Isolus

Yes, they also sold a toilet brush named "VIREN". In Germany this is the plural of virus. And some year ago Danes complained IKEA named carpets and runner after danish towns but never something "better".

Yes, the final decision to revert to Microsoft was taken in 2017. But in 2014, the mayor of Munich began an investigation into how to return to Microsoft products. And he was also the one who negotiated the location of the headquarters with Microsoft in 2013.

No, they didn't. That happened for example in Munich. But that is on the other side of Germany. And there is already a joke that MS can't move their german headquarters every time a state or big city want's to move away from MS products. (They did this when Munich changed back to MS producs - but of course this was pure coincidence.)

I find it inconvenient that pluggable eSIMS are so hard to get. In my opinion they combine the best of both worlds. You can download profiles without wating for SIM cards and you can put them in different phones.

Also many SIM cards (UICCs) / embedded SIM modules as well as e.g. the Secure Element that Samsung uses for Knox run with Java Card.

Most German universtities have applied at an early stage for a class B network block therefore they have little pressure.

When I asked the IT staff at my university years ago, they said that there are still some very old routers without IPv6 support in use. And since everything seems to work with IPv4 for the university administration, there is no money for new ones.

Whenever you present a certificate to the passport, its current time is updated by the "valid from" value if it's newer then the current time.

It's not perfect but if you started you trip in another country with such a system and where a more recent certificate was used, your passport will deny access.

I don't know anything about this particular case, but about these systems in general. They can work without any operator or network connection. They verify that you have a valid passport and that the taken image (face) matches the one stored in your passport. But for modern passports they use Extended Access Control which requires up to date terminal certificates to access the data (you have to update them in the range of days) und you can give these systems revocation lists and lists of unwanted persons. If any of this is not updated, they stop working.

NIO ist doing this with it's Power Swap Stations. But there are too few to really use them.

In a lot of other countries in common language a ton is a metric ton.

I'm pretty sure these changes are great for e.g. standard TLS connections.

But I don't quite understand what this means for other/custom curves.

For example I'm often using brainpool curves. Currently I just set the CurveParams and I'm done.

They are part of a lot of official standards (especially in Europe/Germany but also for e.g. travel documents in the ICAO standard) so I can't get around them.

Do I have to implement everything for that curves myself? That would probably be more insecure than just using crypto/elliptic.

In Germany, you can find them in many EDEKA supermarkets (the biggest supermarket chain in germany).

The price before taxes and fees is absolutely not high in Germany. Only if you look at the final price, the statement is true.

But if production cost isn't the problem what difference would nuclear power make?

As I said, the former government startet the nuclear phase-out but they also didn't approve any new renewable energy sources for years.

Regardless of the type of power plant, it is totally stupid to shut down some and not allow any new ones to be built.

> Reality: the Greens and their allies spent half a trillion USD on the "energy transition" and turned off perfectly good nuclear reactors. Result: energy shortages and diplomatic submission to Russia.

Um no. Renewable energy is now actually cheaper than nuclear energy. You could build renewable energy + storage within the same range of cost. The problem is the former government shut down nuclear power plants and then did exactly nothing.

The nuclear power plants aren't perfectly good. They are very old and would need a lot of investment if run for more than a couple of month.

And germany isn't even near electric energy shortages. It's currently supplying france with a lot of energy.

If electric heating were used everywhere from now on, there would be an electricity problem. But for that the electric heaters are missing.

> Yes and why is that?

Gas price was 4 ct/kWh two years ago, electricity at 35 ct/kWh. People always take what is currently the cheapest.

> It's all because wind and solar are intermittent, there's nowhere near enough storage capacity on the grid and there won't be for decades, and their politicians have their heads in the sand about the whole business.

They didn't put their heads in the sand. The former government sabotaged the whole renewable industry again and again (e. g. they didn't allow building new renewable power plants for years, storage facilities need to pay for the grid when they store energy and when they release it so they can't be competetitive to gas).

The article cites "gas and nuclear were labeled as "transitional" energy sources in the taxonomy".

So the news itself is correct but the headline abbreviates this very badly.

As France shut down a lot of their nuclear power plants due to safety reason (a lot of corrosion) people in Germany are really concerned. It is said that due to the price cap on energy from nuclear power plants there was never enough money for enough maintenance.

And France is still building their nuclear waste dump site not that far from the border. Many also have a problem with this.

> Have you actually seen what nuclear waste looks like?

Yes, it has numerous forms. Most high-level radioactive waste is stored in dry cask storage. Until you destroy the cask and the things in it, it's pretty safe. But if you keep too much at one place it becomes a great target for terrorists. If you put them below the surface you must find conditions which doesn't degrade the cask.

Medium and low-level radioactive (dry) waste is often stored in plastic bags in normal steel barrels. When they rust through, you have a big problem. And steel barrels tend to rust faster than radioactive waste decays. Germany put a lot if these barrels into the former mine Asse and had to get it back at really high cost after saline water entered the storage location. After that there was even more waste to store because you need new barrels and have to store parts of salt from the mine as well. So Germany practically had a nuclear waste storage. It didn't work out so well, so people there are skeptical when someone else says it's not a problem.

And then there are radioactive liquids in storage tanks. The only solution I have heard so far is to dilute them so that they can be dumped into the sea. That may work for small quantities of waste, but if it's done globally, we have a problem.

> Same here, and I think thats precisely the problem - there are few scientists and technical proffeshions in government. Like a huge chunk of human society is not present in decision making.

I just wanted to say that a formal degree doesn't necessarily qualify you more on the subject and I don't like someone saying "you haven't studied this shut up". I judge people by their arguments, not by their title.

But I think more expertise among politicians can never hurt.

The cited article says "a bridge for a limited transition period" and not "green energy".

So no, they don't want to label it green energy, they only prefer it to other fossil fuels and nuclear but the goal is to phase out natural gas as well.

In fact, many believe that storage as hydrogen shows promise. There are many test plants for this right now in areas with a lot of wind and connection to the national gas grid.

The idea is that the hydrogen can then be used in existing gas power plants.

Germany is a densely populated country. We already don't know where to put the nuclear waste. No one wants it on his or her doorstep. The cost of storage alone is a nightmare.

The nuclear exit was supported by the population and not decided against them by politicians.

And to your criticism: A lot of politicians in germany are lawyers. Are they allowed do decide for the country? Do they have an idea about nuclear topics?

I don't know anyone in germany who thinks gas is "clean". New buildings are built with heat pumps. They are considered clean if used with renewable energy.

But it's difficult to use them in old buildings and gas is said to be to most cleanest heating technology based on fossil fuels.