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Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

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Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#551

Post by rstuart4133 »

owebmaster wrote: post #541
energy123 wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a win-win even when one side wins more than the other. Also you are operating in dollars space instead of utility space, which is a mistake. Even if a poor person "only" gains an extra $2000/year in annual earnings due to globalization, that can be a life changing amount of additional wealth given that their utility function is highly sensitive to small changes.

You ignored my point. If the rich side gets richer faster than the poorer side, it is not win-win, it just wide the inequality gap.

> it just wide the inequality gap.

It didn't. Yes, the gap certainly has widened with countries that didn't partake in globalisation. Here I'm thinking countries in Africa, North Korea and Afghanistan.

But if you look at poorer countries that did invite the richer ones so that could provide labour at a lower cost, countries like Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, and yes China - the gap has gone from peasant farmers who starved in lean years to industrial nations that are starting to rival the incumbents. Places like Singapore and Japan are in fact now wealthier than most of the incumbents.

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#552

Post by rstuart4133 »

niemandhier wrote: post #246

So what is an European alternative to hacker news ?

You didn't ask about Australia, but it has https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/

It predates HN and always has always been the place the best technical people in Australia butt heads. Their problem is they aren't up to the same standard as here - where you have the best technical people in the world butting heads.

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#553

Post by snickerbockers »

tossandthrow wrote: post #215
lupusreal wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe has cutting edge domestic military tech in almost all relevant categories but don't build enough of it to matter because until recently their people and governments haven't taken defense seriously. Europe doing so now is good for America because it reduces the risk of Americans once again dying in yet another European war.

Last time Nato's article 5 was invoked it lead to Europeans dying in US wars. We need to go back to WW2 for you comment to have any value. I think Americans can thank themselves and nobody else for their people dying in wars.

>I think Americans can thank themselves and nobody else for their people dying in wars.

Okay that's a fair point, but if we've learned our lesson from Iraq, Vietnam, etc then why would we want a war in Ukraine? Ukraine's not a NATO member and we have no obligations towards them. If Ukraine is so important to the Europeans that they want to risk escalating a regional border squabble into an apocalyptic nuclear confrontation with Russia, then they need to raise an army for it.

I don't particularly like the way that trump has been overtly signaling his desire to end NATO, but the NATO treaty never obligated America to defend non-members and the people who seem to think it does are as perplexing as trump himself.

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#554

Post by rstuart4133 »

elric wrote: post #463
spiderfarmer wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could also be that the US have a person in power who is clearly out of his element.

I find that hard to believe. There have been incompetent US presidents before. This isn't incompetence, this is strategy. Malicious strategy perhaps, but it seems very unlikely to be non-deliberate.

> There have been incompetent US presidents before.

Depends on what you call "incompetent" I guess. I strongly suspect Biden wasn't as competent as his younger peers in most areas. But that's nothing unusual - most leaders are older men. What is clear is Biden was happy to take other peoples advice on most things.

In fact I'd say a core competence of a president is to be able to seek advice, weigh it and chose the best path forward among the alternatives offered. It has to be that way, because the reality is on just about any topic you care to name, the president will be about as knowledgeable as your average Joe six pack compared to the experts that can be found in a country of 300 million.

But if you are like Trump and are recommending ingesting chlorine on public television to cure COVID, seeking advice before opening your mouth clearly isn't your strong point.

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#555

Post by flanked-evergl »

avh02 wrote: post #492
flanked-evergl wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European Threat To End-To-End Encryption Would Invade Phones https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/05/07/europ... European Police Chiefs call for industry and governments to take action against end-to-end encryption roll-out https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/euro... Norwegian actress Tonje Gjevjon faces up to 3 years in prison for saying men cannot be lesbians https://nypost.com/2022/…

you went from "in your own home" to "near abortion clinic" real quick. And abortion clinics IIRC are an area protected from protests or something along those lines. The man knew. He was told multiple times. He didn't have to pray there. Pretty sure big man upstairs wouldn't mind if he went a few meters down the street. edit, source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g9kp7r00vo further edit: i see said "in your own…

it's not happening, and it's good that it is happening

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#556

Post by ojl »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #542
leokennis wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Europe was of the understanding that the "ongoing deal" was mutually beneficial. The US paid by far the most for defense and so had by far the most influence and power in the world, and the peace (at least in the Western world) that US defense brought made sure both the US and the EU could freely trade and benefit financially. What now changed is that apparently the US thinks it does not need this hegemony an…

>The US paid by far the most for defense and so had by far the most influence and power in the world That's the thing, Americans have become very skeptical of our own influence and power, for good reason. Look what we did to the Middle East. Look at the shenanigans we were funding with USAID. There isn't actually a constituency for this imperialism stuff in the US. US voters don't like it. In any case -- if we had so…

> unsuccessful in influencing the EU to fund its own defense

We did cut down too much on our defence, especially after the Cold war (not all European countries though, like Finland). But, many European countries have bought plenty of expensive US military equipment like fighter aircraft, helicopters, anti aircraft systems, etc. It’s not like those were a gift.

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#557

Post by atoav »

buyucu wrote: post #411
atoav wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly us Europeans (similarily: Canadians) have no choice. Trump demonsttated quite clearly that if you're down he will squeeze every last drop out of even his closest allies — just look at how he treated Ukraine. So the choice is to be at the whim of a despotic tyrant from abroad or do your own thing. I guess there aren't many populations out there who'd prefer the former. But I also see it as a chance. Europe is…

it's not just trump. did we forget the US was evesdropping on everyones communications years before trump? trump was just the last straw.

I did never forget this, which is why I said "finally" Europe woke up. It should have woken up years ago.

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#558

Post by xorcist »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #425
tossandthrow wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we will ever reach a conclusion, and it will take the next 4 years to learn whether the approach you represent is more productive than the approach I represent. But remember: Power is rarely taken but mostly given.

>But remember: Power is rarely taken but mostly given. I don't care about the US being a powerful country. I'm tired of being the world's police. I'm against so-called "American imperialism". I want to be Switzerland. Ally with no one, trade with everyone. Switzerland has a much healthier relationship with the rest of Europe, without toxic dependency. That's my metric regarding whether an approach is "productive" or…

The comparison with Switzerland is stretching things a bit thin.

Switzerland never threatened Germany to become the 27th canton. They didn't threaten military allies with military intervention. They also do not keep permanent military bases in other countries, in practice autonomous zones where there are intermittent scandals where Swiss law protects rapists. No other counties dutifully joined any Swiss invasions in the Middle East.

Europe did not have to shoulder orders of magnitude (look it up) more refugees from these wars than the instigator of the wars. The Swiss do not regularly use their economic power to force other countries to share passenger data for all transit, they do not force far reaching intellectual property legislation of all sorts on other countries.

The Swiss, however, do a lot of other strange things. They are basically a bank with national sovereignity which economically has kept up a very strong industrial appendix with a very strong, primarily industrially focused, engineering sector. The post-WW2 history contains a lot of stones largely left unturned, and there is zero chance another coutry could occupy this particular nation state evolution niche.

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#559

Post by xorcist »

logicchains wrote: post #250
iammjm wrote: post #118

Europeans were perfectly happy to buy American tech und military exports, thus earning U.S. money and making EU technologically and politically dependent from the U.S. - it really was perfect for the U.S. But the US decided that it was actually a BAD DEAL and they wanted to extort even more money and dependence from EU. So now EU is investing in their own tech and military, thus reducing the amount of money US is get…

> thus earning U.S. money and making EU technologically and politically dependent from the U.S. This came with a responsibility to provide military protection to the US via NATO. Trumps voters don't want America to be an empire, responsible for protecting a bunch of far-away places that don't share their values, that's why they called the movement "America first". Historically speaking being an empire generally turns…

> Trumps voters don't want America to be an empire, responsible for protecting a bunch of far-away

Then why did they elect an imperialist? The current president has already announced the possibility of military interventions against Canada and Denmark in order to expand US territory.

That's a kind of imperalism not seen since the middle of last century, when most empires started to proritize soft power over territory as the military and economic powers started to unite. It was easier to secure cheap natural resources than to secure the resources themselves.

> that's why they called the movement "America first"

We should always listen to action, not words. Rhetoric is cheap.

The actions tells us that the US deficit will continue to grow. It is not clear yet how much, but everything points to an increase in military spending. Other parts of the state will have to be cut back.

Re: Millions are visiting the European Alternatives site. What trends are we seeing?

#560

Post by disqard »

adamcharnock wrote: post #545
olieidel wrote: post #327

Help me understand this: European companies have already been interested in choosing for European alternatives instead of AWS, Azure, etc. for years . Sure, this interest has recently gone up significantly, but it already was there, especially in the area I've been working in (hospitals / medical devices). But here's what I can't wrap my head around: Why do the European alternatives suck so much? - Pretty much all cl…

In my experience it is a lot of things, in varying amounts depending on the situation (and each of these is both good in some ways and bad in others): - The USA is a huge and fairly homogenous fairly wealthy fairly risk-positive market. - The USA has a bigger = better mindset. "Your restaurant is fantastic, you should open another one!". - Abysmal work-life-balance. Great for making stuff. - Minimal language and cult…

I think you've made some good points.

However:

> All the non-USA-allies developed their own markets

I have friends and family in India, and I'm not aware of homegrown alternatives to any of the following:

* gmail

* amazon

* google search

* whatsapp

* linkedin

* spotify

* facebook

* yt shorts

On that last one, when India banned TikTok overnight, it was a golden opportunity for a different homegrown alternative to step in, but it looks like YT/IG captured most of that market.

Happy to be corrected, though. If you have concrete examples, that'd be good to know!

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