I know most here are US-based, but I thought I'd give this a shot.

I've been running a pretty straightforward ETF portfolio through Ergo in Germany for a while now. Here's my current breakdown:

• 25% in iShares MSCI EM IMI ESG Screen UCITS ETF
• 25% in iShares MSCI Europe ESG Enhanced UCITS ETF
• 50% in iShares MSCI World SRI UCITS ETF EUR

I've recently freed up an extra €500 monthly that I'm looking to invest and am wondering if it would make sense to just bump up my monthly contribution from €1,000 to €1,500 while keeping the same allocation percentages, or should I consider doing something different with this extra cash?

For context, I've got my emergency fund covered (one year's expenses) and no debt to worry about.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

It’s been a few weeks now since the release of iOS 17.4, which

[…] provides new options for app marketplaces, web browsers and payments for residents of the European Union. […]

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am a firm believer in the underlying regulation to it, and have been ever since the possibility of this becoming a reality was in the Brussels air. But so far, I haven’t really been able to come up with a truly practical use case.

Furthermore, I haven’t seen any marketing for an Epic Store, Meta Store, or similar “app marketplaces”, but this may be attributed to the still rather… wobbly legal situation surrounding, notably, still having to direct payments to Apple while not using their store for app distribution. I don’t think there has been any follow-up from Apple (or the EU) that retracts these conditions.

So: Have any fellow EU resident ~tech’ies done anything fun or interesting with this new freedom yet?

To those not affected by this regulation, what would you like to “sideload”, or are perhaps already sideloading on Android?

Do any of you think big companies will move their entire palette onto an alternative store anytime soon, e.g. Facebook and sister products? To be honest, I doubt this will happen, otherwise it would’ve long occurred on the Google Play Store as well.

My ideas were:

• I’ve thought about trying to install Minecraft (the full version, probably using Pojav), or a game of similar caliber, on my phone just for fun and to see how well the iPhone GPU really fares against a “real” game, but didn’t find the time yet for looking into it.
• Also personally, I’d love to see a real “root-capable” shell on iOS, but I don’t think that will ever be a thing irrespective of how much sideloading Apple is forced to allow into their OS.