201–210 of 303 posts
Makes sense to prepare for the Greenland war
A heads-up in case there's any confusion: Greenland is part of Denmark, whereas the Dutch Parliament is the parliament of the Netherlands. Both are part of the EU, of course (although Greenland isn't).
It always surprises me that people only act when a problem becomes undeniable, rather than preventing it in the first place. In a country with a voting system and power structure like US, where a single person can abruptly shift the entire nation's direction, this has always been a security flaw for others. It's the same as relying on Russian gas, people pretend the worst can't happen because it would be harmful to e…
Somehow i doubt it coming from a country which could be described as a datacenter for big US tech
I'm Dutch and genuinely confused by what you're getting at. There are foreign datacenters here but AFAIK not particularly many.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1228433/data-centers-wor...
Called it, again . Data sovereignty is the true trend of the next decade. Not Quantum, not AI, but the new multi-pole world order divesting from Americentric technologies and back into the sort of locally-grown economies that children of the Cold War would be familiar with. Local vendors serving local needs with a focus on regional, not global, scale and service. Us Cassandra types have been screaming for years that…
Dump Office and Teams. Easy to do and a great start to move outside of Windows OS. LibreOffice is perfect, and government officials wont govern better or worst, if their PowerPoint presentations don't have the latest MS fonts....
Can we go back to '90 and relay on sending documents by email?
Building an alternative, even on the level of Google Docs, which has editing capabilities on the MS Word 2.0 level, is not gonna be simple, although I am surprised that European Union is ready to spend a lot of money on adjusting caps to bottles (this costed billions), but is not able to invest into its own capabilities in terms of IT infrastructure.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it was merely about taxes and regulations then nobody would want to choose California over almost any other state for their startup.
This popular mythology in certain circles but it relies on people not calculating the effective total tax rate, including local and property taxes, and in that case California is the 13th cheapest state in the country: https://wallethub.com/edu/best-worst-states-to-be-a-taxpayer... You also want to consider what your taxes fund – for example, a startup founder probably benefits from proximity to two of the best unive…
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 that we badly miscalculated Russia, but not every actor is Russia and willing to tank its own economy for revanchism.
Europe's problem in this area seems to be inability to build a mechanism to realize large, unprofitable projects. It looks like the whole continent operates on thin margins, and has no resources set aside to pursue strategic initiatives. US is building its pile of resources by capitalising on its current advantage, but also by pushing larger and larger parts of society into poverty. Europe is maybe more fair, but ult…
The data business in the US was not developed by “building institutions” through centralized government projects but by private enterprise. There is a fundamental difference in mindset regarding the relative importance of the public and private sectors between the two regions, and I suspect that difference underlies the stark difference between the US and EU in terms of tech companies. The US has Apple, Microsoft, Am…
Lagging country that wants to increase pace, must find resources to invest. The easiest way to find these resources is to squeeze out parts of its population, to decrease consumption and rise investment. This was done historically in the Soviet Union, in Korea, in China. Europe is of course much more prosperous, but I don't think it can escape this logic. I'm not sure if either European politicians and populations are ready to implement such catch-up initiatives that would result in partial dismantling of the welfare state.
> Dutch MP Barbara Kathmann, author of four of the motions, told The Register. "If we continue outsourcing all of our digital infrastructure to billionaires that would rather escape Earth by building space rockets, there will be no Dutch expertise left." This kind of casual anti-technology attitude among European politicians is part of the reason we are in this mess.
> Europe’s lack of industrial dynamism owes in large part to weaknesses along the “innovation lifecycle” that prevent new sectors and challengers from emerging. These weaknesses begin with obstacles in the pipeline from innovation to commercialisation. Public sector support for R&I is inefficient due to a lack of focus on disruptive innovation and fragmented financing, limiting the EU’s potential to reach scale in high-risk breakthrough technologies. Once companies reach the growth stage, they encounter regulatory and jurisdictional hurdles that prevent them from scaling-up into mature, profitable companies in Europe. As a result, many innovative companies end up seeking out financing from US venture capitalists (VCs) and see expanding in the large US market as a more rewarding option than tackling fragmented EU markets. Finally, the EU is falling behind in providing state-of-the-art infrastructures necessary to enable the digitalisation of the economy.
from https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/97e481fd-2dc3...