Skip Navigation
reinar reinar @distress.digital
Posts 1
Comments 46
German railway seeks IT admin to manage MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 systems
  • 35 to 40k (if your spouse is choosing tax class with a higher rate) after taxes or around so, depends on many factors - German tax code is complicated.

    Is it enough to live on

    Generally - barely above "paycheck to paycheck" level, but highly depends on location. In Munich you'll be fucked with this type of salary.

    or buy a home

    lmao no. Houses are mainly for older and retired people or rich, vast majority of active workforce are apartment renters, more fortunate ones were able to save/get help from relatives for mortgage. Total home ownership rate in Germany is 46.7%, lowest of all OECD countries - and that's including older people who got their homes during better economic times. Neat trick about Germany is that you have to have both stable job at big company and a lot of cash on your hands to cop a mortgage, since 20% downpayment + taxes/fees and other bullshit that run at around 10% of the total price make good barrier.

    buy a home and support a family

    Not really, adults in the household have to work, 60k is not 'breadwinner' type of salary at all. In general, tech workers aren't special in Germany, if not for US companies branches they'd be earning the same as everyone else and in many industries (like transportation), where pressure from international market is not present that much, they still do.

    It was good while it lasted, but Germany is heading into some pretty interesting times in general, younger population is absolutely fucked.

  • German railway seeks IT admin to manage MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 systems
  • lmao, 60k eur tops. wages in Germany suck ass, earning at least something is possible if you are running independent consulting or climbing corporate ladder, having some unique expertise or going extra mile as an employee is pretty much pointless.

  • Over 5,300 GitLab servers exposed to zero-click account takeover attacks
  • bruh, feels like gitlab has security update every other day, it's some bullshit even for a project this size. And who knows how many 0-days are around.

  • RTX 4070 Super launch day sales are rumored to be a ‘disaster’ – what’s going on with Nvidia’s new GPU?
  • Launch msrp for a HD7850, which was the same category as the 6700XT today (upper middle tier) was 250 usd.

    There's much more effort involved to produce modern GPU now. Either way, if NVidia would be truly greedy, they'd close gaming gpu business right away and would produce only AI accelerators. You can take same 4070, add $200 worth of GDDR chips to the layout and sell this for $15k minimum, shit would be on backorder.

  • Encrypted traffic interception on Hetzner and Linode targeting the largest Russian XMPP (Jabber) messaging service
  • fun fact - lately russian govt started testing out protocol blocking (through dpi), several days ago there were reports of xmpp blocked for everything but jabber.ru.

    warrant was likely received to bust some cybercrime org, jabber is pretty popular in ex-ussr in these circles, the usual question is what happened with this mitm channel after.

  • Spotify re-invented the radio
  • it's like this to eliminate competition, any alternative has to fund marketing costs + unsustainable pricing, while Spotify will be running their ponzi scheme, effectively leveraging their market position.

  • *Permanently Deleted*
  • I get where you are coming from, however it's important to remember that big players are not equal - they have really, really different people in the leadership. Elmo is just a too-big-to-fall clown with insane ego, spez is a manchild who took VC money like there's no tomorrow and in the end had no idea how to provide ROI, but youtube is ran by very competent people with solid track record and deep pockets.

    Maybe they are not too innovative business-wise recently... but they are good at catching up (except live streaming - screen layout is dogshit and nobody wants to get hyped in their tiny chatbox from a fucking google account with family photo as an avatar) and at leveraging what they already have, which is quite a lot, tbh.

  • *Permanently Deleted*
  • Yt makes a series of bad decisions

    It's not like it's making any bad decisions right now. Pretty calculated, I'd say - they feel safe market-wise, so they can increase amount of ads/fight ad-blockers/push people to buy subscription.

  • Starlink Direct to Cell
  • yes, he bought it, now the question is how he will ruin it. I wouldn't want him anywhere near my network traffic, Elmo is the type of guy to run Musk-in-the-middle for shits and giggles, even without any other possible incentives.
    And before any tls or e2e discussion starts - it's still possible to learn quite a lot if you are sitting on the channel level if you don't run vpn on your gateway constantly.

  • Microsoft published a guide on how to install Linux.
  • why not? it's not like there is any competition.
    Microsoft is making more money off Linux with Azure than several red hats combined.

  • What do you all think of Mental Outlaw
  • I'm clueless european now living in a country where guns are generally available to trained and vetted to some degree public and I was always puzzled by US self-defense culture, some parts of it simply do not compute to me.

    Like how does it work? Are gun owners in America spending reasonable amount of time at the range? Any gun is as good as your training. Safe handling should be muscle memory at the very least to promote an individual from a danger to themselves and people around (not necessarily to an attacker) to someone who is able to hold a gun. Then comes actual shooting practice, which will improve chances of achieving intended things with this gun.

    Also strange obsession with high-power calibers, even knowledgeable gun bloggers mentioning things like .357 magnum in self-defense context. Did people really try to shoot them indoors without hearing protection? Do they really mind what's behind their target, i.e your kid sleeping in the room next door. High-powered round is a responsibility, however a lot of people talk about them like they are toys.

    I really hope I'm missing something or maybe gun handling culture is really common knowledge over there not worth mentioning, because looking at the general public pretty much everywhere I've been - there's no way I'd trust them with a gun. It takes some dedication to learn, even if it seems simple.

  • Linux holds a market share of approximately 14% in India.
  • resold oem key is not legal as well.

    only legal options are: get windows with your device or purchase retail for a hunnit $.

    just accept it and pirate.

  • UBI works too
  • safe and sanitary space in Manhattan can cost the same as mansion with a pool somewhere else.

    With current global world simply existing in attractive locations could be luxury.

  • Meta wants to charge EU users $14 a month if they don't agree to personalized ads on Facebook and Instagram
  • zuck's ego fueled endeavors cost money, actual services upkeep and development is a small fraction of it.

    this lizard already has insanely profitable business at hand, but it's hard to combine steady performance for shareholders and shit like metaverse at the same time, so he needs to milk users for even more money.

  • sooo....
  • how do you bump it into something enough to break the latch without messing up bumper, number plate and bonnet? all of it looks intact

  • Cruise robotaxi collides with fire truck in San Francisco, leaving one injured
  • "autonomous vehicle" in the article can't handle most basic shit like emergency vehicle approaching. I've spent enough years in automotive engineering and all of this autonomous drive bullshit is ADAS with a few gimmicks and shouldn't be nowhere near full control of the car, however this got out of hand and this shit is on public roads somehow.

  • Winning is relative
  • Right… to get at that wealth through taxes you would need a wealth tax or a tax on corporate profits along with outlawing stock buy backs.

    No, you just need to prohibit forming 1-man holding companies. Want to have shares? Write them to your own name, not to a shell company's name. That's a first step to get this income at least tied to individual. Or get a hedge fund license, which ultra-rich will do, but they will find a way in any system other than full commie madness.

    That’s not how a progressive taxes work.

    I know perfectly well how progressive taxes work. In majority of cases bonus from employer will be taxed at source at higher tax rate regardless what you plan to spend it to. Even if your plans for these money would be fully deductible, you will still need to have spare cash to cover planned expenses until you get a refund. In case of wealthy person, there's a privilege to optimize your spending first and report/pay taxes later simply because there's no taxation at source involved.

    Well, yes which is why I said I support sovereign wealth funds. That is the state owns portions of companies directly in the same way other shareholders do. This cuts out the wealthy people entirely.

    No, it doesn't unless you propose nationalization. Even if shares in publicly-listed companies will be bought in some way said fund it's still possible to have billions in privately-held company. You can't get something that is not for sale unless you decide to rob.

    So you support lowering incoming taxes and raising taxes on dividends, capital gains, royalties?

    What I'm proposing is irrelevant, the topic was who is paying for European social security. And my point is that it's paid by poor and middle class, since they have no freedom in optimizing and planning their income. You can have tax brackets up to 99%, it's absolutely irrelevant before a discussion what is subject to this tax. However, works well for populism reasons.

    Uhh… yeah we should close that loopholes, right? Even if we didn’t close that loophole I still think its a much better system for healthcare than in the US

    It's not a loophole, it's perfectly normal to have a paying job along with your other income sources. If these other income sources would've been subject for same tax brackets as job income, there wouldn't be a problem.
    US healthcare is a scam which siphons insane amount of money simultaneously from government and people, I don't think there's any valid argument in favor of it.

    Not all that familiar with these kinds of tax dodging schemes within in the EU. But US corporations do similar things with the Cayman Islands.

    Corporations could be established everywhere, corporate tax rate is another topic. In EU it's possible to dodge taxes on your personal income, not corporate, which is not the case for US citizens.

    Perhaps that is how things are but how should things be?

    Again, how things should be is another topic, my original point is that high income taxes and tax brackets with what currently considered as income is cheap populism to shaft middle class. When applied to wealthy people this will catch a few exceptional individual performers like sports players which have no case in declaring their individual ability as company activity (ironically, only on "salary" part of their income - brand deals and royalties will be optimized into oblivion).

    As of what would be fair... Removing VAT, eliminating 1-man holding companies to get assets to individual's name then doing same tax rate and get any income to be subject for same tax brackets and social security contributions as everyday man's salary. Regarding taxation at source and deductions for individuals... well, that would be also fair, but it is operational nightmare.