Live data from Hacker News

France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

apnews.com

591–600 of 621 posts

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is what people who "vote their feelings" would assert. Most people think they are "sophisticated" and "educated" on these issues, both Democrats and Republicans. There is ample evidence that this is not the case for either. ~130M American adults have low literacy skills with 54% of people 16-74 below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level. And they vote in some amount. Many may not be functional enough to be se…

Ok, but how about learn why that is instead of just insulting half the population. In politics, it is best to be liked and quoting such things doesn't help. Now, why is literacy so low? Because we stopped teaching phonics in schools. When we switch back (in tests/experiments) phonics wins hands down. When we did teach phonics, we had the highest test scores in the world (now we are 17th or so). Who opposes switching…

> Who opposes switching back to phonics? Oddly the teacher's unions. Guess who is the biggest contributor to the Dems? Weirdly it makes sense when you frame it this way.

I think you phrased that incorrectly, hopefully not intentionally in bad faith. What you mean is that something like 94% of teacher's unions political contributions go to democratic politicians. It is certainly untrue that the biggest contributions to democrats come from teachers, and it is trivial to find that out.

I am also skeptical that phonics is why teachers prefer democrats. It probably has a much stronger association with how villainized educators are by republicans.

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, isn’t the point of extreme right to make the wrong calls for the majority of the population? Historically, the right side was pro-monarchy. Then, you go extreme.

Terms like left and right only have meaning in one place at one time. So just because European conservatives 100 years ago believed something doesn't mean American conservatives today believe in that thing. That's why political scientists have terms like socialist, fascists, libertarian, etc. That's how US right (libertarian) is basically nothing like the right in Europe (conservative). That's because the basic axis…

> That's how US right (libertarian)

Except that the US right is not libertarian. If you ask them to describe themselves they often give that impression, but if you look at how they actually govern, libertarian is definitely not it.

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#593
post #23

As an American, this is awesome to see. We should pay penalties for our abandonment of good faith global engagement. And economic damage really is the key to the heart of these United States of Three Corporations in a Trench Coat. We’ve seen companies and CEOs paying millions in bribes to be close to the president. Now this aligns their financial interests with shifting our foreign policy. Not how it ought to work, b…

America is "Three Corporations in A Trench Coat"? Everything America is doing right now is because America is precisely NOT taking corporate decisions. America is doing things to the international order that are directly fucking up American corporations. Only a committed social democrat can look at the populist right-wing chaos right now, and claim that's "Corporate" action. If anything, Corporations were more libera…

> While government consistently goes sharply left and right based on whichever lunatic the American public elects next.

Has there been a non-Trump lunatic president? Or one that turned the government sharply left? I hear this kind of claim pretty often and I have trouble squaring it with reality.

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every government can and will compel companies within their jurisdiction to hand over data for legal cases. I'm not sure of your point. This is an excellent argument as to why the French government should run their government videoconferencing and chat on infrastructure in France, as they plan to do, isn't it? Using software that they have vetted. Regardless of if this is a "uniquely American" thing or not.

Right. I’m not disagreeing with that. A country should run their official business on tools that aren’t trivially liable for extraction by foreign governments. The point was in response to the above comment. All governments can and will compel companies to turn over data. It’s often framed on HN as a feature of only American companies but it’s actually universal.

It happens that the major tech platforms are all US-based, so it's more relevant to talk about US government policy than any other. Even if they are all like that.

But, in addition, the US government has recently become more pushy and less friendly than it was before, which is prompting many other nations to re-assess their dependence on the tech of what was until recently a close ally. The headline is an example.

It seems to me more about "this foreign government is most relevant" than "only this foreign government is like that".

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gave up on the native Zoom client on Linux right away, it was completely broken. It worked well enough on a browser to get through the project though. Same with Teams, the video calls work fine on a browser. You just can't use any background pictures or effects.

> You just can't use any background pictures or effects. Thanksfully it is fairly easy to present a virtual webcam that is a composition of what your real physical webcam is showing and whatever background you want.

Can you give some pointers about this? I thought it's straight to kernel modules territory if I want a virtual webcam.

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, let's take all of that as a given ... (and I've not clicked on one link, or read one line of it, so this is assumption). Even after all of that... I'd still live in Europe any day of the week instead of your sh1thole country. How's your gestapo crackdown going? Your nation is currently as stain on democratic landscape. I hope you move beyond it. You're welcome.

Your comment here is arguably illegal under UK law that prevents extremism based on violence, hatred or intolerance. Referring to someone as affiliated with the Nazi party arguably fits that bill. Please exercise caution... https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/new-definition-of...

You're wrong, but I couldn't give a shit, mate. None of us do... freedom of expression is a wonderful thing. Try it out sometime if your gestapo will let you.

But anyway, I'd have a fine, FINE time in court arguing the similarities of Hitler's finest and your ICE agents.

And don't get me wrong. Just because I call the USA a sh1thole on the ILS glidepath to a fascist state, doesn't mean I don't see the wrong in our countries.

The difference is, I don't turn the other cheek about my own country. I don't look in the mirror and lie to myself like some of you do. Pathetic.

And, AGAIN, even now, even with your evidence (which I didn't click on and couldn't give a shit about considering your comment adjacent to it) ... I'd STILL live here over that sh1thole with your pretend stormtroopers with their trigger happy fingers... hilarious how quiet your 2A fanatics and loud auditors are now.

Hell, half of them probably took that $50k signing on bonus while smoking a big fat one (the burning embers of your constitution).

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotta give them props for all the English. I know that can't have been easy. Now they just need to change the name so it's not so obviously French, and invite collaboration from the other large EU countries. I wonder how many Dutch or German will think of "La Suite Numerique" as an EU-wide office suite.

That website is specifically to explain it to French audiences. German version is here, but unlike France they're mostly boosting already-existing German open source software (like Nextcloud and Open Xchange): https://opencode.de/en/home I don't know how the Netherlands really fits into all of this, but I know they're one of the biggest funders of open source projects in general via NLnet. Seriously, their list of pr…

FWIW, NLNet is distributing EU funds, not Dutch funds.

That said, the Dutch government is collaborating with La Suite (fr) and OpenDesk (de): https://minbzk.github.io/mijn-bureau/

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is "Three Corporations in A Trench Coat"? Everything America is doing right now is because America is precisely NOT taking corporate decisions. America is doing things to the international order that are directly fucking up American corporations. Only a committed social democrat can look at the populist right-wing chaos right now, and claim that's "Corporate" action. If anything, Corporations were more libera…

> While government consistently goes sharply left and right based on whichever lunatic the American public elects next. Has there been a non-Trump lunatic president? Or one that turned the government sharply left? I hear this kind of claim pretty often and I have trouble squaring it with reality.

Right, it’s pretty silly. None of the past three Democrats have been particularly to the left.

Even a true centrist would have built a public option along with the Affordable Care Act. Obama didn’t even support gay marriage when running in 2008! Clinton’s NAFTA accelerated American manufacturing shifting outside of the country. The craziest thing Gore would have done is combat global warming.

America is at best center-right. Our last leftist president was LBJ.

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#599
post #23

As an American, this is awesome to see. We should pay penalties for our abandonment of good faith global engagement. And economic damage really is the key to the heart of these United States of Three Corporations in a Trench Coat. We’ve seen companies and CEOs paying millions in bribes to be close to the president. Now this aligns their financial interests with shifting our foreign policy. Not how it ought to work, b…

America is "Three Corporations in A Trench Coat"? Everything America is doing right now is because America is precisely NOT taking corporate decisions. America is doing things to the international order that are directly fucking up American corporations. Only a committed social democrat can look at the populist right-wing chaos right now, and claim that's "Corporate" action. If anything, Corporations were more libera…

Trump doesn’t have nearly the money he needs to win without dark money from corporations and oligarchs. Populism alone won’t win the presidency given the margins he’s had. The math doesn’t work.

Re: France dumps Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks digital autonomy from the US

#600
post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the move away from American big tech is for practical reasons rather than political, there is no harm in using GitHub. The worry with using an American firm is that the US government could force the company to handover confidential information, or shut down access. For open source code, there is no risk of confidential information being given to the US government (since there is no confidential information), and m…

tbh I was always of the mind that Github offers nothing over some slight convenience in hosting and some exposure, in exchange for the loss of control Github had enough mindshare that for a small dev operation it was a form of social networking on top of actual code revision control, and one could get the occasional PR worth looking at; this consideration has essentially gone away as the amount of unreviewed vibecode…

What control do you lose with github that you want to maintain?

For any code you are sharing, I think you are underselling the hosting + sharing convenience. Everyone looks for projects on github, it is what people expect. Hosting it yourself requires managing user signups/accounts/permissions/etc.

Post reply on HN