U-Bahn is a closed circle so not much happens (except accidents). The issue is with shared rails and there is too much traffic. On the road there is also a lot of delay but it's more accepted because oneself is in charge. Using the train gives up control so you've got easier someone to blame.
For me personally I didn't notice the downtime in the first hour or so. When using some website assets were not loading, but that's it. Turnstile outage maybe impacted me most. Could be because I'm EU based and Cloudflare is not "so" widespread here as in other parts of the world.
Free speech ends when it conflicts with the law or the rights of others - for example, the right to make a free voting decision. Spreading fake news or knowingly lying is not free speech, but rather an abuse of the term.
Yes, I may not have described it well. The "try" only refers to "if the other bank is bankrupt, they get stuck with the loss" - they don't have to argue with the other bank. So unless PayPal's bank fails, it's a very simple process for the customer's bank.
In general, the bank of the entity initiating the debit will only let someone initiate debits to the extent to which they'd be willing to give them a loan.
yeah, but a choice between "ad+tracking" and "no-ads,no-tracking,payment" is not GDPR compliant. It's just that a huge part of EU newspapers do not like it leading to very long outdrawn court proceedings, and other issues.
Basically GDPR says you have to make it as simple to use your site with and without "tracking".
The important part here is it says "without tracking" not "without ads", so the choice presented is intentional deceptive and misleading. There is no technical reason to not have GDPR complaint ads, it's just that web ad market is dominated by a few quasi monopolies (leading Google) and they don't like "not targeted" advertisement at all.
What they theoretically have to provide is the choice between "targeted ad, tracking", "untargeted ad, no tracking" or "no ad, no tracking, payment".
That is not a GDPR violation, no. Most German newspapers do this, and it has been tried in court - it's legal. The court only mandated that the subscription fee cannot be substantially higher than the value of the data that would have otherwise been sold.
Yeah it is, if courts decided otherwise then courts decided wrong, the GDPR is very clear and explicit about this:
> Consent is presumed not to be freely given if [...] the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is dependent on the consent despite such consent not being necessary for such performance.
It's basically the status quo for German websites. This seems legally settled for now unless some appellate court strikes it down, and even that won't happen any time soon.
As a user it's just odd to see German websites do this so differently from Dutch or British websites.
What should be made illegal is how all those German popups do this really grating 3D animation effect upon closing. Do you know what I mean? Not the one at heise.de, but most of these forms seem to have this built in.
> That is not a GDPR violation, no. Most German newspapers do this,
and pretty much all of them are in GDPR violation
just due to long dragged out court proceeding and a lot of lobby power or lets be honest corruption there have been no wide spread consequences
btw. a lot of them have a very hidden 3rd "no tracking, no payment" option which might display non-targeted ads based on the content viewed and is the actual legal required alternative (instead of the "pure abo") this is still not quite legal but much easier to worm yourself through the legal system with
Most website also tried to click a hundred different buttons to opt out - that wasn't legal either. Just because enforcement hasn't caught up yet doesn't mean it's not a GDPR violation.
I think the numbers in the article are mixed up.
Earnings 200k. Wage 120k. So the profit is 80k for the calculation. 80×13,75=1.100k. 60% of it = 660k.
Personal tax at 120k income = 45%. More likely less as for health insurance, etc.
660k×45% = 297k exit tax.
Which can be paid in 7 yearly rates. So 42k per year. You still have a company that has earnings of 200k.
This means the person has to move to a country with 0% income tax for this to make any economic sense, so that's either Monaco or the UAE then. Very difficult for me to understand why someone is supposed to pay this tax in the first place, the business paid a whole bunch of other taxes in its lifetime.
I would understand if they'd tax the sale of the business.
That is actually the intention: to tax as if you sold the business. But with a payment in 7 yearly rates. The tax intends to tax the value of the company that is not yet taxed (on a personal tax level). It does account for already paid businesses level taxes.
Its purpose is to avoid business owners to move to a low-tax place 12 months before selling their business and then move back to Germany another 12 months later, thus avoiding any tax on the increase in value of the business.
Keep in mind there are two methods for taxation: the simplified earnings value method (13.75 factor) or the actual unrealized profit of the business. If you believe your company will not be profitable in the future because you’re moving away, you could wind it down — but you’d still end up paying the same taxes on the unrealized gain.
Why does it matter if I believe if my company is going to be profitable or not?
I have no idea what happens. It may be more profitable, it might be less profitable, it might go bankrupt. It's impossible to predict.
This is especially true for small companies because outcome depends on what the founder does in the future. Taxing future efforts which are going to be outside of the country is just ridiculous.
It also depends on how the company is valued:
If based on balance sheet (retained profits + share capital) e.g. 5×100k retained = 500k value, the exit tax is 18k/year for 7 years.
If simplified earnings method with factor 13.75 is used it much higher valuation, the exit tax is at the 42k/year.
Gave me also a better feeling. GPT-5 is not immediately changing the world but I still feel from the demo alone its a progress. Lets see how it behaves for the daily use.
