I looked at the picture and thought for a straight minute that this is a tiger… Like, photographed from further away

Shocking! Who could have expected that?!

Wenn die Karte regional beschränkt ist, haben die ja anscheinend mehr Kontrolle über die Karten, als bei einer normalen Debitkarte. Wird also wahrscheinlich nicht lange dauern, bis der Kauf von Gutscheinen gesperrt wird…

The exception to the rule. I am working in a smaller company as a software engineer, I could count myself as a weeaboo… and lots of my colleagues. And there’s at least one furry (that I know of). I would say 50% of the engineers might actually be affected by this rule! (Totally representative of course /s)

Of course, but that’s not what the previous poster was talking about. They were talking about commercial use of the data.

Someone also answered the hosting question on the golem forum, they do host it themselves: https://forum.golem.de/kommentare/opensource/paketverfolgung-und-mehr-post-und-dhl-wechseln-von-google-maps-zu-openstreetmap/immerhin-laedt-die-post-die-daten-von-den-eigenen-servern/170687,6788315,6788315,read.html

I dont think they pay anything I the article itself it says it’s free to use and that the main factor to switch were the costs. In the comments there people also say that DHL doesn’t seem to donate to the project.

Here ist the part from the article translated to English:

Since there has been no announcement of the change from either Deutsche Post or DHL, the reasons for this step remain unclear. Presumably, cost reasons may have played a role. Deutsche Post had to pay fees to Google for the use of Google Maps. The data of Openstreetmap is under a free license and may be used without payment of license fees.

Definitely the real one, the last sentence is like a signature!

What do you mean with „Everything on there is actually functional“?

If you read your linked articles and surveys you will see, that they’re even arguing against your argument.

Just to quote some stuff:

David Hemenway, who led the Harvard research, argues that the risks of owning a gun outweigh the benefits of having one in the rare case where you might need to defend yourself.

“The average person … has basically no chance in their lifetime ever to use a gun in self-defense,” he tells Here & Now’s Robin Young. “But … every day, they have a chance to use the gun inappropriately. They have a chance, they get angry. They get scared.”

“If we don’t even have a minimum standard, not for training, but for performance validation for our law enforcement,” he says, “how in God’s name is anybody going to say, ‘Well, just because you have a gun in your pocket, you know how to use it in self-defense?’ You don’t.”

End quote

And some of the other stuff seems very biased:

The largest and most comprehensive survey of American gun owners ever conducted suggests that they use firearms in self-defense about 1.7 million times a year. It also confirms that AR-15-style rifles and magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, frequent targets of gun control legislation, are in common use for lawful purposes, which the Supreme Court has said is the test for arms covered by the Second Amendment.

The online survey, which was conducted by Centiment in February and March of 2021, was based on a representative sample of about 54,000 adults, 16,708 of whom were gun owners. Georgetown University political economist William English, who commissioned the survey as part of a book project, presents its major findings in a recent paper available on the Social Science Research Network.

End quote

I mean, a survey for owners of guns… Of course if you own a weapon like that, you will tell everyone that you use it for self defense. And probably enough people who say they did that, just lie…

I know studies take a lot of time and often don’t leave much freetime, but maybe it’s still worth to try an online TTRPG platform with your group? I am playing regularly with a group on a selfhosted Foundry TTRPG server and also on Roll20. It works well and we’re sometimes even on different continents.

Anyway, I wish you the best luck, either with the same or with another group :D