DC member housetier is hosting this.. from his post:

DC/IOSx02 - Donationcoder Meetup / In Outer Space - the 2nd installment

location: c-base - space station below berlin
rungestrasse 20, 10179 berlin, germany
datetime: 2009/May/31 / 5pm / open end

when we met last time right after the annual chaos communication congress 25C3 early january this year it was a small yet awesome meetup.
so awesome in fact, we agreed to do it again!

as last time already the event will be held on board c-base, the space station buried below berlin.
c-base, conveniently located in berlin's city center, can be reached by subway via stops S+U jannowitzbruecke or U heinrich-heine-strasse.

we still don't believe in agendas, so this is an open discussion / hangout / boozing / lounge / nerd event.
if you're in the area (there happens to be a certain 'it security congress' at the same time) please drop by and join us for some bottles of club-mate and/or brewskies.

for questions of any kind please contact me or housetier.
if you're planning to attend, please let us know so we get a rough idea of what to expect.

Following up on the DC gathering in january (see this thread), gothic (the dc server admin) and his wife traci are visiting me again for a few days, to drop off a cat that i'll be supervising for a few months while they are in Belgium on vacation.

Anyway, i've become a bit of a board game person and we'll probably plan on spending a good part of a day this weekend playing various boardgames.  If anyone is close enough to drive over for the day, I'd like to invite you to come over and join us.

I suppose it's an open secret by now that these DC "Gatherings" are nothing more than when one dc member visits one other (so much for having a massive CodyCon 2010).. But it never hurts to ask, and don't worry if you are the type of person that feels awkward at social gatherings.  Only requirement for this visit is that you have the stamina to get through many hours of playing games you don't really understand.  Just let me know if you'd like to come and i'll get you directions and we can figure out exactly what day it will be.

DC member Arne Thönes posts about his latest technical programming videos, but also about a new introductory video he made on making more money as a freelance programmer, which i think is worth watching by anyone starting out in the freelance coding business:

I'm excited to say that part 2 of my video series is available at aachen-method.com. I'm covering Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and how you can protect your website against it..

...

I also recorded a new introductory video for you where I talk about how people (read: employers) can't help the perception that expensive equals best. This is supposed to serve as a sneak peek of part 3 of my video series and it's a somewhat simplified version of the reality. I'm not suggesting that you should just start charging $500/hour like a lawyer and half a dozen hot chicks will immediately surround you because they will think you are the s***.

http://www.aachen-method.com

From a review on cnet news:

"The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive" by John Graham-Cumming could be the answer to the yearly Father's Day gift dilemma.

(Although I know a lot of women who would love this book, too.)

Graham-Cumming's book is not of the tacky so-and-so-slept-here variety, but a compendium of locations of true worth in the history of science and tech breakthroughs.

(Credit: O'Reilly Media)The book, which is organized by country, includes latitudes and longitudes for GPS devices, and info like whether a historical site is free or available for a price. It's heavy on U.K. and U.S. sites (it lists the U.S. sites by state) but does attempt to cover the entire world.

Some of the recommendations are little-known science museums that happen to have one or two holdings of great worth, but many are a bit more unusual and creative. Graham-Cumming includes things like the descendant of Isaac Newton's apple tree at Trinity College in Cambridge, England, and the first bridge ever constructed from cast iron which visitors can still walk across at the Severn River in Ironbridge, England.

Review: http://news.cnet.com...2_3-10251944-72.html

Direct link to book info: http://oreilly.com/c...talog/9780596523206/

1. Newsletter Editorial

Greetings all, and welcome to another edition of the DonationCoder.com newsletter.

Way back in 2005 I wrote a comprehensive review of desktop email client applications, and ended up picking RITLab's TheBat as my program of choice.  I'm still a happy user.  Last week DC member Innuendo wrote a mini-review of a spam blocking tool for it and the developers were nice enough to donate several copies for us to give away and extend a big discount to supporting DC members (see section 3 below).

And finally, this is your very last minute reminder that if you are going to be anywhere near Germany on May 31st, you need to find a way to get to the DC meetup in Berlin at the c-base geek bar/club that DC members housetier and gjehle help run.  It's a very cool place, and most importantly we've sent ahead some very cool, and very rare, custom DonationCoder Cody Spaceship mugs that will be on hand to be given out to DC members who show up.  These are going to be collector's items one day so don't miss your chance to get one now! See the post below and let housetier and ghehele know if you will be attending.

MakeUsOf.com continues to impress, with a consistent stream of useful and non-trivial howto articles for pc users.

USB flash drives are our personal data carriers, but the way we use it to exchange files also makes them open to viruses. The Achilles heel which viruses exploit is the autorun.inf file. Autorun.inf file is a simple instruction file present in removable media like CDs, DVDs and USB drives.

...

We have to find ways to short circuit the automatic execution of programs (good or bad), so that a hidden malware does not penetrate our system.

http://www.makeuseof...atically-in-windows/