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blumentopf

1,046 karma · joined May 12, 2011

hn2.20.melitta@spamgourmet.com
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blumentopf··on Samwers Clone Stripe
Direct debits as a buyer: You enter your bank account number in the "buy" form of some website and that's it.

Direct debits as a seller: You file the direct debit with your bank. This can normally be done online through a web interface or various APIs (e.g. HBCI). The transaction is then processed through the Eurozone's TARGET2 system, i.e. the amount is withdrawn from the buyer's bank account and credited to the seller's bank account. This works in the entire Eurozone and is supposed to not take longer than a day. In practice, some countries take longer. E.g. I've seen payments between Germany and Italy take 3 days, but between Germany and France or within Germany it always takes 1 day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TARGET2

blumentopf··on How ZFS continues to be better than Btrfs.
Bryan, what's your opinion re: the stability of the LLNL port of ZFS on Linux? The 0.6.0 release is apparently just around the corner and several high-profile people in the community, Russell Coker for one [1], have started using this on production systems. I'd love to make the move to ZFS as well but am still afraid of data loss. I started using XFS on Linux in 2002 and my gut feeling is that ZFS on Linux is now at or around a similar point of maturity. If you could share your opinion I'd be really grateful. Thanks so much.

[1] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2012/07/31/zfs-debian-wheezy/

blumentopf··on Ask HN: Who Is Hiring? (August 2012)
I thought you're only "inbound hiring"? ;-)

http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2011/09/inbound-hiring.h...

blumentopf··on The Disappointing Surprise From Apple
Check out Jens Alfke's blog post when he left Apple, I really can't say this better than he did:

http://web.archive.org/web/20110714114434/http://jens.moosey...

blumentopf··on The Disappointing Surprise From Apple
From the LinkedIn profile of the guy who implemented Safari RSS:

Social-Software Introvert

Apple, Inc.

February 2004 – January 2008 (4 years)

Part of a very small team that implemented the news-reading (RSS/Atom) features of the Safari browser in Mac OS X 10.4, and the public news-reading framework for 10.5, used by Mail and 3rd party applications as well as Safari. I also prototyped some wild and crazy social-software applications I can't talk about here, and researched technologies like social networking, P2P, identity systems, and delta encoding.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jensalfke

Obviously there's noone at Apple picking up the slack that Jens Alfke left behind. He's stated repeatedly on his blog that Apple is decidedly not a social software company. Which is ultimately the reason why they removed these features. The reason is not that "RSS is the past" bullshit.

blumentopf··on Is Berlin the new home for tech start-up business? [video]
I talked to the CEO of a Berlin-based crypto appliance company and he literally called the place "off-shore". Berlin is located in former East Germany, so it's totally separated from the rich former West German states where all the thriving export industry is. He told me they have practically no customers in their vicinity. They apparently can easily find staff, due to the attractiveness of the city and the various universities there, but all their customers are located in former West Germany or in other countries.

If you go to southern German states like Bayern, Baden-Württemberg or Hessen, cost of living is much higher in the larger cities there than in Berlin. That's because of the export industry which has been able to grow there for the last decades, and the resulting abundance of high paying jobs.

blumentopf··on Smart Working at Credit Suisse - 2000 workspaces for 2500 employees
A documentary film on nightmarish office spaces like the one depicted here was recently released by German director Carmen Losmann:

Work hard - Play hard (2011)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeLY9y6VP2U

http://www.hupefilm.de/dokumentarfilm/workhard_playhard.php

blumentopf··on Why was .NET called .NET?
The new name ".NET" for NGWS was unveiled June 22, 2000. (Source: http://heise.de/-26825 -- in German)

In the months leading up to the announcement, Microsoft had registered a truck load of domains including: dot-in-the-dot.com, dot-in-the-dot-com.org, dot-in-the-dot-com.net, dot-in-the-dot-com.com, dot-in-the-dot.net, dot-in-the-dot.org, dot-truth.org und dot-truth.net. (Source: http://heise.de/-27004 -- in German)

So clearly the name .NET was a play on Sun's "we're the dot in .com" stategy. They noticed Sun's success with Java and the JVM in enterprise software development and started their Xeroxes as usual.

By the way -- Loved Sun's ad campaign back then: http://www.bevinceengel.com/SUN-MICROSYSTEMS-THE-DOT

blumentopf··on Designer of the Porsche 911, Dies at 76
Refactoring the design was mandatory to meet statutory emission and fuel consumption limits. Moving to water cooling, reducing aerodynamic drag and using lightweight materials were all necessitated by this.

There's a DVD called "The Porsche Way" available at the Porsche Museum in Zuffenhausen in which F.A. Porsche himself defends the move to water cooling, justifying it with legislation.

As it is, Porsche already has to pay CAFE penalties in the US, and similar legislation exists in the EU as well, called Flottenverbrauch.

blumentopf··on Twitter Picks Berlin For German Headquarters
I can certainly think of German cities with advantages over Berlin.

Karlsruhe for instance has an extremely awesome scientific community, its university is in fact home to the oldest computer science faculty in Germany and coincidentally was the first place in Germany to have leased-line Internet connectivity (in 1989). There's an abundance of excellent engineers coming out of the university which is definitely a plus when you're staffing a startup. Also, much nicer weather compared to Berlin and a much more affluent region with better infrastructure and more companies.

Frankfurt/Main also comes to mind, the secret Internet capital of Europe and home to the largest Internet exchange in the world (DE-CIX).

I guess it's just that these cities aren't as sexy and hyped as Berlin.

blumentopf··on Mercedes uses LEDs and a Camera to make "invisible car" for marketing
Not true. If the hydrogen is generated with renewable energies, driving a car such as the B-Class (Mercedes-Benz W245) shown in this video is in fact emission-free. A solar-powered hydrogen station was opened this week in Freiburg, relatively near to Mercedes-Benz's headquarters in Stuttgart:

http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/de/presse-und-medien/presseinfo... (in German -- sorry, no English translation available yet)

Honda R&D Americas has such a gas station in Torrence CA since 2001. I don't know if it's open to the public though. The one in Freiburg is public.

blumentopf··on Why Germany should copy Silicon Valley's culture rather than their startups
So in my case, the Finanzamt argues that what I did for the startup does not fulfill the definition of a "gewerbliche Tätigkeit" and consequently I can't deduct the "Vorsteuer" of my expenses. (As a business you get the VAT you paid on expenses back from the Finanzamt, which is called Vorsteuer.)

Download the Umsatzsteueranwendungserlass and go to page 63 of that PDF (section 2.3. "Gewerbliche oder berufliche Tätigkeit") to find a list of things that indicate whether you're having a business or not:

http://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/nn_112540/DE/Wirtschaf...

In theory, if you fulfill the definition in that PDF, you're on the safe side. In practice however, the Finanzamt often tries to fleece you by simply making a claim that something can't be deducted, shifting the burden of proof to you. My particular case is still in dispute, I have an appeal (Einspruch) running against their decision. Most likely they'll lose, but they try to fleece people nevertheless because they figure that people will just pay and not spare the time to counter their evil tricks. If you do decide to shoot back, you have to be a German native speaker so you can read the laws and you should have some experience with the tax system. Alternatively, get a Steuerberater but be prepared to waste more money on your Steuerberater than what you would otherwise have paid for the Finanzamt's tricks.

One final word of warning: If your startup fails and you wind down the company, be prepared that the Finanzamt will conduct a detailed examination of the tax declaration of the past 3 years (Betriebsprüfung/Außenprüfung). This can drag on for several years because they're pretty slow. Apparently they routinely do this whenever a company is shut down.

blumentopf··on How Three Germans Are Cloning the Web
Being German myself I think the Samwers are an embarrassment. Unscrupulous copycats like them should be outlawed by the German startup scene.
blumentopf··on Why Germany should copy Silicon Valley's culture rather than their startups
Tell HN:

I participated in a German Government startup program in 2004/2005 called EXIST-SEED (nowadays called EXIST Gründerstipendium). I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. The funding I got was relatively modest (35 kEUR in my case -- as a consultant I now earn more than that within 4 months) and I was drowned in bureaucracy. To this very day, I am arguing with the German IRS because they do not want to treat a failed startup as a business and thus refuse to deduct the expenses I had. I literally ended up spending more time with bureaucracy than doing real work.

If you compare the modest startup funding provided by the federal government to the amount spent on the German cash-for-clunkers program in 2009 ("Abwrackprämie"), which was 5 billion Euro, you get an idea what the government's priorities really are: Firstly big (automotive) corporations, then a lot of nothing, then the Mittelstand, again a lot of nothing, and then as an also-ran the startup scene.

You're ultimately fighting an uphill battle as a founder in Germany: A tiny private VC scene, meager support from the government and a mind-boggling bureaucracy.

I don't see this changing so I drew the frustrating conclusion to become a consultant fleecing fucking big corps.

blumentopf··on Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?
To add to this article: Why do people not use PGP or S/MIME?

I've submitted my resume to a couple of people who posted in the Who's Hiring thread and checked for each of them if they have a PGP key submitted to the usual key servers (e.g. pgp.mit.edu). None of them had done that. Beats me.

blumentopf··on GUM: A better CLI for Git
Why this is needed:

Latest blog article over at progit.org: "Reset demystified" http://progit.org/2011/07/11/reset.html

Scott Chacon, author of the the Pro Git book, admits there that he didn't cover the "reset" command in depth in the book because he didn't fully understand it. Go figure...

blumentopf··on Death of an Engineer: Attention-Seeking has Killed Invention
Article in a similar vein: http://nat.org/blog/2009/07/nerds-and-jocks/
blumentopf··on The myth of Japan's failure
It does make a difference in that Japan could finance the public debt entirely by itself. The country has a trade account surplus, it's not them being indebted to others, but others are indebted to them.

That makes it unattractive for speculators to bet against the country. Countries like China or Germany are in a similar position.

blumentopf··on Stop whining and start hiring remote workers
Contracting instead of hiring is a decent workaround in my opinion. A lot of great people who work from remote are already full-time or part-time freelancers and are totally open to long-term engagements. It's as simple as sending an invoice by the employee/freelancer and sending a check or wire transfer back.
blumentopf··on Merry Christmas from the FreeBSD Security Team
Gee, that BIND vulnerability was made public mid-November and they're integrating that into FreeBSD on Dec 23 ?!
blumentopf··on What really caused the eurozone crisis?
One point that's not fully explained in this infographic is the borrowing costs in the Eurozone countries:

Before the Euro introduction, borrowing costs in Germany, both for the private as well as the government sector, were cheap, whereas in the southern countries they were high.

With the Euro introduction, borrowing costs were essentially unified, the interest rate being set by the ECB. So Germany suddenly faced higher borrowing costs than before and the southern states faced significantly lower borrowing costs.

That lead to the debt explosion in southern Europe and it put Germany in a tougher position than before. Germany went through an economic slump between 2000 and 2005 and had to retool its economy to be as competitive as before. Germany did this with internal devaluation: German wages have now been stagnating for a decade.

Between 2005 and 2010, the roles have switched and right now Germany's economy is almost overheating, in part because the interest rate set by the ECB is super low to make life easier for the struggling southern countries.

That's why Euro critics like Ambrose Evans-Pritchard call the ECB's policy "one size fits none". However, that's not to say the Euro critics are right. The hope of Euro optimists is that the Eurozone countries' economies will eventually converge. Whether or not that will ever happen is still up in the air. The whole thing is an experiment without precedent.

blumentopf··on It's now illegal to throw out rechargeable batteries in New York State
In Germany this is actually law for car batteries. You pay a 7,50 € fee when buying a new battery and get a refund once you return a used battery.

And just for the record: Throwing away batteries has been illegal in Germany since 1991. Since that law was necessitated by a EU directive, I assume that is also true for all other EU member states.

Source: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batterieverordnung

blumentopf··on Poll: HN EU readers, should we start lobbying the EU?
Regarding payment gateways: SEPA is fast, cheap and rolled out in a large portion of Europe. I don't see much room for improvement there, quite frankly.
blumentopf··on Instagram Engineering Challenge: The Unshredder
The German government is funding a project to algorithmically unshred the files that the Stasi (East Germany's secret police) destroyed in 1989 when the Berlin wall came down and protesters started to occupy their buildings:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6692895.stm

blumentopf··on OpenSSL Expert Tips and Tricks: Test and Benchmark Servers
openssl s_client isn't capable of IPv6 last time I checked. (Destination IP address is stored in a 4 byte data structure.)

gnutls-cli is. Plus, much cleaner code in that library.

blumentopf··on A world war is occuring (Naomi Wolf on "occupy")
thanks -- corrected.
blumentopf··on Don't Call Yourself a Programmer
Many asked how to know what programming language or stack to study. It doesn’t matter.

It does matter in so far products come and go and you don't want to accumulate knowledge on a product that's going to disappear from the market.

I worked with SGI IRIX from 1991-1996. The company has since gone bankrupt twice and IRIX has disappeared from the market. All the knowledge I accumulated on IRIX is worth nothing because it's no longer in demand. Practically noone still has IRIX machines in production.

In 1996, I switched to Linux. It had a vibrant community and you could feel it's growing rapidly. Turns out that knowledge is still valuable.

So it's really important for engineers to keep a close eye on the marketplace: If something's getting out of business or out of fashion, stop investing time in it. Instead, be on the lookout for stuff that's growing. In general, open source stuff has a longer lifetime because it can be forked if need be, wheras proprietary stuff is often problematic as companies change their mind on a whim. HP/WebOS is a recent example.

blumentopf··on Steve Jobs left designer Jony Ive more power than anyone at Apple
To those familiar with car history, there's a striking similarity between the Jobs/Ive duo and the Daimler/Maybach duo:

Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach lead the automobile industry in the late 1800s and early 1900s just as Jobs and Ive lead the computing industry in the late 1900s and early 2000s. Maybach was the engineering genius who pioneered countless innovations in engine design, while Daimler had the intuition to get the right products to market and do the industrial power play.

blumentopf··on How much do Apple's factories cost?
I wonder about the implications this has with regards to human rights issues: Apple has always dismissed allegations of human rights violations with the argument that it's basically not their direct responsibility and that it's their suppliers' duty to adher to their supplier code of conduct.

Now if they own their suppliers, that argument suddenly wouldn't really be persuasive.

The human rights story comes to mind because I read this piece the other day and the description of the "man whose right hand was permanently curled into a claw from being smashed in a metal press at Foxconn" has remained vividly in my imagination: :-(

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/opinion/jobs-looked-to-the...

blumentopf··on Ask HN: Who is Hiring? (October 2011)
Seriously, why do you advertise positions if you're not going to hire until "in a few months"? The impression that you're making on applicants is that you're just fishing for resumes. Please consider that applicants put time and effort into preparing a cover letter and their resume. If that's how you treat applicants, I wonder how you treat employees?

Sadly, you're not the only one in the industry who behaves like this. I experienced exactly the same thing with Mozilla this year. I welcome that hokua is making this public because that way of treating applicants should really be outlawed.

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