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Lidl's Cloud Gambit: Europe's Shift to Sovereign Computing

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Re: Lidl's Cloud Gambit: Europe's Shift to Sovereign Computing

#401

Post by shiroiushi »

throwaway48540 wrote: post #398
shiroiushi wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically, homes in the US were very small, far smaller than what you see today. Americans have a huge misconception about this, because the historic homes they see today are the ones that survived, and the ones that rich people lived in 100+ years ago. The homes that regular people lived in have all been torn down, because they were small and unremarkable. But you can see some of this if you visit neighborhoods b…

Europeans didn't raise lots of kids in areas of dense small homes, that was happening outside the cities.

They certainly did have kids in cities: you think people living in European cities in the 1700s or 1800s somehow all managed to stay childfree? They didn't have birth control back then, nor did they have transportation allowing them to commute.

Re: Lidl's Cloud Gambit: Europe's Shift to Sovereign Computing

#402

Post by trevyn »

progbits wrote: post #335
trevyn wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually quite funny. A sovereign cloud that they have no f-ing clue how to maintain without the mothership.

They get documentation and playbooks (which are pretty good), source code access, and of course direct channel to the "mothership" engineers for support. I'm sure early days will be painful but there is no reason for this not to work.

Sure, as long as the mothership exists and is cooperative, it’s fine. But that’s not actually very sovereign, is it?

Re: Lidl's Cloud Gambit: Europe's Shift to Sovereign Computing

#403

Post by 9dev »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #278
9dev wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People used to say this about the energy infrastructure of Russia and Germany too, now see how that went. Or Chinese supply chains during Covid. Change comes rapidly sometimes. It just takes one lunatic president…

I don’t think comparing energy and IT sectors is correct. „Russian“ scenario is about being forced to have full autonomy in software, and that is happening now. For example, see how fast they started rolling out alternatives to Miro - I know about at least two products in this field. ERP, CAD, office tools, certified Linux distros… Yes, Russia has a focus and policy consistency advantage in IT, but I don’t see why Eu…

I think you misunderstood me. I made the comparison to the Russia/Germany situation to point out how quickly a political situation can tear apart even countries interleaved by business relations in critical industries. Germany was completely oblivious to the danger of Russia axing their energy supply, citing the same thought expressed in the grandparent post: ”Surely they wouldn’t do that, it makes no economic sense!“

The EU should therefore not rely on the USA staying a reliable partner just for the sake of the market relations, especially with the possibility of a second Trump term. America is self-centered, unreliable, and politically ruined—you can’t work with populists.

All this is to say: Technological sovereignty is the right direction.

Re: Lidl's Cloud Gambit: Europe's Shift to Sovereign Computing

#404

Post by vjk800 »

newaccount74 wrote: post #395
vjk800 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others here have pointed out, Gaia-X successfully funnels money to EU cloud companies and maybe this is what it's supposed to do. The deal is: company agrees to write some bs on how it contributes to this project and they get the money. The point is to get local cloud tech sector to grow here in the EU and maybe it's too difficult politically or otherwise to just give money to the companies directly.

Yeah, I feel that a lot of EU projects work that way. I've participated in a bunch of EU projects in the academic space. Most of them were catastrophic failures if you just looked at the direct outcomes (few of the lofty goals were actually achieved). But they did provide much needed funds to participating institutions, and I think they were an overall win. They come with a lot of overheads (some had 10% or more of t…

I've also known people who have participated in some EU funded research programs. The consensus among the researchers who apply for those funds is that you write whatever bs gets you the funding and then you do whatever research you were going to do anyway.

Re: Lidl's Cloud Gambit: Europe's Shift to Sovereign Computing

#405

Post by throwaway48540 »

shiroiushi wrote: post #401
throwaway48540 wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europeans didn't raise lots of kids in areas of dense small homes, that was happening outside the cities.

They certainly did have kids in cities: you think people living in European cities in the 1700s or 1800s somehow all managed to stay childfree? They didn't have birth control back then, nor did they have transportation allowing them to commute.

They had much less children than the people outside cities, and the absolute majority of people was not living in cities then. Many of those working in cities had their families outside the city.

Re: Lidl's Cloud Gambit: Europe's Shift to Sovereign Computing

#406

Post by sam_lowry_ »

pas wrote: post #359
sam_lowry_ wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Belarus is irrelevant since 2020.

in what sense? it was irrelevant even before that too.

Between 1998 and 2020 its IT industry grew to a sizeable share of economy. By 2010, the average salary in IT was 10x the average salary. Moreover, the industry worked mostly within the global economy. with many Belarusian firms subcontracting to FAANG, German powerhouses or growing into big successes in the mobile industry.

Unlike in Armenia or Georgia, the Belarusian IT industry was never a major tax contributor, but its internal spending power was enormous and it transformed the country into a much more livable place.

Since August 9, 2020 this all collapsed. Out of slighly less than 9mln population, 300,000 left the country out of fear of prosecution. Many of them -- from that same IT industry that once defined the bright future of the country.

Re: Lidl's Cloud Gambit: Europe's Shift to Sovereign Computing

#407

Post by darep »

arendtio wrote: post #337
stavros wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Hetzner cloud not because it's European, but because it's great.

What I find great about the Hetzner Cloud is that you don't need a dictionary to understand which product does a specific job. With AWS, I found it much harder to take the first steps because of the names being used.

I like to think UpCloud (also EU-based) is in the same boat, servers are servers and databases are databases. No weird lingo or product names, at least when you get to actually using it all in the Hub (hub.upcloud.com)

Re: Lidl's Cloud Gambit: Europe's Shift to Sovereign Computing

#408

Post by Traubenfuchs »

VonGallifrey wrote: post #361
slightwinder wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like builder or maker, then farmer.

I have never heard any native German say "Bauer" for builder. "Bauer" is definitively Farmer unless it is used as a suffix.

I agree.

Re: Lidl's Cloud Gambit: Europe's Shift to Sovereign Computing

#409

Post by RandomThoughts3 »

mathverse wrote: post #91
jeffrallen wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a french speaking Swiss I'm pretty biased, but I'd say it comes down to salary thriftiness to the detriment of innovation, practicality to the detriment of flexibility, and perfection to the detriment of velocity. If you happen to want your supplier to be slow, extremely reliable, and you don't mind paying for the high profit margin they expect to be able to extract, you'll be a perfect customer of a DACH-mentalit…

French speakers are a serious mystery to me. They are much better stewards when it comes to tech and cooperation but they are so much stuck up with their need to "speak french" that it hinders any progress. At least DACH made the progress of opening up. It would be ideal to combine DACH liberalism for language and french attitude towards tech and innovation.

"How dare these people want to speak their language rather than mine?"

Re: Lidl's Cloud Gambit: Europe's Shift to Sovereign Computing

#410

Post by another2another »

arianvanp wrote: post #83
p1esk wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, 5 years later and what have they actually accomplished? Look at the milestones section: https://gaia-x.eu/what-is-gaia-x/about-gaia-x/

They produced a few fluffy documents in 2022 and then nothing happened. They repurposed the word milestone to mean agenda. It's just a list of events they're organizing. Because they have no actual milestones or goals.

Reminds me of a lot of the initiatives coming out of big companies. The grander the vision, the more vague they are, the more money and time they hoover up as people try to rephrase the initial vague aims in different ways.

And, bless they even have an architecture document which does nothing to bring this blurry vision into focus.

https://gaia-x.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Gaia-x-Architec...

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