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Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?

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Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?

#131

Post by antirez »

whynotminot wrote: post #120
antirez wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are something everybody can reproduce with enough money, as shown by Musk itself recently: in one year they have Grok3 which is a SOTA model, without having particular talents or innovations, just following the recipe everybody else is using (and this is why you see new companies competing with established companies: all are training transformers with a lot of tokens, basically). So Europe can have their LLMs as…

> So Europe can have their LLMs as well: the important thing is to relax this stupid AI act But you're kind of showing here why Europe doesn't have the software innovation America does. Americans are not inherently smarter or more capable of doing innovative things than Europeans. It's just that whenever a European wants to do something interesting, there's a handy European regulation making it harder or less profita…

I believe that certain drives for certain regulations that are clearly shooting themselves in the feet were approved with less clear processes than needed (remember corruption cases of certain European politicians recently for the Olympics? If it happens for minor stuff like that... go figure). This was acceptable even if many countries were unhappy as long as the US were believed to be a strong partner. Now this changed, and it is likely that certain regulations will be relaxed.

Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?

#132

Post by Deukhoofd »

olalonde wrote: post #24

What did the US do to Europe this week? Are you referring to Trump withdrawing support for Ukraine?

Vances speech in Munich to Europe, and Trumps apparent selling out of Ukraine.

I can tell you that the media cycle and conversation here (The Netherlands) has been very much about how we can move forward without the United States. People around me have been pulling out of American social media, dropping WhatsApp (which has been the biggest chat app here for a long time), and stopped using American exports.

It's even overshadowing the German elections, which would otherwise be the biggest news topic, as the election in Europe's largest economy.

A lot of people here have lost a huge amount of trust in the US, and I don't know if it can ever really come back.

Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?

#133

Post by culi »

34679 wrote: post #41
Daril wrote: post #8

For what it counts, I deleted my Amazon account today (and lost all my Kindle books in the process), I'll never buy anything from them again. I'll close my S3 storage account with a US company in the coming months : I'll switch to a German service. In the coming weeks, I'll also delete my GMail account (my devices are already deGoogled since many years). There a lot of European alternatives that respect our privacy,…

Would you mind sharing some of your favorites for us Yanks? Some of us like privacy too.

Protonmail and Tutanota are the two big ones with e2ee

This site is great for finding alternatives to any piece of software (not just OSS)

https://alternativeto.net/

Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?

#134

Post by otherme123 »

unosama wrote: post #58
seydor wrote: post #6

Good headlines for sure, but i wonder: Suppose the war ends. Will the Europeans keep boycotting the cheap russian gas? Tarriffs are a nuisance to the US - the US doesn't export much.

The US imports way too much and our economy has been slowly dying since the 70s. Tarriffs are only a nuisance for the upperclass, they're a boon for middle class Americans because they allow more industry to come back to the United States.

Tariffs suck for everyone except for the few that suddenly see their sector protected by them.

For starters, they will shock well greased supply chains, that will cause shortages and thus price raises. Who suffer price raising the most? Then, protected industries will have quasi-monopoly power to raise prices (this is the populism behind tariffs). But other industries will suffer because they can't import their resources and have to switch to more expensive and/or lower quality locals. As an example: suppose that car makers are happy with tariffs protecting them from japanese cars, but now they have to buy expensive US steel, and have to move their assembly lines back to US where today is hard to find experienced and cheap workers. Because everyone always claim to want industry back, but then nobody wants a blue collar job if they can get a white collar one.

Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?

#135

Post by culi »

croemer wrote: post #117
Daril wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a software developer viewpoint, my biggest worry is about GitHub, owned by Microsoft. I self host my open source code with Forgejo.

Can you explain what exactly your worry is with GitHub? If you have your repos locally, you can always go somewhere else if/when something happens with GitHub. Except if you rely on things like Github actions or other features that are harder to move.

GitHub Actions, the issues system, pull request history, discussions, wiki.

Truth is, GitHub has a whole suite of really great features that's hard to move. Especially for open sourced projects/communities

Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?

#136

Post by Mossy9 »

stfp wrote: post #129
browningstreet wrote: post #61

I think it depends a lot on what happens in the elections 2 and 4 years from now. The world may forgive or may be very well justified in their turn. I’m in the enterprise space and there’s not a lot of open acknowledgement of changes yet. I don’t think my particular company thinks there’s a way this is good for them. To some degree I think it’s being treated as yet another line item in the long list of things that ne…

People keep mentioning elections in two or four years, I guess assuming that the MAGA mafia could lose and be ousted. I think it’s 100% wishful thinking. There is no way they’ll let go of power peacefully. But my bet is they won’t even technically lose, thanks to an arsenal of massive disinformation, voter suppression, gerrymandering, intimidation, up to jailing opponents and so on.

Also a lot of the trust damage cannot be easily undone. Even if a more stable government does get appointed in 4 years, it might be too late for restoring the previous status quo

Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?

#137

Post by thunfischbrot »

34679 wrote: post #41
Daril wrote: post #8

For what it counts, I deleted my Amazon account today (and lost all my Kindle books in the process), I'll never buy anything from them again. I'll close my S3 storage account with a US company in the coming months : I'll switch to a German service. In the coming weeks, I'll also delete my GMail account (my devices are already deGoogled since many years). There a lot of European alternatives that respect our privacy,…

Would you mind sharing some of your favorites for us Yanks? Some of us like privacy too.

As a starting point I enjoyed https://european-alternatives.eu/

Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?

#138

Post by gloomyday »

le-mark wrote: post #28

Is 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.

It is much worse. Europeans are seeing Trump say and do things seen in Nazi Germany, including the failed coup years ago, the current removal of key government officials, and filling their positions with loyalists. Not to mention siding with Russia.

Europeans see this as treason, and it is.

Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?

#139

Post by ben_w »

dukeyukey wrote: post #108
alabastervlog wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can see Trump putting hostile troops in Greenland. Tiny population despite the size, and I think Trump (at least) does not believe Europe would respond seriously.

I don't even know how Europe would respond to that, and I live in Berlin.

Canada… not so much. For all the talk, he'd be absolutely screwed if he tried. If you think Fentanyl is a problem now, wait until it's supplied for free by drones sent by Canadian civilians paying for it out of pocket because they've never heard of the Geneva Convention or the Chemical Weapons Convention.

(Harder done than said, of course; if it was that easy to mess with populations, western Russia would be high as a kite right now).

Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?

#140

Post by Daril »

croemer wrote: post #117
Daril wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a software developer viewpoint, my biggest worry is about GitHub, owned by Microsoft. I self host my open source code with Forgejo.

Can you explain what exactly your worry is with GitHub? If you have your repos locally, you can always go somewhere else if/when something happens with GitHub. Except if you rely on things like Github actions or other features that are harder to move.

Well, one day MS could shut everything down or charge a lot of money to continue using the services. Almost all open source projects are currently hosted on Github (and rely on their services).

Yes, the code is replicated on thousands of machines around the web, but this concentration of control by a single company is extremely dangerous in my opinion.

The way events are unfolding these days, I'm really worried about what could happen.

Take for example Starlink and Ukraine... The USA threatened to shut down the internet service if Ukraine won't sign the rare minerals deal. A deal that would make Ukraine a colony of USA.

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