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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: January 27th, 2025

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  • Thanks. The big driver was the EU’s European Interoperability Framework (first version 2004), which promoted: Open standards, Vendor neutrality, Long-term accessibility of public data. It was envisioned for public administration, businesses and citizens: And notably the framework was updated 2015-2017 - the period the Munich administration steered away from it. Though I see they are now saying they should reconsider their move to MS, or maybe that’s just a negotiation tactic.






  • I put Linux Mint on a laptop last year that was running Windows 10 (dual boot) as MS said they were no longer supporting or providing security updates for Windows 10. Mint has worked well (although it does seem to want updates every day). I opened up Windows last week and MS said that they would actually continue to provide security updates for Windows 10 if I logged on with a MS account - so I guess they are actually noticing the migration away from their OS.





  • Follow the money: the current system makes more sense for private insurers, pharma, and large healthcare providers who all benefit from things staying as they are.

    But it’s not just about corporations. The US also built its system around employer-based insurance back in World War II, and now healthcare is tied to your job. That creates risk: leaving your job can mean losing coverage, which naturally makes people more cautious and dependent on poor employment. This also makes people more cautious about starting up a business so the economy becomes controlled in the hands of a few - and so more oligarchic

    There’s also a cultural angle. In the US, “freedom” is often seen as freedom from government involvement, even if that sometimes means less practical freedom (like being unable to change jobs easily), and the individual spending more on insurance than they would on taxes.

    So it’s not one single reason - it’s money, history, and mindset all reinforcing each other.

    Rigidity and social control also show up in other countries with strategies like high housing costs.


  • I don’t use the phone that often as a debit /credit bank card but I use it for payments (bills invoices etc.), paying on line, transferring money to people and accounts, and just managing accounts. The phone app is very useful for those functions - especially if the alternative is going into a bank and queuing.

    A phone OS that will not work with banking apps is not really a contemporary solution. iOS or Android are the only reliable options at the moment in the US/Europe - Iiuc Open Source Android has to sandbox Google Play for banking apps to work so that’s not viable long-term solution, as Google will only make that more difficult in the future.

    Given the issues with the judges at ICC and US payment systems, building an alternative to Google and Apple is a high priority






  • I agree, competition for YouTube is hard to see as anything but positive. And I’m also struck by how one-dimensional many of the comments are.

    Spotify has effectively been turned into a stand-in for the structural failures of streaming, while other Big Tech platforms escape serious scrutiny. That kind of selective critique is revealing.

    At a cultural level, it’s fascinating: drop a few well-worn trigger terms into the conversation and bots barely need to do anything - humans complete the loop themselves. I suspect this period will be looked back on as an object lesson in narrative engineering.