* Posts by Holtsmark

128 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Jul 2008

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Let’s check in with that 30,000-job $10bn Trump-Foxconn Wisconsin plant. Wow, way worse than we'd imagined

Holtsmark Silver badge

Re: Too funny.

The reason why the story is only being pushed by FOX news opinionists and their likes is that the story reeks so badly that even the NYP journalists that had to write the story refused to put their names behind it.

This is not a matter of censorship, it is a matter of lack of believability, and a matter of stopping more damage being done to an already weakened democracy.

Future airliners will run on hydrogen, vows Airbus as it teases world-plus-dog with concept designs

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Re: Looks good to me

What is often overlooked with Hindenburg and other airship disasters (R101) is that these airships were not filled with pure Hydrogen, but rather with a mix of Hydrogen and various gasses found in the air.

Low internal pressure, low technology membranes (see goldbeater's bladder) and long periods between hydrogen exchange meant that hydrogen could slowly permeate out of the lifting bladders, while atmospheric gases, including oxygen could permeate in.

After a while, a Hydrogen airship of that era would fly with a pre-mixed combustible gas-mix.

Should anyone decide to build a modern airship with Hydrogen lifting gas, then the would need to find a way to scrub all oxygen out of the lifting gas. The first thing that comes to mind is to use something similar to a mining lamp to burn off Oxygen while consentrations are low.

I have little experience with liquid Hydrogen, but we have flown using pressurised Hydrogen.

The pressure vessels are massive, and I would expect them to be found intact on the crash-site. Safety systems like in-tank valves prevent uncontrolled leakage.

As long as the system is not allowed to leak into a large enclosed volume, like a garage or a hangar, the assosiated risks are limited.

The ease of ignition of Hydrogen vs. JP1 is somewhat a moot point. There have been more than enough airliner accidents to demonstrate that a hot jet engine can easily ignite JP1. With Hydrogen, escaped gas moves up, up and aawaaay. JP1 can trickle towards the hot engine minutes after having been released.

The Battle of Britain couldn't have been won without UK's homegrown tech innovations

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Re: Jingoistic Juices are flowing

The British, much thanks to the US and Doolittle, could fuel their spitfires with higher octane fuels, yielding higher power rates than available to the Germans.

It is my impression (which might be incorrect) that the German engine technology in a number of ways was more advanced than allied technolog. The superior allied fuel negated this edge.

Still.. I am convinced that the British would have lost the battle of Britain were it not for support from allies, and future allies, occupied or unoccupied.

You have much to be proud of, but you should also be humble about it.

Ex-Apple engineer lifts lid on Uncle Sam's top-secret plan to turn customized iPod into 'Geiger counter'

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Re: Apple should launch this for the public.

"Ammonia Nitrate (a common fertiliser)"

..Uhm.. Next time you get out of the bunker, you might want to read about Lebanon.

You do not need to explain ammonium nitrate anymore.

Germany is helping the UK develop its COVID-19 contact-tracing app, says ambassador

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Re: In the interim, the British government has been forced to adopt human-powered contact tracing

Germanyy has been running human-powered contact tracing all along.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/contact-tracing-coronavirus-germany/2020/05/24/7e59a668-93c1-11ea-87a3-22d324235636_story.html

It is not a matter of one or the other, it is a matter of overlapping efforts to try to cover as many of the gaps as possible.

Holtsmark Silver badge

It has an English translation.

My phone has the OS set to English, so the app automatically chose the English interface (nice and minimalistic).

Bluetooth has to be switched on (a sacrifice that I am more than willing to make).

An effect on battery drain has not bee noticed.

When available; get it!

EU aviation wonks give all-electric training aeroplane the green light – but noob pilots only have 50 mins before they have to land it

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Re: The silence of the lands

Half of the noise of a conventional GE aircraft can easily come from the prop.

In order to make an electric plane silent, you need to install a prop with a sufficiently low disk loading. This may require moving toe prop away from the nose.

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"The EU Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has certified its first all-electric aeroplane for routine use"

Hmmm..

what comes first, 2006 or 2020?

https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/EASA-TCDS%20A%20092%20E1%20Antares%20issue%202.pdf

Off course, one is an aircraft built around and optimized for electric flight, the other is a conventional looking aircraft with an electric propulsion option.

A real loch mess: Navy larks sunk by a truculent torpedo

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Re: Similar to...

I am pretty certain that that should read "Obituary request.."

(Currently making sure that the next generation also gets to grow up in the Discworld)

Airbus and Rolls-Royce hit eject on hybrid-electric airliner testbed after E-Fan X project fails to get off the ground

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Re: Electric planes?

It must also be noted that the efficiency of a combustion based energy conversion has a maximum efficiency of approximately 35% (diesel ICE), whereas an electric machine operates n the high nineties.

Furthermore, an electric drive-train allows numerous advantages with regards to propulsive integration.

Undesired wake interactions can be avoided. Propeller disk loading can be optimized (yielding higher propeller efficiencies at lower speeds). Boundar layer ingestion and propeller / wingtip vortex interactions can be used to further reduse aerodynamic losses.

Electric drive-trains also lend themselves to high redundancy architectures, which increases safety and allows for what would otherwise be deemed to be "risky" strategies like blown wing designs (NASA), further reducing the required wing area and thus drag.

Finally, maintenance- and operational cost can be significantly reduced with an electric drive-train.

These are all things that are being studied intensely, but which will require a number of key technologies to mature before being widel adapted. And meanwhile, the cumulative effect of a couple of percent's worth of annual improvements in efficiencies for conventional aircraft means that there will be a certain amount of catch-up to do as well.

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It may be worth noting that the Siemens electric aircraft propulsion unit was aquired by Rolls Royce in October 2019

https://www.rolls-royce.com/media/press-releases/2019/01-10-19-rr-completes-acquisition-of-siemens-electric-and-hybrid-electric-aerospace-propulsion.aspx

This means that Siemens position in the project is irrelevant.

From Amanda Holden to petrol-filled water guns: It has been a weird week for 5G

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Re: Who'd have thought

ou mean acronyms like UKIP and ERG right?

Official: Office 365 Personal, Home axed next month... and replaced by Microsoft 365 cloud subscriptions

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>DUMMY MODE ON<

US prez Donald Trump declares America closed to those flying in from Schengen zone over coronavirus woes

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Re: They'll see the worst of it

The problem with enacting a lockdown in the US with the current state of right wing "hyperpartisanship", is that this will most likely bring out all the nutcases that desire to "protect themselves against the guburmint" with gun in hand.

EU court tells prudish IP office to fack off for balking at 'fack ju' trademark application

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Re: "MACAFUCKER" (In the Night garden anyone?)

Being up to date, I first misread the C for a G and found it to be quite proper.

Sad times..

China-US tariff tiff, Brexit, and a crap economy: Why OEMs spent $56bn less on semiconductors last year

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Please inform me which bit of the statement is childish?

"The trade war between China and the US looks to be abating" ..I can not determine whether this is accurate, but I can not see anthing childish about it..

"though with a certain" ..words

"unpredictable" see exhibit A

"orange-faced" see exhibits B to ZZ

"loon" .. if implying waterfowl, then inaccurate.. if implying nutcase, then I refer to the The Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library, as well as many many hamberders, umbrellas, invisible F35s, truck-horns etcetera .

"in the White House" ..regrettable, but not childish.

Having not experienced the cold war at its deadliest heights, I have only for the last 3 years started to feel some of the exsistential fear of not knowing wheter someone, on a whim, will screw up for all of us tomorrow. It is not a nice feeling.

The senate missed a great opportunity to make the world a safer place yesterday.

So you locked your backups away for years, huh? Allow me to introduce my colleagues, Brute, Force and Ignorance

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Re: Crazy Hammer Guy

A 19" rack shouls be enough

Tea tipplers are more likely to live longer, healthier lives than you triple venti pumpkin-syrup soy-milk latte-swilling fiends

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Re: Nothing new here

El Reg being a British (soon to be English) Rag, I expected some downvotes for that comment :)

I just find it funny how the "nation of tea drinkers" often serve stuff that more or less comitted tea-drinkers from the rest of the world find awfull..

Anyway.. to each his own.. It all depends on what one is used to.

Holtsmark Silver badge

Re: Nothing new here

Having tried the "teas" available in the UK, I can onl comiserate with you for trying to make these liquid horrors drinkable. But do not despair.. There is more to tea than that which can be found on the shelves of Tesco.

/me pours himself a cup of "Prinz von Homburg", a green tea blend from his local tea store, which by now is being exported to friends and familyy all over the world..

Blackout Bug: Boeing 737 cockpit screens go blank if pilots land on specific runways

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Re: ...

The big diference is that combat aircraft are expected to fly into areas where small bits of heavy metal often traverse through the airspace at supersonic velocities. Thus the chances of a turbine taking damage and shedding bits are intrinsic to the design. In civil flight, the design objective is for this kind of situation not to occur in the first place. Statistics show that this design objective is by and large valid.

Yet, when I fly, I try to avoid seating witin the ballistic cylinders of the engines, which has the added advantage of reducing noise levels where I sit.

Vote rigging, election fixing, ballot stuffing: Just another day in the life of a Register reader

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"Theo" must have had too much spare time in 2016

Brit consumers still holding off on buying new PCs until that Brexit thing is over and done with

Holtsmark Silver badge

Re: Is it really brexit?

Revenant wrote:

"This quote: ... makes it clear that it is a Europe-wide problem."

Do you really believe that Brexit uncertainty is not creating Europe- or world-wide problems?

The clusterf*ck of Brexit shenanigans combined with the unpredictable orange genious taking loudly and carrying a small d*ck makes EVERBODY uncertain about what will come next. Uncertainty leads to reduced investments.. which leads to economical slow-downs.. which leads to brexiteers happily quoting lacklustre performance in the rest of the EU as a reason to go ahead with their destructive idiocy.

I am convinced that Brexit can trigger a worldwide recession which will be destructive for everyone.. but mostly so for the UK.

also:

Reading a BBC hys from outside of the UK has become extremely depressing because it daily demonstrates the level of thinking that is behind the whole thing, and it is not a pretty sight.

Bad news: Earth is not going to be walloped by asteroid 2006 QV89. Good news: Boffins have lost sight of it, so all hope is not yet lost

Holtsmark Silver badge

Nope.

They will not be able to find the earth, claim that they visited the earth, but nobody was there to receive the asteroid, and then return it to sender.

..Which, for the first time in the history of mankind, would be Hermes doing something useful with a shipment...

Hell hath no fury like a radar engineer scorned

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Re: 2.5MW

The Triton (Maritime Global Hawk) is not a stealthy aircraft designed to operate in wartime conditions.

Seeing that it was operating in (or above) civilian airspace, and that there was (up to the last second) no shooting war going on, it is not unlikely that the transponder was switched on as well.

Blighty's online pr0n gatekeepers are begging for a regulatory beating, says digital rights org

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Re: World firsts

Not exactly a chainsaw, but close enough:

https://youtu.be/ZjMO3PVCjvU

Gonna be so cool when we finally get into space, float among the stars, work out every day, inject testosterone...

Holtsmark Silver badge

"You can't get pregnant in space, because the guy has no way to get an erection"

You might want to read "Riding Rockets" by Mike Mullane. Apart from being an extremely entertaining book, it puts your fears of lack of girder rigidity due to lack of percievable gravity very much at rest.

Hackers bragged that pretty vanilla breach included FBI watchlist? Well, colour us shocked

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SSSSSSSHH!

Every time you mention that website which shall not be named, a telemarketeer earns his horns..

UK spy overseer: Snooper's Charter cockups are still getting innocents arrested

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Re: re: Well it clearly hasn't made a jot of real world difference so far,

I seem to recall that X stopped a number of versions of Y not long before Y decided to get out of underneath X. Currently going through #3blokes in a pub . Scary stuff you are heading towards..

Holtsmark Silver badge

Well,

at least there is the ECJ to keep overly snooping-friendly lawmakers under control,

..oh..

..nevermind.

See you in April!

Hubble 'scope camera breaks down amid US govt shutdown, forcing boffins to fix it for free

Holtsmark Silver badge

Re: How many Shuttles could have been kept operative..

Thumbs up for "Riding Rockets".

My copy was recursively lent out, and endet up in the hands of a NASA engineer who knew most of the characters in the book personally. After falling of the chair laughing, this guy then ended up buying 10 copies to give to all of his friends in NASA.

A VERY worthwhile read.

(Oh.. and DID get my copy back in the end)

It may be poor man's Photoshop, but GIMP casts a Long Shadow with latest update

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Re: Forget the geeky stuff, sort out the user experience.

In my eyes, the Gimp UI is not a problem. I am still loosing the toolboxes every now and then, but otherwise the menu's do what they say that they do, inclunding the opening of new toolboxes.

Gimp covers all my personal and professional needs for bitmap processing (including website work).

Expanding my free toolbox, Inkscape covers all vector graphics needs, including backporting pdf's to dxf for import into CAD (reverse engineering parts that do not come with a 3d model).

Libre Office writer is good enough to handle large technical documents including operating manuals with very complex page numbering (LO-Calc remains lacklustre).

If you want a horrible UI, then go look at Blender3d. All other programs (except, maybe dwarf fortress) pale in comparison. This is a pity, since the program itself is getting mighty powerfull. (I work in CAD on a daily basis and I used to handle 3dsMAX in various versions, so it is not a matter of not knowing 3d),

What a flap: SIM swiped from slain stork's GPS tracker used to rack up $2,700 phone bill

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Trust me, they are aware of it.

However, having an unfortunate El-Reg hack locked up in the Tower of London is not something that they wish to be known to a wider audience.

Shared, not stirred: GCHQ chief says Europe needs British spies

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Re: The EU does not need NOR want anything to do with 5 Eyes

"....who we've beaten twice in a World War already....."

The UK not being forced to surrender was very much due to circumstance (that you happend to have the English channel between you and the German Panzers) and lots of help from other countries and / or the people of these countries who were your allies or became so in order to conquer the Axis powers.

Fighterpilots from all european nations (and even some US volunteers) helped win the battle of britain.

Norway, who were then the world's 4th largest shipping nation, sacrificed it's mercant fleet in order to keep the UK supplied during it's darkest hours, Resistance fighters all over Europe kept the UK updated, often loosing their lives in Gestapo torture chambers for dong so.

Reading Brexiteers pulling put WW2 and animosity to Germany as a reason / backdrop for their phobies is sad, because it is plain out wrong. WW2 was wan through European cooperation, and the EU was born out of this.

The UK is not so unique, it is just another nation that has succumbed to the echo-chambers that modern connectivity has created. I dearly hope that we will all learn to deal with this problem, and that the world can return to some degree of normality after this decade of self-induced extremism.

First A380 flown in anger to be broken up for parts

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Re: This underlines one more thing

To my understanding, two things put the brakes on the A380: ETOPS and NEO.

New ETOPS rules (Engine Turns Or Passengers Swim), originating (who would have guessed) from the USA led to a lot of new competition that the A380 had not been designed to deal with. NEO led to savings making these competitors being cost competitive. On top of it, there are not enough airports with the infrastructure required to handle the A380 efficiently.

An A380 NEO might change the picture.

Oddly enough, when a Tesla accelerates at a barrier, someone dies: Autopilot report lands

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Re: After the last childish outburst...

"Those who are still there don't see you as a person. You're just more meat for the system."

-I feel sorry for you and the healthcare system that you are in.

I know plenty of extremely experienced doctors who continue to care for their patients as people throughout their career. That they will have sleepless nights due to their work is clear, but they deal with it.

At the same time, there are clearly some fields of medical work, where patient death occurs more often (with or without the intervention of a doctor). Not everyone can continue to function in these fields, however, there are enough "safe" fields that one can move to if it gets too much..

I see a satellite of a man ... Galileo, Galileo, Galileo, Galileo, that's now 4 sats fit to go

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Growth rates

A high growth rate is easier to acheive if you start from a low number than when you starting-point has centuries of growth behind it.

A high growth rate is also hard to consolidate with stringent safety-, environmental- and labor-rules.

Freed of all of these, both the EU and the UK could much more easily acheive growth numbers similar to those acheived in Asia today. However; Is this a rabbit hole that we WANT to enter?

I have so far been under the impression that NHS at al is something that the UK wants to keep?

US Congress mulls expanding copyright yet again – to 144 years

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Re: Copyright, Patents all screwed.

But here comes the BIG issue:

A patent can be extended to around 20 years (depending on country) after FILING.

This means that ground breaking expensive new technologies that need time to reach market maturity often runs out of patent time before it earns any money, while the rhythmic moaning of some idiot who can not hold a tone without massive computer filtering is protected for all eternity.

It is definitely time to release the mouse.

45-day drone flights? You are like a little baby. How about a full YEAR?

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Re: Why just police?

With this kind of payload mass and flying at these altitudes, this system is designed to carry communication equipment and little else. Fast communications / internet with no ground infrastructure is the goal. Earth observation payloads (visible light, hyper spectral, radar, lidar) are too heavy, and cloud cover will often obscure the line of sight (except for Radar).

If the goal had been surveillance, then the system would have ended up looking a lot more like the U2.

Fancy owning a two-seat Second World War Messerschmitt fighter?

Holtsmark Silver badge

Re: joke

Q: What is the title of the world`s thinnest book?

A: "Swedish war heroes" (Alternative: "Highlights of Dutch cuisine")

Q: How do you sink a Swedish battleship?

A: You put it to sea (Vasa anyone?)

Q: How do you sink a Swedish submarine?

A: You dive down and knock on the hatch. They will promptly open it to see who is there.

Q: How do you sink that same submarine again?

A: You dive down and knock on the hatch. They will open a window to tell you that they will not fall for that trick twice.

..Now guess which side of the No/Se border I am from :)

Holtsmark Silver badge

Re: question

"....and one nice straight run over Trumps next Inauguration...*"

Do not forget that he has now instructed the pentagon to arrange a military parade.

During a parade, it is common to have all parading personnel face the dictator as they march past. It is just a matter of convincing the great orange one that this includes all tank turrets as well...

Long haul flights on a one-aisle plane? Airbus thinks you’re up for it

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Re: The Golden Age of flying is over

So you were the /%$/&&(/ that without warning rammed your seat into my knees and kept it there for 8 hours straight?

I am tall and mainly legs -this was not my choise. I barely fit into exonomy -but I often do not have a choice. However, once you ram your seat back, I WILL be in pain. And reclining my own seat does not help. Therefore: Please check behind you before insisting on your "rights". You might even consider skipping being an inconsiderate $§"$% once or twice.

US govt shutdown lobs spanner in SpaceX's Falcon Heavy launch

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Re: Long live marketing

And when do you expect the next Energia or Saturn V launch to take place?

Twitter breaks bad news to 677,775 twits: You were duped by Russia

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Re: Is there any evidence...

If you do not believe that the Russians carry guilt in the shooting down of MH17, then you are doing the victims of that autrocity a disservice. Whether the INTENDED to is another matter.

Airbus warns it could quit A380 production

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Re: Spaceplane carrier

"No idea, why don't you ask Richard Branson why the f**k he commissioned White Knights One and Two? It obviously wasn't to launch SpaceShips One and Two"

...And strangely enough they desided to drop the rocket/spaceplane DOWN at launch, rather than carry it on top and hope it will not touch something important before it starts to climb.

PiggyBack spaceplanes are a way to TRANSPORT a spaceplane from one site to another, not for launching (SR 71 /D21 excluded for good reasons).

So WHY do you wish to carry a spaceplane on top of an A380 again?

Holtsmark Silver badge

Re: Spaceplane carrier

And WHY exactly do you wish to carry a spaceplane?

Holtsmark Silver badge

I doubt Berlin will pick up that much traffic.

Frankfurt is much more centrally located in Germany, allowing for decent travel by ICE to numerous cities surrounding it.

Holtsmark Silver badge

Re: single-engine A350 ...

The professional term is ETOPS:

Engine Turns Or Passengers Swim

Holtsmark Silver badge

Re: 380b?

What they need is an A380 NEO.

The New Engine Option led to savings in fuel consumption that made the extra outlay for the A380 uneconomical.

Getting ultra high bypass engines (maybe with geared fans) onto the A380 as well as the other aerodynamic refinements that made the NEO such a hit would make the A380 competitive again. The question is: Will it be sufficiently competitive to pay back the investment?

I am convinced that they are crunching numbers in Toulouse and Hamburg.

Time's up: Grace period for Germany's internet hate speech law ends

Holtsmark Silver badge

Re: IMO

The way I understand this new law, it is NOT about going after the posters themselves, but rather to hold the "publishers" of said posts accountable for them. The idea appears to be to apply similar rules to the publishers as the rules that currently apply to newspapers (if you earn your living from publishing falsehoods and hate speech, then we will hold you economically accountable for this). I know that this may sound strange to an English public, that knows nothing but newspapers publishing lies and falsehoods with no repercussions, but this is how things are dealt with in the rest of the western world.

Seeing the amount of damage done by "social media" lately, I believe that I can live with this.

Without the echo-chamber of today's internet, I believe self-radicalisation to be much less likely, possibly preventing types like mr. Brevik from being triggered. It is, as always, a fine balance, and Germany is struggling to find it.

That said, I feel that there is a somewhat unsavory tendency in German politics to try to use the law to go after perceived nazism. They spent decades trying to get the NPD, and now they use similar tactics against the AFD. The efforts against the NPD were squashed in courts multiple times due to incompatibility with the constitution (too many informers inside the NPD).

In one way, German politicians are stuck between a rock and a hard place. With Germany's past, theyy face criticism when they are lenient with right wing demagogery, and they face criticism when they try to do something about it.

Russia could chop vital undersea web cables, warns Brit military chief

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Re: Is Russia just a threat because Hillary lost the election ?

Dear Naive,

please do not turn the Register into the commenzs section for a BBB article about Brexit.

The amount of anti-German xenophobia displayed in those comments is horrifying.

Mrs. Merkel took steps that she believed to be the right ones at a time when the EU borders were buckling, very much as a consequence of failed anglo-american policies in the middle east (iraq war etc...).

This did not leadt to optimal results, but the alternative might have been much worse.

(I am personally critical to unrestricted immigration, but a number of the stories I hear from these people are truly heartbreaking).

Germany now faces the big and difficult task trying to integrate these people. In this, it should not be forgotten that Germany has had to integrate huge numbers before; Peopleb(many of them Jewish) fleeing from the Soviet Union between the wars (which led to sentiments reflected in the UK today), 12 Million Germans fleeing from the Russians in 1945 to 1950 and 1.4 million "German"-Russians after the fall of the wall. Germany also had to refurbish and re-integrate all of East Germany in the same period. Hearing the british complain about having too many Polish plumbers and Romanian field workers is ridiculous.

While WW2 is very much celebrated in the US and the UK, Germany has all thoughts about empire building very much bombed out of them. To the Germans, the British were seen as a sane partner nation, that could serve as a counterweight to the French. How this is currently misrepresented in the UK is quite sad.

And myself; I am neither German nor British, and I live the productive life of an immigrant.

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