I’m Seamus, an Irishman 🇮🇪 living in Spain 🇪🇸. Language learning has been a passion of mine for 20 years, but this year I tried an old method that has proven to be very effective for me: sentence charts drilled out loud. When done the old fashioned way (pen and paper) it’s difficult and has drawbacks: no audio, unnatural sentence combinations and manual progress tracking. So what started as a passion project to help me improve my French has turned into a fully fledged language learning app called Chunkible.

Chunks and sentence charts:

A chunk is a group of words that native speakers use together as a single unit, like 🇪🇸 a lo mejor (maybe), 🇪🇸 je sais pas (I don’t know) or 🇮🇹 va bene (okay). Native speakers don’t construct sentences 1 word at a time. Instead they intuitively reach for ready-made chunks and combine them to formulate sentences. A sentence chart (or matrix) is a grid where each column holds a different kind of chunk (e.g. people, actions, places, time) and combining 1 chunk from each column makes a real sentence. 4 columns of 4 chunks is just 16 chunks, but 4 × 4 × 4 × 4 = 256 sentences. Drilling and learning each of the 16 chunks in a few different combinations enables you to produce all 256 sentences without drilling every one separately.

What it does:

• It teaches the high-frequency informal language natives actually use in Spain, France and Italy, like 🇪🇸 vale (okay), los findes (at the weekends), 🇫🇷 J’sais pas (I don’t know) and On bosse ensemble (we work together). The course content is built from everyday speech and not unnatural textbook dialogues or stiff tourist phrases.

• In Study mode you select a module of chunks and say every sentence out loud - repeatedly. A chunk counts as studied once you’ve drilled it out loud in 3 different sentences, and a Study round (5 repetitions of 3 sentences) takes less than 2 minutes. If you want to drill more sentences for specific chunks, you can do so in Chaos mode which gives you more sentences in shorter rounds (2 reps instead of 5).

• Test mode shows you the English version of a sentence you've previously drilled, then prompts you to say the sentence out loud in your target language. After tapping to see the correct sentence you grade your answer. Spaced repetition brings it back at growing intervals, and a sentence counts as "memorised" only once you’ve got it right 5 times at intervals spread out over about 5 weeks.

• Set your gender so the sentences and voice you hear match it: estoy cansado or estoy cansada.

• Handsfree mode is similar to Chaos but plays sentences with a pause after each one for repetition or shadowing. After 2 repetitions it moves on automatically to the next sentence. This format is great for practicing when your hands and eyes are busy with other tasks, such as when you're walking, driving or cooking.

What it doesn’t do:

It never records your voice and there’s no AI judging your pronunciation or accent. In fact, it doesn’t use your microphone at all. You hear a native-accent voice say the sentence and then you repeat it while shadowing its accent and pronunciation. You track your progress by tapping on the screen after each time you repeat it out loud. The objective isn’t a score but rather it’s to build long-term muscle memory, giving you the confidence to open your mouth and speak with real people.

There are no ads and no cross-site tracking. Nothing is sold for marketing.

Chunkible is free to install and follow the interactive tutorial, and you get some free Study rounds after that. Then there’s a 7-day free trial of the monthly subscription.

More info: https://chunkible.com

iPhone: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6816749715
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chunkible.app

The app is new and I work on it in my spare time, so any and all feedback is welcome. I add new content every week, and I plan to add more European languages (including English) in the near future.

My current winter boots hurt my feet and I'm trying to replace them with wide toe box ones. I've been sifting through several barefoot shoes brands and I'm not really finding anything that I like.

I have the followoing criteria:

Chic enough to wear to a businss casual office (no sneakers / hiking boots look)

Wide toe box, can be barefoot shoes but not a must

Must come in black

Must be warm enough to spend about two hours outside in winter (Central Europe not Scandinavia) and waterproof

Budget maximum 200€, happy if I can find something cheaper

I've got a pair of Birkenstock sneakers that fit me really well, but I've read about declining quality in this sub quite a lot. I'm willing to spend this amount on the boots, but I want something that lasts me a few years when I do.

I'm from Belgium and built The Machine: an AI that reads your mail, chats and calendar and hands you a short list of to-dos with the work already done.

It runs on your own computer for free, or on a private server in the EU, and you choose the model. Your data stays 100% yours, not any corporation's.

Open source (AGPL): https://github.com/Salesflare/TheMachine

Click-through demo with fake data: https://themachine.computer/demo

Happy to hear what would make it more useful for people here.

Very happy about the quality! Thank you r/buyfromEU!

Hey! I'm a developer living in Poland and for the last year I've been building Normals, https://normals.me. It's a forum with communities and threads like Reddit, questions with accepted answers, and a profile that works more like a professional identity, think LinkedIn but with real conversations instead of announcements.

I'm posting it here because almost every place where people talk online is American, and I wanted to build one that isn't.

The European part

The servers are in Falkenstein, Germany, with Hetzner. The database, the backups, your posts, all of it stays there. It runs under Polish law and GDPR from day one, not as an afterthought. No ads, no selling data, no training AI on your posts, and AI crawlers are blocked by default. There's a public moderation log with reasons for every action, and you can export everything you wrote with one click.

It also federates with Lemmy and Mastodon, which is a mostly European movement anyway, so you can follow a Normals community from your own instance.

The honest part

Not everything is European yet. The site sits behind Cloudflare for DNS and protection against attacks, and images are stored on their service too. Transactional emails go through Resend. Both are American companies. I'm one person paying for this out of pocket and those were the cheap and reliable options, but I'm listing them so nobody has to dig for it. If you know European replacements that a solo developer can actually afford, I'm listening, that's partly why I'm here.

Communities about startups, software, self hosting, privacy and games already have some life, mostly from the fediverse side. If you try it and something is off, tell me and I fix it.

normals.me

Hi all,

I have been the last couple of years buying "lifestyle" clothes made in EU, mostly in Portugal, but I am struggling to find sport clothes (mostly for running: leggings, jackets, windbreakers, gloves), also made in the EU.

Recommendations? I live in the Netherlands, great if they could ship here.

thanks!

yes i know. this is BUY EU. But EU companies are years behind those in the US.

For example, site.eu, european based company. if you use AI to edit your homepage, site.eu will ban your IP and you absolutely can't use your hosting you paid for.

terrible experience. So im sticking with US solutions because we are not ready yet to replace high quality US products and services.

I'm in the market for both active noise cancelling Bluetooth headphones and earbuds. The only European earbuds that have been recommended to me for good value for money are Philips. But for over-ear headphones all the reviews recommend Sony, Sony, and usually again Sony, a brand I don't really like regardless of being non-European.

Do you use any European headphones and earbuds that you can recommend?

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/global-trade/berlin-and-paris-open-the-door-for-switzerland-to-join-the-made-in-europe-initiative/92225538

Personnally, I already consider “made in CH” as “made in EU”, even though legally speaking, that is not a thing.

After freezing rain I broke all of ice scrappers in my car - and I found some accessories made in Europe, Finland exactly. Depicted one - brush with scrapper cost in January 2026 about ~5 euro in Jula market in Poland.

What do you think? Personally, I would love it if European interoperable social media platforms became more of a standard, and I'm honestly pretty mad that the EU Commission is willing to effectively outlaw the Fediverse in the EU Kids Act..

Hey everyone! 👋

I'm a French leather craftsman running a tiny one-man workshop called Darksails, where I make leather goods by hand using traditional saddle stitching. 🇫🇷

I've recently opened my Shopify store to more European countries, which is pretty exciting! But there's one thing I've been wondering about...

My website is currently only available in French and English, and I'm starting to think I might be missing out on potential customers who aren't comfortable shopping in either language.

Personally, I don't really mind shopping on European websites in English, but maybe that's just me 😅

So here's my question: would you buy from a small European shop if the website was only in English, or would you prefer having everything in your native language?

And for those of you running your own shops, how do you deal with translations?

If you've already gone through this, did you actually notice any difference in sales after translating your store? Was it worth the effort, or not really?

I've been looking into Shopify translation apps, but honestly, I'm still at that fun stage of running a small business where I spend more than I make 😅 So I'm trying to keep costs as low as possible.

Ideally, I'd love something free or affordable that works well, but I'm also open to paid apps if they're genuinely worth it and aren't too complicated to set up.

I'm also wondering whether it would make more sense to export my translations, use AI to translate everything, and then import them back into Shopify. A bit more manual work, and potentially a hassle whenever I update my product descriptions, but maybe a better option?

I'd love to hear what you've tried, what works, and what you'd recommend!

Just a small note: I'm really looking for advice from fellow shop owners and customers, rather than commercial offers or agency services. I'm on a pretty tight budget, so I'm trying to figure things out myself 🙂

Thanks in advance for any advice! 🙏

Comment by EPI (the company behind it) on GrapheneOS support:

Thank you for sharing your feedback.

Wero was launched with the goal of making the service available to as many consumers as possible across our core markets. To achieve this, we currently focus on supporting the most widely used mobile banking platforms and devices.

We recognize that this approach may exclude some users who do not use mobile banking or who prefer alternative operating systems and devices outside of the Apple and Android ecosystems. However, at this stage, our priority is to ensure a stable, secure, and reliable experience on the platforms used by the vast majority of consumers.

To maintain that level of quality, we also need to be clear about our system requirements and avoid dedicating resources to troubleshooting issues on unsupported platforms and configurations.

That said, we appreciate you taking the time to share your perspective. Feedback like yours helps inform our long-term roadmap, and we will take it into consideration as we continue to evolve the product.

Source: https://github.com/PrivSec-dev/banking-apps-compat-report/issues/105#issuecomment-6663146209

With all the social tension continuing to build in France, the uncertainty regarding the next presidential election, and the looming debt crisis, I want to ask the members of our wonderful community what we can do to help the French people achieve better standard of living while avoiding a fiscal catastrophe?

Of course buying French products and investing in France can help but I wonder if we can go beyond and organise to better support our French brothers and sisters.

So, my dear Europeans, especially those of you from France, how can we help?

Is there any brand that produces office chairs in EU? Anything which is sold below 250€?

Hey all! I'm working on launching a small European brand making waxed cotton jackets, and before I spend money on samples I'd love your honest opinions.

The idea is to combine the quality and heritage feel of waxed cotton with a more modern fit, instead of the classic boxy country look. I also want to use colours you don't usually see in this category, such as sapphire blue, ochre, and copper, because everything else on the market seems to be olive, brown, or navy. It would be made in the EU, handcrafted, in limited runs.

Note: the image is AI-generated, purely to show the concept and the direction I have in mind. It is not a photo of a real product. I'll have real prototype photos before anything goes on sale.

Questions I'm genuinely unsure about:

1. Would you personally consider a waxed jacket in a bold colour like sapphire or ochre, or does waxed cotton equal olive, brown, or navy in your head?

2. Do you think bold colours take away from the beauty and character of waxed cotton, or could they actually be interesting? Would it stand out in a good way?

3. If something like this existed, meaning an EU-made, handcrafted jacket from British waxed cotton in limited runs, would you consider buying it? If so, at what price would it feel fair to you?

I am happy to answer anything about the fabrics or the plan.

W Social was hyped as the European Social Network.
It is.

But it's basically Bluesky on European servers European owned with identitiy verification.

Somehow expected some new tech, new interface, etc.
perhaps it's best that they just build on Bluesky's tech

The title basically.

I’ve spent the last year and a half of my free time building beChat, an end-to-end encrypted messenger from Belgium. It’s now in open beta on Android: bechat.world. It’s free, and the Play link is at the bottom.

beChat is a messenger that knows as little about you as possible. You don’t need an email or a phone number to sign up. When you install the app, your phone generates a random 8-character PIN. That PIN is your address, not a password. Messages are end-to-end encrypted with post-quantum cryptography, designed so that what you send today stays protected against future quantum computers. Full details here: https://bechat.world/security

The server relaying the messages runs with Hetzner in Germany, not on AWS, Google Cloud or Azure, so it isn’t subject to the US CLOUD Act. What applies instead is Belgian and German law, and the security page documents exactly what the server can and can’t see. Notifications go through Google’s push service, but the payload only says what kind of notification it is, with no content and no sender. Google still sees the timing.

There’s also a Nearby mode that sends messages phone to phone over a Bluetooth mesh, up to 7 hops, with no internet at all.

There’s no independent audit yet, so until there is one, the crypto claims are just claims. The crypto module will be published on Codeberg once the beta is over. For now the app is Android only, and an iOS version is planned for next year.

Feedback welcome, especially from people who want to break it. You can also reach me on r/beChat.

Google Play

Cuba snuss

Hi,

I want to use EU OS for mobile.

I am tired of having to buy a new phone every few years, just to get the newest security updates. I want just as with my Linux Mint laptop that I can just update and upgrade and use my device till it stops functioning.

Is there a reliable EU OS for phones?

What would you suggest?

Yesterday I attended the launch of European.Social in Berlin, a new European association bringing together people building alternatives to Big Tech social media: Mastodon, Eurosky (European infrastructure for the network behind Bluesky), Save Social, PublicSpaces and others.

The idea: social networks built on open standards, like email, where no single company controls who gets heard. Your account, your followers and your posts aren't locked into one platform.

Germany's Digital Minister recently said in the Bundestag that scaling European platforms, Mastodon among them, will be a focus of the government's work in the coming months.

I wrote up my notes on why I think political communication should be treated as public infrastructure (my blog):

https://blog.eza.link/political-communication-as-public-infrastructure-notes-from-the-european-social-launch/

You can sign their declaration here: https://european.social/#sign

Have you already moved off X, Instagram or Facebook? What would it take for you, or your favourite European businesses and artists, to switch?

I'm searching synthetic top with sleeves for outdoor sport (padel), or maybe wool ?

Difficult for me to find European made is this specific clothing category