But being based in the United States it is still subject to American laws, and that comes with the risk of potential American spying and embargoes. Software from any American entity (be it coorporation or non-profit) comes with that risk.

That is not entirely a fair equivalence though.

A road is built once and after that it exists. Its a matter of maintenance and upkeep to make sure the road doesnt deteriorate over time. But even if you neglect that, the road will still exist… only now with potholes.
There are many places around the world with shit roads like this.

Public transit requires staff pay, fuel costs, upkeep, etc besides the initial investment and maintenance. If that money doesn’t exist the busses don’t disappear, but there will be noone to drive them. Same for trains and other modes of transit.

So when public transit has funding issues they are more immediately noticeable than when the road authority has funding issues.

Converting that to a yearly inflation figure:

1.015¹² =~ 1.196

So about 19.6% yearly, assuming it will stay at 1.5% monthly for the next year.
By Argentinian standards that is honestly not too bad

In that case it wouldn’t be “good enough”. But I don’t think this is such an all-or-nothing situation.

Don’t let perfection stand in the way of good enough
It may not be the holy grail, but moving away from Meta-owned Whatsapp is already a pretty significant improvement

Not all of them.

I have a non-official chat group with some colleagues, and a chat group for the neighbourhood that are not likely moving just because I am refusing to use Whatsapp. It would just result in me missing out on those chat groups.

Currently I just have both installed, and that is also how I try to convince people to install and try out Signal.

But my goal is not to move to Threema, my goal is to move away from Whatsapp.
Signal fits the bill while expending far less social capital convincing people to use it.

Then by all means keep that momentum going.
I’m just looking at this from a Dutch perspective, where Signal is seeing by far the most growth.

Yeah, but Threema has basically no momentum behind it at all at this point.
I’m putting my social capital behind the option that currently stands the most chance of beating out Whatsapp

After Trump was elected and inaugurated, Signal has finally been gaining some steam here in the Netherlands.

It’s still an American company, so it’s not ideal. But it’s still significantly better better than letting a tech giant like Facebook have control over the most commonly used chat app.

WhatsApp needs to go and Signal is the most likely way in which we can achieve that. We can worry about the American elephant in the room later.

Which is entirely optional. You can install nice looking bollards that fit the scene (Noone complains about the bollards in Amsterdam looking ugly) or are integrated into other street furnishings (e.g. flower pots and planters)

So they are just openly arresting political opponents now. America is really spiraling down the drain fast.

That looks a lot like Tirrel’s art

Is that an AI image in the article? Could they really not find a stock photo of a street in Paris?

Failed wheat harvest which caused a bread shortage.
Bread was a staple food in 18th century France.

I’m not quite sure if it is similar to the rice shortage in Japan today however. When the French couldn’t eat bread in the 18th century they went hungry, but when the Japanese today can’t buy rice they can just buy a different carb.

Its the difference between barely scraping by on bread, and being inconvenienced by not being able to buy cheap rice.

I had the same experience with Spotify recently, but apparently they are Swedish.
There is low-key quite a few large European tech companies that are easily assumed to be American.

OP’s question is for “single board computers developed or produced in the EU or Europe” though

The Raspberry Pi foundation is headquartered in Cambridge, UK.

https://nl.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi_Foundation

Not sure if you are looking for a Pi replacement specficially, but if your goal is only to buy European, the Raspberry Pi already has you covered

Somehow I don’t feel easy with Europe buying American gas at this point. Trump could simply shut down the gas supply on a whim just like Putin did in 2022, and then we’d have another energy crisis on our hands.

America is an unreliable trading partner.

Instead we should be doing everything in our power to build down our gas and oil dependencies as fast as possible. And in the meantime we should be very picky about who we buy gas from.

Lobbying is just a group of people representing the interest of that group to their representatives. A gay rights lobby group would also be lobbying the government if they advocate for better rights for LGBT people.

The issue isn’t so much the fact that lobbying is a thing, but rather the methods (read: bribery) that some lobby groups engage in.