cross-posted from: https://piefed.ca/post/225422

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/42296309

Archived

Schleswig-Holstein only has about 3 million inhabitants, and is far from the richest part of Germany, but for the past several years it’s been following an ambitious strategy to wean itself off Big Tech’s software.

This means switching the workplaces of 30,000 civil servants – a headcount roughly comparable to the European Commission – from Microsoft Office software to open alternatives.

In an interview with Euractiv, digital minister Dirk Schrödter said his state is well on the way to achieving this goal. After getting started last March, Schleswig-Holstein is set to reduce the number of Office licences needed for administration by more than two-thirds by the end of this month, he told us.

[...]

The administration will still need a few Office licences to communicate with other regions and Germany’s federal tax administration, according to Schrödter. But the goal is to be able to get rid of all but a very few Microsoft Office licences by 2029.

Instead of sticking with Word and Powerpoint, the state’s civil servants are migrating to LibreOffice. Emails will go through Open Xchange and Thunderbird, rather than Microsoft’s Outlook, and documents will be edited collaboratively via Nextcloud, not Sharepoint.

The migration goes beyond desktop programmes, too. Schleswig-Holstein is running a Linux pilot to replace Windows itself. Currently around 150 people are testing the new operating system, including the digital minister.

[...]

A major focus for the shift is on making the change seamless. “It’s supposed to change as little as possible,” Schrödter said.

Civil servants will have to get used to new desktop icons and tools that are designed slightly differently, but – in theory – the alternatives should be just as comfortable to use.

But like every tech migration, this one is not going off without some pain. Just last week, an association of judges called for a return to Outlook, saying that outages were plaguing civil servants’ new email clients.

While the alternative software that Schleswig-Holstein is adopting is openly available, a lot of work needs to be done to integrate it with the needs of public administration. The region is mostly handing this work to existing contractors, just with new provisions for supporting open document formats.

[...]

New payment system Wero: First retailers opt for PayPal alternative

PayPal, Visa, and others are facing competition: With Wero, Europe wants to launch its own payment service. The first retailers in Germany are already on board—but the question remains: Do customers even want to switch?

The Wero payment project, led by the EPI (European Payments Initiative) banking alliance, is picking up speed. The digital payment system is in direct competition with services such as PayPal, Apple Pay, and Klarna.

The Wero system is based on SEPA real-time payments, which means payments can be sent in a matter of seconds. The aim is to create a Europe-wide alternative to American payment services.

According to Lebensmittel Zeitung, the first German retailers want to integrate the new payment option into their online shops as early as October. “Preparations are underway, and the integration will take place step by step,” says EPI CEO Martina Weimert.

Mediamarkt and Co. want to test Wero

Mediamarkt-Saturn is one of the first major players to want to use Wero. However, there is no exact start date yet. According to industry circles, Otto and Rossmann are also taking a close look at the project.

The focus on a payment system like Wero is no coincidence: PayPal, Mastercard, and Visa have a firm grip on the market. Added to this are geopolitical tensions, which are reinforcing the desire for a European solution. “Developments in recent months show how important it is to have our own European solution in times of transatlantic tensions,” says Weimert in an interview with Lebensmittel Zeitung.

PayPal alternative Wero: Do people really want to switch?

Acceptance remains a sticking point. According to a study by the EHI Institute, many retailers fear that it will be difficult to lure customers away from established systems. “Customers need good reasons to switch from established systems to a new one,” warns Horst Rüter, payment transactions expert at EHI.

In any case, Weros' plans go beyond online retail: starting in 2026, customers will also be able to pay at supermarket checkouts using QR codes or NFC, directly via an app on their smartphones.

According to Bavarian broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk, around 1.8 million people in Germany have registered for Wero so far, with 43 million across Europe. The payment service is particularly widespread in France and Belgium.

Germany, France, and Belgium are currently the only countries offering Wero, but other countries are set to follow.

Source: watson.de Translated with deepl

Some parts are imported but it‘s probably as European as possible at the moment. Details about production can be found here: https://www.nager-it.de/en/maus/fertigung. Unfortunately their shop seem to be only accessible in German.

credit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1ngg5r6/fair_and_european_computer_mouse/

Coming from the BYD-discussion, I found a list (in German) of 30 >>affordable<< small EVs .

The Citroen e-C3 peeked out due to its price below 25.000€ so I searched and shared an English review for you guys.

Edit: The manufacturer site is a little cumbersome with the language selection:

• 🇩🇪 https://www.citroen.de/modelle/e-C3.html
• 🇬🇧 https://www.citroen.co.uk/models/new-e-c3.html
• 🇪🇸 https://www.citroen.es/vehiculos-citroen/nuevo-e-c3.html

Wero seems promising. But I am confused as it appears they have acess to my bank account's balance and transaction history. The privacy policy (Archive.org) states on page 4

Purpose: Displaying your account information (performance of a contract – art. 6.1.b of GDPR)

Categories of data processed: Balance and transaction history of your payment account

Retention period: Duration of the contract (the Wero General Terms & Conditions)

The term "payment account" is not properly defined in the document, but I would infer from the first line on page 4 that it is the connected bank account.

This would be significantly more invasive than PayPal. Would be a dealbreaker for me, as I don't even see a plausible reason for doing this.

Their FAQ states the contrary:

Wero does not have access to your transactions or any other account activity beyond the information we need to complete a Wero payment.

Again, "information we need" is quite vague...

cross-posted from: https://piefed.ca/post/215371

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/36073569

We must reduce our reliance on Jeff Bezos

An ad seen in Berlin. Positive news

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/35678432

As the global reputation of US brands slips, some US firms are turning to unusual marketing strategies. Coca-Cola, for instance, is now promoting itself as a "German product."

As a result of this discussion in [email protected], there is now an IRC channel about degoogling!

/join ##degoogle on irc.libera.chat:6697 (TLS). The channel name begins with a double hashtag (according to the namespace policy).

Come on down and join us through your local IRC client or the web client web.libera.chat!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/41599289

Search engines determine what information we find – and what we don't. Those who control the infrastructure of web search influence public debates, democratic processes and economic developments. Currently, this power lies with a few US companies.

The EU project OpenWebSearch.EU, coordinated by the University of Passau, has set itself the ambitious goal of changing this. A key milestone has now been reached: the European research team has launched the Open Web Index (OWI) – an open, European web index that serves as the basis for alternative search technologies.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://feddit.nl/post/41557369

#europe #european #europeanalternatives #europeanalternative #privacy #opensource #software #freedom

Recently I was quite delighted to find out that galaxus.de has a "country of origin" filter. The delight quickly faded when I realized that it was quite unreliable, e.g. one size of a USB stick was made supposedly made in Germany while another was supposedly made in China (which I found quite unbelievable). To be fair, they do write "Specifications may include unverified machine translations."

Does anybody know of a (tech or other) online shop where this works? Or tipps how to quicker navigate real and fake/mistaken "country of origin" labels?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/35080815

I'm starting to play with an old laptop that I have installed Ubuntu Server on, with Nextcloud and Docker.

Using Docker Compose I installed Nginx and now I would like to try to do the DDNS thing on a domain that I registered with an Italian provider.

I looked at a few DynDns providers and they seem to me to be all American or in any case on American infrastructure (DuckDNS on AWS, etc)

Is there anything you can recommend that is EU-based and who has a good reputation in general?

Free is preferred.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.europe.pub/post/4655

With 8% commission a bit more expensive than Buy me a coffee with 5%, but it's European and that makes it worth it imo.

Basically the title. People are currently upset with Imgur for layoffs or something and instead of doing the sensible thing of stopping it's use, they're flooding it. Seems like a good opportunity to shill an european alternative if it exists.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/34724034

The Document Foundation is proud to release LibreOffice 25.8.

LibreOffice is a powerful, free and open source office suite for Linux, MacOS and Microsoft Windows.

It contains no advertising, data tracking or subscriptions.

LibreOffice is used by individuals, businesses, universities, and governments around the world.

https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2025/08/20/libreoffice-25-8/

New improvements

Highlights of LibreOffice 25.8 include:

• Up to 30% faster opening of files in Writer and Calc
• Support for exporting PDF 2.0
• Improved user interface
• Optimized memory management for smoother operation on virtual desktops
• Improved scrolling through large documents
• Overhauled word hyphenation and spacing
• New financial functions in Calc
• Significantly better display of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean DOC/DOCX documents
• Spell check dictionaries updates for Danish, English, Hindi, Mongolian, Spanish, Thai, and Ukrainian.

The Document Foundation

The Document Foundation is a German non-profit organization.

We believe that Free Software can provide better quality, higher reliability, increased security, and greater flexibility than proprietary alternatives.

Helping us

LibreOffice is developed by hundreds of volunteers around the world.

Join us today and help us to make it even better!

👉 https://www.libreoffice.org/community/get-involved/

Thank you to the developers, moderators, designers, translators, donors and supporters 🙏 🙏🙏.

To add to the discussion we had some month ago, where some people said the planned laws would never come to be and would never be a threat: proton decided to differ and to move parts of the infrastructure to other countries.

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Surveillance-Proton-relocates-parts-of-its-infrastructure-from-Switzerland-10538664.html

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/34769063

Has anyone found a good EU laptop option? Slimbook look like they've got some good products but I'm having trouble finding reviews.

Do you guys know other brands than the ones named in the comments?

Circular Microcomputers: The embedded computers powered by repurposed smartphone components.

Cool idea.