It’s actually not that easy. Parts of countries can be actually be part or not part of international agreements - Greenland for example is not part of the EU, Denmark as such is. Same goes for a lot,but not all, French oversea territories.

In terms of Greenland this is actually bad for Greenland in hindsight as the EU defence accords are more far reaching as the NATO accords which take precedence, though.

If a Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power, in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. This shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States.

Mailbox.org They could go all the way and become “cool and cloud” but decided not to.

Haix While their customer service is not what it used to be they are still more than decent to a point it hurts their sales.

With my last one I am not 100% convinced: Mikrotik. While their stuff I great and cheap for what it does, I also had one really lacking support experience with them (they forgot to pack the rack ears for a switch and neither the vendor nor they could somehow get me ones. Another premium partner of them helped me for free and since then will always get my business). But in total they are still the good guys I think.

Yeah, that would be favourable.

But: Blackberry has acquired multiple companies that deliver government grade android devices that are fully degooglefied and heavily secured. They are the de facto market leader.

Even if they bring out a properly secured and degooglefied Android that would be a huge step in the right direction.

Yeah, Blender is one of the few points where it works. QGIS is the other.

Yeah. Gaming isn’t the issue for a long time. Productivity is. Rantmode

Proper CAD for Linux? Nonexistent, even worse, some manufacturers intentionally make sure you can’t use a VM either until you massively pay extra.(Looking at you Dassault) FreeCAD is a shitshow (and that is entirely the communities fault) and no professional competitor has shown any incentive - even though there is a increasing market for Linux in some professional capacities. And the current projects to get bottles/wine/etc. to work are maintained by a single guy (bless him) who tried to do it for multiple systems at once and seems to have given up mostly.

Graphic design? While the situation is a little bit better,it’s still a shitshow. No, GIMP and Inkscape are not sufficient replacements for Adobe or even Affinity. They are “good enough” for most things,but they are not nearly ready for production use in any professional capacity.

Office? Yeah. Sadly equally bad. I really really really hate Microsoft and Office. But: They are inherently good at what they do. Not because people get used to it - but because they work. I used LibreOffice since back when it was still StarOffice. (And have used Lotus before that) But we as the open source community still rather fight about ribbons (even though they became the standard everywhere) than get LibreCalc halfway production ready or make proper collaborative working possible. Or get a proper fucking search into thunderbird.

And this is the problem: OSS is so damn up its own ass, that it does not see the bigger picture. We can fight about the kernel allowing Rust, having Ribbons, which is the proper workbench in FreeCAD or about packet managers, distro flavours,etc. In the end what will happen is that the other side will be alienated, excuse themselves from further contributions and, and this is even worse, a lot of possible future contributors will also not contribute. And wow, someone was right and can think he (and it’s almost always a he) thinks he knows the only truth.

While the actual truth is held by the others. The ones that don’t even are bothered by the whole fucking discussing because they make the money, they influence millions and they are the ones setting de facto standards. And yes, that will mean we will need to adapt.

Including adapting market standards. When 95% of the world does a thing “that way”, it’s simply preposterous to claim “your way” is the right way, even it’s for historical reasons. (Easy example: CTRL C / CTRL V)

Same goes for adapting software. If 10% of the development power of Libre Office,GIMP, etc. would have been used to further Wine/Proton to get people to be able to use their industrial standard software we would have seen much much much larger adoption rates,both professionally and for private users.

Because that is literally what happened in gaming. Once Valve basically put massive efforts into allowing Windows games to be played on Linux - and not into developing native Linux games all of a sudden Linux gaming went ahead. Because it is a advantage for your game to work natively and well on a steam deck.

This is even more relevant for production software. If a CEO/CIO has reached a point where his main production software runs on Linux and he has deployed Linux in his company his next software contract for other software will go towards the company who runs better in their environment.

Rant out

(Nothing personal,mate, I just spent the last two days to get fucking CAD to work on Fedora…)

Or if the US fucks up enough for the rest of the world to put a UNO reverse card on the US. If China and the EU do that, the US is fucked within a few months. A “you can’t trade with either of these markets when you trade with the US” would be interesting.

And tbh, from what I gather it’s absolutely a option that is being discussed in diplomatic circles. The main reason it’s not on the table is the huge amount of debts the USA has in China. And the EU will use it as a backup arrow for “further escalation”. Maybe someone should tell Trump who actually delivers the machines for the factories he wants to “bring back”. Hint: It’s not the US.

Yes,you understand how sanctions work.

A person living in a sanctioned country can also no longer buy certain things, travel to certain countries or use certain services. You couldn’t buy a Boeing Plane during WW2 in Germany as well…

And considering that Russia is waging a fucking genocidal war and a hybrid war in Europe and a majority (according to relatively independent statistics) of the population stil supports that shit and has done so for a long time (when they still could have changed course) it’s god damn right these sanctions exist.

BTW: Cuba is being sanctioned by the US for simply nationalising US held companies (Fidel Castro wasn’t that much of a communist in the beginning) since 1960 and basically none gave or gives a rats ass.

Yes, exactly. That’s why it’s preferable to use them self-hosted as the E2E of course ends on the server.

They have been,well, complicated and uncomfortable, a few years back but gradually improved. I use both and they are alright. The WhatsApp Bridge works flawlessly for me, no issues at all, the signal bridge has occasional issues that require a restart of the container (as in “once every one to three months”),but that’s more on the signal end of things. While they are not ideal they are the best option at the moment.

Matrix is also an option and heavily audited+ federated. And unlike Signal not based in the US.

And the best? You can easily selfhost a bridge to signal and WhatsApp.

And it has some options to interpret data following strict W3C standards. Which was incredibly helpful when learning, as it encouraged me (and a lot of others) to don’t go down the IE/Netscape and later Chrome “specialities” road. (Yes,I am that old…I still remember MS fucking FrontPage)

And then he will be a dead Hopefully. Through Vanguard and Blackrock the Saudis and Qataris are said to have substantial investments in Tesla. And especially the former are not kind people when it comes to fraud to their disadvantage.

Often reverse osmosis works better - and distillation systems require a lot of upkeep and energy costs. So there is that. And of course they only help if it’s not their transport system.

First of all: Where in your system was the sample taken? At the well? At a tank? At a faucet?

The answer to this question is important for the next steps.

Be aware that high lead content can also be an issue for plant watering and even showering.

If the sample has been taken at a endpoint (faucet) I would try to get another sample at the well directly. If you are “lucky” the acidity of the water is the reason lead is brought into your system from a section of your transport system. In that case replacing the transport layer (basically: Get new pipes) is the best approach - while it’s not cheap it is also not as expensive as filtering (or dealing with the health issues from lead, especially in the US).

If the well shows the same values you are screwed. There are basically two scenarios then: Your well installation itself is the problem - this is in theory “fixable” but expensive, but you might accidentally even poisoning your neighbours then. (The way to find out if it’s your installation is either with specialised equipment or, for some confirmation, get a sample from a neighbour who ideally life upstream from you)

If it’s not your well installation then it’s the well itself…and then you really really need a more extensive analysis: Lead in a ground water deposit is somewhat rare and often a indication something else is problematic - both because geologically lead is often next to other nasties, but also because human caused pollution with lead often goes with the real nasty stuff like arsenic,etc. And you really would want to find these. Then shit sadly becomes really expensive.

Nope,it hasn’t. If your glasses are fogging up in sync with your respiration rate or within a very short timeframe your mask is not sealing. Period. The only difference is when you have either have a valve mask, work with a face shield or similar things or in confined spaces - it’s basically impossible to fog up your glasses with a correctly positioned mask as the filter medium does work as a diffuser. If your mask does fog up suddenly despite a confirmed fit it usually is a warning sign for a breakdown of the filter medium.

(And believe me, we tried really hard - as part of a customer contract we tested all major mask manufacturers available in the EU, with a sample size in the 4 digit range, including UV fluid and thermal imaging tests)

I am fully aware that the equivalent of N95 is often seen as comparable to FFP2, but this is not actually quite correct. The FFP2 has a slightly worse filtration rate and a slightly higher resistance both for inspiration and expiration. Anyway, I intentionally wrote FFP3 as this is the recommended FFP class for Measles while within the NIOSH legislation only a N95 is recommended.

Mostly yes,but it is possible to have some beardstyles if you know very much what you are doing (and have a large head).

But the actual area of contact and to a certain degrees the areas around it need to be shaved properly,yes.

Every vaccination has a (although very slim) chance to cause an adverse reaction. Around 5% of all people vaccinated have a minor skin reaction (which is physiological and not an anaphylaxis. 1% report joint pain.

But,more severely, 1-4 people out of a million develop a life-threatening anaphylaxis, 3 out 100.000 a serious blood clothing disorder. Very rarely(as in: Less than 1 in 1 Million), but with a slightly higher incidence of you are an adult pancreatitis and deafness is reported.

As medicine is always a game of chances we try not to risk things,even if they are rare.

Healthcare professional here - but not your HPC and you cannot confirm that I am who I am so double check what I write:

• Get your titers checked and get revaccinationes asap. If you are not vaccinated or are a non-responder talk to your healthcare provider. Isolate until then.

• Mask up and keep your hands away from mouth, eyes and nose. You will need a properly fitting FFP3/NP95 mask here - measles are far meaner in terms of infectiousness than COVID. Tight fitting means: You have no leaks at the side - if your glasses fog up, if you can feel air going in or out next to your face,etc. it is not working. The usual “duckbill” masks with straps around the ears very very rarely fit properly.

• Wash your hands and desinfect them properly.

• Stay the fuck away from babies. Really. Please.

Centauri Carbon might be worth a look into then - it can print fairly high temperature filaments.

You are really surprised by a guy who wanted to name his car series S-E-X-Y and had a temper tantrum when model E was taken and he could not “buy” it.