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Essentially big tech is under the jurisdiction of the mad king, which means all users of big tech are also under that same jurisdiction, including any and all private and public organisations in any country.

This is one of the reasons I think the mad king thinks that he can bully the rest of the world - because he can, by proxy, bully the rest of the world.

Much like the diving head first first into AI uptake, the whole cloud mania thing coming home to roost.

If calling a war criminal a war criminal results in sanctions, could sanctions be the new tariffs? I don't want to give him ideas...

This should scare pretty much any organisation outside of the US.

One theory about developing countries was that if oil is found, it's naturally easier for a dictator to control, since it's a concentrated source of revenue. Just a small amount of mercenaries is enough. So there will be a series of dictators.

If there's no concentrated source of revenue, the people need to be involved and thus a more democratic path is likely.

With the internet and software, especially with platforms, you see this concentration of power effect. That then easily leads to certain kind of power dynamics. Ie just as a hypothetical example, if there's only a few closed conversation platforms, government can control them relatively easily.

Europe needs a whole new engineering culture if it wants to stay relevant in this field. It still is focused on outsourcing problems, people are too lazy for details and demand ready to use products.

I believe engineering in growing countries have completely different mindsets. They put the enterprise in enterprise and the results speak for themselves.

Of course you have to stay pragmatic here and not every battle is in the interest of a company. But engineers with the ability to pursue their craft, sensible knowledge management and training have become a rare sight. So R&D is just plainly better in other countries.

Problem is that this laziness of course empowers other players to grow to insane dimensions, like Microsoft did. Microsoft has many competent developers, but their success isn't due to software quality. Especially if you look at the latest cloud offerings. They are so large that they don't have to be good anymore.

And yet, we haven't found a good solution to that yet, and everybody uses smartphones controlled by Apple and Google, communicate via channels controlled by Meta and so on.

It's ok, European Union will enact another regulation saying that starting tomorrow we'll all be more innovative than the US.

> This is one of the reasons I think the mad king thinks that he can bully the rest of the world - because he can, by proxy, bully the rest of the world.

He has even bigger levers to pull unfortunately. Sanctions are this giant hammer that can be dropped on anyone and the weight of the US ensures compliance. When the ICC chief prosecutor was sanctioned it wasn't just US companies who gave in, like Microsoft. His UK bank also blocked him. Sooner or later in the chain of dependencies there will be something based in the US or relying on something based in the US. Your MSP, the airline you travel with, anything will be used against you if sanctions are transmitted like a disease to anyone giving you assistance. No company or country wants to risk being buried to fight the US on this.

> His UK bank also blocked him

This is a 'funny' situation, and potentially telling as to who holds more power, given that the UK government has recently sanctioned two Israeli ministers: https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-britain-settl...

Are UK Banks (maybe only this UK Bank) more beholden to the US than the UK?

Is / Would this UK Bank also block(ing) those two Israeli ministers?

> Essentially big tech is under the jurisdiction of the mad king,

and of the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, the SEC etc.

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> credibly accused of being in the Epstein files

Is there a source of this other than Elon? Cause he’s anything but credible

Aside from everything that existed before? Not really, no. But here's a summary of the facts so far:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuaCuiQmPBU

Trump's own admission to knowing Epstein, photos of them together, Trump admiring Epstein saying he was a "terrific guy" and "It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side."

The fact that Trump and Epstein were friends has always been known, it was always obvious that he would be in the files concerning him.

Musk's accusation is relevant because it's a maga personality saying it, and blind supporters see it now, but it was always known.

Nero's music seems to have been as bad as Trump's golf skills. But you never ever tell the mad king that he isn't as apt as he thinks, you just let him win, for your own sake...

>Given that he effectively and literally ignited Los Angeles

Are we talking about the same LA? Because I only saw LA residents burning down their city. I didn't see Trump or federal law enforcement in LA burning down cars and looting stores.

So how do you get to blaming Trump for LA resident trashing their own city?

Because the obvious intention of sending in Marines was, and is, to further escalate the situation. I, and I suspect no reasonable person, would ever entertain any other interpretation

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> "Orange Man Bad" Trump Derangement syndrome

See, this is why nobody takes you seriously.

So what? They don't even take themselves seriously. The main thing you'll observe is nobody provided any arguments that I was wrong. Because I wasn't.

Well nobody proved you wrong because right off the bat your premise was incorrect - I never said that anything justifies rioting.

I'm merely pointing out the obvious here. We all want less property damage, both you and me. If we want to do that, then we shouldn't be sending in the Marines. That's not going to help anything, it's explicitly just going to make it worse.

Trump isn't stupid, he knows that, which is why he did it. This is media bait, and it's incredibly irresponsible to use actual lives as pawns in some game of owning the libs.

This doesn't even touch on the fact that this is all being done at the behest of California leadership. If Governor Newsom thinks that this is unnecessary and the LAPD can handle it, that's something our federal government should respect. And, I suspect Newsom is more than correct - the LAPD is a very large police force. The Marines here are being sent in the stoke the flame, not put it out.

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Several things you keep repeating but you still haven't explained despite me questioning you several times about it:

>I disagree - Trump is sending in federal enforcement because he intends to make the situation worse.

How does the presence of law enforcement make the situation worse? When you see the police coming in your neighborhood, do you get the urge to rob a store and set your neighbor's car on fire?

>Because we live in a democracy, not a fascist dictatorship?

Since when is enforcing existing laws a dictatorship?

> If people such as yourself are his supporters, then I'm nervous!

Those are some pretty defamatory accusations. Where did I say I support Trump? Just because I criticize LA leadership doesn't mean I'm a Trump supporter

>California is one of the states that contributes significantly more to the federal government in taxes than it takes

You're deflecting again. I asked you why crime is so high and leadership quality so low in LA despite the high Cali taxes.

>You should be more angry at states like Louisiana and Georgia.

Why? What's this whataboutism? We're talking about LA leadership because that's where LA taxpayers pay for.

And BTW, Louisiana and Georgia have lower violent crime rates than LA.

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"Would Europe ever hand over control of its national power grids to foreign companies bound by non-European law? Would we trust a foreign supplier’s guarantee for 99.999% uptime (which is the standard uptime SLA agreement of cloud providers) while at the same time a foreign power could force them anytime to cut Europe’s power? Of course not."

EU already does this:

https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/the-gigantic-unregulated-p...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41292018

Yes, and not only for electricity and the cloud. Also for 5G networks:

https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/5g-elephant-in-the-room/

Bert Hubert is good at identifying problems like this, but his proposed approach is always to demand the EU pass new laws even when the problem is Europeans asking people in foreign jurisdictions to run everything for them because they can do it better, partly due to not being under EU control. The cause of the problem is presented as the solution.

The internet has a compressive effect on markets. Most markets can only sustain about 3-5 competitors before the number of choices becomes overwhelming and customers can no longer easily differentiate between them. If you offer your services over the internet, that means 3-5 competitors globally, and in turn that means hacking one of them can give you control over a huge chunk of the market. It also means it's easy to end up with all of those competitors being outside your jurisdiction if you aren't highly competitive.

Yeah Europe really needs to step up here. It's a huge economic block.

The whole chips fab thing may be a bridge too far for now, but the basics really should be doable. The newly launched EU DNS is a good start. Rules like taxpayer money needs to only fund open software etc need to be pushed. The large hosting providers need to be incentivized to build out more complete offerings that don't have gaping product holes vs big cloud etc.

Both China and the US are aggressively pushing homegrown & favouring their own players. Time for the EU to do the same

I agree with the rest, that it is all manageable, but at least:

> The whole chips fab thing may be a bridge too far for now

for this case, ASML, being Dutch, and crucial to essentially all cutting semiconductor production, gives Europe leverage.

That said, a bit like Biden & Trump banning the export of certain tech to China, it is a slippery slope. Past a certain point they're just forced to develop the tech themselves. Hopefully Europe won't be as short-sighted or wilfully-ignorant, and will capitalise on their advantage here- as you are very correct to point out the ultimate vulnerability.

You forget one thing: ASML licenses american technology. They can't do anything out of the ordinary unless it has US' blessing. Hence, no leverage.

Also, the machines are just one part of the equation. You need chip designs, you need actual foundries where these machines need to be installed and so on.

If it really came to a falling out like this, why do you think US license rights would be considered at all?

ASML has a significant US research presence too. It's not just a bunch of dudes in Amsterdam.

Eindhoven, it grew out of Phillips (and ASMI, also Dutch), but yes. The technology is funded by all stakeholders. Of course who got the IP and what kind of license is a different question.

https://www.asml.com/en/company/about-asml/history

>ASML, being Dutch, and crucial to essentially all cutting semiconductor production, gives Europe leverage

It doesn't.

Firstly, ASML's core EUV light source tech is licensed from the US who threatened to pull the plug if ASML sold EUV steppers to China. That's what actual leverage looks like.

Secondly, you also need cutting edge semi fabs, which EU lacks. If it were that easy ASML would open some fabs in its own back yard with its cutting edge machines and keep the highest profits for themselves instead of letting TSMC, Samsung and Intel have them, but it's not easy. EU semi fabs are behind Taiwan, the US, China and Japan in node sizes despite having ASML domestically which is a huge blow for domestic industry and leverage. That's like making the best hammers but having no idea how to use them effectively.

Thirdly, once you have the lithography machines and the fabs, you also need top IP to make cutting edge high margin chips with them, which the EU lacks. The highest grossing chips are all US IP: Nvidia, Apple, Qualcomm, AMD, Intel, Amazon, Ampere, while European chip companies are way down below the pecking order in profitability: Infineon, NXP, ST, making low margin chips the likes of Nvidia and AMD can't be bothered.

Fourthly(is that correct in English?), once you have your litho, fabs and high end chips, you can now put all those powerful chips into datacenters to create powerful cloud hyperscalers, which the EU lacks. EU has nothing close to AWS, GPC, Azure, Tencent, Alibaba.

This is what tech dominance looks like. And EU is third place behind the US and China.

> Firstly, ASML's core EUV light source tech is licensed from the US who threatened to pull the plug if ASML sold EUV steppers to China. That's what actual leverage looks like.

That's not any leverage at all. The EU would instantly write a law invalidating those licenses on their territory. Paperwork like that is meaningless in geopolitical conflicts.

The asml EUV light source are made in California not Europe. Europe's laws and leverage would be useless in this case.

They don't even have to burry ASML, they can sanction it, or better, just convince ASML to move all cutting edge operations on US soil like the US is doing with TSMC.

I thought that was more of a measure of good will. I'm assuming the tech has been transferred and production could be spun up locally?

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Why the hostile tone? You've also not given any evidence to support your claims.

Deflecting the conversation from me pointing out your misinformation based on assumptions, to my tone, is exactly what I expected from someone unwilling to admit he is wrong.

It's not polite to abuse some's time and labor and have them google things for you, you can do that yourself if you want to check if what they said is correct before attacking them.

The least you can do is abstain from making confidently incorrect assumptions and admit when you're wrong.

You still haven't backed up your claim that production couldn't be spun up in Europe. Instead, you deflect, ironically, by accusing me of deflection.

If you can't google/ask a LLM about ASML and EUV why should I do it for you? Why waste time to convince a troll on the internet operating on thoughts and assumptions?

I'm NOT asking you to believe what I said. If you don't believe me that's fine with me, just have the decency to google information yourself and provide your own counter arguments if you want to argue further, but don't be rude and expect others to provide information on a silver platter just for your lazy convenience.

This is my last post here on the matter with you to save my sanity.

ASML is a power house that stomps all for sure.

...but they're an outlier in a specific part of the chain, not an ecosystem.

Bridge too far? Are you aware that e.g., Germany delivers multiple key components to chip manufacturing? Namely Zeiss and Trumpf?

The bridge is right there, the EU just needs to cross it.

When is the next Zeiss 7nm chip hitting markets?

Ok, so Intel and AMD would not have a 7nm chip hitting the market without these companies. So what's your point?

European digital sovereignty in email depends on having a decent FOSS email client, but the best we have is Thunderbird. I hope TB can make up for all those years of lost time and catch up with Outlook. From their emails it seems like the focus is to compete with Exchange and to build smartphone clients. Personally I just really hope they find time to deal with the absolutely shoddy search.

Not saying that Thunderbird is great, but ms Outlook has serious problems finding mails even for very specific keywords if it is older than a few months. They seem to hyper index recent mails and forget all else.

Ironically, I have set up thunderbird as a client for my exchange email just for archival, and it does much better finding them.

I never used an email client in my life, I don't personally know anyone who does it either. I wonder what's the distribution between people who use clients vs just web.

I never used a web based email client in my life, I don't personally know many people who still do so either.

You also need a good open source web client then…

I'm experimenting with both Thunderbird and MailSpring. The latter looks like a much more natural fit for someone used to GMail/OWA like me.

[1] https://www.getmailspring.com/

Honestly why?

Why does "digital sovereignty" have to rely on stuff like "FOSS email client"

Honestly, as much of FOSS has its importance, focusing exclusively on open source solutions is probably part of why things don't go ahead

Honestly Thunderbird was good 20 years ago. And even then...

Makeshift solutions with pieces duck-taped together and inconsistent UX are not going to win any friends

FOSS != "makeshift solutions with pieces duck-taped together and inconsistent UX".

Many highly polished, widely-used pieces of software are also FOSS. Firefox, for instance.

FOSS can also be a software suite built by a well-funded international partnership for the specific purpose of making something that can replace Europe's current dependence on proprietary US-based software.

Yes, it's important to try to make sure Europe is in good shape with the software (and hardware) it depends on now, but a solid long-term strategy can—and, IMO, should—include building new packages from the ground up to fill niches not currently well-served by the independent, distributed FOSS community. It's likely to take years to truly come to fruition, but if done thoughtfully it will benefit everyone.

> Many highly polished, widely-used pieces of software are also FOSS. Firefox, for instance.

> FOSS != "makeshift solutions with pieces duck-taped together and inconsistent UX".

Sure. Firefox is good. The fact that it's FOSS is of second nature

But let's not kid ourselves, the majority of "User facing" FOSS apps has terrible UX.

And then it always goes back to "it sucks but it's free"

We should go for FOSS choices that are good, free/open shouldn't matter (if they are from European vendors)

> include building new packages from the ground up to fill niches not currently well-served by the independent, distributed FOSS community

Sure, who should do that? Pretty much all linux vendors went out of business, and managing those solutions is easier said than done, also it looks much cheaper than it actually is.

unfortunately nowadays almost every software has terrible UI and UX

commercial because of the insane dark pattern hell and contact us for pricing and 345 step signup onboarding madness to get the sweet sweet data juice

FOSS, on the other hand, because it starts with build it yourself with CMake or cry because there's only a 3 years old prebuilt binary but not for your platform/architecture

Right, I don't understand how these people are legitimately talking about "UX" and then looking at Microsoft products (???).

Are we blind or something? Is there a single Microsoft product that has an even halfway decent UX? We're up to like a dozen setting panels in Windows. Excel can't open two workbooks with the same name. Nobody likes Outlook.

Win11 at launch looked good!

then they fucked it up gradually but royally. Office is completely ridiculous for like 20-30 years. (I still think people who heralded the ribbon menu as some kind of UX panacea should have stopped sniffing glue before it got too late.)

You're missing the point.

The reason Europe should use FOSS software is that it cannot, inherently, be beholden to any company or country. It can't be bought, or subverted without that subversion showing up in publicly-viewable code repositories. These are attributes that inherently go with the fact that it is built in the open, with anyone able to take the source and make their own version of it even if the people who originally built it want to start doing nefarious things. And there's nothing about this that makes software hard to use; that's a consequence of the volunteer, distributed nature of most independent open-source software, combined with the lack of strong incentives to create good UX.

So if Europe wants to get serious about this, it can, and should, make some that's high quality and still open. There are a number of ways it could do that, and the amount of money it should cost to make it happen should be pocket change by the standards of the entire EU working together. There are plenty of good programmers and UX engineers in Europe.

I agree with the argument, but...

> [Would we allow a situation where] a foreign power could force them anytime to cut Europe’s power?

We did just that with Russian gas imports. It took a massive effort to transition of these imports after Russia closed the tap.

And we replaced it with imports from the US. And most oil is from the Middle East, of course. Being completely energy independent is easier said than done.

But it's much, much easier with renewable energy.

We may have to mine coal, oil, and natural gas in specific places, but everywhere has access to the sun and wind.

It wasn't Russia who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline..

It was Russia that stopped delivering gas through the pipeline. It was already non-functioning when it was blown up, the gas inside was static, non-moving, the pressure only kept up to prevent pipe-deterioration. That was unilateral, there were no sanctions, and Russia refused to take delivery of parts they had claimed they needed.

Even before the war, the German subsidiary of Gazprom had already started deliberately lowering the amount of gas stored underground in Germany, at a time when it was usually being filled up for the next winter.

Examples, there are many articles from around that time: https://www.dw.com/en/eu-gas-russia-nord-stream-crisis/a-666... (it shows the timeline, the explosions were inconsequential, gas had already long stopped flowing)

September 2022: "Russia cuts off gas exports to Europe via Nord Stream indefinitely"-- https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/02/energy/nord-stream-1-pipe...

August 2022: "Nord Stream 1: Russia switches off gas pipeline citing maintenance" -- https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/31/nord-stream...

But Russia stopped exporting gas through that pipeline using nonsensical excuses a few weeks before it was blown up by the Ukrainians.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream

Nonsensical excuses like the people who wanted to buy their gas wouldn't pay them in their own currency? If I'm selling you my car, it is my right to say I only accept US dollars. If you insist on only offering me Mexican pesos, it isn't "nonsensical" when I say no, and refuse to sell you the car unless you pay US dollars.

It is amazing how objective reality and basic common sense go out the window when it comes to the Ukraine/Russia situation.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/gas-still-flows-russ...

The request for payment in rubles came about when contracts were already signed.

If you unilaterally decide to change the terms of a contract it's quite obvious that the other party may not agree.

Russia decided to invade Ukraine.

Russia decided to not fill EU gas storage to usual levels ahead of the invasion.

Russia decided to not fulfill its contractual obligations in retaliation to the sanctions imposed by the EU.

Objective reality is only inconvenient to Putin's apologists.

It seems like people agree that EU alternatives are nice and that open source software is great... but even in software development the people making the choices still opt for databases like Oracle or SQL Server and the large US-centric cloud providers, or even communication apps like Teams/Slack instead of just self-hosting Mattermost/Zulip/whatever.

I don't think anyone is taking this seriously enough.

No one listens to the technical people that espouse the alternatives, partially due to the mainly-impenetrable language difference: business vs technical.

Management would rather depend on "Microsoft" than "that employee that talks a lot without saying anything useful / understandable". That's a huge bridge to cross. Even under the mad king, I think most Management would prefer to remain dependent on Microsoft and go out of their way to avoid the ire of the The Kingdom of Trumpistan than to migrate their "everything computer" to a lesser known, lesser proven entity.

it's not a technical question simply.

this is a business/operations risk management question. compliance, legal liability, BCP, regulatory environment flux, and so on.

the case of the ICC obviously shows how little they cared about these things.

MS closed the account? where are the offsite/independent backups? etc.

some do some don't.

obviously most IT/software/tech businesses - especially weighted by capital, impact, influence, pedigree, and other factors of visibility and sales pushiness - are US based, so there's no point in caring too much about picking non-US vendors.

and many European businesses are targeting the US market, so again not much they can do to escape the influence of Uncle Trump.

Nothing has destroyed American goodwill than imposition of extra-territorial sanctions. Btw when the US imposed sanctions on Hong Kong leader ,she had to collect her salary in cash as no bank would process it.

We are in such an insane bind here...

We can see China and the US developing AI tooling (and other tech) at a high speed. One of the reasons for this is the lack of regulation and even active deregulation. In the EU, we won't be able to keep up with this speed because we tend to want to regulate first and many of our regulations hinder gathering the insane amounts of data needed.

Falling behind on AI and not wanting to be dependent on tools from outside the EU will put us at a significant disadvantage in research and production of new technologies and we're already far behind in that aspect.

We also don't want to drop our values just to keep up. Which is partially because we're still in the luxury position of being very rich. I wonder, though, whether we can keep this going in the current state of the world. Things seem to have changed massively in our disadvantage over the past 5 or so years.

It's not yet clear whether AI is so effective at actual work that it justifies throwing away privacy and even copyright law. But there do seem to still be open models if you think you need one.

It wasn't clear that outsourcing a bunch of infrastructure to the cloud was economically effective, but here we are.

AI is inevitable, for better (open, transparent, self-hostable) or worse (closed, opaque, cloud-only).

I can't take arguments like this seriously. "Something else was successful so AI will be successful!!!!1!"

The vibrations of the hype train of AI feel like a similar frequency to those of the cloud hype train.

Once hype train vibrations reach a certain frequency, the topic they represent become inevitable.

Purely subjective of course, my vibration frequency sensitivity is not your vibration frequency sensitivity.

I would say that it feels as if AI is being 'pushed' far more than cloud was. Cloud services were made available, and companies took them up. AI uptake has a pressure behind it from the big players. Refer anecdote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44234139

It's a bit VHS vs Betamax, except it's VHS vs No-VHS. Playing on FOMO.

I don't think he meant going to such absolute extremes...

Regulation is good, it keeps actors in line and prevent cheating, but then overregulation comes into the picture and shoots them in the foot while expecting them to compete on the world stage.

Think balance.

> that it justifies throwing away privacy and even copyright law

That's why I wrote that we don't want to do that. But not doing that comes with a risk that we need to be aware of. There's two sides to the coin and we need to look at both before we pick a side.

I don't have an opinion on which side to pick, since I think it's one of the hardest decisions of our time and I value our sovereignty and privacy. I just don't know if we can keep those in the long term if we start lagging behind on a global scale.

Regulation is a complete red herring.

The reason the EU cannot compete in tech, is because its market is way too tight with the US market. Any founder has a choice (if you can raise this insane level of seed capital you have the choice). They could pick US, Canada, UK, France, Germany ...etc. Given that choice, they will pick the US every single time. It's strategically the best choice, simple because of its size and wealth.

It's not just regulation but a lack of cheap energy too.

Europe chose degrowth instead of abundance, now it reaps the whirlwind.

Is this really true though? UK is building new reactors, France has many. Wind and solar are both massive successes across the continent. The North Sea still has oil and significant new LNG storage capacity has recently been built.

Wind and solar have not been a 'massive' success.

And renewables can only get you so far.

Wind/Solar/etc cannot produce fertilizer - arguably the most important use of fossil fuels.

And the EU's land does not produce enough food to support its population without fossil fuel derived fertilizers (requires lots of nat gas). Hence why the EU still imports $billions of Russian fertilizer despite publicly talking tough about Russia.

The EU leaves fossil fuel extraction to other countries and then imports the result while loudly shouting about their own "morality" and sustainability. It's child-like and pure silly-ness. Until the EU starts fracking they will never have independence over anything.

> Wind/Solar/etc cannot produce fertilizer - arguably the most important use of fossil fuels.

You can create ammonia (and thereby nitrogen-based fertilizers which you are probably referring to) from electricity, water and air alone. However, doing it with gas or oil is often cheaper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44160-023-00362-y

However, the process is very old and proven, see e.g. this historically significant and well-known facility from 1907: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norsk_Hydro_Rjukan

Not only is it far more expensive but Europe is already electricity constrained.

Renewables in Europe simply can’t scale up to meet the need for fertilizers the way nat gas can.

>It's child-like and pure silly-ness.

The EU or your hysterical reply?

I would love to engage a logical rebuttal of why my statements are incorrect.

Apologies for including an ad-hominem insult that triggered you emotionally. I would edit that line if I could.

I think your concern on fertiliser imports is overblown. I find the argument that the EU shouldn't champion & invest in renewables while it also continues to use and import fossil fuels a false dichotomy. The same goes for fracking. I also don't accept the argument that pristine independence in one sector (energy) is a base requirement for overall sovereign independence. For sure, some home grown control over energy is a requirement but we live in an interconnected world and whatever the EU may lack in one area it has more than enough ways and means in other areas to assert its power and achieve its policy goals. It's also quite capable of and not afraid to invest on a large scale when/where it's needed.

> Europe chose degrowth

Through regulation. Regulation is more than just regulation of software. We're also at a disadvantage because of regulation on employee rights, wages and payments in stock options. In the US it's way easier to pay with theoretical money (like options) than actual money. So the start-up scene is way more interesting for young people who work hard and hope to become part of a unicorn to hit it big.

> We can see China and the US developing AI tooling (and other tech) at a high speed. One of the reasons for this is the lack of regulation and even active deregulation. In the EU, we won't be able to keep up with this speed because we tend to want to regulate first and many of our regulations hinder gathering the insane amounts of data needed.

Oh, but the EU didn't just "tend to want to". They already did regulate AI in the most onerous possible way for AI users and producers. They even pride themselves on regulating before everyone else and before even knowing what they are regulating: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20230601STO...

Why are the good guys sanctioning ICC judges?

Are we the baddies?

(cf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY)

The relationship between the US and the ICC has been deteriorating for 3-4 decades now. The OIC effectively controls the ICC (they have the majority vote in electing judges), and the US fights terrorism.

This used to be a huge complaint across African countries (because they had the same problem: African governments went pretty far in suppressing islamic insurgencies that threatened their existence. Of course the insurgencies committed 100x the human rights violations that those states did, but never got convicted)

> The OIC effectively controls the ICC

That's a pretty crazy claim. 125 countries have joined the ICC. The OIC only has 57 members (not all of them even have a Muslim majority).

Of the three judges who issued the arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, two are European (one is French, the other Slovenian).

The US has the same problem with the ICC as it does with the ICJ: the US government does not want to be subject to international law. The US is used to acting as a superpower, in whatever way it wants. It just fundamentally does not accept the premise that its actions should be in any way constrained by international law.

In this particular instance, the problem the US has with the ICC is that the US is Israel's primary backer. The US provides the money, weapons and diplomatic support that Israel needs to continue its war against the Palestinians and occupation of the Palestinian territories. The US itself is heavily implicated in the crimes that the ICC is prosecuting here.

Countries are sovereign and what is called "international law" are voluntary agreements among countries.

Following such agreements, once signed, is also voluntary. And the track record, to put it mildly, is not good. In this situation, just to name one example, hamas and the PA have both promised to arrest any terrorists they know of (because in trade they would gain the right to sue Israel), as well as respecting Israel's borders. Needless to say, their efforts are considered less than convincing.

And it's not limited to this conflict. Other examples include that in order to "join the international order", ie. the WTO, China promised to not support any companies with state support and to charge all companies normal company taxes. And while I'm not aware of definitive proof, nobody seriously believes they are doing this. The agreement also outlaws what they're (very publicly) doing with loans in the belt and road initiative, by the way.

Or other examples: the US, France, the UK and other countries specifically signed that if Russia invaded Crimea that they would do some combination of:

1) declare war on Russia (this is in all agreements)

2) support Ukraine economically

3) support Ukraine militarily

4) commit to attack Russia physically and help free Crimea "kinetically"

In trade for Ukraine denuclearizing. Whilst there are different agreements, let's just simplify and say that any particular agreement contains 3 out of those 4 provisions.

And while all countries (except of course Russia) have indeed supported Ukraine, none of them have followed through on their commitment to declare war on Russia.

I took a year of law school, because, you know, bored. And I do remember one professor (who was a sitting supreme court judge at the time, btw), described international law as "fiction, a guideline at best". The problem being that nobody, except the US and Israel, have any real intention of following through on international agreements. Of course, this was before the current iteration of the conflict, even before 2014. On one hand, his opinion has not changed ... but it's because he has since left us.

> Or other examples: the US, France, the UK and other countries specifically signed that if Russia invaded Crimea that they would do some combination of:

Point me to the treaty that commits the US, France or the UK to what you're describing - what amounts to a full blown defense pact of Ukraine.

The only thing I'm aware of that is remotely close to that is the Budapest Memorandum and that contains none of what you describe. At most, it obligates countries go to the UN Security Council if nuclear weapons are used against Ukraine.

> hamas and the PA have both promised to arrest any terrorists they know of ... Needless to say, their efforts are considered less than convincing.

The Palestinian Authority works extremely closely with the Israelis to hunt down anyone who engages in armed resistance against Israel. Just think of how incredible that is. The PA, which is run by the Palestinian Liberation Organization, supposedly dedicated to freeing the Palestinians from Israeli oppression, is working with the Israelis to prevent Palestinians from resisting an occupying military force. The PA has burned a huge amount of political capital doing this, and is now widely hated by the Palestinians. It's seen as a collaborationist organization. So when you demand that the PA work even more slavishly for Israel than it already does, I don't know what you're seriously expecting.

> China promised to not support any companies with state support

China did not make a blanket commitment to end all state support to its companies. Not even the United States or Western European countries have made such a commitment. China promised to carry out many different types of economic reforms, and it did indeed carry out very deep and painful reforms. The Chinese economy is drastically different than it was in the 1990s. Most of the big state monopolies have been broken up, private companies play a much larger role than before, and foreign investment is much easier.

> the US, France, the UK and other countries specifically signed that if Russia invaded Crimea that they would do some combination of

No, the US, France and UK never committed to defend Ukraine militarily. The Budapest Memorandum just said that each country agreed not to attack Ukraine, and that they would discuss with one another if there were any violations of the agreement.

> The problem being that nobody, except the US and Israel, have any real intention of following through on international agreements.

Huh? The US and Israel are not known for following through on international agreements. The US might have had some sort of reputation many decades ago, but that reputation is thoroughly shot through now. Israel never did. It has always been a loose cannon on the international stage.

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> you actually believe the PA arrests who Israel wants them to arrest

This is just a fact. The PA works very closely with Israel. If you're not aware of this, you're just not informed about the subject.

> support China (and praise their efforts to comply with international trade treaties ... wtf)

I'm just telling you that China underwent massive economic reforms as part of its WTO accession. Again, this is simply a matter of fact, and if you're not aware of it, that means you've never read about the subject.

> but against support for Ukraine

I just told you that you're wrong about what the Budapest Memorandum says. If you think it pledges military intervention to protect Ukraine, you should read it again.

And? This agreement was good and just and is being broken for a garbage reason.

“Good and just” are subjective.

The agreement between the US and the ICC has been broken a LOOOONG time ago:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/05/06/united-states-unsigning-...

This paints a stark negative picture of the US. However, of course, as soon as you consider intent of signing ... and the fact that some signatories to the Rome statute, like Palestina or South Africa, have signed it without any intent to carry out their side of the agreement, and that the ICC has in fact accepted these members (kind of).

The idea of the ICC ... was supposedly the same idea that created Gaza in 2007. If you give them something in trade for cooperating with the treaty, they'll cooperate. Of course, reality was they greedily accepted what they got (e.g. Palestina immediately tried suing Israel), but never carried out their side of the agreement. Palestina, for example, in their "Martyr fund", paid out money to people the ICC said they should arrest, but never took any action and several times publicly declared they would never arrest any Palestinian, no matter what they did, for the ICC. (their "Martyr's fund" paid money to Palestinians according to how many Jews they had killed and/or wounded [1], which the PA committed a $330 million per year budget for). South Africa has now twice publicly protected people they should arrest (Omar Al Bashir and Putin) against the ICC.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority_Martyrs_...

The Palestinians joined the ICC because they correctly concluded that they have much more to gain from the application of international law than Israel does.

The Palestinians are vastly outgunned by Israel, which militarily occupies the Palestinian territories. The Palestinians correctly believe that if everyone is forced to follow international law, it will be a huge net benefit the Palestinians. Of course, the Israelis have no incentive at all to submit to international law, because Israel can enforce whatever it wants through military force.

It's a David vs. Goliath fight. The Palestinians have very few cards to play. International public opinion and international law are two of those cards.

The Palestinian "project" is to destroy Israel (well, not really, the real project is to have the conflict last forever, for "aid"). That is not possible in International law. They have, obviously, not changed their mind.

Israel does not occupy "the Palestinian territories". It does not occupy Gaza (not even now, or at least only about half).

The Israeli have a LONG history of submitting to international law, including retreating from Gaza in 2006 ...

I mean, we can keep going with getting the facts and prejudice out of your post, but ...

The reality is that Palestinians have a dream of eliminating Israel. As they showed before and during the war of 1948, and the wars after that, they want to massacre Jews to achieve that. A long time ago, probably before even 1970s, with help from the KGB, Arafat El-Masri (that's his full name btw, "the Egyptian mountain of knowledge") was an Egyptian KGB agent that scammed the Soviets and the UN out of literally billions of dollars, and that was his only goal). Palestine was created (it did not exist, except as a Jewish state before 1948, a colony of the British Empire, and as a colony of the last 3 caliphates, and a Roman province before that) as a scheme to collect money from international institutions, and that's what it still is. Both Hamas and the PA want conflict, because that gets them about 800$ per month per Palestinian monthly (and that's just the public part). That makes it VERY important for Palestinian leadership to neither lose nor win the conflict, but to keep the conflict, the deaths, the suffering going for eternity, ideally from the side of a Qatarese pool.

There is not a single population on the planet, no matter how badly off they are, that gets 10% of what Palestinians get, on a per-capita basis. Palestinians are absolute geniuses at this. Did you know there are Palestinian "refugees" living in New York, who have never once left the US, who receive an UNRWA pension (tax free, I might add)?

The Palestinians don't have anything against Jews. If you frame this conflict in terms of antisemitism, you just fundamentally misunderstand it. The Palestinians really couldn't care less about the religion of the people who kicked them off of their land. The issue that that an outside group of people came in and took over Palestine, and expelled the native population. This isn't a continuation of the history of oppression of Jews in Europe. It's a totally different conflict, in which the religions of the people involved are completely incidental.

> Both Hamas and the PA want conflict

It sounds like you're still living in the 1970s, when the PLO was engaged in armed resistance against Israel. Those times are long gone. The Palestinian Authority (dominated by the PLO) has tried for 30 years to work with Israel. The last thing it wants is conflict. Israel has been bombing Gaza for 20 months now, and what has the PA done? Nothing. It's actually incredible how passive the PA is.

> There is not a single population on the planet, no matter how badly off they are, that gets 10% of what Palestinians get, on a per-capita basis. Palestinians are absolute geniuses at this.

Oh yes, how lucky the Palestinians are. I hear Israeli bombs are filled with butter tarts and pixie dust.

> > There is not a single population on the planet, no matter how badly off they are, that gets 10% of what Palestinians get, on a per-capita basis. Palestinians are absolute geniuses at this.

> Oh yes, how lucky the Palestinians are. I hear Israeli bombs are filled with butter tarts and pixie dust.

Let me just address this claim in your style: "Oh yeah, that's impossible, because NOBODY has ever heard of large groups of people doing war so they get amounts of money they have no other way of making".

Wait, that's so common just about every language has a word for such people? Oh my ...

Perhaps this illustrates one of the reasons why the US withdrew... I imagine many very 'nice' countries would try to go after the Great Satan.

They're not the good guys. They're covering for the genocide.

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There have never been any good guys, just competing powers and worse guys.

Because international institutions have an anti-Israel bias. E.g. in 2020 Israel was condemned by the UN 17 times while all the other countries put together only got 6 condemnations. [1]

In 2020, Israel killed 33 Palestinians. Compare that to Americans killing 19444 Afganis, drug lords killing 34512 Mexicans, Saudis killing 19056 Yemenis, Boko Haram killing 7300 Africans, etc. [2]

[1]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/12/24/un-condemns-israel...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_armed_conflicts_in_202...

An ongoing illegal occupation for 50 years is reduced down to 33 lives...

In what way is it illegal by the current laws or any laws since 1980? Genuinely curious, not familiar with details.

it's illegal since the Nakba, because starting wars are illegal without UN authorization

and paramilitary forces attacking civilians were illegal in British Palestine

taking private property also

and poisoning wells is also technically not super bueno under a little know statute, the laundry list of deeds for which Hammurabbi will fuck you up personally, but I'm not a legal scholars so maybe it was so legal a mockingbird granted them statehood.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cast_Thy_Bread

The article is about email. Europe could probably bring email "in-house". Large players like IONOS and OVH might help do it at scale.

But what about AI? Soon all of our email will be pre-handled by our OpenAI assistant while we will be driven around by Waymo and a good part of our work is done by a Tesla humanoid robot. How can Europe catch up and do that in a sovereign way?

For world-class AI, a country needs:

    1 Photolithography
    2 Wafers
    3 GPUs
    4 Software (SOTA Neural Networks)
    5 Energy

Photolithography is in the hands of Europe already, and that makes no difference. All that really matters at the moment is the software and where 'the cloud' resides.

We already have AI in-house. Mistral is based in France, and their Le Chat platform hosted exclusively in the EU.

IIRC I read somewhere that ASML depends on some components provided by the US, if so, then it's not 100% in Europe hands yet.

If nothing has changed in a few years, the dependency is only for the EUV machines, and that company was acquired by ASML.

So keeping the company in USA is a favour they do to the country, not that they rely on it.

But does Mistral stand a chance to make a state of the art model?

People will always want to use the best model. Like they use the best search engine.

How would Mistral catch up with US companies, who spend tens of billions of dollars per year on improving their models? As far as I know, Mistral raised something like $1B so far.

When it comes to chip manufacturing, no single country has it all in-house. Neither US, nor Taiwan, nor China can make state of the art chips without machines, materials, chemicals and support from a bunch of other countries.

For personal assistant AI it seems to me that improvements in efficiency will make this a non-issue. We’re able to squeeze more and more out of smaller language models. Eventually the models that require 100s of GBs in GPUs and giant datacenters will not be able to provide enough additional capabilities to justify their cost. Most tasks will run on-device with 10s of GBs.

Don’t know if there’s hope of state of the art CPUs, GPUs and/or NPUs being designed and manufactured in Europe. It has a lot of the expertise. Imagination Technologies and ARM designs GPUs in Europe. But the scale is lacking

> How can Europe catch up and do that in a sovereign way?

Europe, or the EU?

Because DeepMind, despite being owned by Google, was started in and still has HQ in the UK.

Also, given Musk burned his bridges with Brazil, most of Europe, then the US Dems, Canada, SA, and now the US Reps, I don't see him going anywhere any more. Even with his personality aside, Tesla would have an uphill battle getting people to trust that their Optimus won't get hacked and turn into Mr Stabby The 100% Deniable Robot Assassin.

There's chip manufacturing in europe. Is it on par with taiwan? No, like everywhere else it is not on par with that.

Also plenty of software developers. And USA just hires indians and europeans, no reason europe can't hire indians too.

Yeah, and there's a _lot_ of Intel fabs in the EU. In any real geopolitical conflict, it's unlikely that their property would be respected.

Salaries in Europe are just a fraction of what you can get in the US. The quality of life for a good Software Engineer in most of the US is very high. As a foreign-born Software Engineer living in the US, I'd never trade it for Europe during my working years (nothing against Europe in particular).

Sure much more money but:

No time to enjoy said money

No time with your family

Extremely easy to get laid off

If you are laid off, all your savings can easily be used up if you need healthcare, sending you into permanent poverty.

If you consider that a better quality of life… sure… but not everyone likes betting their existence on the lottery.

edit: forgot to mention, if you get laid off you also get quickly deported.

I had plenty of time and leisure activities throughout my US career. Plenty of money for hobbies, toys and a house.

I had the deportation risk while waiting for the Greencard. But I'd happily go back to my birth country with a ton of money if I was deported vs my friends who tried Europe and went back home (due to low Software wages and underemployment in Europe) with nothing to show for it.

The vast majority of my US-born and foreign friends in the software field are doing great financially. A few got laid off but had good savings and were eventually hired elsewhere. Even the ones in the West Coast. They had to buy small houses (like the ones in Europe) but they got to do it anyway.

I have a few friends who came from the richer parts of Europe. A handful went back, but not most. The ones from the poorer parts of Europe are certainly not going back.

Europe is great for the rich, though. Thus a good place to retire if you can afford it. But the same can be said about many parts of the US, so ultimately it's a matter of taste.

Every lottery winner swears that the lottery is amazing.

When it comes to US, for software engineers, the lottery, for the most part, is in getting there in the first place legally on a dual-intent visa.

> As a foreign-born Software Engineer living in the US

If things continue on the trajectory they're currently on, you probably won't be allowed to go on living in the US as a foreign-born anything.

The political situation might change this perspective for some engineers.

It has for me - I've moved back to Europe from the US.

Do I make less money? Sure. Do I feel much safer and enjoy a much higher quality of life? Yup.

But I don't want AI to summarize my email. I want to read my email without a summarization layer.

https://phys.org/news/2025-06-wendelstein-nuclear-fusion.htm...

Europe is leading the world in Energy, by far.

Certainly not in terms of electricity generation:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-generation?ta...

It would be powerfully symbolic of the state of Europe if their energy sector was best summarised as planning to - at some unspecified point in the future - generate useful energy.

You are not actually leading until you win/achieve something.

Europe has severed itself from major sources of the fundamental driver of civilization, energy, it has bet on “renewable energy” in reckless ways, which was demonstrated by the small black swan event energy grid collapse just mere weeks ago. Germany has totally abandoned nuclear energy and has no real alternatives as it imports the majority of its energy and all its renewable energy sources are subpar, at best, and are unsustainable without massively distorting government command economy subsidies keeping afloat what is essentially a Ponzi scheme with decreasing real marginal returns. Germany, the engine of Europe, which keeps the whole EU boondoggle afloat has an avg of €0.44/kwh electricity prices.

That does not really indicate energy leadership.

Maybe Germany can get productive fusion energy online, but it also does not solve the deeper issue of a political system and control mechanism that is self-harming.

It’s the near future: Germany has successfully provided operational fusion energy. German politics and psychological control will all the sudden just give up on blaming, punishing, and hating its own people?

Everyone in Germany gets free AC and free unlimited heating? Free cars and free transportation because fusion basically nullifies the cost of energy? No, the German/EU political class loathes its own people and is recreating aristocracy, which for its own purposes relies on control and suppression of the masses. If anything the EU Lords would use that de facto unlimited energy to create unlimited AI surveillance and thought-crime robot armies to control the serfs.

Not true: E.g. we have Wacker Chemie AG, a global and major producer of wavers (Id guess also for TSMC). There is a lot of stuff here - so we have at least 1) and 2), which is the foundation for the rest.

Regarding 5 - Europeans are working on it

i remain unconvinced that anyone needs to "catch up" in any so-called AI race (to the bottom, IMO) dodging a bullet is a thing, as popular as everything AI seems on HN

France has a lot of energy.

And even more ideas, apparently!

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Waymo is doubling down on the fundamentally flawed technology of the car. It's a dead end.

A proper city should be car-free. Waymos will just reinforce urban hellscapes like LA or Houston and make it impossible to become the next Amsterdam.

Walkable cities + Trams / Metros / Buses is definitely the way forward.

Living in Aarhus a while now and I don't think I've been in a taxi in over a year. The last one I remember being in was a late night/early morning fixed fare to the airport in Portugal.

I'm in Riga, even here public transport is like 1.5 EUR for a ride and you can use a phone app to scan a QR code to register a ride, as well as buy a ticket right there in the app.

I also use Bolt (similar to Uber) for when I need to get somewhere quicker, though it can be way more expensive - yesterday I went to a software development seminar and the cost for the ride was just over 12 EUR for that.

Either way, I immensely appreciate that for the most part I can just walk to whatever stores and such I need, I don't like the idea of needing a car to just get my necessities (living in the countryside is more like that, when there's a bus to the nearby city where the stores are just a few times per day).

Wish they didn't close down a few train routes through the country, though.

How do you move furniture when car-free? And take your children and their equipment to activities, etc.? Nevermind the issues of poor timetabling and service for public transport, and the risk of crime.

A personal car is freedom.

Please don't that, in general. Don't be an absolutist.

"Car free" doesn't mean "ban all the cars":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoAtoaAgm0g

0. This discussion is about urban environments. Suburbs/rural areas will probably be car centric forever (or at least for a long time). If you don't or plan to live in a city, you should move on from this conversation.

1. Of course you'll be able to use car or van to move furniture.

> And take your children and their equipment to activities, etc.

2. What kind of equipment do said children have, pianos??? You can use public transport perfectly well.

In dense enough environments with decent public transit things are generally not that far away by public transit. And a backpack + at least 1 big bag/1 trolley bag fit perfectly well in all but the most crowded public transit.

> Nevermind the issues of poor timetabling and service for public transport, and the risk of crime.

3. All of these are resolved when large amounts of people use public transport and people actually care about it. If it's only for poor people.. yeah, you get US public transit. And regarding crime, fairly sure that in most places your overall risk of death/serious injury is still higher in a car.

* * *

> A personal car is freedom.

A personal car is freedom.

Being forced to only use personal cars everywhere and at all times is slavery.

> "Car free" doesn't mean "ban all the cars":

Isn't that exactly what it means? Like smoke free means no smoking. Why this "abolish the police" situation again?

> You can use public transport perfectly well.

But it's a lot more expensive, e.g. I live in Stockholm and it's about $4 per 90-minute trip, per person.

> Being forced to only use personal cars everywhere and at all times is slavery.

Yeah, I don't want that either, I really hated that in parts of the US and Mexico. Like where you can't even cross the street because there's a big road in between.

> Isn't that exactly what it means? Like smoke free means no smoking. Why this "abolish the police" situation again?

Watch the video linked inked above, it answers your exact questions.

Also, smoking as a thing isn't banned. Smoking is just banned in reasonable places.

But instead of debating me, please watch the video. No place on this planet with more than, say, 10 000 people (so places where probably 80% of the world population lives) banned cars. A few amusement parks (or equivalent) are basically the only places where cars are banned.

> But it's a lot more expensive, e.g. I live in Stockholm and it's about $4 per 90-minute trip, per person.

What is this insanity? Doesn't Stockholm have a fixed cost monthly pass?

> What is this insanity? Doesn't Stockholm have a fixed cost monthly pass?

It does, but it costs ~$106 a month.

That's what happens when there's no competition.

Automated self-driving taxi services will be better.

LOL, in what world do you live in? That's a super good price. How much do you think daily usage of "automated self-driving taxi services" will be? :-)))

Bucharest, a city in a much poorer country, charges about €16 for a 1 month pass for surface transport and €20 for a 1 month pass for the subway. That's about €36.

The average salary in Stockholm seems to be about €46 000. The average salary in Bucharest is less than €24 000.

So €100 per month seems about fair for what I assume is a pretty solid public transport network in a place with far more disposable income than Bucharest.

Edit: Switzerland is famous for having a very well run public transport system. The Zurich monthly pass for all zones is about €250 per month... Yeah, Zurich has higher incomes for sure. Stockholm probably has a decent rate for public transportation. Privatizing it won't help, like it didn't in many places in the world (see England).

To be fair, the public transport in Vienna is €365 for a whole year and the network is one of the best in the world.

There are some outliers that are very cheap for their cost of living but life is complicated, geography, politics, administrative capacity are all different, even between cities in the same country.

And we have 0 proof for the private sector being cheaper. Privatization of transport is almost universally a disaster, even for cars and roads, frequently the costs are just hidden in a million places: budget deficits for road infrastructure, ever increasing public debt due to it, ever increasing car prices, road infrastructure budgets being distributed in a million places, etc.

Uber was sort of cheaper for a while during ZIRP and thanks to massive price dumping/subsidizing due to VC investments while trying to corner the market. Now Uber is basically the same cost as regular taxis...

To be clear, I'm not advocating for privatization. I'm arguing for more public ownership and subsidies - which is how this is achieved in Vienna.

Everyone benefits from more people using public transport instead of cars, so it's in the public's interest to incentivize it.

That's roughly 5 uber rides. That's not bad at all?

> How do you move furniture when car-free?

Rent a van? I do that when I have a car too. Or use a moving company.

> And take your children and their equipment to activities

I currently live in a car centric location and it's true that you just need a car to do those things. But I've also lived in places that are not car centric and you don't need a car to do those things in those places. You can either get there by bike (which is usually faster than by car for short journeys when you can just get on and go and then get off and leave right outside the destination rather than having to find a space), or use public transport which is very reliable. Where I lived there was a bus every 15 minutes that took you to a train station where the trains ran from the suburb to the city every 5 minutes.

> risk of crime

I feel like those places that prioritise non car transport don't have this problem. I never felt unsafe cycling or taking my kids on the public transport.

> A personal car is freedom.

It can be. It can also be a weight around your neck. It's expensive. You have to park it when you go anywhere, and that also means you have to get back to it. You can't just change plans and end up in a different part of the city and be OK because you can just take a different route back to your house, you have to get back to your car and hope you paid for enough parking.

Some places just aren't densely populated enough to ever make public transport work well. Many places are though, even quite small cities, and then it's freedom to not have a car. The thing about not having a car is that you can always get a car if you need one for a particular thing, rent or use various services that provide them, or taxi/uber, or borrow one from a friend. But if you have a car and live where you need one all the time then you're stuck with that.

> Rent a van?

So you're going to drive a car after all?

> Or use a moving company.

You can do that if you move between apartments (and can afford to pay the service), but not if you're getting a few things spontaneously.

> Some places just aren't densely populated enough to ever make public transport work well. Many places are though, even quite small cities, and then it's freedom to not have a car.

That's why it's never either-or but typically both. Most people need, and have, access to a car in one way or another. That doesn't mean they don't use the public transport, bicycle, or walk by foot when they can.

>>That's what Europe will do - stick to letters, faxes and manual methods.

I'm sorry, which parts of Europe have you been to, exactly? Many countries in EU are at the forefront of digitization, years ahead of US in most areas when it comes to banking and civil admin matters.

And not to be rude, but when you go to US it feels like a museum - you see those things called checks that my dad used to tell me about that people pay and are paid with(!!!!), and people still swipe their payment cards like it's 1995. For a country that has the biggest tech companies in the world it's not even in the 21st century on some fronts.

Oh and guess what Apple needed you to do to open a developer account just 10 years ago - that's right, a Fax with your details. I don't think there were any fax machines left in my country by then, I've had to use an online service to send it.

Mainly Germany in that case (I had to send a lot of faxes too), but I've lived throughout Europe and been to the US a lot.

I agree the US is far behind on fin-tech. Actually "developing" countries like Turkey, UAE and China are really far ahead here.

But the real issue is that Europe has no OpenAI (Mistral isn't as competitive) or Google or Microsoft or Anthropic or Amazon or Apple or Waymo - Europe is instead dependent on these companies (see the other post here regarding the sanctions on the ICC blocking all their Microsoft and Google accounts).

While the US still has some way to advance in consumer tech (and is being outpaced by China there), there is at least the opportunity in those innovative, growing companies.

> I'm sorry, which parts of Europe have you been to, exactly?

Probably Germany. Even Austria phased out faxes a year or two ago.

I doubt it, unless you’re in some tiny village in the middle of nowhere Germany is very much technologically on par with/ahead of the rest of the developed world

Second this, my fiancé and I were flabbergasted at the seeming mishmash of 90’s tech and the occasional futuristic building when we were there.

The thing that blew my mind more than anything was the archaic financial tech in place. No chip and pin and instead swiping cards, cheques etc. in one instance the ticket machine in the Chicago subway requested a US zip code to use my card. I was baffled, zip code? Surely this is a typo and it wants a pin. Nope. A zip is what it wanted. When I spoke to a police officer he informed me to just put 0 and it will work. Lo and behold, it did.

It haunts me to this day.

Well, we value the lives of our citizens and aren't willing to sacrifice them to further the development of hype technology. Tesla's "autopilot" alone is linked to at least fifty one fatalities [1].

It's fine for me if y'all decide that's the course to take, y'all voted for this after all, but here in Europe, we prefer doing things the right way.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tesla_Autopilot_crashe...

Yeah, one fatality for every 7.4m miles vs. 0.9m when driven by humans

We can hold humans accountable though. An AI driving tool, we cannot, not without serious reforms in the entire issue of "corporate veils" - when a human gets behind the wheel despite being knowingly unwell to drive, we lock the human up. With a corporate made driving tool, the insurance pays some money in damages and that's it, no human gets any kind of consequence (at least if there was no intent involved like with Volkswagen's emissions scandal).

And we can (and do) make our cities safer to reduce road fatalities and injuries... Germany for example, even though it has Autobahns with unlimited speed, has about ~2800 fatalities per year on a population of about 84 million people. The Netherlands have ~700 road fatalities a year on 18 million people. The US in contrast has ~40.000 fatalities on a population of 340 million - about 4 times the fatality rate of Germany and the Netherlands.

And yes, I am comparing based on populations because the availability of decent public transport is key in reducing vehicular accidents.

That sounds really weird. Why are you keen to hold a human accountable? In my book it's an improvement that autonomous driving is significantly lowering the fatality rate (and we can expect it to decrease further), while simultaneously lowering the direct accountability of single humans. I wouldn't wish anyone the misfortune of being involved in a fatality. The less involvement the better.

> Why are you keen to hold a human accountable?

Because there are companies like Tesla that keep putting up cars with inadequate technology (cameras instead of LIDAR/radar) or testing on the road and people die as a result of this penny pinching, but no one at Tesla got punished in any way or form for this decision.

On top of that we got the way over the top marketing claims, which routinely leads to one scenario: Tesla drivers engaging the autopilot and playing games on their phones, followed by the autopilot either unable to detect a dangerous situation or disengage once the crash becomes inevitable so it doesn't get counted as an Autopilot incident [1].

At this point, it is willful negligence but we don't have a way to hold Tesla accountable. That is why I want to see high-ranking executives, up to and including its CEO, be held on trial for manslaughter at least.

And hell even here in Europe, Tesla's garbage on wheels causes issues. Both in Germany [2] and Sweden [3] we have had drivers fall asleep for minutes while Autopilot was engaged. This kind of crap was promised to not happen, but apparently someone at Tesla fucked that up. I'm amazed that Autopilot has held up and prevented either driver from actually crashing into something, but the failure of engaging safety mode and come to a safe stop if the driver becomes inattentive for whatever reason is inacceptable, period.

And it's not just Tesla that fails to deal with the damages their shit technology causes. Remember Waymo's honking incidents that went on for weeks [4]? At a minimum, this shit should have led to a) immediate cessation of operation, b) damages being paid to the neighbors who got hit by this noise and c) to a fully transparent audit which uncovers why that happened and what steps were made to prevent a reoccurence.

I'm sick and tired of multi-billion dollar megacorporations using the general populace as a free testbed for their crap instead of doing the proper thing that everyone else does - test on closed-off roads and dedicated test tracks.

[1] https://electrek.co/2025/03/17/tesla-fans-exposes-shadiness-...

[2] https://news.sky.com/story/police-in-germany-chase-tesla-for...

[3] https://www.carscoops.com/2024/04/sleeping-tesla-driver-crui...

[4] https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/11/24218134/waymo-parking-lo...

I mean does this technology decrease the number of fatalities or does it not? What are we discussing?

My point is, no matter if it is effective or not, I don't want multi-billion dollar companies to use society as a free-to-kill testing ground for their garbage on wheels.

As said: when a human kills or maims someone with a car, that human gets consequences to feel. When a corporation does the same, they have to pay pittances and that's it. This cannot stand any longer.

Are you accusing those companies of practicing free-to-kill when the numbers, based on everything we have on the table, say the opposite, i.e. the technologies are saving lives?

Would you simultaneously prefer being able to accuse someone who is involved in a car fatality of being a murderer for being basically stupid and careless (like almost everyone is once in a while) and unlucky at the same time, when different technology (autonomous driving) likely would have prevented the accident in the first place?

That's about the kind of claim you would expect from someone openly claiming connections with Antifa.

Intentions (especially those projected by some onto others) don't matter much -- it's the result, the numbers (here, fatalities) that make all the difference.

> Are you accusing those companies of practicing free-to-kill when the numbers, based on everything we have on the table, say the opposite, i.e. the technologies are saving lives?

You did notice that I singled out Tesla and Waymo here, correct? BMW for example does stuff the right way - they opened a dedicated test track in 2023 [1] instead of developing on the open road, Volkswagen does their testing with a human safety driver behind the wheel [2], and Mercedes had their Level 3 system actually certified and audited, a worldwide first by the way [3].

I don't have anything against autonomous vehicles, in fact I believe they are a vital solution to providing individual mobility in rural areas that can't ever be economically served by public transport.

All I want is that companies don't outsource costs to society at large. Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen do this, Waymo and Tesla don't. They just do whatever they want, zero considerations and zero effort, while our industry does things by the book and has more expenses as a result.

> That's about the kind of claim you would expect from someone openly claiming connections with Antifa.

That's a low blow, you know it, and you also know it's against HN rules.

[1] https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/deutschland/article/detail/T0...

[2] https://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/hamburg-volkswagen-teste...

[3] https://www.tuv.com/presse/de/meldungen/automatisches-spurha...

> You did notice that I singled out Tesla and Waymo here, correct?

Yes I did notice, and do the numbers and results that we are talking about not apply to them? Do you have more ammunition to continue to use the term free-to-kill, or want to consider if the use of the term may be a bit ideology laden?

> Yes I did notice, and do the numbers and results that we are talking about not apply to them?

They do but still I'm not willing to give these two multi-billion dollar megacorps a hall pass for penny pinching with deadly results when our car industry shows that better ways of doing things exist.

Not everything needs to be done by the typical Silicon Valley strategy of "move fast, break things" - especially not when the things being broken are literal human lives.

Quite frankly, I'm not an expert in the technologies or what numbers have been published -- but 50 fatalities which was brought up above is nothing compared to the lives saved by a safer technology. It may even be nothing compared to the lives saved by making the cars just a bit cheaper or making them arrive at the market just a bit earlier, or may be nothing compared to the fatalities that happened when people were rushing to the car store, or... you get the point.

Calling Teslas garbage on wheels doesn't help either, when the accident and defect statistics seem to indicate otherwise. Not a Tesla fanboy by the way, but the discussion around Tesla seems to me to be unfair especially in certain circles.

> Calling Teslas garbage on wheels doesn't help either, when the accident and defect statistics seem to indicate otherwise.

Uh, Tesla routinely has people wait for months for spare parts [1]. Bad logistics, okay, excusable for a company just a year or two in business, but Tesla is in for well over a decade now. That's also a contributor in why Tesla vehicles cost significantly more to insure [2], with reports of carriers refusing Tesla vehicles at all cropping up even a year ago [3], and all models being listed as "difficult to insure" in NYC [4]. In Germany, the situation appears to be similar, with serious premiums compared to other cars [5]. And that's all before thinking about the current wave of politically motivated vandalism - say some idiot bashes in a window, good luck getting a replacement in time, not to mention the insurance premium hike that's inevitable after filing a claim.

As for defects, well, the build quality of the Cybertruck is so much a meme at this point that I won't waste time researching on it. Steel sheets literally falling off the vehicle. The bloody thing turning rusty from ordinary rain. No matter what, that's inacceptable.

> Not a Tesla fanboy by the way, but the discussion around Tesla seems to me to be unfair especially in certain circles.

It's not like the criticism isn't well founded in facts. The decision of forgoing LIDAR (by Musk himself, who called LIDAR a "crutch" [6]) has been debated for years, the constant overpromises and underdeliveries led to a multitude of legal issues and SEC trouble, so did the various other issues surrounding lemon laws, general build quality and spare parts availability that I've linked before. And there's a shocking report of someone claiming to be a Tesla IT insider from 2018 that details very shoddy IT practices [7].

And that's before getting to the Cybertruck which is such a dangerous design that it's deemed unsafe to drive on European roads (with the "workarounds" some people found [8] being under serious questioning) or the completely deranged actions of its leader of the last month.

[1] https://www.carscoops.com/2023/11/tesla-owners-stuck-waiting...

[2] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a42709679/tesla-insurance-...

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaModelY/comments/18yrag1/why_ar...

[4] https://www.dfs.ny.gov/consumers/auto_insurance/difficult-to...

[5] https://tff-forum.de/t/versicherung-fuer-tesla-extrem-teuer/...

[6] https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/22/anyone-relying-on-lidar-is...

[7] https://x.com/atomicthumbs/status/1032939617404645376

[8] https://efahrer.chip.de/news/tesla-fan-sichert-sich-eu-zulas...

> We can hold humans accountable though.

We could, but we don't anyway.

Look at the pathetic sentences for driving on drugs or without insurance, etc.

Automation is safer and better.

For trains, it's 0.09 fatalities per billion kilometers.

It's cars that are the problem. Who or what is driving them is a distraction.

I don't enjoy stating the obvious, but driving cars is still relatively safe and trains are not a replacement.

Where I live (south germany), for many trips that we can agree are kind of necessary (e.g. daily commute to work), trains can take 4-5x more time. There are other places where it's probably much worse.

There are other reasons why trains are not a replacement, for example cargo. Are you taking home your new cupboard, sofa, or fridge, on a train?

The key thing is, in urban areas you can get by without a car. The big cities obviously - I lived in Munich for well over a decade without a car or a driver's license, and the only point in time where I was happy that my wife has a license was when we had to put our cats to rest - hauling an alive cat in public transport is okay, but hauling a dead cat in public transport, no damn way.

But also the less urban areas... Landshut? Everything well accessible with a bike, get a trailer and you can move around pretty much everything including a Bierbank and a whole ass grill setup - just a day or two ago, someone legitimately posted a photo of themselves, a cargo bike and a full size fridge. During the day, public transit with buses covers even the tiny villages around Landshut, despite the LAVV actually being ranked among the worst public transit systems in Germany.

> Are you taking home your new cupboard, sofa, or fridge, on a train?

For these cases get them delivered and hauled by professionals. That's how my wife and I dealt with our new sofas, IKEA charged something around 100€, or Saturn 40€ for our new dryer - a bargain, compared to having to haul that shit on our own.

I live in a city of 250.000 inhabitants that is very bicycle friendly and I estimate has an OK public transport. We recently moved (from <40m2 to >80m2) and in the last weeks we got: fridge, washing machine, dinner table, couch, bed, huuuge cupboards and wardrobe closets, chairs, and many smaller items. And I got myself a rig for sim-racing.

I got all of that used either from friends and family, or from kleinanzeigen.de (that's like Craigslist I think). We saved thousands of euros by getting used quality things, instead of new, possibly poor quality, IKEA items. And we did good for sustainability.. But that was only possible by doing spontaneous 5-20km car rides. For the sim-racing rig, driving a bit farther was necessary.

I also went to the hardware store, which is inconvenient to reach by public transport, more than a couple of times.

I don't see how I would have been able to be spontaneous and cheap like that, without a car, or even with a car that wasn't my own.

If you don't have a car, you're going to have a different life. You will make different compromises. You're not going to live in certain places. You're not going to take certain jobs. You might not visit some of your friends and family as often. You might buy new things just because they will be delivered straight to your home (having someone else drive the car).

Of course your life won't end, you might even enjoy it. But you're not _replacing_ the car by a train in many cases. You're just not doing things that you would otherwise do, and some of these will be done, possibly _need_ to be done, by other people instead.

I still take the bike or train when I can, and I like to walk to places within walking distance -- even 30-60 minutes if I have the time. Admittedly, sometimes I take the car instead of public transport only because it's a little bit cheaper or a little more convenient.

I do use city-wide public transport once in a while, but I don't own a monthly public transport ticket because it probably wouldn't pay off since I have a bicycle and a car. A single-trip public transport ticket for 10 minutes is around 3 Euros. If I need to get somewhere quickly (and back) and take the dog (which isn't free), that's closer to 10 Euros. IMO public transport shouldn't advantage the daily users as much in terms of cost (say 60 Euros/month even for people who may use it > 50 times a month), because it prevents adoption.

> But that was only possible by doing spontaneous 5-20km car rides. For the sim-racing rig, driving a bit farther was necessary.

Yeah, but you don't need your own car for such things. In Landshut for example, there's a car sharing association, and if we would need to go on such a ride we could just rent a car from them, there's always at least five of them available. And on top of that: a move is like what, a once in a decade event?

A car is hundreds of euros a month (the cost of the car itself / depreciation, maintenance, fuel, replacement parts, insurance, rent for a garage plus of course the fuel). It's an incredible waste of money to own a car if all you're realistically using it is once a year for a trip to Italy and once a year to haul some furniture.

The hardcore "car brains" are the worst - so many people who own a car spec it to the demands of their once-a-year vacation trip (and massively overpay as a result) when a cheap Dacia Spring (~17k new) would be more than enough for their daily demands and they could just go and rent a large car for the vacation trip.

> In Landshut for example, there's a car sharing association,

Driving like at least 20 times alone would have cost me what, maybe 1000 bucks? Ignoring all the other trouble that makes it less spontaneous.

Also, those cars specifically aren't the right size to transport furniture in the first place. I also can't wear them down like my own car.

> a move is like what, a once in a decade event?

Depends, but there are other situations where you want to move things.

> A car is hundreds of euros a month (the cost of the car itself / depreciation, maintenance, fuel, replacement parts, insurance, rent for a garage plus of course the fuel). It's an incredible waste of money to own a car if all you're realistically using it is once a year for a trip to Italy and once a year to haul some furniture.

Our car is a relatively cheap one, probably 150-200 euros a month all in (about 50 Euros/month for fuel, 50 Euros/month insurance and taxes, about 3500 Euros for buying and maintenance in 3.5 years, you can expect the average cost of ownership here to go down if we hold it for another couple years). Apart from commute (2x/week), we use it 1-2x per week on average. Plus, we can use it for holidays and other trips.

For the basic person-transport needs we could probably use Car Sharing cars if we need it less than 5 times per month (we need it more), but it would be less ergonomic.

A quick search returned to me a number of 2.5 fatalities per billion (10^9) car passenger kilometers. That's an EU average.

BYD and VW are outselling tesla in europe. Just like DJI drones, robots will probably be chinese because they build them faster. Any country that wants sovereignity must control the software , but europe does very little to grow a software ecosystem, other than continuously building obstacles for it.

I get the impression that you think VW is Chinese, or am I misunderstanding your comment?

VW is the world's largest auto maker and it's German.

I'd appreciate a legal perspective on this - is the problem that Microsoft's EU operations are run by a corporate division rather than a standalone subsidiary?

If it were an EU-based subsidiary that controlled the data about EU citizens, it would not be beholden to US executive orders, while still otherwise offering MS the ability to control global corporate strategy from its US HQ, right?

EDIT: fixed s/division/subsidiary/ in the second paragraph

As long as there's any US entity at any point in the chain, I don't think it's reliable.

All this talk of divisions is marketing window dressing as far as I can tell. If decisions are made from the US, it will be used as a weapon against our sovereignty.

Except the US doesn't really care about Europe that much. Having a government bureaucracy try to rebuild the entire US cloud software ecosystem because of one four year presidential term (which is already dramatically losing popularity in the US) sounds wildly silly to me.

Meanwhile turning away from the US means running into the arms of the Chinese for most things. And they are the much bigger threat to the EU economy given their superior manufacturing abilities -- which still today is the base of the EU's prosperity.

Once European industrial companies start losing to the Chinese, it's over for Europe's entire way of life and the social benefits systems all collapse. I'm sure they'll try USSR-style blanket protectionism before this happens, but will just lead to falling even further behind.

I don't suggest fully turning away from the US. I think a stance similar to Yugoslavia in the Cold War would be the way to go. Extract concessions from both blocks by threatening to tip the balance of power in favor of their adversary.

Linux kernel is developed in the US. Russia felt it hard way, when their developers were cut from submitting patches. One Trump word and Europe developers will follow. That's just an example. US is a locomotive for the whole computing. I want to underline that IT production chain is incredibly long and excluding US from this chain is impossible, simple as that.

The kernel is open source. Very worst case, we'll maintain our own fork.

Yes, if you are on the board of a company, with wholly-owned subsidiaries in many jurisdictions around the world, even where the local operations are theoretically through local corps with independent management, you absolutely still need to use your control of those subs to take effect of these types of extra-territorial laws (I can't speak specifically to US executive orders though).

In the anti-money-laundering world for instance, this is very real. When a person gets sanctioned in parent company, you need to action it all the way down your subsidiaries. If that action is at the root of the company, then all subs get caught. The AML world is even weirder because of the overlapping jurisdictions of you and your banking/money-transmission partners (even if you, yourself, are a bank).

I believe that sanctions laws are usually drafted to include the head company and its subsidiaries, and possibly even companies in which it has a shareholding (otherwise it is too easy to work around the sanctions).

The problem is that at some point you're always going to be subject to at least one country's laws, and at some point those laws will conflict with those of another country, even within the EU.

Going on-prem is probably the safest, but you're still at risk of physical search and seizure as well as being subject to pressure placed on your ISP to cut you off if someone really wants it done.

You speak as if in USA there wasn't a different tax code every 3km

I wish they weren't sued into providing a backdoor for the German government, I vastly prefer their corporate structure to proton, but I cant really trust to use a "encrypted" service with a government backdoor.

Proof? There is no backdoor in Tuta, the code is here: https://github.com/tutao/tutanota

There was a court case here a while ago because the feds wanted access to someone's emails. They won the case and forced tuta to build them a way into their system that allows them to get at non end to end encrypted emails before they get at-rest-encrypted. German article https://www.heise.de/news/Gericht-zwingt-Mailprovider-Tutano... English article about the same topic https://hackread.com/encrypted-email-provider-tutanota-backd... This essentially means they are forced to save a copy of the non encrypted emails somewhere, at least for german customers. You can argue its not a "backdoor" in the typical sense, since end to end encryption is still in place, but like, come on

Hi, Tuta Team here, we came across this and wanted to jump in. The facts are correct - thanks for explaining it the way it actually was. We explain in more detail here why this case highlights the need for *end-to-end encryption* and why we recommend everybody using it whenever possible: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/ntzn3w/comment/h0v...

The EU needs to take over Firefox, improve and support it, declaring independence

Digital sovereignty is not someone else's services using someone else's software on someone else's machines on someone else's networks. Its services you run, using software you control, on machines you bought, connected to networks you manage.

So reject the cloud and self-host!

So there's numerous layers to this:

1. Where and how is the data stored and retrieved? This can be made local by forcing all data users/services to use an EU data storage service that is locally owned and operated and under EU jurisdiction. Access to the data would only be to the service delivery operator and the appropriate EU legal authorities.

2. Where and how is the data accessed? The data needs to be accessed by the service provider (eg an email service) to handle incoming updates and requests. The access could be limited to the required updates and inquiries, or otherwise logged so that the service provider is held accountable for access.

3. Where and how is the service accessible to legal authorities? For example, police warrants for an email inbox. The service provider should be required to identify and reveal publicly what data is available and how it is legally accessible if required. Given encryption, it may be that the service provider is unable to provide that access to anyone except the end user (eg Protonmail, Signal).

4. What control does the end user have over their data and the associated meta-data maintained by the service provider? GDPR covers a lot of ground here, including the right to be forgotten.

Something you missed as well was 2018's "CLOUD Act" [1]

Stealing from Wikipedia since frankly it's better articulated than I could do

"The CLOUD Act was introduced following difficulties that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had with obtaining remote data through service providers through SCA warrants, as the SCA was written before cloud computing was a viable technology. The situation was highlighted from a 2013 drug trafficking investigation, during which the FBI issued an SCA warrant for emails that a U.S. citizen had stored on one of Microsoft's remote servers in Ireland, which Microsoft refused to provide."

US Companies can't simply say "well that's in Europe. That's outside *our control*". The US truly considers its data reach to be global in nature when it comes to US companies. it's absolutely terrifying to think about

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act

That's why I'm suggesting that the data storage/retrieval supplier is EU owned and controlled. So in the case you quote, FBI can issue a warrant to Microsoft, but all they can do is pass it on to their data storage provider, who can reject it depending on EU law, not US law.

In the quoted case it would not make a difference if the data storage service was EU owned and controlled because the warrant is asking Microsoft to supply the data.

Microsoft can do that by simply using the normal data retrieval API that data storage service makes available to all its customers. To the data storage service the API call Microsoft will make to get the data the FBI wants is no different than the thousands of other API calls Microsoft is making daily to store and retrieve data.

What using an EU owned and controlled data storage service gets you is that you don't have to worry about non-EU law enforcement getting your data by forcing the data storage service to give it up directly to them.

Unfortunately the time to think about digital sovereignty was back in the 1970s.

We've stacked on so many layers of abstraction to computing and every step of the way Europe missed the boat due to its underlying structural issues for investment and fragmented cultures/markets. It's quite frankly too late.

Here's a NYT article from 34 years ago with the exact same story as today: https://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/22/business/europe-stumbles-...

Europe missed the PC, the internet, the smartphone, and is currently burying its head in the sand over AI.

Dumping a bunch of money into building an inferior domestic version of Microsoft 365 just as it's about to be disrupted by AI-native paradigms would be the amusing cherry on top.

It'd be like Apple moving the final cardboard packaging step to US factories and claiming their entire supply chain is 'sovereign.' Sure, China can't affect that last packaging step. But every layer of (far more important) abstraction below it they still have power over.

Microsoft did not block the email account of the ICC! This really is misinformation. See here: https://www.politico.eu/article/microsoft-did-not-cut-servic...

I always found Tuta's exaggerated reaction ridiculous. What makes their stand even more questionable when I visit their EU alternatives [1] webpage, first category they list is 'Email', under this category only "eligible" alternative is Tuta Mail.

Now, out of all alternative EU email providers they list only themselves as an alternative and expect alternative seekers to trust them?

1. https://tuta.com/blog/boycott-us-choose-european-products

I noticed this too. It makes all their articles look like self-promotion.

Not the whole ICC but the sanctioned prosecutor has been disconnected !

>A Microsoft spokesperson said that it had been in contact with the court since February “throughout the process that resulted in the disconnection of its sanctioned official from Microsoft services.” The spokesperson added that “at no point did Microsoft cease or suspend its services to the ICC.”

I'm not any the wiser from the article - who did what and why doesn't Microsoft want to have done anything?

That article, and its many versions in other outlets, is a weird (successful) attempt at changing the narrative. The news that triggered all of it was that Microsoft cut off the ICC chief prosecutor's access to his email. Microsoft comes out saying "we did not cut services to the ICC, just its chief prosecutor". The media widely announces "Microsoft did not cut services to the ICC". That's not news, that's just marketing for Microsoft.

The original news, and the claims by Tuta, are still correct: Microsoft cut off the ICC chief prosecutor's access to his email due to US sanctions.

The ICC has nothing to do with Europe and the EU apart from being located in the Netherlands, unless there is a claim that it is not independent and partial (hum hum).

The claim that it is "central to Europe’s commitment to human rights" to fluff their case is FUD basically to promote their products.

The ICC is the legacy of the Nuremberg prosecutions.

The country where an international organisation is physically located tends to provide certain kinds of infrastructure and support besides the real estate.

There you go, you answered your own question: the ICC is located in Europe. No need for pointless warcrimes denialism (hum hum).

It doesn't matter.

It's an issue of "this could happen to us".

Wake me up when governments actually start writing checks. I bet the ICC will stay on Microsoft because doing anything else would be difficult. All anyone in big org IT knows is Microsoft, and no one wants to change.

Oh, they are writing checks. They have been writing big checks to create GAIA-X and a few other things as the European alternative sovereign cloud. But basically no-one is using it because "but my Outlook doesn't work!". So it is all wasted money because of stupid bureaucrats and politicians as users who cannot be arsed to remember that their email isn't in Outlook anymore...

You might say it is a little more complicated, but actually it isn't. Nobody wants any kind of change, so things stay as they are. Only the Americans can change things and change your Windows/Outlook/Azure, because then "it is like it is, we have to update"...

Did Gaia-X ship anything besides web pages with fluff and more 'policy documents'?

One line of functioning code?

In the last discussion about this that I read here and participated in, as someone who got paid from that fund for a while, I think the consensus was that the project was less meant to deliver something tangible, and more of a camouflaged general subsidy for participating European software firms.

Yes, there was something: https://gaia-x-hub.de/en/funding-projects/

But as always, most of it is pork for some cronies anyways.

One related thing that has been developed/packaged is the "sovereign cloud stack" https://scs.community/ . However, it didn't see much use yet, for the reasons mentioned.

Was anything valuable actually built? Thought those 'projects' were just subsidy...

Europe could easily have its own stack but I'm not sure taxpayer money would ever reach the right people to make it happen.

> Wake me up when governments actually start writing checks.

This is already happening. The European Commission funds thousands of open-source projects:

https://ngi.eu/about/

For instance, Stalwart is an open-source, Rust-based mail server and collaboration suite that has received grants from the EC:

https://stalw.art/blog/nlnet-grant-stalwart/

https://stalw.art/blog/nlnet-grant-collaboration/

Yeah, that's unironically cool, but I don't see any customer success stories or any mention of big corpo/gov customers. The quantity and security of funding that long-term contracts bring leads to different outcomes than a subsidy. When I look at this my first thought is that I fear it will become abandonware when funding dries up.

What's the relationship between NGI and Nix? Vaguely remember another HNer suggested some sort of conflict of interest there re: funds.

This is already happening. US multinationals will face a huge reduction in user base and revenue, or they will have to truly globalise and shift to neutral locations. Software companies are especially vulnerable.

Locations are not relevant, company structures are. As long as the datacenter/subsidiary/employee in Europe can be instructed/pressured/circumvented by the USian mother company to do things, the problem remains.

So globalisation is actually not the answer here, the opposite has to happen.

Yes, so location is important. Of the entire company.

Checks, money transfer and promises are not enough. But alternative to Excel will be a half of the work :)

Who needs excel now when you can use ai?

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