Even this clothing store in Leiden is joining in. Not my style of clothes, but I love the effort. Good marketing!

It's nice to see that while it started by Big Tech's and politician's crazy behaviour, it's spreading much wider.

Interesting comparison to start moving away your IT infrastructure ...
https://asamsig.com/blog/picking-a-european-cloud-provider
#europe #europeanalternatives #buyeuropean
#BuyFromE

Anybody got any thoughts on a viable Discord replacement that I can use for playing games with relatively non-technical friends?

I'd prefer a low-cost SaaS approach, if the data is not stored in the US, but I'm willing to self-host, if it's not overly complex to maintain.

I really only need text chat and the ability to create group VoIP calls, but it's going to be very hard to convince people to move to a dated application like Mumble, and unfortunately not all participants are Canadians or Europeans who will understand the need to take a bit of pain.

Curious what people are doing in this space.

Here's a PDF explaining the #Eurostack initiative

What is Eurostack:

“EuroStack” is an umbrella term for a European tech infrastructure intended to create local capacity along the digital value chains which enable the provision of digital products and services – from chips to data to compute to connectivity.

The term originates as a catchy shorthand for “Investment in European Public Digital Infrastructure”, borrowing in part from the successful “India Stack” concept now popular across the world.

The objective is to reduce Europe’s current total dependency on non-European actors for service to European citizens, businesses, and institutions, to enhance security, create redundancy and resilience, improve opportunities for innovation and digital competitiveness while establishing European governance rules."

See the full report here:

https://euro-stackletter.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/EuroStack_Pitch_10-January-2025.pdf

Interesting initiative.

"EuroStack

A European Industrial Policy initiative bringing together tech, governance and funding for Europe-focused investment to build and adopt a suite of digital infrastructures: from connectivity to cloud computing, AI and digital platforms."

https://euro-stackletter.eu/

Here are some #europeanAlternatives to #gmail.

Moving away from US cloud services

Martijn Hols write about his experience in replacing Microsoft 365 (Mail, Calendar, Drive), Bitwarden, GitHub, Google search, Cloudflare/Google DNS, Docker Hub and NPM

https://martijnhols.nl/blog/moving-away-from-us-cloud-services
#cloud #europeanalternatives #BoycottAmerica

The Search Engine Map
by @Mojeek

The map is interactive, so you can click on each circle to find out more about the different search engines.

We'd love to know when the map was made, as some of the info looks out of date, but unfortunately we couldn't find that information. And the repo on GitHub no longer exists!

European search engines listed:

Mojeek
Oscobo
Entireweb
Metager
Ecosia
Lilo
Qwant
eTools.ch
Swisscows
ZapMeta
Startpage

https://www.searchenginemap.com/

Opinions on the Vivaldi browser?

And while ewe are at it: There doesn‘t seem to be a single search engine that doesn‘t rely on US search indices. Correct?

Immer noch aktuell:

Das Microsoft-Dilemma. Doku aus der ARD (2019)
https://archive.org/details/themicrosoftdilemma/The+Microsoft+Dilemma.iso

DAB+ radio is my favourite #EuropeanAlternative to streaming music. Not only is it free, there is no evil megacorp spying and putting you on lists, it connects you to your local community and supports local businesses.

All cars sold in the EU/EEA since 2021 have DAB+ built in; modern TVs have it as well, and lots of nice battery-operated radios like these are useful in emergencies as well (eg when Internet cables *ahem* "get cut").
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Broadcasting

#europeanalternatives @ueeu

Now we're talking. It's important that the real power players in the United States start to put pressure on the administration to smarten up. This can't be good for the US economy or for future procurement.

Having a bunch of tech bros and some of the dumbest people in American real estate and the media industry run your economy is clearly not the cleverest of ideas. We don't need to subsidize American military projects any longer, it's better to work with our allies in Europe to develop weapons systems and industrial benefits that suit our needs, not those of Washington or Lockheed-Martin.

If it wasn't so serious it would be hilarious, imagine all the defence contractors and Pentagon procurement folks who are face palming almost as much as we are every time their "commander-in-chief" opens his big dumb mouth.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/f35-blair-trump-1.7484477

Recently I've been looking at European search engines. #Qwant and #StartPage seem to be the most popular, the latter having stricter privacy policy.

Which privacy focused engine are you using and why?

Netflix versus Arte

Arte TV:
https://www.arte.tv/en/

Arte Concerts:
https://www.arte.tv/en/arte-concert/

Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/@arte

Image source: https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1jaj76t/the_app_works_great_and_they_also_offer_games_btw/
#netflix #arte #europeanalternatives

Free Mobile, one of the largest French telecommunications company, has launched a new promotion for its customers: all 15 million customers will be able to use the premium version of "Le Chat", the AI assistant created by Mistral AI who is a direct competitor of ChatGPT and DeepSeek .

For 1 year, Free Mobile customers will be able to access the premium version, which offers unlimited access and uses Mistral AI's most advanced models, guaranteeing faster, more precise & more detailed responses.

Customers will be able to search the web in real time and to upload files for advanced analysis, as well as generate images and presentations.

Why did Free team up with Mistral IA to offer premium AI services free of charge?

Xavier Niel, the owner of Free, is also an investor in Mistral AI and he's keen to boost the reputation of the French service and encourage people to choose Le Chat over foreign competitors.

The goal is to make Mistral a leader in the field of AI, which is great news for and that compete for AI leadership.

And the good news for the French is that if you're already a Free customer, you only need to activate the offer.

If you are not a Free customer, you can sign up to the cheapest plan for €2 to take advantage of this offer.
https://mobile.free.fr/le-chat-assistant-ia
#Mistral #france #europeanalternatives

It would be nice to have a bit more than sartorial support at the G7 meeting, but I'll take it when offered.

https://www.rheinpfalz.de/cms_media/module_img/13418/6709230_1_articledetail_Demonstrative_Solidaritaet_mit_Kanada_Aussenministerin_Annalena_Baerbock_Gruene_und_die_EU-Aussenbeauftragte_Kaja_Kallas_l_zeigen_sich_beim_Treffen_de.webp

Do you know JOPLIN? It's a nice European alternative to apps like Evernote, Google Keep, Notion, Microsoft OneNote.

Joplin is a free, open source note-taking and to-do application, which can handle a large number of notes organised into notebooks. You can search your notes, copy them, tag them and modify them either from the app itself or from your own text editor. The notes are in Markdown format, which is great.

It was created by Laurent Cozic back in 2016 as an alternative to Evernote. It's cloud service is hosted in Paris, France. They focus on privacy, security and transparency.

It's open source and offline-first, so you can always access your data on the device, even when you're not connected to the internet.

It's got all the basics you'd expect, and you can also attach images, videos, audio files and PDFs to your notebooks.

There's a huge community of people who have made extra features possible with their plugins.

It's also super easy to export and import your files, which is great if you're worried about vendor lock-in.

The handy web clipper extension lets you save web pages or take screenshots in the browser and save them to your notes.

Check all the features in their website:
https://joplinapp.org

#notetaking #opensource #BuyFromEU #europeanalternatives

Follow them on Mastodon: @joplinapp

Fundstücke - The Guardian auf seiner Website zur Lage der Pressefreiheit.

#unplugtrump #trump #unplugusa #news #nachrichten #notrump #europe #europeanalternatives #europeunited #theguardian #freepress #freejournalism #freierjournalismus #pressefreiheit

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐧

BeReal is a French social networking app that was created by Alexis Barreyat and Kevin Perreau in France in 2020.

It's seen as a rival to apps like Instagram or TikTok and it's got features that have been copied by Instagram recently.

But some people see it as more of an 'anti-Instagram' because you can't edit your photos, use filters or see how many followers you have.

So, what's the deal?

It's basically a photo-sharing app that encourages users to share a daily photo of their real life without filters or editing, using both the front and rear cameras on their device. Every day, users are given a fun and unexpected notification at a random time, giving them just two minutes to take and post a photo. You can choose to share your photo with friends or more people.

It's already got 23 million users worldwide (but you don't hear about it much in the mainstream media).

Did you know about it? Do you use it?

Check out some interesting growth stats about BeReal here:

https://www.onlineoptimism.com/blog/bereal-stats-app-figures-data-be-real-numbers-to-know/

Official website: https://bereal.com