Technology friendly countries

CLEANUP CANDIDATE

Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Reason: see talk page

There are many lists out there that rank countries by various metrics and try to find which ones are the best to live in. Unfortunately, these aren't very useful, because there is heavy bias along political agendas (liberals will always rank Sweden at the top of their list, while the conservatives will say the otherwise), censorship due to "political correctness", very strong pressure from government propaganda machines to influence results, and much information is either irrelevant to a normal person, or presented in a useless way.

This page attempts to honestly list the meaningful pros and cons of living in various countries, which would relevant to a normal /tech/ user.

Note: Please try to stay objective and impartial, avoid political proselytizing. While political and social climate of a country is important, /pol/ is best kept at /pol/.

General indicators

Internet service quality

The company running speedtest.net aggregates statistics about internet speed (down and up separately), quality, cost, whether ISPs deliver the rate promised, and so on. The statistics can be viewed by country or by city.

Cost of living

Numbeo has a database of crowd-sourced cost-of-living organized by city.

Anglo America

USA

• Part of Five Eyes
• The spearhead of international mass surveillance and domestic spying. The US government knows the people you wish you had sex with, which is your favorite hentai fetish and your favorite H-doujinshi, can trace back to you every single shitpost you have written in your lifetime, and knows exactly where you have lived, eaten, studied and worked. Censorship is almost non-existent, but discussing questionable stuff like CP, household pyrotechnics or computer hacking will raise the red flag within the government and could get you in trouble if you're careless.
• Freedom: Huxleyian dictatorship. You are technically free, but the economy and key institutions like the healthcare system are rigged to make you not free, and the mass media are manipulated to make sure you always believe that's normal.
• Decent internet if you're in a good state
  • In many cities ISPs offer fairly high speed internet (50-300 Mbps) but it's very expensive (typically $70/mo with hard/soft caps and shitty laws like having to rent their router or not allowing home servers) and you often get 10% or less of the speed promised
  • In less populated areas it can be very hard to get internet, usually you end up with very expensive and slow satellite internet
  • Some few places like Kansas City or Provo have very nice ISP market (Google Fiber)
• Some states (mostly "developed" liberal coasts, especially dense cities where all the rich elite concentrate) are liberal shitholes with very high tax and fee burden and consequent high cost of living.
• Others (midwest, south, rural areas) are very cheap and nice to live in
• Tough tech job market, you compete with strong jobseekers both domestic and foreign (everyone wants to come to America)
• The best country in the world™

Canada

• Part of Five Eyes
• Lower population density
• Even more socialist than US, even more political correctness
• Higher taxes than US
• High cost of living in big cities without correspondingly high income
• The government cannot legally force citizens to disclose passwords to police
• Copyright law is some of the most lenient in the world, allowing Canada to be one of the largest filesharing nations
  • Non-commercial penalties for infringement are $100 at the minimum and $5,000 at the maximum for all works infringed. This is significantly less than the maximum $150,000 penality per work infringed in the USA
    • However criminal infringement, caused by selling or uploading copyrighted works, can lead to penalties of up to ONE MILLION DOLLARS and also five years in prison. In practice, these penalties have never been enforced.
  • Fair dealing, analogous to fair use, allows citizens to download copyrighted materials for "private study", essentially making non-commercial downloading legal across the board. For music downloads in particular, the Copyright Act permits personal downloads. This has been affirmed by both a federal judge and the Copyright Board of Canada
  • Despite this, it's illegal to break "digital locks", or other anti-circumvention measures
  • Canada's judicial system is such that copyright trolling is significantly less profitable than in the United States. The loser pays all parties legal fees, discouraging lawsuits that are unlikely to win, and courts are also less likely to reward large amounts of money to winning parties
  • There used to be a cottage industry of rightsholders sending threatening letters claiming copyright infringement to ISPs, which were then forwarded to their customers, demanding money in exchange for not being sued. This practice was outlawed in 2019, making the letters moot
  • The Supreme Court of Canada ordered Google to delist search results that allegedly infringe copyright, including outside of Canada. The Supreme Court has not explained how they expect to enforce this order outside its own borders, but there you go.
• Canada has some of the strictest net neutrality policies in the world, leading to an Internet mostly untouched by monopolistic practices. These policies are enforced by the CRTC, who are different from the FCC in that the CRTC actually does their fucking jobs
  • Quebec passed a bill allowing the province to block unregulated gambling websites, a power never before seen in Canada. However the CRTC said Quebec doesn't have the authority, nullifying the bill and avoiding a legal crisis ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  • Most of the support for net neutrality stems from an incident where Telus blocked users from accessing a union website... which was the same union striking against Telus. Oops. At least they didn't slow down firefighters Internet access during a wildfire
  • Multiple large media companies petitioned the CRTC to implement a site-blocking regime in order to stop piracy (sorry, attempt to stop piracy), however the CRTC denied the petition, saying it doesn't have jurisdiction.
• Mobile network access is essentially limited to three competing companies: Bell, Rogers, and Telus. Internet access is those three + Shaw. Because of this oligopoly, phone service and mobile data is absurdly overpriced. It costs less to give birth in Canada than it does to pay your phone bill
• Average Internet speeds are decent, although less than many first-world countries. People on the West Coast have less speed
• Canadian Netflix used to be worse than Brazil and Cuba, leading to endless guides on how to use a proxy / VPN to get the American version. It has since gotten a lot better (not that it matters because you don't use proprietary software, right?)
• 🦀🦀🦀 MARIJUANA IS LEGAL 🦀🦀🦀

Latin America

General trend is low cost of living, low income, welcoming to foreigners. Infrastructure, law, organization aren't great but serviceable. Very comfortable living can be obtained by telecommuting to earn a mediocre First World salary, which is makes you fucking rich by local standards.

Mexico

• Liveable second world country in general, not too bad but there are serious problems you must be careful about in your everyday life.
• OK internet, worse than USA and less affordable due to lower purchasing power, but there are never any monthly caps or usage restrictions. A 20 Mbps connection usually costs somewhere around 30 US dollars a month (500 pesos), and chances are it will be reliable as long as you're in a town with more than 100,000 people. TCP port 25 (SMTP) is blocked by default, but you can have it opened if you want your own mail server. Net neutrality is not enforced but expected; so far only Izzi has dared ignoring it. Websites are never blocked; the Mexican internet is as clear and open as it can get, and ISPs don't give a fuck about what you do. At one point you will curse Carlos Slim and his unsurpassed monopoly on telecommunications.
• You get American prices if you live in a border city (Tijuana, Mexicali, Ciudad Juárez). Elsewhere, prices are higher but sane: as of April 2015, a Samsung Galaxy S5 will cost you $600 dollars in the States and $650 in central Mexico. In Mexico City you will find absolutely everything; in Guadalajara and Monterrey, general stuff is easy to find but specialized stuff (e.g. headphones that are not Beats, Bose or Skullcandy) is much harder to come across.
• Amazon delivery times can be as short as a single day if you have Amazon Prime and the item is in stock in a Mexican warehouse. Otherwise, delivery times from the USA are usually 1-2 weeks in Mexico City, 2-4 weeks in Guadalajara and Monterrey, months elsewhere.
• Freedom: Huxleyian dictatorship. You are technically free, but the economy and key institutions like the taxing authorities and the justice system are rigged to make you not free, the mass media are manipulated to make sure you always believe that's normal, the elite will axe any threat to the status quo before it rears its head, and powerful people always have the option of hiring a street criminal to do the dirty job of getting rid of you.
• Tech jobs are in high demand and nobody works them. It's not uncommon for fresh engineering graduates to afford a basic family sedan right off the bat. If you're poor, an engineering diploma is almost literally your ticket to the middle class.
• Higher education is OK. Colleges have a very hit-or-miss academic level, so make sure you investigate before enrolling on anything. The main difference between public and private college is the modernity of their facilities and the admission requirements (public colleges have varyingly strict admission exams, private colleges will pretty much always let you in). Compared to the States, private education is not really expensive, with average tuitions being on par with renting a small two-story house in a middle class neighborhood; however, if you're not upper-middle class, you'll probably have to take a student loan. Your family is expected to pay your college.
  • Unlike other countries, there is only one official higher education degree: the licentiate's degree, which is backed by an official document (the professional license) that gives you legal permission to work your profession and give advice on the topics you studied. The same applies for post-graduate education: when you graduate from a master's degree, you also get a post-graduate professional license. Whether you will actually use your professional card depends on your major: those who work "traditional" professions (law, medicine, accounting) will ask for it all the time, while those who work on "modern" professions (design, mechanical engineering, computer science) will only care about whether you know or not.
• American-like mass surveillance is in effect; government has the right to intercept your calls, location, and ISPs must maintain 2-year-long logs. There is some censorship. Some anti-establishment social media big shots have been silenced. Government, organized crime and businesses are just the three faces of the elite and blend together seamlessly, so being the spearhead of a large media attack against any one of these three institutions is likely to get you in trouble. Average joes are usually safe, but if you're doing anything that could draw unwanted attention, you'd better pull out your crypto, your Linux, your bitcoins and your custom smartphone ROM.
• Unlike the USA, there is usually little difference between the governments of different states save for hot issues (e.g. abortion and gay marriage are only legal in Mexico City). General political alignment is lefty in Mexico City, communist in the Southern states, economically right in the North, morally right in states like Jalisco, Guanajuato and Puebla. The states of Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas are communist as shit, because they are mostly populated by local tribes whose culture is incompatible with capitalism, but they're also too poor to give a fuck about them.
• There is a feud between those from Mexico City and those from the rest of the country ("provincians"). Provincians think Mexico City people are corrupt, degenerate, trashy, dishonest attention whores who praise every single little thing that comes from America, and Mexico City people think provincians are jealous, uneducated, mysoginistic, bigoted peasants. Mexico City people in turn view themselves as "the modern, cosmpolitan CDMX", and Provincians view themselves as "the proud, traditional Mexico".
• Government is serviceable but there is always a streak of corruption on anything but the most basic functions. 2000 pesos can buy your way out of a DUI unless you're in a sobriety checkpoint (they're incorruptible). You can carry a gun with you as long as you have 5000 pesos at all times. If you have a million pesos, the law is your bitch.
• Safety is down the shitter and beyond. You have to be always careful at all times.
  • Don't publish your personal data on your social networks. Be careful with what you post there; keep your pictures at a minimum, don't say the places you usually go to, and keep your friend list locked down from other friends. Kidnapper gang stalkers have been known to scour Facebook tracking down the whereabouts of some people, and if they can't get them by themselves they will try to befriend your friends and see who coughs up information about you.
  • Don't trust businesses; you never know if their owners are criminals, have been threatened into collaborating with them, or if some of their key employees are spies or have been sold out. If you're doing slightly advanced shopping (e.g. you're buying a cell phone), one trick that works is to pretend that you're doing it in someone else's name so you can feign ignorance when they ask for your address and phone number.
  • Be as DIY as possible at home. It's better to spend an entire month trying to figure out how to fix your hydropneumatic pump, than bringing a criminal technician that will quickly fix it and tell his gangbanger friends about all your electronics and jewels.
  • If you live in a posh neighborhood and have 3000 monthly pesos to spare, consider renting a second apartment in a middle-class-ish place just to have an alternative address.
  • Most cities have people on Twitter that post about current events in the city. It is a very good idea to follow them and check your Twitter before leaving your home, you never know if there's a shooting or a narco-blockade in progress.
  • Trust nobody, not even your friends: don't make announcements that hint about your income level like trips abroad or buying a new car, regardless of whether they're in person or on your social networks, don't go around wearing flashy clothes and drinking expensive shit at expensive bars, and always keep a distant relationship with your peers until you get to know them for at least 2-3 years; you never know who they actually are, what they actually work on, whether they're kidnapper gang spies, whether they make stints on the wrong side of the law, and you know even less about their own friends with whom they probably share information about you. Yes, you will have a very hard time making friends, none of them will be intimate, and all you will know about them will be a few accidental hints about themselves plus the generic, unidimensional façade they will put up for their own safety. Public danger breaks society. Deal with it. (Protip: joining a local niche interest club in your city can go a long way in making friends).
• Low income, low-ish but rising cost of living. A middle class lifestyle on a rented apartment will usually cost you at least $500 monthly dollars. There are tons of beggars everywhere. A lot of people live off informal employment. Gas is slowly reaching European prices despite being an oil producer. Average citizen debt is rampant among the lower classes.

Brazil

• HUE HUE HUE I REPORT U
• Very poor but also very low cost of living (the costs are rising in the capitals, though).
• Very sharp rich/poor divide - you either live in a ghetto or like a fabled king.
• Growing social divide between the elite and common people, the former isolate themselves and treat the latter as if they're not even human.
• Painfully slow internet, link speeds range between 3mb/s - 5mb/s on average, with no caps (current state of affairs: during the first semester of 2016, all major ISPs tried to change their commercial model, charging on a per MB basis). However, in some places, like the richest areas of São Paulo City or other states' capitals, you can get a fast link (50 mb+), but it will be very expensive for the average Brazilian. Telecoms (who are also the aforementioned ISPs) ARE a pain in the ass, their customer support quality is abysmally low. Be prepared to wait 30 minutes or more on the phone in order to talk to someone when seeking assistance...
• Electronics are quite expensive and not easy to buy. This applies to computer parts, a good/midrange (as of 2016) graphics card can cost more than three months of the average Brazilian salary. An iPhone costs three or four times the price charged in the U.S. if the real is converted to U.S. dollars. (Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, which is 20 km away from Brazil, literally makes most of its living from Brazilians who flock to the city looking for cheap electronics).
• The country is slowly becoming another Tropical Dystopia: Government is spying on citizens through that well known social network, people are getting arrested for downloading torrents (and they are framed as pedos on media). Censorship is subtle, and some politicians keep suggesting that the internet should be controlled by the State "in order to protect the children".
• Recently, the government has approved a law that obliges ISPs to keep connection logs and its trying to actively censor the web through new laws. Most of the population has no idea of what is going on, but those with a tech background in IT sometimes try to wake up the masses.
• Also, there are leaked emails on wikileaks that show evidence that the Government hired the infamous malware company Hackerteam to build some custom remote monitoring software and infect a well know news portal with it.
• IT related fields don't pay as much as they used to some years ago and the profession is suffering from over-saturation and has a great number of bad professionals in its ranks. As such, the average income is getting lower while at the same time companies demand more and more from their employees with no compensation. But they are much needed and you'll hardly get unemployed if you have the right skills.
• Brazil is currently experiencing what some economists say is the worst economic crisis of its entire history. This results in lots of unemployed people, very high crime rates (especially armed robbery) and overall mistrust and aggressiveness. Brazilians are not the stereotypical "friendly people" when you live here 24/7, more so if you have money and show it. Be prepared to get robbed, have your car stolen and have to hand your cellphone to a criminal while he's pointing a gun to your pretty face (and be grateful if he decides to spare you) if you are not extra careful. And yeah, he will ask very politely.
• Police usually shoots first and ask questions later, a symptom of the aforementioned rise in criminality that started in the 90's
• Most of the natives don't speak English (and don't bother to learn too). Without some knowledge of Portuguese, you'll get in trouble. People will charge more for a service or product when they realize you are a foreigner. Remember what I said about the stereotype?
• If you are a lonely anon, you can get sex services very cheap an even a GF (but she will hold on you until you got her the Green card or moves back to your country. After that you will get dumped as you are no longer necessary). There are street whores and "massage parlours" in some "specialized" streets all over the country. Sex is easy to find when you want to. Just be very, VERY careful of where you go while looking for it. Have a trusted guide to show you around.
• Some cities and regions are almost akin to a war zone. Brazil's homicide rate is like 50,000 deaths per year. Do your research before going there and try to avoid these regions. One such region has recently hosted a certain worldwide event that happens every 4 years...

Argentina

• Comfortable standard of living
• Macrocephalic country, most things are in the Buenos Aires city (it's a megalopolis, about 10 million people living in it and surrounding areas)
• Electronics are more expensive than travelling to Chile for a weekend and buying them there due to the crazy protectionism that's been going in the last decade. Border crossings in Chile are literally multi-hour-long waiting lines due to all the Argentinians going shopping to Chile.
• Internet speeds aren't the best, outside of Buenos Aires they drop steeply. Inside, they are average.
• People are foreigner-friendly in inner Buenos Aires
• Cost of life is low, but raising in the last year (2016)
• Privacy situation is average to bad. Most people are tech uneducated and get carried away by the newest privacy-invading gadget. The government has tons of data (search SIBIOS) and citizen ID is required for most paperwork everywhere. There's been some situations with government opposition in the last decade under the Kirchner administration (persecutions to specific people), and the new government, while a different political sign, has shown a willingness to get dirty with people's data. Fortunately, this doesn't translate to widespread incarcerations due to lack of infrastructure and know-how.
• Censorship situation is okay. TPB is banned, but most proxies for it aren't. CP _distribution_ is illegal but it isn't so enforced, and CP posession isn't forbidden. This is fixed by the people, who do "linchamientos" (mobbings) whenever they feel like (not that common, but during a time it was a thing). Inside of Buenos Aires City it's incredibly uncommon, though. Not much stuff is banned because there isn't that much of stuff to ban. The only movies, electronics, etc. that get into the country are the biggest ones (for example, the Killing Joke animated movie had only one showing by the biggest cinema theater chain), but local cinema is kind of a thing, if you're into substitutes. There's also an important independent film scene.
• As such, forget about getting not-that-mainstream equipment. Thinkpads are a rarity. Prices are still high, and importing stuff not always ends with the stuff getting to your house (some zones in the conurbano (suburban buenos aires) have no mail coverage at all, inner country might be even worse) (Even if you live in the center of BA, customs employees have proven to be corrupt and steal your stuff, and that's if your thing compleis with crazy proteccionist rules)
• RMS said he wouldn't come to Argentina ever again due to asking for fingerprints at airport, so forget about autographing your thinkpad here
• Living in Buenos Aires center is like living anywhere else with basic comforts of civilized life. Living in the suburban areas is living in the middle of a war zone where everyone want to kill you. Living in the inner areas and rural areas is living in the 1990s. Internet is expensive and spotty at best.
• There's a growing IT sector, and IT jobs are in high demand. Mostly in Buenos Aires.
• There's barely any electronic fabrication going on in the country, but since there are some plants that assemble stuff like microwaves and laptops in the south, they are reached by proteccionist measures.
• Most public universities are free, and they have an okay level if you don't come out of STEM. They are all focused on bigger cities, though.
• Public hospitals are free, but they aren't in the best of states because they are overrun. Unless you stay in the wealthier/more touristy areas
• Prepare to get mugged at least once
• There's lots of discrimination, but it is normal, don't fret about it and go with the flow. It's just banter (sometimes it's not banter but it's accepted because since most poor people in this country are indian immigrants (Bolivians, Peruvians, Paraguayans,...) (brown skin), and most poor people steal, so it follows that most thieves are indians). It's mostly rooted in classism, and so it avoids scrutiny. Urbanite mainstream in IT is that indian immigration is good, but among the rest of the people is that it's bad. Even in the reddit forum for argentina there's some talk that it's bad.
• Inner Buenos Aires is really gay-friendly. Conurbano not so much, though.

Western Europe

Warning: Every European Union member-state now is bound by the Article 13 restrictive laws. Article 13 has been made by the computer illiterate, and is considered a declaration of war against the Internet. 99% of the whole of the internet is currently blocked. The law will most likely not be repealed in the new future.

UK

• Part of Five Eyes

• Bans certain types of "violent" porn, which the vibrant underground BDSM community in London has been protesting since its inception (known as Article 8, the Extreme Pornography Act). Many members of the BDSM community protest the act via International Fetish Day where people are encouraged to share their sexual fetish and to stand up and be counted by wearing purple clothing.

• Plans to implement a system in which you are required to verify yourself or buy a license in order to watch porn.

• The prime minister wants to put a stop to heavy encryption.

• Freedom: Orwellian type dictatorship. People have been arrested for making racist or other offensive tweets/facebook posts.

• • You have to have a TV license from the government to watch live TV (Not including catch up and on-demand services such as Netflix) on any sort of platform such as a computer or a console.

• • • If the BBC pimps think you're not giving them their cut they will send threatening letters to your address, and they outsource fine collections from a company called Capita. Capita is a disgusting company with a horrible reputation to boot, but what they do is send out 'enforcement officers' who are essentially high-pressure salesmen with no legal jurisdiction, and they will bully and harass you into inviting them into your house so they can pull an excuse out of their ass to get you to purchase a license. The best way to deal with these clowns is deny their entry, record them and use it as evidence of harassment. REMEMBER: THEY ARE NOT THE POLICE AND THEY HAVE NO AUTHORITY TO ENTER YOUR HOME NO MATTER WHAT THEY TELL YOU.

• • The UK government has admitted it used phone data to analyse people’s movement patterns without their knowledge as part of a vaccination study without even informing them.

• • There were a flyers PSA on the side of a busses that read "Secure under the watchful eyes of the government" containing illustrations of floating eyes, it was not a fake intending to scare people or an ad for any sort of tv show. Easily the most blatant of the 1st world countries for this much censorship.

• • After the 2019 Christchurch Massacre, the UK Government raided and arrested an 18 year old man without bail for sharing a copy of Brandon Tarrant's Facebook Live Video, and faces 14 years imprisonment. Source

• Cost of living is absurdly high in London, so much so that memes are made for it. It isn't as bad as it is in San Francisco with the cost for a single bedroom flat being on average £800, twice as much on average for literally every other modestly sized city.

• Police are ridiculously apathetic about your property rights, if your shit gets stolen, if it happens to be not worth the cost of the police investigating and you're not insured you're on your own. Protect your shit anon, at least get your tech theft-protected by Newegg, run CCTV, get alarms, do everything you can to protect your shit.

France

Currently considering becoming another NSA Orwellian Dystopia after the ISIS Paris attacks. At the present moment, considered ok.

In 2019, after the Christchurch Massacre, France participated in global censorship at the apparent aide of the New Zealand Government. This spanned everywhere from The Internet Archive to Kiwi Farms. They are still actively issuing censorship requests.

For KiwiFarms, they are requesting full logs of IPs from every user.

Germany

Germany bans offensive content, confirming with their laws that have existed post-WWII banning Nazi symbols and anything related to it. Also, Cock.li had their hard disks taken by force due to an international order originating from the USA to the German government.

Anti-piracy laws are very severe. Only real reason to go there is that Germany is one of the primary producers of Beastiality and Scat pornography.

Netherlands

Main article: Technology friendly countries/Netherlands

• Fast internet
• Piracy is a grey area in the Netherlands, however in 2014 they outlawed the free distribution of physical CD copies.
• Strict net neutrality bill
• Flea markets are pretty good sometimes for computer stuff and there's a pretty damn good Dutch equivalent of Craigslist, Marktplaats.nl
• Friet en Frikandellen zijn overal te krijgen!
• Lots of freelance computer dudes, if you become friends with one you might get super cheap shit

Spain

• Fast internet connection unless you live in Teruel
• All ISPs are retarded

Switzerland

• Very nice place to live in, very high standard of living, high tech economy
• Very high per capita income (proportionally huge numbers of rich bankers) but also very high cost of living ($5 for a coke)
• Swiss are very autistic rulefaggots, even the Germans think they have a stick up their ass

Portugal

• Generally good ISP practices (the standards may vary)
• Partial Net Neutrality. While it's neutral for WIFI and wired connections, it is not the same for mobile data plans, where one can purchase 10GB data packs for certain app types (Messaging apps, video streaming apps, music streaming apps and social apps) yet these packs are optional as there's always a base data cap associated with the phone's plan.
  • High speeds with no data caps. If there is a data cap in the fine print, it's usually 20TB. You're not gonna hit that monthly limit even if you're using the entire bandwidth for torrent hoarding. Speeds take a hit on Fridays and Saturdays when everyone and their mother uses the internet nationwide, clogging up the infrastructure and you notice the latency at that time. The recent COVID-19 outbreak forced the ISPs to reinforce to support more bandwidth in order to make work at home doable.
• ISPs are aware piracy is what justifies people subscribing to to faster internet packages so when an entity asks to DNS block an infringing website like TPB they try and stall for as long as possible.

• Copyright law is a bit bullshit (a TV show doing a parody of a singer was charged with copyright infringement) but it's rarely enforced when it comes to people pirating stuff for themselves. (AKA, Uploaders can get screwed if they don't hide their location, but seeders and leechers are always ignored.
• Some programmers created a proxy addon for Firefox and >Chrome called Ahoy! which automatically changes a blocked site on their database to a working proxy, so even normie pirates that still use the spyware known as uTorrent can access the sites.
• Law literally allows you to break copy protection or modify software/hardware for private or educational usage
• Finding a Portuguese that never pirated is like finding a needle in a haystack. Even cops with their shitty pay have to resort to piracy from time to time.

• Second hand market runs bullshit prices. Back when the i7-4790k was still sold brand new, a used i5-750 would go for 150€ (about $172 USD), and this regarding private sellers, not second hand stores. Second hand stores are usually well aware of online prices so if a game is being sold for 40 bucks, they might sell it at 45, so while you're not being scalped, you won't find a bargain unless you dive and look for overlooked gems. PC games in physical format are more often than not sold for less than the worth of the box and disc if it's old games originally meant for Windows 98 (Like Cultures 2, which I managed to get for 50 cents)
• Average income is lower than the European average, with the minimum wage being around 700€ ($800 USD). Paying rent, utilities, internet (or phone/internet/cable packages) and the odd expense can leave you with money only for basic needs for the rest of the month if you're living off minimum wage and alone in a small apartment in Lisbon or Porto. Living in the outskirts is manageable but if you work inside Lisbon, either you get a car, motorcycle or spend 40€ ($46 USD) on an all access public transport pass that will cover the entire district's transportation, including bus, train, subway and trams for the entire month.
• Prices for non essential goods are among the highest in Europe due to the sales tax of 23% (if not mistaken only European country topping that is Croatia with 25%), which means looking at the price of a build in the US that is perfectly within budget might require you to get the lower tier parts or cut corners to make a PC within the budget:
  • Example: If a PSU costs $80 on Newegg in the US, expect it to cost 130€ ($149 USD) on the cheapest online store.
• Amazon Spain has great deals that can make the combined price with shipping costs cheaper than buying from a store locally or online in the country, but their main delivery service, MRW has a spotty track record as couriers, so if your package is small and you live in the suburbs and are not home in time of the delivery, chances are the courier is either gonna throw your package over the fence (you're fucked if you own a dog) or he's gonna wedge it on the fence/railing and risk getting your shit stolen. (actually had this happen with an album I ordered, luckily the package was white, like the perimeter wall so no passerby noticed the package)

• Lefty country but so far not derranged like the SJWs in the US. Last time the far left party tried a frivolous proposal to change the name of Citizen Card to Citizenship Card and not only did the proposal get rejected, but it also got mocked. (Context, Citizen defaults to Cidadão, a male word, as Portuguese lacks a gender neutral term like "it", yet Citizenship is "Cidadania", a female word) Country is decently LGBT friendly despite the Catholic background (yet nobody but the oldfags practice said religion), the Islam community is secular and keeps away from any radical shit at all costs to avoid backlash.
• Land of the Start-ups. Expect plenty of tech jobs, yet average (by Portuguese standards) pay and sometimes very specific requirements.
• Microsoft, Google, Miniclip and other tech or tech-related companies established offices/data centers
• After the New State dictatorship collapsed there's no known record for banning of books, movies, music, shows or video games. (DVD release of the 1979 movie Caligula was released uncut for audiences 18 and older)

Scandinavia

All Scandinavian countries are very cold and snowy for many months in a year. People spend a lot of time inside. There are often very few hours of daylight. This makes some people very depressed (light has a huge effect on your psychology).

Sweden

• Everything is expensive
• Politically left and progressive minded people/government
• As 2020 Sweden passed law that allows law enforcement to hack devices that they reasonably think suspect is using as an primary device.

Norway

>Black metal

Finland

• Internet is written in the constitution as a human right, currently the only country in the world to do so
• Expensive yet still having low wages compared to literally every other Nordic country. While the salary of an Estonian is half of a Finnish salary, the Norwegian salary is twice as much as a Finnish salary.
• Expect a lot of bureaucracy. If you come from outside of the EU/EEA area, expect long processing times for residence permits with Migri and expect to wait for a clearance from the Ministry of Defense to buy some land.
• Marko "Panasonic is best mechanics" Vanhanen
• Piracy is a grey area in the Finland
• Not much censorship, but the legislation is still far from being privacy-friendly like Iceland and Switzerland. One site telling about the dangers of watching CP was blocked by the authorities' request due to the name of the site "sounding like a CP site".

Eastern Europe

Belarus

• Bans Tor
• Internet most likely monitored
• Most forms of encryption banned

Russia

• One of few countries that aren't third world shitholes (eg. have electricity and running water in most places) yet aren't socially dominated by Western progressivism
• Government probably spies on everyone but they only care about going after political opponents
• Economy, rule of law, corruption, infrastructure (having nice stores and decent houses) improved dramatically over last 15 years
• Freedom: Corrupt dictatorship. Vladimir Putin is either the president or the man behind the president, the worst thing you can do is being the political opponent of a powerful person, and being publicly outspoken against the government or the official ideology can get you in trouble. Personal freedoms are proportional to your money: if you're poor you're not allowed to do anything, but if you have 3 million roubles the law is your bitch.
• Cheap currency, low cost of living - very nice if you have dollar income
• Very lax CP laws, hence most CP sites are hosted in Russia
• No 50-year copyright rule
• Very low population density, lots of secluded wilderness
  • By wilderness we mean wild, wild wilderness. These places are so far away from civilization there are literally no paved roads. Forget modern amenities like non-satellite internet, you're lucky if you buy more than one kind of cheese within 50 miles. Electricity and running water is probably readily available everywhere by now, but this definitely wasn't the case in, say, early 2000s.
  • A few large cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg are hardly any different from a typical western metropolis like New York or London, aside from culture and politics. The prices and cost of living are also very high. Muscovites are infamous in Russia for being extremely rude, but Petersburg is regarded as a very nice place to live.
• Cheap, fast internet with no caps or retarded restrictions, ISPs don't give a fuck what you do, however purchasing a data plan without identification might be tricky.
• Westerners who want to visit require an invitation from a Russian (can usually be bought for a few $100) before they can even apply for a visa
• Russia has banned 8chan since March of 2015 because of this thread (NSFW) posted to the board /beast/, specifically this image (NSFW). A copy of the order is available here.
• Actually, Russia has banned lots of things, so Tor will be your new friend there.

Romania

• God tier internet
• Shit tier government and infrastructure
• Uses Euro unfortunately

Estonia

• God tier internet
• E-government
• Cheap
• Everyone is /g/ as fuck
• Uses Euro sadly
• Computers weren't as common before 2000, old non-Soviet Era technology is expensive and hard to find.

Latvia

• God tier internet
• Most tech companies in Latvia are owned by Lithuania or Sweden
• The government doesn't care what people are doing on the internet
• Uses Euro
• 9/10 households have an internet connection
• Shitty government e-services that break every week

Serbia

• Shitty internet
• No internet censoring whatsoever
• Cops can be easily bribed
• Corrupt to the bone government
• There's a huge gap between the rich and the poor
• Seasonal floods
• Removed Kebab in the 90s/Yugoslav Wars (yet there was no war in YU)
• Belgrado Bombing with depleted uranium in '99 still affects lots of people
• People drive like absolute madmen, lots of traffic accidents every year
• Did I say that 95% of the people in Serbia are dirt poor?

Slovakia

• EU, Eurozone, Schengen zone
• Depending on the region, you may have fiber internet in the western parts, especially if you live close to main roads. Internet generally cheap and fast
• Tor is fine
• No internet censoring whatsoever
• Piracy laws completely unenforced on the internet
• For most of your tech needs there are local e-shops and second hand shops with lots of cheap stuff
• Tech shit from China takes usually 21+ days to arrive, sometimes multiple months
• Your phone location was only being monitored if they had a court order, prior to the coronavirus crisis. During the coronavirus crisis, all phones are being monitored

Ukraine

• Get out of here, Stalker!
• Decent internet, no caps or censorship
• Piracy is everywhere, but due to government licking Europe's and 'Merica's balls this may soon no longer be the case. (Although there is not much good shit to listen/watch/etc. legally, so they will find another way eventually)
• Shit government that tries to be Europe with the same ruskies in it
• Shit infrastructure
• One of the cheapest, but also poor
• A quite peaceful country despite ongoing conflict with Russia

Asia

Japan

• Lightning fast internet, cheap too
• Country in general is run by old geezers with literally no idea of how to technology. Old-ass technologies like faxes, SMS messages, MiniDisc and LaserDisc are still in use. New technologies are for today's kids who spend their days and nights glued to their computer things playing that Kankai Koreshon thing.
• Just visit USA sites for uncensored porn.
• Piracy, however, is treated very seriously. There's a fair number of cases where people got big jail time for torrenting. If you value your freedom, use a goddamn seedbox and a VPN paid with bitcoins.
• Unfortunately, not actually a real life anime. Still a pretty neat place to visit at the least.
• Japan is THE shit for car freaks, there's also a very active car tuning scene in Japan.

South Korea

• Lightning fast internet. Gigabit connection to your home is for something like USD 30. (Cheaper if limited)
• Government and banks still run ActiveX.
• Conglomerate led economy sometimes gets unstable, but it is much better off than other types of Asian economic system.
• Statist and authoritarian. It comes from that South Korea was a military junta until only 1987.
• Porn is banned. Just use VPN or torrent.

China

• The internet is not only censored, every single thing that happens on a computer is monitored. (What else is new?)
• Attempting to access information on the 1989 Tienanmen Square Riots not only returns completely censored results, you will be purged like in the Stalin-led USSR.
• Using advanced technology, if you type the words "China sucks" into your computer, even into an offline text document, they will purge you like in the Stalin-led USSR. The American NSA briefly experimented with such technology, but later left it for easier and more affordable illegal surveillance tools.
• Thousands of shills exist to spam Pro-Chineseisms on the English part of the Internet
• Orwellian Dictatorship
• Wuhan Flu (2020)

How to get chinks off your server

The following line of text has proven to trigger the automated filter on the so-called "Great Firewall of China." Posting this engages automatic responses, temporarily kicking every Chinese person off their own ISP for about an hour.

动态网自由门 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Free Tibet 六四天安門事件 The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 天安門大屠殺 The Tiananmen Square Massacre 反右派鬥爭 The Anti-Rightist Struggle 大躍進政策 The Great Leap Forward 文化大革命 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 人權 Human Rights 民運 Democratization 自由 Freedom 獨立 Independence 多黨制 Multi-party system 台灣 臺灣 Taiwan Formosa 中華民國 Republic of China 西藏 土伯特 唐古特 Tibet 達賴喇嘛 Dalai Lama 法輪功 Falun Dafa 新疆維吾爾自治區 The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 諾貝爾和平獎 Nobel Peace Prize 劉暁波 Liu Xiaobo 民主 言論 思想 反共 反革命 抗議 運動 騷亂 暴亂 騷擾 擾亂 抗暴 平反 維權 示威游行 李洪志 法輪大法 大法弟子 強制斷種 強制堕胎 民族淨化 人體實驗 肅清 胡耀邦 趙紫陽 魏京生 王丹 還政於民 和平演變 激流中國 北京之春 大紀元時報 九評論共産黨 獨裁 專制 壓制 統一 監視 鎮壓 迫害 侵略 掠奪 破壞 拷問 屠殺 活摘器官 誘拐 買賣人口 遊進 走私 毒品 賣淫 春畫 賭博 六合彩 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Winnie the Pooh 劉曉波动态网自由门

Singapore

• An authoritarian city state, very different political environment than a Western liberal democracy
• Sharp class divide: A few rich Chinese live in very nice apartments, everyone else has trouble affording rent
• Freedom: Asian dictatorship. Very strict laws with an old-ass justice system. Drug offenders get executed, littering can get you jailed and eating Durian on the MRT carries hefty fines. Laws are mostly apolitical, concerned with enforcing civilized behavior. Government does not tolerate disrespect to itself but otherwise doesn't care much about ideology. If you want to organize a protest, you must get a license from the authorities and wait for Speakers' Corner to be vacant.
• Strong software, banking and biotech sectors. Startups flourish because of favorable legislation.
• During the COVID-19 pandemic, Singapore used very authoritarian measures for preventative measures. Unless a Circuit Breaker was in place, everyone has to use TraceTogether to spy on citizens trace contacts for contact tracing. Luckily TraceTogether is GPlv3-licensed so RMS would approve this piece of government spyware.

Philippines

• >Hotwheels
• Cheap.
• If foreign blood, best advice is to stay in places where foreign people reside than in urban places just to avoid any intrusions and risks to get yourself get rekt.
• Internet is basically below average but more on two local ISP giants, PLDT and Globe (others still pending for information).
• You can acquire gun license from different cities depending on the city you're staying or living at.
• High population especially when you're sightseeing on many squatter areas in cities.
• No spying because the police don't know how to do those things unfortunately; still trying to ever since volunteers from other countries are shutting down and arresting other malicious users who are into CP over the internet.
• No censorship; [unless this bill is implemented heavily enough: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/philippines-inching-toward-censorship]

North Korea

• The government has completely shut off the internet from the common man in favor of the Kimternet
• They have created their own Linux distro, Red Star OS
• Any criticism is basically a suicide there
• /pol/ considers the ideology of Juche to be somewhat like National Socialism
• Pseudo-Democracy consisting of a congress of Three parties, only two with relevance, and only one allowed actual power
• Outside electronics considered illegal goods
• All radios and televisions (which are reserved for the few wealthy) are state-run propaganda

Oceania

Australia

• Has horrible internet in comparison to other countries of similar size and structure.
• Has Attourney General in charge of metadata laws who gave an infamous "trainwreck" interview showing that he's computer illiterate.
• Part of Five Eyes
  • Spies on Indonesia
  • Spied on East Timor and bugged their government's Cabinet. Raided offices of journalists who reported it, cancelled passport of whistleblower so he couldn't travel to court in the Hague.
• Freedom: Orwellian dictatorship. The government is retarded and has insane Big Brother tendencies.
  • Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Bill 2015
    • ZDNet. "Data-retention Bill passes Australian House of Reps"
  • Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018
    • ZDNet. "What's actually in Australia's encryption laws? Everything you need to know"
  • Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Bill 2021
    • Digital Rights Watch. "Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate"
• Pirate website blocking laws very likely in 2015.
• .com.au domains cannot host porn. Abby Winters even left the country.
• Software, games, electronics are insanely overpriced due to shitty tarif system.
• Australian iTunes has much higher prices
• It is cheaper to fly to US than to buy Adobe software in Australia
• Netflix took until March 2015 to launch in Australia.
• Games banned for sexual or violent content:
  • GTA:SA (Hot Coffee), later re-released
  • Saints Row IV banned for sex and drugs. Edited version was released.
  • Manhunt
  • Postal
  • Postal 2
  • Hotline Miami 2
  • Risen
  • Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude
  • Phantasmagoria
  • Witcher 2
• So fucking many there is an entire Wikipedia page
• An R18+ rating was finally added in 2013, after M15+ being the highest possible classification, yet games are still banned.
• During the 2019 Christchurch Massacre, several Australian Men were arrested for speaking in praise of the Massacre, and have subsequently been arrested on these grounds. Sharing the video and manifesto of the Massacre suspect is also grounds for legal arrest. Similar to New Zealand, many websites such as 4chan, 8chan and liveleak were blocked by many (but not all) providers. However these blockages were temporary and were not required by law (the providers independently decided to block these sites).

New Zealand

• Part of Five Eyes
• Spies on tiny island neighbours for the US
• Military style raid on Kimdotcom as show of force/salad tossing for US.
• After the 2019 Christchurch Massacre there were numerous instances of censorship surrounding the Video, the Manifesto, and the websites involved. As of now (Wed Mar 20 01:01:47 UTC 2019) 8chan, 4chan, Kiwi Farms, Encyclopedia Dramatica, LiveLeak, The Daily Stormer, and various other websites are under censorship. It has been made illegal to share or possess the video, and to comment positively in regards to it will be met with legal arrest if caught. Upwards of 14 years jail time for possession of Brenton Tarrant's video and the manifesto, as well as a legal requirement to destroy all copies of both items has been enacted. source