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Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?
181–190 of 318 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?
#182> the US completely destroyed its soft power this week Soft power sounds like manipulation to me. So if we destroyed our manipulation, great. The United States has put its fingers on too many scales rather than respecting the rights of individuals in other countries to manage their affairs the way they see fit. I welcome tech competition from Europe. Let the best products and services win.
> Soft power sounds like manipulation to me. So if we destroyed our manipulation, great.
Wow. So hard power -- literally killing others -- is OK, but "manipulating" them is not?
The fact is, power is power, "soft" or "hard," and we are discarding ours for nothing.
Also, alliances are not "manipulation." Working together against a common foe is not manipulation. Trade agreements are not manipulation.
Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?
#183Canada too. Border crossings down significantly over the recent long weekend: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/fewer-canadi...
Wow those numbers don't lie.
Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?
#184I was just thinking today how long will it be until Windows is turned into a weapon. I know I know, but its not really paranoid to think that anymore is it? Imagine the chaos around the world caused by Windows machines simultaneously reformatting hard disks except in America.
Considering they are trying to economically extort Ukraine for resources using Starlink access. Probably not too far away? The US does have a history of this, it's how anti-drug laws were exported to much of the world, they were pressured with economic threats by the USA to adopt them.
Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?
#185I’m an unhappy American. With D-ump’s anti science and education stance Europe (and china) will have an unprecedented chance to lure some great talent. With grants being suspended, colleges, government science, and technology professionals will have to find employment, Europe would be very attractive to a lot of educated people in the USA. My daughter holds a phd and is on the chopping block, I plan to tell her and her husband if they get job offers in Europe, I would gladly sell everything here and move to Europe too!
Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?
#186Earlier 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…
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.
Sure, but the strategy of US companies has been the same for many years.
Take for example Gmail: I remember 10 years ago it was free even for companies up to 100 users, then 50, then 10, then 0... The same with Google Maps, before it was free and later, after reaching a large user base, they changed the terms and above a certain number of visits per month it is a paid service.
Nothing wrong with that of course, but once you are inside their services, they make it really difficult to change providers. It is possible, of course, but in some cases it requires a relevant effort and many prefer to pay after being lured with very different promises.
I recently read the story of how Google took over Yahoo! as a search engine, they used a "Troy horse" ... and when Yahoo! discovered what happened it was too late.
Back to Github and MS ... MS has a very long history of trying to boycott Linux in any way possible (and I also remember what they did to BeOS) ... I think these are very valid reasons not to trust them. They didn't buy GitHub because they're nice and want to help open source ... the first thing they did was kill the Atom IDE. VS is full of trackers,yes it is open source, but also a mean to steal data and information directly from the computer of the developer.
The main problem for me here is the lack of principles, values. The only principle they follow is to try to become overly rich in some way. The US companies have a long history of trying in every legal and almost legal way to avoid paying taxes.
Until a few years ago, Amazon was always in loss in Italy because they transferred the profits (as inflated costs) to their subsidiary in Ireland and the Italian taxpayers gave back every year millions of Euros to Amazon as tax credits. This is not capitalism ...
Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?
#187I am European and I've never even seen anyone talking about it outside the internet. Majority of people do not know and do not care.
Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?
#188I ditched my Google account a while ago. That was tricky because I used it to log in to several websites.
I fortunately also got rid of Facebook a while ago. This gave me a lot more time back. It's difficult at first, because there's a little fomo, but now I am very happy.
I never started with all the other social media. No Instagram, no Twitter. So that makes it easy.
My computers have always run Linux, very happy with that.
Streaming services are next. At least the US ones.
Replacing whatsapp with signal also. I noticed a lot of my contacts are already in there, just not actively using it. It's a question of just starting communications and groups there.
It's quite doable, but you have to really want to "vote with your wallet" so to speak. I think it's a worthwhile sacrifice. In fact, it rids you of psychological warfare, reduces anxiety, costs less money and gives you your time back.
If you think about it that way, it's a no brainer.
Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?
#189I ditched my Google account a while ago. That was tricky because I used it to log in to several websites. I fortunately also got rid of Facebook a while ago. This gave me a lot more time back. It's difficult at first, because there's a little fomo, but now I am very happy. I never started with all the other social media. No Instagram, no Twitter. So that makes it easy. My computers have always run Linux, very happy w…
Signal is us based too though?
Re: Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe?
#190For 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,…
I'm in the U.S. and doing the same. While EU laws don't protect me as well as they would someone on the correct side of the pond, I do still benefit from better integrity and transparency. Would you be up for making recommendations?
for plain e-mail, recommend migadu.com (swiss) . They do only that
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one thing that seems tricky though, is smartphone OS software. Apple + Google is on like 99% of everything. i went few years with Sailfish, all fine.. but they support only 5y+ old devices, for a reason or another.. and i got tired of waiting, and switched to Android. hmmm