Sideloading is simply a matter of installing an APK file onto your phone. Where that APK file comes from does not matter.
If Google bans the banking apps I cannot imagine that the banks will just accept and tolerate that without a fight. They would be the ones likely distributing their own app
“Go to Rabobank.nl, and download our Rabobank app”
That depends entirely on how Wero works (with which I have no experience yet because I do not have access to Wero until my bank rolls it out next year) for in-store payments
If Wero works by simply scanning a QR code, and not through NFC (Apple or Google Pay), there is no dependency. It’s just data being transferred through a visual code, with which you can independently communicate with your bank’s servers.
That is how it used to work with iDeal for online purchases anyway… So I don’t see why you cannot use the same method for in-store payments.
Edit: I think I misunderstood what you were referring to. You are referring to the apps being installed on phones running Android or iOS. Not using Google Pay or Apple Pay to verify the payments.
That is a different problem that probably needs to be tackled separately. There are de-Googled versions of Android that could hypothetically gain traction, but even if that happens it would take years for people to swap out their phones as they become old.
Sideloading is also a way in which you could hypothetically get existing phones back up and running after apps get removed (for Android anyway, not so much for iOS)
The Dutch tax agency did the same, mostly because there are supposedly no sufficiently capable European alternatives.
(Worth specifying that it’s specifically about the Office 365 suite, and not the software for handling tax returns)
With 27 member states and only 6 bank notes, you cannot represent every country no matter how many culturally significant people each country has. It forces you to pick at most six, and the rest is simply not represented. That is why the original notes represented the general idea of architectural styles and not specific real-world examples of those architectural styles.
The proposal for landscapes, rivers and birds seems like a much better one, in my opinion.
I’m not sure if I like the idea of putting the faces of specific people on the banknotes. Wasn’t the whole reason of the fake architectural styles and bridges on the notes, to not give preferential treatment to any one country?
Now they are proposing specific people from specific countries:
So what about representation for the other countries?
I knew Weird Al wasn’t real! He’s like Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny
Clearly there is places where pump theft is not that common or tackled in some other way, because there are countries where post-pay is still the default.
I do know that at some post-pay pumps the cashier has the ability to lock and unlock the pumps from inside
Unmanned stations have existed for quite some time here, they are just not the only way to fuel up.
Manned stations are still very common, if not the default, and if a station is manned it is usually not prepaid.
In the Netherlands it’s a mix of both these days.
During the daytime you pump, and then walk inside to pay afterwards. At night, when the building itself is closed, you pay using the terminal and only then are you allowed to start fueling up
There is also unmanned stations without a shop. They are pre-paid all day by default.
Missouri filed a lawsuit against China for hoarding personal protective equipment in the early months of the pandemic
Didn’t the exact opposite happen? A bunch of countries, including mine, did not have sufficient stockpiles of PPE such as facemasks and China sent them some of their stock in the early pandemic
I may or may not be misremembering things
From top left to bottom right, horizontal first:
The only ones that are a bit ambiguous are the Password Manager and the VPN logos imo
deleted by creator
Nearby is probably relative. Almost all of Europe and a significant part of Africa is in the same timezone
They may also decide not to scale up production. After all, they just started making 2-3x on existing products.
Another thing to consider is that the current spike in demand is almost entirely fueled by datacenters used for AI.
It takes years to set up new manufacturing facilities, and the AI bubble popping is still going to happen at one point or another. They may simply decide not to increase manufacturing capacity because they believe that this spike in demand is temporary.
Building new capacity costs money, and if the demand suddenly drops you cannot make that money back on sales.
Even the NOS didn’t really spend a lot of attention on it. I only really saw one or two articles on the topic.
That’s nothing compared to, for example, the row with China over Nexperia that has been brewing over the past two months.
Welcome!
This place is not quite as active as Reddit, simply by virtue of the userbase being a lot smaller. But I’ve quite enjoyed the past three years I’ve been on this platform.
My first recommendation would be to subscribe to some communities (equivalent to subreddits) you are interested in.
The main communities are mostly covered, but if they are particularly niche they might either be rather quiet or simply don’t exist yet. At that point the only real way is to get them going is to contribute yourself.
Also, small piece of potentially unsolicited advice:
If a community is hosted on a domain that ends in .ml, they are likely a “Marxist-Leninist” (authoritarian communist, aka “tankie”) community. The same holds for individual users.
The moderation in tankie communities (e.g. lemmy.ml) is generally not very great, in my experience.
They tend to not be particularly accepting of any criticism of their beliefs, so these places tend to turn into an echo chamber.
Personally I blocked lemmy.ml, and the overall Lemmy experience has been better for it.
Enjoy your stay :)
Don’t Stop Me Now is great too
I would join, but 8 PM is 2 AM in my timezone
Most people aren’t cheering that we are rearming, but they understand that it is a necessary evil.
Russia is right at our doorsteps and is increasingly aggressive. So we either rearm in the hope that that threat keeps Russia at bay, or we don’t and will hopelessly lose if Russia invades.
Personally I prefer the first option.
Because people expect their app to be on the app store, and the app store is still available?
Sideloading is more of a pain for the average user compared to just downloading it from the app store, and as long as it isn’t necessary there is not much reason for banks to accomodate it. However, that doesn’t mean that once it becomes a necessity, it’s impossible to set up methods involving sideloading to get around restrictions from Google.
Edit: As an example, the Chinese have Android phones, but the Google Play Store is not available in China. They have different app stores to “sideload” applications onto their phones. In theory they could also install APKs, if that is how apps would be provided to them.