It was announced that they all committed “schwere Verbrechen”. That means it’s all felonies and capital crimes. I do characterize people who commit capital crimes as scum, because those are by definition never small misconducts or accidents. Felony convictions for capital crimes need proof of malicious intent. So there really is incredibly little room left to feel bad for the criminals.
Why do people fall for these stupid populistic statements?
We in Germany value human rights. We have some of the most pro-asylum laws and culture in the world. Which is part of the reason right wing parties like the AfD get popular.
The problem is, not every human is a saint, not even asylum seekers. Some come here without having a valid reason for asylum, because they are not actually persecuted. Others come here with the express intent to criminally exploit our welfare system. There’s lots of reasons to come here, but not all of them warrant asylum. These people should seek to immigrate properly like anybody else and not exploit our hospitality offered to people in need.
Now, under our previous Merkel government, we welcomed hundreds of thousands of refugees in an unusually short timeframe. Our chronically overworked and slow bureaucracy became even easier to exploit, many could simply wait out time limits on their asylum requests, making them automatically accepted without any check for validity.
I was an active volunteer helping arriving refugees get accommodated in their assigned first quarters (often old empty barracks, I helped with trips to all kinds of bureaucratic necessities, but also got a central free Wi-Fi set up for everyone to use and stuff like that), and funnily enough the most vivid calls for stricter handling of asylum requests and punishments for rule-breakers came from all the legitimate refugees: those were some of the most decent people, and they hated being associated by their status with any criminal refugees. The assigned building security and police quickly learned that they actually had to be swift in picking up fresh offenders, before street justice would be applied by their “fellow” refugees.
In short: We have laws and we try to follow, them. It’s not always easy.
Also, asylum is different from immigration, I feel many people forget that. If conditions in your place of origin have improved, you are expected to leave. Asylum is inherently temporary, contrary to migration. And if you violate the trust and resources your host nation has given you, you should suffer legal consequences, just like any regular citizen. Committing hard felony crimes is obviously not a nice way to repay that trust, and as consequence we ask you to leave. If you refuse to do so in a (very) sufficient timeframe, we can use it executive power (police) to force you.
Last but not least… Each of these criminals even got 1000€ cash upon exiting the plane in their home country, just to ensure they have zero risk of having to live in inhuman conditions while they get reacquainted in their home society ( e.g. get an apartment and a job). Because that risk alone would be reason enough to make even the worst terrorist ineligible for deportation. Because it’s a basic human right to not have to live in extreme poverty and/or hunger.
I think that’s pretty much the opposite of “shitting on human rights” and definitely not what I expect many other nations would do with such foreign felons.
I find it amusing that you believe German bureaucracy to be versatile and efficient enough to be able to be steered so quickly by spontaneous political will.
No, deportations are rare because we take asylum rights as a basic human right extremely seriously and there are an unbelievable amount of reasons a deportation can be called off. Each of these deportations takes months, if not years of preparation by the interior ministry ( executive), leading to lots of legal consultations and usually legal battles in court due to appeals, intense diplomatic talks with the recipient country ( especially in this case, because Germany refuses direct diplomatic ties with the Taliban and Qatar had to play middle -man) and only then the actual forced deportation itself can be tactically planned and organized. And there’s tons of very specific rules, even for how and when police may or may not pick up a deportee during the night and if/what charter flights can be used.
So definitely no spontaneous politicking. The change in policy to start enforcing existing extradition orders more rigorously started years ago when the current government got elected. It’s a very slow and arduous process still.
Just a small correction: the involved German states did not “make it a point to hide” the individual crimes from being published. Instead this happens because we in Germany place a comparably very high value on privacy. And yes, even criminal scum gets theirs protected by neither naming them nor their crimes. Even convicted criminals’ names are never published on principle unless they have become public figures through other means anyway.
And the crimes were not detailed because knowing the specific combinations of crimes and sentences would make it too easy to identify them, given there’s only 28 of them.
The idea of protecting privacy so much is that by having completed their sentences, they should have the same opportunity as anyone else in life and not be “tarnished” forever.
Technically true, but I think everybody knows exactly what kind of dlc is meant, and because they still make up the majority of dlc content and addon-sized dlcs are so rare, it’s fair to call them that.
Moneygrab empty dlcs ( shiny horse armor! ) are stupid, and history has shown that people are not fiscally responsible enough to not be lured into spending absurd amounts of money for very shallow or plain empty content. “Vote with your wallet” doesn’t really work in the face of more and more insidious marketing efforts.
*rogue Roguelike
Though rougelike certainly sounds like an interesting genre too 😉
Regarding the profit incentive: providing free school lunches or medical/ hygiene supplies does not hurt profits. As the meals/supplies will still have to be sourced from the market, it probably will now be a few big contacts with big suppliers that will cover entire school districts.
The costs of these contracts will be a public burden unless they implemented a specific focus tax to pay for it, so it will come out of various broad tax pools. This means everyone pays a little bit so every kid has something to eat. Even if you don’t have any kids or if your kid gets homemade lunch packs. This is where the “social” aspect comes in.
Other countries, many of them European, actually go a step in the other direction: if you do not have kids, you actually pay a premium on your income tax. And that is generally accepted, because for society to live on, obviously kids are necessary. And if you don’t support society by raising kids, you at least help cover some of the associated costs. These premiums are explicitly used to fund kindergartens, schools etc…
An often valid capitalist criticism of public large contracts on infrastructure such as this is that the public offices tend to be notoriously bad negotiators, accepting worse deals than private companies would. This is because there’s little to no incentive for them to reach good terms. It also makes the process more vulnerable to corruption and politicking on a grander scale. These are not guaranteed to happen, good governance can definitely avoid this. But public governance simply isn’t that great to begin with in many areas.
It’s is important to understand what law is used for these rulings.
Germany limits free speech by putting penalties on speech that calls for others to commit crimes. This is rarely actually enforced by police or judges when it is about minor things or clearly satirical/parody usage. On the other hand, when it’s clearly malicious intent and for severe crimes, there’s little tolerance.
Most commonly this happens when people publicly call for violent regime changes (attacking democratic/republican or feudal constitutional principles) or calling for violence against basic human rights, e.g. supporting genocide, deportations of specific groups, etc…
This actually serves as a strong base which is mostly used to combat domestic terrorism and unconstitutional organizations such as far right parties ( see dissolution of NPD).
Calling for support of an officially recognized terrorist organization is a surefire way to get into trouble. Hamas is, as in many countries, recognized as such by Germany. The judge now based their ruling on the belief that the chant is “clearly and obviously used to support Hamas” and as such supports terrorism.
What the article above does not tell: This ruling is incredibly controversial in Germany, and it is actually very likely to be overturned in a higher court. There even are precedent rulings of the same chant with entirely different ruling outcomes.
It really saddens me to see so many clearly well-meaning left-oriented people on Lemmy get outraged so easily without being informed. If you lack info, I feel such news should be approached with cautious neutrality until more info is gathered and an opinion is formed and voiced.
Yes, it’s fine to dislike this ruling and voice such an opinion. But calling Germany fascist or “freedom of speech is dead in Germany” based on such an individual event is just comically far from the truth.
We have checks and balances in Germany. Our system is not perfect, but whose is, and I firmly believe it’s still better than most out there.
Germany has no infinite freedom of speech, but I also firmly believe that being intolerant of intolerance is absolutely vital for a robust liberal society. So I’m fine with deeply disruptive and simply vile inciting speech being treated as criminal.
It’s more of a political statement, same as the Soviet missiles on Cuba and Pershings in Germany during the Cold war. As such they carry great strategic value.
Id2 is the actual successor. It’s planned to be the first VW “affordable” EV with a starting price below 25000 euros when it releases in 2025. At least they now try to target the budget market, but I’d never recommend a VW. They have done so much bad quality cars since the late 90s…
You’re correct. I got caught up in explaining the overall concept. 😅
My personal interpretation is that the Chinese companies are now feeling the competitive pressure after their golden years and are scrambling to get their products on larger markets, while said market ( better affordable EV) still promises some margins.
Everyone wants cheap cars, but that’s not what this is about. This is about fair and competitive markets and products.
China heavily subsidizes their car industry. Actually everyone had been doing that, but currently China is doing it more.
Subsidies become a problem when they don’t serve to make necessities affordable in-country, but are used to boost sales in foreign countries, while hurting their local industry.
Now you might conclude that “why don’t we just subsidize or own manufacturers more as well so cars get as cheap as China’s?”
Well, where do you think the money for subsidies comes from? Taxes. So in the end, it’s just another scheme to make the general public pay for things that only part of the population needs, and it reduces pressure on manufacturers to innovate, leading to stale products. Which is a big reason why Western car companies are not competitive: the West has done exactly what China is doing now. We have subsidized the car industry massively in order to push or products into the global market. Those subsidies were considered worth it, because it created a trade surplus, effectively meaning wealth is transferred from the global market to mostly the car industry leaders, and a bit of it trickling down to workers as well.
After a while, the subsidies lead to corruption, inefficiency and lack of innovation, and the bubble bursts. That’s how you get histories like Detroit. Equivalents exist in almost any Western country.
A means to protect against subsidized products ruining the local markets is to impose tarrifs. The US has many of those, not only against China, but also against EU companies, especially in the car market. See chicken tax. American car manufacturers were so far behind after decades of heavy subsidies they couldn’t even compete with European cars ( and apparently still can’t, given that the chicken tax and similar tariffs still exist). In the end, tariffs run the same risk as subsidies: over time, a protected market means the industry can get lazy and keep selling the same, because competition is forced out of the market. Tariffs and subsidies are never a viable long term solution. Both can only serve strategic purposes: either providing actual essentials to ones population or nurture change ( eg subsidized regenerative energy build up) that only exist for a limited time. Tarrifs can be used to protect strategically important industry: e.g. military or technological cutting edge tech where you don’t mind paying extra for the privilege of maintaining in-country know how and manufacturing abilities.
Laying even 10 times the cable should not be more difficult when you have 60 times the total population (335mio in US vs 5.6mio in Finland) and hence more resources.
And sure, Alaska definitely it’s expensive and inefficient to service, having a pop density of about 0.5 inhabitants per km². But unlike Northern Finland, most of Northern Alaska is in fact entirely void of human life and more akin to a desert. There really mostly are a handful of oil industry clusters and native communities. And still, the extremely low pop density means it’s only 730 000 people living in Alaska. That is 0.2% of the entire population of the USA. If you were to completely ignore and not service Alaska, you should have a an even easier time providing service to the vast majority of the US population in all the main states. I think it’s pretty clear this is a political failure and not a matter of financial resources or natural obstacles.
You are absolutely correct that distribution matters. However, Finland has an even more uneven population distribution than the US. 75% of the population lives in the costal cities, with 30% of the entire population living in the capital region( density of 193 persons/km²). The entire rest of the country is not empty dessert ( which would require no services), but very sparsely populated rural woodlands, down to 2 people per km².
Density still is an overall useful quantifier given that extra knowledge, as providing services for a small population of only 5.6mio inhabitants is not easy either. Sure, providing coverage for the 75% in the cities is fairly easy. But that still leaves 1.5mio rural residents, which require huge investments in cable to supply with broadband. And due to the vast distances, you definitely cannot cover them with wireless alone, if you were thinking that.
Finland is not a small country compared to its population density and distribution.
Finland has 18 inhabitants per km².
USA have 35 inhabitants per km².
What’s your source on the reverify thing? I use matrix a lot, and this hasn’t been an issue I ever experienced anymore since they introduced cross-signing a couple years ago.
Same goes for the common clients such as element. It has been clunky in the past, but after the past major overhauls ( also years ago now) everything has been silky smooth for me, if not better than others. The one thing left I prefer from Signal is the one-time photo share.
Matrix is great, clients are great too, only the server part still is annoyingly complicated and messy. Would only recommend that for tinkerers, on that case it’s a great path to learning about the complexity of addressing lots of security concerns that others gloss over.
Edit: to add - there’s a reason why the French government and the German military decided to build their secure internal IM infrastructure on Matrix. Obviously they are hosting their own private network, but if the concept is good enough for European government and military, it is an indicator for quality especially in terms of security and privacy.
Antlion itself an official wireless modmic, but it’s a staggering 150 bucks, was cheaper a could years ago… On the upside, it’s pretty much a lifetime purchase and really good quality. But it’s definitely overpriced.
If your budget is lower, you can look at lavalier mics or wire mics. Those are the kind that TV/ video guys usually wear. Lavaliers are simply tacked to the top of your shirt, while the wire mics are super thin wires that you wear under your actual headset. Both are light, have good audio quality and nur importantly are available at much wider and fairer price ranges, as they are less of a nice. Lav mics can be as cheap as ten bucks.
I have invested lots of effort and research and sadly money over the years into this specific question. And nowadays my recommendation would be: keep it simple.
That means: get a headset that is well reviewed and uses a wireless connection. Do not use Bluetooth. Bluetooth has good quality now, but no matter what perfect settings you use, you will have a noticeable delay, which is especially noticable during hectic gaming voice comms. Some headsets with a dedicated wireless receiver ( usually a small USB dongle) offer BT as an extra option, which can be great if you want to use it for listening to music or doing occasional calls while moving outside while linked to your phone.
Second tip: don’t get a combined all-in-one gaming headset. They can be good, but are always overpriced für what they offer. Marketing ftw. Instead get a good headset and get a simple separate mic. Modmic or any derivative works.
Overall, you’ll get tremendously better quality for significantly less price. The sheer amount of options for good “generic” headphones is immense. Added bonus: because the two are separate, you can swap one out when it breaks. Especially the addon microphones have a tendency to last decades, unlike the headsets themselves, which suffer more immediate wear and tear.
Don’t forget Yemen. I know, it’s a measly 350 000 dead so far, which apparently rate much less than Israel-Palestine conflict losses.
Game passes exist for PC as well, and offer even more variety there.
Boot time should never take 30sec on PC as well. But most consoles are actually not much faster in boot and loading times. People tend to compare a PC booting from cold with a console just booting from sleep/hibernation mode.
Boot times on PC however can easily be further optimized, especially when not using Windows for gaming. A gaming Linux distro will be faster by leagues, even in a cold start.