As part of a campaign calling on the government to reduce red tape, Alsleben has opened what he calls “the most German of German museums,” the Bureaucracy Museum.
Genius move. I think it’s a worth move either way. Bureaucracy and the shape and history of it is worth preserving [information on].
Among the objects on display is a 10-foot stack of files representing the paperwork needed to install one wind turbine. Another is a photograph of a mailbox with the label: “Please deposit online forms here.”
Looks like it’s a 3 month limited activity, unfortunately.
Worst part of that 10 ft stack is that it’s actually just a single paragraph that makes reference to like 50 obscure german legal concepts that are named with contractions of like 180 words apiece.
I was about to say, you could do serviceable OCR on a 486, which illustrates just how little processing power is needed for conventional approaches compared to this hallucinating AI nonsense.
OCR existed long before the 486. AFAIK it was already used in the 70’s or 80’s to scan mail and presort them based on the postcode. I remember that postcards had light orange boxes (presumably because this color was invisible to B/W scanners?) with dots inside where you where supposed to write the postcode numbers in.
Doing OCR in a very specific format, in a small specific area, using a set of only 9 characters, and having a list of all possible results, is not really the same problem at all.
I meant OCR of arbitrary printed or faxed text, which really only became feasible for home users in the 1990s. There were professional, but often very limited, solutions earlier than that, of course.
It reads to me more just as a statement of contrast, as in ‘we’re in a world of incredibly high-tech new technology, we shouldn’t still be using something from the Victorian era!’
Of cause that is a BS reason. But they should have stopped using fax machines 20 years ago. How can any reason they give why they have to stop now be any other than BS.
When I started my apprenticeship as assistant tax adviser in 2016, I used the fax regularly to send stuff to the IRS equivalent.
I was also in charge of printing certain thing because the setup for those to come out right was unholy.
In the company I am in now, we are pushing for digital solutions but still have a lot of clients with a listed fax number.
One of our digital partners had fax: we don’t do that here written in their signature.
Looks like high usage in UK and USA and Canada (as colonies) since it refered to the red tape used To bind legal documents closed. As a UK to Canada resident. i can say I just knew what the term meant from hearing it so often in conversations or on the news, but never though to look up where the term came from. TIL
It refers to bureaucracy but specifically in a negative way, as in unnecessary and obstructive bureaucracy that just serves as busy work between people and getting what they want or need from the government in terms of services or approvals.
“Red tape” is a pretty common idiom here. It’s similar to bureaucracy, but it’s more like the useless stuff you have to deal with in order to do something.
Say you want to update your driver’s license and you need to bring in some ID and fill out a form. That’s regular bureaucracy.
If you want to feed the homeless so you have to get a permit for an event, prove your volunteers have food-handling training, fill out forms for your volunteers, notify the police that there will be a public gathering, schedule an inspection of the facility, etc, that’s red tape.
Another way to look at it might be that Bureaucracy describes the system in which offices communicate with each other, and Red Tape are the tasks/forms/whatever you have to complete in order to get what you want approved.
I agree with the move; it reduces the unnecessary waste of time, space, and material. While some things should have physical copies, not everything needs to.
Regarding the “AI” part: the author is simply highlighting that BRD is sticking to really old technology, in a world going further steps beyond. Don’t think too hard on that.
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Click here to see the summary
Much as Germany’s reputation for efficiency is regularly undermined by slow internet connections and a reliance on paper and rubber stamps, fax machines are at odds with a world embracing artificial intelligence.
But progress is on the horizon in the Bundestag — the lower house of parliament — where lawmakers have been instructed by the parliamentary budget committee to ditch their trusty fax machines by the end of June, and rely on email instead for official communication.
As a member of Germany’s governing coalition, Herbst has been working on legislation to make email a legally binding form of communication.
Herbst says the fax machine’s long-exalted legal position in Germany boils down to widespread distrust of anything that isn’t written in pen and ink on actual paper.
In March, the International Monetary Fund warned that if Germany wants to boost economic growth, it must reduce red tape and finally get round to digitizing properly.
He shows off his vast collection of old typewriters, desk phones, floppy disks and fax machines which now adorn the shelves of his own office.
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Note that the proposal was sent by fax
Genius move. I think it’s a worth move either way. Bureaucracy and the shape and history of it is worth preserving [information on].
Looks like it’s a 3 month limited activity, unfortunately.
Here’s a video tour/intro of the Bureaucracy Museum.
Worst part of that 10 ft stack is that it’s actually just a single paragraph that makes reference to like 50 obscure german legal concepts that are named with contractions of like 180 words apiece.
“fax machines are at odds with a world embracing artificial intelligence.” So bring on the fax machines! MORE fax machines!
I don’t see how that makes sense as a statement, an ai with access to a 56k modem can send a fax. It feels like they’re just using ai as a buzzword.
The issue is not sending, it is receiving. With a fax you need to do some OCR to extract the text, which you then can feed into e.g an AI.
ChatGPT can recognize text on images already.
At horrendous expense, yes. Using it for OCR makes little sense. And compared to just sending the text directly, even OCR is expensive.
I was about to say, you could do serviceable OCR on a 486, which illustrates just how little processing power is needed for conventional approaches compared to this hallucinating AI nonsense.
OCR existed long before the 486. AFAIK it was already used in the 70’s or 80’s to scan mail and presort them based on the postcode. I remember that postcards had light orange boxes (presumably because this color was invisible to B/W scanners?) with dots inside where you where supposed to write the postcode numbers in.
Doing OCR in a very specific format, in a small specific area, using a set of only 9 characters, and having a list of all possible results, is not really the same problem at all.
I meant OCR of arbitrary printed or faxed text, which really only became feasible for home users in the 1990s. There were professional, but often very limited, solutions earlier than that, of course.
My phone can recognize text on images. How hard could it be to send that data to an AI?
How many billion times do you generally do that, and how is battery life after?
I wouldn’t do it on my phone. 🙄
What I’m saying is that it would probably be fairly easy to incorporate an already existing technology in to an AI.
It reads to me more just as a statement of contrast, as in ‘we’re in a world of incredibly high-tech new technology, we shouldn’t still be using something from the Victorian era!’
Of cause that is a BS reason. But they should have stopped using fax machines 20 years ago. How can any reason they give why they have to stop now be any other than BS.
There’s a chance Indian govt never even switched to fax… It’s more snaily here
I didn’t expect it to be this high… But I guess it’s not unrealistic. My job doesn’t expose me to them at all.
When I started my apprenticeship as assistant tax adviser in 2016, I used the fax regularly to send stuff to the IRS equivalent. I was also in charge of printing certain thing because the setup for those to come out right was unholy. In the company I am in now, we are pushing for digital solutions but still have a lot of clients with a listed fax number. One of our digital partners had fax: we don’t do that here written in their signature.
It is a thing still sadly.
How common is the terminology “red tape”? I had to look it up. Is it more than “bureaucracy” would fill?
Looks like high usage in UK and USA and Canada (as colonies) since it refered to the red tape used To bind legal documents closed. As a UK to Canada resident. i can say I just knew what the term meant from hearing it so often in conversations or on the news, but never though to look up where the term came from. TIL
It refers to bureaucracy but specifically in a negative way, as in unnecessary and obstructive bureaucracy that just serves as busy work between people and getting what they want or need from the government in terms of services or approvals.
“Red tape” is a pretty common idiom here. It’s similar to bureaucracy, but it’s more like the useless stuff you have to deal with in order to do something.
Say you want to update your driver’s license and you need to bring in some ID and fill out a form. That’s regular bureaucracy.
If you want to feed the homeless so you have to get a permit for an event, prove your volunteers have food-handling training, fill out forms for your volunteers, notify the police that there will be a public gathering, schedule an inspection of the facility, etc, that’s red tape.
Another way to look at it might be that Bureaucracy describes the system in which offices communicate with each other, and Red Tape are the tasks/forms/whatever you have to complete in order to get what you want approved.
It’s a bit too early and premature. There needs to be an alternative to fax first.
Cryptographically signed documents and Matrix?
Email.
Fax is not secure, never has been and most businesses are using e-fax which is email with extra steps.
This particular dinosaur actually deserves to be Chicxulub’ed.
Please for the love of god abandon fax. I’m tired of troubleshooting it.
I think the the previous post was sarcasm. :)
Very likely lol I’ll whoosh myself on that one haha
New word of the day.
My dr. office has a fax number and I’m like who is sending you a fax exactly?
Japanese Prime Minister
I agree with the move; it reduces the unnecessary waste of time, space, and material. While some things should have physical copies, not everything needs to.
Regarding the “AI” part: the author is simply highlighting that BRD is sticking to really old technology, in a world going further steps beyond. Don’t think too hard on that.
🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
Much as Germany’s reputation for efficiency is regularly undermined by slow internet connections and a reliance on paper and rubber stamps, fax machines are at odds with a world embracing artificial intelligence.
But progress is on the horizon in the Bundestag — the lower house of parliament — where lawmakers have been instructed by the parliamentary budget committee to ditch their trusty fax machines by the end of June, and rely on email instead for official communication.
As a member of Germany’s governing coalition, Herbst has been working on legislation to make email a legally binding form of communication.
Herbst says the fax machine’s long-exalted legal position in Germany boils down to widespread distrust of anything that isn’t written in pen and ink on actual paper.
In March, the International Monetary Fund warned that if Germany wants to boost economic growth, it must reduce red tape and finally get round to digitizing properly.
He shows off his vast collection of old typewriters, desk phones, floppy disks and fax machines which now adorn the shelves of his own office.
Saved 80% of original text.
Fuck me it’s now actually the end times.
Tbh I was surprised they’re still using them
laughs in Japanese bureaucracy