iglou

You're shifting way too much blame on Russia. Our democracies are failing by themselves, because of complacent politicians who care more about their career and being elected than doing good for their countries. Politicians who learned they don't have to apply their promises and everything will turn out fine. Voters got pissed and fell for far right lies and propaganda.

It turned into a roaring fire by itself. Putin just made sure the fire doors don't shut.

Yes, but the company could still keep the data somewhere.

That's rough. I honestly couldn't do that.

2.5 hours is wild. You spent 5 hours a day commuting?

Users are the cons of everything, including Windows and OSX

I'm far from an expert on licenses, but logic tells me that any version that was released with the previous license is still under that previous license. So it's probably okay to fork from a previous version to maintain linux support?

Same. My personal Home <-> Work line will never see a Newag train.

So you're forgetting all the instances where american companies have been forced to paid fines again and again for breaching EU law, and base your opinion on one recent event?

Hmm. Naive isn't the word, no.

I don't think so. The EU is pretty good at maintaining fair competition, especially against American companies.

It's a tradeoff. It's still democratic, as the parliament can in all these instances reject a candidate, while bringing stability by not having endless debates in a potentially fractured parliament on who should be nominated.

Because the head of state doesn't pick someone randomly, they pick a candidate that will have the approval of the Parliament. So there is still talks, agreements, compromises with parties of the Parliament, so that the nominated candidate is a candidate that would have likely come out of weeks/months of debates and votes.

The vote that follows the nomination is a safeguard, to prevent a shitty stuborn head of state from imposing their government.

So the tradeoff is, slightly less democracy (no debate), faster government appointment (which is desirable for the good of everyone), while keeping a democratic safeguard. And it works, that's why failing votes following the nominations are extremely rare.

Yeah, but I'd rather have the option of a government one than yet another rando company with my sensitive data :)

It's actually not. Yes, the Chancellor is elected by the Parliament, but after nomination by the President, your head of state.

Per the German wikipedia article on the Chancellor of Germany:

Der Bundeskanzler wird auf Vorschlag des Bundespräsidenten vom Bundestag gewählt, anschließend vom Bundespräsidenten ernannt und durch den Bundestagspräsidenten vereidigt.

And per your Basic Law, Article 63:

• (1) Der Bundeskanzler wird auf Vorschlag des Bundespräsidenten vom Bundestage ohne Aussprache gewählt.
• (2) Gewählt ist, wer die Stimmen der Mehrheit der Mitglieder des Bundestages auf sich vereinigt. Der Gewählte ist vom Bundespräsidenten zu ernennen.
• (3) Wird der Vorgeschlagene nicht gewählt, so kann der Bundestag binnen vierzehn Tagen nach dem Wahlgange mit mehr als der Hälfte seiner Mitglieder einen Bundeskanzler wählen.

The election of the Chancellor in Germany is just like the election of the President of the European Commission: There is one candidate, either they are voted in, or they are not. If the parliament disagrees with the nominated candidate, then they must elect one themselves, yes. But it has never happened since 1949, and the only close call was Merz.

You can actually have a look yourself at the list of chancellor elections, and you'll see that it's always been a Yes/No vote on the nominated candidate, just like for the Presidence of the European Commission.

And this Basic Law was ratified after the miserable passage of history you mention.