• 0 Posts
  • 136 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 15th, 2023

help-circle

  • Two year interval instead of four years. FIFA requires that nobody do big cups during a world cup year ( would also be super exhausting for players). But while most regional cups keep a non-cup year in between, Africa keeps busy with basically having a big cup every year. As cups are played in addition to regular season, they get way more practical playtime (more experience, less recovery) than other regions.

    This is somewhat offset by many African nations having no dedicated national cup in addition to their league, while others such as Europe can have national and additional yearly, smaller regional cups and leagues to play in.


  • They have different jobs. An officer receives and leads the mission and will bear the responsibility for how it’s performed. A low level officer such as a 2lt usually deals with this on a small scale, such as a single squad. While this puts him close to the NCO’s scope, the NCOs are focused on the inner workings of a squad or platoon. They can give valuable info on individual strengths for specific tasks in the squad and tactical familiarity. A good 2lt will use that and combine it with his higher level approach including logistical concerns ( timing, transport, supplies…), intel about the situation as well as comms with possible other active elements in the area to formulate a strong plan to maximize success chance and minimize risk.

    A NCO has completely different training and knowledge from an officer. The whole planning and strategy part, including high level communication and logistics are usually of no immediate concern to an NCO. Still, depending on training and experience, they might have insights on particular fields, and a good officer uses any advantage.


  • Just a minor correction: the 100$ one time deposit cannot be reclaimed manually. Instead, it gets automatically returned once your game hits 1000$ in sales.

    https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/gettingstarted/appfee

    The purpose of this fee is to block low effort automated scam games from misusing the shop.

    Many successful indie devs have voiced that the 30% is actually impossible to beat for them if they tried other distribution approaches. Some even closed down their existing alternatives including self hosted shops which would grant them 100%, simply because the overhead costs ruin the percentage for them, plus a whole lot of time and effort that have to go into maintaining that.

    Yes, steam has a very strong monopoly position on the games distribution market. That is problematic for all the usual reasons with monopolies. What makes steam unique is that the company behind it, Valve, has demonstrated in all their efforts that maximizing short term profits is not necessarily their prime directive. This can obviously change at any time, so being wary is always good, but convenience is simply extremely attractive to everyone involved, devs and customers alike.



  • Almost all of these the game literally tells you about right there in the GUI… When you are building, you get an info bar telling you what button combinations do what. This is smart enough to even depend on what exactly you are building, so it will not tell you about R for build modes when you are building things that don’t have build modes.

    Another small thing not everyone knows about: when building normal hyper tubes or pipelines, you can rotate the end point vertically as well. While placing it ( hold left mouse button), you can drag the cursor up/down for elevation, but you can also use the scroll wheel to tilt the connector. This allows for more aesthetic long gradients, without having “steps” on the connectors.




  • The device needing more power won’t get it, simple. Depending on what device it is, it will automatically throttle down so it needs less power, but obviously it will also deliver less performance while so throttled. And if the power is missing during a very sensitive part of a process so there’s no time to throttle down, your PC could blue screen or restart.

    It’s very unlikely to suffer any long-term damage from this.


  • Japan had a lot more wood-only city buildings back then compared to the colder climate in Europe, where more massive stone architecture was common. In Europe, cellars are also common/default, unlike in Japan.

    During high heat firestorms, most of the wooden material burns up and the ash gets carried away. The photo definitely shows cleanup and very likely was not taken the day after the bombing, but a single firestorm definitely can produce these results, much like other examples in Cologne, Hamburg, Dresden, Würzburg,… Except those had much more stone rubble standing afterwards.




  • It was announced that they all committed “schwere Verbrechen”. That means it’s all felonies and capital crimes. I do characterize people who commit capital crimes as scum, because those are by definition never small misconducts or accidents. Felony convictions for capital crimes need proof of malicious intent. So there really is incredibly little room left to feel bad for the criminals.


  • 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.


  • Just a small correction: the involved German states did not “make it a point to hide” the individual crimes from being published. Instead this happens because we in Germany place a comparably very high value on privacy. And yes, even criminal scum gets theirs protected by neither naming them nor their crimes. Even convicted criminals’ names are never published on principle unless they have become public figures through other means anyway.

    And the crimes were not detailed because knowing the specific combinations of crimes and sentences would make it too easy to identify them, given there’s only 28 of them.

    The idea of protecting privacy so much is that by having completed their sentences, they should have the same opportunity as anyone else in life and not be “tarnished” forever.


  • Not a big fan of this blanket sentiment.

    It’s important to note that it absolutely is NOT necessary to hear things “pop” or “break” to deliver effective CPR. It’s a common occurrence and not worrisome, but a lack of those effects is not a sufficient indicator you have to increase pressure.

    Rather check or have someone next to you check how deep you’re compressing so it’s about 2-2.5 inches. It’s handy to know how much that actually is. While it is a significant depth, it’s also not as deep as some think. When in doubt, always err on the side of pushing too deep, but there’s no inherent benefit to crushing bones and cartilage and it’s also very exhausting trying to continuously push so incredibly deep.


  • Regarding the profit incentive: providing free school lunches or medical/ hygiene supplies does not hurt profits. As the meals/supplies will still have to be sourced from the market, it probably will now be a few big contacts with big suppliers that will cover entire school districts.

    The costs of these contracts will be a public burden unless they implemented a specific focus tax to pay for it, so it will come out of various broad tax pools. This means everyone pays a little bit so every kid has something to eat. Even if you don’t have any kids or if your kid gets homemade lunch packs. This is where the “social” aspect comes in.

    Other countries, many of them European, actually go a step in the other direction: if you do not have kids, you actually pay a premium on your income tax. And that is generally accepted, because for society to live on, obviously kids are necessary. And if you don’t support society by raising kids, you at least help cover some of the associated costs. These premiums are explicitly used to fund kindergartens, schools etc…

    An often valid capitalist criticism of public large contracts on infrastructure such as this is that the public offices tend to be notoriously bad negotiators, accepting worse deals than private companies would. This is because there’s little to no incentive for them to reach good terms. It also makes the process more vulnerable to corruption and politicking on a grander scale. These are not guaranteed to happen, good governance can definitely avoid this. But public governance simply isn’t that great to begin with in many areas.


  • It’s is important to understand what law is used for these rulings.

    Germany limits free speech by putting penalties on speech that calls for others to commit crimes. This is rarely actually enforced by police or judges when it is about minor things or clearly satirical/parody usage. On the other hand, when it’s clearly malicious intent and for severe crimes, there’s little tolerance.

    Most commonly this happens when people publicly call for violent regime changes (attacking democratic/republican or feudal constitutional principles) or calling for violence against basic human rights, e.g. supporting genocide, deportations of specific groups, etc…

    This actually serves as a strong base which is mostly used to combat domestic terrorism and unconstitutional organizations such as far right parties ( see dissolution of NPD).

    Calling for support of an officially recognized terrorist organization is a surefire way to get into trouble. Hamas is, as in many countries, recognized as such by Germany. The judge now based their ruling on the belief that the chant is “clearly and obviously used to support Hamas” and as such supports terrorism.

    What the article above does not tell: This ruling is incredibly controversial in Germany, and it is actually very likely to be overturned in a higher court. There even are precedent rulings of the same chant with entirely different ruling outcomes.

    It really saddens me to see so many clearly well-meaning left-oriented people on Lemmy get outraged so easily without being informed. If you lack info, I feel such news should be approached with cautious neutrality until more info is gathered and an opinion is formed and voiced.

    Yes, it’s fine to dislike this ruling and voice such an opinion. But calling Germany fascist or “freedom of speech is dead in Germany” based on such an individual event is just comically far from the truth.

    We have checks and balances in Germany. Our system is not perfect, but whose is, and I firmly believe it’s still better than most out there.

    Germany has no infinite freedom of speech, but I also firmly believe that being intolerant of intolerance is absolutely vital for a robust liberal society. So I’m fine with deeply disruptive and simply vile inciting speech being treated as criminal.