This is how it works in Sweden. Employers and banks report to the tax agency, and once a year you get an overview of what they have got, and a preliminary calculation. If it's correct, just can just sign the paper version and send, or sign with e-id or one time code at the government e-service. There you can also make common deductions (like commuting expenses) before signing, and the tax will be adjusted accordingly.

The tax agency also has guides how to do different kinds deductions. They also has a mostly competent e-mail / phone helpdesk.

Besides the obvious risk of lock-in and enshitification, i have another question:

While perhaps mostly European at the moment, a non-negligible number of people have their motor vehicle needs fulfilled by shared cars instead of owning - either via an official car club, of sharing among friends. And there are of course also traditional rentals. For this, a system which you don't have to configure per user and vehicle is useful - for example plugging in a smartphone. Will this "centralised system" work for cases where you may use a different car each time?

I help non-tech friends with IT support. Several have switched to GNU/Linux distros, and I haven't in a single case had a problem that required manual driver compilation, even less using vi.

They mostly use the system without any issue for regular web-based activities + office. I have helped showing Inkscape. In one case I had to help install a Firefox plugin to make Zoom links use the web version, and helped with the sound GUI to use correct input devices. But the latter seems to be a rather common problem on all systems ... Systems used have been Devuan with Mate, Mint with Cinnamon and Debian with Gnome 3.

It does not even have to be mountains, or a location at land. You could for example construct a dike at sea to create a polder (as done in the Netherlands) and use the potential of different water levels inside and outside the dike for energy storage. Cost of dike building should be roughly approximate to circumference of the polder, while energy storage potential is proportional to area of the polder - thus a technology that scales well with large storage requirements.

Or you could possibly use the water pressure at depth, without having a structure going all the way to the surface, as in this project: https://www.iee.fraunhofer.de/...

"we're no longer able to sustain the development and support of the cloud infrastructure that powers this older generation of products" - translation: "We are only interested in selling things, no ensuring customer have working products. The warranties are not valid anymore, and we thought we can end support without a backlash large enough to make customers not buying other stuff from us".

Devices like this should at least a have a published and open hardware specification, and avoid DRM or any technological measures to prevent users modifying their product. Ideally also sources provided for software used, at least when discontinued. Perhaps the EU or other progressive unions / states could do a bit for this.

And it's rather silly requiring internet connectivity for controlling things in your home.

You don't have any other storage options?

Especially hydro can scale really well. Existing dams can often be re-purposed to a higher degree of load regulation, saving stored water for periods of neither wind nor sun enough. Pumped storage may also be a possibility. Either in an existing hydro installation, or in a "pure" pumped storage solution, were water is moved to a higher reservoir only by excess production in the electricity net, without any existing river doing resupply.

Sorry, but what kind of far-right misdirection do you spread? The mayor of London may be a favorite object of hate from far right groups for being both of the wrong faith, and because he is implementing progressive policy on for example local air quality, climate and slightly better social equality. And leads a city where people of many ethnicities and religions mostly get around together rather OK. Which is a powerful counter-example to xenophobic rants. (The support for LGBTQ+, women's rights, factual science-based policy and freedom of religion also seems much better than from most "patriots")

Sure, immigrant have been subject of some bad things with heavy media coverage. Still, most immigrants are as hard-working and law-abiding as anyone. And yes, climate change is correctly identified as a much larger scale problem than most problems today. But it requires action and adaption, instead of just finding some group of "other people" to blame, avoiding taking responsibility yourself.

That sounds rather short-sighted and egoistic.

Do as you like. Especially as long as it doesn't endanger the life or health of other people.
Regarding the latter, have you checked your carboon footprint? I,e, how much strain your (chosen or not) consumption patterns but on climate systems? There are several useful tools, for example https://footprint.wwf.org.uk/

And all of those events get more intense and/or frequent when we increase the heat in the atmosphere. It's not that complicated meteorologically, and well supported by both models and actual evidence.

And sure, a single car trip is not break-or-make. But the total global emissions are the result of many small contributions.

If you value the transportation mode "stuck in car traffic" so high, then sure. Reducing car dependency however helps with many urban qualities, including preserving green spaces, ability of kids or the elderly to get around on their own, and of course air and water quality, traffic safety. Also congestion, helping those who actually specifically need a motor vehicle.

A workaround would be using a smaller vehicle - like a cargo bike (I can large almost all cargo, including building supplies, with the cargo bikes available in the local cycle pool) or regular bike. But yes, this kind of "buy more" verbiage both encourages driving and wastefulness.

Have you missed the estimated 2000 dead from the latest South Europe heat wave? Or the increased intensity of both drought and flooding? Or the fires in California, Australia ... ? Of course the whole world is not literally on fire (if that's how it was interpreted), but climate change is already here, and have already consequences to society. Mostly as predicted by meteorologists / climate science / geologists.

It's more than reasonable to listen to the predictions, and act on them if we would like to avoid much more severe consequences.

The question is slightly wrongly formulated - we don't need to replace fossil fuel vehicles with BEV:s 1-to-1.

A *huge* amount of traffic can be done with more efficient technology - for example rail with overhead electric power, which can move large amounts of cargo as well as provide efficient commuting and intercity trips (just look at Europe). All this while using relatively small amounts of rare metals - or real estate. And in smaller cities (especially in Europe where BMW is headquartered) a large share of car trips are 10 km with very little cargo. You seldom need a car for that - a bicycle or e-bike is often enough. Cars, when needed, can be then shared to a much higher degree - either as traditional fleets of shared cars, renting a car when needed, or (if you like cutting edge hyped technology) as robotaxis.

And yes, global warming is real, and will have significant impact on most parts of civilisation, more so if we don't take timely and adequate steps to stop emissions.

Full reusability, crew rated and rapid turn-around / low price - pick any two? The STS system aimed for all, but ended up with partial reusability and crew rating. With lots of inspection of ceramic tiles and other parts, probably not unreasonable given the documented risk profiles.