Ralph Pfister

"An good way to learn German is to try reading children's books to familiarise yourself with basic grammar and vocabulary" German children's book:

Don’t tell Donald Trump about this

Remarkable post by the German Foreign Office, directly contradicting and mocking Trump.

Be our guest @elonmusk ⚖️🇪🇺 There has never been — and will never be — any “secret deal”. With anyone. The DSA provides X (and any large platform) with the possibility to offer commitments to settle a case. To be extra clear: it’s *YOUR* team who asked the Commission to explain the process for settlement and to clarify our concerns. We did it in line with established regulatory procedures. Up to you to decide whether to offer commitments or not. That is how rule of law procedures work. See you (in court or not).

when product loses to legal

New York City paid Mckinsey $4m to conduct a feasibility study on whether trash bins are better than leaving garbage on the street. The deck is 95-slides long and titled “The Future of Trash”. Some highlights: ▫️The official term is “containerization”, which is the “storage of waste in sealed, rodent-proof receptacles rather than in plastic bags placed directly on the curb.” ▫️Two main types of containerization: 1) individual bins for low density locales; 2) shared containers for high-density. ▫️NYC needs to clean up 24,000,000lbs of garbage a day ▫️Containerization has only become the norm worldwide in major cities in the past 15 years. ▫️New York City first considered containerization in the 1970s but never conducted a feasibility study until now (Mckinsey’s sales team has been dropping the ball) ▫️Key considerations for container viability: • POPULATION DENSITY: NYC has 30k residents per square mile (more dense than comparable big cities) • BUILT ENVIRONMENT: Few places to “hide” containers due to history of infrastructure development. • WEATHER: Snow creates challenges for “mechanized collection” in the winter. • CURB SPACE: Mostly taken up by bus stops, bike lanes, outdoor dining and fire hydrants. • COLLECTION FREQUENCY: NYC needs to double frequency of pick-up for estimated speed of trash that bins would accumulate. • FLEET: A new garbage truck will needs to be designed to collect rolling bins at scale. ▫️ The proposed solution (literally garbage bins and shared containers) covers 89% of NYC streets and 77% of residential tonnage. ▫️The three case studies — because you gotta have solid case studies — are Amsterdam, Paris and Barcelona. ▫️There is a slide called “Why containerization matters” and three reasons are “rats”, “pedestrian obstruction” and “dirty streets” (the 21-year intern that did this slide billed at prob $10k an hour is my hero). The study is actually pretty interesting. I have no idea if $4m is a rip-off to learn that “yeah, we should put garbage in bins so rats don’t eat it” but I would have happily done it for 10-20% of that budget (and come to a similar conclusion).

Dringend gefordert sind demokratische Kommunikationsstrategien, die ebenfalls technisch auf der Höhe sind. Leider sind gerade Populisten gut darin, sich Technologien und die auf Aufregung gepolten Algorithmen zunutze zu machen. sueddeutsche.de/medien/ki-musi…

What do audiences say news is for and how do news organisations satisfy these needs? These are core questions of a #DNR24 chapter by Director of Research @richrdfletcher 📚Read chapter reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-r… 🎙️Listen to author reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/our-podca… 🧵3 findings in thread

In German we don't say restricted mobility, we say Deutsche Bahn.

@storydoxs @RBraunmueller @MarkusBlume @Erlangen Die sind ein Verein, der sich auch mit einem Schauraum für ein Museum einsetzt - Erlangen wäre aber mit der Historie des Comic-Salons ein guter Ort dafür.

@RBraunmueller @MarkusBlume @Erlangen Ja, das gibt’s auch. In Erlangen comic-museum.org

Markus Söder verspricht bayerisches Comic-Museum. Und, haltet euch fest: @MarkusBlume will einen Parkplatz beseitigen. Das ist nicht mehr die meine CSU, wie ich sie kenne und liebe. abendzeitung-muenchen.de/kultur/buehne/…

Antoni Gaudí was born 172 years ago today. He's one of the most beloved architects in the world, and that makes sense — his style is utterly unique. But Gaudí only designed 17 buildings...

Schlechte Nachrichten für die EU-Regulierungsfreunde. In China und Russland, wo ChatGPT gesperrt ist, wird es sogar verstärkt genutzt.

The top 10 photos from last night’s solar storm & aurora borealis around the world. 1. Netherlands (@albertdrosphoto)

Behörden: Die ausgebremste Digitalisierung faz.net/1.9609232

Nachhaltigkeitsberichte: Wo der deutsche Mittelstand steht. faz.net/1.9548289?prem…

Interessanter Artikel zum KI-Phone der Telekom und generellen Überlegungen zum Markt. sz.de/1.6394310

Die AfD ist der Feind der Beschäftigten: Sie will weniger Fairness auf dem Arbeitsmarkt und weniger soziale Sicherheit für Beschäftigte. Wir wollen ein gutes Leben für alle statt der unsozialen und menschenverachtenden Politik der AfD: dgb.de/-/UT4

My take on Open AI Sora: If you are going to create a TON of HQ video from different angles, you need to simulate it. There are a lot of things though that lead me to believe UE5 is being used in part to create the training data. A 🧵

Lasst uns nochmal über die Definition des Wortes „Sprinter“ reden, liebe Bahn.