TBH I don’t like FreeCAD - I fell like it’s like recommending Gimp as a serious alternative to Photoshop. With enough effort and deep knowledge you can almost achieve similar results but you have to invest multiple times as much time. The saving in licencing cost is very quickly eastern up by the increased labour cost.

There is an alternative that has come a long way IMHO, though: BlenderBIM. They are still not quite as good as ArchiCAD and such but it runs natively on Linux and is very neat so far.

Agreed, but it still is the only device that can run GrapheneOS.

Signal seem to be the least compromising messenger app out there with their privacy policy and open source code base. It’s only natural they are frequent victims of FUD.

…and at the same time supporting racist and anti-migrant narratives to “fight” the fascist AfD. Which, obviously, just strengthens that narrative and hence the AfD.

Although it’s important to point out that those two are vastly different.

Sovereign citizens deliberately misinterpret US laws to (in their minds) escape jurisdiction. Reichsbürger are actively planning a coup to overthrow the government, install an actual emperor and go back to feudalism.

Sounds ridiculous but they are connected and prepared surprisingly well wich make them a real threat, not just a funny curiosity.

And how is that determined? I found the shit that I took this morning immensely creative.

Dude, those are nice programs but if you need professional work done those are of very limited use. The only thing that is almost as useful as Adobe is Affinity and that’s also not running on Linux.

As far as I know those services are barely breaking even, using the few remaining old sleeper wagons. Growth of them is not likely because new wagons cost a lot and profitability is low.

It might work together if the real cost would be reflected in every product. Like, if cost of pollution, emission, all consequences of everything at every step in every country would be priced in and equalized. But that’s so unlikely to happen that we might as well set the whole thing on fire.

Nope, it’s not even the executives, they are straw people for the most part.

Most corporations are owned by investors who can cash out any time and threaten to plunge the stock into oblivion by doing so. They go where short term profits are highest, squeeze out every bit they can get and prodeed to the next investment afterwards, demanding enshittification there.

Also, it’s not that there are no alternatives. Vertical farming, for example, is developing extremely fast as an environmental friendly way to produce food. Demands are changing and like every serious business they should strive to adapt instead of clinging to an aging business model.

Exactly! They will come, no matter what. But of we create a welcoming climate and a dynamic culture, we can all benefit from that. There is a correlation between the size of a country’s population and its economic success, if the country is politically stable. Hate against immigrants creates nothing but instability though.

TBH I believe it when I see proof in action. Decades of appeasement and being subverted up to the highest levels are not wiped away over night. Hell, Putin’s puppet party, the AfD currently celebrates record highs because the CDU (Merkel’s party) is aggressively doing marketing for them by echoing their racist agenda.

Well technically they did raise awareness.

So giving a platform to proven enemies of free speech and democratic systems is supporting democracy and free speech?

It indeed is. Why is an article of scientists discussing children’s welfare marked NSFW?

The protests last year where activists glued themselves to roads were about this exact thing. The message was “act according to the law”. They were branded terrorists by media and politicians.

Yeah it’s a wicked conundrum of past politic decisions now biting their asses. CDU and SPD made the debt brake law that forbids them to take loans to solve a crisis that is not unforeseeable and short term. Almost all crisises now have been foreseeable and are long term (demographic change, climate crisis, declining work force,…). SPD is part of the government now and the CDU is weaponizing the debt brake. All socially responsible solutions are vetoed by the neoliberal FDP and the opposition uses that to discredit the entire government, mainly shifting the blame to the Greens because they are their main political opponent. This results in a surge of far-right votes, pushing sane solutions even further away.

Agreed. This level of success certainly doesn’t come from the austerity policies dictated by foreign politicians.

How about they contribute studying in Europe? It’s not like we don’t need skilled workers over here…