ErsatzVerkehr

Thus it is all the more surprising that in present-day Germany one must register one's residential address and religion with the local government.

> Where the actual door to your apartment is remains unknown to the mailman, post office, and person sending you mail.

This is true, but, given that the building itself is identified, I think this provides a negligible amount of privacy.

> Never seen this in Germany. Not that I remember, but most places, no, this doesn't happen.

What are you talking about? Every apartment building has a set of labeled doorbells at the ground floor.

> Even when registering with the government they have what floor number you live, but not the apartment number.

The local (German) government knows exactly where I live. My apartment doesn't have apartment numbers - as far as I can tell, this is common. Instead I live on the "second floor, right side" (2-R). This is what it says in my lease and on my registration with the local government, and, along with the street address, it uniquely identifies my apartment.

Besides, the very fact that one must register one's residential address with the government is contrary to the point you are trying to make. Even more bizarre, in my opinion, is the fact that I must also register my religion with the local government. (That is so that the government can collect "church tax.")

My experience living as a foreigner in Germany is that Germans trust the local government but not private companies.

...assuming a completely random outcome.

Do you really want to associate yourself with Klout?

> Using these data, scientists will choose a landing site for the mission’s 100 kg Philae probe. The landing is currently scheduled for 11 November and will be the first time that a landing on a comet has ever been attempted. In fact, given the almost negligible gravity of the comet’s 4 km-wide nucleus, Philae will have to use ice screws and harpoons to stop it from rebounding back into space after touchdown.

Does Yelp have any duty to "protect" them?

> As people mentioned this site is an exception to how to do things, in that PG actively does not care about search engine results.

Is pleasing Google now the only reason to obey the HTTP spec?

> This seems like something that should be self-evident to pretty much every high-school educated adult on the planet.

You, sir, are an optimist.

I'd say he was an engineer AND a philosopher.

He was a bit crazy in some ways - I tried to read his books, but they are full of too many self-invented words to be readily made sense of.

He was a visionary who saw much earlier than most that our planet has finite resources that should be used wisely, and that, through appropriate engineering, we have the ability to provide a good quality of life for everyone on earth if we so choose.

There's a superb theatrical "biography" of Bucky Fuller called "The History (and Mystery) of the Universe" -- definitely go see it if you have the opportunity. It's inspiring, informative, and entertaining.

It's playing early next year in San Jose CA (Jan 30 to Feb 23), and Cambridge MA (Jan 14 to Feb 5), and probably other places too.

CA: http://ticketing.sjrep.com/single/psDetail.aspx?psn=3026

MA: http://americanrepertorytheater.org/events/show/r-buckminste...

Here's an example of process migration implemented in Linux:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOSIX

that's a nonsense phrase.

For example, solids are "solid" largely because of the Pauli exclusion principle, which says that two fermions (such as electronics) can't occupy the same state at the same time. These effects are so familiar, and we explain them with simple words like "solid," that we forget that quantum mechanics makes it work. Without quantum mechanics, we'd fall through the floor.

Does anyone even know who the German president is? (Hint: it's not Angela Merkel.)

I live in Germany and I wouldn't have been able to name him.

This American Life recently featured an episode on (false) confessions. I found one of the stories in particular quite painful: the suspect who confessed just in order to get the interrogation over with, the cop who didn't realize that they had spoon-fed the suspect the facts to support their own confession. Give it a listen:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/507/c...

In which Linus is calm, friendly, and helpful!

> I was thinking about picking up an intro to CS book to begin learning CS. Would this book be good for this?

No, absolutely not.

It's the halting problem, not the parsing problem.

For the case of normal income, usually income tax is paid to the country where you are working. The U.S. also claims the ability to tax the income of U.S. citizens working in other countries, but for incomes below $97k/year the Foreign Income Exclusion prevents double taxation.

http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Forei...

But who will guard the guards who are guarding the guards?

"You're one of today's lucky 10,000!" http://xkcd.com/1053/

Cooperative multitasking and a lack of protected memory does not really lead to a robust system.

Why should OS vendors also supply cloud storage?

Who would provide this cloud storage for Linux distributions?

Where can I find a code example?

Here's the USGS report:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usc000kn4n#...

M7.3 , offshore

These alternatives would all have their own pitfalls.

Agreed, but, do most of the users of SnapChat care?

> I'm not finding much sympathy for users of a system built on the premise that they should not have access to data on their own device

One of the more out-of-touch HN comments I've seen in a while. And that's saying a lot!

Look at it this way: the person sending the snapchat owns the "data", and is just granting the recipient permission to watch it for ~10 seconds.