SImple as that.

YOU are supposed to be obtaining a skill. How can you judge what AI creates, when you're not even able to read what it creates... errr... copies.

Linux Mint looks very similar to Windows right out of the box. Installing it is also not difficult. The learning curve with Linux Mint mostly is getting familiar with different applications.

"Just invest in rail."

No, it's not that easy. Trains are slow to get started, they need a significant amount of time to stop. Most trains weigh way more than a truck with full load. But trains need to be managed carefully. Enough distance between the trains, a quality management system for switches and signals, good trains, good personnel.

Before that, you need to design your network such that it's attractive enough for people to use it. With public transit this generally means: put stations at places where people want to get on or get off or want to transfer to other modes of public transport (such as buses, subways, trams) which can bring people closer to their final destination. All of these modes of public transport need to be efficient, arrive at least twice (preferably more) per hour throughout the day, be safe and clean.

When all of this isn't the case, people will not use public transit, simply because it doesn't get them to the places they want.

But if it works, public transit stands to take quite a few cars from the roads. It's also a good idea to design your cities around public transit and to be walkable/bikeable, as walking or cycling is better for the environment and results in healthier people. Public transit then helps lessen the environmental impact of society.

So, no, it's not that simple. When you put down a railwaysystem, you'd better make sure it's reliable, efficient, and has a high frequency, on top of all other connected, reliable, efficient, and frequent other forms of public transit.

The data you provide will provide, will help us with corporate espionage.

...our imports, making everything more expensive for ourselves!

I wonder how this will go.

It'll sure be a cold day in Hell if TSMC moves its most advanced manufacturing to the USA. Taiwan simply won't allow that, as it's the only bargaining chip they have for protection against the big scary neighbor next door.

The construction of that facility is just a smokescreen to keep Trump happy. As soon as the dumb orange bully is gone, that fab will disappear.

So I guess Suse GmbH (German) isn't a tech company, then...
Or Phillips (Netherlands) isn't a tech company, then...
TomTom (Netherlands) isn't either...
NXP (Netherlands) doesn't produce any chips, of course...

As soon as something interesting shows up here, it is bought by some American or Chinese company.

Case in point: LanguageTool. It was a promising German company and was hosted in Germany, so EU regulations applied. Then they were bought by LearnEO (a californian company) and their servers moved to California. This prompted me to cancel their service.

Another issue is that our governments just keep buying Microsoft, while we do have European alternatives available (one such is Suse (German) Linux Enterprise Desktop or Ubuntu (which is British)). Sometimes I think our government gets bribed in order to set up a contract with Microsoft.

Nearly nothing. Most of wikimedia's income comes is small donations from individuals. Then there's donations or grants from the various philanthropic institutions and companies. I wouldn't be amazed if the grant from the US government is less than 1% of wikimedia's income, maybe even less than 0.1%.

Now, that does not disqualify their concern. Wikipedia is the goto place for a lot of people when they look up information on a particular topic, that makes them quite powerful. Wikipedia has a requirement to link to sources or provide citations for articles. That being said, not everybody checks those.

So, I'm not amazed they want to check wikipedia on what they do about abuse.

All that being said, there are public modification logs of articles and each page has its own discussion page. They can see for themselves what has been done about malicious modifications. On top of that, wikimedia has a page about vandalism.

Who in their right mind would attack a community project? Why?

Is it some disgruntled user who got banned from their forums?

Europe basically doesn't have a tech sector. We're sucking on the USA's tit, while the USA has recently proven to be an unreliable "ally". You'd guess our bureaucratic institutions would run to the few local suppliers (such as Suse) there are... but no, they all keep buying Microsoft and Intel like nothing is going on.

All the while Trump can press a button and the entire EU will grind to a halt. From another perspective, all that American influence is slowly strangling our own IT industry... the little that we have.

That guy just made sure he will never be hired again for the same or similar functions again.

At about the size of a human nail I can imagine loads of uses for this. Computers can get even smaller with this, which would be a real advantage. Devices which need to be small (such as phones) can absolutely make good use of this.

All those countries calling themselves "communist" are in reality "totalitarian". You people would be happy with an actual communist country (you know: communist is based on the word community (based on principles such as being nice to one another and helping one another in the community)).

A perfect expression of communism is the average company. Lots of people working towards the same goal (e.g. a community working towards the same goal). Hence a "capitalistic communism" is very possible.

Problem is, with countries it generally messes up. People start off with "yeah, sure, all this stuff sounds really nice" and toppling the government to replace it with a "communist" government, which finds that it all of a sudden has a lot of power and... well, the saying says it all: power corrupts, infinite power corrupts infinitely.

Now, I prefer countries which actually care for its people (socialism), as opposed to countries which let them die in hunger or let their people become homeless due to staggering medical bills. In a socialist country people are actually taken care off and going to a hospital won't ruin you financially.

That being said: no country fits perfectly in one category or another. All of them are actually a mixture of various ideas, even North Korea and Saudi Arabia.