"The Swedish government wants to strengthen ties with US tech giants, despite the Trump administration's potential influence over these companies. This is according to Minister for Public Administration Erik Slottner (KD) in Ny Teknik. "What is happening in the US is rather proof that we need to have a strong relationship with these tech companies – perhaps even stronger than we have today. Europe is an important market for them, and they are very keen to have a good relationship with us." He mentions Google, for example, as a partner he wants to continue to have on his digitalization council."

Translated with DeepL (https://dee.pl/apps)

Avanza is one of the largest banks in Sweden, and in their monthly blogg, they're noticing a big movement where Swedes are selling their American funds and shares, to buy Swedish/European instead.

The governor of the Central Bank of Sweden comments our payment systems.

Here’s an AI translation of the text into English:

"Given the geopolitical situation, it is important to create European systems in a number of areas. This is according to Riksbank Governor Erik Thedéen in an interview with Ekot’s Saturday program, where he emphasizes that Sweden’s payment systems should not be as dependent on the USA as they have been. As an example, he points out that the two dominant credit card issuers, Mastercard and Visa, are American. 'It is probably wise to consider that we should also have European or Swedish systems that function in case the American ones do not,' he says. According to the central bank governor, Swish is 'a certain complement.' He also highlights that other countries, such as Denmark, have their own national credit cards."

I'm not saying anything about this particular case, but this shows that Microsoft and other US tech giants have the power to politically disrupt or hurt a country, or in our case, a whole continent.

If the US/tech giants for whatever reason decide that Europe needs to be punished, they can hurt us really bad by just turning all our digital services down, which could potentially cause chaos depending on the scale.

Europe needs to start using European alternatives to American IT services!

Edit: Just to be clear - I'm not posting this to discuss the Israel/Palestine conflict, or whether what Microsoft did here was right or wrong. I'm trying to raise awareness of a potential dangerous dependancy of American tech, and am trying to promote European tech in a group called Buy European.

Hey!

Windows 11 gamer here, I basically only use my new PC desktop for gaming. Using Nvidia. Right now playing mostly GW2 and CK2.

I just started fiddling around with Linux a few weeks ago. I tried Linux Mint but had problems with CK2 recognizing my Nvidia card despite installing the driver. So I moved over to Ubuntu. CK2 is now working perfectly, but GW2 is stuttering whenever I move my mouse, making it not playable. I’m running it as a non Steam game on Steam.

Which distro would you recommend for me? I’m thinking about Bazzite (but maybe it’s mostly for handheld games?) or Pop_OS? Fedora? Or can I maybe fix GW2 on Ubuntu somehow?

All the different distros is making this a bit overwhelming 😅

Update: I switched to Bazzite but unfortunately the issue persisted. When I turned on V-sync in game it basically disappeared though, so problem solved! And I really like Bazzite btw.