Tag: germany

Germany fake Phds

reminds me how in austria, seating at formal events is by academic rank.

German law in the past prohibited foreign Ph.D.s from using the title “Dr.” American Ian T. Baldwin, a Cornell-educated professor of ecology in eastern Germany, received a summons from his local police chief in early 2008. “He wanted to know how I planned to plead to the charge of Titelmissbrauch,” or misuse of titles, recalled Prof. Baldwin, who directs the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. “I couldn’t even pronounce it.”

Reindustralize Germany

Germany will likely sleep through the next industrial revolution, and lose, as a result.

German manufacturing is rooted in 19th-century technology. Over decades, industrial companies (including scores of smaller, lesser-known names) have perfected the manufacturing process. German companies generally consider their work to be done once a product leaves the factory. But in the world of Industry 4.0, also called the industrial internet, that’s just the beginning. A matrix of internet-enabled sensors will soon link factories with customers and suppliers to optimize production and service. If German manufacturers don’t embrace the digital shift, they might be quickly overtaken by US and Asian competitors.

2022-11-30: Germany is also culturally completely hopeless, like requiring highly qualified jobs to be in German, which approximately no one speaks.

118m Menschen sprechen Deutsch als Mutter- oder Zweitsprache. 2012 ging man davon aus, dass insgesamt 185m Menschen die deutsche Sprache beherrschen. Davon leben 100m Menschen in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz. Die restlichen 85m machen 1% der Weltbevölkerung aus. Sie sagen also: „Ich will 99 qualifizierte Kandidaten ablehnen, um den einen einzustellen, der zufällig auch noch Deutsch kann.“ Haben Sie denn 100 Bewerber für diese Position? Dann nur zu.

Grave wax

This “grave wax” buildup has disturbed the natural cycle of decay — and created a horror scenario for burial authorities. When bodies don’t decompose, their graves can’t be reused — a common practice in Germany. This widespread problem has given rise to an entire industry that aims to save the day with new methods of rot. The latest innovation on this morbid market is the Swiss-engineered Linder reconditioning system — a severe method that involves deep incursions into cemeteries. After excavating the unusable soil, Linder fills the area with a “custom mixture of topsoil, woodchips and gravel.”

Eurotechnopanic

I wrote a 3000-word essay about Eurotechnopanic — or, Google and the German Problem — that just appeared on Zeit Online. A small backstory:

Zeit is my favorite German publication by far. But I did first approach the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung with this piece because the paper has been at the forefront of Germany’s antitechnology movement and I thought they would welcome discussion … and also because the FAZ had published an 8000-word attack on me and I figured 3000 words was a downpayment on equal time. But the FAZ refused to publish it.

So I went to my favorite newspaper, Die Zeit, and its online editor-in-chief, Jochen Wegner, agreed immediately to publish it. I’m honored to be there. These are important issues in Europe that require more balanced discussion.

Here is the start of the essay in English:

I worry about Germany and technology. I fear that protectionism from institutions that have been threatened by the internet — mainly media giants and government — and the perception of a rising tide of technopanic in the culture will lead to bad law, unnecessary regulation, dangerous precedents, and a hostile environment that will make technologists, investors, and partners wary of investing and working in Germany.

I worry, too, about Europe and technology. Germany’s antiprogress movement is spreading to the EU — see its court’s decision creating a so-called right to be forgotten — as well as to members of the EU — see Spain’s link tax.

I worry mostly about damage to the internet, its freedoms and its future, limiting the opportunities an open net presents to anyone anywhere. 3 forces are at work endangering the net: control, protectionism, and technopanic.

The Gerontovetocracy

Germany’s graying society, it seems, is so cozy and settled that it resists anything threatening to upset the status quo. In the process, it has lost sight of the bigger picture.

increasingly, protest movements are formed by people on death’s door, who have nothing to lose and want to avoid change at any cost.

Germany infrastructure decaying

it’s not just the us that has massive infrastructure problems, it’s everyone except perhaps the chinese, who have invested massively and have the benefit of learning from others by being last. the great rebuilding of the world’s infrastructure will be a major theme for the next 30 years, but will be underreported.

Europe wants to spy too

A main outcome of all these revelations will be that the amateurish spying services in europe will be built up:

It also seems to be difficult for German intelligence agencies to actually track the activities of the NSA. The Americans’ technical capabilities are in many ways superior to what exists in Germany. At the BFV domestic intelligence agency, not even every employee has a computer with an Internet connection. But now, the German agencies want to beef up their capabilities. There are already more than 100 employees at the BFV responsible for counterintelligence, but officials are hoping to see this double.

all the calls by eurocrats to not use american sites make a lot more sense now.

Edward Snowden papers unmask close technical cooperation and loose alliance between British, German, French, Spanish and Swedish spy agencies

i have been amused how naive / hypocritical people have been around the world in assuming that their own governments aren’t spying on them. the funniest are the german politicians that sprout nonsense like the “right to be forgotten” while being fully aware of their own extensive spying.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, received the coveted software program XKeyscore from the NSA – and promised data from Germany in return

2013-12-05: as expected, other countries are working hard to close the gap with the NSA.

Yesterday the 2014-2019 defense bill passed first reading in the French National Assembly. It marks a strong shift towards total online surveillance. If passed, the bill will not only allow live monitoring of everyone’s personal and private data but also do so without judicial oversight, as the surveillance will be enabled through administrative request. The bill also turns permanent measures that were only temporary.