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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?

#141

Post by culi »

whynotminot wrote: post #54
ben_w wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the constant promises and slow rate of improvement, there's a high chance Tesla's FSD was never going to be authorised in Europe even absent this.

I think this is true. Given the regulatory environment, it's hard to imagine FSD ever getting approved -- even if it actually does get truly safer than the average driver! Europe does not want innovation. And it will not take the (admittedly non trivial) risks required to have it.

BlueCruise and BMW's systems are both approved. The truth is Tesla is simply behind on self-driving tech. In part due to Musk's insistence on relying solely on cameras without use of radars

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

#142

Post by computerthings »

alanfranz wrote: post #5
rvnx wrote: post #2

Tesla FSD wont be authorized in Europe, this will be one direct consequence of all of that. In addition, tariffs will be put on cars coming from the US. Plus, US is now recognized as a very unreliable partner in terms of defense, that Europe regrets buying their systems.

Will this really happen? Or will the US prevent Europe from doing that by saying “then defend from Russia all by yourself?”

Oh, we're already looking at the likelihood of Trump arming Russia and joining the war on the side of Putin. But for some people, although probably a minority, that just increases the resolve. They simply will never be part of something like this: https://bsky.app/profile/doctoroxford.bsky.social/post/3liqw...

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

#143

Post by browningstreet »

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.

I’m not discounting that at all, but I shuttled that into the weird and dangerous part. The DNC is an impotent agent for its constituents. And democracy. A spark needs to alight there too.

Musk is already pretty unpopular. A lot of the damage will hit MAGA territories. It may unravel the base for the GOP. They conspired well for a long time. It’s a daunting situation.

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

#144

Post by qq99 »

croemer wrote: post #34
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,…

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.

Around the time where Hetzner was all the rage ("Just host your own server for $8 a month!") I was trying to sign up. They had a multi-day outage that prevented even signing up. I think I was lucky to experience that before I started using them.

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

#145

Post by robocat »

vvpan wrote: post #19

If Europe somewhat deregulated startup stage businesses an countries issued more visas to engineers it could probably turn a lot of things around. So far European founders have been moving to US. But these days I imagine I'm not the only one who doesn't want to work in the shadow of US technofeudalist oligarchy and receive money from people like Marc Andreessen.

I believe there is a lack of startups in New Zealand (the example I'm familiar with) because it simply doesn't make any financial sense to begin a startup[1]. The rewards are not enough to cover the risks.

The USA has a culture of startups because there you often get financially rewarded for winning. Startups are mostly a loser's game in New Zealand (Disclosure: I'm a very minor winner at the startup game over here - I have at least some skin in the game and some practical learning).

Improving regulations would help - however governments seem to lack the skills/incentives/motivation to choose good compromises.

> receive money from people like Marc Andreessen.

Money doesn't actually have morals: the point of money is it allows all of us to choose between morally conflicting choices based on prices and our bank balance. Money is a fungible representation of limited resources. I've never met Marc, but his writing seems fairly disagreeable to me.

Part of the reason Europe is economically losing is that Europe doesn't play economics to win.

Systems have their own emergent properties and Europe seems hell bent on regulating their systems so that European countries gift control to the USA for critical things.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43099056

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

#146

Post by loloquwowndueo »

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.

The number of people who don’t know git is decentralized and instead equate git with GitHub is staggering. Glad to see that’s not the case with parent, but seeing people thinking you must have a GitHub account to use git at all is very common.

Launchpad.net offers project management and git code hosting and is run by a UK company (Canonical).

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

#147

Post by weatherlight »

madspindel wrote: post #50

I've sold all my holdings in US companies to instead invest in STOXX Europe 600 alternatives. I know others here in Sweden that have said they have done the same. In Sweden, Russia has always been the enemy. My prediction is that France and Germany will soon join the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) and it will be the end of NATO. UK will probably join the Maximator intelligence alliance. The death of Five Eyes and NA…

I'm a dual citizen (US, Spain), I moved to Spain 1 year ago. I need to completely divest from the US.

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

#148

Post by loloquwowndueo »

pogue wrote: post #130
Sakos wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how to degoogle at this point. 90% of my registered accounts across the internet are with my Gmail account because I didn't want them tied to my private email.

There's an entire subreddit dedicated to helping people degoogle. One of the hardest things to get rid of is Google Maps as there's no real alternative that's as good. https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/

I haven’t touched Google maps in ages - I use Apple Maps which is decent these days (not the dumpster fire it was at launch - and even so, I used it back then, if only to de google a bit).

If the point is to avoid US companies this won’t be useful, but if the point is to avoid Google specifically, it is an option.

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

#149

Post by kcb »

lompad wrote: post #16
alanfranz wrote: post #5

Earlier 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?”

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…

I don't know, I think lately there's a massive flaw in first-strike and MAD policies. Does it ever really make sense to destroy the world and yourself because an ally(Baltic states for example) or even your own state is being invaded? It's certainly not going to improve your situation even if the alternative is invasion by a foreign power.

A powerful conventional army capable of proportional response is the only realistic deterrent.

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

#150

Post by Daril »

croemer wrote: post #110
Daril wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They launched recently their S3 Storage, so I think some initial issues are inevitable.
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