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European Alternatives

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Re: European Alternatives

#431

Post by palata »

jacquesm wrote: post #281
palata wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everybody and their mother is using Gmail anyway Though that's one of the easy ones. Get your own domain and you're free to use whatever you want forever.

That's not as simple as it may seem. I've been running my own mailserver on an alternate domain for decades now and it is one thing to be receiving mail there but to send it is a nightmare. Google, Microsoft etc have made it all but impossible to get through their anti-spam measures to the point that they reject tons of perfectly good mail.

I have used Fastmail for years, and now Migadu for years as well. Never lost a single email?

Re: European Alternatives

#432

Post by palata »

pageandrew wrote: post #347
palata wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think culture and quality of life not withstanding, the raw numbers simply don't favor the EU becoming a tech leader with the current incentives. But maybe culture and quality of life should not be ignored :-).

Quality of life in places like San Francisco and New York is very high, and you get the insane salaries, and your healthcare is oftentimes mostly if not completely covered by your employer (I pay literally $0 out of pocket for high quality healthcare here in San Francisco).

> Quality of life in places like San Francisco and New York is very high

Quality of life is also a cultural thing. I know it's hard to understand for US people (I truly believe it is the case for cultural reasons), but many people really don't want the lifestyle of the US for all sorts of reasons. For some people, quality of life means easy access to healthy food, or to nature, seeing trees instead of giant concrete parking lots or 6-lanes highways, etc.

Re: European Alternatives

#433

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #425
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the past few decades I've only seen the US constantly criticized as either "complicit" or "imperialist". We tried to take responsibility for everything and it got us nothing but hate. Hopefully it will be Europe's turn soon.

That's a very childlike understanding of the world around you, I'm afraid.

It goes to show how pointless it is to chase 'soft power' by appealing to global public opinion. Even in democratic countries, most leaders have sub-50% approval. So even if the US was run by a politician chosen by a global electorate, we would most likely still be hated.

And of course good intentions are no guarantee of good results, e.g. I believe Bush had good intentions with Iraq, he was just incompetent.

China is very smart to simply not get involved in much of anything. As soon as you do something, it gives people the opportunity to blame you, if even a single person thinks the result is even a little bit less than perfect.

Switzerland is the smartest.

Re: European Alternatives

#434

Post by palata »

pjmlp wrote: post #296
palata wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Java is FOSS by the way What was the problem between Android and Java then? Wasn't there some dispute between Google and Oracle on that? Genuinely interested.

Back then the licence did not apply to embedded systems, and Google did a Microsoft move as well, Android Java is their J++. Sun did not sue, because they were out money already, and Oracle used the argument they were using Apache clone implementation of Java, with copyrighted headers. To this day you cannot pick a random Java library and have it run on Android. Even after having won, they refuse to implement full co…

> To this day you cannot pick a random Java library and have it run on Android

Because of the licence or because it won't work? Sounds like the latter, but I have never seen a Java library that unexpectedly did not run on Android.

Re: European Alternatives

#435

Post by palata »

pepinator wrote: post #419
palata wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was edited to "average educated European", whatever that means. But I think two languages is probably not exagerating. And not only in Europe. People have their native language and usually an international one (in Europe that would be English). And then there are similar languages. Say a Spanish person will speak Spanish and English, and possibly French/Italian/Portuguese, so that quickly goes up to 3. Also in man…

I agree that a lot of people speak two languages. But man, I've lived in several countries in Europe for many years, and even the average university student doesn't really speak English (and I work at the university so I interact with many of them). Even in countries like Belgium where there're three official languages! However, I'd agree with that the average educated person can somewhat communicate ideas in a secon…

> I've lived in several countries in Europe for many years, and even the average university student doesn't really speak English

Have you tried any Scandinavian country for instance?

Re: European Alternatives

#436

Post by yodsanklai »

lmf4lol wrote: post #192
skrebbel wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You simply don’t need such inflated salaries if schools are free, roads are not broken, trains exist, healthcare is affordable, grocery stores are in biking distance, parks are good and free and plenty, labor laws are in your favour, utilities markets mostly aren’t dysfunctional and a 2-bedroom apartment doesn't cost $10000/m. Americans compare their salaries to European ones but never stop to imagine the insane high…

True. But the systems are more and more breaking down. Its unsustainable. At least what I can tell from Germany and the Netherlands. to see a healthcare specialist, you wait 3-6months in some cases. Not talking about the trains. Germany DB runs on time in only 50% of the cases. So thats a big problem

> At least what I can tell from Germany and the Netherlands. to see a healthcare specialist, you wait 3-6months in some cases.

Same in France, it can take a while to get an appointment to see some specialists nowadays. There's a clear decline there.

But if you have something bad, they'll treat you in time. Actually, a relative of mine has been diagnosed with cancer a not long ago. She got several surgeries and all the treatments with no wait, and at not cost.

There's no reason why it shouldn't be sustainable.

Re: European Alternatives

#437

Post by embedding-shape »

coryrc wrote: post #302
embedding-shape wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> About European Product Hunt - very good idea. Older members of HN will remember that Product Hunt probably came to life a lot because of HN and the submissions/comments from rrhoover (founder of Product Hunt). He's still active here, but before/during Product Hunt launch he was very active if I remember correctly. Maybe a grander idea is a European Hacker News, that has the potential to spawn the European Product H…

There is one, it starts about 11pm my time at https://news.ycombinator.com :)

Good morning :)

Re: European Alternatives

#438

Post by embedding-shape »

perssontm wrote: post #417
embedding-shape wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> About European Product Hunt - very good idea. Older members of HN will remember that Product Hunt probably came to life a lot because of HN and the submissions/comments from rrhoover (founder of Product Hunt). He's still active here, but before/during Product Hunt launch he was very active if I remember correctly. Maybe a grander idea is a European Hacker News, that has the potential to spawn the European Product H…

I read about https://techposts.eu/ the other day, seems like a decent alternative, but needs some more traction.

No documentation about who runs it, no privacy policy, no words of licensing or anything else. Seems like a good prototype for a start nonetheless.

Re: European Alternatives

#439

Post by embedding-shape »

tialaramex wrote: post #305
embedding-shape wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but what are you talking about? Yes, a core idea is freedom of movement, but you make no case for why that makes EU Hacker News infeasible? It has nothing to do with where people write software. I'm using US Hacker News, and I'm in Europe, is that wrong/bad, or what's your argument here?

EU Hacker News isn't infeasible my argument is rather that it's largely pointless. The EU should avoid key US dependencies, but that means things like we shouldn't design a system that needs Microsoft's stupid "Co-pilot 365" or whatever they are now calling Word and Excel, rather than it's important never to visit a web site hosted in the US. "The new government policy shouldn't require iPhones" is a long way from "N…

> EU Hacker News isn't infeasible my argument is rather that it's largely pointless

Ok, but what are your actual arguments against it? Again your comment contains things about the EU and US which I don't know why you keep bringing up.

Do you have any arguments against a European Hacker News that isn't related to the EU and US geopolitics or government policies?

Re: European Alternatives

#440

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #425
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the past few decades I've only seen the US constantly criticized as either "complicit" or "imperialist". We tried to take responsibility for everything and it got us nothing but hate. Hopefully it will be Europe's turn soon.

That's a very childlike understanding of the world around you, I'm afraid.

If you're trying to imply that I have a childlike understanding... in that case, I appreciate you reinforcing the points I've made in this thread, namely (a) Europeans are condescending jerks, and (b) Europeans will airily claim "Americans are ignorant" but rarely have much interesting evidence to back up their claims.

Our relationship with Europe is not very important for American prosperity. The GDP growth trend is the same before and after NATO was founded: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/GDP_per_...

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