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European Alternatives

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Re: European Alternatives

#411

Post by 202508042147 »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #349
aucisson_masque wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are paying more for everything because your country is extremely anti social, people alone have no leverage to negotiate prices with visa, pharmaceutics and so on. Trump is only pushing that « free for all » policy even more, I wouldn’t expect to see things improve for you. Instead of fixing your country and making the rich accountable, you’re being manipulated to look elsewhere. Anyway, I believe that the eu cut…

Yes, I am very happy to see Europe develop its own military-industrial complex. That way, whenever something bad happens in the world, you will be "complicit" if you sit by, and "imperialist" if you take action. It's a lot of fun!

Besides the military-industrial complex, I am very happy to see Europe develop its own digital systems. That way we won't be totally dependent on Google, Microsoft, AWS, OpenAI, Apple, Visa, Mastercard etc.

Re: European Alternatives

#412

Post by ta20240528 »

202508042147 wrote: post #408
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When European customers pay American firms, it's "protection money". When American customers pay European firms, it's just capitalism, sorry bro.

For pharma there are, most of the time, alternatives. There is no alternative to Visa/Mastercard in Europe. It's an American duopoly.

No, Europe had Europay, which their regulators allowed to be subsumed into Mastercard.

Hell, the EMV standard — used in all cards worldwide — means "Europay, Mastercard, Visa".

Look after your toys better.

Re: European Alternatives

#414

Post by evaneykelen »

mlitwiniuk wrote: post #275
evaneykelen wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, do you also provide the actual audit for ISO 27001 as part of your service? That’s why I went with Oneleet, but a EU-based solution would be attractive.

No, we don't do audits — and that's intentional. I think there's a conflict of interest when the same company advises you on compliance and then certifies you. Incentives get weird. The good news: there are plenty of EU-based ISO 27001 audit firms. We can recommend one or two if you need a pointer — we just don't have a formal catalogue or marketplace for that yet (though it's on my list). So you'd use Humadroid for…

They also do not carry out the audit themselves (for the same reason) but the do all the legwork for you. Huge benefit imo.

Re: European Alternatives

#415

Post by Tade0 »

lostmsu wrote: post #390
ragall wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Numbeo shows averages, and the basket of goods that it considers is not what a well-off person would buy. I Zurich I could live perfectly well without having a car, just with public transportation, and French and Italian cheeses and wine are a cheaper than in Seattle.

As a well off person your most significant purchase is going to be a house, and in Seattle they are 3x cheaper. I just left Seattle Greater Area and my 350sqm admittedly old house + a small ADU with an outdoor pool went for $2M (at the moment it was a downturn, so maybe $2.5M tops now). What can you get for that money in Greater Zurich Area? A 100sqm flat?

How long was the commute from your place?

The rail network in and around Zurich is reliable and punctual, so you can live anywhere along that 30km long lake and still have your commute be 30-40m, without needing to search for a parking spot and whatnot.

I experienced this myself when I was briefly commutung from Pfäffikon(SZ).

Re: European Alternatives

#416

Post by 202508042147 »

ta20240528 wrote: post #412
202508042147 wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For pharma there are, most of the time, alternatives. There is no alternative to Visa/Mastercard in Europe. It's an American duopoly.

No, Europe had Europay, which their regulators allowed to be subsumed into Mastercard. Hell, the EMV standard — used in all cards worldwide — means "Europay, Mastercard, Visa". Look after your toys better.

> Look after your toys better.

Lesson learned, at least for me. I am in the process of moving everything digital to Europe.

Re: European Alternatives

#417

Post by perssontm »

embedding-shape wrote: post #131
vldszn wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the comment. I hadn’t thought about this before, but it makes sense - I agree. About European Product Hunt - very good idea. I was thinking recently that we need more European social networks, messengers, etc. It’s a very good time to build imo =)

> About European Product Hunt - very good idea. Older members of HN will remember that Product Hunt probably came to life a lot because of HN and the submissions/comments from rrhoover (founder of Product Hunt). He's still active here, but before/during Product Hunt launch he was very active if I remember correctly. Maybe a grander idea is a European Hacker News, that has the potential to spawn the European Product H…

I read about https://techposts.eu/ the other day, seems like a decent alternative, but needs some more traction.

Re: European Alternatives

#418

Post by lava_pidgeon »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #374
kergonath wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The EU had such a good deal with the US. There are regulations. Both Visa and Mastercard were happy with those and made quite a lot of money from their business in the EU. They absorbed and merged with local alternatives and competitors. It’s a bit rich to complain after the game has been going on for a while that the rules are as they are: they’ve always been that way and if they were not happy, they could just ha…

I'm not complaining about Visa or Mastercard fees in the US. I am pointing out the absurdity of the original European claim that such fees are "protection money" to the US, when the EU is getting a sweetheart deal relative to the US. It's typical disingenuous European rhetoric.

Who claimed which money is protection money of US?

Re: European Alternatives

#419

Post by pepinator »

palata wrote: post #227
pepinator wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your average European speaks at least three ok ok I get the point but let's not exaggerate

It was edited to "average educated European", whatever that means. But I think two languages is probably not exagerating. And not only in Europe. People have their native language and usually an international one (in Europe that would be English). And then there are similar languages. Say a Spanish person will speak Spanish and English, and possibly French/Italian/Portuguese, so that quickly goes up to 3. Also in man…

I agree that a lot of people speak two languages. But man, I've lived in several countries in Europe for many years, and even the average university student doesn't really speak English (and I work at the university so I interact with many of them). Even in countries like Belgium where there're three official languages!

However, I'd agree with that the average educated person can somewhat communicate ideas in a second language. This is what polls usually show, around 30% to 50% of people.

Re: European Alternatives

#420

Post by sam_lowry_ »

woodpanel wrote: post #333
sam_lowry_ wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see one engineering job ad https://careers.epicompany.eu/jobs/6909459-senior-full-stack... if we can call EU Digital Wallet speculation "engineering". But you just answered your own question. Wero is a money extraction business that secured European Commission support. There is no engineering nor payment system to it.

what ever "money extraction business" means - wero is a real thing people (me included) are already using and developed jointly by many european banks.

Old Dutch banks and their Belgian suckers, mostly. You can see a list on their website.

I am not deep into this, but I heard multiple times that the choice of the pan-european payment system was largely political and technnically suboptimal. Old Europe pushed for the aging iDEAL against a much more advanced Blink, so Eastern European banks led by Poland left the consortium.

In the end, iDEAL rebranded as Wero was dead on arrival because a successful system needs to be supported by everyone.

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