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.

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.

But it’s not really true. Switzerland has no naval branch of its armed forces.

It has a dozen or so of 10t patrol boats armed with a single 50cal MG for its lakes, and those are organized in a single motor boat company, which is staffed and manned by the military engineers branch.

Their duties are supporting the border guard (police) on the lakes against trespass/ smugglers and assisting (civilian) search& rescue.

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.

Maybe we should turn this idea around? I know tons of healthy rich old people that have nothing better to do than bicker and complain, how about we force them to do a free full year of community service? Why is their time and energy considered more valuable than the youths’?

And maybe it would humble those wealthy nepo pieces of shit, and likely resolve the social issues that people complain about.

Currently, just barely under half of Germany’s population is overweight.

That’s only ten percent less than the USA, which sits at 57%.

And yes, it causes massive health problems, staining the healthcare system.

You are swapping correlation and causation to some degree. A country does not become industrialized by people starting to have kids at a later age. Rather, people start getting kids when their circumstances allow it: in industrialized countries, you rely less on children to provide for you when old, as there hopefully are social systems in place or you can save up on your own. Downside is, without social systems you also have to provide for yourself at old age, meaning people need to build up more savings before they feel ready for the financial burden a child is for around 20 years.

In developing countries, children often get little support above bare necessities and start contributing to the household income at a much earlier age, even before hitting their teens.

I’ll still use the opportunity to voice my opinion clearly on this: Yes, forced circumcision on infants is only a very small step above the also still common practice of female genetic mutilations at birth/infancy. It does not matter what reasons you claim, only medical necessity should matter. Society should protect its infants from any religion or tradition demanding body modifications of infants.

Leave people’s bodies alone until they can decide on their own what to do when there is zero proven medical benefit to doing it before without their informed consent.

The common “improved hygiene” argument is nonsensical. You know what improves hygiene? Washing, and teaching kids how to wash themselves.

Otherwise you could cut off ears using the same logic. No ears, no need to wash behind the ears.

I was about to say… What does “suitable” mean? I grew up in the 90s, and “suitable games” ranged from SimCity or the settlers to age of empires, crusader Kings, quake, doom, unreal tournament or half life.

There is no need to over protect kids from the “simple” evils: when I was very young, I didn’t want to play violent or scary games, even knowing they exist. Later I got curious and explored them. Depending on your choice a game such as the settlers, age of empires or crusader Kings could well be classified violent and “unsuitable”. But violence is everywhere, and those were some of the games that I fondly remember for instilling a huge curiosity in history and cultures in me. And yes, we were marketing victims as well: everyone spent way too much on Magic, Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh cards and related toys. But it didn’t infect every part of our lives.

Help your kids reflect on their choices and wants. Help them find out why they really want to pay too much money for that shiny Roblox skin. And offer alternatives with free, open content sharing so they realize they are being swindled. Media literacy is much tougher today because companies got much more insidious marketing vectors to infect kids.

Nowadays there are thousands of games being released per week, in addition to classics such as Minecraft, Terraria, Rimworld, Eco, which still have very strong modding and multiplayer communities.

People should just stop trying to interfere with people’s private life in general. Get pregnant or don’t, how is that a concern to me?

As long as it’s two consenting adults, which should be obvious, but sadly apparently isn’t.

I’m curious, why are you “happy it’s been done”?

I live in a country where we don’t perform this procedure out of tradition/religion, or at least not in the majority. I’m only aware of it being done for specific medical pathologies such as phimosis.

Because I kind of agree with the sentiment that performing unwarranted surgeries on someone that is unable to voice his (non-)consent is an ethical problem. Even more so with excisions, which always are drastically and usually irrevocably diminishing the body.

The reason politicians should have good salaries is that it should dissuade them from being attracted by bribes or other kinds of corruption. Of course, some peoples’ greed knows no bounds.

And frankly, I’d much rather see public servants rake in big money than the 0.1% “businessmen”.

As a bonus fact: because multiple embryos are implanted at once, IVF has a much higher chance of having multiple embryos take hold at once. So while getting pregnant is hard on the first place, if it works, there’s a higher than usual chance to get twins ( or even more, though much less likely).

This “risk” is clearly communicated in the preparation phase and the potential parents have to ok and accept this for IVF to go ahead at all.

During IVF, you don’t prepare a single embryo. You prepare dozens at once.

IVF is used when for whatever reason the natural process fails. This can be due to had sperm, bad eggs, trouble with the path to the womb, hormonal imbalances, and a large number of illnesses that fuck up this delicate process. So IVF has to fight a steep uphill battle, and you want multiple fighters in the ring to increase the odds. Why do it all at once and not over after the other? Extraction of the eggs requires intense, weeks to months of hormonal therapy. The extraction is also a surgical procedure, requiring a surgeon to access the ovaries. This is painful and has health risks, you don’t want to this every week. Less time and less procedures also help reduce costs. IVF is expensive, quickly costing many thousands of dollars. Last but not least, IVF is an intensely stress- and painful time for the couple on a psychological level alone. Every failed attempt weighs heavy, every miscarriage is a huge loss. Those emotions should not be toyed with and it’s clearly ethical to follow the medical process with the highest success chance and least suffering.

Explaining the process: You extract many eggs and fertilize them with sperm at once. Then you wait for them to do their first couple cell divisions, usually until they are a count of 4, 8 or 16 cells, varies by nation and its laws. The more splits, the easier to qualify the health and success chance of the embryo.

Even during this early stage, multiple of the embryos typically fail to divide properly and are then discarded.

Then, the most vital and hopeful embryos are selected and implanted during another surgical procedure directly into the womb. Again, always multiple. This is because some embryos will die during the process, others will not attach. In the end, you only need one embryo to attach and get supplied by the womb, then you’re on track to getting pregnant.

All the other good candidates are frozen, so you have them ready for possible future implantation attempts. It’s common that the attachment process doesn’t work at first try.

Once your pregnancy is carried out (miscarriage is always a big risk up until the end during IVF) and you are certain you don’t want more kids, the rest of the frozen embryos are discarded.

With this new interpretation of the law, doctors and lab techs would be mass murderers.

Taste is actually a valid and very important identifier used for classifying minerals during geology field work when there is no access to advanced diagnostic tools. For health reasons, it’s obviously not the primary method, but it usually follows the “scrape test”. Scraping the mineral over a known hard surface tells a whole lot about hardness, texture, color, granularity…

Sanctions have been shown to be a very ineffective, but low risk tool to apply external pressure. There is no way to apply sanctions in a way that truly hurt the responsible rulers without affecting the general populace. As the rulers by definition have power, they will simply be able to force lower, non sanctioned ranks to do what they want, circumventing the sanctions.

In addition, the hope of blanket sanctions is that the populace looks their economical suffering to the bad decisions of their leaders and speak our act against them. This rarely ever works, as state propaganda easily spins it to blame the international community being influenced by the state’s enemies. The first to suffer will always be the lowest strata of society, which usually is least involved in international affairs.

It’s the same reason any kind of external punitive action against civilians (e.g. city bombing in ww2) doesn’t work.