Germans coming both with the disease and a pinch of a cure. What's the role of German publishers and media companies in lobbying for the new rules? Had their activists been so special, they'd keep their copyright lobbyists chained and gagged somewhere domestically.
I presume countries like Finland and Denmark somehow oppose these rules, while countries like Bulgaria and Poland don't know what they are doing and slacked on the topics in this particular domain.
Copyright reforms pushed by American and German copyright bullies, lobbyists, predators, and stalkers. The days of your entertainment and content will come to an end. Unfortunately the bullies will likely remain unpunished.
Internet Speeds in Germany are lacking in some areas, but fast internet is generally available. I have a symmetrical 1 gig FTTH connection in the countryside
Except when you rent and the landlord says "Internet is internet, why do you need different one?" then a next desperate tenant will rent whatever there is.
War costs money. Civilians will be cut off from money and pushed down by security services and "law" enforcement, rewarded with privileges and confiscated money. So obvious, such a cliché, and works flawlessly every time ad infinitum.
It's more a problem why European countries gave up to American Visa/Mastercard duopoly for cards, where the alternative is... Google Pay/Apple Pay duopoly for mobile. Their only answer are miserable local debit/ATM card systems working only in individual European countries, or superfrauds like Wirecard.
Haven't tried it in neighbouring countries yet, but as I understand - it's a virtual Visa/Mastercard card, yeah. So it should be accepted in the same places where my physical card is accepted.
During covid for a moment red/green status in a mobile app was determining basic civil freedoms and freedom of movement of an individual. This is the future if we go cashless. If things start going wrong, it takes few days for tyranny to creep in. Most people are ecstatic when given authority to control others and to toggle their rights.
The problem is not dystopian control. Societies are much to chaotic to keep that up. Even in china it fell apart and does fall apart. People rebel by withdrawing the will to life in such a society.
Dystopian totalitarian states burn themselves out in one way another. Some final act is usually some futile war against a neighbour, before turning into small substates fightin one another.
A tokken represents the value of what a society can do for you.
When that shrinks and all those billionaires, become just paper factory owners. Thats were the hurt is. What does it matter who and how you hold that weimar paper money fort.
"During the Zombie apocalypse, whether or not you're a zombie is determining basic civil freedoms and freedom of movement of an individual. This is the future if we go cashless"
WTF? You do realize that it's not an arbitrary status in an app that mattered, but whether you're at risk of infecting hundreds, right?
Do you realize it was an arbitrary status based on arbitrary decision by arbitrary politicians based on opinions of arbitrary scientists?
You may also analyse the currently available arbitrary data. Then you may realize that the status was indeed arbitrary. There is not even correlation, let alone causation on infection outcome when comparing arbitrary countries and states whose arbitrary politicians arbitrarily decided to listen to a different set of arbitrary scientists.
We're talking about a highly contagious disease. I've lost my entire sense of smell (I used to be a quite good amateur chef before that, cooking for friends all the time, now that's gone) and I'm exhausted instantly when I do anything physical now, struggling with tasks that I used to do easily before.
I'm not going to have any sympathy to people who intentionally and knowingly bring that upon others.
It sounds like you're arguing for the right to knowingly infect others with contagious disease.
Sometimes things happen that cause society to need to be rearranged. In the case of COVID it really didn't require that much rearrangement - prefer outdoor activities, wear masks, stick HEPA filters in enclosed spaces, keep windows open. Contact tracing apps, maybe. We had those in Taiwan in a way that protected privacy.
Predictably, people with reactionary tendencies, well, reacted, to which I say good luck in your next hurricane I guess? "Bah to this flooded city, I'm not about to let a half meter of water change how I live my life!"
Why should society give preference to people unwilling to acknowledge the reality of a pandemic? Seems the obvious solution is to allow access to the commons to those willing to take steps to protect eachother, and block access to malcontents. I'm really confused why this was suddenly controversial during COVID - we had ridiculous rules about commons access before such as you must wear a certain kind of clothing, but mask or vaccine requirements is somehow different? I don't get it but, whatever.
> They are over because people eventually decided they were done with them.
People didn't "eventually decide" anything.
People accepted that Covid was a pandemic of a new virus and some temporary measures would have to be put in place to avoid a potential repeat of the Black Plague. Reasonable thing to do with a completely new human virus.
So governments put those measures in place <<temporarily>>.
Just like when a storm is coming and you close all the windows, all the doors, make sure that everything important is inside, etc.
Again, reasonable people always knew that strict measures were temporary.
Unreasonable people just assumed we'd be boarded up with wooden planks like in China, for the rest of our lives.
We've banned this account for posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments and otherwise breaking the site guidelines.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
The budgets and incentives are all wrong. We have to do something which will make ad and profiling zombies stay in bed every morning and look at the ceiling, instead of leaving the bed and starting their workday.
