Buy European

The Asterès report quantifies the staggering cost of Europe's digital dependency on US software and cloud services, amounting to €264 billion annually. This economic drain highlights the urgent need for a sovereign, open, and resilient digital future in Europe, as advocated by the EuroStack Project. The report underscores the potential for job creation and economic growth if Europe chooses to invest in its own digital solutions.

There. That's out of the way. I recently installed Linux on my main desktop computer and work laptop, overwriting the Windows partition completely. Essentially, I deleted the primary operating system from the two computers I use the most, day in and day out, instead trusting all of my personal and work computing needs to the Open Source community. This has been a growing trend, and I hopped on the bandwagon, but for good reasons. Some of those reasons might pertain to you and convince you to finally make the jump as well. Here's my experience.

[...]

It's no secret that Windows 11 harvests data like a pumpkin farmer in October, and there is no easy way (and sometimes no way at all) to stop it. The operating system itself acts exactly like what was called "spyware" a decade or so ago, pulling every piece of data it can about its current user. This data includes (but is far from limited to) hardware information, specific apps and software used, usage trends, and more. With the advent of AI, Microsoft made headlines with Copilot, an artificial assistant designed to help users by capturing their data with tools like Recall.

[...]

After dealing with these issues and trying to solve them with workarounds, I dual-booted a Linux partition for a few weeks. After a Windows update (that I didn't choose to do) wiped that partition and, consequently, the Linux installation, I decided to go whole-hog: I deleted Windows 11 and used the entire drive for Linux.

Looking for a European smartwatch for health monitoring - what are your thoughts?

Hi everyone! I’m on the hunt for a smartwatch that’s great for monitoring health - things like blood pressure, stress levels, sleep quality, and physical activity. However, I’d prefer to avoid products from overseas and focus on something available in the European market. There are plenty of smartwatches, rings, and fitness bands out there, but I’m not sure which ones are actually worth considering.

Source in Italian.

The Italian engine manufacturing company, CMD, has completed a reverse buyout operation which has brought it back under 100% Italian control. The cousins Giorgio and Mariano Negri, who founded the company back in 1989, have bought back the 67% of shares that they themselves had sold to the Chinese multinational Loncin Motor Co. Ltd, which had bought CMD’s shares in 2017 to sustain its global expansion. The recent buyout operation costed the Negri cousins 17,4 million euros.

“Bringing back to Italy the decision and industrial centre of the company means reclaiming an identity built in over thirty years of history and it also means creating better conditions with which to face the technological and industrial challenges of the incoming years”, says Mariano Negri, president and CEO, who leads the new board of administrators. “In a complex transitional phase for the automotive industry – continues Mariano Negri – we continue to invest because we believe in the growth possibilities of the company”. We are talking about a technological champion of southern Italy, where the company has always been located: in Atella, province of Potenza, with four manufacturing plants, and in Campania, with its R&D centre and its administrative offices in the town of San Nicola La Strada.

“We chose to stay anchored to southern Italy, to our roots – continues the president - and in particular to the Basilicata region, which in a complex historical moment it’s proving itself to be a land capable of industrial rebirth”. The industrial pan is focused on three lines of action, cultivating the relationships with large clients (spanning from Lamborghini to Ferrari), continuing to invest on research and development focusing on hybrid engines, and continuing to diversify by investing in the aeronautical sector. CMD, with a 2025 yearly revenue of over 38 million euros and 200 employees, of which 60 temporaries, begins 2026 with a portfolio of orders worth 40 million euros per year for the next 10 years, thanks mostly to three big contracts with Lamborghini (worth 20 million euros per year) and with Asian and Austrian clients. The reverse buyout operation has also meant a significant increase of the share capital, which increased from 16,8 to 25,9 million. Founded in 1989 by the Negri family, for over 30 years the company has developed, prototyped and built engine and propulsion systems. In 2012 it entered the elite programme of the Italian stock market.

Written by Vera Viola, published by Il Sole 24 Ore 8/1/2026, manually translated by u/minos83 (reddit).

My company is slowly but surely getting hooked on AI coding. Our management is resisting it, because we know it's self-destruction for us for a variety of reasons, but it's like a drug: lazy engineers insist on using it and they'll win out eventually because laziness is relentless.

So I've decided to preempt the inevitable and dive into this stuff, because one thing is concerning me: the lazy engineers ask Copilot to write their code for them, because it's right there, already integrated in VSCode, and it's bundled with other Microsoft services my company has unfortunately fallen pray to a few years ago when our last aging Unix engineer retired and was replaced by a MCSE monkey.

Of course, the tightly integrated ecosystem is very deliberate from Microsoft: they're creating a powerful path of least resistance for the laziness and it works.

There are two problems with Copilot:

• It's Microsoft (no need to rehash why it's generally best to stay away from Microsoft I guess)
• Microsoft is headquartered in a country that has gone rogue, adversarial, unpredictable and is getting very, VERY Nazi.

All my career, since the 90s, I've argued against using Microsoft products with all my employers, and I've always been treated as an amusing paranoid lunatic. But this time, the Nazi argument is landing: my management is genuinely concerned that the company's balls are in Microsoft's hand, and that they can be instructed by the orange madman to wreck our business - along with all the other businesses in Europe - at a moment's notice.

So I'm evaluation Claude Code an a step to at least divest away from Microsoft - still American, but fewer eggs in the same nasty basket. But ideally I'd like to evaluate a European AI company's coding assistant, so I can be in an informed and authoritative position to make a recommendation that isn't neither Microsoft nor American when the company finally decides to include AI use officially in the rule book.

Does anybody know a good AI coding assistant out of Europe I could look into? I don't mind spending money on evaluation, but if there's money to spend, I'd rather it'd be expensed on the right tool from the get-go if possible.

Also which alternative I should use? Is Codeberg good enough?

Anybody know some good European radio stations focused on Soul music, not too much talking? (Not Spotify or streamers, radio please).

Hi!

We just booked our vacation and felt the need to share our experience as a reminder that if you start to book your summer vacation within the next few weeks, try to choose a European toolset!

So, what did we use, and how was the experience?

First, we searched for flights.
We used skyscanner.at and kiwi.com to search for flights from Austria to our chosen destination.

We did not book our flight via those, however, but directly with a European airline we found through them.

Ok, the flight looks good. Now, accommodation. Typically we are hotel vacation people, but this time we decided to go for an apartment + rental car. We hope it's a bit more adventurous, and we get to see more beautiful places and meet nice people.

So we searched for apartments via hometogo.at and holidu.at.
We found quite a lot of super nice apartments on both and ultimately decided on one on HomeToGo and booked it directly with them. The process was super smooth, just as one would expect.

So the flight is done, and we also have somewhere to sleep. Now, how to get there?

We used check24.at (mietwagen.check24.at) and europcar.at to search for rental cars. Europcar is only one provider, while Check24 is a comparison portal that searches for the best offers.

We ended up booking a car from a Spanish car rental company through Check24. Again, so far, the process was flawless, and I felt very well informed about insurance and everything else I needed to pay attention to.

And that's it; the only thing left is how to get to the departure airport. We haven't decided yet on that, however.

One major drawback: almost all of them allow payment via PayPal, credit card, or SEPA Direct Transfer (which is just not comparable to the payment protection the others give).

That's really a bummer, as still, through the use of credit cards/PayPal, the money does not solely stay in Europe. That's such a pity.

I do hope the payment problem is solved soon via the digital euro or possibly WERO or other alternatives.

Other than that, we are super happy with how the process went and are looking forward to our vacation this year :)

If you have any tips for former hotel vacation people who just switched to trying out apartment + rental car, let me know. I'm grateful for advice from experienced people on this matter. :)

One more thing: While checking out the area, we used mapy.com, and for navigation during our vacation, I already downloaded www.comaps.app for offline navigation. :)
And for correcting this post, I used languagetool.org (but I stop now to not go off-topic 😇).

It's also made to be decentralized. Seems voice chat works already. Screenshare and video chat don't seem to be released yet, but I was told that if you host your own instance, you can turn them on (vidchat and screenshare are probably still in beta/are experimental features I assume). UI layout is comparable to Discord.

Me and a friend are considering installing an instance on the server our peertube instance is installed on.

Semi-impartial article, although it is easy to see what side Politico, or at least the journalist - prefers to lean in relation to the agreement.

POLITICO analyzes who is uncorking the Malbec — and who is crying into their Bordeaux (cough, Emmanuel Macron, cough).

Europe’s biggest ever trade deal finally got the nod Friday after 25 years of negotiating.

It took blood, sweat, tears and tortured discussions to get there, but EU countries at last backed the deal with the Mercosur bloc — paving the way to create a free trade area that covers more than 700 million people across Europe and Latin America.

The agreement, which awaits approval from the European Parliament, will eliminate more than 90 percent of tariffs on EU exports. European shoppers will be able to dine on grass-fed beef from the Argentinian pampas. Brazilian drivers will see import duties on German motors come down.

As for the accord’s economic impact, well, that pales in comparison with the epic battles over it: The European Commission estimates it will add €77.6 billion (or 0.05 percent) to the EU economy by 2040.

Like in any deal, there are winners and losers. POLITICO takes you through who is uncorking their Malbec, and who, on the other hand, is crying into the Bordeaux.

WINNERS

Giorgia Meloni

Italy’s prime minister has done it again. Giorgia Meloni saw which way the political winds were blowing and skillfully extracted last-minute concessions for Italian farmers after threatening to throw her weight behind French opposition to the deal.

The end result? In exchange for its support, Rome was able to secure farm market safeguards and promises of fresh agriculture funding from the European Commission — wins that the government can trumpet in front of voters back home. It also means that Meloni has picked the winning side once more, coming off as the team player despite the last-minute holdup. All in all, yet another laurel in Rome’s crown.

The German car industry

Das Auto hasn’t had much reason to cheer of late, but Mercosur finally gives reason to celebrate. Germany’s famed automotive sector will have easier access to consumers in LatAm. Lower tariffs mean, all things being equal, more sales and a boost to the bottom line for companies like Volkswagen and BMW.

There are a few catches. Tariffs, now at 35 percent, aren’t coming down all at once. At the behest of Brazil, which hosts an auto industry of its own, the removal of trade barriers will be staggered. Electric vehicles will be given preferential treatment, an area that Europe’s been lagging behind on.

Ursula von der Leyen

Mercosur is a bittersweet triumph for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Since shaking hands on the deal with Mercosur leaders more than a year ago, her team has bent over backwards to accommodate the demands of the skeptics and build the all-important qualified majority that finally materialized Friday. Expect a victory lap next week, when the Berlaymont boss travels to Paraguay to sign the agreement.

On the international stage, it also helps burnish Brussels’ standing at a time when the bloc looks like a lumbering dinosaur, consistently outmaneuvered by the U.S. and China. A large-scale trade deal shows that the rules-based international order that the EU so cherishes is still alive, even as the U.S. whisked away a South American leader in chains.

But the deal came at a very high cost. Von der Leyen had to promise EU farmers €45 billion in subsidies to win them over, backtracking on efforts to rein in agricultural support in the EU budget and invest more in innovation and growth.

Europe’s farmers

Speaking of farmers, going by the headlines you could be forgiven for thinking that Mercosur is an unmitigated disaster. Surely innumerable tons of South American produce sold at rock-bottom prices are about to drive the hard-working French or Polish plowman off his land, right?

The reality is a little bit more complicated. The deal comes with strict quotas for categories ranging from beef to poultry. In effect, Latin American farmers will be limited to exporting a couple of chicken breasts per European person per year. Meanwhile, the deal recognizes special protections for European producers for specialty products like Italian parmesan or French wine, who stand to benefit from the expanded market. So much for the agri-pocalpyse now.

Then there’s the matter of the €45 billion of subsidies going into farmers’ pockets, and it’s hard not to conclude that — despite all the tractor protests and manure fights in downtown Brussels — the deal doesn’t smell too bad after all.

LOSERS

Emmanuel Macron

There’s been no one high-ranking politician more steadfast in their opposition to the trade agreement than France’s President Emmanuel Macron who, under enormous domestic political pressure, has consistently opposed the deal. It’s no surprise then that France joined Poland, Austria, Ireland and Hungary to unsuccessfully vote against Mercosur.

The former investment banker might be a free-trading capitalist at heart, but he knows well that, domestically, the deal is seen as a knife in the back of long-suffering Gallic growers. Macron, who is burning through prime ministers at rates previously reserved for political basket cases like Italy, has had precious few wins recently. Torpedoing the free trade agreement, or at least delaying it further, would have been proof that the lame-duck French president still had some sway on the European stage. Macron made a valiant attempt to rally the troops for a last-minute counterattack, and at one point it looked like he had a good chance to throw a wrench in the works after wooing Italy’s Meloni. That’s all come to nought. After this latest defeat, expect more lambasting of the French president in the national media, as Macron continues his slow-motion tumble down from the Olympian heights of the Élysée Palace.

Donald Trump

Coming within days of the U.S. mission to snatch Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and put him on trial in New York, the Mercosur deal finally shows that Europe has no shortage of soft power to work constructively with like-minded partners — if it actually has the wit to make use of it smartly.

Any trade deal should be seen as a win-win proposition for both sides, and that is just not the way U.S. President Donald Trump and his art of the geopolitical shakedown works.

It also has the incidental benefit of strengthening his adversaries — including Brazilian President and Mercosur head honcho Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — who showed extraordinary patience as he waited on the EU to get their act together (and nurtured a public bromance with Macron even as the trade talks were deadlocked).

China

China has been expanding exports to Latin America, particularly Brazil, during the decades when the EU was negotiating the Mercosur trade deal. The EU-Mercosur deal is an opportunity for Europe to claw back some market share, especially in competitive sectors like automotive, machines and aviation.

The deal also strengthens the EU’s hand on staying on top when it comes to direct investments, an area where European companies are still outshining their Chinese competitors. More politically, China has somewhat succeeded in drawing countries like Brazil away from Western points of view, for instance via the BRICS grouping, consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, and other developing economies. Because the deal is not only about trade but also creates deeper political cooperation, Lula and his Mercosur counterparts become more closely linked to Europe.

The Amazon rainforest

Unfortunately, for the world’s ecosystem, Mercosur means one thing: burn, baby, burn.

The pastures that feed Brazil’s herds come at the expense of the nation’s once-sprawling, now-shrinking tropical rainforest. Put simply, more beef for Europe means less trees for the world. It’s not all bad news for the climate. The trade deal does include both mandatory safeguards against illegal deforestation, as well as a commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement for its signatories. ___

A lot of the European brands produce in China. So, wondering if anybody produces in Europe/EU.

Europe is experiencing a crisis of digital autonomy. Our dependence on US big tech has been growing for decades and is now nearly total, at a time when worries about our former ally are no longer theoretical. Might we, like the International Criminal Court in The Hague, find ourselves locked out of our own mailboxes if we say something that is upsetting to the US government?
This post was written in response to an article in the Financial Times.

See title. I'm curious if there's one independent from the US, and if possible also from China.

Or well, at least as independent from Big US spy tech as possible. While Apple is nice, it's proprietary and I don't trust them in the long term.

Thank you all for suggestions.