17 ms·

Migrating to the EU

• jagermo 6mo ago
  Uberspace is solid and a lot of fun to try stuff out. For domains, i would also recommend inwx.com, they have been around for ages, good prices and no-fuzz admin stuff.
  • FinnKuhn 6mo ago
    The author mentions using them as well, but I personally would have a really hard time trusting any service run by any individual and be it just in case something happens to them.
    • jasonvorhe 6mo ago
      It's a team of 10+ people though.
  • shafyy 6mo ago
    I tried Uberspace for email and what bothered me that you can only set up one email domain per Asteroid. So if you have multiple domains, it gets expensive quickly... (depending on how many users per domain you have). But other than that, great company with a great ethical stance (and as far as I can tell, great technical infrastructure). I will definitely be going back to them if I need a simple VPS.
• sph 6mo ago
  I'm also pretty much using 100% EU services except FastMail. Nothing against the Aussies, but I'd rather use something local, with servers within the EU. But I don't think there's anything as good as Fastmail this side of the pond, and I'm not prepared to compromise on this just yet. I might self-host email despite all the dangers the day FM decides to enshittify itself.
  • ktta 6mo ago
    ProtonMail? Not strictly speaking EU, but atleast EEA It also comes with a whole suite of software that you don't have to find EU alternatives for like Calendar, Drive, Password manager, etc
    • sph 6mo ago
      I like privacy, but a service that's focused on maximum possible privacy for its users paints a target on its back for any three-letter agency, as it will attract a large contingent of unsavoury people.
    • mvdwoord 6mo ago
      I just onboarded and was dumbfounded that they do not allow for proper calendar exposure other than a fully public link! The claim of zero knowledge is super cute, for those that need it, but I need a provider which allows me to integrate the calendar elsewhere, as those will not magically move into Proton. I guess I am not in their target market.
  • yellowsir 6mo ago
    https://mailcow.email/vps/ https://mailcow.email/vps/
  • ongy 6mo ago
    I love fastmail, but I really wish they had servers close to me. The high ping kills the throughput on davfs and makes their website hosting a pain to update :(
    • josephg 6mo ago
      Where abouts are you located?
      • ongy 6mo ago
        Smack center of Europe (southern Germany) Got >100ms pings.
• I_am_tiberius 6mo ago
  Codeberg is only for FOSS projects. Is there some good European hosting provider for git? I really don't want to self host git.
  • cyanydeez 6mo ago
    gitlab ce is easy to host.
  • lynx97 6mo ago
    Git is extremely easy to "self host". What makes things complicated are the web interfaces around code hosting, and all their supposedly important features. These days, Prs, issues, forums, wikis and all that seem to be synonymous with "git", which is pretty weird.
    • ptsneves 6mo ago
      Which is ironic because PR is definitely alien to git. There is no such git concept as a PR, nor git pr command. Coming from a pure git workflow in mailing lists where branches, and commits(and associated diff and git am metadata) are the unit of work, I struggled to adapt into the PR concept in the beginning. I liked to work with gerrit, where the unit of the review is the commit. This also ensured a nice little history and curation of the change set. The commit in github is not even in the main tab of the PR. It is like it is a second thought. Even in the review, reviewing by commit is awkward and discouraged.
      • _flux 6mo ago
        There are the commands git request-pull and git send-email to work with that workflow, though.
    • torben-friis 6mo ago
      What do you mean by supposedly? The PR model is pretty much universal for a reason. I get why it is considered out of scope for core git, but it is by no means a weird fixation people have.
• sobiolite 6mo ago
  I’m not with I could ever migrate away from Gmail, even if I wanted to. I have so many accounts and services linked to it.
  • fsflover 6mo ago
    Set up the redirect and change the emails of your services one by one whenever you have a minute of time. It took a year for me, and I am free now.
  • sylens 6mo ago
    It’s easier than you think when you stop trying to treat it as an all or nothing move and more of a gradual migration. Fastmail makes it really easy to keep the two in sync
  • vertnerd 6mo ago
    If you are using a password manager, start by searching for every record with your gmail address. Make a list. Every day, go to the next entry on the list and change your email with that app or service. Of course, set up gmail to forward messages to your new address and filter them into a folder. Once you have changed all the services you know about, watch for emails coming to the gmail folder, looking for more services that need to be updated. Eventually the only thing arriving in the folder is spam and you can just route it all into the garbage.
  • mhitza 6mo ago
    Took me a year of slow migration so that my essential emails and connected services don't go over Gmail. Email is the hardest to move because of its central nature as an online identity.
  • microtonal 6mo ago
    Don't make the same mistake again, get a domain so that you can keep using the same address when switching between providers. Then set up GMail to forward e-mail to your new address. Then slowly update the E-mail address in your account. You could even set up a label that gets attached to e-mails that arrived through your GMail address. In that way, you can easily see the stuff that still needs to be updated. Untangling yourself from Google (or Apple, which is similarly hard), doesn't have to be all at once. Break it up in small steps that feel like individual wins. One more note about using your own domain: avoid provider-specifict features like subdomain addressing (made it more work for me to move off Fastmail).
• appstorelottery 6mo ago
  I would add Hetzner for hosting. German based, solid in my experience with virtual servers.
  • aleph_minus_one 6mo ago
    In Germany, netcup (https://www.netcup.com/ https://www.netcup.com/) is also quite popular among customers who are - small or midsize companies, or - "hacker-minded people" (I know quite some "hacker-minded people" who rent a server or vServer at netcup), since they offer quite a bit of value for the money. In opposite to Hetzner, netcup is more of an inside tip.
    • poolnoodle 6mo ago
      Also https://uberspace.de/en/ https://uberspace.de/en/
      • dewey 6mo ago
        That's the host mentioned 6 times in the article.
• madflo 6mo ago
  I have been a customer of OVH’s new Zimbra Starter service. It works for my personal and professional needs, CalDAV and ActiveSync are active. I do not use the web interface so no feedback on this.
  • choo-t 6mo ago
    Does their Zimbra implementation support 2FA ?
• BoredPositron 6mo ago
  Blast from the past... I really miss fluxbox but I also need Wayland because of different refresh rate monitors and the last time I checked waybox wasn't there yet.
• _osud 6mo ago
  How comfortable are you guys with the fact that EU countries allow prosecutors and sometimes even police officers to issue their own search warrants without meaningful judicial review? Some EU courts will not exclude illegally obtained evidence either, so challenging the warrant later on will be pointless. Oh, and you might be in a reasonable EU country and still be hit with an EIO from one of the unreasonable countries. This is especially concerning given recent ECJ rulings increasingly directing courts in receiving nations to blindly defer to the requesting party when dealing with EAWs, EIOs and similar. Worth considering when hosting in the EU.
  • andix 6mo ago
    No system is perfect. It's more a theoretical risk for now, if you're not running a shady business.
    • noosphr 6mo ago
      The police will of course decide if you are running a shady business.
      • rithdmc 6mo ago
        Nintendo may also decide this. https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/uk-games-collector-raided-by-police-after-purchasing-gbp10-000-worth-of-hardware-including-old-dev-kits-disposed-of-by-sega/ https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/uk-games-collector-raided-b...
  • alpineman 6mo ago
    At least there is still the rule of law and democracy in the EU
    • _osud 6mo ago
      Is there really? Governments routinely go against the ECHR and the ECJ, and do nothing to rectify past violations when ruled against. On a national level, sure.
• axegon_ 6mo ago
  I've migrated just about everything I was relying on a while back. Not only that but I've self-hosted just about everything, with the exception of my email and I've moved whatever I have public on github to codeberg. With the exception of github pages, though I plan on doing that too, when I find motivation to going through the tedious DNS management. I've been on and off on qwant and ecosia for search(lately ecosia has been stepping up their game it seems). But I am considering switching over to searxng, I just want to put it behind a squid proxy somewhere remote, away from my apartment.
• andix 6mo ago
  Is there a good tool to automatically (and continuously) mirror all GitHub repositories to another provider? Something with GH API integration that also catches newly created projects/repos? Issues and PRs would be a bonus, but not a requirement in my case.
  • patcon 6mo ago
    Haven't used it, but I've been intrigued by git-bug (stores issues in got itself) for years, to use as the issue/pr sync. Bonus that now the issues aren't vendor locked either https://github.com/git-bug/git-bug/blob/trunk/doc/feature-matrix.md https://github.com/git-bug/git-bug/blob/trunk/doc/feature-ma...
• brandrick 6mo ago
  Proton ticks a few of those boxes for me. Mail, VPN, Cal.
  • robertlagrant 6mo ago
    Also docs collaboration, and now video calling as well. And they've just bought Standard Notes, so that'll be next. It's definitely chugging along fast.
  • sime2009 6mo ago
    proton.me? That is in Switzerland, not the EU.
    • knorker 6mo ago
      The stated reason in the article seems like Switzerland should be as good as EU, if not better. > I have decided to move as many services and subscriptions as possible from non-EU countries to the EU or to switch to European service providers. The reasons for this are the current global political situation and improved data protection. "or switch to European service providers". EU or not, CH is still in Europe, so would qualify?
• vertnerd 6mo ago
  Used Chromebooks are plentiful and cheap on eBay and many of them are easy to convert to Linux using the tools and instructions at https://docs.mrchromebox.tech/ https://docs.mrchromebox.tech/. I used to have a house full of Chromebooks, but now all but one of them are Linux laptops. My favorite is the Acer CP713 because it comes in flavors with lots of RAM and drive space. I also prefer the convertible touchscreen models because they can go on a shelf and make cheap and attractive Home Assistant dashboards.
  • wraptile 6mo ago
    You can also get a refurbished thinkpad with Ryzen and 16gb of ram for 400€ or so on european Ebay.
  • bluebarbet 6mo ago
    You seem to know what you're talking about. I used a cheapie Taiwanese Intel netbook for years, on Linux, with great success. When it came to replace it, there was nothing left in that niche (i.e. small and cheap) except ARM Chromebooks with (apparently) locked bootloaders. So I reluctantly bought a heavy and expensive Intel laptop. Was I wrong to assume that the average big-box-store Chromebook cannot be jailbroken, or has only driverless hardware, or are things changing here? If the latter, surely this opens a boulevard for Linux? Any insight much appreciated.
  • dangus 6mo ago
    I never understood why bother with these. You get a dealbreaker keyboard because of the lack of an alt key and you don’t even save much money for the effort of working around the Chromebook restrictions. A laptop originally sold with Windows is so much more straightforward to work with. I’d just grab something like an HP EliteBook 840 G10 on eBay. Around $300, upgradable RAM and SSD, and reasonably recent. Relatively modern/attractive aluminum build. Or I’m sure there’s some other 2-in-1 not-Chromebook convertible model you can grab if you need the touch screen.
  • mixmastamyk 6mo ago
    Buy and support vendors that ship proper Linux laptops. I know of Star labs and Nova Custom in the EU, both use coreboot as well.
• _pdp_ 6mo ago
  Our company started migrating our tech stack from USA to EU. We are about 90% there with a few small dependencies that could be resolved but we have not yet tackled.
  • flowerthoughts 6mo ago
    Could you summarize the easy and hard aspects? Have you had any unexpected benefits or downsides?
    • spiderfarmer 6mo ago
      For me: - SES was a big one. There was no affordable alternative at my (not big, not small) scale. - I'm still waning myself personally of GMail. That dependency took decades to build and it will take years for all ties to sever.
      • Aachen 6mo ago
        Maybe this comment downthread helps for the email problem? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47489711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47489711
      • Galorious 6mo ago
        Have you checked out zeptomail by zoho? Not as low cost, but getting close. More basics build in.
        • entropie 6mo ago
          Not EU. > Zoho Corporation is an Indian multinational technology company that makes cloud-based office software.
          • felixg3 6mo ago
            They have EU datacenters and an actually staffed legal entity in Germany .
• atoav 6mo ago
  One tip in the EU is to consider just renting a Hetzner Storage Share. This is a 1TB (or more) Nextcloud that Hetzner manages for you for 5.11 Euros per month. A Nextcloud can give you many things at once, file syncing, file shares, contact syncing, calendar syncing, etc. I have been using this for years now after having hosted my own Nextcloud instance. The space and performance they give you for that price is unbeatable with nearly no downsides. The one downside is that you can't just ssh into the server, but you can even run occ managment commands via their web interface. It is an absolute no-brainer.
  • robertlagrant 6mo ago
    I had no idea how cheap this was. Thanks.
  • majoe 6mo ago
    Had a self hosted nextcloud instance runnning on my homeserver, but migrated away two years ago to a Hetzner Storage share. All in all I'm quite happy with that. There are some downsides, though: - No support for collabora online, so no way for collaborative editing of office files - Data is not encrypted Hetzner also has classical web hosting offerings, which are cheap as well. I'm using that for email and a website of mine.
    • atoav 6mo ago
      You can do collabora online if you add your own collabora server. I did not try encryption, but there is an addon for that, did you try it?
  • gib444 6mo ago
    I've just rented one a few days ago! It's not a full-on Nextcloud instance, mind. For example there is no ffmpeg for generating video thumbnails. But liking it so far
  • 4k93n2 6mo ago
    just to piggyback off of this, theres also Pikapods (based in malta i think) that have about 100 or so self-hosted apps that can be installed with one-click and then you just pay depending on what you use. im more into self-hosting on my own hardware but its a nice option for people who want to get their feet wet or that dont have the time to manage a VPS themselves
• lynx97 6mo ago
  I find it pretty ironical that people seem to want to move to Von der Leyens vision of the future. As a EU citizen, my trust in what recently has been going down is almost non-existant.
  • ludvigk 6mo ago
    I guess when the alternative is Trump's vision of the future ... - at least I know what I would choose.
    • CalRobert 6mo ago
      I agree, and moved to the EU from the US for related reasons, but Von der Leyen's entire strategy for handling Trump seems to be immediate capitulation to horrendously one-sided deals, which doesn't give a lot of confidence.
    • mytailorisrich 6mo ago
      Trump will be gone in 2028 and policies may radically change depending on who replaces him. There is no change on the horizon in the EU when Von Der Leyen is replaced (she is just the current public face of the blob...)
      • konradx 6mo ago
        Do you believe this ? Even if the Americans get out of their zombie existence and get out to vote (on another candidate), I cannot imagine Trump will accept an election loss. (A reminder: The US has had a 24% drop in the Liberal Democracy Index score in just one year and your supreme court is owned)
        • Acrobatic_Road 6mo ago
          >The US has had a 24% drop in the Liberal Democracy Index score Yet another index detached from objective measures. >your supreme court is owned The same court that declined to take up Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election?
• deaux 6mo ago
  https://bunny.net/ https://bunny.net/ seems solid as a Cloudflare and S3 replacement. I'm not affiliated but they deserve more mentions in these threads.
  • christophilus 6mo ago
    Used them in my last project for around 5 years. They were boring in a good way and inexpensive.
  • recroad 6mo ago
    I use them too. Highly recommend. Have never had an issue with them.
  • spiderfarmer 6mo ago
    Hetzner and Bunny are solid choices for EU projects.
    • saxenaabhi 6mo ago
      For those looking for a PaaS instead of VPS provider like hetzner I can suggest Northflank. We moved from Render to Northflank and couldn't be happier. Again non affiliated with either.
  • jauco 6mo ago
    Too bad they don’t support mtls client certificates or something that would allow me to limit the connection to just their servers.
  • vanviegen 6mo ago
    I recently used Bunny for a small project. Pretty good experience. And they're rolling out new functionality at a good pace.
  • sebastiennight 6mo ago
    We've been using them for a few years now and they are AMAZING.
• hbbio 6mo ago
  Still not accepting Codeberg moral stance. Yes, gitea (and originally gogs) are released under permissive licenses, so it's legally allowed to fork them. But forking complete working projects with years of work, rebranding with a "good guys" attitude, and progressively erasing the name/history (mentioning a gitea fork has moved down the faq now) is not fair. Edit: even worse, the word "fork" is not in the FAQ. It is "Comparison with Gitea" now (fork is mentioned on that page).
  • jen729w 6mo ago
    > Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software… – https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/blob/main/LICENSE If you don't want your software used like that, don't choose this licence. You can't post-hoc decide how people behave.
    • jdiaz97 6mo ago
      open source is all fun and games until they fork you
      • cobalt60 6mo ago
        I mean you build a base for your oss tooling. You reject a base's notion, what do you expect?
  • looperhacks 6mo ago
    This is already a crazy take on its own, why would a fork have to describe their relation to the parent project front and center? Both the Readme and the comparison page link to the origin blog post [1] that describes the lineage clearly. But even if there were some "ethical reason" to do this, I don't think Gitea is the right project to play up as a victim. Their homepage [2] doesn't mention that Gitea itself is a fork either. Their Readme does, but is this so much better? [1]: https://forgejo.org/2022-12-15-hello-forgejo/ https://forgejo.org/2022-12-15-hello-forgejo/ [2]: https://about.gitea.com/ https://about.gitea.com/
• debugnik 6mo ago
  And yet the hardware had to stay all American brands, how sad we barely compete there.
  • dude250711 6mo ago
    That ship had sailed long ago.
• _joel 6mo ago
  You can take fastmail from my cold, dead hands :D About the only thing I can rely on to actually work.
  • shafyy 6mo ago
    Yes, same here. I tried some EU providers like Mailbox, Tuta and Uberspace. In the end, even though Fastmail is not EU-based, at least it's based in Australia (and not US) and they have a solid track record as a company to make the right decisions and not chase every hype. So, this is good enough for me. For now.
    • evan_a_a 6mo ago
      Australia is a member of five eyes and the US basically treats them like the 51st state.
      • AlexandrB 6mo ago
        Heyyy! I thought Canada was the 51st state!? Get in line Aussies!
        • _joel 6mo ago
          Oh come on guys, everyone knows it's the UK
• piokoch 6mo ago
  I wonder what will happen when Jordan Bardella will be new France president and Alice Weidel will be German Chancellor. Where people are going to migrate to then...
• s_dev 6mo ago
  https://european-alternatives.eu/ https://european-alternatives.eu/ I recommend Scaleway for cloud hosting. I recently migrated from Digital Ocean who I really loved, to Scaleway and have I have to say impressed with both dashboard interface and pricing so far. In work we still use AWS but everything is hosted in eu-west (Ireland) in AWS EU Sovereign cloud but not sure how truly compliant this is in a CloudAct vs GDPR showdown. I've yet to migrate from namecheap but planning on moving my domains to inwx. My MacBook Pro will be hard to replace so that will be years away. Nothing phones look cool but I would like to go with EU solutions rather than British ones. https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-phone-sep-ii-2026 https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-phone-sep-ii-2026 looks cool but some the HackerNews guys have been quite critical so I'm still considering what those next devices will be.
• yurii_l 6mo ago
  [dead]
• Unical-A 6mo ago
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• severino 6mo ago
  > First, I tried mailbox.org, which I can generally recommend without reservation. Unfortunately, you can’t send emails from any address on your own domain without a workaround, so the search continued. I had read about other problems about this mailbox.org service, but not this one. Anyone knows what's the catch when trying to send emails from your own domain?
  • kioleanu 6mo ago
    I think he means that he can have a catch-all, but to reply from that address, there needs to be an alias created on the account
• chairhairair 6mo ago
  "This way, I can enjoy YouTube ad-free and without an account." Not having the gumption to actually give it up. Pathetic.
• dragochat 6mo ago
  how about the OPPOSITE problem: _anyone knows of any non-EU AND non-US email providers_? with email accounts as the roots of trust for many things, i'd really wanna know how can I get a trustworthy one not-attached to eithern an unstable system (US), or a very overregulating one like the EU juristictions... and ofc, non-CN too
  • PeterStuer 6mo ago
    I'm using Zoho (Indian company, hosted in Europe). Maybe not perfect from a geopolitical pov, but it will do for now.
  • realusername 6mo ago
    Fastmail is australian
    • roelschroeven 6mo ago
      But their servers are in the US.
  • petesergeant 6mo ago
    For email and calendaring, Fastmail, although Her Majesty’s Australian government has strong overreach instincts.
    • dragochat 6mo ago
      ...would those "overreach instinct" expand to "handing over access an overreaching and likely corrupt EU or US prosecutor"? (I don't care about 5eyes etc, spyies will spy me, I just don't want stuff to be easily and unexpectedly draggable in a court case, or am email used as bolt-key to access other things to get blocked by a prosecutor's regulation...)
      • ffsm8 6mo ago
        If your threat model includes the USA government then you can only go with obscurity, honestly - preferably self hosted with a completely locked down system that cannot initiate any network communication besides on the relevant mail protocol ports, completely immutable filesystem beyond the mail data with encryption at rest And with all of that they'll still be able to pwn you through network equipment which relays your mail, eg some router or switch which they backdoored and mirrors all traffic to their datacenter.
• dinowars 6mo ago
  > First, I tried mailbox.org, which I can generally recommend without reservation. Unfortunately, you can’t send emails from any address on your own domain without a workaround I use mailbox for a long time, one account for 2.50EUR/month with multiple custom domains and I can send emails from any address. To send from a different address the process didn't really seem different than other providers. From Thunderbird mobile on Android I just add a new sender identity. If I need to send from webmail, similarly I just add a new alternative sender. Are these the workarounds you mentioned?
  • dragochat 6mo ago
    ...also migrating AWAY from Fastmail (Australian) and TO an European provider sounds like a very bad idea - I'd kind of want both the US and the EU legally away from my coms at all costs (!)
    • sakisv 6mo ago
      While I agree in principle, I have to remind you (and to myself) that Australia is part of the Five Eyes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
      • kioleanu 6mo ago
        The problem is that, even if Fastmail are Australian, they host exclusively in the US. They state that sure, there is the possibility of interference at the data center level, but they rely on their anti-hacking measures to prevent unlawful access
    • severino 6mo ago
      Is it that different? Being Australia in alliances like "Five Eyes" I don't think you can keep your stuff away from the US at least when using Fastmail. If you want both US & EU away from your data, I suppose you will have to consider things like Yandex Mail, which comes with its own set of problems too, of course :)
• Raed667 6mo ago
  > set up catch-all addresses but also send emails from any email address I wanted I have been frustrated with ProtonMail for this exact reason, i have a catch all but responding is a hassle where i have to manually create an address. I wish Proton would just allow me to respond to an email from the address it was addressed to
• BrunoBernardino 6mo ago
  For search, I'd suggest Ecosia [1] or Qwant [2] if you don't mind ads, or Uruky [3] if you don't want them (full disclosure, I've created Uruky with my wife). [1]: https://ecosia.org https://ecosia.org [2]: https://qwant.com https://qwant.com [3]: https://uruky.com https://uruky.com
  • eino 6mo ago
    Thanks, uruky sounds quite promising, giving it a try
    • BrunoBernardino 6mo ago
      Thanks, please reach out with any suggestions or problems you find!
  • Schlagbohrer 6mo ago
    For anyone who wants some eco-optimism, Ecosia has a youtube channel where they film their reforestation efforts.
    • BrunoBernardino 6mo ago
      And a nice blog [1] too! [1]: https://blog.ecosia.org https://blog.ecosia.org
  • jruz 6mo ago
    Ecosia is just Google/Bing depending on location. Qwant is the way to go
    • BrunoBernardino 6mo ago
      Both use Google and Bing, though not exclusively, and both joined efforts to create the new, independent EUSP index. Sources for Ecosia indexes/providers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosia#Ecosia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosia#Ecosia Sources for Qwant indexes/providers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwant#Development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwant#Development EUSP: https://www.eu-searchperspective.com https://www.eu-searchperspective.com
• tonydav 6mo ago
  For mail I've been using migadu. I self host most services: contacts, calendar, git, .. Agree on mullvad, buy giftcard on amazon. Tried hetzner, but it wouldn't allow me to create an account. Ovh it is. I haven't thought about registrars, I don't think it matters for most tld. (Moniker, porkbun)
  • aktau 6mo ago
    > Agree on mullvad, buy giftcard on amazon. I've heard this before. Is this just to add another hop in the chain to make it harder for someone to track the user down? Apart from someone needing to order Amazon to pony up the details ("Which credit card was this Amazon item bought with?") Is there another layer of privacy I'm missing?
    • actionfromafar 6mo ago
      Or send cash in an envelope.
    • tonydav 6mo ago
      Doesn't cost extra No need to share my cc with yet another company.
    • bombcar 6mo ago
      Giftcards from Amazon will be enough of a stumbling block to stop copyright trolls and such. it won't even slow down actual criminal investigations by nation states and might not even stop a determined civil suit.
    • deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
    • drcharris 6mo ago
      The gift card is a scratch off and has a number that is used to fund your Mullvad balance. So Amazon doesn't know which instance of the gift card you ordered, meaning there's no link to your specific Mullvad account payment. The authorities might know you ordered a gift card, but not which Mullvad account you funded it with.
• lvales 6mo ago
  This is something I've been trying to help people and companies with excipio (shameless plug). Data and digital sovereignty are fundamental nowadays.
• drstewart 6mo ago
  Another daily thread on this topic. Interesting. What makes this one unique and not exactly like every other one?
• pennaMan 6mo ago
  > the EU currently has the most user-friendly laws when it comes to data protection This is laughable. The EU has the most big-tech regulatory capture friendly data laws that make it really hard for small companies to compete, nicely packaged under consumer protection pretenses. Those same laws give the institutions of the state complete and total right to silently wiretap the digital existence of anyone, at any time, for any reason.
• retinaros 6mo ago
  migrating to a re gion that votes laws to restrict freedom of speech, wants to remove anonymity from social network and can block your bank account for opinions that do not align with european stance on things like for instance mass migrations from third world countries. Yeah seems a smart move.
• sylware 6mo ago
  Slight detail: EU does not know how to design performant mobile/server/desktop CPUs (and GPUs). But they have ASML and "obsolete" foundries.
  • chupasaurus 6mo ago
    Yeah, and ARM is based outside of EU, just across La Manche and Irish Sea.
    • sylware 6mo ago
      One: ARM has been softbank for a good while now. And softband is japanese. Two: ARM ISA is heavily IP locked. For the moment, would be much more appropriate to design performant implementations (mobile/server/desktop) on RISC-V ISA.
  • jdiaz97 6mo ago
    yeah the blog is about software, not hardware
    • sylware 6mo ago
      software runs on hardware.
• aborsy 6mo ago
  Some of these European countries such as France are quite authoritarian. They frequently pass (update: propose/push for) laws to ban VPN and even social media, request access to private messages, etc. It seems to me the situation is equally bad in EU.
  • 9dev 6mo ago
    You have no idea what you are talking about, really. We don’t "frequently" pass such laws. Nobody is accessing private messages, even if there have been such attempts. The EU has still the strongest privacy laws world wide, and in contrast to others a strong ethical foundation. It may be slow, it may be torn, it may be overly beaurocratic, but sure enough not authoritarian.
    • antievropean 6mo ago
      Two words: chat control
      • Aldipower 6mo ago
        Defeated! (At least for now...)
      • prmoustache 6mo ago
        https://www.brusselstimes.com/eu-affairs/2030171/end-of-chat-control-controversial-eu-legislation-on-online-child-protection-up-in-the-air https://www.brusselstimes.com/eu-affairs/2030171/end-of-chat...
    • mytailorisrich 6mo ago
      France is routinely criticised for its police, justice system, and rule of law [1]. In general only the French believe that they are a shining beacon. [1] https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/country/France https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/country/Fr...
      • prmoustache 6mo ago
• kouunji 6mo ago
  Honestly this is part of a macro trend of everyone outside the US scrambling to get off a US tech stack…these are going to be the longer term economic consequences for the country, as it is no longer seen as a safe option for any kind of data or service exposure.
• gradus_ad 6mo ago
  The EU is going to fail in the next decade or two. It is a financially and politically unsustainable patchwork that will rip apart in the great power conflict that is coming. The sick man of Europe is now Europe itself.
  • deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  • alexejb 6mo ago
    Assuming your assessment is correct, how do you think this will affect the digital sector?
    • gradus_ad 6mo ago
      Capital flows to where it enjoys the greatest returns. That is not Europe, not now nor in any foreseeable future. There is no reason for a skilled professional interested in making money to go there.
      • Aldipower 6mo ago
        You know, making money is not everything. Why should I be rich in a third-world country (the US).
      • alexejb 6mo ago
        I don't think that this was the intention of the original blog post. It's about _digital_ migration for tech savvy folks who want to decouple from us-based tech monopolists.
• ankit7000 6mo ago
  "Running a €5 Hetzner VPS in Helsinki for 1+ year — CPX22 gives 3vCPU 4GB RAM. For most indie devs the EU infra is genuinely better value than US providers at the same price point."
• twoquestions 6mo ago
  For the longest time it was an economic axiom that regulations drive off businesses, and here stronger laws are directly attracting business!
  • varjag 6mo ago
    It's the rule of law that attracts business.
• darthcloud 6mo ago
  As a Canadian, I’ve been thinking since last year about migrating to non-US services and applications. My main goal is simply to avoid giving money or data directly to US corporations. I have no illusions, these non-US services probably still benefit US companies in some ways. They’re rare, but I’ve consciously decided to stay away from some Canadian alternatives. The main customers of most Canadian tech companies are in the US, and I feel they would happily move there if needed. I started with this: Gmail / Drive → Proton Mail / Drive NameCheap / GoDaddy → Infomaniak Google Maps → TomTom Google Chrome → Vivaldi Google Search → Startpage (Vivaldi default) GitHub → Codeberg & Codefloe (for private) I do like Proton Mail. The main thing I hate is how often the app and web versions get out of sync for read and archive states. I’m really happy with Infomaniak, migrating all my domains was a breeze. Vivaldi is based on the Chrome codebase, but I really love all the extra customization options. It was a very easy switch. Startpage took me some time to get used to. It’s not as good as Google, but whatever. TomTom isn’t great, but it’s not like Maps has been great over the last few years either. Forgejo is much better than what GitHub has become. Next, I’m thinking of moving away from Google Photos. I’m considering pCloud for that.
  • pkulak 6mo ago
    I can't recommend Immich enough if you want to move off Google Photos.
  • avazhi 6mo ago
    [flagged]
    • fcarraldo 6mo ago
      Which of these is Apple?
    • __bjoernd 6mo ago
      How is Proton a US-controlled company?
      • nilslindemann 6mo ago
• nopakos 6mo ago
  One concern is that if an EU company becomes very successful, it could easily be acquired by a large U.S. corporation.
  • Invictus0 6mo ago
    Don't worry, EU companies never become that successful
    • gib444 6mo ago
      Weird, I've worked for multiple that got acquired by US companies
  • gib444 6mo ago
    You're not wrong. But no SaaS is forever. Price rises, bankruptcies, ToS changes, change of CEO etc. Being acquired by a US company is just one of the things that can happen. For someone like the author, it's not a reason to stay with a US company And helping European companies be more successful might prevent them from selling out...
  • mafuy 6mo ago
    If you have a good path and a bad path that may or may not converge sometime later on your journey, you still should walk the good path.
• u8080 6mo ago
  Reminder: Hetzner/Linode were MITMing their client(jabber.ru) withour any legal basis and past prosecution: https://notes.valdikss.org.ru/jabber.ru-mitm/ https://notes.valdikss.org.ru/jabber.ru-mitm/
• creantum 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  • cindyllm 6mo ago
    [dead]
• silexia 6mo ago
  The EU has far worse freedom of speech laws than the US, most websites would be insane to migrate to the EU.
  • OrangePilled 6mo ago
    The people who publicize this kind of stuff are not the sort to ruffle major feathers.
    • surgical_fire 6mo ago
      I wonder what kind of freedom of speech you would require. There's many a way to ruffle feathers eh?
• dwedge 6mo ago
  > For various reasons Because it's trending. Likely the same reason they ended up outside the EU in the first place. I find this to be a non article. They moved from Google to Google and Apple, installed Graphene but installed the play store for a "significant number of apps", and didn't even consider self hosting email or git. I've probably seen a dozen of these articles now, not to mention posts on LinkedIn, and it's a shame that there is almost never any real substance to them because on the surface it's an interesting thought experiment
  • microtonal 6mo ago
    /r/BuyFromEU is a continuous enumeration of individuals posting from what US services to EU services they moved. I agree that these posts get uninteresting once you have seen a few. I would be more interested in I have used European service X for 6 months, these are the up/downsides I found, since they actually help people picking alternatives.
• achayala 6mo ago
  I did the same! The only problem with this is the uptime of codeberg.org, it sucks haha, but that is not a problem for me. I have not critical services there.
• bkolobara 6mo ago
  Shameless plug. We have been working on building a European GitHub alternative for private repos at https://lubeno.dev https://lubeno.dev.
• mads_quist 6mo ago
  If you need an on-call / incident management platform like PagerDuty or incident.io All Quiet offers EU based Hosting and is operated from Germany: → https://allquiet.app https://allquiet.app
  • dwedge 6mo ago
    While it's in your bio, I feel like you should have made it more obvious that this is your company
  • evnsio 6mo ago
    Just for completeness, both PagerDuty and incident.io offer EU hosting.
• 3842056935870 6mo ago
  [dead]
• dipshady 6mo ago
  hello
• fmajid 6mo ago
  The EU is not a privacy and human rights panacea, as shown by the continuing efforts to impose Chat Control. Switzerland is no better. Then again one of my wife’s friends is high up in the Canadian policy establishment and some of her positions on surveillance and political control over social media were chilling, and I assume widespread among the Five Eyes. Certainly the UK and Australia have deeply authoritarian policies far beyond even Trump’s wildest dreams. Small countries like Iceland have enlightened policies but are vulnerable to coercion and in fact were militarily occupied during WW2.
  • AlexandrB 6mo ago
    Yup, I don't get someone who would look at the US and say that their government overreach is particularly bad compared to the rest of the "first world". For example, the UK is arresting people for getting too spicy in school Facebook groups[1]. It just feels like "grass is greener" mentality because folks on here are most familiar with US political issues. [1] https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/police-arrest-parents-who-complained-in-school-whatsapp-group-6r6lb2fgn https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/police-arrest-...
    • askonomm 6mo ago
      Do the immigration police in UK also murder their own citizens in broad daylight? What about incarceration (and falsely incarcerated) rates? What about general cases of police brutality? What about pedophile-run government where nobody ever gets arrested? What about a government that's bailing out known criminals for money? Or one that rug pulls its own citizens via crypto scams, phone scams, citizenship scams? USA is so far beyond comparison to any other country that it's not even funny. The whole place is a con artists paradise, run by con artists, for con artists. Not to mention that they are actively hostile towards its own allies, threaten to annex ally territory, don't want to help its allies, and then when it can't pull off a war it on its own started, then EU is supposed to come help? And when we don't, we get insulted for not being friendly? Honestly, F USA, and everything that place stands for. What a toxic cesspool of a place.
      • 6mo ago
• awongh 6mo ago
  > The reasons for this are [...] improved data protection. Didn't the Snowden leaks just prove that the NSA is listening to most things anyway? I suppose this has more to do with the specific case of a lower-level agency being able to access your data, rather than it being actually secure? I get that people would be concerned about that scenario, but also it seems like a little bit of hair-splitting.
  • Schlagbohrer 6mo ago
    GDPR is real, and real good
    • awongh 6mo ago
      I think GDPR is a good example of why it doesn't really work in practice. I think the fines and enforcement have been a generally good balance to the status quo in the USA. But- in practice, is your data materially used differently than in the USA? The problem is that no one is abandoning facebook, instagram or youtube and that data is being used in the exact same way as it is in the USA- to sell you things and track you across the web. Technically there are more barriers to getting and using that data, but I would argue that it's not a blocker, just an inconvenience to those using that data- it just makes the targeting etc. 10% less accurate. The whole system still runs the exact same way. And, to make it look like it seem like it works now everyone has to deal with these dumb popups that don't mean anything.
• draw_down 6mo ago
  [dead]
• pelzatessa 6mo ago
  > I’ve always been a happy Mullvad customer. For 5 euros a month, I pay a Swedish company that has proven it doesn’t log any data How did they prove that? Is such proof even possible?
  • crosa 6mo ago
    Start by the fact that in their system you are just a random number that is generated at the moment you arrive in their website. They make very easy to pay without having to use any of your personal data, like Credit Card. Overall I think if a company put so much effort on that side, they simply don't have any data to log, or if they do is pretty anonymous anyway :)
    • pelzatessa 6mo ago
      While their account privacy policy is commendable, it isn't a proof for not collecting logs. Even without personal details you can collect quite a lot of data - ip address that uses certain VPN account, which servers it talks to while using vpn, at what hours, at what intervals, also all the plaintext data exchanged between client and server. A lot of data that someone (who might already have your ip address mapped to your personal info, for example your ISP, or an online store where you shopped something before you turned on the VPN) would be willing to pay good money for. And companies like money.
  • eviks 6mo ago
    The usual proof is whether law enforcement agencies can force the company to share such data
  • Aachen 6mo ago
    Also based on your reply on a sibling thread, is this a legit question (you expect that there is a way but you're not sure how) or are you just waiting for someone to bite just so you can state your case about proving a negative?
    • pelzatessa 6mo ago
• Aldipower 6mo ago
  For transactional email, Lettermint is a great email broadcaster from the Netherlands. Saying this as a German means they really must be good!
• NoSalt 6mo ago
  > "the EU currently has the most user-friendly laws when it comes to data protection" I have not done any research into this facet of EU laws, but isn't the EU simply horrible when it comes to privacy of your data from a nosy government?
  • cl3misch 6mo ago
    I think OP means user-friendly in the relationship user-company, not user-government.
  • jojomodding 6mo ago
    In what sense are governments in the EU more nosy than the one in the US or China?
  • SlinkyOnStairs 6mo ago
    > but isn't the EU simply horrible when it comes to privacy of your data from a nosy government? It's a case of "better is not perfect". Yes, the EU & it's member states allow the police quite a bit of access to data and servers. However, there are still decently functional checks and balances. Unlike China, unlike Russia, unlike the US, where there is a carte-blanche already employed by authoritarian governments. What the line really seems to refer to is General data protection. While "the state spies on you" is one attack vector, and one certainly becoming dangerous for oppressed minority groups in the US, it's not the only one. For most people, really, all people because the authoritarian systems rely heavily on data from breaches, the chief risk to one's wellbeing are said data breaches. Of companies recklessly collecting all data they can get their hands on and retaining it forever. There, the EU does have notably better laws. Where data collection and retention are restricted, and user-requested deletion is a legal right. (Enforcement of this is still a mess.)
  • Ylpertnodi 6mo ago
    > but isn't the EU simply horrible when it comes to privacy of your data from a nosy government? Depends on the country, as much as it would xState in the US.
  • alextingle 6mo ago
• canmi21 6mo ago
  Big companies never treat your data good. It's better to store it privately :(
• max_ 6mo ago
  > The reasons for this are the current global political situation and improved data protection I don't understand why people keep saying this when Europe is more hostile towards privacy. The constantly insist on schemes like chat control, and GrapheneOS users are often confronted by legal authorities. They may have "the laws", but its way less trust worthy.
  • mafuy 6mo ago
    You misunderstand this. Yes, there have been moves by some in the EU to reduce privacy, but they face resistance and have actually been repelled often. The ChatControl debacle you mention is one such instance. And on the other hand, sometimes there is actual progress, like with GDPR. But more importantly, at least there are privacy laws in the EU that do something. In the US, there are virtually none, so of course you won't hear about their erosion. I trust the EU ten times more than the US in this regard.
• kuon 6mo ago
  For domains, spread them across multiple registrars.
  • mkl 6mo ago
    And don't pay for multiple years at once even if you're sure you'll be keeping the domain for a long time - at any moment the company could be bought by someone else you don't want to be trusting.
• Invictus0 6mo ago
  Foolish blunder
• gib444 6mo ago
  Not a fan of Mailbox.org. It's Nextcloud for starters. The UX is clunky. They feel a 30 day web app session expiry is perfectly fine. I've gone back to FastMail for the time being I think what I really want is: - FastMail or similar for sending, and receiving new emails - An email archive system that syncs from my main email provider, deleting from the remote anything over eg 4 weeks old I like hosted providers for their IP reputation, spam systems, deliverability etc (and in the case of FM, the excellent web UI) but I don't like them having 15 years of my email which they can read whenever they wish. (edit: yes, I realise they could just keep copies) Does anyone else have this kind of set up? Any recommendations to remove the pain of having a mailbox split into 2?
• gib444 6mo ago
  There are reasons other than privacy to move to non-US companies: e.g. not wanting contribute to the US economy and the further expansion of US tech companies. This is my main motivation in fact. So criticisms about these kind of posts and initiatives along the lines of "EU privacy bad too" are insufficient and are unpersuasive.
• ta9000 6mo ago
  Frankly many in the US are over the Trump administration and I expect a massive backlash in the midterms. Do what you want of course but I think the descent of the US is slowing and there will be a return to normalcy after this admin.
  • Ylpertnodi 6mo ago
    Promise?
  • Lapel2742 6mo ago
    It's still the same population that voted for Trump twice. It's the same constitution, the same supreme court, the same parties, the same oligarchie and the same god-king like office of the US president. Nothing will change with respect to trust after the midterms.
• vldszn 6mo ago
  Not sure if it counts, but I’m based in Warsaw, Poland (EU) and working on a free and open-source invoice generator: https://easyinvoicepdf.com https://easyinvoicepdf.com Github: https://github.com/VladSez/easy-invoice-pdf https://github.com/VladSez/easy-invoice-pdf It doesn’t have any backend and all data is stored in the browser.
• unsupp0rted 6mo ago
  > For a long time, I was a satisfied Namecheap customer. Other than them suddenly and arbitrarily deleting your account on a week's notice if you chose to have been born in the wrong country, they're great. Arbitrarily because you can always email them and explain why you chose to be born in the wrong country and how you're actually one of the good ones. But you don't understand: most of their employees are from a country that the wrong country is currently in conflict with, so they can't stand idly by while you sit there with your birth certificate hanging over you.
• _the_inflator 6mo ago
  European here. "Migrating to the EU" is serving a self-fulfilling delusion just as joining the so -called revolutionary forces after WW2 and moving to eastern Europe. The EU does everything to de-industrialize itself and protect its ground by using surveillance tools branded as "child protection" rules. Europeans don't have any tradition in thinking in freedom, in civil rights, in having a state that isn't there to spoil you, but grant basic service to allow you to shape your life the way you want it. Instead, Europeans hunger for "the state", thrive under more and more "protection rules" and supervision over the economy. Anything and everything that requires financial and economic freedom is deemed suspicious and under the disguise of equality needs to be taxed into the ground. Almost no one takes offense by the fact that the predominant topics in the EU center around perceived life-style threads all caused by one person thousands of miles away while wondering that the quality of life and public service going down the hill and every still existing local newspaper looks like an international outlet like New York Times: local topics don't exist. Anything and everything has to be linked to something that can be linked to "the fight against XYZ" not simply pragmatism or anything rational. In Germany there is a former major party imploding in record time, having absolutely no representation anymore. And what these radicals do, is building a self-serving kraken, that checks off any and every checkmark of an totalitarian playbook. And this shall be the basis for making my future depend an services having to exist within these given circumstances? The genius thing about US constitution is the inherit limitation of terms. You see exactly the opposite in anything and everything in the EU and Germany. 14 or 16+ years of being in control means there was never any need to readjust. I am more than happy and willing to move everything out of the EU. Given the fact that europeans think, that a "Hosted in the EU" service is 100% European (whatever the term means) is some sort of discriminatory - something that is dealing with the double standard rampant in the EU. BTW, I am still waiting for full autonomy: nothing from Github or any open source project that traces back to Github was used in this service. European arrogance is so disgusting. Instead of simply changing the tune and accepting the fact, that different circumstances lead to different results, there is some sort of ego distorting the decision making process. How much more evidence is needed, that the EU is lost compared to services done in the US? And you should look at the whole picture, instead of using your gut to draw conclusions. I admire and acknowledge anything and everything that has been achieved in the US in regards to Computer Science. I will never ever migrate to the EU. Never.
• cdrnsf 6mo ago
  Migrating away from US services altogether is an admirable goal. In cases where that's not possible, it's still worth moving off the services and platforms offered by large tech companies.
• levmiseri 6mo ago
  For a European alternative to Google Docs / Notion, we made https://kraa.io/about https://kraa.io/about that might work for you if all you need is a simple editor with collab features.
• XCSme 6mo ago
  Shameless plug: if you think about switching from Google Analytics/Hotjar, check out my project[0] (built in EU, started in Romania, now working on it remotely in Netherlands). If not, happy to hear any criticism or the alternatives you decided to go with instead. [0]: https://www.uxwizz.com https://www.uxwizz.com
• stronglikedan 6mo ago
  What a waste of time. It's all the same regardless of location. There's better things to do than worry about bogeymen.
• leftytak 6mo ago
  I'd like to get out of the matrix as much as the next guy, but I haven't found any reliable alternatives that actually provide equivalent services. And in terms of degoogled phones, I like the idea, but the conspiracy theorist in me tells me, "hhhhmmmm, people are leaving the google / apple ecosystem, and the best phones out there for degooling is Pixel phones by google..." That's like the best move Google made, their "free" services are the main driver for selling their phones.
• whiterose1214 6mo ago
  Lot of discussion about different privacy laws across jurisdictions, and while I understand a lot of users have different approaches to privacy and opinions on political matters, realistically if your threat model is the NSA or some other three-letter agency: a) migrating to a different jurisdiction isn't realistically a massive barrier for them (related: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf) b) if they're taking the time to get a "secret" warrant for you, you have much larger issues. It's like building a car that's resistant to hellfire missiles. It'll help, but if you're getting hellfire missiles thrown at you, you have much larger problems than the structural integrity of your vehicle. Realistically, there's a reason that a lot of these services are underused. Many of them lack reliable support, many of them aren't as useful, and the vast majority lack the interconnectivity that makes services like Drive and Gmail so useful to the vast majority of consumers. In addition, if your evaluation of the utility of US companies is based on which party is in power, you should know that both parties equally don't care about your privacy, and never have.
  • jrexilius 6mo ago
    If your threat model is the NSA, moving to non-US providers actually lowers the barrier as they no longer have to deal with the US constitution and US citizen data. If your threat model is law enforcement (or border/customs, et al), moving to EU really doesn't cause much in the way of speed bumps. In my opinion though, the real threat model is not the actual government, its the US corporations. The NSA wont sell your information to any bad actor with a credit card and, realistically, doesn't care about you. But there is much that can be stolen or exploited for financially-motivated bad-actors from non-extradition countries or others with differing interests than your own.
  • cjs_ac 6mo ago
    Yeah, sure, but this idea that the government is the threat you're defending against is very American. I'm not saying I trust my government with a lot of my personal data, but they're not the most important threat I'm defending against when I look after my privacy online.
  • mixmastamyk 6mo ago
• deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
• jwr 6mo ago
  I can recommend: * Hetzner.de for servers (I've been using their physical servers for many years now, incredible performance per € spent) * Fernand as your CRM, it's smooth and nice and so much better and faster than all the zendesks and freshdesks it's not even funny. (https://getfernand.com/ https://getfernand.com/) * AISLER if you design electronics and need to make PCBs (https://aisler.net/ https://aisler.net/)
  • matt-p 6mo ago
    AISLER are AMAZING at printing boards, but sadly are very very expensive for assembly. Love them though.
  • deepsun 6mo ago
    Thanks, just a note that by "CRM" people typically think of Sales (Salesforce, Hubspot etc), not Support (zendesks and freshdesks).
    • perch56 6mo ago
      Ehm sorry but no. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management so … a support ticket is, by definition, a customer relationship event. Salesforce spending millions to conflate “CRM” with “sales pipeline” was just marketing. Also, Zendesk calls itself a CRM. Freshdesk’s parent is literally named Freshworks CRM. Gartner and Forrester have always put support under the CRM umbrella.
      • deepsun 6mo ago
        I just noted how people typically think, based on my experience in the area. :shrug: PS: By the way, "Can Zendesk be used as a CRM?": https://www.zendesk.co.uk/blog/can-zendesk-be-used-as-a-crm/ https://www.zendesk.co.uk/blog/can-zendesk-be-used-as-a-crm/
    • jwr 6mo ago
      Hmm… In my mind "CRM" is "Customer Relationship Management", and I use Fernand to manage relationships with my customers :-)
• esher 6mo ago
  I don't like all the 'us against them' rhetoric going on. All that European alternatives talk is not much better than America first.
  • Insanity 6mo ago
    It's a geopolitical reality. Not liking the 'us against them' mentality is fair enough, I agree with that, but we can't be blind to what's happening around us. Also, I do think that there's benefit to opting for EU products, as they are generally more 'consumer-rights' friendly than the US alternatives.
  • vages 6mo ago
    Most of the articles I read about this is about showing that going all-European is possible at all. If that feels like it’s an us vs. them thing, I’m not sure how I could change your mind.
    • esher 6mo ago
      Thanks. You don't need to convince me much. I was curious to post a more controversial comment. It's my specific perspective, we run a small hosting business: German company running on American infrastructure (AWS), serving a global customer base. This is much harder to defend these days. We really don't need 'US against them' or 'EU against them'. I am writing a blog post about it.
• malbs 6mo ago
  For email, I've been using migadu for a number of years now. Very happy with the service/support I get for the amount I pay per year
• moltar 6mo ago
  Fastmail is Australian
• ellieh 6mo ago
  > Codeberg is a German-based nonprofit organization, and it’s hard to imagine going wrong with this choice. I like what they're doing, however Codeberg's 14 day uptime is _97.05%_. I've heard from many that downtime is normal there, and is worse than GitHub (which is already... bad). This makes them a non-starter imo, until that improves. With the current trend of things going down all the time, the best way to compete is just to be available.
  • badsectoracula 6mo ago
    One neat bit with Codeberg however is because they're using (actually developing) Forgejo (a Gitea fork which itself is a Gogs fork) you can easily clone the entire thing locally or on your own VPS to have as a backup. Forgejo is even trivial to set up as it is a single self-contained binary you can throw somewhere and it'd work.
• loeber 6mo ago
  This stuff strikes me as misguided. Britain's Ofcom is sending censorship/deanonymization requests around the world, Germany prosecutes thousands of its citizens every year for "offensive" things said online... and you think Europe is a bastion of free speech or privacy? You might find that you have greater rights on US soil.
  • schubidubiduba 6mo ago
    The US president is threatening to shutdown news organizations that report about his war in ways he does not like. The US government is sanctioning European individuals for doing their jobs, preventing them and their families from accessing any US digital service. I could go on. But the message is already clear: Relying on US services is gambling with a ticking time bomb.
    • loeber 6mo ago
      Can you provide credible examples of each of these?
• exiguus 6mo ago
  My next phone will be also one that is supported by GraphenOS. Currently, my private setup is: - VPN: Windscribe [CA] - AI: Mistral [FR] - Phone: De-Googled Fairphone [NL] (F-Droid/Aurora/OpenStreetMap) - Search: Self-hosted SearXNG + YACY (since ~10 years / good setup & documentation) - Domain Provider: INWX [DE] (since +10 years / good setup & documentation) - DNS: Self-hosted AdGuard Home / dnscrypt-proxy 2 + dnsdist / resolver (since ~5y / good setup & documentation) - Git: Self-hosted GitLab (since ~1 year / ok setup & documentation) - Mail/Cal/Card: Self-hosted with Mailcow (since +5 years / good setup & nice documentation) - Password Manager: Self-hosted KeePass2 + SSHFS (since +10 years / easy setup) - Notes: Joplin + self-hosted Joplin-Server (since ~5 years / good setup & documentation) - Feeds: Self-hosted Miniflux (since +5years / easy setup & good documentation) - VPS/Server/Storage/Hosting: netcup [DE], Webtropia [DE], IONOS [DE], OVH [FR], Hetzner [DE], Contabo [DE] - Browser and Mail-Client: Firefox and Thunderbird (since ~2013 - last Opera release) Costs: ~60 EUR/month and between 2 and 4 hours of work a month to maintain. Moving away from PayPal and Amazon is quite hard and currently I search for a Slack alternative that don't need a k8-cluster to run stable or cost >50EUR/month (playing around with Matrix, Rocket.Chat and Mattermost). Recently, I’ve been using https://european-alternatives.eu/ https://european-alternatives.eu/ a lot to help friends and family.
  • thiisguy 6mo ago
    Interested to hear what hardware you have if you’d mind sharing some details.
    • exiguus 6mo ago
      Actually, I moved from dedicated hardware last year to using KVM VPSs, interconnected via VLANs and tunnels (like WireGuard or rathole). Cost and flexibility were the main reasons. This allows me to change locations, upgrade plans, or switch hardware more easily. Before, I ran a Proxmox cluster at home on an two old Supermicro server and a Protectli Vault (which still exists as a single Proxmox instance), plus instances on Hetzner and Webtropia with a dedicated server. That setup cost around 150 EUR/month, even split with a friend. For local storage, I use 2x QNAP NAS. For time synchronization, I rely on 2x NTP270 from CenterClick. As a TAP device, I use the Protectli Vault and a Pi 4b. AdGuard Home is deployed on my OpenWrt GL.iNet routers. Most of my services are now hosted on VPSs: 3x Netcup VPS 1000 ARM G11 (6 vCores, 8GB RAM, 256GB NVMe) 7.29 EUR/month each 3x Netcup VPS piko G11s (1 vCore, 1GB RAM, 30GB SSD) 1.60 EUR/month each 1x Webtropia Cloud VPS S2 (4 vCores, 8GB RAM, 100GB NVMe) 4.99 EUR/month 1x Contabo Storage VPS 20 (3 vCores, 8GB RAM, 400GB SSD) 6.66 EUR/month 2x IONOS VPS Linux M+ (4 vCores, 4GB RAM, 120GB NVMe) 4.00 EUR/month each Total monthly cost for all servers: 46.32 EUR. For failover and load balancing I use DNS (via round-robin and inwx-dns-in-git).
• mcswell 6mo ago
  I suppose I'm the only one who thought this article would be about moving oneself to the EU. Frankly, given the current mess in the US government (Making America Little Again), I would do that if I could swing it financially. But I'm retired, and have no kin that live or lived in the EU.
• zenmac 6mo ago
  >For a long time, I was a satisfied Namecheap customer. They offer good prices, a wide selection of available domains, their DNS management has everything you need, and their support team has helped me quickly on several occasions. But now it was time to look for a comparable provider in the EU. In the end, I settled on hosting.de. Some of the reasons were the prices, reviews, the location in Germany, and the availability of .is domains. So far, everything has been running smoothly; support helped me quickly and competently with one issue; and while prices for non-German domains are slightly higher, they’re still within an acceptable range. Have you tried zone.eu? Think they are related to the Nodemailer people or they acquired them. Would fit the whole Migrating to the EU theme of the article. And it is in English ;-) Couldn't really navigate the hosting.de site without using Google Translator.
• Nifty3929 6mo ago
  I do not feel that the EU is less likely to surveille me than anywhere else. The laws seem mostly geared toward protecting me from corporations - but those aren't the ones I mostly worry about. The EU seems to be mandating surveillance by the government, which is a higher-order concern for me.
• Cribkind 6mo ago
  [dead]