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macbr

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physics is what you study if you couldn't do engineering

Wdym "couldn't do"? Nobody here is studying Physics for the job opportunities but I'd say everybody who makes it past semester 4 genuinely loves Physics otherwise they'd be studying something easier.

I record my travels using travelynx and this is how Deutsche Bahn has been faring:

- 2022: 15512 km travelled, spent 150:23 in trains, timetable: 148:42

- 2023: 9818 km travelled, spent 121:01 in trains, timetable: 118:39

- 2024: 11614 km travelled, spent 129:28 in trains, timetable: 127:48

- 2025: 10636 km travelled, spent 116:21 in trains, timetable: 109:58

This year was skewed upwards by a 3 hour delay because some teenagers managed to get into a railway tunnel causing a track closure for multiple hours...

A lot of times the time you save by going for high speed rail is still worth it.

To be fair: if you're doing a Masters degree the grade you end up getting on your Bachelors degree is pretty unimportant and Masters usually isn't graded that harshly.

But yeah, we had exams with 70% failing.

A Fachhochschule (Wikipedia calls them "university of applied sciences") in Germany is very similar to a university but as they're less research oriented and usually (with some notable exceptions) don't have the ability to grant doctoral degrees. AFAIK none have the permission to grant the ability to become professor (Habilitation). They also usually have a limited selection of subjects.

There are also Technische Universitäten (Technical University) which are "proper" universities with the ability to grant doctorates and the ability to become professor.

So Fachhochschulen are a separate thing from both Berufsschule (vocational school) and universities.

At least with the Venus probes they were only publicly announced when they were well on their way to Venus with failures either not getting published or getting assigned alibi mission goals (e.g. if they failed to leave earth's orbit) so failure modes were limited to the destination.

From the Wikipedia page:

The frequency initially chosen for Galileo would have made it impossible for the US to block the Galileo signals without also interfering with its own GPS signals. [...], but they have since reached the compromise that Galileo is to use different frequencies. This allows the blocking or jamming of either GNSS without affecting the other.

Interesting

Oh, yeah. No non-ASCII in the “machine readable” part. Though I’ve never seen anything use that section. My national id card also has a “machine readable” section – but that doesn’t even contain my whole name: It’s just cut off after 20 letters.

I’m aware of a party in Germany which, at some levels, uses Nextcloud to great success so I could imagine them pushing for it in their fraction. No idea why that wouldn’t work though given that they have tons of experience

The main reason the Apollo program wouldn't happen today is safety:

The first Apollo test (unfueled) had three astronauts die due to an electrical fire! At the time Apollo 10 launched the lunar module wasn't finished yet (they wouldn't have been able to get back from the moon because it was too heavy). Apollo 16 and 17 by chance missed the 1972 solar storm by months - if an astronaut had been outside the Earth's magnetic field during the storm they have received a potentially lethal dose of radiation. One reason why after Apollo 17 the rest of the flights were cancelled even though the rockets etc. were already ordered or even built and why it took until 1981 (apart from Apollo–Soyuz) to get humans into space again.

Having read through the links you provided: You are comparing two different things. DB’s Reisendenpünktlichkeit takes in delays caused by missed connections etc. SBB’s 3 minute delay are just the individual train delays. For that DB has a similar measure which defines punctual as below 6 minutes of delay. So the difference is big (3 vs 6 minutes) but not that big (3 vs 15 minutes).

Note that trains to Zurich and Basel SBB then end in Basel Bad (or sometimes they let it go to Basel SBB). It’s a separate train station in Basel which is run by Deutsche Bahn so it’s not literally “turning back at the border”.

IIRC Swiss passengers waiting in Basel SBB get a replacement train travelling at the original time.

As someone studying Physics (Bachelor) in Germany Jackson is what my electrodynamics professor recommended. My professor greatly shortened the chapter maxwell in matter and opted to give an intro into quantum electrodynamics instead.

At my uni it's a fourth semester course with theoretical mechanics (second semester) and quantum mechanics (third semester) preceeding it.