If it has a decent camera, use it as a dedicated webcam. If the camera is just okay, convert it to a car dash-cam or a home security camera with integrated UPS, storage, and even fallback connectivity via mobile networks. Use it as a dedicated gaming device, or a music player for non-IoT speakers. Convert it to an LTE modem and make it a fallback for your home internet. Run a Monero node on it. Or a Briar mailbox. Host a personal website on it and make it available via DynDNS. Make use of the phone’s sensors, e.g. the light sensor or the microphone for home automation. Connect it to speakers and use it as a Bitcoin price monitor that plays “You Suffer” by Napalm Death every time BTC passes a certain threshold. Or just use it as a digital photo frame on your desk.

Even though your comment is absolute nonsense under the given post, I fundamentally support your call in general.

Denmark is set to have the highest retirement age in Europe, after lawmakers voted to raise it to 70.

In addition, Denmark has the highest top personal income tax rate in Europe in 2025, at 55.9%.

So I guess this is actually great news for everyone here that loves paying taxes, as now they get to do it even longer! Bummer all the people making a decent living off of these taxes (politicians) won’t participate. Who could have seen that coming?

Wait, who actually likes paying taxes?

//edit: Forgot I’m on Lemmy. I’ll show myself out, comrades.

You are right, I am speculating, as was the poster of the parent comment. I certainly didn’t mean to muddy any waters, but you have to admit that there have been things going on within the EU, that paint a bit of a bleak picture of how the table might turn if the EU had greater influence/power (in terms of aforementioned platforms and software) on the global stage.

And while you’re right that the examples I gave didn’t become actual law just yet, it’s certainly not due to the EUs benevolence that proposals didn’t materialize, but instead very much like in Mozilla’s case, that the outcry from people had them reconsider.

However, I believe there were proposals that were put into law even though the outcry was there. (eg. Article 13?)

European companies and governments regrettably aren’t better, they simply don’t have that many eyes on them because, well, they don’t have much to show for to begin with. Name a production-ready made-in-Europe browser/browser-engine. Name a widespread European messenger. A European smartphone platform? European Facebook or Twitter? Anything?

Even the few small scale European examples that you might come up with had an absurd amount of controversy to them. Remember that Tutanota thing? Remember Chat Control?

The reason people believe that Europe is so much more privacy respecting than the US is simply because there aren’t many services to exercise the same level of invasive, authoritarian control over than in the US. If 60% of the world however would be using a Nokia minäPuhelin you would see the same, if not worse, privacy-invasive regulation and controversy popping off every other week.

I know that I’m supposed to enjoy each comment equally, but this one really made my day.

Couldn’t show them, the rules said no NSFW.

An ad camouflaged as blog post providing little to no value for the reader and probably only written for SEO. Why is this being upvoted?

You never own an iPhone, regardless of how you purchase or rent it. Try repairing it, try installing software outside of Apple’s control on it, try to turn off features you don’t like/want. You don’t own any Apple product, you use them and you’re at the mercy of Apple.

“Image restricted due to copyright” should not exist for something that apparently is an important thing in societal knowledge.

As soon as it can properly phone it might be included in such reviews.

“How the German government failed to build a meaningful IT industry over the past thirty years due to the lack of knowledgeable workforce and a failed education system to train them, and is now looking into open source for help to get them out of their US controlled infrastructure.”

Humans need to stop naming things “Snowflake”. We have too many. Perform an internet search with “snowflake SUFFIX”, where SUFFIX is any other term, eg Crypto or Database or Movie, and you will get at least one hit.

Does anyone know the actual designer behind them? I would be curious to know.

NLNet

The main problem with these Funds, especially European ones, are the inability of the people running the funds to properly identify technologies and direct funding to the right projects. If you have ever taken a look at NLNet’s projects you will find how there’s a 20:1 ratio of projects that are like “Errrr… okay” versus “Yes, that’s a useful thing to fund”. It also doesn’t help the case that a noticeable amount of the funded projects appear relatively low in activity already.

For example, NLNet is funding bringing an extremely niche and largely irrelevant Android ROM to an even more niche phone and helping it release an update (?!?), while on the other hand you cannot find any support for a smartphone-related project that makes actual sense. I’d argue that there are plenty more successful “de-googled” Android ROMs that have a better track record and a larger user base than Replicant. And I’d also argue that there are a lot more reasonable Pinephone projects (cough cough Camera cough) to sponsor than bringing Android to it to make it… another Android phone?

Horizon Europe

Horizon on the other hand has a different focus. It is not an open-source fund, but a broad “technology research” fund that ventures into health, environmental and many more areas. Horizon is very much politically driven. One famous example is the Horizon 2021-2022 programme agenda, which they unfortunately deleted, that describes HORIZON-CL3-2021-FCT-01-02: Lawful interception using new and emerging technologies (5G & beyond, quantum computing and encryption). Horizon is the very initiative that ProtonMail received funding from, btw.

Long story short, I don’t think more funds and programs are needed, but rather a different way of how the existing ones are being run. From what I see, in many cases funds either completely miss the target, or they suffer from NIH syndrome when there are existing alternatives.

I’m a bit sad for Neon Modem Overdrive to not have been included to make it a flat 1.0 on that list. :-)

Just install it manually via cargo then.

Low-key made my day.

A.k.a. the EU’s fully accepted, non-blacklisted tax havens.