I love Qobus. I heard they also pay the artists more fairly. It’s just unfortunate that some big artists are still missing. And from what I can see subscriptions only work via the Google Play store.

I switched careers from logistics (office) to IT a couple of years ago. Logistics was notoriously badly paid and it was hard to find a job that’s not temporary for a year amd then they throw you out. Everybody kept telling us for years to go to IT, because that’s where the money and the non-temporary contracts are… But that’s only true for people who’ve worked there for decades.

It really does feel like no field is left where you can have a stable career. Accounting, sales, hospital, no matter where you ask, it’s temp contracts and shitty wages.

Since there are still horse drawn wagons around there are also still manufacturers for wagon wheels. But there were several opinion pieces in newspapers whenever a new technology took over. I’m sure you can find plenty for the time when cars became mainstream.

Office isn’t the problem, I use Libre Office even on Windows. The problem is very specific software for some courses. Like we needed to work with SQL for one course and they wanted us to use a specific program. It was a group project, too, and I didn’t want to be the one who messes up our database because something didn’t work right with whatever Linux substitute there is.

I still need to use it for university. We often need to use very specific programs for homework and I don’t know if I can always find an alternative on linux. Even if, I’d have to go through the hastle of converting to the requested file formats. And it’s not guaranteed that I will always find a solution for every course I’ll take. Unfortunately education still expects you to work with Windows and programs that only work on Windows.

I’d argue that the drop in conference and other professional visitors could be even steeper. There are still enough people who’ll privately take the risk or aren’t informed or think “I’ll be Ok if I comply with the laws”. Companies or universities however have HR departments and people in charge of travelling and compliance. They would risk a lot more money and possibly secrets if the devices are searched and employees are detained. I think they’ll be even more careful and restrict trips to the US. I could imagine a lot of conferences offering online participation and many opting for that rather than risking it.

And if enough international speakers can’t get in even more conferences will opt for moving the entire conference to a different country.

Soon we can translate all the GDR jokes and use them for the US.