Here in Germany, that's the case as well - but the distinction is that there has to be a barrier. A railroad track is not a barrier. An open tunnel entrance is not a barrier. TFA makes it seem like they only used openly accessible tunnels, and in one instance explicitly mentions that a closed gate meant they had to take another route.

The only reason you can run the same OS is that the x64 architecture supports emulation of the old 32 bit x86 architecture which supports emulation of the 16 bit architecture that came before it. Maybe you didn't notice these jumps, but they were there. There's another jump just happening, the move from magnetic hard disks to solid state disks. That's again one you don't notice unless you know about the technical difference, but it's still a pretty big difference. And yes we have more RAM, and yes that's even an example of something that's essentially still very similar to 1995 RAM, but even then, miniaturization is kind of a big deal. The chips may still work in the same way but there were huge advances in the technology that is used to produce them, which are hidden from most normal users. The basic idea of how a computer works is still the same, of course, but then, that hasn't changed in almost a century. And it probably won't change anytime soon - the next big change is probably the move to smaller, portable devices that require even less inside knowledge to operate. Maybe, ten years from now, you'll look at your phone and say "why this is so different from the computers we used to have to put up with- finally they changed something!" because the package looks different, but the overall architecture will still be the same.

There is a car sharing program in the city I live in (in Germany) that has electric cars. Maybe it doesn't count because I don't think they have electric-only cars, but they do have plug-in hybrids i.e. cars that can be charged from external sources and will run on electrical power for the first 20 km or so.

If you have an HR webstart app that loads libraries from random servers on the internet, you probably deserve what you get...

Siemens think they can, and in the light of recent political decisions in Germany, they see an opportunity for Siemens to make some money off non-fission power plants that *will* have to be built. What's so hard to grasp about this, it's almost like everybody here thinks Siemens want to get out of the fission business because they have concerns about the viability of nuclear power... they're a business, they'll do what makes them money, and right now fission doesn't fit the bill for a German company.

It's quite possible to build a device that can help with acne and isn't really much larger than a smartphone. Acne bacteria (and a number of other organisms that are responsible for other types of skin irritation) can be killed with UV light. You just need a bigger light. For someone who doesn't know the technical details and/or how much light it actually takes to see a measurable difference, it's not an unreasonable assumption that a company that sells a product with the claim that it can do enough to help with their acne isn't actually lying, especially not when they're citing dermatologists.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5406-WFZC-5519

There is a Zero-Tolerance policy for any violations of the Steam Subscriber Agreement and Online Code of Conduct. All accounts in a user's possession for any of the following activities will be suspended:
Piracy or Hacking

This includes using an unauthorized ("hacked") Steam client to access Steam, attempting to register fake CD Keys or attempting to register a CD Key which has been published on the internet.

Right; I did have to go outside every once in a while for my astronomy habit.

The kind of access to maps is different. Also, more things are mapped.

Almost all my portable gadgets have GPS these days. I can pull out my phone, tablet, or my actual old GPS receiver with openstreetmap data on it, and instanty see where I am, where I can go, how to do that fast, and what places of interest are nearby. Some of the digital maps (especially everything based on openstreetmap) are very flexible regarding modes of travel I want to choose; I can use the same map for fast car routes, scenic bike routes, or just general walking around. The possibility to find my way to wherever I want to go very quickly alone has drastically changed how I approach visits to places I haven't been to before - no more studying maps before leaving the hotel room. I can look up nearby bus and tram stops and see upcoming trains; I don't even have to look at the map at the stop I decide to go to because my phone can tell me the same thing plus what trains I actually need to take to get to my destination and how long it'll take me to get there. There is an app that will find geographically close wikipedia articles and tell me not only what places I should visit, but also why, and what happened to them during recorded history and which well-known persons were born in the vicinity. There is an app that will find nearby restaurants and give me up-to-date ratings for them, tell me when they're open and what kind of food they serve at what prices; I can filter by type of food which is handy when you're on a specific diet like I am. There is an app that will let me find nearby stores and browse their digitized paper catalog. There is an app that lets me scan bar codes on items in stores and can tell me how much cheaper I can get it elsewhere. There is an app that will tell me what the codified ingredients in products I can buy in a supermarket really are, how they are made, and whether they can cause allergies. I can instantly find out what alternatives to the product exist, and where I can get them nearby (although I don't know an app for that, but there's always the web).

The only thing that is missing is accessing this information via video glasses and some sort of hidden input device and then I'll call myself a full blown cyborg. This is hardly the same thing as paper maps. It's not even close. It just happens that some of the information is presented in a visually similar style.

I would install Ubuntu or some other free operating system. Main reason being licensing, with Ubuntu they'll get a current operating system and future updates and I don't have to worry about whether the XP license was part of a family pack and I can't even give it away, or whether it's an OEM license that prevents them from modifying the hardware, etc.

Don't forget that this discussion, in Germany, is decades old because the police keep bringing it up as something that could help them find terrorists :) Detecting faces is fairly new, but e.g. there's been extensive discussion of automatic detection of car license plates on the Autobahn. Just implementing it is not going to go well after more than 40 years of discussion, no matter who does it and why and how it's presented...

Facebook has a subsidiary in Germany and if they want to keep that and do business there, they will have to adhere to German laws.

English-speaking folks learned of the existence of Bavaria when it was called Bavaria or something phonetically similar. Baden-Württemberg was formed after WWII so it was never called something else. Saxony-Anhalt is an interesting case. Saxony is derived from the old Latin name Saxonia, while Anhalt is not old enough to have a Latin name. When Saxony-Anhalt was created after WWII with the German name Sachsen-Anhalt, English speakers used the existing English name of Saxony but the Anhalt part wasn't translated.

For the same reason, Germans are called Germans in English while modern-day Germans using the same word (Germannen) would be talking about members of the Germanic tribes from two thousand years ago. The German name for modern-day Germans (Deutsche) is only a few hundred years old; at the time people started using it to refer to what ended up to be Germany (Deutschland), English already had a name for the people living in the general direction of where Germany is located.

You can buy a Fling joystick for any phone with a capacitive touch screen.

Stereo displays have this effect when you don't look at them at the right angle and distance. Your eyes will each see the wrong channel and you won't be able to make sense of what you see. I worked with stereo displays a few years back, some people even claimed they were unable to position themselves correctly in front of the display because they had to look at it to be able to align. I own a 3DS and I found that it's very easy to hold it too close to the eyes; looking from the side doesn't work at all of course. It's a bit annoying that they chose to include software that has you swing the device around and move while holding it, doens't make it easier.