I don’t remember, sorry.
But that is exactly how it should be. Why are we throwing our money collectively after institutions that provide zero benefit outside of the solution they deliver? I don’t imagine service providers will go away, there’s no reason for some municipality of 5000 in a remote region to have their own full IT team, but if everything is open source every improvement that happens in one place can benefit somewhere else.

Fair enough, thanks for the response

I’ve been arguing this for a few years. Create a solid, open source ecosystem for all the things we use for-profit providers for currently. It’d be a massive gain for European governments, and governments/businesses globally to have open enterprise solutions that are maintained with significant budgets (less than what we’re all paying the US now)

I’m curious, since you’re already on Protonmail, why not use their VPN too?

I feel like this is unfortunately pretty likely to be misunderstood, like the original comment did

Had to look it up, it’s close. Wiki says the foundations were laid in 1785, so not long after the US independence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaeger_Corps_(Denmark)

in Europe you have to develop and sometimes apply for permits and licenses for each country

Honestly, EU Inc, announced at the WEF, is one of the few good things to come out of that mess. A single framework for running a business in all EU countries, meaning expansion across borders will be simplified enormously. Should allow for easier growth in the future.

There are certain sayings, phrases or slang that I may not be intimately familiar with.

This says nothing about your fluency. There are tonnes of English slang that Americans are unfamiliar with, and vice versa.
Hell, there’s a lot of Singaporean English that doesn’t exist in the minds of Brits and Americans, but Singaporeans are still fluent in English, it’s just different from what people consider “true” English.

If someone has trouble seeing cyclists who have all the required visibility measures

That was the point I was making. Cyclists SHOULD be wearing/using all of these at night/in the rain, for everyone’s safety.

If you can’t see cyclists during the day in fair weather without them wearing a hi-vis vest, you shouldn’t be driving. I think we’re on the same page there.

That’s not victim blaming, that’s being sensible.

As someone who both bikes a lot and drives, seeing bikes in the city at night on a rainy day, with all the various lights, water reflections and loss of visibility from rain is a nightmare if they don’t use lights, or have poor ones. Hi-vis vests are a godsend, makes life easier all around.

Stop apologising, start acting

No mainstream alternative to Android/iOS exists. Same goes for Visa/Mastercard. All of them are US products.

Essentially shutting down all smartphones and most consumer payments would be pretty crippling.

I hope this whole thing is enough of a wake-up call for the EU to put (more) effort into a lasting solution.