Alternative ODes surely do have better privacy than Android, but that’s probably not sufficient. On Smartphones, there runs not a single CPU like on a laptop, but more like 5 computers and only one of them is controlled by the OS. For example, there is a baseband processor and a radio modem. And the SIM card is a computer. And part of these can be controlled remotely (have you ever wondered how your phone automatically re-programs it parameters when you change providers?).

And then there are gaps in authentication in the radio prozocol: Your phone / SIM card authenticates against a radio tower so that the right phone user pays the bill. But the phone has no way to detect a rogue mobile tower…

It seems to be just accepted that everyone is going to jump to another company every couple years (usually due to companies not giving adequate raises).

Well. I did the last jump because the quality was so bad.

Always funny these companies that want a “market-driven approach” - obviously thinking “nah, things won’t change in a loooong time” and then moaning that they are going out of business because the market has changed as everyone knowledgeable was predicting.

Also note that some registrations are done by car dealers, so the number of new cars registered is not the same as the number of cars bought by people, and these will not be bought at the nominal price.

And that’s also the consequence of using a “market-driven approach”. If you want the market to take care of the clean energy transition by pricing, you accept that any companies that don’t adapt will go bust.

So, if you are fine with paying ten times more for fuel, you can run your car with hydrogen.

Munich is making good progress on cycle lanes! ☺

The ironic thing is that all this won’t help the German car industry at all. The transition to EVs is inevitable and it is coming fast. For Germany, this means that a lot of people in so far pretty well-off regions are either going to need new jobs, or will depend on welfare - the same way as coal workers in the Ruhr area in the 1980ies, or ship builders in Bremerhaven, Glasgow and Manchester in the 90ies.

Regulations were very careful in the beginning, but now it is that basically anyone can plug in a system like this and register it.

To note, there were some technical challenges, of course the plug needs to be safe when it is not plugged in, and the system switches off when the power fails, which is also for safety - these are not autonomous or “island” systems though of course, solar can be used for that.

On top of that, you can now get used ones for about half the new prices.

By the way: One reason why electricity from the grid is relatively expensive in Germany is that private consumers pay much higher prices than large, power-hungry companies. Effectively, consumers are subsidizing companies, which in turn can often profit from very low prices for power from solar generation, because companies can buy from exchange markets at spot prices, but private persons can’t.

Balcony solar plants shift that tilted balance back a bit.

The thing is that the misinformation that “reducing car traffic would harm business” is still being spread again and again, so it is necessary to repeat the facts.

I am physicist and software engineer. My current Linux desktop PC is now 16 years old, from 2009, and with 8-core CPU and 16 GB RAM is still plain over-powered for running Emacs and rustc under Debian and Arch in VM. It is only the third desktop computer I own. I bought the second one in 1999, and that one had an AMD K6 (Pentium-like) CPU with 300Mhz clock, running S.u.S.E. Linux, and I used it for writing uni stuff and my PhD thesis on digital speech processing. The first PC I owned was a old PC with an Intel 80386 CPU which my uncle gave me in 1995. I could barely run Word 6.0 on Windows 3.11 on it (MS Word became very instable for larger documents), but LaTeX (emTeX) was running totally fine (after installing it from about 30 floppy disks).

So, to sum up: Using Linux you will save a ton of money for hardware.

That was how Germany lost its leading position in science in the 1930ies. It was not only Einstein but loads of world-renonwned scientists which emigrated. It even marked the end of German as a common language for top-level science publication.

What’s going on is clearly not good for the mental health of people.

See also:

Leading UK tech investor warns of ‘disconcerting’ signs of AI stock bubble

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/01/leading-uk-tech-investor-warns-of-disconcerting-signs-of-ai-stock-bubble

See also: “The AI bubble is the only thing keeping the US economy together, Deutsche Bank warns”

https://www.techspot.com/news/109626-ai-bubble-only-thing-keeping-us-economy-together.html