Industry lobby group opposes consumer protection movement. In other news: water is wet.

It's taken only about 35 years for the "free" countries of Europe to adopt the same mindset that the Eastern Bloc used to have. In large parts of Germany, for example, people can still remember how it was when you could expect your government to listen in on any and every private conversation. It wasn't good.

It's so frustrating that we are living through an active genocide (again) and doing absolutely nothing (again). In my youth, when there wasn't yet a 24 hour news cycle and I learned about the genocide in Rwanda as a teenager, it was my naive belief at the time that a lack of knowledge was the main reason for the general indifference in "the West". A year later the genocide in Bosnia, especially the massacre at Srebrenica, was headline news in my home country of the Netherlands and yet people seemed to collectively just shrug that off just as quickly as it happened. Now, many years later, I've become much more cynical. If you want people to care about unjustified murder you should either make sure to have your country located really really close to "the West", but even that is just of limited use to Ukraine, or make sure that the killing happens to take place at the hands of mostly Jewish people, although most Palestinians can attest to the fact that while media attention is good, action is still lacking.

So we're now at the stage where people risk being arrested without a charge by goons unwilling to properly identify themselves and then being killed because of that?

The current situation in the United States is eerily similar to 1930s Germany in my opinion. We're probably just a few months away from political opponents being picked up on made up charges or even disappeared straight up.

It's really difficult to look like the "good guys" in a conflict, when you're the Islamic Regime of Iran. Somehow the current United States are making the Iranians look more and more reasonable.

One thing junior devs at my company are taught early and often is that it's OK to look at a potential solution that an AI could come up with, just like it's OK to use stack overflow, but to never ever trust that solution without fully understanding it and usually simplifying it quite a bit.

I really didn't think this German government was going to oppose chat control. Well, apparently even the broken clock is right every once in a while.

At this rate Germany might win this contest for once! /s

It's unbelievable how many things had to go right, in order to avoid tragedy. In these dark times, I've almost forgotten how events unexpectedly turning out better than they could have been feels. Just a re-cap:

1. The pilot had to overcome his injuries and open the door from the inside.
2. Passangers and crew had no overpower the attacker while the plane is in full descent.
3. A separate crew had to be on board to regain control over the aircraft and land it safely
4. A doctor and a nurse were on board to administer first aid, probably saving the pilot's life.

Too bad that "mood" really doesn't seem to be relevant in totalitarian dictatorships.

The sender of the goods was a company from Spain, and the recipient was from Azerbaijan.

I'm sure these legitimate businessmen could perhaps consider transporting their wares via Turkey and Georgia? You know, along the well established transit route for commercial cargo between the EU and Azerbaijan.

Man, I remember using Eutelsat to send and receive E-Mails in Afghanistan in the early 2000s. Of course back then we needed a giant receiver in the back yard of the compound. It was slow as hell, incredibly expensive, but the only reliable way of getting an internet connection after the end of the (first) Taliban regime. The world really has changed so much in the last twenty years, unfortunately more for worse than for better in my opinion.

Maybe it's because I'm a foreigner living in Germany, but from what I gather few people really want to see her back in power. If anything, it's more of a longing for a bygone era where stability and the international set of rules many had grown up with still applied.

Personally I believe her reign was one of the worst things to happen to Germany in my lifetime. For 16 years nothing really changed, unless her hand was forced. One of the very few unambiguously positive and lasting changes during her reign was marriage equality - which she personally voted against in parliament.

He's right, you know. If you own an AR you shouldn't slack on practice. Go to the gun range regularly. Train how to clean and maintain it. You may one day be facing people who are well trained.

Canada used to be the largest source of international visitors to the United States by a large margin. I suspect that Canadians especially will take, on average, quite a bit of convincing to travel south of the border now.

Überzeugter Nationaldozialist mag Nationalsozialismus. Und morgen: Wasser ist nass.

This has become something of a major topic in German news. Apparently many people stored cash of dubious origin there. Furthermore many people did not read the contract properly and didn't realise that the insurance was capped around 10k Euros.

Oh dear ! Must be those batteries spontaneously combusting. I remember when that used to happen to Samsung phones a while back.

Once again, this is an opinion piece that (willfully?) misrepresents several arguments and mixes and matches them throughout. First of all, the problem of software you purchased being deactivated remotely didn't exist in the first place. The problem was introduced with the (sometimes forced) reliance on online infrastructure. Second of all, service agreements for software are fine and very common for different sectors. These usually contain specifics about how long support will continue and even often include exit options for when the time comes to migrate. Putting video games on the same footing as most business software is also fine.

I believe your wording is a bit poor. The government doesn't "give" that money to Microsoft, but instead buys and rents various products and services. While I agree that the public sector in general, especially here in Europe, should try to set an example by trying to make use of open source software if possible and feasible, I know from experience at my own company that Microsoft is so firmly entrenched that there's no short term solutions here.