IMO, this is a great wake-up call for every country out there that over-relies on US tech and considers them a messiah. On the short term, this is going to be painful if US continues to bully and holds tech hostage but in the long term, trying to be as independent as possible will only prove to be advantageous (if done seriously and done right). China is a good example.
Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?
101–110 of 318 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?
#102Is the backlash worse than the Bush invasion of Iraq in 2003? Is it worse than the first Trump administration? Genuinely curious. The reality is the 50% of voters who DID not vote for the current president are just as shell shocked as the Europeans. Only we KNEW it was coming.
Yes, it's much worse than 2003. Back then, multiple NATO countries took part in the invasion of Iraq, as US invoked Article 5.
Now, 22 years later US is saying "f... o..".
In the first term Trump was unprepared, now they had 4 years to prepare and it seems they are very methodical in dismantling US global influence, and but also dismantling structures internally.
As far as I'm worried about security of Europe or Far East allies (Japan, SK, Taiwan, Philippines), I'm worried about future of US itself.
Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?
#103Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Will this really happen? Or will the US prevent Europe from doing that by saying “then defend from Russia all by yourself?”
Bidens aid undoubtedly moved the needle, but that’s over and from what I’ve heard weapon deliveries have already stopped. So I guess my question is aren’t Europe already by themselves?
Trump can still make things worse, e.g. explicitly saying "If Putin invaded Estonia, US would stay out of it" or things like this. He hasn't said that (I hope) so there's still some strategic ambiguity - i.e. it's not clear for Putin if Trump is just uttering empty words re letting Europe go or whether he would in the end do defend.
Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?
#105The majority of Americans do not care and do not really want US tech to be global. The majority of Americans are ashamed of US soft power and the way we meddle with other countries constantly. While loss of dollar hegemony will have economic implicatiosn for the US, American's just don't really care about having dollar hegemony. We don't care about any of these things or what Europe is doing.
> "The majority of Americans do not care and do not really want US tech to be global."
They will care very, very much when it bites them in terms of higher prices and loss of jobs because of decreased tech exports. Dollar hegemony has benefitted the US economy tremendously over the past few decades; money rushed _into_ US dollar denominated holdings in the 2008 crash as one big example.
Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?
#106Switching search engines to what? AI-powered search also created by American companies? America's image is toxic to everyone right now (including its own citizens). But I don't really see that many valid alternatives. It's not like Europe has done much to cultivate any kind of relevant software industry.
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Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's already expected. Right now, preparations are made for nuclear (re-)armament of europe. Germany in particular is working towards that at this moment [EDIT: politically. not in the "actively preparing weapons"-phase.]. Also, france has a first-strike policy. So even without US troops, europe will be fine. A sizable part of the population has wanted the US out of especially germany for a looong time now, so thos…
> Right now, preparations are made for nuclear (re-)armament of europe. Germany in particular is working towards that at this moment. Can you provide a source for this? It would be big if true, in particular the Germany claim. I've not heard it and couldn't find things with a quick google search. Germany is currently already doing nuclear weapons sharing with the US, i.e. they have access to US nuclear weapons though…
Sure, here from a german public broadcaster[1].
The political work for it is being done right now. However, I reread my comment and realized, it could be interpreted as "actively working at the weapons" instead of the political framework. My apologies in that case.
[1] https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/deutschland/nuklearwa...
Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US is already effectively saying that.
Yeah when you unilaterally give up your largest bargaining chip, you stop getting any say in what happens.
Which ironically means the US also loses it's leverage. They're already threatening to functionally (if not actually) withdraw from NATO and economically split off via tariffs. The next step is actual invasion, which while sorta-kinda has been talked about with Greenland, probably won't happen.
Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?
#109Any links to read what people in EU are saying?
Look at https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/top/ with timeline=last_month.
It has many links to articles with an European viewpoint.
But you have to read between the lines as EU media does not like to write "this is too crazy to be happening, what are they thinking?".
E.g. a title like "Macron calls emergency European summit on Trump". How bad do you think it has to create a EU summit solely for handling the new US relationship?
tldr: large increase in EU military and which has to be EU made. US is seen as ending "rule of law" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law) and has become an unreliable partner, great loss of soft power and prestige.
Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Beware if you want to use Hetzner's s3, they had a massive repeated outage over the past few days and don't offer any reliability guarantee, not even something like 99.9%. Maybe you're thinking of something else, or don't care if you can't upload/download for a few hours here and there - just wanted to warn as I was surprised by this as a user.
Yes, I was considering Hetzner or Scaleway, I have a few months to decide before my current prepaid plan expires. Thank you for the heads-up !
I've had 0 issues with Hetzner's servers, they're great at that. I hoped this would translate to cloud services as well, but it turns out (not surprisingly in hindsight) that offering a fully managed service is something completely different than cheap and easily administered server.