_ak (u/_ak) - Readit News

_ak commented on The New Austrian Railways' Intercity and Nightjet Sleeper Train Interior Design priestmangoode.com/projec... · Posted by u/Osiris30

ido · 7 years ago

"airfare-level prices"? In Germany and Austria my experience was that flying was generally cheaper than the train, and sleeper trains more expensive still.

I'm on a (day) train between Berlin and Vienna this very minute and it costed me €99 (one way!) where as a flight would have been about €50.

You can get cheaper tickets if booking well in advance (months) but the same applies to budget airlines.

_ak · 7 years ago

In Germany, jet fuel is untaxed, whereas train companies have to pay tax on electricity, in particular renewable energy. Also, VAT is handled differently: if you buy a flight from Germany to another country, only a portion of what you paid for your plane ticket is taxed at German VAT rate, but for train tickets, 100% of the ticket price is taxed with the German VAT rate. These are several factors that make it quite a bit harder for the railway to compete with short-distance flights.

_ak commented on AdNauseam – clicking ads so you don't have to adnauseam.io/... · Posted by u/JoachimS

varelaz · 7 years ago

Most of the ad networks already fight with ad fraud and validate clicks and redirects. Their technologies are very sophisticated. So I don't think that it does more harm to ad companies than to plugin users, who marked suspicious and fraud. There are already plenty of bots who scrape ads and click on them. By different estimates around 20-30% of web traffic is already caused by bots. As for me plugin is a kind of way to say how you hate ad market and web in general, nothing more.

_ak · 7 years ago

I worked in adtech a few years ago, and AdNauseam-style click fraud is a relatively trivial to detect and ignore. It does nothing, and adtech companies don't care about your hate of online advertising the least because that's what brings in the cash.

_ak commented on Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada twitter.com/a_h_a/status/... · Posted by u/jwildeboer

jstanley · 7 years ago

There are other parties that suffer from the sanctions.

For example, the guy in the Tweet, who doesn't even live in Iran and is merely ethnically Iranian.

Not to mention anyone in the US (or, just ethnically North American?) who takes the ethical stance of ignoring the sanction and gets punished for it.

_ak · 7 years ago

I think it's also worth noting that Iranians have no possibility of renouncing their Iranian citizenship. So even if they wanted to cut any possible connection to Iran, they will never be able to get rid off their citizenship.

_ak commented on Police search homes of Zwiebelfreunde board members and OpenLab in Augsburg ccc.de/en/updates/2018/ha... · Posted by u/meskio

keldaris · 8 years ago

The militarization of police is largely a U.S. problem among first world countries. As a practical matter I'm more concerned about things like investigations with poor judicial oversight, poorly justified police searches, warrantless or rubber stamped surveillance, frivolous information requests, general lack of respect for privacy rights, etc.

France, for instance, unfortunately seems to have moved quite a bit in that direction after the terrorist attacks of recent years. I've not heard of a similar trend in Germany, but it's always nice to hear an informed perspective from people who actually live there.

_ak · 8 years ago

Militarization of police is happening in Germany, as well:

* Police special forces (SEK which are organized on the state level unlike GSG9 which are state police) have switched from blue to military-like green/brown uniforms (which have no tactical value, but that's another discussion).

* Police in e.g. Berlin are changing their fully automatic weapons by phasing out the 9mm MP-5 and replacing it with 5.56x45 G36 assault rifles for "anti-terror defense" purposes.

* More and more police units are equipped with armored wheeled tanks.

* Peaceful left-wing demonstrations in some states are regularly "secured" by special forces equipped with tactical equipment including assault rifles, a clear intimidation tactic. SEK units aren't even being trained to handle demos.

* Crime statistics are recorded in bizarre ways to artificially inflate anti-police violence, which in turn forms the basis for police unions to demand stricter laws. For example, any attack on a single police man is counted as an attack against their whole unit, and suddenly one victim becomes 10 victims in the statistics.

_ak commented on Chaos Computer Club criticizes police action spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/h... · Posted by u/singularity2001

Mashimo · 8 years ago

But they are just witnesses, the police say so them self.

_ak · 8 years ago

"Just" is the wrong word. With the latest legislation in place, witnesses can be forced to make statements to the police under threat of duress, including fines and jail time.

_ak commented on Police search homes of Zwiebelfreunde board members and OpenLab in Augsburg ccc.de/en/updates/2018/ha... · Posted by u/meskio

niklasd · 8 years ago

A bit of perspective for non-Germans: The raid was ordered from Bavaria, a state in Germany which is traditionally governed by the conservative CSU party, which is currently also in the (international) headlines for the ongoing immigration fight, since they are part of the federal government with Merkel (they are taking a very though standpoint on immigration).

Just recently this party introduced a new police law in Bavaria which is considered to be the toughest in Germany, making it considerably more easy for Police to read your mail, block your bank account, to surveil you etc.

While this is not directly related to the CCC raid, the raid was ordered by the Munich Attorney General. For Germans, it is not surprising that such an act comes from the Bavarian justice system.

_ak · 8 years ago

The. CSU. Is. Not. Conservative.

Call them what they are: a right-wing populist law-and-order party that is only active in the state of Bavaria, but terrorises the rest of Germany with their reactionary and regressive policies.

_ak commented on Caffeine dosing strategies to optimize alertness during sleep loss onlinelibrary.wiley.com/d... · Posted by u/nickcw

Zezima · 8 years ago

Did you read Blitzed by Norman Ohler?

_ak · 8 years ago

No, why?

_ak commented on Caffeine dosing strategies to optimize alertness during sleep loss onlinelibrary.wiley.com/d... · Posted by u/nickcw

euroclydon · 8 years ago

Surely there’s a better drug than coffee for staying awake for a long time.

_ak · 8 years ago

The Germans used metamphetamine during World War 2. They gave it nicknames Panzerschokolade ("tank chocolate"), Stuka-Tabletten ("Stuka tablets"), Herman-Göring-Pillen, or Flieger-Marzipan ("pilot's marzipan"). It was freely available under the brand name "Pervitin" until 1941. From then on, you needed a prescription in order to purchase it.

_ak commented on Caffeine dosing strategies to optimize alertness during sleep loss onlinelibrary.wiley.com/d... · Posted by u/nickcw

_ak · 8 years ago

Interesting detail: look at where they authors are working. This is military research. And I'm not surprised. The problem of having to keep soldiers alert during long phases of sleep deprivation has been around since the early days of modern warfare.

_ak commented on Why “children,” not “childs”? (2016) grammarphobia.com/blog/20... · Posted by u/warent

afroboy · 8 years ago

> but languages are generally pretty resistant to borrowing grammatic features wholesale versus, say, borrowing vocabulary.

Not always check Spanish for example they took a lot from Arabic, like 'EL'.

_ak · 8 years ago

LOL, what? Spanish "el" is etymologically derived from Latin ille/illa/illud, which became el/la/lo in Spanish.