Well if one would get theological about it, I do believe they were given the land and then expelled by god. The Bible is quite explicit on that point.

I don’t remember seeing the memo that god gave “back” the land, so logically speaking they are acting against the will of god.

I believe the idea is that friction and resistance is proportional to the square of the speed. After a certain speed, every 10 mph extra starts to really count in your mileage.

The idea is that some green ideologists think that when they don't need to drive a car because they don't leave their city, no one needs to drive a car. Because car driving creates CO2 which means car driving is bad. And they search for ways to implement that or make driving a car as bad as possible. Because they can't make the Deutsche Bahn better, they have to make driving your own car worse.

An EV is the superior vehicle in every aspect. Cheap fuel, reliable, nice to drive, less maintenance costs, less noisy and yes, no local emissions.

But then why not just make car driving not create CO2?

Because that doesn't play to Germany's industrial and economic strengths (precision machining, metallurgy, basically the whole ICE automobile supply chain).

EVs are just mechanically much simpler, with a shorter BOM that largely centers around Asian (particularly Chinese) battery, REE, and semiconductor supply chains, so hundreds of thousands of good jobs that supported Germany's industrial model are now economically obsolete.

That's the Kodak business model: New thing arrives that will disrupt the old thing, so don't build it. Problem is then someone else will build it anyway and instead of losing 2 jobs making ICE cars and getting 1.5 jobs making batteries and solar panels, you just lose the 2 jobs and get nothing, which is how Kodak went bankrupt.

Also, LFP batteries don't contain rare earths.

I agree with you, generally speaking. I was being descriptive, not prescriptive.

> LFP batteries don't contain rare earths.

No, but good motors do. And probably GaN FETs to handle megawatt-class charging currents.

And those that do have not yet understood what will happen when those seasoned workers retire, and there are no juniors or mid that can grow because they have been replaced by AI

While I understand why you would say that, I think the way "spy network" was meant, was in the way that their job is to spy within the US. And given the resources at their disposition, and the size of the US, "worlds biggest spy network" is not wrong.

Also, they do head up the main counterintelligence effort of the US.

How the mighty have fallen.

actually, they raised $1.03 billion at a $3.5 billion valuation.

That would work if obesity levels increased equally across the globe. But even if obesity does increase globally, there are very wide disparities. Contrary to popular belief, there US is not the world.

There's a pattern where criminal organizations fill governance gaps rather than starting as genuine governments. The Yakuza did this opportunistically at certain historical moments. Hamas is a similar example (not a criminal organisation, but..) , allthough they are more of a institution-building than the Yakuza ever was.

Mafias generally fill the same functions of the government but for the underworld: providing "protection", extracting "taxes", enforcing rules via the use of violence, and so on.

Probably the best example of this are American mafias.

Yes, it’s a big reason why they have always tended to be based out of immigrant communities - those were excluded from mainstream culture, governance, etc.

If you were mainstream you didn’t need the mafia - you were already the gov’t, the police, etc.

my more generous interpretation of the situation is that people do not see the work / effort / complexity of operating a solution. They think that open source is free, when in reality it is cheaper (generally) but not free.

You need to pay the hosting. You need to install it, configure it, and patch it. And when stuff breaks, you have no one to call upon but yourself.

But, as you say, if you can do all of that, open source is amazing value.

Exactly this. The sticker price of open source is zero but the total cost of ownership is your team's time. I've talked to CTOs who spent more engineering hours configuring and maintaining free tools than they would have spent on a managed alternative. They just couldn't see it because the cost was buried in salary, not a line item on an invoice.

Yes. After having flattened it and occupied / denazified it for a bunch of years. The Germany after WW I was not trusted.

No. It delends on how you ask.

Did you walk over? Did you say hi? Did you lower yourself to be around their height? Give them a second or two to get used to you? Tell them first that their noise is loud ? Ask them in a respectable tone if they would lower it, just a bit? Did you give the impression that you were asking, not demanding?

Of course I won't ask a drunk or aggressive looking person. But there is a wrong way to ask, and a better one.

I'm all for asking nicely in general but it doesn't work well with entitled people who don't give a shit about the people around them.

The chances, regardless how nice you try to ask, that the person who elected to broadcast their tiktoks or calls to the whole wagon at full volume goes "oh, sorry, I'm so embarrassed, I'll turn this off", are very low.

Last time I tried to ask "can you use headphones?", the guy answered "I don't have headphones" and put the volume even louder.

A person who cared even a tiny bit would not have started to begin with. Asking is almost futile. These people simply seem to be used to get away with inflicting themselves to people around without consequences. The worse part is that if you do nothing, you participate in this.

What can you do.

I think it can only work if it becomes very socially unbearable, or if they got fined for this. Or, indeed, if it brought them nuisance. In that regard, this HN post's solution is interesting (not sure it's good though).

i agree with this one, in this particular order, how things be in large cities & crowded areas:

- loud person does not care in the first place, that's why they do the loud act

- usually they are more than 1 person, outnumbering me

- although some places have public disturbance prohibited laws, unless there is a law enforcement/security around, chances of me being ending up in a hospital is higher than chances of stumbling on a decent person

- it is easier to act or play stupid

---

on a similar note, last time when i asked someone to lower their volume while having headphones on me, they demanded my headphones because they claimed they were too poor to buy one. -- i am talking about 20$ type-c earbuds vs 16" macbook size marshall speaker. -- as a result, i did not give my headphones and they continued to play music.

> Of course I won't ask a drunk or aggressive looking person.

I've learned in my time in cities that it can be very hard to judge who is likely to be aggressive and who isn't.

I'm not really sure where you're from or what sheltered life you've lived but this does not jive with reality what so ever.

Seems like you're from western Europe, and maybe people are nicer there, but once you get to a place with strong racism, classism, wealth disparity, you suddenly find that being civil has little weight.

No it doesn't. That's equivalent to saying you can get most woman to date you depending on how you ask.

> Did you walk over? Did you say hi? Did you lower yourself to be around their height? Give them a second or two to get used to you?

I personally detest the kind of people who behave like this. It all just exudes deliberate fakeness; if anyone were to try this on me I'll only be irritated more than anything else.