Damn! Americans like to complain about taxes but it seems that health insurance take a much bigger cut than any taxes do... $1500/month would be about 40% of my income, I pay about 22% in income tax and about 6% of my income (paid by the employer through a payroll tax) covers health insurance whether I'm employed or not and would cover any eventual children as well...

What exactly would their choice be? Quit and not qualify for unemployment insurance while the unemployment rate is 8%, even higher among young people? It's a situation that urgently needs the attention of the mainstream unions but they don't appear to care much, the syndicalist union is the only one I know of that has tried to do something about the situation.

I am not employed through one of these companies, but I was for a short time.

I'm in disbelief, it can't really be that bad? It's not like pregnancy is something uncommon, it happens all the time. How is that legal? The insurance sounds quite cheap though, perhaps that's why?

I have insurance regardless of employment or whatever but the part of the "arbetsgivaravgift" (a tax paid by employers, includes dedicated tax for health insurance, pension payments, etc) is 5.95% of my pretax income, at present about 220 USD.
If I were to have a kid I would share 16 months (with 2 months reserved for each parent, the rest can be distributed among the parents and it's becoming more common for fathers to take about half the leave, I know I would want to spend as much time as possible with the kid at that age) of paid parental leave with the mother, this is financed by another part of the arbetsgivaravgift, 2.2% of the pretax income.

The hardware tested had an Intel HD 3000 integrated graphics, the Linux Intel drivers are known for being slow, but the Nvidia drivers are just as fast (or slightly faster in some cases) as the Windows-equivalent and presumably OSX as well. ATI I'm not sure, but they're at least closer to Windows performance than Intel is.

Yup, in the past decade or so these despicable companies have taken over a large part of the employment market here in Sweden, especially for younger people. Companies use it as a way to skirt employment laws by stacking multiple short-term positions on top of each other, meaning the employee is never covered by the employment protections and can be fired without compensation without reason or notice. There have been multiple instances of idiotic leaders (presumably MBAs) firing the entire staff only to rehire them through these companies with essentially zero employment protection. They charge the company about the same as they would pay for a regular employee but pay the employee much less and take the difference for themselves.

Sweden used to have really good employment protection but the past 20 years of neoliberalism (subscribed to in varying degrees by pretty much all parties except the left party, including the social democrats) has changed that, employees are now disposable cogs in a machine and nothing else.

Not only non-techies, I find it very user-friendly simply because it gets out of my way. It's been a long time since I cared about customizing every little detail on my desktop, nowadays I just need to get shit done and for my workflow at least Gnome 3 works.

Unity is buggy and crashes all the time on my machine, Metro I've never used and don't really plan to (no Windows-machines), but Gnome 3 on Arch just works for me. The menu for things not in the favorites is a bit of a hassle but I always use the search so all I have to do is press super and type a few characters. I'm also not very fond of the new alt-tab (applications on alt-tab and windows within application on alt-key above tab) or the lack of a shutdown menu option, but those can be easily fixed with extensions.

Bullshit, you've obviously never used Gnome 3. Extensions are as simple to install as going to extensions.gnome.org with epiphany and clicking switching the "off"-button to "on" for the desired extension. It's by far the easiest extension install I've ever seen.

A single beer is enough to get you in trouble while driving in Sweden so we tend to stay away from driving after having had as little as one beer. Driving to the pub is very rare here because of it, and if you do you'll have to take the bus or a cab home.

IMO it's a good thing, it discourages people from driving to the drinking establishment thinking they will only have a single beer. One beer so easily turns into two, two turns into three and all of the sudden you really are completely unfit to drive, but you still have that car outside and your judgement is impaired. Better if everyone just takes the bus/subway/taxi to and from the pub.

Oh another question for those in the know about the area (sorry if this is becoming too much off-topic): I'm thinking of renting a car and go on a road-trip down to SF from Portland after the conference, which carrier would have the best coverage there? It seems from the maps I've seen that rural coverage is quite poor..

Sounds much better than buying a phone only to throw it away.. Do you have to be a US resident to activate or can I use a temporary address or something?

Sounds very strange, but I guess they like throwing phones away for nothing.. Is this only in Wal-Marts or are there other places? I won't have a car so getting to a Wal-Mart could be complicated.
There's the further complication of my phone using Micro-SIM (Nokia N9), it's unlocked though. I suppose I could bring my old HTC Magic (also unlocked), it only has, it only has the 900, 1700 and 2100 MHz UMTS bands though...

How exactly do they prevent tethering? Unless they control all the devices that use their networks they cannot ensure that phones do not have the ability to tether. User-agent detection perhaps?

On a related note, while I'm in the presence of Americans with knowledge of these things: I'm going to the US for a conference and vacation in two weeks, is there a decent pre-paid SIM-card that includes a few hundred MBs of data? My phone is pentaband so that shouldn't be a problem I assume..

At least in Sweden, the OEM version is for sale separately, as far as I can tell without any hardware requirements. It may be that the rules are different though. It's still quite expensive though, about the same price as the retail "upgrade" version.

The US requires any passengers going to the US to be scanned, the airports had to install these contraptions specifically for US flights. US-bound flights have their own "secure" area in which passengers can board. I would be curious to find out who pays for the scanners to be installed specifically for US-bound flights, my guess is not the US..
Admittedly I don't fly much, but I didn't see a single scanner on my trip from Stockholm to Tokyo via Helsinki last month, although I know they have them for US-bound flights.