It was very easy to get free WiFi in the US compared to most EU countries I’ve been in. But here in the EU at least I have cheap data so it’s not all bad.

I couldn’t activate my W11 with a genuine W11 key taken from a previous W11 install.

At least 20 minutes is not enough to get to a place you want to visit though, while trains in many places ride straight into the city.

Incredibly so.

There is also the issue that if you want to work together with other companies who use 365, they often want you to send them files in Office formats. Yes, you can also make Office 365 work on Linux, but at that point people already don’t want to try it out anymore.

Personally I just tried Linux Mint for a short period and there is a lot to love. But I’m doing a huge personal project in which I’m reorganizing tens of thousands of photos which I want to store in OneDrive and backup on a drive. Currently I’m just more familiar with Windows and I understand how OneDrive works (instead of something like rclone on Linux). After I’m done I’m going to reinstall Mint or something similar on my secondary SSD and try to set up OneDrive in a satisfying way.

Ironically I’m biting the hand that feeds me as I work as a lowcode developer using Microsoft Dynamics/Power Platform. But still, Microsoft can eat a bag of sweaty sausages for what they’ve done with privacy, bloat, annoying restrictions in Windows 10/11.

You all keep saying that, and I’m not saying I can’t ultimately make the move, but there’s always something that doesn’t quite work as easily.

Then there’s always a solution to that which isn’t quite what you want and involves a lot of terminal which isn’t really something casual users want.

For me this time it was OneDrive which I want to be able to use, trust, and have control over without terminal commands and a half baked GUI. I get it, fuck Microsoft, but it’s already paid for and we’re not moving because my wife, who is doing dome contracting work, doesn’t want to mess with what she is familiar with.

What’s the point of this whole platform if we’re not exchanging experiences?

I know there there was a feeling by some back on Reddit that Europeans like pissing on the US without self-reflection. Maybe that is partly true, but you also don’t read any of the self-reflections because chances they are in our native languages.

But for me personally I have considered moving to the US as a skilled worker, which if possible is a privileged position to begin with. I’m in a field that pays much better in the US so I am still envious of colleagues in the US making 1.5 to 2 times what I do. But I just don’t love my job. I’m pretty good at parts of it, but I hate (read: am bad at) some other necessary parts of my job. So in the end my career options are somewhat limited. So yeah, there is probably a degree of cognitive dissonance involved.

Here is a list of things wrong with the Netherlands, just to balance shit

• Dutch childcare benefits scandal: Government falsely accused vulnerable citizens of fraud, leading to children being placed out of the house, bankruptcies, and even suicides
• Youth minimum wage (though being phased out)
• Labour exploitation through flexible contracts
• Terrible working and housing conditions for foreign slaughterhouse workers
• Nitrogen crisis
• Housing crisis, partly because of demographic developments (fewer people per house, slight growth through immigration) but now also because of the nitrogen crisis
• The government basically forced hundreds of asylum seekers to sleep outside last summer because of budget cuts which are probably popular with a certain constituency
• Earthquakes crisis in Groningen because of natural gas extraction, with a government turning a blind eye to people who saw the value of their houses tank because of structural damage

And that’s before you get to all the things you could say for any developed western capitalist nation.

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A continuous 30 day vacation is only 20 working days or so. In my country that’s the government mandated minimum.

I think 25 or 30 workday paid vacation mandate is better for your mental health and productivity.

I actually get “unlimited” paid vacation days, which sounds like a bit of a shady practice. But I’ve already taken 30 days this year and I get absolutely no complaints. I’m planning on taking at least one more week this year.

I can’t imagine not having any vacation days. America sounds nice and all if you’re making 150k+ but I’d hate to work there at median income.

In my country torrent sites are blocked, so I use a search plugin for qBittorrent to find Linux ISOs. I don’t quite remember which one I use or how I installed, but it was quite simple. Google is your friend.