It says here that fraud happened on german side. The chinese company reported that documents have been modified on the german controlling side without their approval, and that potential fraud is happening and they should investigate. However nothing was done.
"Dabei waren die Gefahren Geld nach China zu zahlen für solche Projekte dem Bundesumweltministerium eigentlich bekannt. Zuletzt im April meldete sich ein chinesischer Öl- und Gaskonzern von selbst bei dem von Steffi Lemke (Grüne) geführten Umweltministerium und erklärte deutlich, dass von Betrugsfällen auszugehen ist. „Wir vermuten, dass es eine hohe Wahrscheinlichkeit gibt, dass Dokumente gefälscht wurden und wir bitten dringend, dass Ihre Behörde dazu ermittelt“, teilte der chinesische Konzern dem Ministerium mit. Dieses wimmelte wohl ab, wie die Welt berichtet. Deutsche Prüfstellen haben anscheinend einige Daten der Anlagen des chinesischen Unternehmens geändert und ohne dessen Zustimmung verwendet. "
I understood it in a slightly different way: The multinational oil companies owning these Chinese companies wrongly claimed that these would save millions of tonnes of CO2. The German authorities accepted this claim even though there was reasonable doubt and it could not be verified because China doesn't allow German authorities to come to China and verify it. The way you phrased it made it sound as if Germany (as in the government) was somehow trying to profit from it. However, they are the ones being frauded.
But, crucially, it seems that the Chinese subsidiaries are the ones that came forward to set the record straight to the German government. So basically it seems to be multinational corporations defrauding Germany by trying to hide behind Chinese laws.
Oh yes, because China, the #1 polluter in the world (exceeding US, Europe, Russia and Brazil combined together) is very known to be the first and foremost voice in greening endeavours
China, the country with one of the largest populations in the world, that produces less CO2 per capita than three quarters of Europe, including such green hearts as Germany or Finland, while still producing a quarter of the entire world's goods.
It's however (according to China's official statistics) the country with the highest solar energy production.
It also burns the most coal for electricity though, that makes it clear that China just needs an insane amount of electricity. Regardless wherever it's green, brown or toxic
how much of that is because half of the country is still incredibly poor? broke dudes living in coffin apartments and poor rural villagers don't emit a lot of carbon. kinda like their meme about the dude in an apartment who just has a mattress and a PS5 causes less waste, etc.
Okay and? Wouldn't the fact that their population is 4-5x larger also mean that it makes sense for them to pollute more? And regarding your first point, I don't see how that's relevant to China polluting more or less per capita. They still do pollute less per capita.
What's your suggestion then? For China to reduce its population by 3/4 (wasn't China heavily criticized for enforcing birth-control?), or to acknowledge that Chinese citizens (or those of any other country with a population greater than that of the US) don't deserve to enjoy the same standard of living as US citizens?
It is reasonable to assume that they are in on it. At the very least they got out of their way not to change it, even when they were being notified about potential fraud.
I also understood it this way (native German). In Germany companies want to claim "as much saved CO2" as possible.
> Das Ziel war, möglichst hohe CO₂-Einsparungen in Deutschland geltend zu machen.
The federal authorities knowingly approved the fraudulent UER projects. What's spicy is that the secretary is a green party member.
> Das Umweltbundesamt und die Deutsche Emissionshandelsstelle genehmigten 75 dieser UER-Projekte – fast ausschließlich in China. Und das, obwohl weitere Hinweise dafür sprachen, besser nicht dort zu investieren. Denn China lässt unabhängige Kontrollen im eigenen Land nicht zu. Peking verweigert entsprechenden Prüfer:innen die Einreise.
Also, apparently a simple look at satellite images should have at least caused suspicion when Chinese companies raised the concerns. There is still no reaction from Steffi Lemke.
> Was Rostek mit dem „Durchwinken“ meint, ist die anscheinend unzureichende Prüfung der Bauvorhaben durch das Umweltbundesamt und die Deutsche Emissionshandelsstelle. Über Satellitenbilder wäre einfach zu erkennen gewesen, dass einige der eingereichten chinesischen Vorhaben schon vor dem eigentlichen Baustart existiert haben.
> The federal authorities knowingly approved the fraudulent UER projects. What's spicy is that the secretary is a green party member.
I am not under the impression that anyone has illusions about the Green party here. It is evident they are greenwashing and destroying environment (for the climate of course) among other things they supposedly "don't stand for". The reasons they get votes still is likely due to choosing the lesser evil, even if that is also untrue, or conscience. I have seen the sentiment here too, so I have no illusions that this is going to change either no matter what the Green party does.
> Über Satellitenbilder wäre einfach zu erkennen gewesen, dass einige der eingereichten chinesischen Vorhaben schon vor dem eigentlichen Baustart existiert haben.
IANAL, but getting money for projects that existed prior sounds legally actionable as fraud even. Tho the plaintiff would be the government in the end, so it might not happen anyway.
> I am not under the impression that anyone has illusions about the Green party here. It is evident they are greenwashing and destroying environment (for the climate of course) among other things they supposedly "don't stand for".
Sources? Details?
Lots of hate, zero substantiation. The greens are the party that pushed environment protection for decades, long before anyone cared.
The problem they have is they are held to a different standard than other parties for one and secondly their programme is thought to be only about ecology. It has become a national sport in France and germany amongst politicians to blame the greens for environmental measures which are constraining for the average citizen. Even when for example in France they are not even in the government.
In Germany their members are regularly attacked (as in violence) due to the amount of hate other parties generated about them.
It’s really sad, and I think we need a party which is strongly for ecology but not called “the greens”, otherwise it’s too easy for populists to bash them.
> The way you phrased it made it sound as if Germany (as in the government) was somehow trying to profit from it. However, they are the ones being frauded.
As made evident by the english name of these initiatives (Upstream Emission Reduction - UER), this originates from the EU. It seems that UER is one of the options to achieve greenhouse gases reduction goals set by EU (see [1]). So, allowing your local industries to cheat on UER reporting, does bring in an (unfair) advantage to Germany.
right, because companies stealing from the german government is clearly giving giving the nation a competitive advantage.
Totally true, anything else insight worthy from your side?
The German government was defrauded by German companies collaborating with Chinese companies.
Calling that a competitive advantage is like saying German companies have a competitive advantage because some have been stealing billions of taxes over the last few years via CumEx.
It'd also be the same as saying that India's medicine factories have a competitive advantage because they're able to illegally dumb toxic waste in rural areas, which is currently the world's biggest breeding ground for super bacteria (resistant to antibiotics)
The article doesn't blame China, it's just plainly stating that the currently undertaken initiatives in China are almost all fraudulent. That doesn't mean that Chinese government is stealing from Germany.
> right, because companies stealing from the german government is clearly giving giving the nation a competitive advantage.
It obviously is. We are talking about intra-EU advantage, where the same GHG rules apply. If e.g. French industries actually invest in reducing their GHGs instead of using a fraud scheme, isn't that an advantage?
> Calling that a competitive advantage is like saying German companies have a competitive advantage because some have been stealing billions of taxes over the last few years via CumEx.
Also a competitive advantage. If, let's say now, Spain does more rigorous checks for tax fraud than Germany, then their industry growth is comparatively stifled. And did the participating industries get anything more than a slap in the wrist?
German stakeholders pointing each other, and then everybody pointing outside of Germany may work internally, but is not fooling anyone else on the outside. Germany is totally ok to turn a blind eye on eschewing (supposedly) common EU rules when it is to the advantage of their economy.
> Totally true, anything else insight worthy from your side?
> And did the participating industries get anything more than a slap in the wrist?
No, they didn't even get that. After all, our Kanzler forgot about it.
I still wouldn't call this a competitive advantage. The only companies that gain this advantage do so through fraud. And Germany has a gigantic problem with corrupt politicians that help fraudulent companies profit.
It's objectively terrible for Germany, and not a competitive advantage. The companies using these schemes do not pay taxes for the most part, so calling that great for the economy is such a gigantic stretch that it's hilarious.
It's great for the politicians though. After all, they always get paid to make the scandals go away.
> Nein mein herr. Das ist alles mein herr. /s
That's fair, I was definitely too aggressive with that statement. Sorry for that.
It just triggers me a little when people blame the nation for the actions of individuals, almost always entirely unassociated with said government. (Wherever that's India, China, the USA or Germany)
After all, what you're calling a competitive advantage is fraud! The issue is that German politicians are just so hopelessly corrupt that no prosecution ever happens. That's the issue we have to address. After all, most companies in Germany are law abiding and do not have a competitive advantage.
It's marked in the thread you referenced that Marcus only excepts US based customers.
I assume it is best to close your account with them and let them transfer the remaining balance to your European bank.
Not sure how you can achieve that now, since you probably lied/faked to them before that you were still living in the USA, and your account is flagged now.
I also don't believe filing will complaints will help, since you seem to be at fault here, and they have to lock your account for compliance and security reasons.
When you unlock your account, I strongly also suggest that you use your local bank to exchange the currency (or Marcus and make a € transfer). IB currency exchange is meant for trading purposes, not for exchanging currencies:
What do you think will happen when a transfer in $ comes into a newly opened account, you convert it to €, and then cash out to a European € account. All alarm flags will probably go off, as this is classic money laundering. I would definitely ask their ok in advance and provide them documentation on where the money comes from, before trying to exchange money through their platform.
Depending on how large your transfer is, any european bank will flag the transfer and you have to provide proof of the source of wealth. It's best to provide that documentation beforehand, because otherwise your funds will be blocked for a few days too before you can access them.
Also, in case you have signed a "compromis de vente" without a suspension clause (e.g. that the contract is void if the bank doesn't finance the acquisition, or something similar), then yes you are on the hook for the 10% in case you don't go to the notary in time to buy the house/appartment.
It's going to take the heavy hammer of the European Commission to fall on them with a significant fine before they do anything about it.
Unfortunately, with so many misbehaving players, that seems to take some time.. But from the fines I read about, once it falls, it falls painfully. Their choice.
I had a similar bug more than 10 years ago, also while building a search index through Lucene. It would crash after hours of running with an impossible nullpointer exception. It always appeared after running for hours, and running that specific iteration would not trigger the exception, so hard to reproduce.
Turned out it was a java jvm bug which was triggered when the jvm decided to recompile that code part since it was used more frequently.
Try running your code with the -server flag and see if that makes a difference.
Reminds me of a time where I almost certainly found a bug in Safari Mobile's JS implementation. Some variable ended up undefined in a place where it was provably impossible. It didn't happen consistently and was prone to right timing, so extremely hard to pin down and debug. Given the fact that all debugging had to be done tediously through a phone emulator and remote dev tools (it was inside a Cordova app), I eventually just gave up and added some sort of if-else for that case.
-server is only a thing for HotSpot. They mention that HotSpot works perfectly fine. There is no option of "-server" for Graal native-image. It has "-O{0,1}" though for turning optimizations off and on respectively.
I think the project does have a bit of a naming problem. They've gotten the part out where it's very fast and pretty good, but everything is named GraalVM-something and it's not always entirely clear what's being referred to.
How do you think we would judge someone using common sense to work out a problem in computing? Because saying the FAA is existentially deferential to Boeing is a "series of tubes" analog.
I don't understand why this only applies for Facebook then.
2 1/2 years, ago they opened up a loop hole for newspapers that they are explicitly allowed to do it (Either you pay, or when you use their free version, you must accept to be tracked for behavioural advertising).
Are they any better than facebook?
Some example news sites: www.zeit.de, www.spiegel.de
(21aa) In some cases the use of processing and storage capabilities of terminal equipment and the collection of information from end-users' terminal equipment may also be necessary for providing a service, requested by the enduser, such as services provided in accordance with the freedom of expression and information including for journalistic purposes, e.g. online newspaper or other press publications as defined in Article 2 (4) of Directive (EU) 2019/790, that is wholly or mainly financed by advertising provided that, in addition, the end-user has been provided with clear, precise and user-friendly information about the purposes of cookies or similar techniques and has accepted such use.
Can you elaborate? That's not how the article makes it sound.
> The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has instructed the Irish data regulator, where Meta’s European headquarters are located, to impose a permanent ban on Meta’s use of behavioural advertising within two weeks. The EDPB states that its decision is an urgent binding instruction to enforce the ban across the EEA.
Well, you are correct that the specific Binding Decision by the EDPB has issued to the Irish data regulator about how it should harmonise rulings about the systematic infractions by Facebook across the union is not something that applies to newspapers in general, on account of newspapers not being part of Facebook.
But obviously the GDPR applies to all newspapers, and if any particular newspaper is doing behavioural advertising using the same illegal methods as Meta they'll probably get fined much quicker. But hopefully most are by now not even using illegal methods but properly asking for consent.
Newspapers are themselves in the business of targetted political ads.
Facebook etc, while politically biased, keep profit as a target above their views, for the most part.
Brexit? I remember most news and ads were selling "no" yet "yes" happened. I recall the "no" voters either were of the category that wanted to vote against the political party in power, or of the type of voters having had enough to be told how to think.
As for the further turmoils you might be correct though. The lockdown ads campaign didn't go without some opposition but got sold to a large enough audience.
> Newspapers are themselves in the business of targetted political ads.
I think you are confusing being opinionated "tinted" of sorts, as newspapers are, with microtargeting. a progressive newspaper will have progressively tinted reporting, and you get what you buy.
and the newspaper is showing every reader the same content for the same article.
microtargeting means you identify personal traits and you present a content that fits your profile. probably pro brexit? contents that engaged you to go and vote and contents that you will more likely share with like minded people. probably against brexit? deter you from voting, by giving you a false sense of the outcome, or by frustrating you just enough. and so on.
I was shocked when I realized that political campaigns create dozens of variations of contents tailored for different combinations and varuations of personality parameters. the wasp lesbian gets another one their than the Catholic than than the black atheist.
and in this game Facebook keeps their own opinion out. they just offer means for the microtargeting, so the different messaging reaches their individual targets.
> I don't understand why this only applies for Facebook then.
It applies to everyone. It's just a consequence of GDPR. The regulator has found, after complaints, that Facebook's handling of personal data was in breach. Anyone who does the same thing as Facebook will be in breach. It's just that so far, either nobody is doing the exact same thing, or nobody has raised a complaint yet, or they're still in the regulator's backlog.
Also, you're hearing about it because it's Facebook. If it were a small unknown company you wouldn't have heard about it.
The GDPR makes it pretty clear that you need a legal basis for processing personal data. And serving personalised ads, with the purpose of increasing revenue, is not a legitimate interest. Moreover, consent is not only required for such use-cases, but rejection should not degrade the service for the user.
The writing has been on the wall since 2018, when the GDPR came into effect. What's new is its enforcement. The DPAs are slow, but the law is clear, and eventually everyone will be forced to comply, if they want to do business within the EU.
Unfortunetly because European cases usually do not involve punitive damages, it costs nothing to these actors to try their hand and keep up for as long as thier turn comes becasue there are a lot and they don't risk practically nothing for being found illegal initially. Only after being found illegal they risk fines for repeat violations.
"Dabei waren die Gefahren Geld nach China zu zahlen für solche Projekte dem Bundesumweltministerium eigentlich bekannt. Zuletzt im April meldete sich ein chinesischer Öl- und Gaskonzern von selbst bei dem von Steffi Lemke (Grüne) geführten Umweltministerium und erklärte deutlich, dass von Betrugsfällen auszugehen ist. „Wir vermuten, dass es eine hohe Wahrscheinlichkeit gibt, dass Dokumente gefälscht wurden und wir bitten dringend, dass Ihre Behörde dazu ermittelt“, teilte der chinesische Konzern dem Ministerium mit. Dieses wimmelte wohl ab, wie die Welt berichtet. Deutsche Prüfstellen haben anscheinend einige Daten der Anlagen des chinesischen Unternehmens geändert und ohne dessen Zustimmung verwendet. "