It may not sound like a satisfying answer, but: because I'm not here to earn a language certificate but rather to live and work, my German is more than fine, and I think my time could be better employed doing something else.
I've worked in German institutions for a long time now, I've published in German, I have no problems understanding people and, leaving my accent aside, people can understand me. I read books in German and understand German movies. My German is fine.
I could take time away from learning what's new in tech and science (a lot, apparently) to get a C2 but, and I may be wrong here, I don't think someone asking for "minimum C2" (which, again, disqualifies even native Germans) is engaging with the process in good faith.
I have no objections to learning the language, which is why I've done it. What I do object to is chasing a pointless certificate when I could be doing the thing I was brought here to do.
I migrated to Germany 10+ years ago and I'm still here. Based on my limited experience, there are two big issues.
First, things are bad: trains are getting worse every year, the highways are in disrepair (ask me about Bonn!), overloaded doctors, impossibly slow bureaucracy, economic crisis, growing inequality, housing crisis, and so on. If you're a fresh immigrant who cannot find a job in an economic crisis (aka "most of them") you may very well wonder why staying here alone when you could be just as unemployed near your family.
Second: I won't say that Germany is xenophobic (not even all AfD voters) but I will say it's unfriendly. Work example: I've worked in multiple places in German without language issues, and yet many jobs automatically disqualify me because they ask for "minimum C2", a rank I don't have and one that many native Germans wouldn't achieve either. Add less chances to make a social circle, inflexibility, not great weather, and a government that's constantly calling you lazy and entitled, and that's how you get depressed.
The sad part is, Germany has all the pieces to be a great place to live that, for some reason, has decided to dismantle them all one by one.
Mild tangent: are there smart glasses out there without camera, without needing internet access, and with custom app support? All my neck and back want is a way for me to look up instead of down whenever I'm bored and smart glasses would be one possible solution for that.
> Other than suicide and that one incident with facebook, people do not die in appreciable numbers
Is your argument that "no one is dying other than those who are dying"?
I became radicalized against social media when I saw the statistics for suicide rates in teenage girls [1]. With Facebook having been found legally guilty of addicting teenagers, I can't in good conscience say "kids will figure it out" when there's clear evidence that the richest men alive are investing millions and armies of behavioral scientist to keep them addicted.
There are most definitely consequences for things that happen on the Internet, including depression and death. I don't like that age verification mechanism are raising so many problematic issues, but I also don't like that so far we've tried nothing and are running out of ideas.
Here's an article (in German) from last year where Richard Lutz, boss at the time of Deutsche Bahn, says they needed at least twice as much as what they were getting:
And here's an article (also in German) from this year about how the money that's been promised is not being delivered, leading to the cancelation of 90 projects.
For what it's worth, it does say right before and in colors "NOTE: Your name WILL BE VISIBLE TO THE WORLD."
I did a double take when reading that part too, but if you're a Meta employee then you should be able to understand the implications of those technical measures.
I'd argue the opposite: because they are focusing on knowledge acquisition they are trying to separate the medium (the books) from the objective.
40 years ago books were the only way to obtain knowledge. Nowadays even those who come for the books do so with a laptop for taking notes. If I were a librarian, it would be naive of me not to ask the question "if all the books are online, then why are we here?"
Anecdotally, on the topic of "knowledge acquisition", I used to run a drawing group. Finding a place to do so was a major problem because nobody wanted to invite strangers home and not everybody could afford the ~$20 it would take to stay at a cafe for long. A library with a meeting room would have been our dream solution and perhaps would have kept the group from dissolving.
You are being unfair to the spirit of the original quote.
Yes, the quote is naive in expecting a world where those who own share with those who rent without nefarious motives. But sharing, particularly in this context when profit is out of the equation, is a great idea. I don't have the money nor space for my own 3D printer, but thanks to my local library I own objectively more 3D printed stuff than I would without them.
I started sewing because I wanted to make a Guybrush Threepwood costume for Halloween. I'm currently making a bag and the next items in the pipeline are a couple summer shirts and a custom cover for a camera lens I have. I also brought my sewing machine to a kid's birthday party to make small plushies with the kids.
I've also repaired a non-insignificant number of clothes from friends and family. I know I used to roll my eyes when people used terms like "upcycling", but I have to say that I've come around since.
I didn't see on the list the NES games based on the Captain Tsubasa anime. While technically soccer, they can be better described as RPGs in soccer form where players have energy, special attacks, and so on.
Happened with all of tech support, really, or at least in my corner of the world: you take your PC to a technician and you receive in return a fresh Windows install, a folder with most of your files (including a copy of "C:\Windows"), and none of the programs or shortcuts you had before.
I saw it in Berlin. In two occasions I saw the realtor be openly bribed in front of all of us, although whether he took the bribe or not I cannot say. I also saw a man bring mini muffins and a personalized letter from his wife, family picture included, but I'm not sure it counts.
After predictably failing at generating a sewing pattern, Gemini gave me yesterday this excuse:
> Because AI generates pixels based on visual patterns rather than mathematical geometry, it creates the illusion of a sewing pattern without any of the functional blueprints required to actually drape and construct a real garment.
If you want the illusion of a meaningful research question then sure, local models will give you that.
As an example: Tesla has promised unsupervised self-driving for its cars for the last 10 years. Every year the promise is "it will be here soon", and yet this year we found out that the promises from 2019 are never going to materialize because the hardware isn't enough [1].
That's not to say that electric vehicles are going to go away, nor that supervised self-driving isn't useful. But it does mean that there are some things that the technology just can't do and that constantly arguing "the next version will fix it" without any evidence is not productive.
I think your comment points towards the heart of my complaint, namely, that Firefox stopped extensions on its tracks to offer parity with a browser that doesn't care about extensions. It fits the post's complaint about doing things just because Chrome is doing them.
As for the effect of extensions, my feeling is that people care less about them now but used to care more about them back then. I think Firefox main selling point was always "my cousin who works in IT told me to install this instead of that", and once Firefox angered those power users away (at the same time when Chrome was trying to bring them in) the effect compounded.
> if Mozilla spent all money on the browser only, if Mozilla made the best browser ever, would that really make a difference?
It's obviously impossible to say, but when we look at things that did happen due to Mozilla's financial decisions we have some major disruptions. Besides the already-mentioned Rust and Thunderbird examples we also have the years-long rebuild of the extension system where Firefox, once known as the leader in customization, offered less than 20 extensions for its mobile version and deprecated who-knows how many. I find it hard to believe that these actions didn't affect their market share, goodwill, or both.
I am in favor of Mozilla launching initiatives to support the browser, but right now I think they are using the browser to support their initiatives.
> A reverse centaur is just a person with a horse head right?
Well, no. A centaur is a normal person with stronger-than-human legs. That is, it's an augmented person who drives the powerful machinery underneath. Think of a person driving a car.
A reverse centaur is the opposite, namely, a machine making the choices and a frail human following them. In this context, a reverse centaur is an AI spitting thousands of LOC for a human to find the good ones.
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