schroeding

I find it quite surprising that Danish high school students (the article isn't about university) apparently did write digital exams with internet access until now, so basically open book.

The analogy is a bit shaky IMO, as you can certify individual, heavily modified, foreign or even self-built cars in EU member states.

For cars, the local certification authority themselves decides what is road-worthy or not, not VW et al. You can add third party parts without the manufacturers consent. This is not the case for Android or iOS attestation, you're pretty much at the mercy of the foreign manufacturer and their local laws.

You cannot prove the absence of e.g. a Veracrypt hidden volume or similar, though. Even if you honestly give up your key, you could still be either

A) held in contempt of court, if the authorities do not find what they expect for some reason and accuse you of using such techniques or

B) if you specify that such behaviour by law enforcement is overreach, have a clean way out for criminals, codified in law, heavily damaging the impact you may expect of such a law.

Because what is the alternative, with the same level of convenience and support by (online) shops? Genuine question, because I do not know any and would be happy to.

Wero is not supported by most shops (yet), Credit / Debit Cards often charge fees if the payment goes to a foreign country, direct transactions cannot be undone.

The problem in Munich is that everything must go through a single two-track part underneath the city center, which is at absolute capacity. If anything breaks down there (and it does, often, very often), even a small delay in a single train, all trains get delayed or skip stops.

In my experience, you have to take at least one train early if you do not want to come late regularly. Even e.g. the main airport train line, used by tourists, often turns around before the actual airport due to delays.

If you live in the city itself, it's fine, you also have other options. If you live further away, it's barely acceptable to very bad, IMO.

It is reliable-ish, but more "Amtrak Capital Corridor"-reliable than "JR Yamanote Line"-reliable.

I think they mean the actual posts on tea itself, not the leaked ID photos.

Interestingly, the pendulum at least in my friend group starts to kinda swing in the other direction, i.e. non-technical friends start to indirectly ask (me as the tech guy) about blatant piracy for (visual, Spotify is still very much accepted) media and (TOS-violating[1]) ad blockers for ad-supported streaming.

I cannot overstate how unexpected this was and is to me, we talk about people in their mid-twenties with jobs - maybe (video) streaming / subscriptions services actually overplayed their hand in the current economic climate.

Doesn't make me super optimistic in this regard.

[1] even if most of it is void in my jurisdiction anyway

Ah. Thanks! Since the letter only calls it "reconciliation bill", I didn't make the connection. Not an American here, oops. Maybe creating "mega bill bundles" isn't the best idea in general. ^^'

I still think this specific reversion / change, for itself, would be something you can lobby for, though. It itself doesn't do harm, the push to include it in this specific bill may do (if it is the thing which tips the scale for it to be accepted).

This "tax cut" is (and was) simply the status quo in most western countries for virtually all businesses, e.g. in the EU. It itself is not immoral, as long as you see developers as normal office workers, which they IMO are.

The existence of silicon valley giants and their faults notwithstanding.

IMO, if you lobby for a thing which does not do harm to other people, you are not the bad guy. If you do, you are. Lobbying itself is not immoral.

The oil and gas industry, and the tobacco industry et al., lobbied (and lobby) for things which they know were (and are) doing harm. This isn't the case here, IMO.

Code is not an asset in all (I would even argue most) cases - proven by companies which open source the vast majority of their code and live from service contracts or certain addons to it, and basically pay developers to commit to open source software.

Often they buy market- or mindshare. There is no way in hell e.g. Akamai wouldn't have been able to bootstrap "Linode 2". I'm unable to see the secret sauce why OpenAI couldn't have created their own VS Code fork instead of buying Windsurf. But why do that if you can acquire their existent customers / market share? Additionally, the term "acquihire" didn't plop into existence with no precedent.

Being able to immediately get a full deductible for salary, which in many (western) countries is the norm for virtually all businesses, does not strike me as particularly immoral. It's a normal office job, developers do not create gold out of thin air.

Big tech isn't even the most affected by this change, they (often) have obscene margins - small software companies do not.