BuyFromEU

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/62570577

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/62570526

I'm looking for an alternative to duolingo, the main appeal for me of duolingo is the gamification of the app as this helps me to stay consistent (so just normal flashcards would not be suitable).

Thanks in advance

Is it time to start an Infomaniak community on Lemmy to post news and Q&A?

I’ve recently picked Infomaniak for my buyeuropean/degoogling process and I think it’s pretty great, but the online dicussion is really limited compared to Proton or Tuta.

Does someone have recommendations for cargo shorts? I need new ones for the upcoming summer. Everything I find are shorts without additional pockets and/or they are to short, I like mine at knee length. Thank you!

I work in a store where I walk a lot and make many heavy lifts on a daily basis. And normally i just use regular cheap jeans, but they only last some months before they rip on the inner tights.

So I'm looking for some durable pants that handle friction and sweat in the inner thigh. I was looking at Fjällräven but I have heard they are not that good compared to price anymore. So any recommendations on EU or preferably Scandinavian brands?

This year, I gave 10 euros to Libre Office

https://www.libreoffice.org/

I gave 5 euros to VLC

https://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html

I gave 5 euros to Qbittorent

https://www.qbittorrent.org/

I come from a low-income country. Europeans can afford to give much more.

Last year, the CEO of Adobe earned ~~20~~ 40 million dollars. He only travels in an armored SUV with bodyguards. He has been described as ''completely obsessed'' about money and power. If he could get away with it, he would probably murder open source developers to send a warning.

Are you happy that people and companies from your community are wiring money to Microsoft for the privilege to use Word™ and Excel™ ?

Are you happy that people and companies in your community are wiring money to Adobe for the privilege to use Premiere Pro™ and Photoshop™ ?

This is money leaving your country. For what?

Please support open source software developers.

With extremely limited ressources, Inkscape, Krita, Gimp, Kdenlive are doing fantastic work, offering free quality alternatives. These volunteer developers are really doing the best they can.

You don't have to donate fortunes. You could simply adopt 1 software.

If I can do it, so can you.

Volla phone AMA on reddit right now: https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1k6rmdo/ama_volla_phones/

Volla is a German phone brand that offers an own minimalistic operating system, too. It was subject in this community and there is a chance to ask questions at reddit. AMA started at 15:00.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.nl/post/32786914

I'm currently looking to replace my in-ears (which are slowly dying) and I have settled on the open-ear form factor. Unfortunately open-ears are not very common, so I've had trouble finding many European options. I'd settle for a European company, because produced in Europe is even more difficult to find.

What I found so far:

• Nothing Open Ear (UK, produced in China)
• ~~Suunto Aqua/Wing/Sonic (Finland, probably produced in China~~ apparently completely Chinese now
• Teufel Airy Open TWS (Germany, probably produced in China)
• Beyerdynamic Veerio 200 (Germany, 85% of all Beyerdynamic products produced in Germany)

Please do not confuse open-back (full-size over-ear) and open-ear (small form factor).

European brands I have checked which do not have open-ears:

• Steelseries
• Bang & Olufsen
• Austrian Audio
• Sennheiser
• Meze
• Fairphone
• Valco
• Fresh 'n Rebel
• Jabra

Brands with open-ears but not European:

• Shokz
• Bose
• JBL
• Suunto (used to be Finnish, now 100% Chinese)

Do you have, use, or recommend alternatives to Grammarly?

If you are unfamiliar with Grammarly, it is a spelling, grammar, and tone checker and suggester. The free tier is very useful.

I looked into alternatives, and what I found is:

Grammarly is a US-based company. For accounts created in the EU or UK, no content is used to train models. Others have a choice. Targeted advertising (email address to unique identifier) can be disabled.

LanguageTool is owned by a German business (GmbH), but operates under an international business called Learneo (Inc.). The privacy policy is with Learneo and does include data transfer to the US. It's unclear to me whether they operate [with the data] in the US or if that is only for specific or secondary operations and support.

LanguageTool uses third-party US analytics (Google Analytics and Amplitude.

LanguageTool is Open Source, but self-hosting does not include any of the AI features/rules.

DeepL is a German business. The free tier processes your data for training, and you must not submit any personal data.

Do you know of other alternatives that go beyond simple dictionary spell-checking, similar to these services? Ready-for-use service, local, or self-hosted.

Dear Fellow Europeans

Any recommendations on where to buy a small number “Buy European” stickers in various sizes and materials that I can stick to my laptop/phone?

I just canceled my Amazon Prime membership, something I was almost afraid of. Phew, it's nice to have that off my back.

I've been shopping less and less at Amazon anyway and barely used prime video, so I'll probably won't even notice the difference.

My TV is not a smart TV but has hdmi inputs. Are there any non American alternatives to the Amazon fire stick?

Not only software and FMCG! Support EU artisans and manufacturers!

I needed to create a wishlist recently, so I researched what websites of this type are managed by entities located in the EU, EEA, UK. Here's what I found:

• favolis.com: BE, Cubro BVBA, BE 0633.839.768

• wishlephant.com: DE, Anika Lindtner and Bodo Tasche, Richard-Sorge-Str. 59, 10249, Berlin

• wishly.de / wishly.uk / wishly.net: DE, Dresslove GmbH, DE300292359

• gowish.com: DK, Gowish ApS, 41284366 / onskeskyen.dk: DK, Ønskeskyen ApS, 41284366

• wishlist.dk: DK, Morten Helmstedt, November 4, 1983, Heimdalsgade 45, Nørrebro

• cherpapanoel.fr: FR, Tilt Studio SARL, 52134798900019

• listy.fr: FR, LISTY SAS, 888083326

• thegoodlist.fr: FR, THE GOOD LIST SAS, 890016769

• lijstje.nl: NL, Digital Intelligence BV, 34121564

• mywishlist.online / mijnverlanglijst.eu / meinewunschliste.eu: NL, Jamo Web Creations, 34280613

• giftwhale.com: UK, GiftWhale Ltd, 15384054

• moonsift.com: UK, Moonsift Limited, 11403224

Self-hosted:

• Christmas Community: https://github.com/Wingysam/Christmas-Community
• PHP Gift Registry: https://github.com/gebailey/phpgiftreg
• Pønskelisten: https://github.com/aunefyren/poenskelisten
• Simple Wishlist: https://github.com/ajb3932/simple-wishlist
• wishlist: https://github.com/cmintey/wishlist
• wishthis: https://github.com/wishthis/wishthis

Hoka originates from Europe but moved their HQ to USA at some point so fml.

And they also make my favourite shoe ever, Bondi SR: https://www.hoka.com/en/gb/men-lifestyle/bondi-sr/197634149271.html

5 things that I’m looking for in the alternative, from least to most important:

1. White on white like my old Bondi SR edition (or like this new edition from the link, light gray in white is fine too, just no circus colours).

2. Leather. Helps in my wet weather. Any other weather-resistant material could be fine I guess.

3. High, plush cushion. Just preference of my feet who will kill me otherwise.

4. Wide toe base! A lot of sport shoes ends up being narrow squashing the toes too much for a comfortable whole-day use. It has been a (walking)life-changer for me to go for a wide design.

5. Super grippy sole. I live by the port, cross a port dam and take a chain ferry every day pretty much, often on slipways too. I want those shoes to have excellent grip. Those shoes on dry asphalt feel like walking with glue on. Wet floor in the shop? Not a problem. I bet you could walk on oil and not die immediately.

Those came from the recommendations of my NHS friends who walk all day and on less-than-favourable substances spilled sometimes in ER.

They are sadly out of ideas what other shoe could replace it well.

Let me tell you about the “boycott light”: It is of course difficult to directly eliminate all American products and all American technology from your life. Smartphones are one technology in particular for which there is no real European alternative. And of course, in some cases Amazon is the only place where certain products are available or where certain products are significantly cheaper than elsewhere. Boycotting is hard, but there is a way to hurt them without hurting yourself.

But: the big tech companies live from your “engagement”. The more time you spend on YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, the more advertising they can show you. And the more profitable you are for these companies. That's why they rely on all these addiction mechanisms, because every minute you spend there is hard cash for the companies. This also applies to the eCommerce giants. PayPal collects a commission for every payment. Visa and Mastercard too. Amazon also takes its cut and so on.

Every minute that you are not surfing Facebook but are on Lemmy, Mastodon, on other websites or even offline is a minute in which your engagement there drops and in which no profitable advertising can be shown to you. You can of course stop using those services completely and delete all accounts, but if that's not possible, a partial boycott is also a good idea. If only one of your friend groups stays on Facebook and you move with the others, that's less time spent there and therefore less profit for Zuckerberg. Your local football group wants to stay on WhatsApp, but you can move your friends to Signal? Less time spend in WhatsApp, KPIs are going down.

And of course it's hard when certain products are significantly cheaper on Amazon than in other stores. But if you compare prices before you buy and then buy many products elsewhere and don't just go for the default Amazon, then that's poison for Bezos pocket. If you simply select the other payment methods for stores and not PayPal by default, that attacks their business model. Does a store only have PayPal? Then you can of course do without the purchase completely, but: If you no longer use PayPal as the default, but only where it is absolutely necessary, then the KPIs at their HQ will be on fire.

This also applies to other digital services: If you no longer use Google Search as your main search, but only as a backup when you haven't found what you want in other search engines, then they will absolutly go nuts at Google HQ. If you use an Android phone but refuse to use the AI and all the cloud services, then that kills their engagement metrics and honestly: it doesn't do you any harm.

So: If you are unable to do a full boycott, a partial boycott is still an effective method of harming certain companies. Try to be as unprofitable as possible for you in your circumstances.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.wtf/post/19420830

Bye bye Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, and many others. They can go and play "America First". We'll have our own independent system by november 2025.

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/html/index.en.html#timeline

cross-posted from: https://feddit.nl/post/31947474

https://boycott-flyer.eu/

Credits: https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1jvavc2/im_working_on_printable_brochures/