Category Archives: Opinion

NATO’s open door policy

Now, while any small town club is able to reject applications for membership and scholarships are tied to preconditions — and ignoring for a minute that NATO even refused to talk about Russia’s security interests, including its unwillingness to accept … Continue reading

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FLOSS-Developers gone bonkers?

So as I understand under the hashtag #StandWithUkraine some idiots have started supply-chain attacks, targeting Russian and Belarussian targets. I’ll leave the exercise to find the respective repos on GitHub to the inclined reader. Has everyone gone bonkers now? Aside … Continue reading

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Corona Pass

As could already be seen in other EU countries the restrictions are getting more and more ridiculous. The pressure for unvaccinated people is mounting. This account of a Lithuanian man shows the absurdity of the rules once again and how … Continue reading

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Unprofessional, hopeless, Sectigo

In February I applied for an AuthentiCode code-signing certificate for personal projects. I decided to go with KSoftware, a reseller of Sectigo certificates. That was February 15th. TL;DR: More than two months and dozens of emails later I’m none the … Continue reading

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Assange

So turns out — for now! — Assange won’t be extradited. Whether he’ll be set free on bail is yet to be seen, though1. The thing is that the lawyers representing the US government have already said they’ll appeal the … Continue reading

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I don’t feature products often, but this one deserves it

Zalman, a Korean company that filed for bankruptcy a few years ago and is better known for silent CPU and chassis fans and power supplies, is selling a range of devices that are being designed and produced by another Korean … Continue reading

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Oh, so that’s what Republican stands for …

While Trump manages to avoid a concession speech, here’s what one of his most vocal boot-licking sycophants had to say: If we don’t challenge and change the US election system, there will never be another Republican president elected again. President … Continue reading

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Socialist America under Trump

Let us spell it out: E X P R O P R I A T I O N Yes, expropriation. Remind me, wasn’t that a common practice in what some more uneducated Americans would call communist countries1? Expropriation is the … Continue reading

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Dear UN Secretary General Guterres

According to the news and the WEF website you said this (emphasis mine): I think we need to understand the grievances and to understand the reasons why – the root causes of why large sectors of the population in different … Continue reading

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Now, I’m no expert on international law …

… but the belligerent rhetoric between the two vain peacocks ruling the US and North Korea respectively, seems to have already resulted in a full-fledged war according to US-American cyberwar doctrine, it seems. It’s just that the North Koreans, if … Continue reading

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Hey Google, I fixed that for you

No need to thank me! // Oliver

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Re: bad, worse, worst, CAPTCHA, reCAPTCHA

I wrote about reCAPTCHA once before. However, on that day Google made a claim. The claim was that a single click would be enough to tell whether you were a bot or a human. Well, that claim is hogwash. Similarly … Continue reading

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bad, worse, worst, CAPTCHA, reCAPTCHA

Think what you will of Google products. I personally try to avoid them for privacy reasons. But there’s that one Google product that is at the same time the crappiest and most ubiquitous Google product ever conceived. It’s called reCAPTCHA. … Continue reading

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Blame Russia!

Since Trump is slated to win the electoral vote and the DNC and Hillary Clinton blamed Russia during her campaign for all mischief that hit the campaign, why isn’t anyone trying to remove that president elect which allegedly won as … Continue reading

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Dear US-Americans, cut out the middlemen, would ya?

While all the — hopefully embarrassed — pundits and other experts, including the statisticians that produced such an epic fail with their forecasts, are weaning themselves to the notion of President Trump, the press coverage fails — yet again — … Continue reading

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So many questions this morning

Did Hillary already prepare her concession speech? Will Hillary accept the election results or keep us in suspense? How long will Mr. Drumpf’s term be? He’s not going to be as profitable to the MIC1 as Hillary would have been, … Continue reading

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President Trump

Let’s face it, it looks like Trump will win, despite the bitching and moaning of the so-called “liberal” press in the US1. Obviously the US has a certain history of assassinations (or attempts thereof) of its presidents, so it’s possible … Continue reading

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Does the Brexit mean we can have the word “Marmelade” back?

The German loan word Marmelade for any kind of fruit preserve predates the first mentioning of marmalade in English literature by about a century. The real origin can be found in Greek, passed to us via Romance Languages, in particular … Continue reading

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Stupid news story

So currently a story about some Mormon1 from the US-of-A survived two – according to some even three – terror attacks. So in case of yesterday’s attacks in Brussels he was a mere few meters away. Fair enough, I’d count … Continue reading

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Merry Christmas, America! (Don’t be so overly politically correct all the time!)

Language shapes how we think. It changes our mindsets. Not only George Orwell acknowledged this with his novel Nineteen Eighty Four, where MiniTru – the Ministry of Truth – rewrites newspaper articles and manipulates recorded history. I am an atheist, … Continue reading

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