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Escaping the trap of US tech dependence

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Re: Escaping the trap of US tech dependence

#21

Post by hokumguru »

lm28469 wrote: post #19
cmiles8 wrote: post #5

“You told me these were the best engineers in the world!!” “I said they were the best engineers in Canada” (Great quote from the BlackBerry movie). Rings true here. You can’t fight market forces. To push out the US tech you need to build something that’s better than the US tech. Anything else is just wishful thinking.

Better? It just needs to be cheaper I think. The US tech power is a bit like the US political soft power, it's there because it's huge and has momentum but it's not like it'll be here forever, especially given the current trajectory

Libre Office is literally free and has never competed for significant market share in 30 years.

It has to be better

Re: Escaping the trap of US tech dependence

#22

Post by Loughla »

palmotea wrote: post #10

The easiest was of escaping the trap of US tech dependence, is to buy your tech from China. Everything they have is very advanced, and cheap to boot. Huawei instead of Apple, WeChat instead of WhatsApp, etc. Everyone wins except Trump.

Is China a better country to rely on?

Re: Escaping the trap of US tech dependence

#23

Post by bflesch »

palmotea wrote: post #10

The easiest was of escaping the trap of US tech dependence, is to buy your tech from China. Everything they have is very advanced, and cheap to boot. Huawei instead of Apple, WeChat instead of WhatsApp, etc. Everyone wins except Trump.

There's a German saying "Vom Regen in die Traufe", I think the English version is "out of the frying pan into the fire".

China is a good alternative for a lot of hardware, but in terms of software it is not an option.

Re: Escaping the trap of US tech dependence

#24

Post by bflesch »

Loughla wrote: post #22
palmotea wrote: post #10

The easiest was of escaping the trap of US tech dependence, is to buy your tech from China. Everything they have is very advanced, and cheap to boot. Huawei instead of Apple, WeChat instead of WhatsApp, etc. Everyone wins except Trump.

Is China a better country to rely on?

Right now, China is still supporting the russian war machine. The russian people are openly at war against Ukraine and the European idea.

Still China is a great alternative to US in terms of hardware, because all the things you would buy from the US is just made in China anyways.

While the US are acting like foolish, uneducated hotheads China is silently benefiting from all parties involved.

Re: Escaping the trap of US tech dependence

#25

Post by bflesch »

SilverElfin wrote: post #20

This is written from a Canadian perspective, but even within America, there are good reasons to stop giving money to American tech companies and find alternatives. The founders and executives and investors of all of these companies have become wealthy and powerful. Now they are dismantling the country by funding a certain political group and looking the other way as that same group seeks to deport 100 million America…

Do you think a lot of US tech workers feel the same?

From my personal interactions these past few days on HN it is very disappointing how ignorant and devoid of facts the arguments are which come from people who seem to be US tech workers.

Re: Escaping the trap of US tech dependence

#27

Post by torton »

terminalshort wrote: post #9
cmiles8 wrote: post #5

“You told me these were the best engineers in the world!!” “I said they were the best engineers in Canada” (Great quote from the BlackBerry movie). Rings true here. You can’t fight market forces. To push out the US tech you need to build something that’s better than the US tech. Anything else is just wishful thinking.

You absolutely can fight market forces. China did it for decades with their car industry. Chinese people were financially forced to buy inferior Chinese cars to support a domestic industry until it learned to compete in the global market. Very difficult to do this in a democracy, though.

Isn't that the exact description of the current U.S. car market?

Re: Escaping the trap of US tech dependence

#28

Post by bflesch »

hokumguru wrote: post #21
lm28469 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better? It just needs to be cheaper I think. The US tech power is a bit like the US political soft power, it's there because it's huge and has momentum but it's not like it'll be here forever, especially given the current trajectory

Libre Office is literally free and has never competed for significant market share in 30 years. It has to be better

Your "better" assumes that availability is not a problem.

The risk we need to mitigate is that some right wing doofus in the US gets triggered by a twitter reply and decides to block our use of all US software and services.

In that case, having libreoffice installed locally does not seem so bad.

This is the risk we are worrying about.

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