undoubtedly criminal origin

What makes you so convinced it is a bill of criminal origin? To my knowledge Germany is generally still a cash-nation, moreso than other European countries

And many shops don’t accept 200 or 500 euro notes at all

This entirely depends on where in the world you are from.

The English-speaking world generally refers to America as two continents.
The Spanish-speaking world generally refers to America as one continent.

Neither are correct, both are correct.

It’s still a good thing that they are adhering to the rulings of the European Court of Justice.
There are other European countries which I don’t expect to do the same thing (cough… Hungary… cough…)

I think the majority of people at this point don’t have a computer with a CD / DVD burner anymore. And at least over here the supermarket also does not sell blank CDs / DVDs anymore.

Most people would have to go out of their way to acquire the means to burn their own CDs

And that is the tactic commonly used to slowly boil the frog.

Japan and the US during WW2 were not allies. They were enemies.
That is pretty much why Japan attacked Pearl Harbour in the first place.

Today the US and Japan today are allies, however.
The two situations are not exactly comparable. You shouldn’t treat your allies like you treat your enemies

Africa, Asia, and South America

So we are not counting North-America, where the ICE raids continue then?

While other NATO countries may have sustained their switch to renewables, we are not free from our dependence on oil and gas yet. And unlike the US which is a net-exporter of fossil fuels, Europe is a net-importer.

This looming energy crisis is also seriously affecting European countries.

I believe there are two main reasons why European countries are not keen on helping the US out of this:

• Europe does not want to reward the way the US is currently treating its allies. There is no real guarantee that Trump will come to our aid if Russia invades, so why would we join the US into their ventures in the Middle East.
• Europe also does not really benefit from escalating a destabilizing war in the Middle East. We have experience with the resulting refugee crisis and terrorist threats from the last few times that that happened.

It also would have been helpful if the US involved us in the plans to start a war with Iran, as allies on an equal footing. But instead the US unilaterally (or together with Israel I guess) decided to bomb the Ayatollah, expecting the European vassals to just fall in line.

“This is not our war”

The term “AI” is vague and used too liberally imo.

When people talk about AI, they generally refer to Large Language Models (LLMs), which is what ChatGPT, Mistral, etc are.
Most accurate machine translation is not that. It’s a different approach to machine learning that has been around in some capacity or another for a long time.

It would seem that the sweet spot for HDDs is as high as 16 to 24 TB at the moment (at least here in the Netherlands).
You can get a 24TB Seagate Barracuda for €479,- right now, which comes out to about €20 / TB.

If you specifically want a NAS drive though the best “bang for the buck” appears to be a 28TB Seagate IronWolf Pro for €688,- coming out to about €25 / TB.

Edit: Personally I run 8TB drives in my server, which are currently €209,- (€26 / TB) for a regular Seagate Barracuda, and €289 (€36 / TB) for a Seagate IronWolf Pro. Funnily enough 4TB drives would actually be better for NAS drives at €132,90 (€33 / TB) for a WD Red Plus.

There is no real clarification what that budget is, so I will assume that the budget is tight.
My advise is assuming that you are looking for the best bang for the buck.

The case looks like a good option, assuming that those are 3.5 inch bays.
It should give you plenty of space for expansion in the future if you want to do that

RAM prices are pretty nuts right now, so I would definitely not go balls to the wall with 128 GB of RAM.
16 GB of RAM should be more than plenty for a NAS server. Maybe you can even get away with 8GB?
I’m using 16 GB of DDR3 RAM in my own NAS server (which is also running Jellyfin and Nextcloud) and it’s running fine.

Speaking of DDR3… Have you considered buying your CPU, motherboard and RAM second hand?
From what I hear the prices of DDR3 RAM are not nearly as elevated as those of DDR4 and DDR5 RAM, and DDR3 is plenty sufficient for a simple NAS.

Be sure not to skimp on the power supply. Most consumer power supplies are not built for running a NAS worth’s of HDDs.
I’m running a Corsair RM550x in my server, which is capable of supplying 130W on the 5V rail.

Good luck with your server build!

In terms of hobbies I would say photography, videography, generally messing around with computers and other electronics.
I also enjoy casually cycling and driving, as well as traveling to see new places in general. Usually I combine that with the photography and videography.

Oh my bad, I completely misunderstood what you were saying. I read your comment as saying we should not be looking to obtain nuclear weapons because it’s ancient tech, instead looking for diplomacy.

I do think that collaborating with France is a good first step towards quickly rebuilding the nuclear ubrella that was lost with the US falling away as an ally. It gives us time to breathe while we look at maybe building our own nuclear arsenals.

Nuclear weapons are still an exteremely effective deterrent.
Diplomacy is great, but if you can’t defend yourself, more powerful and aggressive nations will take advatage of you.

Europe used to be under the American nuclear umbrella until recently, but with Trumps antagonism we can no lonnger rely on that.

France is offering their nuclear arsenal to act as the nuclear umbrella in America’s place.

The Netherlands is also ready for talks, as of a couple of days ago.

Netherlands takes France up on offer for collaboration nuclear weapons.
https://nos.nl/l/2604694

It’s slightly depressing that this is the state of the world right now, but we do need a nuclear deterence that isn’t reliant on being in the good graces of King Trump I

There is a difference between a border police that is lawfully performing deportations, and the roaming gang of thugs that is ICE under the Trump government.

You cannot really do something as fundamentally impactful as joining the EU without explicit consent from the people though.

This is also not a referendum on joining the EU yet, but rather one to restart negotiations. There will be another referendum once the deal for Iceland joining the EU has been completed, to check with the people whether they find the terms acceptable.

There are ways to hold referendums on this that are better than how the shitshow that was Brexit was handled.

Not made in China, Russia or the US

The majoriry should be fighting to protect the vulnerable minority. The minority alone doesn’t stand much of a chance against the might of the state.

But as that doesn’t seem to be happening, at least not in sufficient numbers, the second best thing would be to leave and become a refugee.

The alternative is fighting alone, failing, and being genocided anyway.