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kuerbelon Why the AfD Wins

Nothing in this sentence is true. There is a network that is not part of the left that is trying to do this. But the official party line is different.

Anyone can join a party and make it look bad, if they bring their friends even doubly so.

Not to mention that a honest discussion about Israeli war crimes, their government and its members, and finally settlements is long overdue in german society.

kuerbelon Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city streets

In Germany that would probably be a "verkehrsberuhigter Bereich", Traffic calming area with a speed limit of 7 km/h.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_street#Around_the_world

kuerbelon My hobby of building miniatures and taking pretty pictures

Ah thank you, I get it now. She is making original pieces instead of rolife and such. That's a nice hobby. Maybe you could share a picture or two? :-)

kuerbelon My hobby of building miniatures and taking pretty pictures

They buy them assembled? or rare versions or something?

kuerbelon The EU has begun enforcing the AI Act: first RFIs to model providers

>Why would you ever expect that you would have a choice of what products you use at work?

Umm Because of worker protection laws? For example the Betriebsrat has the right to have a say in this. Second what if the product is very much inferior and the whole company would be more productive with another product?

> You are being paid to work there.

Yes and that means if I see an improvement opportunity or if I have concerns I will voice them. I'm being paid to improve the company, not be a cog in the machine.

kuerbelon The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change

https://archive.is/UwGSh

Paywall free link

kuerbelon The world may have less time than it thinks on climate change

https://archive.is/UwGSh

kuerbelon Climate change is strengthening El Niño, coral records suggest

Those people are not convinced by evidence.

kuerbelon Climate change is strengthening El Niño, coral records suggest

They mean a glacial period, I guess... we are in an interglacial in an ice age

kuerbelon California's new tire efficiency rules could save drivers $1B a year

I live in Northern Germany so a temperate climate all in all, although nowadays it gets really hot during the summer.

Well everyone says they are a good driver, and probably they are not. But I like to drive in a way that I rarely if ever have to engage the breaks. I also try to spread the regen distance if that makes sense, so it doesn't do a hard stop but slows down... gently over a longer distance. And when it comes to curves I try to follow the late apex line approach.

I was also lucky with my car though, it came with an excellent wheel alignment which isn't always the case.

kuerbelon California's new tire efficiency rules could save drivers $1B a year

Hmm, I have these tires on my Model 3: https://www.contimediacenter.com/eulabel/en/03143300000/

After 15,000 km, they haven't worn down by 2 mm. And that's despite being an EV. I think it really depends on how you drive.

kuerbelon SugarTrack – an offline Android logbook for blood sugar (no account, no cloud)

My parents dog has diabetes and since they failed to draw blood from his ear he got the freestyle libre 2. The vet just put it near his shoulder. I'm not sure how accurate this is...

kuerbelon Europe's scorched landscapes seen from space after summer heatwaves

Best article I know about this topic is: https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/amoc-explainer/index.htm...

kuerbelon A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

>Please don't respond with something dumb like "you can stay alive without meat". Yes, we know that.

That part is actually the weakest part of your argument. You are dismissing a valid counterargument before addressing it.

Something being part of a current food production system does not make it a biological necessity. People can live without meat, therefore alfalfa is not "required for life" in the literal sense.

You are also shifting the meaning of "required": from "necessary for humans to survive" to "necessary for maintaining our current livestock industry." Those are very different claims.

Preemptively calling an obvious counterargument "dumb" is not a way to win the argument; it is a way to avoid having it.

Is it rational to dedicate enormous amounts of land, water, and energy to producing animal feed when those same resources could feed more people directly?

Using crops as feed and then eating the animals is an inherently inefficient way of converting resources into food. That may be acceptable when resources are abundant, but it becomes increasingly difficult to justify as we face limits in freshwater, arable land, and ecological capacity. That is the true argument, and what the discussion should be about, not if we can (very obviously) survive without meat.

kuerbelon A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return

I agree but

>Fix shit instead of replacing it. The greenest EV on earth is more CO2 intense than the car you’ve already got (assuming you keep it in good working order)

This is not correct at all...

https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/are-electric-vehicles-defini... one source of many. Also local pollution is reduced, e.g. nox and particles.

kuerbelon French firefighters face 'pyrocumulonimbus' for first time

The Landes region has a long history of devastating wildfires, and the 1949 fire is a tragic example, that's correct.

But that's not really the point being debated. Nobody is claiming climate change invented wildfires. But it is making the conditions for extreme fires more common. The IPCC concludes with high confidence that fire hazard conditions, including heatwaves and fire weather, have increased across Europe since 1980, particularly in southern and western Europe, even though ignition sources and land management still matter.

Climate change is increasing the odds that fires become larger and harder to control.

Western Europe has also experienced increasingly frequent and severe droughts in recent years. Those prolonged dry conditions leave forests and vegetation far more combustible, making fires spread faster and burn more intensely once they start.

kuerbelon Kill The Cookie Banner

If you use social media pixels, ad tracking, or performance analytics tools like Google Analytics a cookie banner and consent is required. If not, then not.

kuerbelon It's getting harder to focus every day

I'm not sure I have the willpower to follow your example but at least I managed to turn of notifications on my watch after reading your post.

kuerbelon It's getting harder to focus every day

ADHD isn't something you suddenly develop at 30 or 40. You can get diagnosed later, but the signs are meant to have been there since childhood.

kuerbelon I Owe My Life to the Commodore 64

I don't know. IT is a bit different in that regard. As a doctor, even if the system is shit, you still help people directly. As an engineer, you build something tangible that can make people's lives easier. And so on. In IT, though, the impact often feels much more indirect. Most of the time you're optimizing processes or helping businesses become more efficient, rather than improving people's lives in a direct way. You're often several steps removed from the people who ultimately benefit from your work. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, it just doesn't feel very meaningful to me.

kuerbelon Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again

I'm from Switzerland and live in Germany and I think it is very relaxed. Too relaxed for my liking to be honest. Sometimes the bins are still out in the evening??? What kind of anarchy is this ;-)

Really, it's just what you are accustomed with.

Stores closing on Sunday is a good thing I think, it makes it easier for families to have a day together and kind of resets the week. On Saturdays they are also open until 8pm, some even until 10pm or so.

>I remember once I waved at my neighbours who were sitting eating in a common garden area and they acted super confused that I would wave to them.

You need to yell "Moin" very loudly. If you are in Southern Germany, you need to yell "MOIN" twice as loud to establish dominance.

kuerbelon Nintendo announces new product revisions in Europe with replaceable batteries

>Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite, and Nintendo Switch – OLED Model will all continue to be manufactured in 2026, and should be widely available in Europe all year.

>From mid-February 2027, almost ten years after Nintendo Switch launched in March 2017, Nintendo will no longer sell to retailers hardware in the Nintendo Switch family of systems – specifically Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite and Nintendo Switch – OLED Model. Sales of Nintendo Switch hardware on Nintendo Store will also end in mid-February 2027.

Understandable, but maybe that shouldn't be buried in the FAQ...

kuerbelon Solar rail could become common in Europe after successful trial in Switzerland

Better article with video: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/emissions-reduction/solar-energ...

kuerbelon Giant trees have no trouble pumping water to top branches: new research

I'm studying for a bachelor's degree in horticulture part-time through a distance-learning university. If you're more interested in growing plants, I'd say horticulture is a better fit than botany. If you're more interested in understanding how plants work, botany is probably the better choice. That said, you'll still learn a lot of botany in a horticulture degree as well obviously

kuerbelon We Don't Have to Be This Bad at Improving Society

Hmm what do you mean by disputed?

There is mixed but often promising evidence depending on context. For example there is quite a bit of urban planning evidence that shows that walkable environments improve physical activity and health outcomes and other outcomes. And so on for the other topics.

It’s also worth noting that current systems are not the result of a unified scientific optimization process. So even incremental changes that are supported by good evidence seem worth seriously exploring.

kuerbelon We Don't Have to Be This Bad at Improving Society

You frame this as an either-or choice. It's a false dichotomy. economic prosperity and environmental protection are often interconnected.

That said, ecology is more important to me in general. The economy exists within the environment, not the other way around. It's definitely a more nuanced relationship than "either-or" suggests though...

kuerbelon Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

I don't know what you worked on but I'm sure it brought joy to a lot of people.

kuerbelon Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

Hu?

the final output is not guaranteed to be visually identical because parts of the processing pipeline (chroma reconstruction, tone mapping, scaling, and output formatting) are implementation-dependent. There is a spec, but multiple processing stages are not strictly defined to be identical. Higher end players also use a HDR Optimizer and the ps5 does not, which is visually noticeable.

kuerbelon Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

I think it was around 8500 euro for the 100''. They also have a smaller one for 3500!

kuerbelon Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation

No upscaling as it's not necessary. (But better players have better 1080p to 4k upscaling too, as the algorithms are more sophisticated, e.g. edge-adaptive scaling, temporal filtering, etc.)

First, the player performs MPEG-4 HEVC decoding, reconstructing full video frames from heavily compressed data.

Once decoded, the signal is still not in a display-ready format.

UHD Blu-rays are almost always encoded in 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, meaning luma (brightness) has full resolution, but chroma (color) is spatially reduced. so one of the first steps in the pipeline is chroma upsampling (chroma reconstruction). After that, the player applies color space conversion and output formatting, usually converting to a HDMI-friendly format like YCbCr 4:2:2 or 4:4:4.

HDR handling is sometimes done on the player. The tv is doing a last stage processing that is fine tuned for it's display like contrast enhancement.

I hope that helps