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Ask HN: What are the best websites that the Anglosphere doesn't know about?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the best websites that the Anglosphere doesn't know about?

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany really needs to start documenting their work in English. This is good stuff.

Germany is fine with you not being able to ingest their documentation. If there is ever a need to do anything it would be the need for you to learn German and the need for anyone monolingual to learn a second language. The more balance in the world the better place it would be.

I agree with your point on principle, but to balance a bit: I'm trilingual but don't (yet) speak German. Yes there's no fair reason why English should be the standard language, but there's value in a standard language and that's the closest we have.

Edit: I'm not American and English isn't my native language

Re: Ask HN: What are the best websites that the Anglosphere doesn't know about?

#182
post #125

There's a home automation protocol that's been around for over 20 years called KNX. It's backed by big names (ABB, Hager, Gira, Osram, Mean Well) however outside of Germany it's pretty much unknown. Compared to ZigBee or Z-Wave it's wired and the config is stored in the devices themselves, so there's no single point of failure. It has strict certification requirements so you can be guaranteed that products from diffe…

Germany really needs to start documenting their work in English. This is good stuff.

Or more people need to learn German? The community is already there, obviously — if others want to join, that's how they do it.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best websites that the Anglosphere doesn't know about?

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden is a privacy-minded individual’s nightmare. There are a bunch of other sites like Hitta as well. For example on Ratsit you can pay a small amount of money and see anyone’s salary and full personnummer, which is similar to a social security number in the US. If they live in an apartment you can see exactly where in the building they live. Just as an example, when I was visiting a friend for the first time I was…

> full personnummer, which is similar to a social security number in the US It's similar in the sense that it's a unique number assigned to each person, but the fact that it's publicly available means that it cannot be used as authentication.

And SSN shouldn't be used as authentication either. It's too easy to steal, too hard to change.

We have a similar issue with Finnish Personal Identity Codes, which are legally public, but there are restrictions related to their processing. Which leads to the common misunderstanding that they're secret, so they're used for authentication. It's a mess.

https://hetueiolesalasana.fi/en.html

Re: Ask HN: What are the best websites that the Anglosphere doesn't know about?

#184
post #116

In French you have a few interesting options, notably: - LeBonCoin.fr (“the good corner”, a Craigslist type site that’s used for everything from second-hand selling to job hunting to meet up organising), - LesNumeriques.fr is a decent tech review media with in-depth tests and a VERY critical community providing good balance - Gazelle which has now become backmarket.fr (also exists across other countries like Spain an…

It's very niche but Philharmonie de Paris has some brilliant visualized analysis of some classical music scores.

For example:

https://pad.philharmoniedeparis.fr/CMDA/CMDA100008800/defaul...

https://pad.philharmoniedeparis.fr/CMDA/CMDA100003900/defaul...

https://pad.philharmoniedeparis.fr/CMDA/CMDA100004800/defaul...

Sadly they don't present the full scores, only the beginning or some part. I wonder if there are other sites where you can find something similar.

Somewhat related is http://www.critique-musicale.com/ - another great site.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best websites that the Anglosphere doesn't know about?

#185
post #89
post #10

If you're asking about services too: Yandex Market. It's like Google Product Search that is actually successful and widely used for searching for specific products, or Amazon that doesn't swindle you left and right. It's basically just a large catalog of products, filled by third-parties a-la Amazon now, only it didn't sell anything itself (until recently). Instead, it had detailed characteristics for a lot of produc…

Something like https://idealo.de/ (and .at .es .fr .it .co.uk)?

Idealo is a great price comparison website, but not really for finding the right product for you. More for finding where to buy the product you've already chosen.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best websites that the Anglosphere doesn't know about?

#186
post #76

In French we used to have "le site du zéro". It was a very popular collaborative site with a ton of free courses for beginners in (mostly) programming. Today it feels that it just became a somewhat bland and nothing-special corporate resource (OpenClassrooms), but it was once a vibrant community with it's own identity: http://web.archive.org/web/20120309143317/http://www.siteduz... On a completely different topic, ht…

Le Site du Zéro is how I got started with programming back in high school. That was a great site, it's a shame what happened to it.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best websites that the Anglosphere doesn't know about?

#187
post #87

Quality docomentaries and looks on society on Arte.tv, the european culture channel AFAIK, north americans don't know about its existence. It's available in english. https://www.arte.tv/en/

There is this short weekly broadcast on french and german cultures compared, with a light tone, that we never miss: https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/RC-014034/karambolage/ Available in french and german languages.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best websites that the Anglosphere doesn't know about?

#188
post #137
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly enough, Yandex did so also, a while ago, as it was being used as a scarily good open-source undercover agent identification tool https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/how-tos/2019/12/26/guid... although I can't seem to find the followup post that actually discusses how the Yandex search quality decreased following the publication of the original article

Fascinating read, thank you. I can't help but wonder what is available to big companies and governments these days in terms of technology and algorithms that we laypeople don't have access to or even dream about.

Ah, wow, finally found the exact article I was looking for. This thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22492671

And then there was the genomics or DNA database or something that a couple of people were running out of their garage (well, a bit more than that) but then had to shut down after law enforcement discovered it, found it incredibly useful, and everything rapidly went sideways as "things aren't supposed to work that way"... but I'm having the hardest time finding the link for this one sadly ._.

EDIT (just within the 1hr window :): I think the second one was GEDmatch. A quick search of https://hn.algolia.com/?query=gedmatch didn't relocate what I remember reading, but I think this was it.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best websites that the Anglosphere doesn't know about?

#189
post #89
post #10

If you're asking about services too: Yandex Market. It's like Google Product Search that is actually successful and widely used for searching for specific products, or Amazon that doesn't swindle you left and right. It's basically just a large catalog of products, filled by third-parties a-la Amazon now, only it didn't sell anything itself (until recently). Instead, it had detailed characteristics for a lot of produc…

Something like https://idealo.de/ (and .at .es .fr .it .co.uk)?

I usually use https://geizhals.de/ since it is more tech related. Useable for people living in EU/UK/AT/DE/PL.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best websites that the Anglosphere doesn't know about?

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is fine with you not being able to ingest their documentation. If there is ever a need to do anything it would be the need for you to learn German and the need for anyone monolingual to learn a second language. The more balance in the world the better place it would be.

I agree with your point on principle, but to balance a bit: I'm trilingual but don't (yet) speak German. Yes there's no fair reason why English should be the standard language, but there's value in a standard language and that's the closest we have. Edit: I'm not American and English isn't my native language

I empathize with you. But I reject that it should fall upon Germany to learn English for your convenience or that the task of translating their texts should fall upon them. I guess I reacted (perhaps poorly) to GP's statement that Germany "really should start documenting their tech in English" which to me sounded rather preposterous.
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