I stopped visiting sites with image recognition reCAPTCHAs. It has to be one of the worst UX patterns ever devised. It's dirt cheap to automate them away so it doesn't really stop any self-respecting bot maker, and it comes at a price of being a huge pain in the ass for a real user. Every time I run into them I felt used and abused.
It's really sad. So much brain power and this is what they come up with.
Apologies for the rant, couldn't help it. ReCAPTCHA is one of very few things I genuinely hate.
According to first vice-president of the European Commission, citing some internal report from the Frontex (EU border agency), 60% are economic migrants.
I would love to see the actual numbers and how Frontex arrived at them - Frontex' job is NOT to decide on or even investigate in asylum applications at all. They have to refer applicants to relevant national authorities; one becomes an applicant by merely stating the wish to apply for asylum [1].
I furthermore have a severe problem with categorically saying that Moroccans "have no reason whatsoever to ask for refugee status" - the country is not as bad as it once was, but political activists are still far from safe [2].
It's been 6 months. Have these "new, unpublished, figures" since been published, or otherwise shown to be correct?
In that news article, Timmermans also argued that border closures are not the right solution.
Edit: If https://euobserver.com/migration/132048 is correct, then the 40% refers to the people specifically from Syria. Most of the remaining 60% are from Iraq or Afghanistan. As that link says:
> almost 90 percent the people who arrived by sea in the EU in December came from countries gripped by war or emerged from a wider regional conflict.
"More than half of those fleeing to Europe from the Middle East and Africa are economic migrants and not asylum seekers fleeing the horrors of war in Iraq or Syria, according to first vice-president of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans.
Quoting what he said were new, unpublished, figures from the EU border agency, Frontex, Mr Timmermans said: “More than half of the people now coming to Europe come from countries where you can assume they have no reason whatsoever to ask for refugee status … more than half, 60 percent.”
Those 60 percent were predominantly from north Africa, mainly Moroccans or Tunisians who were leaving their own countries for “economic reasons” and attempting to travel to Europe through Turkey, the former Netherlands foreign minister told the Dutch national broadcaster, NOS."
No, unless you think that every south american who crosses into the US some is somehow deserving of a refugee status.
The refugee status is a very specific legal term and it comes with allot of requirements both on the person seeking refuge (different from seeking asylum, asylum seekers are not the same thing as refugees) and the country taking them in, a refugee is responsible to contact the authorities and register in the first safe country which is signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, and the "safe" part is a critical issue here, this is about not being shot and have to duck bombs not about financial opportunity and quality of life.
The migrants coming into Europe are not refugees as they've crossed multiple countries which while unpleasant are not currently in conflict, countries which are signatory to the UN convention and in which the UN operates refugee centers.
Once they skip those countries and continue moving to greener grounds legally they are defined as migrants not refugees.
Now asylum seekers are a completely different legal group, they are individuals that are not considered as refugees and they can seek asylum in any country the wish however the rules regarding asylum vary considerably and they are not uniformly protected by the 1951 convention on refugees.
Refugees are people escaping natural or man made disasters that while do not target them individually, no longer allow them to reside safely in their original homes, asylum seekers are running from very specific human made threats due often to their political, social, racial or religious background.
We also seem to forget that most of those countries were part of Hitler's forces that attacked the Soviet Union a few years before that. Small example would be Hungary that sent ~500,000 soldiers to the eastern front. That invasion resulted in ~5 million civilians being killed, let's ignore the military casualties and general destruction.
Every country/nation did all kinds of nasty shit, it's just a matter of how far back you want to look.
Read again: most of those countries. Now make a list of countries that had its forces on the eastern front, and the list of the ones that didn't. Still Bizarro World?
Not that facts matter to you, but Poland attacked Soviets in 1920. Slovakia (Tiso regime) joined Hitler's forces on eastern front. They also attacked Poland and had a war with Hungary, both in 1939.
But given your attitude I'm pretty sure there won't be any meaningful discussion so I'll leave it at that.
and before that Russia occupied Poland together with Prussia and Austria, wiping out Polish statehood altogether for 123 years. Russification, heard of it?
the 1920 war was a result of that, Poles trying to reclaim territories in Ukraine - using the chaos of the Russian Revolution. but yeah, totally attacking Russia.
but all of that justifies the occupation by the Red Army from 1945 till 1989. yup.
You can get those Rockchip HDMI sticks for $50 on aliexpress, shipping included (RK3288 ones support 4K). They usually ship with Android 4.4 these days. But for $70-$80 you can get a stick with Atom Z3735F 2GB/32GB and have full desktop OS, Windows or Linux.
You will need to pay import tax + handling charge though. Don't know about the actual prices in Germany, but in UK this would cost you another ~$30 on top of the Aliexpress price.
You're right. That may ruin it for some. It differs a lot from country to country, I guess. Where I'm at the moment there is no import tax on <150 EUR items, and handling is 1 EUR.
Can we please stop pretending that this has anything to do with loading pages faster?
Stop breaking the web. It's stupid. You can try to just shove the ads down someone's throat but you're in for a surprise, again. Any attempt to force it will actually hurt the advertising. People don't hate ads. People hate obnoxious, obtrusive ads that bloat the page to the point of making it completely useless and the whole experience fruitless frustration.
Non-obtrusive ads work just fine. I know that for a fact, they pay my bills.
It's really sad. So much brain power and this is what they come up with.
Apologies for the rant, couldn't help it. ReCAPTCHA is one of very few things I genuinely hate.