I'm hoping for a renewed focus on writing software that runs well on constrained machines and helps people get many more years of useful life out of their existing computers.
Apple still pushes ads to you. I can't recall how many times I saw ads in the App Store, and how many times they tried to push me into subscribing to whatever nonsense their executives' KPIs demanded (Apple Arcade+? News+? Music+?). No matter how many times I told Apple "No," they just kept pushing it. And now ads are coming to Apple Maps as well.
GrapheneOS has zero ads in the OS and main services.
Sure, I _could_ carry more weight, but I'm not sure why I'd _want_ to. Why should I sacrifice for example an extra pair of socks or a shirt, when I don't need to? Having a bigger screen or a faster PC doesn't matter more to me in light of that space and weight trade-off. I use a code editor from 1992, a programming language from 1989, and a tiling window manager with no frills. An N100 is more than enough.
Meanwhile the moment I (a human, of which I'm reasonably confident) see a Cloudflare captcha I nope immediately out of the site and block it forevermore in Kagi. It's not worth the waiting game. "Verifying..." lasts ages.
The anime girl captcha works fine and provides no such annoyance.
I care that runtime developers know and understand their codebase deeply. 1M LOC written by 1 dev in a short time does not inspire confidence in such an important dependency.
There's no way this code is understood fully by the original author, let alone anyone else. I wouldn't accept this from an intern, let alone in code that's fundamental to my business.
When these mega-companies block new competitors it really ought to be seen as collusion. Google, Facebook, and Microsoft certainly have the resources to test and approve the occasional new browser.
I used an immigration service to help me through the process. Alongside that I spent several months learning the language then weeks traveling through PT before making the decision.
You can do the immigration process yourself, but it's a long process with a lot of i's to dot and t's to cross. It was helpful to have experts guiding me through the process. Learning the language also helped a ton. The Portuguese in cities all speak English extremely well, but they really embrace you when they see you putting in some effort to speak Portuguese. I learned with Pimsleur for native pronunciation and Anki frequency vocabulary decks. I had some background with Spanish, so it was easier for me to learn Portuguese than starting from zero.
I also considered Uruguay and Malta but preferred the safety of Portugal and its bigger size.
NHR (the tax scheme that the parent is discussing) ended. If you didn't already move to Portugal under it, it's no longer available to you, so your question should really be in the past tense.
NHR 2.0 offers much reduced benefits and in a much narrower scope.
I'm not moving to Lisbon, but my experience in that city aligns with your friends'.
Other cities offer much better value for money and hold a lot more of the Portuguese culture intact. There are beautiful cities and towns all throughout the country.
I'm moving from California to Portugal this week. I get to retire much earlier with low-cost healthcare and a cost of living lower relative to CA, and the Portuguese people I've met have all been wonderful. The food is great too!
I'd rather be on the side that supports Ukraine, clean energy, and stable trade agreements. I don't feel safe in the US anymore.