A big store chain in italy (mediaworld/mediamarkt) sells laptops without license as well, of course with a lower price than the equivalent with windows license
With sumup I get 0.5% cashback up to a whopping 10€/ month lol. There are other cards giving cashback, I think Amex blu has a 1% with no upper bound of monetary cashback
I haven't followed the legislative process, where can I find that the eu wanted a single registry but the country pushed for national ones? Because i have never read it.
I'm not saying it's not true, it's just that it's so hard to follow these things when one is supposed to have a life as well
"According to the Händlerbund, the European Commission's proposal to abolish the requirement has been on the table since December 2025. However, discussions in the Council of the EU were suspended a few weeks ago after a majority of member states spoke out against it."
"A restricted version is currently being discussed in the European Parliament. According to this, an exemption is only to apply to micro-enterprises with up to 49 employees and an annual turnover of a maximum of 10 million euros. A first reading is scheduled for October 2026 at the earliest."
a) exempt companies with under 50 employees to not kill small business
AND
b) are okay with doing so, ie. there's little consequences from exempting companies from this
Then this is the mark of a terrible piece of legislation. What problem are we actually addressing here by creating another fee collecting, headache inducing registration regime and the 684th enforcement bureaucracy in the EU over yet another trivial consumer issue?
Yes, single use plastics aren't great. Incentivize companies to move away from them by creating positive market incentives instead of creating an anti-productive, full time packaging Stasi.
It's almost as if the people attracted to a career in government can only imagine their subjects responding to the stick, even though the carrot is often far more persuasive. This is the classic downfall of all economic central planning.
The problem with this particular topic is it's a religious one for many in the urban monoculture. They don't ultimately care about packaging waste, they care about punishment and repentance for humanity's existence. We've angered the gods and must repent via punitive measures! To incentivize good behavior is antithetical to that, even if it is more effective at actually doing the thing.
What does "positive market incentives" mean for you? My immediate thought is various subsidies, but given how those usually end up (easy money for companies spending more on lawyers than actual productive work), I'd much rather just have a tax.
The tax won't actually create the desired outcome though. In practice the tax is basically just a wealth transfer from the private sector to the state, who will use that money to dump into boomer pensions and not invest in packaging innovation.
Punitive taxation doesn't invent new technologies. Investment does.
For example, the only reason the electric car market even exists today is because of subsidies 15 years ago.
I agree subsidies can easily turn into a boondoggle, but so can the state itself given more tax money.
Ultimately, I personally think government choosing to focus time and money on this specific thing over other far more important issues is dumb (like say, the thousands of young men dying in Ukraine right now, the social welfare debt spiral, the lack of a capital markets union, the lack of any coherent military strategy, etc. etc.)
But if we're going to posture as if we actually care about this issue, we are going about the desired outcome the completely wrong way.
>if the Europeans really want to, they could produce a lot more by converting over to 'war mode'
As an Italian there's definitely been a perceptible shift due to the increase in defense spending. Leonardo now makes TV ads (something I had never seen before), they advertise on newspapers (...)
>But maybe I'm wrong? If you are in your 20s now and feel like writing down your thoughts about this topic, consider yourself challenged! I'd love to read them.
i'm 24. I think that improvements in tech nowadays mostly involve the hobbyist of any niche, while the general public is ever more satisfied with what already exists.
sd to hd to full hd was cool, full hd to 1440p i can see the difference, at 4k yes but it is not so big. Miniled is something people won't really care about imho (and they can already go very bright, i'm only waiting for more minileds to be integrated in monitors before changing mine).
Audio, well, most people will be satisfied with cheap razer/gaming/bose/whatever headphones are there. Sure anc is cool if you're in a noisy environment quite often
Bikes, well at 24yo i'm not really knowledgeable to say whether a bianchi that costs more than a motorbike is worth the upgrade from an older model... but ebikes are kinda nice even for people outside of the cycling world
However, what has happened with audio and video - and a change that i can perceive -, is the prices of things (not cpu/gpu related, for obvious reasons) coming down. oleds were so espensive ten years ago, now they are not. 4k minileds monitor are as expensive now as my regular non miniled 1440p va monitor from ~4/5 years ago. Hifiman has (permanently) slashed the prices of its headphones more than once over the years. It is not exciting as new tech but it is "just" nice
p.s. wifi printers are a pain in the ass much more than cable printes, and for llms i am kinda happy with them, i'll give you that, they're a godsend for studying; i'm less excited about the idea they'll replace most workers
