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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?

#171

Post by quickslowdown »

croemer wrote: post #157
Daril wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thanks, yeah the problem is the things done beyond code-hosting: Authn/z, issues, PRs, community, links pointing at Github URLs. I wish there was a way to automatically mirror those things to Codeberg as a backup. For issues/PRs that shouldn't be too hard to do.

Gickup mirrors most of these things. Not sure about PRs, but it can mirror issues, wiki, and all your branches.

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

#172

Post by ben_w »

dybber wrote: post #156
ben_w wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Europe will respond with drastic economic sanctions that will act quickly. Tariffs are slow to make a difference, but EU have prepared what they call an economic “bazooka”, that will very quickly hit US economy if force is used against a member state.

Sanctions, even well targeted ones, as the only consequence for an invasion, seems to me to likely be a risk Trump is willing to take.

Even if the sanctions would include, e.g. all Trump assets (like the Scottish golf course) being seized.

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

#174

Post by danaris »

kcb wrote: post #149
lompad wrote: post #16

Earlier 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…

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 real…

The purpose of MAD is to never have to launch a nuke.

The entire point of the doctrine is that any sane person in charge of a country('s military) would never risk getting their own country nuked just to attack another country, so having nukes on your side means that no one else will attack you.

This...does somewhat break down when we end up with people in charge of nuclear countries who are not sane.

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

#175

Post by qwerpy »

pavlov wrote: post #69
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.

I have a Tesla with so-called FSD in Europe, and it still feels like it’s ten years away from being road-safe. It can’t even recognize speed limit signs correctly. I bought this car six years ago paying for the FSD feature upfront, and since then Tesla and their CEO have been constantly lying about it. I’ll never buy another car from this company just for this reason. I think Musk probably sees the writing on the wal…

Counterpoint, I helped my father buy a model Y and it helps him do the 2 hour drive to visit his grandchildren. The FSD marketing has been a bit over the top but it’s still the best system by far.

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

#176

Post by politelemon »

Daril wrote: post #140
croemer wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The contexts aren't the same. You aren't a captive audience with GitHub, and the "concentration of control by a single company" makes it sound like they forced us to use their service. We chose to gather there because of critical mass, similar to ig, FB, etc.

Starlink is a legitimate concern because in some places there were no other choice, hence a captive audience.

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

#177

Post by ModernMech »

Daril wrote: post #43
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,…

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

Great thing about git is it's distributed. I use Gitlab as my main repo, but I set Github as a remote, and I keep a copy on my hosted version of Gitlab. If Github disappears tomorrow I'd lose my issue tracking but that's about it.

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

#178

Post by ben_w »

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.

> Suppose the war ends. Will the Europeans keep boycotting the cheap russian gas?

How fast can Ukraine scrap the parts of the pipeline going through their own territory?

Even those countries that would quite like access to Russian gas, may just not have a choice in the matter.

And given we've already seen some spectacularly poor decision making by whoever fires the various missiles[0] that end up hitting multiple different nuclear reactors in the area, there's a non-zero risk of the entire border region suffering catastrophic (though likely not Chernobyl-1986 level[1]) radiation leak incidents.

This also makes it somewhat of a moot point to consider any mineral wealth besides oil, or even a return to normality for food output, at this point.

[0] Zaporizhzhia: both sides blamed the other, and irregardless of who did it, the nature of the damage says it was done by shelling; more recently Chernobyl's outer barrier was also hit.

[1] I think Russia still has some reactors with positive void coefficient in Kursk (near where Ukraine's counter-invasion was), but Ukraine itself has decommissioned all their positive void coefficient reactors.

So it's not impossible for another Chernobyl, but it's really unlikely.

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

#179

Post by rsync »

silverquiet wrote: post #73

I'm a US Millennial and my impression is that the US has spent my adult lifetime destroying its soft power, and this week is really just a culmination of that. US tech firms do not and have never (at least in my time working for them) cared about anything other than a pathological pursuit of profit that borders on nihilistic paperclip-optimization. I believe that US firms see European tech companies as slow/lazy and…

“US tech firms do not and have never (at least in my time working for them) cared about anything other than a pathological pursuit of profit that borders on nihilistic paperclip-optimization.”

Ahem … large US tech firms, that is.

FWIW we have had two customers (apologetically) terminate service in the past month citing nationalist concerns.

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

#180

Post by hagbard_c »

dopidopHN wrote: post #40
olalonde wrote: post #24

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

Vance came to Munich, and promoted European fascist political parties. I wish I was kidding.

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