Fun fact: the train pictured here is a Siemens Velaro. That's the same family of train as the ICE.

It's the American Pioneer Edition, the variant for the American market, set to operate Brightline West services, but even that one is based on Velaro Novo, a platform designed 100% in Germany.

Edit: Velaro Novo for comparison:

That's how you get a Boing

One thing to make your girlfriend's transition easier: you can reconfigure the UI to be more similar to more recent versions of MS office. The first time you open it, there will be a popup that brings you directly to the relevant settings menu. It's not one to one but the major options are going to be in similar places after you changed the UI.

BioNTech, the German company that actually developed the Pfizer Covid vaccine, has a bunch of open job listings. So yes, they have a need for people with that skill set. Most of the jobs seem to require German language skills, but not all of them.

And if the most famous German biotech startup is looking for people, then there are bound to be even more lesser known companies also searching.

I agree. On social media they posted this:

Europe is ready to negotiate with the US.

We have offered zero-for-zero tariffs for industrial goods, because we're always ready for a good deal.

But we’re also prepared to respond with countermeasures and protect ourselves against indirect effects through trade diversion.

We will focus on the 83% of global trade beyond the US.

Europe stands together for our businesses and with our businesses for all Europeans in the EU and beyond.

https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/@EUCommission/114297268233791229

Replacement with a different stability.

As the famous quote from Spider-Man goes: "with great power comes great responsibility." Past WW2 the US acted as hegemon. They where the most powerful country and tried to use this responsibility on the global stage - at least to an extent. NATO, free access to US markets for other countries (though that also benefitted the US because it cemented the USD as reserve currency)

Now the government wants to keep the power but have none of the responsibility. It's similar to their position on free speech.

To put it an other way: They want to be a bully.

Wero is great for what it does (sending money to other people) and it's going to gain the functionality needed for online commerce.

But that only covers half the functionality provided by Visa and MasterCard. You also need the functionality to pay at a restaurant or in the supermarket. You know, the card part of MasterCard?

Some European countries have their own debit card system (here in Germany for example giropay) but once you cross the border that stops working. Which is why those cards are usually co-badged with one of the big networks to act as a fallback. That's where the EU should act to ensure that the fallback functionality isn't necessary anymore, at least as long you're in the Euro-zone.

Would you have been able to create your specific use case on Windows? Because most people don't try "getting mulvard out of the VM". That's the type of thing that's in my experience usually (I don't know about this case specifically - that's why I'm asking) a lot easier on Linux than on Windows (not that it's easy)

Her voice? Who are you talking about?

You know that Moxie is a dude, right?

Bazzite:

• Fedora based, so newer libraries
• Atomic updates, therefore doesn't break on updates
• Steam and Lutris are preinstalled

All the open source alternatives also work on windows. You could try them on your current OS and make the switch to Linux once you're confident you've found a workflow that works for you.

Lightroom: Darktable Photoshop: Gimp (version 3 just released) or Krita Illustrator: Inkscape

One note though: The Windows versions tend to be a bit of an afterthought. Performance can therefore be not as good as the Linux version.

Thank you, I've added it to my post

I hate to be the one to break it to you but AIs aren't actually people. Companies claiming that they are "this close to AGI" doesn't make it true.

The human brain is an exception to copyright law. Outsourcing your thinking to a machine that doesn't actually think makes this something different and therefore should be treated differently.

Since you are already familiar with the Steam Deck, I would go with a distro (that's Linux-speak for version) that uses KDE Plasma, as that's the desktop environment used by Steam OS. My recommendation therefore is Bazzite or Aurora. Both OSs are developed by the same team using the same core technology. Bazzite is more "gamer focused" (a.k.a. they are pre-installing steam) while Aurora targets more of a developer audience. But I would argue that the differences are, at the end of the day, mainly cosmetic. Aurora is still pretty noob friendly and you could still develop on Bazzite.

Both systems are "Atomic" which basically means that a system update can't screw up your system. And if you screw something up, then you can "rebase" the system which reinstalls the OS but keeps all your data and installed apps*. It uses flatpak with flathub as its appstore so you have the same apps available as on the Steam Deck.

Now for the downsides: Some apps are a bit harder to install. Mainly apps that need deeper system access such as vpn apps can take a couple more steps to install here than on other distros. There is also no live system. Many distros have a "live mode" where you can test the system before installing. This allows you to check if your hardware is supported. Aurora and bazzite don't have that.

Lastly the userbase is growing, but other disros such as Mint are still more popular. You therefore might find less specific documentation and tutorials on the internet for it than with other options.

*Technically it's more complicated than that, there are edgecases of apps that don't survive a rebase, but don't worry about that.

https://fortune.com/2025/01/31/aldi-scrubbed-careers-website-of-all-dei-initiatives/

The Aldi operating in the states under its own name is Süd and the one that owns Trade Joe's is the northern one

corrected

Trader Joe's is also owned by Aldi - slightly different Aldi (long story) but German Aldi nonetheless. And I think German supermarket chain Lidl is also present in parts of the US.

GNOME has too. There it's called nightlight

Budgie might ship with an applet, that enables the functionality as well (not sure, it's been a while, since I last used this DE)