> just look at England.

And perhaps Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and/ or Great Britain, the British Isles, and/ or the United Kingdom?

Fucked up, indeed.

Voting is not important to me. Never have voted, never will.

Including on HN?

It's like returning the shopping cart at the grocery store. Other people have more work to do because you chose to do less.

The action may not matter, you are free to choose, but not doing it does make you a bad citizen. Personal importance doesn't factor into it, this is an external designation.

> Other people have more work to do because you chose to do less.

Not voting in America does not increase the burden of other people. My state has voted the same in Presidential elections for two decades. Local politicians almost always run unopposed and I don't think anyone in my lifetime has won here without an endorsement from the party in favor, so they are picked behind closed doors. Our state governor elections can swing, but ultimately one vote is a vanishingly insignificant portion of that.

I vote every year out of habit, but putting the "I VOTED" sticker conspicuously on a trash can probably makes more of a difference than casting my ballot. The two party system is designed to give people an outlet for feeling like they made a difference without any risk of change for the people in power. See how people like Musk and Zuckerberg cozy up with Trump just as easily as Obama.

> . In general the global tendency is that the more and more digital data is there, the more and more states want to surveil people and invade onto their privacy.

You found out why.

Watching my very, very MAGA 'friends' purchasing byd's is hilarious. I've also, of late, noticed fewer and fewer Teslas around.

You have MAGA friends outside the United States?

There are way too many, unfortunately. For example, Venezuelans are 99% MAGA.

"Trust but verify', very often equals 'fuck it, I'll do it myself'.

> the European failure and subordination to the USA/Microsoft by not fostering at least an alternative to Windows that its corporations and governments can operate on. There has been nothing but talk and tiny little forays into adopting open source, but absolutely nothing that could even rise to being a real alternative to Windows or even MacOS.

Yet. The current US 'situation', combined with US tech spying means those little forays are getting seriouser and seriouser. It's going to be somewhat slower due to languages, and induvidual governments wanting 'their' version (of spying on their populations), but the beginnings are begun.

> - VLC player (what does a traffic cone have to do with playing video?)

Https://1000logos.net/vlc-logo

Let the reader decide? I - incredibly rarely - downvote. It's either vote up, or move along.

You're strategy is good. I'm a bit jaded. I try to make up for it with upvotes and clarifying comments... Seems like I often run into people arguing over a misunderstanding.

"You are strategy is good." And I missed the edit window, oof.

Europe is pretty big and varied.

>The problem in Europe isn't keeping warm in the winter but keeping cool in the summer. In part thanks to their near-total lack of AC in residential buildings,

The times they are a-changing. Every house on my 21 year old estate came with ac. I'd assume the same for newer constructions. People rarely use it due to the price of electricity. Temps get well over 30C for a couple of weeks in august.

Yes, but renting a cloud pc will be initially very cheap for consumers - that's got to be good for consum...governments.