US tech firms share Dutch regulator officials' names with Senate • Hacker News Board

Re: US tech firms share Dutch regulator officials' names with Senate

#131

Post by vanviegen » Sat, May 23, 2026, 5:12 PM UTC

WarmWash wrote: post #86

vanviegen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way to look at it is that things just move slowly in government land. The tax office moving towards Microsoft has probably been in preparation for half a decade... And do you really believe the government is technically capable of switching DigiD to a different provider on a (relative) moments notice without causing large scale outages? We'll start seeing government bodies moving away from US IT suppliers in…

The actual question is if (capable) SWEs will choose working for (or be a founder of) Dutch/Euro tech companies over US ones, or even leave the US to live there. Europe is an excellent value prop if you want to be a bartender or baker. Its decidedly less so if you want to be a white collar/gold collar worker.

> Its decidedly less so if you want to be a white collar/gold collar worker.

If you want to earn big money, you're better of in the US, for sure. Quality of life though, as a white collar worker?

That does probably have its effect on economic growth..

Re: US tech firms share Dutch regulator officials' names with Senate

#132

Post by bob001 » Sat, May 23, 2026, 5:12 PM UTC

j_maffe wrote: post #123

bob001 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> retaliation would mean more anti-US people selecting themselves into these projects. Very few people are martyrs or want to become martyrs. Even fewer in places where life is generally fine and for a cause that isn't dire to their loved ones.

The curve of willingness to oppose aggressive action rises significantly before it drops off at some safety threshold. I believe US-Europe relations are still well below that threshold and the rise in level of aggression is only stirring up more resistance, not less.

I think you highlighted something without meaning to. The core problem is that short of literally nuking Brussels I don't think the EU will ever think the threshold was crossed. Even then I'm not sure. The US has threatened to invade sovereign EU territory multiple times this week alone and we're still having this chat here. The US will keep pushing because the EU does basically nothing when it's literally threatened with invasion.

Re: US tech firms share Dutch regulator officials' names with Senate

#133

Post by portly » Sat, May 23, 2026, 5:17 PM UTC

sixhobbits wrote: post #64

portly wrote: post #26

Sorry, but "dutchnews.nl" is not a source I take seriously. Please link a publication on an established media outlet because this smells like misinfo.

Dutchnews.nl is an established media outlet and what a lot of English/non-Dutch speakers use to keep up with Dutch news (which is perhaps surprisingly to Americans, usually written in Dutch)

My bad, I was not aware that expats read this. I had never heard of it before. But still, as far as I can tell, they just translate the news from platforms like nos.nl and perhaps newspapers rather than doing the journalism themselves.

Re: US tech firms share Dutch regulator officials' names with Senate

#134

Post by skippyboxedhero » Sat, May 23, 2026, 5:22 PM UTC

dgellow wrote: post #62

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you said comprises the exact error in logic that people make. Because we did this, this other thing is possible. The EU was a certainty in a region that is hostile to change, wants big government, wants centralization, is suspicious of democracy, etc. Free trade would be a massive change, that is why it hasn't happened. The EU is basically the logical conclusion of European forms of governing.

> The EU was a certainty in a region that is hostile to change, wants big government, wants centralization, is suspicious of democracy, etc I don’t understand how you can say that with a straight face, it’s such a contradictory statement

I have no idea how you can be aware of the history of Europe or the people involved with the EU and think this. It is incomprehensible. One of the most bizarre aspects of the EU is that has become a religion for people who have no idea that the basic principles of the EU are everything they oppose.

But the EU started out as an industry group, the ECSC, to limit competition in coal and steel (with the helpful side effect of making German industrialists who did very well under Hitler even more rich).

If there is any founding principle of the EU, it is that competition should be limited because the view of people who founded the EU was that economic competition caused WW1/2 (a very generous interpretation of Germany's role in events but one that was used because there were a lot of wealthy Germans who wanted to use the EU to limit trade...btw, the situation today is beyond their wildest dreams, it is has made a small handful of German billionaires very wealthy for no effort).

Re: US tech firms share Dutch regulator officials' names with Senate

#135

Post by Muromec » Sat, May 23, 2026, 5:32 PM UTC

intended wrote: post #125

graemep wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a general western problem to some extent, but the US has a a faster growing economy than any of the big European economies. It is still a super-power.

As much as people complain about the EU, its the last western polity that is functioning to some degree of normal. To put it politely, America is just not, at this moment in time, with a predictable actor with rational self interest. If things continue to fail, then its simple to assume we return to the spheres of interest stage of things, at which point the EU still functions as a bloc which everyone trades with. Pl…

The EU is curiously a block that countrirs want to join

Re: US tech firms share Dutch regulator officials' names with Senate

#136

Post by WarmWash » Sat, May 23, 2026, 5:42 PM UTC

vanviegen wrote: post #131

WarmWash wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual question is if (capable) SWEs will choose working for (or be a founder of) Dutch/Euro tech companies over US ones, or even leave the US to live there. Europe is an excellent value prop if you want to be a bartender or baker. Its decidedly less so if you want to be a white collar/gold collar worker.

> Its decidedly less so if you want to be a white collar/gold collar worker. If you want to earn big money, you're better of in the US, for sure. Quality of life though, as a white collar worker? That does probably have its effect on economic growth..

>That does probably have its effect on economic growth..

Yes it does, it has kept the US economy growing and relevant. Europe has been economically stagnant and resting on its laurels for 30 years.

Also QoL in the US is high, you just need something like an SWE job to access it.

Re: US tech firms share Dutch regulator officials' names with Senate

#137

Post by WarmWash » Sat, May 23, 2026, 5:44 PM UTC

dgellow wrote: post #117

WarmWash wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're letting Chinese cars in when automobiles are there last remaining mega industry. How can you take them seriously?

FWIW our local car industry had decades to prepare to compete in the EV sector and decided to do pretty much nothing + train China how to take over their market. We’ve been way too protective of that industry, I’m personally happy they finally have to face some real competition. Protectionism has its place in global trade but it should be with a very specific goal in mind, such as giving the companies some room to br…

Giving industry "room to breathe" means cutting regulations, including what many view as worker protections.

I don't know if there is the social inertia yet on the ground for "screw the benefits, I want to save the ship".

Re: US tech firms share Dutch regulator officials' names with Senate

#138

Post by dgellow » Sat, May 23, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

skippyboxedhero wrote: post #134

dgellow wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The EU was a certainty in a region that is hostile to change, wants big government, wants centralization, is suspicious of democracy, etc I don’t understand how you can say that with a straight face, it’s such a contradictory statement

I have no idea how you can be aware of the history of Europe or the people involved with the EU and think this. It is incomprehensible. One of the most bizarre aspects of the EU is that has become a religion for people who have no idea that the basic principles of the EU are everything they oppose. But the EU started out as an industry group, the ECSC, to limit competition in coal and steel (with the helpful side eff…

The ECSC was about creating a common market. So we are talking about free trade within the community. Which is the literal opposite of what you’re describing? We are talking about a trade community that is literally about blocking countries from introducing discriminatory policies. I assume you see the EU as anti-democratic somehow? You seem to have pretty much everything backward. The ECSC is something covered in school as a teenager, it’s not a secret or hidden history you’re somehow finding out. Yes after the world war there was a huge push to get neighboring countries to compete in a local free market instead of via military expansion. And yes that eventually served as a framework to develop EU institutions. And yes some people in Germany and other countries made quite a lot of money from the trade. How do you arrive to the conclusion that the region is hostile to change, wants big governments (we are talking about a region split in multiple countries, each with their own political systems, multiple of which are federations split in states that have their own autonomy and political systems. Somehow this huge community of small political entities becomes a huge government?), want centralization, and are suspicious of democracy?

Somehow whenever European powers collaborate together it is framed as anti democratic, anti innovation, anti trad. Complete nonsense

Re: US tech firms share Dutch regulator officials' names with Senate

#139

Post by armada651 » Sat, May 23, 2026, 5:52 PM UTC

gyanchawdhary wrote: post #105

armada651 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not public scrutiny though, that comes from the public and their institutions. This is simply a nation meddling in the internal affairs of other nations.

It’s not so innocent and pure are you are trying to portray. The average person cares more about important issues like immigration, jobs, economy .. not self appointed experts trying to regulate software companies about things that don’t have material impact on their lives ..

So the United States should step in because it knows better than our elected representatives? Are you sure you're on the side of democracy here?

Re: US tech firms share Dutch regulator officials' names with Senate

#140

Post by ben_w » Sat, May 23, 2026, 5:58 PM UTC

rafram wrote: post #24

jorvi wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However what has happened is that the EU's soft power is crumbling Uh, no. The US soft power is turning to dust whilst the EU is out there building the new free [trade] world, with itself as the biggest lynchpin. What has happened the past ±30 years is that most EU countries cut spending on their militaries to the bone, because big brother USA would take care of it anyway. Now that we are returning to a multi-polar…

The US alone spends 1.5x as much on consumer goods (yes, adjusted for PPP) and nearly 2x as much on R&D as the entire EU. It’s very sweet that the EU is trying to decouple itself from the US economy, but I highly doubt its ability to become “leader of the free trade world” when it has so little money to throw around.

> The US alone spends 1.5x as much on consumer goods (yes, adjusted for PPP) and nearly 2x as much on R&D as the entire EU.

Given that by PPP the EU and the US are about the same, that necessarily means the EU spends more on other things.