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Artlav

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on the other hand my generator just came up with what I'll call "the flip-flop illuminati".
Sounds perfectly reasonable - "the government stopped following my orders, time to replace it. Now, what type is trendy these days..."
 

Urwumpe

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Not sure I understand this. Can't anyone apply for German citizenship?

Apply yes. But getting it is harder. As the article attempts to describe: Germany had quite some changes in the laws that define, who is German. And that meant, that people had been able in the past to lose their already existing legitimation for German citizenship, for example just by taking another nationality.

It is not about people who lived long enough in Germany (or play football good enough) to become German citizen by other means.
 

kuddel

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"soccer" that is - for our trans-Atlantic friends ;)
 

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Yesterday the submarine K-329 "Belgorod" was launched is a tribute to the sunken submarine Kursk
these are two Oscar II submarines welded together with the ability to carry smaller submarines (aircraft carrier under water)
without proganda, this is the most perfect submarine for a decade to come changing the balance of forces in the area

c80a972b328b319a2dd30269b64c51e0.png.jpeg
 

Urwumpe

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First time in the Limburg cathedral, already rushing out after merely 5 minutes. My son managed to fall unlucky and got a long deep cut above his eye from the corner of a massive wooden box. All is well now after a short stop at the ER for glueing his cut.

Catholic cathedrals are simply no safe places for us heathens.
 

jedidia

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[rant]
There's these times in my job where I feel so far out of my depth that I feel like surely I must be one of the most stupid people in this industry. I mean, Most of the time I know at best halfways what I'm actually doing.
So I go around looking for answers and explanations from smarter people, and oftentimes they introduce the problem with sentences like "Most developers do xyz" or "It is a very common misconception hat xyz" or the likes. And I just do a double take and think "No, wait, I know that much! How is such a misconception even possible? Like, how can you even produce working code under an assumption like this? You say this is common?".

And instead of being filled with some new confidence, all I'm usually left with is existential dread and fear that the whole world might break down any moment. Because I have no clue what I'm doing, and apparently it's common that other people know even less, so how the hell does anything keep working??
[/rant]
 

Notebook

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Nice rant. We are nearly always out of our depth, you only realise it when something unexpected happens. Even though you knew it might happen someday.
 

Notebook

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Looks like fun, wonder if they have an adapter for White Knight Two.

Previous problems with the page have come good.
 
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Linguofreak

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[rant]
There's these times in my job where I feel so far out of my depth that I feel like surely I must be one of the most stupid people in this industry. I mean, Most of the time I know at best halfways what I'm actually doing.
So I go around looking for answers and explanations from smarter people, and oftentimes they introduce the problem with sentences like "Most developers do xyz" or "It is a very common misconception hat xyz" or the likes. And I just do a double take and think "No, wait, I know that much! How is such a misconception even possible? Like, how can you even produce working code under an assumption like this? You say this is common?".

And instead of being filled with some new confidence, all I'm usually left with is existential dread and fear that the whole world might break down any moment. Because I have no clue what I'm doing, and apparently it's common that other people know even less, so how the hell does anything keep working??
[/rant]

Off the top of my head...

1) There is a God, and he works miracles.
2) Bugs can mask bugs. This may happen with bugs in people's assumptions as well.
3) People with nothing to compensate for their misconceptions get caught out early in the "fake it 'till you make it" game.
4) The good coders have done well enough at separating layers of abstraction that misconceptions about how things work only do damage in corner cases.
5) The world has already stopped working, and we're all too dumb to notice.
6) ...or this is why we didn't reach our current level of technology a couple thousand years ago.
7) Where security bugs are concerned, the people trying to break things are as dumb as the people trying to build things.
8) People may have brainpower that they don't have direct conscious access to. I've heard people report having some section of their brain that they can somehow hand a problem off to, stop thinking consciously about the problem for a while, and then suddenly get an answer back. I've never caught my own brain doing this, though.
 

Fabri91

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That's pretty standard. Switzerland doesn't buy anything they can't take apart conmpletely and put back together again, quite often with some improvements. Though sometimes they're not exactly improvements... There was that very swiss episode where they re-engineered a mirage engine literally from scratch because they felt some parts just didn't fit together with satisfactory precision, and experienced a significant power drop-off compared to the french built. When they couldn't figure out why, they called in a french expert, and his verdict was "It's much too precise! those parts need more clearance!" ?


That's pretty much what we expect our government to do, actually. It's their job to view things in a wider context and exploit related opportunities. It's one of the reasons why we're still as high up in the game as we are...
It appears that the rumors were true and that the Bundesrat will recommend the purchase of 36 F-35A aircraft, in part due to lower total cost.

I am unsure of differences to the last Swiss combat aircraft procurement attempt - what are the chances of this getting derailed again?

EDIT: not even losing in the eighth-final helped France secure the bid.
 

jedidia

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I am unsure of differences to the last Swiss combat aircraft procurement attempt - what are the chances of this getting derailed again?
The way it works this time is fundamentally different. Last time (and all the times before that) the government asked "We'd like to buy F18 fighter jets for this much money, can we do that please?", and the swiss people said "yeah, sure!".
This time it started the same way, but the swiss people said "nope!". THen they were like huh, uhm, ok, looking at our data here there seems to have been a lot of very different reasons why people voted no. Some didn't like the plane proposed, some didn't think we need new fighters at all, some thought we'd be better off by not having a military in the first place, some just had some other gripes with some other decisions of ours and thought this was a relatively inconsequential way to kick us in the shin. If we just propose another plane the same is bound to happen, so let's reframe the question: Can we have a budget of 6 billion to buy new fighter jets? We'll decide which one by ourselves if we get the budget". And the swiss people said "yeah, ok" (juuuuust barely).

So with things being what they are and what was agreed on in that vote, there's not much that could be done to derail the decision. In that vote we gave the executive the budget and the full authority to decide which jet to buy, which they didn't have before.

EDIT: not even losing in the eighth-final helped France secure the bid.
Oh... OOOOOOOOH! That's the first reasonable explanation I've heard for that weird anomaly!! ?
 

jedidia

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Off the top of my head...

1) There is a God, and he works miracles.
2) Bugs can mask bugs. This may happen with bugs in people's assumptions as well.
3) People with nothing to compensate for their misconceptions get caught out early in the "fake it 'till you make it" game.
4) The good coders have done well enough at separating layers of abstraction that misconceptions about how things work only do damage in corner cases.
5) The world has already stopped working, and we're all too dumb to notice.
6) ...or this is why we didn't reach our current level of technology a couple thousand years ago.
7) Where security bugs are concerned, the people trying to break things are as dumb as the people trying to build things.
8) People may have brainpower that they don't have direct conscious access to. I've heard people report having some section of their brain that they can somehow hand a problem off to, stop thinking consciously about the problem for a while, and then suddenly get an answer back. I've never caught my own brain doing this, though.
I guess I'll have to go with either option 1 or 5 here. I can't quite believe in option 4, as it makes it difficult to explain how I've still got a job, and option 7 kinda runs counter to what we know about the criminal mind.
In fact, when it comes to security specific issues the "don't throw stones when sitting in a glass house"-effect is probably a better explanation. Criminals are after money, not after destruction, so they're actually quite careful to exploit security issues without breaking anything, as that significantly decreases the odds of those issues ever getting fixed, and the ones that would have the resources as well as the interest to cause significant destruction know that they're just as vulnerable as their potential targets...
 

tl8

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8) People may have brainpower that they don't have direct conscious access to. I've heard people report having some section of their brain that they can somehow hand a problem off to, stop thinking consciously about the problem for a while, and then suddenly get an answer back. I've never caught my own brain doing this, though.
Shower and/or laying in bed. Has happened enough times to be very useful for stubborn problems.
 

Urwumpe

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Shower and/or laying in bed. Has happened enough times to be very useful for stubborn problems.

Or driving on the Autobahn.... Sitting in a train....
 

Fabri91

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The way it works this time is fundamentally different. Last time (and all the times before that) the government asked "We'd like to buy F18 fighter jets for this much money, can we do that please?", and the swiss people said "yeah, sure!".
This time it started the same way, but the swiss people said "nope!". THen they were like huh, uhm, ok, looking at our data here there seems to have been a lot of very different reasons why people voted no. Some didn't like the plane proposed, some didn't think we need new fighters at all, some thought we'd be better off by not having a military in the first place, some just had some other gripes with some other decisions of ours and thought this was a relatively inconsequential way to kick us in the shin. If we just propose another plane the same is bound to happen, so let's reframe the question: Can we have a budget of 6 billion to buy new fighter jets? We'll decide which one by ourselves if we get the budget". And the swiss people said "yeah, ok" (juuuuust barely).

So with things being what they are and what was agreed on in that vote, there's not much that could be done to derail the decision. In that vote we gave the executive the budget and the full authority to decide which jet to buy, which they didn't have before.


Oh... OOOOOOOOH! That's the first reasonable explanation I've heard for that weird anomaly!! ?
I see, thanks for the explanation!

To be honest while I often admire the direct democracy model employed by Switzerland, I can see the issue in having to vote on what is a specific technical choice like it happened years ago - obviously I and many others wouldn't be qualified to have an informed opinion.

Oh well, I'm looking forward to seeing some Lightnings at Axalp live firings / airshow in a couple of years.
 
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jedidia

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Oh, for crying out loud, can we stop it with the NFT's already? Why would you pay millions for something with no purpose when you could instead use them to create something of your own? I don't get it...
 

Urwumpe

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Oh, for crying out loud, can we stop it with the NFT's already? Why would you pay millions for something with no purpose when you could instead use them to create something of your own? I don't get it...

Same here. Its just the current hype. Would be great to use the technology for industrial data. Instead its used for crap.
 
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