Buy European

Luxchat4Gov and Luxchat for the general public and businesses are interoperable national instant messaging services, based on the Matrix technology.

Matrix is an open standardized protocol for instant communication, developed by a large, mainly European community, and supported by a foundation, The matrix.org Foundation, guaranteeing the sustainability of the key principles and foundations of the Matrix technology.

https://www.luxchat.lu/en/technical-details/

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/12833459

Here is the announcement video: https://youtu.be/q85lZdNStGs

This video is about how China uses fashion and its digital presence to exert influence globally and bypass diplomatic tensions

Video games have grown into an industry with billions of customers worth hundreds of billions of euros. During this time, a specific business practice in the industry has been slowly emerging that is not only an assault on basic consumer rights but is destroying the medium itself.

An increasing number of publishers are selling video games that are required to connect through the internet to the game publisher, or "phone home" to function. While this is not a problem in itself, when support ends for these types of games, very often publishers simply sever the connection necessary for the game to function, proceed to destroy all working copies of the game, and implement extensive measures to prevent the customer from repairing the game in any way.

This practice is effectively robbing customers of their purchases and makes restoration impossible. Besides being an affront on consumer rights, video games themselves are unique creative works. Like film, or music, one cannot be simply substituted with another. By destroying them, it represents a creative loss for everyone involved and erases history in ways not possible in other mediums.

Existing laws and consumer agencies are ill-prepared to protect customers against this practice. The ability for a company to destroy an item it has already sold to the customer long after the fact is not something that normally occurs in other industries. With license agreements required to simply run the game, many existing consumer protections are circumvented. This practice challenges the concept of ownership itself, where the customer is left with nothing after "buying" a game.

• European Citizens' Initiative

https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq

Giant FAQ on The European Initiative to Stop Destroying Games!

Europeans can save gaming!

https://www.youtube.com/clip/Ugkxly_O-3JxyBULIT283l5A1KOhnNsWC3Bj

Remember, what's the alternative?

Place to sign EU petition:

https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home

Mistral AI summary:

The European Union is making another attempt to create a truly unified single market by addressing internal trade barriers. The European Commission's latest strategy, set to be published, aims to streamline regulations and reduce friction for businesses operating across EU countries. The plan includes measures such as uniform packaging labeling, digitizing paperwork, and making it easier to set up new businesses. The Commission estimates that a 2.4 percent increase in intra-EU trade could offset the impact of a 20 percent tariff-induced drop in U.S. exports. Political support for this initiative is strong, with EU countries tasking the Commission to draw up this strategy.

However, the plan has its limitations. The financial sector is largely excluded, and services, which make up a significant portion of Europe's GDP, face challenges in cross-border expansion. While the strategy includes measures to smooth access to services, cultural and linguistic differences across the 27 member countries pose additional hurdles. The Commission has proposed measures to ensure the strategy's implementation, including appointing high-level representatives in each country and reviewing progress by the end of 2026. Despite these efforts, the success of the single market strategy ultimately depends on the cooperation of member countries.

Does your government rely on Microsoft etc. to function?

EU High Level Group (established by EU commission) recommends forcing all devices in the EU to be sold with ”integrated Law Enforcement access” (page 21, recommendation 25) and sanctioning non-EU approved messaging services (recommendation 33)

After 2,5 years of intensive research and programming efforts, the entire Openwebsearch.eu project team is excited to grant access to its pilot of the first-ever federated pan-European Open Web Index (OWI).

From June onward, commercial and scientific development teams of any size as well as interested individuals are welcome to access and make use of almost a petabyte (and growing) of open web data under a general research license or – upon request – under a designated commercial license as well.

Given that the European Commission has launched the InvestAI initiative to mobilize €200 billion of investment in artificial intelligence, the Open Web Index comes with perfect timing.

The OpenWebSearch.eu consortium actively calls early adopters to pioneer innovative projects surrounding vertical web search, argumentative search, LLM applications including RAG and more.

“The OWI symbolizes a first step towards true European digital sovereignty and is a fundamental step in paving the way for a comprehensive open European AI landscape.“ says Community Manager Ursula Gmelch and further:

“Our goal behind this initial pilot phase is to onboard a range of projects from diverse domains to get early feedback in. We look forward to users confirming the quality and value in current functionalities and/or helping us pivot in such ways that real market demands can be met and further expanded upon.“

An official kick-off event will be hosted on 6 June from 10 am to 12 am CEST via Zoom.

Registration to the event is open under the following link:

https://cscfi.zoom.us/meeting/register/eATIpDQ5TZidh4Jzkim6FQ#/registration

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A European Citizen's Initiative is a formal process for the European Commission to debate/discuss a proposition by citizens that has managed to collect 1 million signatures from European citizens within a year. I think the tides are turning and it might be good to ride the wave that the orange man on the other side of the world has started.

We could start an initiative to ask the EU governmental bodies to use software that is guaranteed to be European. Probably it would be better to ask them to use opensource only and no proprietary software. A citizen's call for digital sovereignty could be understandable and even get business backing because there are even people on LinkedIn calling for the same.

What do you think?