chebureki

The DB App is great. It lets you buy tickets, informs you of delays and possible alternatives especially if you miss your connection, you can file a request for a refund, you can reserve a seat, you can use the comfort check-in and check yourself in, so you wouldn't have to show your ticket. You can even request a refund up to two hours after you purchased your ticket, without any fees.

No PDFs or print-outs or forms are needed.

Yes, you still get a PDF ticket sent to your email, but you aren't required to use it.

Germany has allowed dual citizenship since June 2024.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nationality_law#Reform_...

Why shouldn't knowing a national language be a requirement for naturalization? After all, politics is generally conducted in (a) national language(s).

She is still a foreigner. Just because it is relatively seamless to work in another country, it doesn't mean you are a citizen.

It depends on a country, if dual citizenship is allowed. Sometimes, it even depends on what the original citizenship is. Germany and France, for example, allow dual citizenship, meaning naturalization doesn't mean a loss of another citizenship.

I don't understand the argument the author makes. The author admits missing deadlines to vote in the general elections at home. The author admits missing deadlines to register for EU elections due to a recent move.

I am an EU citizen, living in another EU country. I managed to vote in the most recent general elections at home. When it comes to the EU elections, I even have a choice: I could vote for MEPs in my country of residence or in my country of citizenship. If voting in my new country was really important to me, I could naturalize and vote in a general elections in my new country.

A requirement to be registered at a new place of residence isn't that unusual. When one moves to another state within the United States, one has to register to vote in that state. Many states require that you live in the state a certain period of time before being able to register to vote, so if you move a week before the election, you are out of luck in your new state. You could be better off voting by an absentee ballot in your old state before you move.

EU citizens generally can vote in municipal elections where they live. Cities and towns also provide services that are supported by tax payers.

I never claimed it set a precedent. But a federal judge in this case claimed "The First Amendment does not draw President Trump’s invidious distinction [between citizens and legal non-citizens] and it is not to be found in our history or jurisprudence."

In our history OR jurisprudence! You seem to claim otherwise, if I am not mistaken. So, it behooves you to provide evidence to the contrary. Specifically, what precedent-setting Supreme Court decision claims that the First Amendment does not apply to non-US citizens?

I would think the Bill of Rights applies equally to citizens or non-citizens. That includes the First Amendment. That includes the right to freedom of speech and expression of opposition to whatever he or she desires. The freedom of speech is part of the 'truths' that are self-evident. And almost every time, the Congress tried to restrict these rights, they were struck by the courts. This isn't about demolishing the state, as communists would want to do. This isn't about changing the constitutional order, as any totalitarian party would have to do. This is about a right of a person to express his or her opinion without repercussions.

"This case -- perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court -- squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us. The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally ‘yes, they do.’ ‘No law’ means ‘no law.’ The First Amendment does not draw President Trump’s invidious distinction and it is not to be found in our history or jurisprudence. … No one’s freedom of speech is unlimited, of course, but these limits are the same for both citizens and non-citizens alike.”

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.282...

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

The US has either suspended or slowed down visa processing due to COVID-19.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/News/visas-news/s...

A good friend of mine has a somewhat similar story. Originally from Germany, she is a visiting researcher at an American university on a J-1 visa. Her husband is a refugee in Germany, who is going through education there and working toward obtaining German citizenship this summer. She used to travel to Germany often to see him since he cannot visit her in the United States because of his citizenship (his country is on a list of countries whose citizens are banned from entering the United States). Her employment was under a two-year contract, which was renewed for another year. Now she needs to renew her J-1 visa, which means she needs to travel to a consulate in Germany to do it. The US embassies have suspended issuing these visas. Their website says the decision to issue an emergency J-1 visa is on a case-by-case basis. She applied for an appointment. The embassy did not see her case as "an emergency", so her application was denied. It all happened before the EO was issued yesterday, which exacerbated her stress even further. She cannot pack up and move things, like many of her books or furniture, for example, because the shipping of these things between the United States and the European Union has been suspended due to COVID-19, as far as I understand it. She doesn't have a job in Germany and jobs in academia are hard to come by these days. And academia is not quick processing job applications. It can take months or even a couple of years before a decision is made. She cannot continue working on her book, which hurts her chances of employment in the future. So she is stuck in the US, where at least she can continue to work. He is stuck in Germany. They haven't seen each other in months.

Auburn, Indiana has been offering municipal internet since 2005[1]. The town needed fast internet to keep companies from leaving to big cities. So, the town decided to build on its municipal public utilities to proide also fast internet. Naturally, it ran into resistence from Verizon. But when the town council has asked the company to provide fast internet service to the community, the company said it was too expensive to do that. I remember that because I attended the town council meetings on this issue.

[1] - http://www.auburnessentialservices.net/about/

A side note. The cost of living here in Pittsburgh is much, much lower than in SF or in NYC. According to a Cost of Living calculator, to maintain the same living standard in Pittsburgh at $60K, you have to make $137K in SF.

My university education experience seems to contradict this notion. Many classes were heavily focused on Java to allow students to learn data structures and object-oriented programming, in general. Other classes, like Operating Systems Programming were focused on C. In the end, you learn that there is the right tool for the right job.

I once complained about a long line at the customs and immigration in the United States. The CPB officer's response was "Call your congressman."

I can't comment on my own observations because I don't have enough experience with this. However, some suggest that default choices are hard to resist: whether it's online or off. NYT wrote about that several years ago. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/technology/default-choices...

While it may be difficult to explain to civilians what Github is, the issues of any government overreach into the Internet domain are easy to understand. For instance, a state does not like particular content on the Internet. It wants to force a company to get rid of it by attempting to hamper the company's service. Google's clash in China over censorship has been wildly covered by the media.