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fredm-de

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While it is true that securing funding for new ventures is much easier in the US compared to Europe, the question how much this contributes to the building of successful and sustainable companies is still unanswered.

The fact that European companies can't afford to burn through cash for decades might lead to better resource/talent allocation. This is visible in the very healthy deep tech industry in Europe.

Right now European companies are very good at solving narrow but difficult problems, whereas American companies seem to be much better at creating consumer facing technology.

I usually listen to podcasts for about 6 hours per week while working out. Mostly these podcasts offer a shallow introduction into a topic, often even point towards the literature behind it. Half of the books I read this year were about things for which podcasts have sparked my interest.

The trigger for the decision was not the recent Chernobyl series but the Fukushima incident combined with an important election. If Fukushima would have happened a month later, Germany probably wouldn't have decided to shut down it's unclear power plants.

On October 28th 2010 the German government (CDU & FPD) voted to prolong the usage of its existing power plants for another 8 years. Fukushima happened on March 11th 2011. Put under pressure by an increasing poll numbers of the (anti-nuclear) Green Party and having a state election upcoming on March 27th the same government decided to close down the power plants.

Sadly, it's not always that easy. A large amount of swiss property is owned by pension funds, which are legally limited in their possible investments. So increasing the supply of housing will also defund the pension funds.

Luxury housing, too, does create supply. Prohibiting the construction of luxury apartments will just end with rich people paying luxury money for standard apartments thus raising prices and people with less financial means will be priced out.

While smartphone camera sensors have come a long way, lens technology did not progress as much. You still have a fixed focal length and quite small fixed aperture.

This means that your cannot control one of your 3 parameters of the exposure triangle, which is a big limitation. Also it leads to the user not being able to control the depth of field. A smartphone camera sensor is still too weak/small to offer good low light performance and your lens isn't sharp enough to allow for radical cropping.

Those are things that amateurs/non-enthusiasts don't realize but lead to any old 35mm film camera being much more capable in the hands of a skilled photographer. That being said, research on computational photography is currently making big steps and could narrow that gap quite a bit.

Here's the problem: Merkel can't politically justify to give Greece more german taxpayer money because it isn't spent wisely. After 5 years of crisis, Greece still has a primary deficit, while maintaining more extensive welfare programs than most EU Members. Even in the case of debt forgiveness, they would still have a massive household deficit and be in the same situation again soon.

So it's not about getting money back, it's about not burning more money.

This strike is so ridiculous. I agree that warehouse work isn't the easiest work(physically), but that's part of not being skilled. If you take a look at the wages Amazon pays (10€ for the first year, 11,77€ in the third year) and take a look at other jobs for the unskilled (McDonalds, DPD, Hermes), you can clearly see that this is actually a decent wage. Especially in the Area of eastern Germany, wich is still economically much weaker than western Germany. I worked part-time in a large themepark for 4 years and none of their regular workers got paid that much. Also they we're mostly unemployed in offseason.

Also consider that there are only about 15% of their workers striking. The Store is drawn much bigger than it actually is.

Also the Union VerDi is just a big Joke. They're not about fair treatment of workers but their own advantage. They're just giving these workers a runaround.