MFA is a requirement of the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) in the EU and many banks use their apps for authorising online card payments. Its also common to use apps as 2FA for logging in to online banking or making bank transfers.
There can be alternatives in some cases (some banks offer code generating card readers, for example) but for personal accounts in particular, it would probably be difficult to operate without banking apps.
The point obviously isn't to give grocery stores more money for no reason, it's to support products that have higher quality standards.
Take poultry as an example, standards vary by county, but the differences between quality labels can be stark. Cheap poultry is often raised in tiny indoor cages and they need to be pumped full of antibiotics due to the unhealthy living conditions. On the other end of the spectrum, organic poultry is free to roam in fields and the coops are regularly moved or kept clean, avoiding the need for antibiotics in the first place.
Even if you disagree that the latter provides a better quality product, it's pretty clear that supporting brands with higher standards results in better living conditions for the animals.
Somewhat tangential, but the EU has a directive mandating electronic invoicing for public procurement.
One of the standards that has come out of that is EN 16931, also known as ZUGFeRD and Factur-X, which basically involves embedding an XML file with the invoice details inside a PDF/A. It allows the PDF to be used like a regular PDF but it also allows the government procurement platforms to reliably parse the contents without any kind of intelligence.
It seems like a nice solution that would solve a lot of issues with ingesting PDFs for accounting if everyone somehow managed to agree a standard. Maybe if EN 16931 becomes more broadly available it might start getting used in the private sector too.
The CFA franc is used by 14 countries. Until 2020, those countries were required to deposit half of their foreign exchange reserves with the French Treasury. France also maintains a military presence in several of its former colonies.
Colonialism may have ended, but France continues to exert influence in Africa.
The issue isn't necessarily the form of the agreement, it's verifying the identity of the signatories.
If you can't see the other person signing the agreement, you need to verify that the right person is signing it. It's much the same issues that exist with simple passwords versus 2FA; shared accounts, piracy, identity theft, etc.
eIDAS is a set of standards for verifying identity that is backed by law. It allows businesses to follow protocols (some similar to 2FA) with the assurance that it will be held up in court.
> When 90% of the "content moderation" decisions lean towards one end of the political spectrum that's hardly a mere disagreement at the adjudication stage.
Which end of the political spectrum do you mean? I've often heard of them being criticized for leaning too far to the liberal-left but the examples you gave are a little confusing.
The Chinese government is authoritarian left-wing so that kind of aligns with the anti-right sentiment but it goes against liberalism.
Parler is conservative/authoritarian right-wing, so that holds up but the Iran example is also conservative/authoritarian right-wing which contradicts that?
The biggest bias I see for the English language with foreign languages being poorly moderated. It is a business after all, so they probably only invest as much in moderation as they need to to keep their advertisers.
Flamanville 3 in France was started in 2007 and is due to be launched in 2022. It's the first of its generation (in France at least) so the delays and cost overruns are not unexpected. Even so, if more are to be built they will not come into service until the mid 2030's at the earliest. I don't think we can wait that long.
Most reactors in France are 1st gen whereas the new one being built is 3rd gen and the first of its kind in France. The increased safety has made construction more complicated than previous reactors but a lot of those issues are being worked out so future reactors would probably be built more quickly and cost efficiently.
We use Calendly to let users book appointments for calls. They submit their number and we call them at whatever time they choose within our availability hours.
If you know when you'll be available in advance maybe a similar setup could work for you.
Pricing is definitely an issue, I think one of other big issues that is often overlooked is that countries with some form of national or regulated health insurance have an incentive to encourage preventative care.
When everyone including healthy people are insured it makes sense to optimize for long term costs and that means keeping people healthy and dealing with health issues as early as possible to avoid letting them get worse and more expensive.
As an example, I've seen insurance proactively provide assistance to help people quit smoking. They don't have to pay for patches or whatever but they do because it's a lot cheaper than cancer treatment.
Medical practitioners and private institutions are not required to follow the state set prices in France. It's the limit of how much the social security will cover so essentially anyone who sets prices above those limits is competing with "free".
Technically social security covers 70% of the state set price and insurance must at a minimum cover the other 30% but that's the general idea.
The engines field is generally used for package consumers so when you do an `npm install` you know if the package is compatible with your local node version.
Pinning the Node.js version for tools like nvm is used by developers of the package or app developers who want to use the same version of node locally and in production, for example.
Democracy requires an informed electorate and publicly funded broadcasters are a means to achieve that. The government must have as little control as possible over their funding to ensure their journalistic independence.
That's the guiding theory at resulted in most European countries having some variation of a public broadcaster funded by TV (formally radio) licences.
There are many implementation differences between countries and none of them are perfect but I would argue that those I'm familiar with serve their purpose.
I know a few people who put tape over their camera so I can see some market for this. One friend in particular had an ex install some sort of remote access software on her laptop which he used to access her webcam.
Personally I like to think I'm careful about who has access to my hardware and I trust the webcam light. Theoretically someone might be able to hack the firmware but if I was being directly targeted by a sufficiently capable and motivated actor my webcam would not be my biggest concern.
In the context of the census that certainly makes sense and there are obviously strong links between religious backgrounds and political beliefs.
The reason I mention it is because I've encountered too many people in continental Europe who assume the Troubles were purely due differences in religious beliefs which seems absurd given how similar those two branches of catholicism are. I realize it's entirely based on my personal experience but I've seen it too often to ignore!
There are reduced rates of VAT for certain categories of products and services so payment processors would need to know what the charge they are processing is for.
It's not uncommon for invoices to include multiple VAT rates in certain industries so that would add another level of complexity.
A grocery store will charge different rates for essentials and non-essentials, a builder will charge different rates for materials and services, and there are probably other examples that apply to online sales too.
There can be alternatives in some cases (some banks offer code generating card readers, for example) but for personal accounts in particular, it would probably be difficult to operate without banking apps.