptom that you need to rethink some part of your UI. If an element is important enough to be pointed out like this, it should perhaps feature more prominently in the layout.
so apt for Talk Like a Pirate day. Jokes notwithstanding, it is good to see a new generation enter the control room
Ahh, thanks for both reports. The G+ button seemed to be the most finicky about how things worked. I'll get both of those items updated, though. Thanks again.
I think you're throwing out the baby with the bathwater. There are straightforward technical solutions they could implement to address your complaints, but for those of us that aren't so extreme, there's no easy solution to the way they're breaking our desired usage.
Rich Server Monitoring - Why HTTP 200 isn't enough
I'm sure it would work and the people here on HN would be all over it. The only tricky part would be to come up with a system that obfuscates the personal details as well as the company details or you may run into privacy issues.
Google Wallet might be released Tomorrow
Past week, Google placed a remarkable puzzler video for its upcoming online mobile payment system named as “Goggle Wallet” will be launched soon, according to TechCrunch reports.
Sounds interesting. But I think "live" or "real-time" captures it better.

"Metropolis replaces the soundstage with real-time CGI" ?

"Shoot with live CGI" ?

"With Metropolis, you can shoot a CGI feature in real-time" ? This is probably a little bit false as the final rendering is probably better than what you show the camera operator, but it gets the point across.
Wow. I suppose they didn't want to move the bulk of their servers because of their sunk costs in space, security, etc. ... but, yeah, I can see that getting a lot of attention.

And you implicitly bring up a point I've read about, that power and cooling are now the limiting factors in server spaces. Moore's Law plus the even faster doubling of disk platter capacity (as of late I've read it's doubling every year or so) has allowed us to pack rather a lot in rather small spaces.
This analogy isn't exactly the best, considering that Germans came up with a lot of the automotive innovations in the first place… I'd be careful with quick cultural assumptions (Germans this, Japanese that etc.), a lot more often you'll have to follow the money, i.e. investment, banking system, etc.
I've watched things on Amazon Instant in the past and didn't find it any less usable. In fact, I actually find Amazon more usable since it works on my operating system.

It's kind of a moot point to say "Well, Amazon has a crappier interface, so Netflix is safe", since Amazon can always update its interface to something more friendly. The important point is that Netflix has given up one of the major incentives to use its service -- the integration of DVD and streaming.
I really like Netflix but this seems like a mistake because I think that the AI recommendation system will be cut: movies watched on DVDs will not affect recommendations for streaming, and vice-versa.

The recommendation system is important to me: my wife and I have different streaming accounts just so our recommendations are accurate since we like different types of movies.
I'm in the same boat -- a sharewall is almost guaranteed to bounce me.

Then again, I'm probably not the target for a viral marketer, so perhaps this is an effective solution.
Any good recommendations for stock art?
Great library, great work - kudos to you for tackling a very tricky subject (I'm staying well away from CSS parsing and typography ... for now)

My only concern is whether this is (in startup lingo) a painkiller or a vitamin - as in, this is really nice to have, if you're that worried about kerning, but perhaps not enough of a pain-point for designers and developers to warrant learning a new set of nested and prefixed CSS rules, just to do something that's possible to hack together on a case-by-case basis with something like lettering.js...

Perhaps if there's a way to simplify the syntax or provide easy copy-paste examples, it'll remove the barrier to entry?

Still, applaud the work and the code looks great.
Isn't the fact that more people have more to lose in the event of totalitarianism sort of a good thing, in that it makes totalitarianism less likely?
I think the parent's point was, that is the case -now-. But that could change with one new release of Amazon's steaming service. Previously, even if Amazon released a new offering, the mailing service added an additional incentive to stay with netflix. Now if Amazon releases a better streaming option, you can simply dump Netflix streaming.
Sept. 19, 1982 - First :-)
It still is! I use it instead of github for some projects.
Fair point. What do you do with a situation where the person receiving the LaTeX CV has never heard of LaTeX though?
Top Ten Books About Hackers
Nice concept. If it doesn't work out maybe you should start a demo video service of some kind. Totally impressed that you could put that video together so quick, looks really nice.
I'll be interested to see if the split compels media companies to make more content available for streaming. Perhaps that's part of the logic behind splitting out the business; Netflix may have reasoned that it will put more pressure on content holders to license that content for streaming if it won't be available on Netflix at all anymore. In this scenario, it seems that Netflix may be throwing the DVD arm under the bus in hopes that it will strengthen their streaming offering.
Nope. Neil is CEO of Red Gate Software, and an angel investor. (And just a really good guy, too.)

He's been teaching himself to draw for a year or so, thus the format. :)
Massive Biometric Project Gives Millions of Indians an ID
The thing about Stephenson is that he takes a lot of time to do proper research in to his topics, and with his parents both being in academia (fathers side is electrical engineering with physics, and mothers side is biochemistry) he has excellent knowledge sources as well as learned how to do proper research (this is what he explained at a book signing for the Boroque Cycle's first book), and it shows in all his work.

The problem, as I see it with Stephenson, is that he goes in to such detail that he always needs to build up the world in such a depth that it can make the opening to his books long winded. Any time I have recommended a Stephenson book (and I've read them all, and recommend them all) I warn people to get past page 100, because that's when you will get sucked in to the story. His writing style can be a little unsettling until you get used to it (IMHO), but once you are in there you won't want to put the book down.

As for recommendations - Cryptonomicon, Snowcrash, Diamond Age are all great - the later two are far easier reading but still show the great depths of knowledge and research put in to the books. And once done with those - read the rest.
On Windows, the only browser that consistently renders Typekit fonts legibly is Safari for Windows, due to its use of Apple's subpixel smoothing. I prefer the Apple style font rendering, which is one of the few compelling reasons to use Safari on Windows.
I've read most of Reamde already (have an early access copy from a bookstore book buyer friend). I'm nearly done (800 out of 980 pages). It simply is not a good of a book as the Baroque Cycle volumes or Cryptinomicon. I actually did not like Anathem all that much, as it felt too contrived.

That said, Reamde is a fun read. I suppose it could be put into the book category of Thriller as the article suggests. I'd give it a 3/5 stars, as in, I liked it, but won't bother reading it again. Which is how I feel about most decent thrillers. But then again, it appears that it will have an actual climactic ending to the story/book, which Stephenson has failed to do many times as his other books just peter out without ending properly (Snow Crash, Cryptinomicon, etc).

It is more accessible. It is a thriller, and could be easily sold as airport pulp. There's a few descriptions of unix commands that various hackers are taking that would be skipped in a normal thriller, which does make it a Stephenson book. But, I am glad that Stephenson is experimenting with writing styles. Why would I want to read the same book over and over, just with different characters (which is all too common for writers)?
I already thought that Anathem was way more accessible than previous works. I recall reading in Cryptonomicon two pages of some strange event before realizing he was showing us a different view of the Hindenburg disaster. I can't think of any example in Anathem where it wasn't immediately clear to me what he was trying to show.

On the other hand, if Stephenson has a fault as a writer, it's the way he writes books' endings. The ends of Snow Crash or Diamond Age were just a mess. He skirted that in Cryptonomicon by just not really having an ending. I confess to not having been able to make it to the end of The Baroque Cycle, so I can't say. But then Anathem had a real, if rather out-of-left-field, ending.

So I think that while he may be trending toward greater accessibility, he's also trending to writing better endings.
My guess is that their recruiting software doesn't handle PDFs correctly. I recently went through a job search and was dumbfounded by the number of places that would only take a Word document.
Microsoft is perhaps the most business-savvy major tech company around. I for one am glad that we didn't have this kind of disaster back then -- Microsoft has always recognized and capitalized on its bread and butter: Windows and Office. These two are the workhorses, the crown jewels in the Microsoft empire, and almost everything else that Microsoft does is centered on strengthening the positions of these two cash cows. Splitting these into a separate entity would have been utterly ridiculous.

Again, Windows and Office are and always have been the lifeblood of Microsoft. You really think they should have decided to let someone else make all of that money in 1998 and retooled their whole business to keep only Hotmail? I think that would have been disastrous for MS.
I think it might depend on the offer as well. I'm probably the same on most things. But AppSumo has a similar "Free Deal" on their site where you get access to the video/product after tweeting about it. Since I may actually be interested in the offer most times, I'm usually pretty happy to do it. I know that I'm going to get value out of it and, by helping advertise the site, I'm helping them continue these offers in the future.
Samsung Plans To Sue Apple As Soon As iPhone 5 Arrives
Taleb's point is that there no real way to create a Black Swan proof world, but that by applying a few straight forward rules the impact of a Black Swan Event can be kept bounded. He also believes, that reckless behavior should not be encouraged by social and/or economic policies.
Well, I don't think you're any worse off than you are with credit cards now (and having a good search of my own purchase history sounds sort of cool), but the problem is that you might buy something that nobody but 3 guys in some corner of a federal agency know is a felony, like import lobsters from Honduras in plastic bags.
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/rightsandfreedoms/a/alobsterst...
Netflix Separates DVD and Streaming Services
Sounds like a good idea.

One crucial difference to the original, though, is that you're _supposed_ to react instantaneously to a picture. Resumes, even 1-pagers, demand more care or some involvement of higher cognitive functions. So, this could get very tired soon. I myself would be _much_ more interested in what other people think than in looking at other people's resumes; at best, I might be able to look at 5 max. People watching is (kind of) fun, people pay premiums to have their coffees in cafes, after all. But it's not exactly my idea of fun to look at a bunch of random CVs.
Windows and MacOS use different techniques when approximating a font to the pixel grid of the screen.

The Mac obeys the font, applying smoothing via anti-aliasing along the way, with no extra consideration given to the pixel grid.

Windows tries to snap things to the pixel grid. For most "medium" sized text this produces a sharper lighter look. For small text or (in your case) typefaces with light strokes to start with, if tends to make things look too light and a bit blurry instead.

These two pages give (respectively) an example of where the difference is clear to see and a description of the different processes:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/06/whats-wrong-with-ap...
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/06/font-rendering-resp...

At higher resolutions Apple's way would definitely be better (you get a result closer to what the font designer indented). For low resolutions (like the 96dots-per-logial-inch Windows usually assumes on screen) the Windows way often produces much clearer text if you are not using font-smoothing in either case. Once you add font-smoothing techniques into the mix (they use slightly different sup-pixel mapping methods) it all gets a bit arbitrary, varying from typeface to typeface (and by size, the sub-pixel differences mean some colours are more affected in certain typefaces, and opinions vary from person to person too) as to which way around looks better.

The answer? Aside from just putting up with it (and testing your output on both types of font-renderer if you need/want to use typefaces away from the "standard" set) and arguing about which is technically the better mix of methods, the only real solution is probably to wait for nice high resolution screens that will make it a moot point. Unfortunately they are likely to be a long time coming, scaling the sort of DPI an iPhone4 boasts to 20"+ screens is likely to be much more expensive than the market will bare ATM.

lt;dr: MS and Apple render fonts differently. The difference is often not significant, but it is often enough that unless you use the de-facto "standard" set of typefaces you need to test on both systems to ensure your output isn't blurry or otherwise difficult to read on one or the other system.
I'm surprised "The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security" by Kevin D. Mitnick didn't make the list. (http://www.amazon.com/Art-Deception-Controlling-Element-Secu...)
The White House Brews Its Own Beer
You can't include commentary on the ToS without them becoming part of the ToS, and thus changing the legal meaning of the ToS.
Diamond Age is also my favorite. I think Snow Crash is a satire, given that the hero / protagonist (named Hiro Protagonist) is a programmer, extreme pizza delivery boy, and the best swordsman in the world. I read it once. It was kind of fun.

I've read The Diamond Age about 30 times. The world is very deep, and the characters are mostly interesting (if a little hammy - NS's characters are all just a little one dimensional).
So, to style the 235th word in a text, I'd have to do
#main {
-letter-size: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .... 0.5em;
}

Why wouldn't I simply wrap it in a span, then it even works on browser with JS switched off. Uh, and once I have to edit the copy and add a single word somewhere, everything breaks.
I believe Amazon's HR has this issue.
Sun was so into keeping backward compatibility intact they would not update the default /bin/sh because of some compatibility issues that could affect customers. So they included the newer XPG4 sh in a different location (it is a POSIX-compliant ksh88): /usr/xpg4/bin/sh. So you can write:

#!/usr/bin/env sh

So that users who have setup PATH=/usr/xpg4/bin:$PATH get the correct shell and everything works fine.
Its probably just a marketing drone. The level of clueless ness at netflix is astounding. How about the we'll get rid of reviewers that are 40 times better than our clueless recommendation system and replace them at a future date with the getsapo facebook? Whats that you say gestapo facebook is illegal? Oh well we didnt want your opinions anyway. We replaced the customer with a robot.
The flight of the Big Bird (part 3)
My experience and market research echos yours, just to get another tally mark here. Differenct schools allocate discretionary budgets differently, and there is some variance also between elementary, MS, and HS in the same district. A good time to reach for discretionary $ is near the end of the school year, after they've spent 7 months being frugal but don't want to "underspend," in part for fear that they won't get the full budget the next year if they don't spend it this year.
As a reference on the topic, I found Andy Lester's
"Land the Tech Job You Love" (PragProg) an informative and
entertaining reading.

It contains a few useful tips & hacks on how to tailor your CV and "hunt" jobs that match your expectations
(backed by real life stories and examples).
Some of the treated aspects - imo - fall under common sense, but I would suggest anyone
with little (or none) experience on the job market to pick it up nonetheless.
Well, I found the renaming of Linux to Finux pretty annoying, I must admit. Really liked the book otherwise, but that was grating.
This is all good advice. But there are two even more important things that I'd add:

• Specialize. It's way easier for an in-demand specialist to find work and also it's much easier to answer who you'd like to work for once you've got a narrower focus.

• If you're applying for a job that's posted internet, you're already behind the curve. Build a network. Make sure that you know other programmers and that they know you're looking for a job. If you know specific companies you want to work for, make an effort to meet people at those companies.

The two points interact because if you specialize, you tend to get to know the other specialists in your field. I've done a lot of audio software in C++ and did that in my last job. Even before working there I knew a bunch of the other people that did C++ audio software and one of them did an intro for me that got me the job. This wasn't even theoretical -- I actually had filled out the online job form a few weeks prior and gotten the, "This position has already been filled." mail. When I used a personal intro instead I had an interview inside of a week and they wanted to know how quickly I could start.
Oh my, goodness gracious, this does sound very serious indeed.
The Ups And Downs Of A Tech Startup Rollercoaster
Between Arduino and Raspberry Pi, are we approaching a point where a hardware startup can bootstrap? There's a lot of room for disruption in the home appliance sector that has been out of reach for the typical internet startup. Think garage door openers, doorbells, anything in your house that currently has a chip in it. Those companies are firmly entrenched in their way of doing business.
Speaking of being a salon.com article... what the heck did they do to the behavior of the web site? It refused to let me read the whole article. Every time I clicked (FF6) the "Continue reading" link, it expanded the text but then immediately re-loaded the whole page. I had to quickly click the "Stop" button before it could reload. This is an unfriendly feature.
Great Tutorial For Matlab
Smarterer and FutureM: Boston’s Marketing Community Puts Itself to the Test
What does Windows 8 have to do to succeed?
I haven't found one yet. hackaday.com isn't Arduino only, but they cover a lot of interesting projects with Arduinos.
Use mkdir -p to avoid failing if .ssh already exists.

ssh user@host "mkdir -p .ssh && cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys" < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
There's a full transcript a bit further down though, in case you missed it.
"With completely separate websites, what opportunities will exist to inform me "

Your comment here is echoed all over HN and the Netflix blog.

Obviously being a separate website in no way prevents them from engaging in that sort of cross promotion. Strikes me as common sense. Comments like yours seem to imply an airgap between the two sites. I haven't read anything official that should suggest that.
MailChimp security issue (Tweet)