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Dutch Parliament: Time to ditch US tech for homegrown options

theregister.com

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Re: Dutch Parliament: Time to ditch US tech for homegrown options

#191

Post by eigenspace »

DiscourseFan wrote: post #183

This is practically impossible, however. The entire population of the Netherlands is only about twice the size of the entire US tech sector. That would mean dedicating half the population of the Netherlands to tech work to compete with the US. The reason why China and India are competetive is because those countries have similarly sized tech sectors as the US. A single European country cannot compete with the behemot…

That's why the Netherlands is in the EU, and the EU has a Sovereign Tech Fund for helping fund and organize the development of (mostly FOSS) non-US reliant technologies.

Re: Dutch Parliament: Time to ditch US tech for homegrown options

#192

Post by Cthulhu_ »

pb7 wrote: post #27
epistasis wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What anti-technology attitude do you see?

Chastising developing space tech?

Chastising "billionaires that would rather escape Earth"; the goal isn't developing space tech, it's escaping the world instead of fixing it with their resources.

Re: Dutch Parliament: Time to ditch US tech for homegrown options

#193

Post by bayindirh »

Lanolderen wrote: post #184
bayindirh wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know what you mean, but now you're talking about a very niche market. Finance, which uses Excel or spreadsheets since 90s. You can't replace these, I agree. But for other uses of Excel, I can say it can be easily exchanged. This is why I used 99.99% percent, but not more nines. The remaining "three nines" are the niches you're talking about. It's like how we say "Nah, it's a small set of matrices. just 2 , 3000x300…

I remember back in the 00s Excel could support millions of rows on an office PC used in a bank department to check approvals for loans. I don't want to know what perversions they're doing now but at some point all that needs to get in normal DBs.

Excel has native DB connectivity for quite some time. Maybe they were using that, actually?

Libreoffice Calc also supports the same thing over ODBC AFAIK.

Re: Dutch Parliament: Time to ditch US tech for homegrown options

#194

Post by sodapopcan »

hylaride wrote: post #160
bayindirh wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely curious. Can you elaborate?

I don't think people realize how much of the world runs off of excel, especially the financial world. Excel still "supports" buggy issues from versions in the 1990s as to not break financial models. IBM mainframes do the same thing with COBOL because modernizing core code means having to notify and test all the downstream users that have their own code to deal with the legacy issues in the current stack. I was once e…

> I don't think people realize how much of the world runs off of excel, especially the financial world.

Most people working in software understand this as a huge chunk of software projects are "let's get these people off of their spreadsheets!"

Re: Dutch Parliament: Time to ditch US tech for homegrown options

#195

Post by wolframhempel »

SEJeff wrote: post #180
wolframhempel wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making more stuff in the countries with the cheapest costs also means that people in those countries are being lifted out of poverty. China's GDP per capita went from ~350USD in 1990 to 12.500USD in 2023 and similar growth happened for India, Bangladesh and lots of other poorer countries. Globalization brought affordable goods to wealthy nations and better living standards to poorer nations. In addition, closer trade…

> closer trade ties lower the likelihood of armed conflict This was 100% what Europe believed and the Merkel administration in Germany more than anyone. Not to bring politics into HN intentionally, but I think the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and threats of invading Poland, Finland, and Germany from Russian spokesmen or MPs kind of throws cold water on this theory. No matter how well meaning you are, you can't expect…

I agree with what you're saying, but lowering the risk does not mean completely eliminating the problem. It's always hard to argue the counterfactual, but I feel the number of conflicts since 1990 that HAVEN'T happened due to countries being economically dependent on each other is significant.

Re: Dutch Parliament: Time to ditch US tech for homegrown options

#196

Post by Cthulhu_ »

owisd wrote: post #60
egorfine wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also yes, because it's easier to start in a jurisdiction with sane laws and bearable tax burden, none of which is available in the EU. EU is indeed drowning in mind boggling bureaucracy. Source: am a startup in the EU.

If it was merely about taxes and regulations then nobody would want to choose California over almost any other state for their startup.

A lot of companies are moving to Texas though (https://www.newsweek.com/multiple-companies-ditching-califor...)

Re: Dutch Parliament: Time to ditch US tech for homegrown options

#198

Post by Scarblac »

amelius wrote: post #59

I wonder what they will replace their MacBooks with ...

I've never seen anyone in Dutch government with a MacBook.

On the other hand every single government agency is addicted to Office 365 / Outlook / Teams / Azure, and I don't see them getting rid of those any time soon.

Re: Dutch Parliament: Time to ditch US tech for homegrown options

#199

Post by madsbuch »

pembrook wrote: post #190
madsbuch wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Common source, great! First, you seems to conflate "free markets" (Whatever free means here?) with decentralized spending. How does that make sense? And more importantly: If we can agree that a democracy ought to be an aspiration for a society, and a functioning democracy requires some minimum level of equality, how will you ensure that under your "free market"?

Definitionally, government spending is centralized activity. Definitionally, non-government spending is market activity (controlled by each market participant, so decentralized). I would question why this data upsets you so much instead of trying to shoot the messenger.

Fair enough.

Now, can you justify your sentiment? Which was what I asked about?

(Or is it more fun to just cycle around in indifferent ontological ramblings?)

Answer to the edit:

I am not upset by the numbers. I am asking how you will ensure a society with equality and democracy under your proposed system.

In particular, taxes are an effective way to ensure equality - something that you are probably seeing in the numbers you refer.

In the US we see that trump is increasing taxes on consumers (Tariffs) while lifting taxes from the highest earners.

To cut to the core: I am asking if you are pro oligarchies? and if not, how do your propose that we ensure the equality needed to uphold a democracy?

Re: Dutch Parliament: Time to ditch US tech for homegrown options

#200

Post by kivle »

tossandthrow wrote: post #142
andrewflnr wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing so rational, I'm sure. Tariffing Canada was already insane and he didn't care.

Your point exactly - why didn't he do the same to the EU?

Who says he won't? I think he is just waiting for the market to stabilize first. When the DOW has flattened out and started to rise again, he will do it.
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