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hendrik-xdest

241 karma · joined December 30, 2010

So you are the guy that reads Hacker News profiles. Well, for your entertainment: I wrote the software that increased and decreased the brightness of the stars on the set of the fake moon landing in 69 - to make it look more real, you guessed it.

About 10 years later, I was born.

Another 10 years later, you could find me in-front of a SNES. 10 years on, I was studying for my CE diploma as a side-project to Quake 3 and partying. Or both. And finally, yet another 10 years later, I am old.

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hendrik-xdest··on Re:publica 2014 live streams
If you havn't heard about it - re:publica is Europe's largest social media conference, mostly featuring on digital life in culture, media, politics, and business.

Here is an overview of the sessions presented this year http://re-publica.de/en/event/1/sessions - a large number of those are in English. For example "DIY Microscope" or "Redesigning News, Deeply" or "The Amish Futurist and the power of buttermilk". Brilliant stuff, hopefully.

hendrik-xdest··on European Parliament passes net neutrality law
I wouldn't give too much on this just yet. From the information in the article I can't tell if the word "strong" is correct for what was passed today.

If anything, an indicator that Neelie Kroes is happy with the result might point to a weak law that won't help net neutrality at all. We might not have the "Specialised services" part in there anymore. Yet, let's wait until the dust settles and some people have read the complete text before we celebrate.

Also, as we speak, the text that didn't make it might already have been inserted in the US-EU trade agreement that is discussed behind closed doors at the moment. Wouldn't be the first time that the same words were dismissed first and than added in a different law. ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) was dismissed and then added to a treaty between the EU and Canada.

hendrik-xdest··on YouTube Blocks Game Videos, Industry Offers Help
I don't think that will last. It shouldn't take too long for rights holders to figure out that there are videos and live streams on Twitch that contain music and cut scenes, as well. Might be that Twitch is not receiving as much take-down notices, just yet. Imho that's not going to last. Since there is already people on their making money with their "property".
hendrik-xdest··on Magic Card Selling For $38K
I thought the MTG hype ended when I stopped playing in the 90s. It has taken a kind of revival in recent years due to popularity of online card games. With one coming from Blizzard next year, this buy could be worthwhile if you sell it again by the end of next year.

I don't think you will get any value from it if you keep it locked up in a bank vault for centuries, though. At least, I don't see it - but I was wrong before, apparently.

hendrik-xdest··on KitKat's new website
Nice find. There are no other possibilities to start this easter egg, though. Yet, there are actually three different images that might be shown:

http://diclr3aci3hzg.cloudfront.net/desktop/images/misc/droi... http://diclr3aci3hzg.cloudfront.net/desktop/images/misc/droi... http://diclr3aci3hzg.cloudfront.net/desktop/images/misc/droi...

hendrik-xdest··on KitKat's new website
Oh no, does that mean that meta keywords are relevant for Google search again?

<meta name="keywords" content="Kit Kat, Kit, Kat, ...." />

hendrik-xdest··on US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits
This sounds like a Hollywood magic trick. Tarantino filmed a gruesome headshot to distract censors to get his desired version of Pulp Fiction into cinemas. This might very well be the same thing.

Before we blow-up this topic we probably should collect all the nasty parts hidden in the document and fight-off all of them at once.

hendrik-xdest··on Shame.css
Been doing this for years. I usually call the file ie8.css, though.
hendrik-xdest··on Why we still love board games
There are quite a few. From the top of my head: Pandemic. Even non-European is not unheard of. For example my all-time favorite: Robo Rally (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RoboRally)
hendrik-xdest··on Why we still love board games
German-style board game is a term that refers to specific game mechanics. The reference to Germany stems from the success of the "The Settlers" board game. In contrast to well known American games, like Risk or Monopoly, the game ends with all players still in the game and it introduces mechanics where players have to interact (trade) with each other to advance.

The Settlers obviously isn't the first game with those mechanics. Magic the Gathering and others might have been available a lot earlier. Still, The Settlers made these gaming principles popular to the broad masses. Interestingly, the German gaming market became huge mostly through the influence of this game as well.

hendrik-xdest··on Dear Internet: please move the share buttons from the web page to the browser
I can already hear our customers ordering page enhancements that show an arrow or a bubble pointing somewhat in the direction of where that FB button should be in the current visitors browser.

We know that problem with the "Add page to your home screen" button. Of course, it has to disappear when the user opens your website from home screen. And god forbid Apple changes anything - like releasing an 8" tablet.

If we'd always get what we wish for, live could be so easy. And boring, probably.

hendrik-xdest··on Crack in Internet's foundation of trust allows HTTPS session hijacking
Ah, so that's why Google removed TLS compression with Chrome as discussed here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4510829
hendrik-xdest··on Stop validating email addresses with your complex regex
I don't think this will work. If you follow the RFC completely an e-mail "text space\@moretext"@host.com is valid, as well.

Some services have two input fields for an e-mail address. The second is to verify for typos. After that, just send the e-mail, already. If it fails you can delete the user entry from your database and print out something in the likes of "Who types their e-mail wrong two times?".

hendrik-xdest··on Munich Detonates WWII Bomb
They did not. I've read in a German newspaper today that a piece of the metal casing has been found 300 meters off, near one of the main roads of Munich. They coated the bomb in straw and sandbags to minimize the shrapnel as best as possible, though.
hendrik-xdest··on Munich Detonates WWII Bomb
Here is a better recording: http://vimeo.com/48399328
hendrik-xdest··on Germany's laws on github, machine-readable and ready to be forked
This is not completely true. You can share copyrighted materials but you are not allowed to bypass or crack any security measures to do so. Also, the information on cracking a protection system, like ripping a DVD or an LP, may not be discussed publicly. Tutorials on these topics are illegal. The same is true for software products that would allow network intrusions. Wireshark is illegal, as well.
hendrik-xdest··on Germany's laws on github, machine-readable and ready to be forked
It's not. You still have to have the complete text of the law and manually add the changes that are described in the Bundesanzeiger. It states for example something like "Change in BGB: Paragraph 123, section 45, change the word 'and' to 'and/or'. Only completely new texts would be printed in full.

The Bundesanzeiger is merely the last step in the law making process. First, the two law making institutions (Bundestag, Bundesrat) have to vote in favor of the law and the president has put his X under it. Only after the law is published in the Bundesanzeiger it takes effect.

hendrik-xdest··on Dear Mark Zuckerberg
It worked: http://allthingsd.com/20120801/facebook-platform-exec-ethan-...
hendrik-xdest··on Renewables now account for 25% of German energy production
I think this is related to statistics regarding how fast the power grid can be expanded in relation to how fast it has to expand. Can't find any news items on this, though.

There are not enough land lines to transport the energy that is created in wind farms to the parts of Germany that need it, for example. Seems Germany is missing about 4500 power grid kilometers to supply every household.

I'm not completely sure if that is in anyway related to the big players in nuclear energy who won't allow the use of their networks. Could be it's just the basic infrastructure missing. However, it's probably crucial to hook up big wind parks first.

Try searching for Energiewende on the matter, maybe.

hendrik-xdest··on Imagining a future dictated by Google Glass
Have a look at the new ShowCase TV series Continuum for some ideas on how an implanted Glass chip may enhance police work in the future.
hendrik-xdest··on Groupon moves headquarters to Berlin (German, English summary)
I really didn't want to put caps into a headline ;) You are right of course. But it seems I am not able to edit it anymore.
hendrik-xdest··on If Google had a gun… (or – shoot your developers first, ask questions later)
I remember a German or European court ruling that states that as soon as a measurable effort is needed to collect the data it might be protected by copyright--could even be the effort to create a management or collection software. At least, I think that was the case but I might be mistaken. Also, I do not remember what kind of data collection this related to in the first place.
hendrik-xdest··on If Google had a gun… (or – shoot your developers first, ask questions later)
I don't think that a publicly available database means that you can use their data without consent. In Germany any collection of data might fall under the protection of copyright (or you could even patent a data collection, if I am not mistaken). Telephone books, for example, are free for anyone. But you can't go ahead and scan the pages and provide a service that parses through the data.

My guess is that the sources you use might be free to use but not necessarily free to integrate into a software product. Even if there are APIs available I would check your sources to see if there are special rules for commercial products or applications that access the data massively.

hendrik-xdest··on CSS3PS: Convert Photoshop layers to CSS3
Does this only work for vector objects enhanced by layer styles? What would happen if I wanted to extract, for example, the CSS3PS logo?

I don't have Photoshop ready but would like to show this to creative. That's why I ask instead of testing it myself :)

hendrik-xdest··on Wkhtmltopdf, shell utility to convert html to pdf using webkit rendering engine
That seems to be a qt problem, as far as I know. I think a saw somewhere how to recompile qt to get a more robust solution. The issue tracker of wkhtml is quite helpful here.

An easy solution could be to just use extremely short URLs as these seem to affect the space used by wkhtml as well. But that was just my solution for a 200 page output. In addition, if you are using HTML footers or headers, try not to give them any parameters, if possible.

Edit: I can't find the best entry at StackOverflow (I remember there must be a Python based solution as well), but this might be a good overview:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/633780/converting-html-fi...

Some of those are commercial.

hendrik-xdest··on Wkhtmltopdf, shell utility to convert html to pdf using webkit rendering engine
It's practically unusable when not in an environment with X11. I had to use it on a Windows system and any text would have incorrect letter-space. Every letter would bleed into the next, it's a typographic nightmare. You could use Arial Unicode MS to get a somewhat acceptable result but that won't support bold or italic text cleanly.

I'm not quite sure but I think the fix isn't even part in the 0.11 release. One has to compile wk himself to get it working.

When this issue is resolved this will be perfect, though. It has great capabilites to render footers and headers and JS-based output (in my case Highcharts). For the time being you can't even switch to commercial systems - ActivePDF, for one, has the same issue in the latest release.

hendrik-xdest··on Show HN: Ham, a fast PHP router/microframework I hacked up last night
I was thinking about the part where you check the cache with if (!$found)

On that note, I adapted a rule of an open source project (can't quite remember which) that said to never use !$var to validate your data. One should always use isset($found['args']) or empty($found['args']) or for example is_array($found) && count($found) > 0 to check.

hendrik-xdest··on Show HN: Ham, a fast PHP router/microframework I hacked up last night
Great work. Hope to see this evolve into a great little toolset.

I have gone through your code a bit and think that you should consider error handling first. Some methods return strings on error but arrays on success but this is not validated before using the value as an array (this results in the error reported before). I guess when no caching system is available the Dummy will break your code as well as it only returns false.

Also, I think using "False" instead of "false" results in two internal checks when PHP tries to determine if something is false or true, instead of one. Not sure if that is still the case with the latest PHP version, though. I reckon using "false" would be better.

hendrik-xdest··on Poll: HN Meetup in Munich - date, agenda, etc. (second try)
Great idea. I think I can make it but won't be able to support the program much. Would you reckon English as the primary language or German?

Also, it's a good idea to have someone like Nils (kojote - www.silberkind.de/+) on board because he has extensive knowledge about the organization of such events. He is active in the PHPUG, organizer of the Barcamp Muc, GTUG Muc, ... probably the best known geek from Munich.

hendrik-xdest··on Why I'm a Pirate
I do not know Netflix but have you heard of Videoload? Havn't used it either but my guess is that there are no current movies out soon after their cinematic release on that platform, as well. ITunes Germany had some TV shows one day after their broadcast in the US. I don't know if that is still happening.

There are some strict rules around in Germany that defined at what time a movie may be released on DVD after it has hit cinemas. I think it is 6 months. Renting the movie might in some occasions be possible a couple of weeks earlier. Though, that has never mattered to me. Waiting on the DVD release or for it's TV premiere are pretty much the same for me. Although, I guess there is also a minimum period for DVD sales before it is shown on TV.

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