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brokencupon First government survey of hikikomori

The second half of the word (the "komori" part) is not written 子守 but rather 籠り, which means "to isolate oneself".

The 引き part is less "dragged along" in this context and more "pull away from," so the literal meaning is "to pull away from (society) and isolate oneself."

brokencupon An introduction to Japanese

The stickied posts at Koohii are a great resource for everything related to learning Japanese. It's a pretty popular forum for Japanese learners:

http://forum.koohii.com/index.php

brokencupon An introduction to Japanese

Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese is a resource that has been around for a while that has helped a lot of beginners with the language. I'd recommend checking it out if you are interested in learning the language: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar

brokencupon Renting a Friend in Tokyo

I saw a documentary a few years ago about this called Rent a Family Inc.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dROyjWHleUs

brokencupon The New York Times Makes 17k Recipes Available Online

Their 53 videos on cooking techniques is nice too (the landing page only lists a few):

http://www.nytimes.com/video/cooking-techniques

brokencupon Lessons from a year’s worth of hiring data (2013)

Previous HN discussion on this post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6326477

brokencupon The Unique Weapons of Ancient Japan

A Guide to the Regional Ramen of Japan ?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9622949

brokencupon Ask HN: Best resources on webapp security?

I'm not a security expert at all, but I was wondering if Google Gruyere[0] was a worthwhile resource/training exercise...

[0] https://google-gruyere.appspot.com/

brokencupon Ask HN: Why would people trust their banking credentials to a service like Mint?

Wells Fargo lets you create a read-only account:

https://www.wellsfargo.com/help/faqs/profile/

brokencupon A Year of Spaced Repetition Software in the Classroom

You might want to look into "Kanji ABC" by Foerster & Tamura. It was developed some years after Heisig and avoids using nonsensical keywords. I think their approach is better than Heisig if you already have familiarity with a decent number of kanji. The book is out of print so it may be a little tough to get a hold of (I found mine online at Powell's used bookstore). You can see an online version at work[1], but it isn't that useful on its own without the book.

[1] http://www.kanjiabc.net/

brokencupon Philanthropy for Hackers

GiveWell[1] and Open Philanthropy[2] would probably be of interest here. (I am a donor to some of GiveWell's recommended organizations but otherwise not affiliated with them)

[1] http://www.givewell.org/

[2] http://www.openphilanthropy.org/