cross-posted from: https://europe.pub/post/219869

cross-posted from: https://metawire.eu/post/30434

Wer noch immer Windows 10 im Einsatz hat, sollte nach Einschätzung des BSI zeitnah tätig werden und sich mit einem anderen Betriebssystem anfreunden. (Windows 10, Microsoft)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/32675349

Archived

[...]

The sweeping new toy safety rules will also mean that all toys sold in the EU will be slapped with a 'digital product passport' in the form of a QR code displaying its compliance with EU safety laws.

Children’s squeaky plastic toys, trucks, blocks and dolls contain chemicals which are harmful to health, such as PFAS, also known as ‘forever chemicals’, as well as other hazardous substances like bisphenols.

[...]

Recently, the Commission said they would take a "holistic" approach to regulating large e-commerce platforms like Shein, and Norway is mulling a crackdown on Temu, including a possible ban, over the sale of toxic toys.

A recent investigation by Toy Industries Europe into unbranded toys sold online found that 80% of toys examined by the group failed to meet EU safety standards, including products purchased from Amazon, Wish and AliExpress.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber_Inc.

From [email protected]

Golem.de is reporting about an increasing interest of European companies and people to buy European cloud services.

According to the article Open cloud reports 62% more users. Nextcloud would see a threefold of inquiries.

According to golem, major contributers to the trend would be corporation's and official state agencies. Private consumers would also contribute, but at a much lower scale.

Comment: I think this is great news. Things are changing not only on a personal level, but on a corporation level. I think this is super important because a huge portion of revenues of the tech companies is done in B2B. Yet, it is important for us to keep spreading the message. The more we speak about the topic, to further it grows in our societies. We need to use the momentum to emphasize the significance of a change.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/10701035 by @[email protected]

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.