Manufacturing in Germany is dying, making anything which is cost competitive is impossible and the measures trying to fix it are miniscule compared to the magnitude of the problem.
no surprise given the high taxes, extreme energy prices, massive bureaucracy, ridiculous regulations, work-hating employees and extremely business-hostile culture
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/15/europe/germany-nuclear-phase-...
A lot of people seem to be pushing some weird "anti-environmental" when the simple reality is that all energy costs
I cannot understate the impact of Russian Energy being cut off. Right now we're paying roughly twice as much than we used to for compressed natural gas brought via tanker ships from the us. I genuinely believe that the war in Ukraine is mostly about energy dependence on Russia and Ukraine losing its transfer fees through their old pipelines
Their people are still transitioning from agrarian hardship to urban factory life, and there seems to be a zeal that comes with this transition, a willingness to work hard for what here today would be considered little.
Good for them. But in Europe we had this transition already and we became disillusioned with the lifestyle tradeoffs.
Having our people do nothing productive while all of our life objects are made by others is not sustainable and it is awful for the morale of our peoples. It needs to be stopped.
forcing germans to buy everything at 10 times of what it costs now is not the way to rescue the country
Perhaps you can limit the allowed manufactured units to India, but the U.S. also wants those.
For some reason, every time Europe is mentioned, there is always a comment about how Europe is struggling but when you look at the quality of life, happiness or life expectancy, all those numbers are higher than the US. People should stop obsessing with GDP.
I am not some American desperate to insult Europeans. I am a German, I work in the German industry, my livelihood depends on this economy.
>When you combine them, they are way bigger than the German companies you hear everyday which are laying off people or closing factories.
This plainly is not true. Even the "small champions" are struggling, because they are mostly suppliers to the large companies. A very significant part of the "Mittelstand" exists as specialized suppliers to the German car, Aerospace and Railway companies. If those are struggling, then the suppliers feel the pain just as much.
I was looking for a portable external keeb recently, and I looked to Cherry and they simply had nothing which even approximately matched the form factor I needed. I wanted to buy from them, but couldn't.
ch_123•58m ago
Meanwhile, Cherry kept making the same product line which they had since the 1980s, with relatively minor improvements.
donquichotte•53m ago
Ekaros•48m ago
TheChaplain•38m ago
chasil•35m ago
I found another at Best Buy with red LEDs, but otherwise similar, and I gave it to my coworker. He wore all the letters off the keycaps before he retired and took it home, but it was otherwise reliable.
I think these were both blue switch-based.
Several genuine Cherry keyboards were in the e-waste pile at work, so I rescued them. I am using one on a test PC with rhel8.
https://www.dealnews.com/Redragon-S107-BA-Gaming-Keyboard-an...
https://www.dealnews.com/Aula-F75-Gaming-Mechanical-Keyboard...
https://www.dealnews.com/K4-RGB-Tenkeyless-Mechanical-Gaming...
I wish that Cherry could get a cut of these.
ch_123•9m ago
In terms of keyboards, a good all-rounder suggestion is to take a look at some options from Keychron.
Ekaros•52m ago
Have to figure out if there is anything there when they arrive. But I think that is not even inclusive of some more expensive chinese brands.
Still, it is another interesting example how something can end up standard. That is the pin layout and the stem for keycap.
jsheard•50m ago
The count is a bit inflated because different colorways of the same design by the same manufacturer are often sold as "different" switches, but even if you filter those duplicates out there's still a ton of distinct ones out there.
stockresearcher•34m ago
Cherry was an American company that manufactured in the US until the automotive division was sold to a German company with keyboard switches thrown in. They moved production to Germany to capitalize on the perception of German quality. So, it’s not really surprising that it stagnated - it was a somewhat unwanted portion of a company and all the original folks got left behind.