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Comment by TazeTSchnitzel | Hacker News Reader

I don't think Denmark in particular is preparing, because at the end of the year their national postal service will cease to deliver letters (after the government removed the legal requirement for it to do so), and more than 85% of Danes will only be able to receive government and commercial letters in digital form via a privately owned cloud service (e-Boks). That is an alarming level of concentration. If I were hypothetically in control of a state that was planning to go to war with Denmark and had the resources for hybrid warfare, I know which company's servers I'd want to take down first.

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Denmark are. Only two days ago the danish PM on public TV said the had ordered the head of the danish military to "buy, buy, buy" [1][2] [as many weapons as the can get their hands on]. This is repeatition of of what she said 6 months ago[3]

[1] https://www.dr.dk/drn-video/67b5f9f966d82a0507aeda6a

[2] https://www.berlingske.dk/politik/mette-frederiksen-vil-slaa...

[3] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/denmark-boost-2025-26-d...

Not 2 days ago, but in February, iirc.

We are thankfully on quite the shopping spree, we have also decided to include women into conscription (and that conscripts can be used for real missions, iirc) and we are financing and building Ukrainian weapons like the Flamingo.

Also, Scandinavia has pooled our airforces into one airforce, surpassing the UK, France etc. in size.

Belgian youngsters aged 17 wil get a voluntary call for 'vacation camps' in the army in a few weeks. Recently a lot of people were hired four the federal and regional governments to handle strategic supplies. All Belgians were asked to stock their own 3 day emergency kit.

I mean war aside, the 3 day kit is always a good idea - power outages happen, freak weather events, supply chain issues, strikes, or even not feeling like going out which is very common.

As for the army vacation camp, I think it's good experience (same with scouting for example), although there's probably a huge recruitment angle there.

Personally I wouldn't mind a stint in the military, but at the same time I'm nearly 40 and not exactly fit if you catch my drift. That said, the military is also looking for a lot of reservists, people who do some jobs outside of their day job, some in IT security, base guarding, that kind of thing.

I think Belgium is the most stable unstable country in the world. We're always on strike, only surpassed by the French. At any given moment one of our seven governments is in a state of crisis. Somehow I feel like we'll make it though three days of lockdown without any issues.

I tried to sign up as a reservist - civil personell - because I feel like my logistic expertise could come in handy but sadly I passed 40 a few years ago and I'm deemed to old for service, even as a reservist.

Damn, France's plan to retake Wallonia has been discovered!

Au contraire, mon ami. In all the geopolitical madness it's time to reclaim what was ours onder Charles Quint. Habsburg rises again! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_V,_Holy_Roman_Emperor#...

Fun fact: Karel spoke Flemish natively.

Diets, indeed.

She repeated it two days ago on live danish TV. See link 1 and 2 in my previous comment

Aaaaaand we just bought for 7.7 billion euro earth-based European airdefenses.

Wow. I'm in software and my whole house is as automated as can be, but I want my important documents physical, and delivered via the mail.

Credit card bills, notices, etc. I don't want to have to log in every time I want to check a bill / notification, only to have to pull out my Yubikey or phone.

Not to mention having to click 'no' to all the popups about new credit cards or subscription upgrades.

My country does this, however there are multiple authentication options.

The main one is a private company that provides an authentication system using private certificates. When you try to login to an authenticated website your phone pops up a message asking you to verify the login and enter your PIN. That signs the request with your private certificate and sends it back to the provider. Other actions such as transfering money or signing contracts require you to authenticate using a different certificate, with a different PIN. The private certificate stays on your device (there are mechanisms to generate a new one if you lose your device).

The other options are ID cards with a USB card reader or a mobile signature in the SIM card of your phone. For government website and utility companies you can usually authenticate with your bank as another option.

I prefer it to username/password as all I need is my ID number (which unlike the US doesn't need to be private) and my phone. And basically everything you need to use to adult uses this system.

What if phone is destroyed? It's a mobile device, can happen any time.

Sounds exactly like the system we used in Belgium.

I don't think the system you explain is bad. It's essentially PKI.

My issues are deliverability: what if I get the email and never open it? What if it gets marked as spam?

And it requires me to read emails, something I've actually tried to reduce because every subject is screaming for attention.

From next year, national post will be handled by a different company than currently does the job.

From next year there will still be one private company claiming to offer this service, yes, but they are under no obligation to keep doing so, and if the market is already so unprofitable that the national postal operator immediately exited it once freed from the obligation of remaining in it, it is questionable how long a private company will remain.

One particular concern I have is whether that company will be connected to the Universal Postal Union; if they aren't, sending letters to and from foreign countries will suddenly be a minefield. I don't know and have been trying to find out.

You seen to have failed to understand both solutions and changes you mention... the technology stack of our digital post and the change of letter delivery (I don't blame you, many of my fellow Danes don't understand it either).

But Eboks is not holding all digital post of all our citizens, it's one of at least 3 services who we can choose from to read our mail from the governmental organizations. It's a freemarket compromise with multiple private and public solutions the public can choose from.

Also while yes the private company that did deliver physical mail no longer will, another have taken its place for physical letter... Isn't that freemarket capitalism? Why should one private entity have the contract for all time?

Your post does read like the old "Denmark is a specialist hellhole" posts from the conservatives when Bernie Sanders dared using the country as an example of doing Social Wellfare + Free market right.

"specialist hellhole" :D

I'll leave the autocorrect as is

Yeah, the only dumb thing about the digital mail is that they're not just using email with an official registry.

They could have started some kind of certification thing for email providers and even funded a couple of certified email providers much more effectively than the digital post monstrosity.

That would have been awesome and forward looking, and perhaps even helped ordinary people get better security for their personal emails.

Perhaps we'll get there some day.

I don't think a massive market concentration in a single cloud service is good for societal preparedness, regardless of whether there are technically other options.

In the same way, it concerns me how much Sweden relies on BankID, but that's a different thing.

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