rostigerpudel

Can confirm it's true for French and German: Million 10^6 Milliard(e) 10^9 Billion 10^12 Billiard(e) 10^15

Obligatory XKCD reference:

https://xkcd.com/673/

Some "life science" companies, in particular pharmaceutical, can extend the life of their patents by 5 years in some jurisdictions (at least here in Europe). This is called a Supplementary Protection Certificate [0] and is subject to certain conditions (e.g. clinical trials took a long time).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplementary_protection_certi...

EDIT: typo

No, I don't trust Google either. But at least Google is somewhat open about the fact that they collect the data. I can have a look at it and I have settings to influence and even delete (probably) what is being collected.

That is vastly different from a spyware module installed clandestinely together with a software I paid for that sends data about me to somewhere and somebody then does something with it that I don't know about.

While I agree that is what they officially say they do, the means employed go beyond that. From the article:

> "These are generally data points about the user’s device, such as its operating system, installed fonts, browsers (and versions) used, timezone, language, the user’s in-game ID, and screen resolution. This is what Red Shell calls a ‘fingerprint’, which can also be made on games consoles as well as PCs."

Such a fingerprint is very unique and can easily be connected to a person with very little effort down the line, even if now nobody does that (yeah, right).

Personally, I do not trust any company that collects such detailed information without my informed consent and without a clear (i.e. verifiable and legally enforceable) pledge to delete that information when the original purpose has been served. This is exactly the overshooting behaviour that was rightfully targeted by the Europeans with their recent data protection law.

edit: formatting

>"People can have their own opinions on it but our data is not personally identifiable information (PII),"

Err..isn't the point of this exercise to have enough data to identify who bought the game and why? I feel the exact kind of computer I use and the various customizations that lead to it being a unique machine are very personal and identifiable.

That is wrong. The Munich public transport system has been turning a profit for at least 15 years out of the last 17. For the two missing years, I did not find numbers or sources, but it's probably the same.

Pretty sure there are others that run successfully.

BTW only road systems where you pay for every mile you drive (see e.g. motorways in France, Spain, Italy) turn a profit. All others are, basically, just a waste of taxpayers money ;-)

It's usually failed policies and nincompompous administration that make public transport systems fail.

Sources: >https://translate.google.de/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pre... >https://www.swm.de/dam/swm/dokumente/unternehmen/swm/geschae...

Would you kindly elaborate on which part of that link is relevant to this kind of letter? The PDF there only relates to what a citizen can do when you don't answer the letter.

How does that make the letter irrelevant? Responding to the letter rather seems to be the first countermeasure against the authorities' involvement...

Thank you for pointing that out. I was not aware that the content is actually stored on Telegram's servers. The first example picture looked like typical link-sharing in some IM channel and I kind of overlooked the download buttons.

Still, that does not change my critique of the article's style.

Am I the only one who senses a huge bias in this article? Arab writing, citing Russians, telling "law-abiding" citizens not to download. Everything seems to be designed to scare away the "good American people".

Also...yes, you can transfer files over IMs. Yes, having good encryption protects everyone. Duh, where is the news? Maybe that's part of why the article feels extremely sensationalist to me.

EDIT: > "It's actually a challenge to use Telegram and not run into these sketchy groups."

Well, it's a challenge to use ANY messaging and not run into sketchy stuff. Just take a look at your Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or whatever timeline...

From the article:

Am Abend änderte sich die Auseinandersetzung dann, nachdem ein Nutzer, "BassT87", einen Screenshot als Beleg für eine 25-Euro-Spende an die Krebshilfe postete. "Ich habe den Rummel um Herrn Krebs mal zum Anlass genommen, meinen Teil gegen Krebs beizutragen. Vielleicht macht der ein oder andere es ja (statt dem drölftausendsten Meme) ja nach...".

In english:

In the evening, the dispute changed after a user, "BassT87", posted a screenshot as proof of a 25 euro donation to Krebshilfe. "I took the hype about Mr. Krebs as an opportunity to do my part against cancer[Krebs]. Maybe one or the other will (instead of the thrwelvethousandth meme) imitate it...".

This is really the kind of absurd humour I like...

(Edit: format)

I'm not familiar with the details of copyright law. But I would think that Linus has contributions in all part of the kernel. It should be possible for him to claim copyright ownership on all of these part, effectively making it impossible for anyone to legitimately use any of those parts of the kernel against his will. Since that probably (!) also means some essential core parts, I would consider that nobody legitimately uses Linux against Linus's will.

He still cannot claim copyright ownership of the whole though, since he did not create everything in the kernel. Commits from other authors still have their own copyright.

In a way, yes. You can only assert the GPL is you are the copyright owner of a work. The court first had to test whether McHardy can actually claim copyright as he did (for the whole Linux kernel) and found that he cannot according to copyright law.

In short: The license only governs the rights you give others relating to what you own. You cannot give (or revoke) a license for things you do not own.

When you operate a business somewhere, you have to observe the laws of the place you do business in. It does not matter where you are based.

How someone gets a hold of you to enforce any action against you is a different matter. But Emirates kind of needs to come to the EU sometimes to do its business there.

You gotta love the "Special Note" saying "This is not a Chromecast".

You might want to take a look at http://dreckstool.de/hitlist.do There is a nice ranking there...

("Dreckstool" = sh*tty tool)

Not to forget the myriad of different standards for storing and ex-/importing data...it's job security for the programmers, I guess

My guess would be that everybody is just happy they have some tool for this other than pen and paper. Since not one product in the sector distinguishes itself by being both mostly correct and somewhat useable, there is no pressure to improve.

EDIT: typo

Ok, so this is a slightly different take to all the "apps" out there that are just fancy wrappers of some browser widget. It makes it incredibly easy to get started.

Or does it? Instead of the usual paradigms of desktop applications you now have to handle all the different ways that webapps are more complicated than desktop apps. Say, you need to have global state and need to track user interaction through page loads... Yes, JavaScript apps might make all that easier, but now I need to understand Python/Flask+HTML/CSS+JS and a little bit of Qt. With that level, I can just learn PyQt and things will be a lot faster and less of a headache to debug and maintain.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of making desktop application development easier. I just don't think introducing more moving parts is going to achieve that.

Because X over SSH requires a somewhat low latency and high bandwidth. The guy's requirement is unpredictable latency and low bandwidth (like 3 kbps). X is no fun at all over that kind of connection.

Erm, no. It is not. Any site describing the German income tax will tell you that what I wrote is perfectly true. You can verify quite easily for yourself by following the conveniently provided Wikipedia link.

Maybe you misunderstood your tax return?

The payscale links you provide in your blog provide some insight into why you seem to think that. In all of your examples (see links below for the lazy), the salary for a Senior Software Engineer is slightly below what payscale _thinks_ is the average national salary. The huge difference really lies in how payscale determines the "salary" in each country.

So, when compared to the average (which factors in cost of living, social security etc.), the salary really isn't that much better in the US:

US: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Senior_Software_Engi... UK: http://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Senior_Software_Engi... FR: http://www.payscale.com/research/FR/Job=Senior_Software_Engi... SE: http://www.payscale.com/research/SE/Job=Senior_Software_Engi... DE: http://www.payscale.com/research/DE/Job=Senior_Software_Engi...

You do mean the marginal tax rate, right? Not the average tax rate. To be taxed @ 42% (average) in Germany your income would have to be way north of 300k€ [1]. With that kind of income, your social security (health, unemployment, pension) would already be somewhere below 10% so nothing to complain about, really, given the benefits (yes, I know the benefits are no longer what they never used to be).

Add to that the absurd housing costs in, say, London, and things don't look too shabby for Berlin. Although you need to be tolerant towards the locals. I can understand some people having problems with that nonchalant "don't care if you care because, you know, I don't care" attitude that sometimes shows. But if you're capable of letting the occasional inflammatory/stupid remark slide, these guys and gals are quite nice. (Protip: This ability is great to have pretty much anywhere. Hanlon's Razor, anyone?)

To me, London is great to spend a few days of vacation. The atmosphere, the people, British humour, all great. Still, I never felt the urge to permanently move there to work. Too crowded, hard to get a decent flat... I guess it's not always just the money.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Germany

Well this isn't exactly a fair comparison, still it seems to indicate that overall (not for specific applications eg. graphics acceleration), the performance improvement is not that massive: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=1081&cmp[]=107...

Another anecdote: Drive Now (carsharing corp) has i3 in its fleet so you see a decent number of them in large German cities (like Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne), definitely more often than Teslas:

https://de.drive-now.com/en/#!/yourcars/bmw-i3

Munich has covered most of its inner city beltway: http://www.muenchen.de/sehenswuerdigkeiten/orte/120326.html

The article is in german, see before-after visualizations at the bottom of the article under "So soll es bald aussehen: Vorher - Nachher".

Current status is that traffic runs through the tunnel. Above ground, work is in progress to make things look like in the visualization. I might go and take some photos of what it currently looks like if anyone's interested.

Actually, having traveled a lot I have come to appreciate bavarian cops (and northern/central european cops in general) as being professional and downright civil when compared to some of their southern European counterparts (say from Spain, Italy or France). I've noticed, though, that it always helps to have at least some knowledge of the local language.

There are always A-holes around in the police but consistently getting the frisky treatment would make me wonder if something in my appearance could be seen as cop-bait. Maybe the dreads and the weed silhouette on your cap? Just kidding, but since we don't know what you looked like, it's hard to tell if what happened to you was plain bad luck or something in your looks and/or expressed attitude. Definitely not something that happens to everyone.

Criminal law (StGB in .de) and rules relating to proceedings in crime-related investigations (StPO in.de) are not harmonized in the EU, so no, there is no EU law for this.

The Generalbundesanwalt (Public Prosecutor General, GBA) is a civil servant bound by his superior's orders. That is why he can always be retired instantly by the Minister of Justice (§54 BBG). So yes, it is extraordinarily stupid for a GBA to against his orders.

In this case, however, I think Range actually wanted to be retired. He has taken so much fire over his apparently incompetent statements relating to NSA spying (among others he confused NSA and NASA on multiple occasions) that he probably wanted to get out of what is otherwise a fairly quiet job. In particular since there is pretty much nothing to gain anymore in this case.

At a scale of 100% I feel that 0.84% would be awfully few pixels. That said I agree that a bar chart might have been more appropriate but c'mon - pretty!