Russia. MS-13 is nothing in comparison. Though it wouldn't surprise me if Russia supports MS-13 as part of their hybrid warfare. That's how they work.

Understand that Russia has largely been able to put US to its knees through hybrid methods that utilize and enhance the negative effects of american arrogance, neoliberal dogmatism and the war on drugs. Trump is the final stage before the empire comes down. It's probably too late to turn the ship around by now. China + EU is already the facto world leaders and the US is doing everything to destroy itself and there is no real political and economical self-awareness among people with power.

The US should have started to decrease inequality, stop the war on drugs and enforced (sane) tariffs and migration policies 15 years ago. The EU has the same problems, but there isn't the same level of inequality and political extremism and fundamentalism, which makes me believe that the EU will survive as a western democracy and relevant world player, but the US will not.

Maybe give Doom Emacs a try? Anyway, I thing we can put IDE/Editor in the subjective quality bucket.

Ok, I agree about music apps and Google Maps.

Isn't Intellij largely open source? What does premium offer over the community edition? More content and support? Anyway, I find this one subjective. I would argue that Emacs, VS Code and Neovim are at least as good (much better if you work with many different programming languages and/or require extra control).

Actually, what we probably want is something like openSUSE MicroOS with containers based on Nix or Guix.

Best would be if openSUSE simply adopted Nix/Guix for container configuration.

Don't forget about Nix and Guix.

I think it makes great sense to use Nix (or better Guix). The users are not expected to do any configurations. They basically need a browser and maybe a text editor if it's the public sector.

Also, you can run Nix or Guix on basically any other dist. Which is very helpful for reproducible deployments.

Ubuntu doesn't make any sense. Better use Debian in that case. We don't need to give yet another eccentric South African billionaire more power.

SUSE is owned by the Swedish venture capital firm EQT. For better or worse. All software has "ties" to the US. Remember there are lots of good people in the US as well. Everything isn't MAGA or tech feudalism.

I agree. Most Linux distributions have their base within the EU. Just dumb to bring a new Fedora based dist to the table. Debian is also very connected to the EU and France, even though the SPI is registered within the US.

One could push for The Linux Foundation to to move their HQ to the EU. If that changes anything. I guess it depends on if Linus resigns or wants to move back to Finland.

Alpac Capital's CEO Pedro Vargas David, is well established in the government of Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán and is the son of Mario David, one of Orbán's advisers. In April 2016, Orban called Mario David a "true friend" and gave him the middle cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit. Due to Orbán's repeated media violations, where he influences media regulators to punish any and all journalists who negatively reports on his or his government's actions, Alpac Capital's purchase of Euronews from Naguib Sawiris was put under increased scrutiny as an attempt by Orbán to influence wider European politics.

On April 18, 2024, the International Federation of Journalists called for a European parliamentary inquiry into the Hungarian government's influence over Euronews via Alpac Capital due to Euronews attempting to influence the 2024 European Parliament election.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpac_Capital

Seems you don't know how to configure your editor/IDE. There is nothing in a "Jetbrains IDE" which you cannot also get in Neovim, Emacs or VS Code. Using only FOSS plugins. Or what functionality are you thinking of?

The facto standard is not an objective quality.

I mean the best big tech "products" are FOSS as well. But I guess it depends on which definition of FOSS that you use.

Usually, nowadays, proprietary software is built on 95% FOSS and then you maybe have a thin layer with your own stuff (which will become FOSS in a year or two when there's someting better that can replace your own hack). The rest is content and marketing.

Proprietary software which doesn't have an objectively better FOSS counterpart (that I can come up with right now):

1. Nvidia GPU stack. But ROCm and IPEX-LLM will probably catch up in a year or two (both are mainly FOSS).
2. Some videogames that still use their proprietary engines. Though they are certainly not good because of their in-house engine, rather the opposite. I.e. they are good because of content, not software.

Many people bring up proprietary CAD and graphics software. Though I suspect that's a more subjective opinion. My experience is that proprietary CAD apps and the Adobe suite are buggy as hell. My experience is also that the people who use these softwares have learned how to cope with the legacy crap and they refuse to learn new and better ways.

I had to integrate Photoshop into a project a few years ago. The whole software just smelled huge legacy bad quality code base. Buggy as hell. But good marketing and/or user lockin I guess.

I don't consider anything from Apple to be good in an objective way. Unless you count social status symbols as an objective quality. I do consider price to be an objective quality though.

The only good things that has come out of Microsoft are open source. VS Code, dotnet core and Lean. Same goes for Google.

A more relevant question: What proprietary software is better than its FOSS counterpart?

Because I can't come up with any.

Sensor fusion is something that any 4.5 gen fighter is capable of. Cool HUDs and XR is just marketing bling. It doesn't really matter. Scale, sensors, ew, range, load and cost benefit matter.

F-35 is good if you need first strike tactical nuke capabilities today. Or small carrier capabilities. However, modern sensors can probably catch your F-35s quite early on anyway. The extra stealth might be good if you're fighting goat herders with Soviet AA and radars from the 50s. But hey, then you can just go for an upgraded F-16 with some fancy EW.

Any rational state actor should skip 5th gen, push their 4.5s to the limit and go for unmanned gen 6+.

Because the political right doesn't actually like functional markets.

This just doesn't have a any connection with reality. You know what you suggest is what has been done for 20 years and it has massively failed? In basically all western countries? Learn from your mistakes or be an idiot.

Make sure that you understand materialism and solidarity grounded in self interest if you want to win the working class. Get rid of idealists and identity politics (unless they're working class or populist identity politics). Get your head around consequential ethics and how to set political priorities.

I recommend studying the 1930s strategy of the Swedish SAP.

This is the number one thing. The US collapsed because of inequality. Liberals are out.

And it can be summarised in one word: materialism.

They are evil.

There are many private alternatives, but that is missing the point. An ECB backed digital coin takes away the private bank monopoly on printing digital money. It will be a great contribution to the commons and will decrease the power of private banks. It will also contribute to increased economic resilience.

I recommend reading the publications from positive money on this subject.

https://positivemoney.org/eu/publications/a-digital-euro-for-the-people/

I don't drive a BMW, so yes.