Creutzfeldt-Jacob can be tested for using the RT-QuIC test[1] where a positive result guarantees with near certainty that misfolded prions are present. But as the disease is defined via the physical changes in brain tissue only obtainable via autopsy a definite diagnosis is often only made after death.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_quaking-induced_conv...

You're right but there has been some progress in that matter.

I.e. streaming providers can't stop you from watching Germany exclusive Netflix content when on holidays in Greece using your German Netflix subscription (only free/ad supported services are allowed to do that)

> physics is what you study if you couldn't do engineering

Wdym "couldn't do"? Nobody here is studying Physics for the job opportunities but I'd say everybody who makes it past semester 4 genuinely loves Physics otherwise they'd be studying something easier.

As one example, I met quite a few graduate students from Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) who ranked high enough in the entrance tests to study computer science/engineering or electrical engineering but really wanted to study physics. They all had significant pressure from their parents to choose the engineering branch and had to fit in physics electives where they could. My understanding is that the priority list was:

computer science/engineering > electrical engineering > mechanical engineering > ... > things like metallurgical engineering > ... > physics (and maybe other sciences)

Some of this is driven by job prospects while some of it is prestige driven because one's major lets one infer one's rough ranking in the entrance tests.

So it's very common to infer that if you weren't studying engineering, you didn't rank very high and barely made it past the cutoff ranks and had to study physics or metallurgical engineering.

When I was younger, I thought these rank-based systems (very common in Asian countries) are better than the fuzzier American system of grades + extracurriculars + reference letters. But my opinion is the opposite now. As soon as ranks are involved, a notion of prestige gets assigned. Once prestige is involved, people will climb over each other to get through the doors and suppress their instincts to earn social credits. I have seen enough people who are successful by traditional metrics but are miserable because they didn't spend time pursuing their interests (modulo concerns about jobs and money).

Edit: I'll add that my IIT friends were generally extremely bright, curious, creative and generally wonderful to work with. But they also had a competitive streak which could turn counter-productive. Against their own better instincts, they sometimes got locked into a path where outcomes could be measured vs exploring areas less traveled. If they saw a topic or area that attracted top minds (e.g. see AI at frontier labs today), they felt pulled in that direction because "that's where the smart people were going and they themselves were smart and therefore, should go into the arena". This is true of Asian Americans in general. After all, that's why there was an uproar that students with perfect SATs and GPAs of 4+ (5?! i.e. A++ grades) were sometimes getting rejected by Harvard. I agree with Harvard in this case. One doesn't want cookie cutter/prescriptive paths into top universities. Instead, there should be some randomness as long as students meet some decent baselines. I don't mean race-based or group-based selection. Just really random selection at least for a small fraction of students.

> In many other places, physics is what you study if you couldn't do engineering.

What places are these?

I record my travels using travelynx and this is how Deutsche Bahn has been faring:

- 2022: 15512 km travelled, spent 150:23 in trains, timetable: 148:42

- 2023: 9818 km travelled, spent 121:01 in trains, timetable: 118:39

- 2024: 11614 km travelled, spent 129:28 in trains, timetable: 127:48

- 2025: 10636 km travelled, spent 116:21 in trains, timetable: 109:58

This year was skewed upwards by a 3 hour delay because some teenagers managed to get into a railway tunnel causing a track closure for multiple hours...

A lot of times the time you save by going for high speed rail is still worth it.

Google, including Google Flights, does have a cookie banner. It's just likely that you already accepted/denied the prompt at some point.

That’s certainly possible. I don’t deny occasionally clicking them. I just don’t bother most of the time.

Edit: I just tried the flight ordering flow again (starting at google.com/flights) in a private/incognito tab, and did not encounter any cookie banners.

To be fair: if you're doing a Masters degree the grade you end up getting on your Bachelors degree is pretty unimportant and Masters usually isn't graded that harshly.

But yeah, we had exams with 70% failing.

A Fachhochschule (Wikipedia calls them "university of applied sciences") in Germany is very similar to a university but as they're less research oriented and usually (with some notable exceptions) don't have the ability to grant doctoral degrees. AFAIK none have the permission to grant the ability to become professor (Habilitation). They also usually have a limited selection of subjects.

There are also Technische Universitäten (Technical University) which are "proper" universities with the ability to grant doctorates and the ability to become professor.

So Fachhochschulen are a separate thing from both Berufsschule (vocational school) and universities.

Sorry, I wrote it in a confusing way because I thought of something else - so that's on me for confusion.

I was thinking of high school, not uni itself. I'm myself also from a technical university equivalent in Poland.

Not just Asia. E.g. in Congo it's tradition to see the spouse's siblings as sisters and brothers. There it goes both ways though. (Not sure it's embedded into law.)

At least with the Venus probes they were only publicly announced when they were well on their way to Venus with failures either not getting published or getting assigned alibi mission goals (e.g. if they failed to leave earth's orbit) so failure modes were limited to the destination.

From the Wikipedia page:

> The frequency initially chosen for Galileo would have made it impossible for the US to block the Galileo signals without also interfering with its own GPS signals. [...], but they have since reached the compromise that Galileo is to use different frequencies. This allows the blocking or jamming of either GNSS without affecting the other.

Interesting