Category: current affairs

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A ‘Thank You!’ to BigBrotherAwards

Have you ever visited their site? Maybe you should…

I just read the BigBrotherAward 2019 in der Kategorie Verbraucherschutz (in German) which went to Zeit Online for their paywall which basically lets you choose to either pay with money or with your data – something that 75% of all online news magazines seem to do now as the article and speech said.

And yes, I’ve seen the same paywall at spiegel.de or heise.de – and no, that *is* not acceptable. If you click “yes, go on”, the heise guys for instance will send your data to >200 “partner” sites all over the globe – so I just asked a member of the EU commission if we can’t stop these practices, for instance with forcing them to add the option “yes to ads, but no to tracking”.

Maybe we should all say “no” instead, and boycott these data tracking sites? If they’d all lose their readers like the British “Times” which lost over 90% of their audience when using similar techniques, then maybe that would stop them… according to Wikipedia (search for something like “Paywall”), some US news magazines are already taking these trackers off…

Thanks to digitalcourage, DVD, ILMR, and CCC for supporting these BigBrotherAwards!

And to you, like always, thanks for reading.

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Auf Deutsch: Corona und Freiheitsrechte

Direktor des Bonifatiushauses Fulda Gunter Geiger im Gespräch mit Dr. Patrick Liesching, Leitender Oberstaatsanwalt der Staatsanwaltschaft Fulda:

Online-Akademie Bonifatiushaus: Corona und Freiheitsrechte

Das Video ist am 8 May 2020 hochgeladen worden, also bitte nicht wundern wenn manche Aussage nicht ganz aktuell klingt.

Wie immer: vielen Dank für’s Lesen und für’s Zuschauen.

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Anti Covid jabs

Got my first vaccination against the COVID-19 disease on Monday evening, with the AstraZeneca vaccine. Just like our chancellor and vice chancellor who both had the same as well.

Tuesday morning I felt nothing at all, no side effects – but that changed quite a bit during the day: first I felt cold and feverish a bit (didn’t measure anything tho), then I developed a real headache which also didn’t want to go away after taking an Aspirin 500, and around the evening there was also sickness involved, couldn’t really eat.

So I went to bed early, at around 9 or so, and slept through, dreaming some wild stuff, but next morning (Wednesday) I was back to normal again, and since then I’m more or less without any further symptoms.

Too early perhaps for a conclusion, but yesterday a friend from Paris reported almost the same – he wrote “i feel a bit like i’ve been trampled by a herd of buffalos this morning…”

My wife and a colleague of hers who both work in a Kindergarten had their dose a few weeks earlier, and just continued working, unlike their boss who suffered as she told me with a remark like: “Men…”

So let’s see. To feel sick and bad for half a day is still far better than catching that virus, that’s why I would recommend getting the jab to everyone who has the chance to, and is offered one of those.

As always, thanks for reading.

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Working from home

I’m sitting at our dining room table with my notebook from work, preparing for the last day of the first week of working at home. Still a bit early (as usual), so I’ve turned on the Wikiloops One World Radio, which looks like this:

Screenshot from 2020-03-20 07-56-42

As you can probably see you don’t have to have an account or being logged in to listen to this, so go and have a listen if you like – it’s nice and it’s free.

I was productive this week, without having all of the colleagues around me, so as I thought (or knew) I can concentrate on work much better in silence and in solitude – but it’s still something else, this. Unreal somehow, the thought that this might go on for weeks or even months.

And holidays? Hm. Strange thought.

Ok, off to work right now. Take care, be safe, and stay healthy everyone. Thanks for reading.