As I live around the area where this happened and I am well aware of how DB is on this route, this story sounds extremely sketchy - why would the train change lines to the other side of the Rhine and not stop at any of the 17 (!!!) stops along the way to Neuwied? Especially with people in it?
The problem was a broken relay, no trains were able to run for a few hours through Bonn. The official statement said that the trains have stopped and were replaced by buses.
I know how sketchy it sounds, and it was even documented in DB Navigator. But DB makes this information inaccessible a couple of days later in the app, so there is no way to „proof“ it except asking DB itself.
Yes it is! And yes it was a typo! Thank you for finding the link to it. I was trying to find it before but couldn’t find it in official sources, DB deleted it from the official app. It did not stop at Troisdorf though.
It is operated by National Express, but I guess the routing comes from some other company (likely InfraGo)
What a wonderful project the Leihbar is! My local MakerSpace has something similar, but it’s pretty unofficial, you just have to announce what you’ve taken in a public chat.
I’ve often had the problem that I’ve needed a tool and borrowing it from Obi or similar cost more than half the price of a new one so I just bought a variant from Parkside for cheaper or similar price. Keep up the good work!
This is happening in Germany too, but in another form. The delivery is handed personally, you sign or confirm it. The package is sealed, but when you open it, there’s something else in there, usually of the same weight as to not trigger alarm bells along the way. The phone or tablet disappears along the way somehow.
Then you go into a kafkaesque process with Amazon, who say “sure buddy, we sent you something else”, and then you have to file a police report and probably have to claw the money back which leads to the forfeiture of your account.
A good solution I’ve seen from Otto, another big eshop here in Germany is that they seal the package with tape that can’t be removed without damaging either the tape or the box and you are instructed not to accept the package if it’s been tampered with.
In Germany, it sure didn’t help that the 2024 TüV report says that 14% of Tesla Model 3s fail their first inspection, which is done when the car is 2/3 years old (VW is at 3,5 - 7%).
My last car, a Ford Focus, passed the inspections on the first try for 13 years in a row
My experience is that most of the smaller stores actually process the orders fast, but then give the packages to DHL and lately DHL deliver on time only if they feel like it. Last week I had a package that went in the delivery van 3 days in a row before being delivered.
With Amazon however, they probably have an ironclad contract, which they never break. If it says it will be delivered on a specific day, it will also happen
Dunno about Germany but in Belgium there is Crossroads Bank for Social Security which effectively controls the flow of information between various social security and public health organizations: https://www.ksz-bcss.fgov.be/
In its current form, it's a set of SOAP or REST APIs that your organization gets access to after completing paperwork about your needs.
It was established by a 1990 law [1].
There is also a similar legal and technical setup for information on companies [2] where most information is public, and the register of residents [3] which is even more guarded.
Yes, that makes sense, we don’t allow people to connect to our databases directly either, and in any case the systems should be built so they are separated, it’s good architecture.
I was very much more intrigued about the statement that data can’t be easily/legally shared within the same agency
I worked for the equivalent of the IRS for two month in my country (student job basically). When people asked for a deferred payment, i could accept it if it was the first time, but when they asked for a deffered payment the second time, or for reduced taxes (recent job loss, loss of a house or big events like this), i had the mean to verify who the person asking for this was, but not the mean to approve it.
I verified the information and filled a form, then asked for approval. The person approving had no idea who the person asking was (he had no access to the tool i used to match the internal ID to an actual person), but had the form i filled, and approved of the deferred payment/reduced taxes without any knowledge of who asked. Also i did not know who that person was, and he did not know who i was.
All of that is not very effective, but it reduces the risk of corruption from civil servants: you either have limited information, or limited power (this isn't the case with mayor or other elected officials though).
> I was very much more intrigued about the statement that data can’t be easily/legally shared within the same agency
Consider it from this hypothetical perspective: My mom is an analyst in the health service and has database access to produce various reports. Her access is extensive, to allow reporting on things like whether the courses of antibiotics prescribed by doctors are of the recommended length.
Meanwhile, I'm a rebellious teenager. My doctor asks me how often I smoke, drink, take drugs and engage in promiscuous sex. If my doctor enters my answers into my electronic medical record - should my mom be able to look at my record?
The answer, of course, is that her right to access data depends on what she's doing.
This is also true, to some extent. You have to have valid reason to access PII (Personally Identifiable Information). All access is logged and the DPO (The Data Privacy Office, one of the good things GDPR formalized) monitors access on a regular basis.
And since the current understanding is that even the combination of an IP address and a timestamp is personally identifiable... many organizations are actively not collecting usage stats. Which leads to the abuse of public funds, but this is a different story.
But when culture fails you, it's nice to have guardrails. This is why we have a constitution, law, institutions etc. It's defense in depth, it can buy you time and that's important because the more time you have, the higher chances that the wind start blowing in another direction.
This is why the electoral college is a weak point in American democracy and no wonder it was the actual target of the Jan 6th coup attempt, the Capitol invasion being merely a distraction. Weak points like this must sealed over so that the overall system is more robust to attacks.
Well, in Italy the "IRS" (Agenzia delle Entrate) is not allowed to cross-check banking statements with its own data from Tax Returns.
Whenever anyone proposes to allow it, the members of the informal "Party for Tax Evasion" scream and denounce the descent towards "Taxation Fascism". It's so pathetically cheeky, that it feels a bit endearing (how dare them, what rascals!)
I prefer Vaultwarden because it’s much much easier to set up and had only minimal problems, the only one I could think of being some inconsistent behavior when syncing passwords for the clients inside organizations. I find the setting up of Bitwarden locally gruesome.
There was a breaking change when I updated to iOS 18, but by the time I’ve noticed that, it was already fixed in an update.
As a paying customer for the last five years, I can’t wait for an alternative that also allows inline adaptations of the translations, like DeepL does. The quality of the translations is worse now than in the beginning and the customer service is abysmal, should you have a problem
I’m a fluent speaker in the language I am translating to, but have trouble with grammar. I write texts (email, jira tickets etc) in English or my native language and let DeepL translate. I then adapt the translation to sound less machine-y
The problem was a broken relay, no trains were able to run for a few hours through Bonn. The official statement said that the trains have stopped and were replaced by buses.