Reminds me of my current customer. We (another freelancer and me) built an application that replaced an Excel sheet, which was the foundation of the business until then. So the usual so far.

We have a policy that our customers are responsible for all their business-related input, but we make the decisions about the technical implementation. Every technical decision that the customer wants to make basically costs extra.

In this case we built a rather simple multi-tenancy B2B app using Laravel, with one database per tenant. They planned to start with a single customer/tenant, scaling up to maybe a few dozen within the next years, with less than a hundred concurrent users over the first five years. There were some processes with a little load, but they were few, running less that a minute each and already built up to run asynchronous.

We planned a single Hetzner instance and to scale up as soon as we would see it reaching its limits. So less than 100 €/month.

The customer told us that they have a cooperation with their local hosting provider (with "special conditions!") and that they wanted to use them instead.

My colleague did all the setup, because he is more experienced in that, but instead of our usual five-minute-setup in Forge (one of the advantages of the Laravel ecosystem), it took several weeks with the hosting provider, where my colleague had to invest almost full time just for the deployment. The hosting provider "consulted" out customer to invest in a more complex setup with a load balancer in front, to be able to scale right away. They also took very long for each step, like providing IP addresses or to handle the SSL certificates.

We are very proud of our very fast development process and having to work with that hosting provider cost us about one third of our first development phase for the initial product.

It's been around two years since then. While the software still works as intended, the customer could not grow as expected. They are still running with only one single tenant (basically themselves) and the system barely had to handle more than two concurrent users. The customer recently accidentally mentioned that they pay almost 1000€/month for the hosting alone. But it scales!

I can only sympathize here because I have those exact issues with some of our customers

They don't want our hosting solutions but insist on using their own hosting partners

The result are similar:

- its at least five times more expensive on pure hosting costs

- we lose a considerable amount of time dealing with the hosting partner (which we bill to the customer)

- it's always a security nightmare, either because they put so much "safety protections" in place that it's unusable (think about the customer wanting an Internet-facing website, but the servers are private...) or because they don't put any safety settings in place so the servers are regularly taken down through awfully simple exploits (think about SSH root access with "passw0rd" as password...)

- customer keep complaining about performances to us, but what can you do when the servers are sharing a 100Mbps connection, or the filesystem is on an NFS with <20Mbps bandwidth

Yes. For these reasons I now have a policy that if you want me maintaining your website / web app, then I manage the hosting. I use something I'm familiar with that I know works.

This smells a lot like IONOS. They can put their certifications where the light doesn't shine. 10x the cost, really baaad provisioning API and bottlenecks, broken OS images, useless support...

Super interesting, and truly unfortunate when that happens! Just thinking about having to wait for SSL certificates like in the old days (versus Let's Encrypt) would frustrate me to no end.

Forge seems like a great integrated solution (I subscribe to their newsletter and their product updates seem quite frequent and useful). What's been your experience with them? Any particular things you like, or dislike about them?

I'm also curious when you talk about scaling up Forge - is that something you've done, and is that generally easy to do?

Thanks a lot!

Local hosting can make sense. Being able to drive to your provider and talk to them in person is quite valuable, and if you want to get the highest support tier from a large cloud provider you will often pay several times more compared to the same service with no support, assuming you are a large enough customer that they are willing to sell it. Cooperation with local businesses can also result in some fair amount of additional sales (sending customer to each other, buying services from each other, word of mouth, ectra), so the product cost may not represent the complete picture.

Local hosting can also be comparing apple with oranges. A local data center that provide a physical machine is very different from a cloud provider, especially if that cloud is located in a different continent and under different jurisdictions. Given that they were providing SSL certificates, was this a local php webshop? Data centers should be a bit more proficient with things like IP addresses and setting up any cast, but less so in providing help with php or certificates, and if they sell that it may not be their area of expertise.

What prevented them from scaling to more tenants?

I'm usually first in line when talking shit about the German government, but here I am absolutely for this. I was really positively surprised when I had my apprenticeship at a publishing company and we had a routine to bring physical backups to the cellar of a post office every morning. The company wasn't that up-to-date with most things, but here they were forced to a proper procedure which totally makes sense. They even had proper desaster recovery strategies that included being back online within less than 2 hours hours even after a 100% loss of all hardware. They had internal jokes that you could have nuked their building and as long as one IT guy survived because he was in the home office, he could at least bring up the software within a day.

It's incredible knowing the bureaucracy of Germany.

Ha, I've written a lot of these Makefiles and the "make dev" command even became a personal standard that I added to each project. I don't know if I read about that, or if it just developed into that because it just makes sense. In the last few years, these commands very often started a docker container, though. I do tend to work on Windows with WSL and I most of my colleagues use macOS or Linux, so that's definitely one of the reasons why docker is just easier there.

I have a paywall there :(

Absolutely! I have used Copilot for a few weeks and then stopped when I worked on a machine that didn't have Copilot installed and I immediately struggled with even basic syntax. Now I often use LLMs as advanced rubber ducks. By describing my problems, the solution often comes to my mind on its own and sometimes the responses I get are enough for me to continue on my own. In my opinion, letting LLMs directly code can be really harmful for the software developers, because they forget to think for themselves. Maybe I'm wrong and I am just slow to accept the new reality, but I try to keep writing most of my code on my own and improve my coding skills more than my prompting skills (while still using these tools, of course). For me, LLMs are like a grumpy and cynical old senior dev who is forced to talk in a very positive manner and who has fun trickling in some completely random bullshit between his actual helpful advice.

I guess it totally depends on the specific use cases. Just yesterday, I asked Gemini 2.5 for how to test a Laravel artisan command that internally calls another artisan command using the Pest testing framework. Gemini showed me a method that looked perfect. But when I tried to execute it, I got an error that the method doesn't exist. So I asked Gemini about this, and it told me: "Ah, apologies! That's a classic sign that you might be using a version of Laravel older than 5.7." So I told it that I am actually using the latest release (12.3), to which it responded with: "You're right to question things when you get an error! However, let's clarify the Laravel version first.

As of today, March 27, 2025, the latest stable version of Laravel is Laravel 11, which was released in March 2024. Laravel 12 has not been released yet (it's expected roughly in Q1 2026 based on the usual schedule).

Could you please double-check the exact Laravel version you are using?" So it did not believe me and I had to convince it first that I was using a real version. This went on for a while, with Gemini not only hallucinating stuff, but also being very persistent and difficult to convince of anything else.

Well, in the end it was still certain that this method should exist, even though it could not provide any evidence for it and my searching through the internet and the Git history of the related packages did also not provide any results.

So I gave up and tried it with Claude 3.7 which could also not provide any working solution.

In the end, I found an entirely different solution for my problem, but that wasn't based on anything the AIs told me, but just my own thinking and talking to other software developers.

I would not go that far to call these AIs useless. In software development they can help with simple stuff and boilerplate code, and I found them a lot more helpful in creative work. This is basically the opposite from what I would have expected 5 years ago ^^

But for any important tasks, these LLMs are still far too unreliable. They often feel like they have a lot of knowledge, but no wisdom. They don't know how to apply their knowledge ideally, and they often basically brute-force it with a mix of strange creativity and statistical models that are apparently based on a vast amount of internet content that has big parts of troll content and satire.

I have met several of these leaders. Problem is, that very few of them are also very successful. Most of these "leaders" that I met, based a lot of their success from basically being able to stack their bs very high and bailing out before that stack fell over. Interestingly, the one guy that I am the most sure of being a good guy and leader is also one of the most successful, having retired with several hundred millions in the bank. But the most successful guy is the one with the worst methods, who is very close to become a billionaire (he might actually already be one, haven't checked on him for a few months).

I think that wokeness is increasing racism. The woke people tend to throw around "-isms" a lot. It is sometimes enough to not be on the extreme left-wing view to be called "racist", or even "Nazi" immediately. Especially on platforms like Reddit. I've been very left-wing in my youth myself, which - in retrospect - happened mostly through indoctrination in school. I doubt that I ever turned very much into the other direction, and I see myself very much in the middle with most topics.

My personal philosophy for most topics is to find out what the extremes are, then look at what the middle between these would be, and then call that the ideal.

On Reddit, that philosophy is enough to be called "racist" and "Nazi". Trying to start a proper discussion to (in-)validate any of my - in my opinion - rational points was met with "I don't talk to Nazis!" several times. Mind you, I never even talked about race or anything similar and most times not even about culture. I basically formulated my starting points, added some facts, and was ready to discuss. There were very few discussions that really took place and I have even changed my opinion on several topics based on these discussions. But in the last few years, even these few discussions became less and less. I can only remember one discussion in the last two years that I had with a left-wing person (a teacher from Africa) and I only got this far because our kids were playing with each other. Based on what she told me, I am pretty sure that I would not have the chance for that discussion under other circumstances. She even thanked me for that conversation and told me, that she could not remember the last time that she could talk so open to anyone. I don't know if she realized that she told me how she categorized every negative feedback about her as "racist" half an hour earlier. Strangely, the more to the left a person is leaning, the less they like to discuss nowadays. I find that very strange and also not helpful to their case. If I have two parties where one of them likes to discuss and argue, while the other one directly calls anyone with a slightly different opinion a swear-word, I tend to sympathize more with the party that likes to speak with me. I've yet to encounter a really right-wing extremist that is actually racist. I know that they exist, and I have a friend who was in one of these groups when he was young, but I never had anyone tell me directly that they find any specific ethnicity inferior to others or something in that regard. Well, except for members of a certain religion, but I don't want to start that topic here.

Btw., I am German, and I associate the word "Nazi" with war, racism, and industrial-scale mass murder. But today it is enough to say "I don't like how the immigration into Europe is handled, and I think we should reduce the amount of illegal immigration" to be called a racist and even a Nazi. Ffs, I've seen people in high ranks calling people "racist" because their products were criticized. It had nothing to do with race or anything like that, only with the quality of the product, but they still throw that word around as if everything was just based on race. And if people say that everything and everybody is racist, they at some point start believing that themselves.

Nowadays, you really have to be careful if you criticize anyone's work if they are part of any minority. What's even more ridiculous, most times it's not even the person themselves, but some other person who has their "everyone is racist" opinion, and they will start attacking everyone who dares to critique anyone belonging to any kind of minority. That leads to "toxic positivity", where no-one dares to call out any BS. And that leads to bad products being created. Just look at some of the films and games that have been produced in the last few years. Concord is a good example of something that is the result of this "woke" culture.

This is bad in so many ways. If you hire people by how good they fit into their role, the heritage of the applicant must not be a factor. If the pool of applications does not fit the overall demographic, that is not the fault of the recruiting company. If a company obviously discriminates against anyone, they should be held accountable. That is what I call the balanced solution.

But forcing them to hire specific percentages of certain demographics is contra-productive. Now you don't have the best person for the job, if their ethnicity, sexuality or whatever doesn't also align with the current requirements. This might lead to very bad results. You want your brain-surgeon to be good at his job, and not just the only one that had the right skin tone in that hiring session. And even if they are good or even the best choice, others in the company don't know that, and they might categorize them a "DEI-hire" anyway. That only creates further resentments.

The greatest success I have seen in the fight against racism was not seeing color. We should be color-blind and treat everyone equally. For a time, that worked great. Today, the heritage, gender, color of skin and even sexuality are things that have to be acknowledged, recognized and valued. I've only seen bad results coming out of this and nothing positive.

Oh, and about the part of the professors making their students "feel uncomfortable"; Of course, if a professor says something like "Women belong in the kitchen anyway", or any really sexist or racist stuff, that behavior is not okay, and they should face consequences for that. Only making someone "feel uncomfortable" is not enough, though. To learn, you have to be told if you are wrong. Feedback can't just be positive, and it doesn't help anyone to be wrapped in cotton candy for their whole education. That's what leads to the aforementioned "toxic positivity".

About my last point, I strongly recommend this podcast. One part dedicated to this is timestamped, but I recommend listening to the whole thing. It's really good and it explains a lot about our behavior. https://youtu.be/R6xbXOp7wDA?si=MCF3hfZxe9NmzJ-b&t=4724

> And that leads to bad products being created. Just look at some of the films and games that have been produced in the last few years. Concord is a good example of something that is the result of this "woke" culture.

I didn't play Concord and only saw Sony are shutting it down shortly after release due to poor sales. The reviews I saw were about uninteresting gameplay and characters. What exactly was "woke" about it?

> But forcing them to hire specific percentages of certain demographics is contra-productive. Now you don't have the best person for the job, if their ethnicity, sexuality or whatever doesn't also align with the current requirements. This might lead to very bad results. You want your brain-surgeon to be good at his job, and not just the only one that had the right skin tone in that hiring session. And even if they are good or even the best choice, others in the company don't know that, and they might categorize them a "DEI-hire" anyway. That only creates further resentments.

I agree, forcing specific percents of people is counterproductive. It would be good if it happened naturally, but it didn't for a variety of reasons (some of them various -isms, like hiring managers with biases, poor schooling outcomes or directions due to bad locations/prejudices; some of them more widely cultural, religious, personal). But are you aware of any place where there are actually forced distributions of people to hire? I'm aware of multiple efforts to level the playing field at the hiring stage, including by the European Comission (on men/women equality). But they're all about goals, with extremely explicit caveats that the best candidate should be picked, but if two candidates are equal, the less represented one should be preferred to add diversity. Diversity in a business or public facing organisation is good for them due to a wider representation of ideas and lived experiences. Are you aware of any places where there are fixed quotas and random unqualified people are hired because of their gender or skin colour? I'd be shocked, and all "DEI HIRE" outrages I've seen have been utter nonsense spread by right-wing crisis actors (I've seen it for firefighters, Boeing, Alaska Air and a bunch of other things I can't recall) because it's fashionable to say any non-majority employee was hired only because of their immutable characteristics and is by definition unqualified. Which is, of course, nonsense.

About Concord: There is a lot of discussion about why Concord failed. Some say that the price was too high. But at the same time, games with the same or even higher prices sold just fine. Then there is the argument that the genre of hero shooters is just over-saturated. This is also not true. Look at Deadlock, which (AFAIK) is still in a closed playtest phase and currently has a five-figure player count according to SteamDB. Or Marvel Rivals, which currently has > 270,000 players online. One "non-woke" mistake they made was the marketing. Apparently, very few people even heard about that game before it was cancelled. Then, there is the awful character design. No one in their right mind could call that design good. That's where that toxic positivity comes to mind. That is probably the most criticized thing about that game. If you research how that happened, you might find things like these: https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/1d85lr9/con...

And that's what really pisses off the average guy. It is perfectly fine to have certain statements and to want to raise awareness of specific issues. The main demographic for these computer games is straight white men. So it makes sense to try to insert your views about this in a game if they are your target audience. But that needs to be done properly and in an intelligent manner. Just adding one white dude option into a mix of overly diverse characters, also making them visually very unappealing to not follow traditional beauty standards and then telling the average dude to "Acknowledge their privileged position" is not an intelligent way to handle this. Here, the consequences were quite spectacular. The average gamer who plays hero shooters wants to have their escapism in games and be the great hero that they can't be in real life. This game did not provide that. There are also games that are openly about specific statements, and they openly communicate that. They are also usually niche products because of that because - like I said - the average gamer wants escapism from games.

An example where that's done better is Baldur's Gate 3. The overall game is great, but you also have all the relationship options you might like. I learned that the hard way, when I accidentally broke my carefully created romance between my male avatar and a female party member. I was just being friendly to another male party member, which directly started a gay romance with him. In this case, I would have preferred an option to select the sexual preferences before that happens, but it's nothing that makes the game bad.

> Are you aware of any places where there are fixed quotas and random unqualified people are hired because of their gender or skin colour? I'd be shocked, and all "DEI HIRE" outrages I've seen have been utter nonsense spread by right-wing crisis actors (I've seen it for firefighters, Boeing, Alaska Air and a bunch of other things I can't recall) because it's fashionable to say any non-majority employee was hired only because of their immutable characteristics and is by definition unqualified. Which is, of course, nonsense.

Well, that doesn't look like you are really open to any discussion on this, since you're dismissing anything that's said about this as "nonsense" and you are calling anyone who brings up the examples you just mentioned "right-wing crisis actors" by default. That's not how you discuss this. You bring up your position and already define any other perspective as invalid. But maybe I am wrong, and you are actually willing to change my mind. So, what do you say about this video? It's less than 1.5 minutes and I think it is a good example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hghBAcxEMzM

What I'm understanding you saying re: Concord is that the game was poorly marketed, had bad character designs, and also one of the developers made some ill-considered tweets 4 years before the release of this game.

Absolutely, that one dev has some weird opinions. But if those opinions are/were core to the game design, and done on purpose, then the marketing also failed to get that point across.

There's also something sort of funny about digging up 4-year-old tweets and saying "see, this is what cancel culture looks like in action".

Speaking to the concept of "DEI hires", the implication is always that the person in that role is only there because they met some quota. The reality of affirmative action was that frequently, you could never get into that role, regardless of qualifications, if you had the wrong skin color. And that wasn't just like a backroom sort of thing. There are countless examples of explicitly racist policies in the US prior to 1964. But the funny thing is, with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it became illegal to hire based on race in either direction. "DEI Hire" affirmative actions are explicitly illegal, and it would be an easy case to win if you thought you lost the job to a less-qualified "DEI" candidate. Indeed, the US Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld that racial quotas (of any stripe, but especially "hire more minorities") are illegal.

Re: that video, I see that as less of a policy fail and more of a marketing fail. Like, everybody producing that video understood that as "when a firefighter, ANY firefighter, is physically carrying somebody out of an actual fire, a great number of things have already gone VERY wrong, and being a racist prick about the exact race/gender/etc while a rescue is underway is severely missing the point". But nobody bothered to run that in front of somebody who wasn't adjusted to how firefighters see the world.

Firefighters' physical exams are notoriously physically demanding, because the consequences of not measuring up are pretty dire. And yet I know several female firefighters.

> Concord is that the game was poorly marketed, had bad character designs, and also one of the developers made some ill-considered tweets 4 years before the release of this game.

You almost got it. Not "some developer made some ill-considered tweets 4 years ago", but the Lead Character Designer. That is the person who is responsible for the whole character design concept. And because you're so focused on the Tweet being from was 4 years ago: That game did not magically appear a few months ago. 4 Years ago, it was deep in development and that person was already very publicly apparent about their opinion regarding the main target audience. The characters in question were being formed at that time.

And it was also the first hit I got on Google with my search query. It's not that I dug really deep. It was literally the first result I got.

People like these are what the average guy calls "woke" nowadays. This person has a very toxic agenda and is still put in a lead position for a project with a budget that - according to some sources - may have been up to 400 Million USD. And that is an example on what is considered problematic regarding the DEI topic. If you think that this is not a problem and not even a part of the reason why games like these fail; fine. Then we agree to disagree on this point. You could also look at the game "Dustborn", if you want something that you could find in the glossary next to "woke game". I don't even know what to say about that mess. But that game at least was openly marketed for it's woke target audience.

> Indeed, the US Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld that racial quotas (of any stripe, but especially "hire more minorities") are illegal. I don't like this Dave Rubin guy, but this video sums it up pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwwjREOWtm0

In the comments, you can find plenty of people who tell their own stories matching the one told in the video. So, this apparently does happen. People see that and they're angry. Normal, simple people see that. Some of them, who were neutral before, now look at these minorities with distrust. That's what I mean when I say that these practices sometimes increase racism in the end. That's normal human behavior. If you say those things and are called "racist" in response, that doesn't help. Instead of a proper discussion and trying to find solutions on how equality can be reached without creating these issues at the same time, people need to get together and find solutions. Calling each other swear words and continuing as planned does not help, but worsens it.

> that video, I see that as less of a policy fail and more of a marketing fail. Like, everybody producing that video understood that as "when a firefighter, ANY firefighter, is physically carrying somebody out of an actual fire, a great number of things have already gone VERY wrong, and being a racist prick about the exact race/gender/etc while a rescue is underway is severely missing the point". Wow. I have to admit that I did not manage to get to that train of thought. So, they created a narrative that people care how their rescuers look like, and then they call the people in their story "racist pricks"? How often does this happen that somebody complains about who they were rescued by? I haven't heard that before. So either you know of some of these cases - in that case, please enlighten me. Or are you already conditioned to see racism everywhere, even in made up stories? Honestly, how did you manage to interpret racism into that video?

That is precisely the problem that I mean. People call out an obviously bad video. Instead of saying: "Oh boy, they messed up there. Let's see how we can fix that." the people criticizing it are being called "racist prigs". That will surely improve the situation! Well, shit. If that's how people "discuss" things nowadays, society is really doomed.

The only thing that I know average people complain about is when anyone considers lowering the criteria for physically demanding jobs specifically for women. And that is precisely what this question is about. "Is that woman able to carry a man out of a burning house?". If the answer is "Yes, she has to meet the same physical requirements as the men", then that is the answer that should make everyone happy. To answer "It's his fault to get into a fire anyway" is the worst answer anyone could give. And this went through numerous hands before it was published. So either no one involved realized that this spot could be a bad idea, or there was toxic positivity involved again. Things like these push people further apart when we should be working together. But, I forgot. Nowadays, one also gets called a "racist" for listing biological facts like "women have different bone structure, average muscle mass and hormone levels than men".

Yeah, I can't see why the average person would have anything against the woke people.

> Well, that doesn't look like you are really open to any discussion on this, since you're dismissing anything that's said about this as "nonsense" and you are calling anyone who brings up the examples you just mentioned "right-wing crisis actors" by default

I'm calling the nonsense claims nonsense.

> So, what do you say about this video? It's less than 1.5 minutes and I think it is a good example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hghBAcxEMzM

It's a good example of grifting, yes. We have an ad by the LA fire department where a high positioned person at it talks about diversity. Considering the high amounts of incidents between police and minorities, and high distrust of officials, having the fire department be diverse and representative of the population it serves is a good idea, no? That being said, that must happen with regards to what their job is. No point in hiring someone who can't do the job. And you'll notice that in the ad (or at least the cut this youtuber has chosen to use for engagement, who knows if it's representative or not) the person doesn't say they'll hire anyone or will have a quota. There's a very dumb and aggressive attempt at a dismissal/joke/I don't even know what about a potentially sexist reaction to the above ("can she carry me"). I personally trust the fire department or medic will be able to do their job regardless of their gender or skin colour or whatever. If they're indeed hiring incompetent people because of quotas or any other reason I'd want to know, but neither the ad, nor the youtuber make that claim.

So yes, thank you for illustrating my point. There's a bunch of outrage about "DEI" and quotas and what not, but when you look at the substance, it's nothing.

> And that's what really pisses off the average guy. It is perfectly fine to have certain statements and to want to raise awareness of specific issues. The main demographic for these computer games is straight white men. So it makes sense to try to insert your views about this in a game if they are your target audience. But that needs to be done properly and in an intelligent manner.

While it's true that that's the main demographic, maybe game publishers are trying to add others as well? Increase their target demographic if you will.

> Just adding one white dude option into a mix of overly diverse characters, also making them visually very unappealing to not follow traditional beauty standards and then telling the average dude to "Acknowledge their privileged position" is not an intelligent way to handle this

You're mixing a lead's personal opinion with what the game's options are. I personally don't consider the characters being ugly to be a game stopper (and I'm not alone, I don't think anyone complained about Travis looking like he did in GTAV), but I can see how that can be a problem for some.

Buddy, if wokeness is making you a racist then you were always a racist especially within the US context where families have endured 100s of years of generational racism. You’re not making any sense

I agree. I still have to rely on my car for basically everything because the same government also fucked up the rail system so severely that it barely works in my region. When I moved from a small village to the city, I sold my car and wanted to use public transportation for everything. I'm not fond of driving, especially in cities, so this looked like a no-brainer. I had my first bad experiences quickly when I learned that public transportation wasn't anywhere as reliable as I previously thought.

I had to choose between going to work 45 minutes earlier (of course, unpaid and without the possibility of leaving earlier) or risking being too late half the time. I had to travel further for my next job, but I thought it would be better because it was another connection. I was wrong. It was usually better in the mornings, but my way home usually took between 1,5 and 3 hours instead of the planned 45 minutes.

The next job I chose only because there, at least, I could take the S-Bahn instead of the Deutsche Bahn Trains, and it was a direct connection, which was way more reliable. But it was very loud, very smelly, cold in winter, and very hot in summer (I remember having a working AC twice in the four years that I traveled that line), and there were (not always empty) beer bottles rolling around the floor almost all the time. I always paid for the entire year in advance, so the 90-minute daily drive did cost a little more than 220 Euros monthly. Otherwise, it would have been even more expensive. So, the current ticket would have improved that, at least financially. Now, I barely take the train anymore.

I broke my ankle so badly in my youth that the doctors told me that they had to completely cut it open from both sides to see if they could improve it in any way. They also said that there was a strong possibility that I would wake up with a fused ankle after the operation. They recommended I only do that when the pain becomes unbearable, which I am now waiting for. So, I am permanently in pain, and walking is terrible for me. Still, when I have to go to the nearby city center, I prefer walking for 45 minutes instead of taking the 10-minute trip by train. That is what relying on German public transportation for more than ten years did to me. I tried that train connection multiple times before and stopped after it took me over an hour twice (after about five trips total).

Disclaimer: It is not that bad everywhere in Germany. That's why I wrote "in my region" in the beginning. Within Berlin, for example, I had good experiences with public transportation. Well, at least regarding its availability. There were still junkies in there. And homeless people who smelled like they were living on that train for at least a few weeks. But well, that's another topic.

I don't get why you would write your first two sentences. It is very obvious how the automobile lobby has a direct influence here. Here is an excellent documentary (in German) that analyzes the issues with the DB. https://youtu.be/-dmtNToFwuI?si=3ydA_QOjzOvTke2_&t=480 At the linked time stamp, they mention that every minister of transport in the very influential period from 2009-2021 came from Bavaria, with heavy influence from companies like Audi, MAN, and BMW.