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Escaping the trap of US tech dependence

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Re: Escaping the trap of US tech dependence

#51

Post by nxm »

shimman wrote: post #7
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.

Is US tech even good anymore? Do none of us not encounter the massive amount of shit from companies like Google, MSFT, Apple, Amazon, etc as users? Truly terrible bugs or user flows from engineers that clearly don't care while everyone is just collecting their own share of blood. I can't think of a single thing that big tech has done to improve my life, or society for that matter, over the last 10 years. All US Tech…

No, US tech is driven by investors willing to risk allocating a ton of capital towards companies and products that have a good chance of succeeding.

Europe has been struggling and behind on tech and investments way before Trump. It’s policy and over regulation that prevents Europe from making any inroads

Re: Escaping the trap of US tech dependence

#52

Post by istanbulbebesi »

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?

More sane and predictable for sure. Which is a good thing.

Re: Escaping the trap of US tech dependence

#53

Post by Havoc »

I really wish the EU leaned heavily into the cloud basic building blocks.

There's a lot of stuff in big cloud that is genuinely hard to duplicate especially with network effects, but I don't see why they can't throw a billion or 3 at ensuring you've got a homegrown stack that can do VMs, S3, function, container registry, database, block storage, firewall etc - with guaranteed funding, clear licenses, handful of local options perhaps with some sort of local guaranteed certification etc.

Baby steps are better than no steps & a lot of things can be made to run on those building blocks

Re: Escaping the trap of US tech dependence

#54

Post by dekrg »

loeg wrote: post #42
dekrg wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean compared to the country that is bombing other countries, kidnapping their leaders while also threatening to annex territory of its ally?

Which countries and leaders do you have in mind?

Oh sorry, right the US just kidnapped a singular leader this year while bombing and killing people.

Glad you pointed that out and everything just peachy with the US foreign policy of just some bombing and kidnapping and threatening to annex Greenland! Go murrica!

Re: Escaping the trap of US tech dependence

#55

Post by solidsnack9000 »

istanbulbebesi wrote: post #41

Here are the migrations we been doing to with my extended family to get rid of our US dependencies: - Gmail -> ProtonMail - Whatsapp -> Telegram - I installed Linux to my parents laptops. They like it. - YouTube App -> Newpipe and Smarttube Also, my next car will be a BYD. The current one is a Ford.

Ford actually makes vehicles in Europe. Does BYD?

If push comes to shove and Europe needs to part ways with the USA, to greater or lesser degree, there will still be machinists, mechanics, and actual facilities in place to keep making Fords. That is a positive from the standpoint of European sovereignty.

The EU probably has rules in place to strongly encourage US manufacturers of automobiles to put facilities in the EU. The US has similar rules and many Toyotas, Hondas, &c, are made in the US, using US suppliers for parts.

It's not hard to imagine an approach to digital services that trends in a similar direction. In the EU or Canada, the US parent company would supply technical data, software, specifications, &c, to a domestic company with its own facilities and operations. It probably requires a combination of regulations and regular stress tests; but nothing prevents the domestic company's operations from being as de facto severable as a car factory.

Re: Escaping the trap of US tech dependence

#56

Post by mcbetz »

pseudony wrote: post #39

Made a Ask HN, but screwed it up by editing the text. Anyway, good ideas/tools for evaluating LLMs ? Naturally, as a Dane, I am moving away from Claude, but I’d like more than a gut feel about how much I may have given up to do so.

You might benefit from LMArena's Leaderboard. It does not have Danish (yet), but German and English evaluation might help: https://lmarena.ai/de/leaderboard/text/german

Openrouter.ai shows the location of providers, you can find just a few European services, but also Singaporean and Canadian. Unfortunately, I could not find a way to filter easily.

Re: Escaping the trap of US tech dependence

#57

Post by steve1977 »

OGEnthusiast wrote: post #15
shimman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is US tech even good anymore? Do none of us not encounter the massive amount of shit from companies like Google, MSFT, Apple, Amazon, etc as users? Truly terrible bugs or user flows from engineers that clearly don't care while everyone is just collecting their own share of blood. I can't think of a single thing that big tech has done to improve my life, or society for that matter, over the last 10 years. All US Tech…

> I can't think of a single thing that big tech has done to improve my life, or society for that matter, over the last 10 years. Apple silicon has been pretty transformative for desktop/laptop-class chips.

Transformative sounds a bit exaggerated. It has a nice power consumption to compute power ratio, but it's not like order of magnitude above the rest.

A lot of the Apple Silicon magic is also due vertical integration with the OS IMHO.

Re: Escaping the trap of US tech dependence

#58

Post by JCM9 »

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’re getting downvoted because you touched on a sensitive spot with some folks, but you’re right.

If other countries want to stop their reliance on US tech then they need to build better tech. Your BlackBerry quote shows that playing out in reverse. A non-US company dominated the market, a US company built something better (the iPhone) and the non-US company imploded.

Re: Escaping the trap of US tech dependence

#59

Post by steve1977 »

I think many people don't realize how big this dependence is.

You're running Linux? Oh fine... on which hard- and firmware? Intel? AMD? Apple Silicon? Qualcomm? All US.

You're using the Internet? Via Cisco routers?

Europe and other regions would have to put in huge efforts to really gain independence.

Re: Escaping the trap of US tech dependence

#60

Post by emptybits »

loeg wrote: post #40
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…

> [Republicans] [seek] to deport 100 million Americans (basically all non whites), invade allied nations, You think these are statements of fact?

These statements are pretty well supported.

Re/ deporting 100 million Americans: The actual number would be 53 million and I'll explain. The USA Department of Homeland Security made an official statement two weeks ago which included an image of a classic American car on a beach with blue sky and the headline "America after 100 million deportations."[1][2] According to the US Census there are fewer than 47 million people living in the USA who are foreign born.[3] So even if every single immigrant is deported, including legal residents and naturalized citizens, hitting the government's goal of 100 million deportations would require deporting approximately 53 million people born in the USA who are, according to the 14th Amendment, entitled to citizenship. The Supreme Court has said the exceptions to this citizenship right are 1) children of foreign diplomats, and 2) children of an occupying enemy force. I'm going to say #1 is tiny and #2 is zero. DHS appears to have a goal to deport approximately 53 million Americans.

Re/ invading allied nations: For months the world has listened to the American president and republicans threatening to annex and control allied nations, such as Canada and Greenland. I don't think that claim even requires a citation, does it?

[1] https://www.instagram.com/p/DS8Tx3XCRLQ

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/03/homeland-sec...

[3] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/POP645223#PO...

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