Well, its a nice opportunity to get insight into a war with near peer adversaries, especially for a country like China who hasn’t fought in a bigger conflict in the last decades. And i bet its also nice for China having a good look into the russian tactics…

What about a trip into the smol-web? Perhaps a Gopher or Gemini Server? A IRC Bouncer? Or enter the fascinating world of telnet BBS systems!

Ten years ago i would have agreed with your assesment of the situation, but today? I am pretty sure they were aware what they were doing.

Yeah, we should have ended our ties to the US and our infrastructural dependency back then.

Back then was one of the few moments I was proud about a german politician, when Schröder said “No”.

Well… my apprentice and me, we are rolling the show! And how we manage this contraption? 90s style sneaker-admin!

Well, its not overly complicated:

On most of the clients we are now running OpenSUSE Leap, but for now we still need to run a few Windows boxes for our ERP system. Luckily, the next update of this system will make it browser based, so the clock for those system is ticking. Another thing that will keep two machines on Windows is the goddamn Datev…

For other tools we are now settled in on this solutions:

• Paperless-NGX as document management solution
• Seafile as cloud storage
• Libreoffice as office suite
• Thunderbird + Firefox as email / browser combo
• Etherpad-lite and Ethercalc for collaborative editing needs

Everything is locally hosted.

As a german, working in the IT sector for a bit over 25 years I say: The alternatives are there, but the pain isn’t hurting enough to finally force us out of the walled gardens.

It took me years to convince the company I work for to ditch big tech, and we are just a small (<50 employees) company.

At the moment i think China is the lesser of two evils. Yeah, its not a democracy and China does things that benefits China, but it has one thing that the OTHER evil has lost recently: Predictability.

I - as my personal opinion - think he is more a case for the 2nd amendment…

In the beginning, even after the “Machtergreifung”, it was fairly ok to insult Hitler and make fun of the Nazis. They thought, its a form of venting for the population, preventing REAL resistance. Though, this changed later. There is a good ARTE documentary about this “Humor unterm Hakenkreuz”.

So, regarding the US… just wait a while…

Why should Europe leave the influence of the US just to bow to another hegemon? Why shouldn’t we do our own thing?

Of course he does.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Well, perhaps something good comes out of this… a world where there is no hegemon, no tech-giants and way less populism… one may dream…

The real, and quiet fast acting “bazooka” (of the “Davy Crockett” type) could come from the european population itself:

• Do not buy american goods
• Do not visit the US
• Do not invest in the US

So, let us part with this few last words from me i write without wanting to anger you, just to with the hope you may contemplate about: “In todays age there is nothing apolitical. You are either a part of the solution… or of the problem”.

Dead broke son of a low middle class family. …in a western country, especially in the US.

Yeah, that IS inherited privilege. You realize, that a low middle class american family is still in the uper ~ 10 % of currently living humans?

Well… you may be not, Mr. Šefčovič, but i, for once, am absolutely in the business for “BURN IT ALL DOWN”…

Just my two €-cent

Well, I sincerely hope the EUs answer to it will be “get lost”. We should not, we can not let us extort by a wannabe Mafia boss.

I had an account on reddit, about five years old until I finally decided to leave it because i spend an ungodly amount of time there. Knowing myself and my habit to flake on self set goals I thought out the ultimate strategy to keep me from coming back: Over a couple of weeks I intentionally posted atrocious stuff on my main and my two alt-accounts to get me permabanned and burn every single bridge.

For now it has successfully stopped me from wasting time there any longer.

I think we are now finally at a point where the individual choices either make you a part of the solution… or of the problem. A neutral, “I don’t care” stance puts a person in the later of the two categories.