I agree, but it also tells me propaganda really is a force to be reckoned with

For two years (not complaining, just adding info)

I’m in the Netherlands and had better results from HERE than from Mapy.

I guess it’s worth trying multiple apps for anyone who wants to ditch Google. We also have a local company (9292) who’s whole business is providing public transport information, so you might not even need a map app for this.

This would definitely be doable but only if public transport companies publish their data because I don’t see this happening if it has to be imported manually

I’m glad at least a part of us citizens are helping to steer the ship, a lot of political parties are willing to change positions of they see they’re losing support. Germany is (slowly) ditching windows for example, the Netherlands wants to leave American cloud services, Denmark is promoting EU products. The fact that there are opposite forces working against this change, also proves it is starting to have real impact. I hope so at least.

I’m not sure how I feel abour the parties that won the election now executing the plans of the losing party, in order to prevent that party from winning an election next time.

Be wary of giving the robot your WiFi password though

If youre from central Asia going to Russia to earn money can be a way of getting out of poverty, also Russia is pretty big so there is also a lot of internal migration for that reason as well. Russia has seperate words for a Russian from the Russian culture and a Russian that is only Russian by citizenship. It’s not like these migrants come from democratic countries with free healthcare and accessible education, so in general it can look that way from certain angles.

I disagree, especially if it is news about an ongoing event with new information coming out. There actually is a rule about posting about ongoing events, but that aside; consolidating comments is valuable when new information is coming out so that the conversation going on can include the new information. Also, a mod cannot look into the future and know how many comments there will be made later.

Why do you think that’s pointless?

Spain wouldn’t be a primary target and if they would be in their national grid they would most likely hide there until they have a reason for using it (like put pressure or take revenge). Russia on the other hand has already been proven to sabotage stuff in the EU, their main goal being creating chaos and unrest. If it would be either of them, I think Russia is by far a more likely culprit. But let’s not jump to conclusions too fast either. You are right China is capable of causing something like this.

It is really crazy to me that if you’re from Hongkong, Tibet, Xinjiang Taiwan but you speak out about the situation there from Europe, you are most likely watched by secret service. EU should really put effort in protecting the freedom of speech of these people, and not let them be silenced by a nation.

But this, not only trying to silence them but also instigate personal dislike of them from people that have anti-immigration views, is really another level of oppression.

I never heard of them but browsed their website just now out of curiosity. They list an adress in the US and one in Bulgaria on https://mobisystems.com/en-us/contacts. My guess would be that it is developed in Bulgaria (so it supports people working in the EU), but sold from the US (so it they may pay their taxes there).

I believe they are kind of to LibreOffice as what Ubuntu is to Linux, they’re headquartered in the UK and I’m a happy user.

The enterprise-ready edition of LibreOffice. Collabora Office is the enterprise office suite of LibreOffice, the world’s most widely used Open Source office suite. We provide installation and administration utilities together with long term maintenance and contracted support to deliver successful deployments with expertise.
https://www.collabora.com/about-us/open-source/open-source-projects/libreoffice.html

Free for home use.
https://www.collaboraonline.com/subscriptions/

The contents show how this is an actual problem in almost every European country:

Collapsing sewage drains in Brussels’ landmark Palais de Justice, judicial clerks striking in Lisbon, years-long waits for hearings in London. After years of underfunding in justice systems across Europe, the continent is grappling with a crisis in its courts.

Over the past decade, as Europe has faced stuttering economies, a wrenching pandemic and the impact of war, justice has routinely been targeted for spending cuts by governments that have prioritised other parts of the public realm such as healthcare and education.

The result has been crumbling courts and shortages of publicly funded lawyers, creating record case backlogs and eroding trust in the justice system in a host of countries. The problems have become so severe that leading lawyers warn they threaten to undermine the rule of law, which underpins European institutions and cross-border trade.

Europe’s slow-burning malaise has taken a different form from the sudden, convulsive crisis Donald Trump has brought upon the US legal establishment, pushing executive power to the point of outright defiance of the judiciary.

I’m confused, it lists collabora as not free? Or should the distinction be ‘local desktop install’ ‘online service/mobile app’?

I haven’t seen the EU inspired by Hungary’s policies, so let’s hope that will be the same here as well.

No true, luckily we have much stronger forces controlling the government. Also because they don’t have a majority.

Well, might be because eastern-european countries have much more discriminating laws on gays compared to north- and western European countries. So even though it’s getting worse, the rethoric isn’t anything new. Hungary has a law forbidding queer ‘propaganda’ that is said to be an almost exact copy of the russian law. Facial recognition on the other hand is very new, and as far as I know hasn’t been used on any other protest/celebration/public gathering anywhere in Europe so perhaps a part of the noise isn’t from people particularly concerned about LGBTQ+ rights, but about their civil liberties and see this as a first step of using digital tech as a mechanism of suppression. But I don’t really know tbh.

Yes definitely