Cobra's bits (Posts about thoughts)

The higher power

Cobra — Sat, 31 May 2025 13:41:12 GMT

A snapshot taken from my living room when a thunderstorm approached.

Don't worry, be happy

Cobra — Sat, 29 Jul 2023 13:12:40 GMT

It's Friday evening, 18:30. My fourth video meeting in a row has just concluded. Now I could finally work on the revision of a manuscript I wanted to get resubmitted during the weekend. This last revision was purely technical: the production editor requested that we move the present addresses of the authors to the back of the manuscript, instead of leaving them beneath the list of authors on the title page as destined by the LaTeX class from the publisher. Now, any such request that forces me to work around or against the journal style provided by the publisher means that the reputation of the journal (ACS Appl. Nano Mater., in case you are curious) takes a steep dive. But anyway, I had to do it, and I was looking into the footmisc package to get all footnotemarks I needed when I realized that I hadn't done my ritual update in the morning for the lack of time. Starting it, I only peripherally noticed that the update involved TeXLive and brought a new kernel. In any case, this information didn't stop me from compiling the manuscript I was working on during the update. Repeatedly. Incessantly.

At a certain point, the build command of Sublime Text didn't produce any reaction. No error message, nothing. I began to have a bad feeling. Indeed, while I could still move the mouse around, the entire Window system was unresponsive, and the update process – which was just about to build the fmt files – was hanging. I started to suspect that I had just committed the greatest blunder of this year, and indeed, when I rebooted, the system greeted me with the message that the kernel could not be found:

Loading Linux linux...
error file /boot/vmlinuz-linux not found
loading initial ramdisk
error: you need to load the kernel first

Well, I knew that this SNAFU looked worse than it actually is. But since I was suddenly very tired, I decided to call it a day and do the repair on Saturday morning.

On Saturday, I first needed a live Arch installation on a USB stick. The ISO ist just 813 MB (as of release 2023.07.01) and downloaded in 30 s. There are several options to write the ISO to the stick, but I prefer dd:

dd bs=4M if=archlinux-archlinux-2023.07.01-x86_64.iso of=/dev/sdd conv=fsync oflag=direct status=progress

Note that the stick must not be mounted, and one writes to the stick (sdd), not a partition (sdd1).

After booting from the thus created live media, I was just a few commands away from a restored system. I first wanted to have my WiFi working:

iwctl --passphrase PASSPHRASE station DEVICE connect SSID

After that, I just needed to mount my drives (have a look with lsblk before), delete the stale lock file from the previous failed update, and do an update in the mounted root directory:

mount /dev/nvme01p2 /mnt
mount /dev/nvme01p1 /mnt/boot
mount -t proc /proc /mnt/proc
mount --rbind /sys /mnt/sys
mount --rbind /dev /mnt/dev

rm /var/lib/pacman/db.lck

pacman --sysroot /mnt -Syu

Took all in all half an hour, but I would still have preferred to avoid this situation altogether. The lesson is: avoid working on the system when you're all stressed out. Particularly on Friday night.

MSTwo

Cobra — Mon, 03 Oct 2022 13:12:43 GMT

We are in the middle of a scientific discussion, and out of nowhere, a reference to an old and well-known operating system popped up. Our benjamin chimes in, grinning: “MSTwo!”

“MSwhat?” It took a second or two, and then it clicked. She's spanish, you know: “uno, DOS, tres, cuatro,...” And young enough to have never seen MSDOS herself.

Which makes me a relic because I've not only seen it but prepared my master thesis with it. 😑

Android file transfer

Cobra — Fri, 24 Dec 2021 10:32:48 GMT

My home and office computers are synchronized via the ownCloud server located at my workplace. This synchronization takes place via an TLS encrypted connection with an A+ Qualys rating. In addition, I encrypt files containing sensitive information prior to their transfer on an individual basis. Since all systems accessing this cloud folder are driven by an operating system (OS) that I trust and largely control (Archlinux), I feel very comfortable regarding the security and privacy of my data. To keep this warm and cozy feeling, I wouldn't give devices with an OS beyond my control (such as Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS) access to this folder.

Now, I fully appreciate that even a hardened desktop Linux would have difficulties to compete with the level of security offered by an up-to-date Android – with “security” being defined here in the conventional context with respect to a potential third-party adversary. But concerning the privacy of my data, and thus mine, the threat of an overly nosy first party is much more palpable. Actually, I shouldn't call it a threat. It's in fact a promise.

How, then, am I supposed to transfer or even better synchronize data from and with the newest member of my gadget zoo? Since I've acquired this gadget as a two-factor authentication for my banks, I cannot simply root it and install LineageOS without any Google services. Therefore, I won't trust the device beyond its specialized purpose and I won't give it access to my cloud folder.

But that's actually not a big deal in this case. Because of its specific function as a two-factor authenticator for my banks and several other services, the phone will remain stationary. Hence, I need to synchronize within my LAN, but not outside of it. When looking for apps that would be suitable for this task, I was initially attracted by those appealing to the nerd in me, such as, for example, croc installed (pkg install croc) and running within termux, or juiceSSH. In the end, these apps turned out to be fun for a limited time, but too tedious for everyday use. I'm very fond of controlling computers with a keyboard, but for using termux efficiently, you'd need the eyes of an eagle, the fingers of an elf and the dexterity of a spider monkey.

For ordinary human beings, syncthing is the tool of choice. It's available on f-droid, easy to set up on all participating systems, and works reliably without manual intervention. In my case, I've simply created a folder (~/androidshare) on my desktop that automatically receives all files from my phone that may be worth to keep, including the backups of the andOTP and keepassDX databases and all photographs of my cats. 😍

Resistance is futile

Cobra — Sat, 28 Aug 2021 14:37:38 GMT

In my childhood, I lived in conditions that would be considered poverty today, but were not uncommon at the time. For example, our apartment featured neither a toilet nor a bathroom or shower. The toilet was located half a floor down in the stairway, and we shared it with our neighbors. To take a bath instead of a quick wash, we had to visit the public bath. The stove was still coal-powered, and we relied on it for cooking and getting hot water for preparing coffee and tea as well as for washing dishes. In the winter, this stove was also used for heating, but the heat didn't spread far, and we had to put on several layers of clothing in the other rooms. As we had no place for a washing machine, the clothes had to be carried to the next laundromat once per week.

But we felt very comfortable, even privileged, since we enjoyed a number of household appliances that were not entirely obvious at this time. For example, we had a telephone, a huge table-top radio, and even a black-and-white cathode ray television set (which, I remember, was smaller than the radio) with three programs that signed-off at midnight. Plenty of entertainment for my parents, but I had lots of toys in addition, of course. And since my parents tried very hard to make me happy, I got the greatest gifts a boy could wish for at that time: a Märklin model railway and a Carrera slot-car race track.

Much to their disappointment, these electric gadgets held no fascination for me. I actually spent most of my spare time outside, playing soccer and swimming, and indoors I much preferred classic board games such as Mills and Checkers, and later Chess, which became kind of an obsession and occupied most of my time and attention in solitary concentration. To get me back to a social life, my parents very cleverly introduced me to classic card games, which I then started to study with three equally nerdy friends of mine. We played Rummy, Canasta, Whist and Bridge, but also the German classics Skat, Schafkopf, and Doppelkopf.

I've recently googled for these three friends, and found to my great delight that they have all made their way. A surgeon, an attorney, an engineer – and I became a physicist instead of an electrician, as my parents had planned. And I hope that for them the ability to play a variety of board and card games has been proven to be as useful as it has been for me. For example, when I arrived in Japan some 15 years later for my postdoctoral studies, I went to an English pub I knew from a conference after realizing how fundamentaly lonely I was. The time was early, long before it actually opened, but there was a girl behind the counter, waiting for the first guests, playing Backgammon with herself. It was my knowledge of Backgammon acquired 15 years ago that enabled me to play with her, earning me an invitation for a party where I would meet Susie from Kenya. But that's another story.😙

Nowadays, I keep an average household with regard to technology. It features all of the typical electrical appliances of western civilization, sprinkled with plenty of electronic gadgets, such as desktops, notebooks, tablets, e-book readers, and even a mobile phone, but it's not “smart”. In fact, so far I even didn't bother myself with a smartphone, as I didn't see any compelling reason for using a technology without having the slightest need for it. Worse, it seems that all gadgets with the attribute "smart" are essentially designed to collect as much data as possible about their unsuspecting, dumb users and send that data to various third parties who subsequently profit from it. And last but not least, I feel thoroughly repelled by the pathetic addiction of users to their smartphone, made evident by the innumerable smombies and nomophobes whose catatonic behavior I have to endure every day.

The first of these circumstances has changed very recently. In complying to the revised payment services directive of the EU, one of my banks has decided to terminate mTANs as a method of payment authorization. As alternative, they very prominently advertise an app-based authorization, although a photoTAN generator is in principle also available – but of course not compatible with any other bank. Should I pile up photoTAN generators on my desk or go for the smartphone? I pondered this question for a short time, but it was finally decided by unexpected circumstances turning up in an entirely different context: traveling in the age of the pandemic. My wife has important family business in Japan, and for her entry and the subsequent 14 days of quarantine, she will need no fewer than three apps on a smartphone, which can be either her own one, or has to be rented at the airport.

In view of this development, an attitude of denial would be donquixotesque. I decided that we would instead try to embrace the situation, and make the best out of the gadgets we are forced to acquire by circumstances. That shouldn't be too difficult, since I already knew from my experience with our Nexie that an Android device with small form factor can be great fun. However, there was no need to spend the obscene amounts of money the smartphone industry has somehow managed to establish, with price tags for the flagship phones having tripled over the last decade. Chapeau to the industry for the masterful creation of a new consumers desire leading to excessive debts particularly for the young generation. I'm quite immune to this attempt of seduction, and we consequently decided to look into the low- rather than the high-end.

Since I would be using my phone for security-critical tasks, the main criterion was the guaranteed availability of updates, which is the domain of the Google Pixel phones, a few of the top models from other manufacturers, and of phones running Android One, of which only the Nokias are left. After looking through the specifications, I settled on a Nokia 3.4, which seemed more than sufficient for the simple tasks I would need it for. For my wife, who will certainly enjoy playing an occasional game on her phone, I looked for a higher-class SoC than on the Nokia, and finally opted for the Motorola Moto G30. Both smartphones together came for less than €300, the maximum amount I had been willing to spend.

And you know what: I wouldn't have half of the fun with this little gadget if it hadn't been so affordable. I was a bit disappointed that the Android 11 upgrade didn't come earlier, but eventually it came, and the phone is currently running Android 11 with the latest patches (August 5). That's good enough for me to use it for the purpose I bought it for, i.e., as an authentication factor for my banks. But I also set it up as a general two-factor authentication device by installing and configuring andOTP for some of my most important accounts, such as the control panel of the server running this blog. Being thus an integral part of my security measures, it will securely stay at home, where it has already plenty of alternative uses. Here's one of them: I always wanted to have an HP 48, but never got it. Now I have one!

Fast, faster, M1?

Cobra — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 14:36:24 GMT

I should have created a category called “Modern advertisement techniques” or “How-the-media-manipulate-us-to-help-Apple-selling-its-products”. The crude attempts of the tabloid press are so glaringly obvious to anybody that they are more amusing than anything else. What I find far more disconcerting is the subtle approach one encounters in media of higher standard. At first the occasional inaccuracy or omission seems innocuous enough, but after a while it becomes clear that all of these apparent oversights and mishaps are invariably in favor of Apple, establishing an act of framing, deliberate or not. Here is one and here is another example of what I'm talking about.

Now, in June Apple announced that they are going to switch from Intel to ARM, and in November they announced the Apple M1 system-on-chip with their usual vastly exaggerated grandiose claims (3×, 6×, 15× faster!!!). One doesn't have to be the oracle of Delphi to predict the resulting media circus and the ever higher flying expectations based on nothing but hype.

Finally, some meaningful benchmarks (Cinebench R23) in c't 26/2020. Before examining and evaluating the numbers, here are two quotes from this issue:

p. 36 (Bit-Rauschen) Beim 15-W-Typ Ryzen 5000U wird es jedenfalls spannend, ob er zumindest bei Multithreading Apples-ARM-Renner M1 einholt und somit die x86-Ehre rettet.

p. 44 (Alles M1!) In der Single-Core-Performance enteilt der aktiv gekühlte M1 [...] allen bisherigen Mobilprozessoren der 15- bis 45-Watt-Klasse [...]. In der Multi-Core-Wertung sortiert er sich zwischen den 45-Watt-Mobil-CPUs Core i7-10750H (6300 Punkte) und Ryzen5 4600H (8370 Punkte) ein [...].

Now, these statements very clearly imply that the performance of the M1 surpasses that of any currently available 15-W mobile processor, wouldn't you say so?

Let's compare the single/multithreaded Cinebench R23 scores [1] of Intel's TigerLake top model and three Ryzen 7 4000U with those of the M1:

i7-1185G7               1538/6264
4700U                   1184(1218)/6874(7269)
M1                      1514(1517)/7760(7786)
4750U                   1184/8088
4800U                   1235/10156

As you can see, Apple has come up with a highly competitive chip offering a single-core performance on par with the 1185G7, and a multi-core performance just between the 4700U and the 4750U. But neither do we need a 45-W-CPU, nor the upcoming Ryzen 5000U to leave the M1 far behind in terms of multi-core performance: the 4800U does that well enough. And that's what I would have liked to read in an objective summary of the M1 instead of the distorted statements above.

The M1 is the first ARM-based processor that offers competitive performance for desktop applications. Is that the end of Intel and AMD? The loss of Apple as a major client may seem like an enormous loss for Intel, but actually it's a rather insignificant one, and some even believe it to be beneficial for them. Moreover, the M1 currently only runs on Apple hard- and software, resulting in a correspondingly small market share. More alarming, particularly for AMD with their hopes to break the dominance of Intel processors in data center and high-performance computing applications, is the current development of ARM-based server processors offering high performance for an affordable price. Remember when Linux-based x86 boxes replaced SPARC, MIPS, PA-RISC, and Power PC workstations running Solaris, IRIX, HP-UX, and AIX? That's just 11 years ago. Perhaps we are witnessing an analogous transition right now.

[1] A very similar comparison can be found, by the way, in the current issue of c't (Apfel-Alternativen, c't 1/2021, p.109). The values here are taken from cpu-monkey.com, and the ones in parentheses are from c't. If you have an older processor and would like to compare, chances are good that you find it in the comprehensive, community-compiled list at computerbase.de.

Bad mojo

Cobra — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 13:50:18 GMT

There are many examples of companies that didn't last very long after having been acquired by IBM. In a process called blue washing, IBM replaces the processes, corporate culture and philosophy of the new acquisition with those of its own. This routine inevitably leads to the complete assimilation and absorption of the company's original identity until nothing is left of it.

It is thus no surprise that IBM's spectacular takeover of Redhat in 2018 was met with considerable scepticism and sometimes outright concern. And rightly so: a few days ago Redhat announced the end of CentOS as we know it. Ironically, those who recently upgraded from CentOS 7 to CentOS 8 to get support until 2029 instead of 2024 now have only one year left.

CentOS Stream is not a viable replacement for the most common use case of CentOS, namely, running software suites certified for Redhat as I've described previously on this blog (part I, part II). New distributions filling the gap that CentOS will leave have been announced (Rocky Linux, Project Lenix), and we will see if and when they materialize, and how long they last. In the meantime, I'm glad that I generally avoided Linux distributions with a commercial background.

Home Office

Cobra — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 17:20:56 GMT

The spread of SARS-CoV-2 has made it advisable for many people to work from home. I and my colleagues are doing that now for four weeks, and it's working very well. For me, home office isn't new: I use this possibility since a decade whenever I have a task at hand requiring particular concentration and focus. Writing papers or proposals is such a task, or developing and implementing a quantitative model to understand experimental data (that's what lucky physicists do for a living). In fact, I've been asked in January by colleagues to help with the development of such a model, which I thought to be challenging, but didn't expect to be as difficult as it actually turned out to be. For most of the time, I was rather cluelessly poking around in a forest of equations and not getting anywhere.

During the last days, I made an effort to refocus on this issue, and not only for a few hours, but a couple of days: you go to bed with the problem and wake up with it, and there's nothing to distract you from it. This kind of total concentration is simply not possible in the daily office routine, but I can do it at home, basically returning to my time as a student where every living moment was devoted to problem solving. What greatly helps with reaching this trance-like state is having no kids, an understanding wife, and softly purring cats that love to sleep in the chairs on my left and right. The breakthrough occurred after two days, all of a sudden, like a flash. I still had to solve technical problems, but the direction was clear. These are the moments that every scientist cherishes and holds most dear: the intense joy to have solved the problem, to have broken the code. 😌

I realize that not everybody has the same favorable boundary conditions as I do, or even the luxury to compare. And I understand that the situation is very different with young kids instead of cats. 😉 But still, I'm really tired reading commentaries in the newspapers moaning about the “solitary confinement”, and how unbearable it is. Most of them stem from rather young people with a smartphone glued to their right hand, and the strong belief to have the god-given right to party. Even worse are the characters with a political agenda, bitterly complaining about violations of our constitutional rights and predicting the end of democracy. What unites these two apparently very different groups is their failure to understand even the most simple arithmetic. And yes, there's no need for calculus to understand the simple concept of the exponential spread of a virus.

More realistic models are based on systems of differential equations similar to the ones describing the zombie apocalypse. The infection rate of the human population depends on the infection probability when a human and a zombie meet. Similarly, in epidemiology, the spread of an infectious disease is characterized by R0, the basic reproduction number. This number determines how fast the infection spreads (i.e., the slope of the exponential), and if it decreases with time (which is highly desirable), the curve “flattens”. The curve remains, however, an exponential as long as R0 > 1.

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. A. A. Bartlett

Upgrade to Windows 10

Cobra — Fri, 13 Dec 2019 16:47:57 GMT

My wife's gaming rig is still running on Windows 7, and it's about time to change that. In principle, an upgrade to Windows 10 requires only the download of the Media Creation Tool from Microsoft on the system to be upgraded. However, to save myself the download of several GB of data with my meager DSL connection at home, I've used this tool in my virtual Windows 7 at the office to prepare a USB stick for installation. It took some time to find an active download link for the USB 3.0 drivers compatible with VirtualBox (Intel 7 Series C216 Chipset Family, which Intel has discontinued), but in the end I had my stick.

After uninstalling the antivirus scanner (Avast), I've plugged in the stick, clicked on setup.exe, and off it went. But after 15% installation progress:

Error: 0x8007025D-0x2000C
The installation failed in the SAFE_OS phase with an error during APPLY_IMAGE operation.

Just below the error message is a link that can neither be clicked nor copied. Now that's usability! In any case, the suggestions on this page aren't helpful at all, but send the users experiencing this error message on the wrong track. Fortunately, third-party pages such as techjourney and the windows club do much better in this respect, in that they have the most likely reason on top of their list: corrupted installation media. And in fact, when I simply let the Media Creation Tool download the files, the upgrade works flawlessly. Didn't even take 3 h including the download, which was much faster then I had expected.

You see how easy the upgrade is – even for someone who hasn't actively used Windows since 15 years. Don't be one of these pathetic figures that are eternally whining and bawling that they have a god-given right to use Windows XYZ until the end of the time, and are very loudly expressing the opinion that Microsoft must be condemned by international (or at least European) law to keep the OS in question alive. Get a grip on yourself, make an update, and deal with it, for Pete's sake. Or switch to OpenBSD or any other one of these geekish systems. You could also buy a Mac, if you insist. But don't act like a newborn.

For us, Windows 10 itself is not entirely new, since earlier this year, we purchased a Lenovo Miix 630 for accompanying my wife on her trip to Japan. We got this 'Windows on ARM' detachable for €444 complete with a back-lit type cover and a pen, 8 GB of RAM, and LTE, allowing her to access the internet from home without the need to search for places offering public wifi. The Miix turned out to be very versatile and fun to use, and it has an almost unbelievable battery life in excess of 20 h thanks to its Snapdragon 835 processor (a mid-range smartphone SOC). What I also like is the rolling-release concept of Windows 10, which guarantees that the device isn't obsolete after at most three years as it's custom for Android gadgets. It's a pity that this interesting concept is so unpopular. Lenovo has already stopped the production of the Miix, and there aren't any others like it (the Surface Pro X from Microsoft comes at more than three times the price).

Quality journalism, the second

Cobra — Sun, 24 Mar 2019 13:40:44 GMT

I'll keep this post in German since most of the links and the quotes are. Use DeepL to translate. 😉

Der Niedergang von Zeitungen und Zeitschriften macht auch vor Computerzeitschriften nicht halt – ganz im Gegenteil. Die c't is davon noch vergleichsweise wenig betroffen, was aber ausschließlich an ihren treuen Abonnenten liegt. Doch auch hier bröckelt es seit Jahren langsam, aber stetig. Ich habe seit mehr als 20 Jahren ein Abonnement der c't, die ich als Klolektüre auch auf keinen Fall vermissen möchte. Allerdings häufen sich in den letzten Jahren Fehler einer Art, die einem das Vergnügen nachhaltig vergällen. Wenn man jede Aussage hinterfragen muß, ist es einfacher, selbst zu recherchieren. Und zur reinen Unterhaltung kann ich auch Fix und Foxi lesen.

Mit der letzten Ausgabe ist mir der Kragen geplatzt, und ich habe mich dazu hinreißen lassen, einen Leserbrief einzusenden:

...

Es ist ja ein wirklich lobenswertes Ziel, den Leuten Lua- oder auch Python-Programmierung näher zu bringen, aber ich erwarte, daß zumindest erwähnt wird, daß es auch deutlich einfacher geht (wenn es denn so ist).

c't 7/2019, p. 158. „Trotz dieser Flexibilität stößt man irgendwann an Grenzen: So kann das Tool von Haus aus nicht die aktuelle Wetterlage bei wttr.in erfragen und anzeigen. Diese und weitere Funktionen lassen sich jedoch leicht über selbstgeklöppelte Lua-Skripte nachrüsten.”

Was immer auch „von Haus aus” bedeuten soll, Lua-Skripte braucht man nicht dafür.

Stündliche Abfrage des Wetters:

${execpi 3600 curl -s "wttr.in/Berlin?nT&lang=de" | head -n -2}

Stündliche Abfrage des Wetters in Farbe. 😉

${execpi 3600 curl -s "wttr.in/Berlin?n&lang=de" | ~/.config/conky/ansito | head -n -2}

Ansito: https://github.com/pawamoy/ansito

Und ganz ähnlich in

c't 5/2019, p. 42. „Der Grep-Befehl durchsucht die Datei auf einem Rechner mit Core i5 mit SSD in etwas mehr als einer Minute. Er nutzt aber nicht aus, dass die Datei bereits nach Hashes sortiert ist. In einer sortierten Liste kann man per binärer Suche viel schneller suchen. Eine selbst programmierte binäre Suche in Python braucht nur wenige Zeilen Code. Wir haben daher kurzerhand ein Skript entwickelt, das die Datenmassen in Rekordzeit durchforstet.”

Auch sehr schön, aber mit keinem Wort erwähnt, daß es unter Linux deutlich einfacher und etwa viermal schneller geht:

$ look $(echo -n "111111" | sha1sum | awk '{print toupper($1)}') pwned-passwords-sha1-ordered-by-hash-v4.txt

Himmel nochmal, das ist doch nicht so schwer. Ein Satz, der darauf hinweist, ist doch nicht zu viel verlangt. Oder doch?

...

Begleitet werden diese Eindrücke natürlich von der Entwicklung von heise online (ein von der c't prinzipell redaktionell unabhängiges Medium), das ich wie so viele langjährige c't-Abonennten als Online-Heimathafen betrachte. Neulich kam es dort zur Veröffentlichung eines Artikels einer Autorin aus der Ecke der genderfeministischen SJWs, der vor allem mit der kompletten Abwesenheit auch nur irgendeiner Kompetenz glänzt. Ein Zitat:

Während Entwickler stets bemüht sind, möglichst genau den Programmcode einzugeben und dabei keine Tippfehler zu machen, sind SozialwissenschaftlerInnen trainiert das "große Ganze" zu erkennen, die systemischen Zusammenhänge in der Welt zu überblicken.

Die mehr als 5000 Kommentare ließen keinen Zweifel daran übrig, daß es Heise hiermit geschafft hat, seine Kernklientel nachhaltig zu verärgern. 😊

Wenige Tage später erreichte mich diese E-Mail vom „neuen Online-Service heise+”:

Sehr geehrter Herr Brandt, es freut uns sehr, dass Sie als 7 Leser unseren Qualitäts-Journalismus unterstützen.

Ich habe nicht nachgefragt, was „7 Leser” zu bedeuten hat. Ein solch eklatanter Fehler in einer Mail, die schätzungsweise an eine halbe Million Leute rausgeht, in einem Atemzug mit dem selbsternannten Merkmal des Qualitätsjournalismus' (nur echt mit Deppenbindestrich) zu nennen, ist schon recht frech. Ob sie wohl irgendwann mal merken, warum die Leute sie nicht mehr kaufen?