This has nothing to do with defense anymore – we should be ashamed that we don’t speak out against it far louder…
Klartext, finally
The German AfD – this time the party as a whole entity – is now considered “gesichert rechtsextremistisch”, which means without leaving any further doubt, right extremistic:
This took too much time in my opinion – it was too obvious in case you ever heard them rant against minorities. And thanks God, their voters are a minority themselves! Although, in my opinion, the sheer number of those is frightening as well, and a reason for what we call “Fremdschämen” (something like “cringeworthy”, or better: not wanting to be identified with such a group).
And “Klartext reden” means to not paint things more positive than they actually are… it’s a bit stronger than the translation into “plain text”.
Maybe we should really consider to finally forbid that party. Out of Bundestag with them, that would make plenary sessions much quieter, and a lot more enjoyable to listen to. You’d have my vote for this…
See also in The Guardian, who can explain it in English much better than I could.
Never trust only one source
While heise.de praises a TV from LG as the best buy ever, arstechnica tells more of the real story, namely that our TVs now also spy on us. Reminds me of what my grandma said about her parents – they believed they had to dress properly when sitting in front of a TV, because “they” could see us, too…
And while we all were chuckling with our grandma about this, it seems that times have moved on, and while we don’t (yet) have that Orwellian “Big Brother”, we now seem to have many “Little Brothers” in all of these big global tech companies – no matter where they’re from (like in the case of LG and Samsung, South Korea).
And no, switching off both LAN and WLAN from your “smart” TV is no option, since that would cut off all streaming to and from the device as wll, which would mean: no “Mediatheken“, and no more content even from your computer to the TV. So I want my TV to be as dumb as possible; thanks.
Like always, thanks for reading.
A pretty penny indeed…
Just read an enthusiastic review of the Trek Madone SLR 9 AXS Gen 8 (what a name!) racing bike, which sells for $15,999 in the US of A. By the way I still don’t know how to pronounce their line of racing bikes, is it “Madone” like in “Al Capone”? I’d rather think of these as “Mad One”s 😉
And yes, 15.999 is indeed a hefty sum for a bicycle, don’t you think? I once got a second hand Peugeot racing bike from an uncle of mine (RIP Wolfgang) for IIRC about 200DM or so (100€). Peugeot cycles was the big name during that time, even Eddy Merckx rode one, as you can see here. I know I know, apples and oranges, but I loved that old steel bike, still have a steel bike from another German manufacturer today. And to further compare prices, I think I bought my Honda NTV motorcycle used for about 2.500DM – today you won’t even get a Honda Cub for the same amount in Euros… and our used Toyota Yaris Hybrid was also less than 16k…
Why do I even mention that all here? Because of the latest trade tariffs of the US against China of course. I don’t know much about Trek, but last time I looked, pretty much all of today’s modern carbon frames were made either in Taiwan (which is the world’s number 1 bicycle maker), or in mainland China. And now imagine +145% tax for importing these into the US – that same bike could soon cost north of 30k or so – which will make it a hobby for the rich I guess. Which would be, as mentioned in the headline, a pretty penny indeed, way out of reach for mere mortals. Crazy times, aren’t these?
I’m happy with our steel bikes which 10 years ago did cost some 800€ or so each. More than enough for me, even if I can’t race with that one, but who cares?
As always, thanks for reading.
Update, from April 22nd, 2025: it had to come; everyone except a sad clown in the white house knew it (or he doesn’t care)…
RIP DivestOS…
Oh my – bad news from last December which I saw only now: Tavi, lead and sole developer of DivestOS (see Wikipedia EN, DE) announced in his project news that he ends support of the project immediately:
“I believe the projects were highly successful in their goals, however this month will mark the end. DivestOS and its apps will not receive any further updates.”
Very sad news indeed, as this was the one project which saved us all from throwing away our old devices, keeping up updates and thus, security as long as it could. Which means that from now on we have to rely solely on the time span provided by our hardware vendors like Apple, Google, Samsung, or Xiaomi to name a few. And even GrapheneOS, the most secure system of them all only supports (google only) devices only as long as hardware vendors (of the internals, like Qualcomm and others) do. After that, they’re toxic waste.
Maybe it’s time to go back to dumb phones next time, me thinks – for those of us who really need mobile phones at all (I certainly don’t). Let’s see.
As always, thanks for reading.
Yddoh
“Your daily dose of horror”. Or so I thought after more or less “innocently” clicking on a video link to the intenet’s biggest video site to watch Nat King Cole’s “Calypso Blues“. And no, I’m not using a login on that site, and my browser also doesn’t save any cookies from it – but on the right hand side, in their “suggestions” about what to watch next, I saw several video links which point to the extreme far right party here in Germany (won’t even name them), or to “reports” about them from some self-centered “influencers” or “mentors”.
Enough of that; really. Enough of automatically tracking my IP address coming from Germany and suggesting such far right crap. Oh, and have you tried using their main page without being logged in? You won’t see much, and if you do, you’ll see what’s “trending” – which makes you shake your head about mankind, really. Try it via some 3rd party site to save you from your own filter bubble, and which at least covers where you’re coming from… that is what I’d call “Yddoh”.
So at the moment I’m really considering to boycott that site once and for all – with deleting all of my own stuff there first of course. And to do that, I’d have to log in one last time.
And yes, it really would be the last time, since I don’t log in into anything Google or Apple even when using my mobile phone – I have something far better than their clouds, and I also can do without their “app stores”, thank you very much. I’m using Flickr far less since I unsubscribed from their paid “Pro” service, and opened an account in the Fediverse instead – not much to see there yet, but who knows? And maybe I should do the same with video – I’m not a big “content creator” in that art form anyway. So in case I will delete everything from that big video site, this will also be the end of my accounts with Google – deleted the Apple one right after I had to give back the iPhone SE to my last employer.
And for now, back to more pleasant things. And thanks for reading, as always.
2025
A new year has started, but there isn’t that much to report, or so I think.
This is the year that Microsoft will stop supporting their operating system Windows 10, so everyone including the ARD and the CCC are recommending to upgrade rather sooner than later, and if Microsoft thinks that your machine isn’t fit for Windows 11, try Linux instead. I still remember that old joke where someone wrote: “The box said to install Windows 7 or better – so I installed Linux” 😉
Yesterday one year ago I bought a fitness tracker, and started to investigate in free software for it, using Gadgetbridge since January 10th, 2024. You can search this page for the term “Xiaomi” in case you’re interested. The main thing for me is the step counting, and that my data isn’t saved in some 3rd party cloud, neither in China nor in the USA. Anyway, since last year I have now walked over 4.2 million steps, so that’s a bit more than 10,000 steps a day, and I’m planning to continue this. With a step length of about 75cm, that would sum up to over 3,100km so far, so I’d say that I’d have covered Europe by now… and maybe reach my father-in-law’s after some 3 years or so 😉
What else is new? Oh, I volunteered to assist with the upcoming elections here in Germany. In case you’re not sure whom to vote for, from 6th of February you could consult the “Wahl-O-Mat” again. What would also help to reach informed decisions is to stop living in your “filter bubble“, or “Filterblase” like we say here in Germany. So it could help to stop using search engines which belong to giant companies, and also to avoid (a-) social media sites and services which belong to tech billionaires, like my friend Peter just did – bravo to him!
So – let’s hope that this year will be better than the last one, and that we can continue using more and more renewable energy; Germany is on a good way here even if we broke the 1.5° barrier already. So don’t throw away your old PCs which I mentioned above, and also your old mobile phones – use alternative operating systems instead, and save money and toxic waste. I wish us all a good new year 2025.
And like always, thanks for reading.
In German /Auf Deutsch: Denk ich an Deutschland…
“Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht, dann bin ich um den Schlaf gebracht”
Heinrich Heine, Nachtgedanken, 1844
Was Heinrich Heine von 180 Jahren schrieb fällt mir ein wenn ich Nachrichten und Umfragen wie diese sehe…
Edit: … und ja, natürlich weiß ich daß er das vom Exil in Paris aus schrieb, und daß er vor Allem seine Mutter vermißte die er nicht sehen konnte. Heine meinte das also weniger politisch, auch wenn man zwischen den Zeilen einige Hinweise auf seine eher unfreiwillige Ausreise bekam – Deutschland mochte ihn zu dieser Zeit nicht.
Egal; an diese Zeilen denk ich oft wenn ich an Deutschland denke… auch wenn meine Gründe andere sind als die von Heinrich Heine. Einen frohen vierten Advent wünsch ich Allen die das feiern.
In German / Auf Deutsch: Lesenswert…
… ist der Artikel “Perle Europas” von Elena Wolf in der Stuttgarter Kontext: Wochenzeitung. Allein schon wegen des “Kasperletheaters”. Aber bitte trotzdem nicht ultra-rechts wählen. Nicht mal schwarz – die haben die ganze Misere ja erst verbrochen die “die Ampel” jetzt nicht mehr viel Zeit hat noch ausbaden zu müssen…
Und wie immer: danke für’s Lesen. Und die kontextwochenzeitung ist einen Bookmark wert, trotz des Stuttgarter Lokalkolorits. Immerhin werdet Ihr nicht von Trackern verfolgt…
Just told my better half…
… that each time she turns on the TV, I see either politicians, or cops in a series. Seems we Germans love to be ruled and punished…