Do you find advocating for AI literacy to be controversial amongst peers?
I find, as a parent, when I talk about it at the high school level I get very negative reactions from other parents. Specifically I want high schoolers to be skilled in the use of AI, and particular critical thinking skills around the tools, while simultaneously having skills assuming no AI. I don’t want the school to be blindly “anti AI” as I’m aware it will be a part of the economy our kids are brought into.
There are some head in the sands, very emotional attitudes about this stuff. (And obviously idiotically uncritical pro AI stances, but I doubt educators risk having those stances)
Not OP, but I would imagine (or hope) that this attitude is far less common amongst peer CS educators. It is so clear that AI tools will be (and are already) a big part of future jobs for CS majors now, both in industry and academia. The best-positioned students will be the ones who can operate these tools effectively but with a critical mindset, while also being able to do without AI as needed (which of course makes them better at directing AI when they do engage it).
That said I agree with all your points too: some version of this argument will apply to most white collar jobs now. I just think this is less clear to the general population and it’s much more of a touchy emotional subject, in certain circles. Although I suppose there may be a point to be made about being more slightly cautious about introducing AI at the high school level, versus college.
> It is so clear that AI tools will be (and are already) a big part of future jobs for CS majors now, both in industry and academia.
No, it's not.
Nothing around AI past the next few months to a year is clear right now.
It's very, very possible that within the next year or two, the bottom falls out of the market for mainstream/commercial LLM services, and then all the Copilot and Claude Code and similar services are going to dry up and blow away. Naturally, that doesn't mean that no one will be using LLMs for coding, given the number of people who have reported their productivity increasing—but it means there won't be a guarantee that, for instance, VS Code will have a first-party integrated solution for it, and that's a must-have for many larger coding shops.
None of that is certain, of course! That's the whole point: we don't know what's coming.
I agree with you that everything is changing and that we don’t know what’s coming, but I think you really have to stretch things to imagine that it’s a likely scenario that AI-assisted coding will “dry up and blow away.” You’ll need to elaborate on that, because I don’t think it’s likely even if the AI investment bubble pops. Remember that inference is not really that expensive. Or do you think that things shift on the demand side somehow? Either way, you’ll need to elaborate for your claim to sound on any way convincing, I think.
AI is extremely dangerous for students and needs to be used intentionally, so I don't blame people for just going to "ban it" when it comes to their kids.
Our university is slowly stumbling towards "AI Literacy" being a skill we teach, but, frankly, most faculty here don't have the expertise and students often understand the tools better than teachers.
I think there will be a painful adjustment period, I am trying to make it as painless as possible for my students (and sharing my approach and experience with my department) but I am just a lowly instructor.
People need to learn to do research with LLMs, code with LLMs, how to evaluate artifacts created by AI. They need to learn how agents work at a high level, the limitations on context, that they hallucinate and become sycophantic. How they need guardrails and strict feedback mechanisms if let loose. AI Safety connecting to external systems etc etc.
You're right that few high school educators would have any sense of all that.
> I find, as a parent, when I talk about it at the high school level I get very negative reactions from other parents. Specifically I want high schoolers to be skilled in the use of AI, and particular critical thinking skills around the tools, while simultaneously having skills assuming no AI. I don’t want the school to be blindly “anti AI” as I’m aware it will be a part of the economy our kids are brought into.
This is my exact experience as well and I find it frustrating.
If current technology is creating an issue for teachers - it's the teachers that need to pivot, not block current technology so they can continue what they are comfortable with.
Society typically cares about work getting done and not much about how it got done - for some reason, teachers are so deep into the weeds of the "how", that they seem to forget that if the way to mend roads since 1926 have been to learn how to measure out, mix and lay asphalt patches by hand, in 2026 when there are robots that do that perfectly every-time, they should be teaching humans to complement those robots or do something else entirely.
It's possible in the past, that learning how to use an abacus was a critical lesson but once calculators were invented, do we continue with two semesters of abacus? Do we allow calculators into the abacus course? Should the abacus course be scrapped? Will it be a net positive on society to replace the abacus course with something else?
"AI" is changing society fundamentally forever and education needs to change fundamentally with it. I am personally betting that humans in the future, outside extreme niches, are generalists and are augmented by specialist agents.
Never had this issue. Its just as simple as start to work without contract and the promise of department head to get a contract and after two weeks mention to the contracting that you work since two weeks and have still not signed a NDA.
Next sentence is: I don't fear to not get my money, but currently I don't know if you pay or someone else...
One way hand coding is productive is it gives you detailed intimate knowledge of the code. We’ve all seen someone that really knows a system hear about a bug and say “Aha!” and take 5 minutes to pump out a fix.
A well setup Claude Code, with good guardrails and feedback, could possibly do this (we’ve seen examples of it for sure). But it also might loop idiotically not finding the issue.
All the time i do it. I will often provide claude with read only credentials to the db or api access to the logs and it will nail the problem almost every time
Some codebase are a logical mess and have bad names as well. Sometimes Claude is wrong because the semantics of our legacy codebase doesn’t makes sense. Sometimes it find problems at the wrong places because of that.
Arguably these and billionaires have become a social menace. They undermine democracy, destroy our environment, and prioritize shareholder value over long term well being of the economy they live in.
If they all had unified in one voice against the administration, Trump might be more constrained. They might not be so hated. If they realized, like Henry Ford, that a strong middle class actually is good for THEM too, all this could be avoided. Instead they’re showing up at Melania screenings while average citizens are getting shot in the streets.
I don’t think they realize the fire they’re playing with my stomping on the social contract that made them so wealth.
But the pitchforks are coming for 12 years already. They got accustomed to the sight and even put some measures to redirect the masses so they fight each-other.
I just googled confused what a "Melania screening" (Thought it was like a sort of security screening, maybe all the ICE is messing with my head) is. First time i heard about the Movie. This feels like one more step the Trump fam. took to become some sort of celebrity-king thing.
Bezos gave $40m to make the movie. It was a way to maintain his companies position. It's standard oligarch tribute to the godfather. See Russia or Hungary for further examples.
The movie cost nowhere near that much to make. Melania got the money. It was her very own little grift, while her husband and his children have been extracting literally billions.
>Arguably these and billionaires have become a social menace. They undermine democracy, destroy our environment, and prioritize shareholder value over long term well being of the economy they live in.
Sadly, I'm far more worried about a thousand people who make a million bucks than I am about one guy who makes a billion.
You don't get to the B number by not being pretty darn shrewd and sociopathic so those guys must be pretty evil but man have the "upper middle class" or "professional managerial class" or whatever you wanna call the "comfortable enough to not think about the harsh economic realities of their ideas" class been an unmitigated disaster for western society over the past 20-70yr depending on how you wanna measure.
Americans fail to appreciate a few things about our economy
1. We have a large homgoneous market where you can build a product and it’s expected it can succeed for hundreds of millions of Americans
2. EU is the easiest second market, and another step change of hundreds of millions of customers in a somewhat unified market
3. there’s not an easy 3rd economy that replaces EUs wealth, population, and comfort with English + technology
When we piss everyone off in the EU tech company growth gets kneecapped and limited to US / Canada. Theres not an easy market to expand to without much deeper focus on that specific market and its needs, for much fewer returns.
There's a strong desire to forge closer links with the EU now and reduce dependence on products that could be weaponized against us at any time. Geographic proximity doesn't count for much when it comes to software.
With 40M people, Canada is about half the size of Germany in terms of population and GDP. Also smaller than France. Canada is more similar in GDP to countries like Italy. The Spanish economy is a bit smaller but it has slightly more people (48M). The EU + UK is a bit over half a billion people.
The thing with Zoom, Meets, Teams, etc. is that these aren't that hard to replicate. There is not much of a technical moat. It doesn't take a very large startup to create your own version of that. And given what a basket case teams is, it's also not that hard to do much better. There have been plenty of alternatives over the years. Network effect is what drives the growth there, not technical quality.
So if the French want to use something else, all they have to do is pick something and they might get the network effect through mass adoption. That would work better if the whole of the EU does it of course. We'd still need a solution if we want to talk to people in the US. The reason why US drives the network effect traditionally is its trade relations. It's convenient for everyone to use the same tools and solutions.
Indeed, and the IM space is a good example of an unfinished job. IMO it's high time that Brussels stepped in and picked a winning protocol, i.e. Matrix, and mandated that public bodies use it.
I'm not sure I agree about the lack of a technical moat. While spinning up a basic WebRTC wrapper is trivial, the real challenge is the global distributed systems engineering required for low latency and reliability at scale. You need a massive edge network to handle routing, jitter buffering, and packet loss effectively across continents. It seems like the hard part isn't the client, but ensuring it actually works reliably when you have millions of concurrent streams on flaky connections.
This stuff was state of the art 15-20 years ago, it's more of a commodity now.
That doesn't mean it's easy or cheap. The moat is more in the installed base of data centers, edge networking, etc. US cloud providers undeniably have a bit of a head start there.
But the EU has a lot of domestic infrastructure as well. And the US outsourced a lot of things as well. E.g. mobile infrastructure and networking is now dominated by Chinese (Huawei) and European companies (Ericson, Nokia). Former telecom giants like Motorola seem to have faded away. Nokia actually owns Bell Labs currently. And of course a lot of the software involved is open source with a very international developer community. The hardware comes from Asia or in some cases Europe. ASML is Dutch, ARM is nominally still headquartered in the UK. Ownership of these companies is of course more complex.
> The moat is more in the installed base of data centers
For Slack and Teams, I'd say not even that is necessary. They're not meant as broadcast tools, even if they could be used as such, they're tools for… well, for teams. Either within a single company or B2B stuff. Given how powerful all the client devices are, the remaining work of the server to coordinate them all should, in 99% of cases, be so low that you can offload it to someone's bluetooth earbuds (as per recent story of Doom being ported and the conversions it led to about the typical modern embedded processor, and what we could do back when servers were that powerful).
It's not like every Slack/Teams instance is also running some clone of Google's Page Rank indexing of the entire internet locally.
That seems like a downside to me, but as a Linux user, I tend to shun Microsoft products.
I do have to use Teams occasionally for work and bizarrely the web client in Firefox works far better than the native Linux Teams client. Not particularly difficult as the Linux Teams client wouldn't do anything except display a blank box (this was on Ubuntu).
Yeah, I did notice an issue with feature parity with their application.
I hadn't heard about PWAs (Progressive Web Apps) before, but it doesn't look like they're commonly used on Linux. At a first glance, they look a bit similar to ActiveX to me.
I would imagine that many EU governments would like to replace MS Office too. EU sponsoring open source development for a mandated replacement would be a huge risk for Microsoft.
The European Economic Area + UK also have a lot of telecoms and networking experience. If they have to pay for improvements to edge networking for a reliable replacement for Teams they could easily bring farm that work out to their telcos.
With enough political motivation barriers will be removed one way or another.
Or so the theory. But what is that specific functionality that I get from this integration? That I can preview an Excel attachment WITHIN Teams instead of starting another Excel instance? The only useful thing is that Teams calendar is the Outlook calendar, definitely not a reason I'd use Teams if not forced to.
It should also go without saying that Canada already had a vertically integrated telecoms giant in RIM/Blackberry that handled end to end smartphone comms globally in the 3G era, right down to compressing emails through their servers so they could be transmitted efficiently over 2G data networks.
Unfortunately Blackberry was heavily dependent on US telecoms and corporations buying their servers and devices to pad their profits. And since then, local engineering talent from the Kitchener-Waterloo region has been siphoned off by Silicon Valley money, mostly to craft elegant solutions to deliver more ads to your devices.
Canada's telcos are a "narrow waist" for a lot of software licensing.
A lot of business customers bundle their business/productivity software with their phone and Internet services. Did you know you can buy Google Workspace and/or Microsoft Office through your telco? I was shocked to find out how many do this when I worked for one of the telcos.
Just like how consumers bundle their streaming services with their home Internet plans.
One bill for all the things is convenient.
I would bet it's the same in EU (but can't say for sure, I only have first-hand info about Canada).
If there was a real push to move companies away from these platforms, it would probably start there, mostly because the telcos are typically very government-aligned due to regulatory and spectrum concerns, and would get in line with government efforts to promote non-US alternatives, if they decided to.
Getting the majority of consumers to ditch their US-based streaming and entertainment is another thing though, I can't see that happening ever, no matter how at-odds the US and Canada become.
Threats only works if the threatened entity thinks they can avoid them via compliance.
Tariffs come anyway, both Canada and Denmark are under threat of annexation, and ICC suspensions of Microsoft emails show that governments cannot rely on US tech.
Yes, or as Cory Doctorow put it: "So now we have tariffs, and if someone threatens to burn your house down unless you follow orders, and then they burn it down anyway, you really don’t have to keep following their orders."
The British and the Russians also had a COVID vaccine (and much cheaper), and the French cancelled theirs because they realized it would come too late to be competitive.
So if they were restricted to some reason to use their own only, they would be fine.
The technology and vaccine design comes from BioNTech, a German company. Pfizer did the phase 2/3 clinical trials, worldwide regulatory expertise and manufacturing outside of Germany.
I take a more optimistic stance here. Trump can only live so long, and everybody except basically Trump and John Bolton knows that the majority of his idiotic tariffs (and nonsensical belligerence like pretending NATO control of Greenland doesn't meet all our defense needs) are wealth-destroying on net, as well as wealth-destroying for at least 10x the number of people than they help (many of them I'd say 100-1000x as many). When Trump leaves the stage, those who replace him will either be Democrats sprinting at full speed from all his policies to demonstrate how not-Trump they are, or Republicans who want to grow the economy. Either way, the stupidity in a lot of his policies is a temporary condition.
Note that I'm not saying everyone should give the US a pass or maintain as much economic and defense dependency on the US. But I think it's hyperbolic to make all your long-term plans assuming something as stupid and self-defeating as his worst anti-ally policies are a new normal, because they harm the US at least as much as they harm everyone else, and everyone but those two knows this.
The decades long level of trust in the US and its institutions was unprecedented and built off of the tremendous goodwill and momentum post WW2.
It was an unusually high degree of trust, and now it's unusually low. Even if the US reverses its policies it will take a very long time to rebuild trust, and even then the historical warning marker of the Trump admin will be studied as a reason to never return to the prior level of trust.
Without total trust software products are a natural target for any country that's thinking more about how to defend its own sovereignty. Policies and subsidies for locally built software that previously would have seemed frivolous or wasteful now seem prudent and badly needed.
The higher the risk of e.g. a loan, the more interest it has to pay out to be worthwhile. The exact amount* is, as I understand it, governed by the Black–Scholes model.
* probably with some spherical-cows-in-a-vacuum assumptions given how the misuse of this model was a factor in the global financial crisis.
One should not overlook the human/emotional aspect. Decision-makers are not immune from it.
Hegemony comes with a certain degree of humiliation. Socially, it means accepting that a foreign language being taught in elementary schools becomes synonym with intelligence and eloquence, or protecting a copyright/taxation regime that go against your interest, or accepting that manslaughters perpetuated by troops stationed in foreign military installation on your soil will go unpunished, and so on. There's always been creeping resentment towards the US in any given European nation.
However, resentment is not a concern when "adults are in the room", even if not explicitly in charge. Economic prosperity is great, no one wants to break a good deal. But now those safeguards are failing on the US side. There's suddenly room to rationalize any hostility.
Sure, the extent to which this is a factor vs rational analysis is arguable... but I don't find it mere coincidence that France is the nation spearheading this.
My fear as a Briton and European is that even when Trump departs, the distrust remains so long as the US continues to be so politically divided. The chance of Trump being replaced by someone similar or worse will make most European politicians (incl UK ones) throw their hands up in despair.
The UK seems a lost cause though, even under Starmer it has been far more appeasing than any (West-)EU country. And as right-wing as Starmer is, your next PM will inevitably be even moreso and more buddy-buddy with the US. Perhaps even a personal friend of MAGA.
Yes, as an American, I could point out that the side of US politics represented by Biden, Obama and Clinton is very real. It's internationalist, cooperative, and reliably so. Clinton was, in some ways, more willing to intervene in Eastern European crises than the EU was. And Biden came in early and aggressively to support Ukraine (though the EU eventually got there, and we can't decide who's side we're actually on, now).
But the problem is, internationalist Democrats are not the whole story of the US. There's another faction, one which our allies used to be able to work with. But that half of our nation's politics has been on a long, ugly moral slide. We are imposing ridiculous and destructive tariffs based on the personal grievances of one man. But a duly-elected Congress absolutely refuses to stop him. We are still covering up massive amounts of information about pedophiles in positions of power, but Congress hasn't done more than hold a vote and refuse to follow up. And we now have masked Federal police just murdering people in our streets for peacefully exercising their 1st and 2nd amendment rights, but a significant minority of voters are still cheering it on. If the moral trajectory sinks much lower, I'm not sure there would be any sins left to commit except public devil worship.
So no, you really can't trust the United States. Not because nobody here understands honor, alliances, or even practical business. But because that's not the whole story of the United States right now. We can't even get the Epstein files released. Which, admittedly doesn't affect you much. But it's clear sign of who we're becoming, and what a critical mass of our voters will ultimately accept.
Trump is not the reason for the current disdain for the American state - he is merely the latest excuse that Americans make for the disastrous state of their country.
The rest of the world started being disaffected by America's actions in 2003, when it launched an illegal war based on utter lies, which murdered 5% of Iraqs' population.
This act and the following acts of war and funding of terrorist groups that the American empire decided was 'necessary' for its survival, have been noticed by the rest of the world, even while Americans' themselves do not have the temerity to confront the issue.
Blaming Trump is just another excuse Americans make for the mess that has been being made by their state for decades before he walked down some elevator somewhere.
> Note that I'm not saying everyone should give the US a pass or maintain as much economic and defense dependency on the US. But I think it's hyperbolic to make all your long-term plans assuming something as stupid and self-defeating as his worst anti-ally policies are a new normal, because they harm the US at least as much as they harm everyone else, and everyone but those two knows this.
It is debatable if everyone but John Bolton and Donald Trump knows this. After all, according to the last NYT poll the current POTUS commands an approval rating of 41 % in the USA. The number of people I meet who do not understand how tariffs work, for example, is staggering.
Anyway, it is smart policy to expect the worst and plan for it instead of being surprised by another insane president voted in by the people of the USA. Call it risk management if you like. It would be negligent of the leaders of the EU and its member nations to not account for that. The EU has to reduce dependence on unrealiable trade partners, this is true whether we are talking about warmongering Russia, dictatorial China (probably the most reliable of the three!), or unpredictable USA.
So, let's hope for the best and prepare for the worst. The EU can't change it if preparation harms US economic interests in the long run. That's on Trump.
They won't. This is the same line of people that voted for Reagan and Bush II. I used to be one, most of my family still is. Whatever Democrat gets elected (if we have reasonable elections) will get the blame from them and it will be used to fuel the election of the next populist.
This is the mistake a lot of people made with Bush II and Trump I, thinking that "this will all go away" when the man at the center goes away. It won't, no man rules alone, they represent a large population of anti-intellectual isolationists who are not going anywhere. At best you can hope that the intellectuals will govern in a way that helps everyone next time they get a chance, leaving less fuel for the next populist wave.
> After all, according to the last NYT poll the current POTUS commands an approval rating of 41 % in the USA. The number of people I meet who do not understand how tariffs work, for example, is staggering.
For sure -- the bottom 41% of economic literacy are so misinformed that they have no clue what they're talking about. But those voters aren't picking the nominee for President from among a circus of general morons, the party elites are, and the Republican Party elites are rich dudes who don't want to screw ourselves back to the stone age. Without Trump just flailing around like an idiot, they'd be content to do things that preserve the status quo in a lot of areas. They pander to the unsophisticated Trumpists where needed, but it's lip service, since a lot of them, for instance, love open borders because of how it depresses wages and gives them a compliant workforce. They talk a big game about the debt or the deficit, and also work to make sure we increase defense spending and funnel as much healthcare spending as possible through a bunch of private insurers who add a huge margin to our healthcare costs.
> the party elites are [picking nominees], and the Republican Party elites are rich dudes who don't want to screw ourselves back to the stone age
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but you seem to be claiming the rich Republican elites are not happy with Trump's economic policies. But then why did they support him so much during the reelection campaign and continue to support him throughout the Presidency?
> the Republican Party elites are rich dudes who don't want to screw ourselves back to the stone age.
They said that about Trump I. The Republican Party elites have power, but they don't have all power on the conservative side of American politics. They contend with the Religious elites and various conservative cultural elites and the libertarians and so on. Trump didn't get elected by accident, there are a lot of people who love what he is doing, what he represents. They will happily vote for "the next Trump" when the time comes, and their elites will bend the Republican or the Democrat elites with tax cuts just as easily as they did for Trump.
MAGA will likely not die with Trump, and the Democrats have done their fair share to shaft Canada too. (If Jimmy Carter were still alive you could ask him about his family tree farm and what he thinks of softwood lumber tariffs.) As our PM recently said in Davos, the U.S.-led rules-based world order was a bit of a sham from the get-go. Certain countries were more equal than others. The rules were always flexible and they bent in favour of the U.S. most of all. Canada and other middle powers got an okay deal nonetheless, so we went along with it. That's over now, and "Nostalgia is not a strategy.".
Now that we're always going to be four years or less from the next potential bout of American insanity, it's time to build a new order that is less vulnerable to big powers and more equitable for everyone else. An order in which the rules are applied more consistently and have teeth. That doesn't necessarily mean breaking out the feather quills and having a big shin-dig at Versailles though. It's doing lots of little things that shift our dependence to like-minded middle powers whenever and wherever possible.
e.g. The white house has threatened other countries (including Canada) with tariffs in order to deter regulation or taxation of american software giants in non-U.S. jurisdictions. That makes dependence on these companies an exploitable (and already exploited) weakness. This is why governments, like France, want alternatives.
His family farmed a few things, including trees. Carter was on the record as a fan of soft-wood lumber tariffs, even though his term had come and gone by the time the softwood lumber dispute arose.
There are democratic presidents who have done worse things to Canada than Carter. I singled out Carter because, today, he seems to be viewed as left-leaning (for a POTUS) and un-Trump-like.
Left leaning in the US has not meant international trade friendly, historically it’s the opposite. The Clinton/Obama branch of the democrats who were pro free trade are really the exception.
That the Republicans sold out their business branch for cronyism and populism with MAGA may end up being the negative outcome of that movement with the longest negative ramifications (my thinking being administrations can change immigration policy easily and Trump is more the final nail in the rules based international order than the initiator of its demise)
Americans elected trump not just one time. They did it twice.
They all knew who he was by the end of the first mandate yet they still elected him again.
Why wouldn’t they find another « trump like » when trump goes away ? Vance or someone else, the list is long.
I see no reason for things to change and that’s if the USA doesn’t become an autocracy in the meantime. Trump already did so much in a year, that’s fascinating. He just need to boil the frog a bit longer but everything is in place.
Exactly. Trump is just a symptom. If he disappeared tomorrow, the people who elected him are still here, and they still want the same things: Belligerence, Cruelty, Isolationism, and lots of other terrible things. When Trump is no longer in the picture, they'll find a new candidate who offers this.
Well, the isolationism is dubious. Trump and his followers (with a few exceptions, granted) seem happy to throw isolationism to the wind as soon as there's a chance of wielding power over a defeated enemy.
For sure. Isolationism is a far distant third when it comes to what they value. They just want someone who is belligerent and promises to grief people they don't like. Any ol' candidate who fits that pattern can be next in line.
You don't have to convince every Trump voter. The margin who swung from Biden to Trump and elected Trump aren't all those things. They just don't want what the Dems were selling in 2024, specifically: the dems' adopted ideology surrounding gender, plus using race and gender to pick who gets jobs and into schools, rather than merit. If they removed just those two planks from the DNC platform, (1) Harris would have never been nominated, and (2) Trump couldn't have won.
Who was the moderate candidate? We had Trump and a candidate who wanted to continue the open borders policy and racial quota system in hiring and university admissions.
Moderate/smoderate. There was an insane choice, which people chose to vote to the detriment of most, and a sane candidate, which people rejected due to misinformation and bigotry.
No, they lost because much of the population is bigoted and did fall for misinformation. People started sharing the nonsense about Haitians eating cats and dogs, they fell for the transpanic ads...and many were still not comfortable with a woman in charge. Misinformation and bigotry, and it's not out of touch to recognize that.
The problem is with the people more than the party, and fighting that so we can actually progress the country out of the dark ages is an uphill battle.
No, it seriously was not that. We didn't refuse to vote for Harris because of the idiotic cats nonsense. It was in large part her and the whole DNC's explicit embrace of DEI (note: "i don't like DEI" isn't anti-minority. Plenty of minorities also want to get jobs and admitted to schools because they qualify for and earn those things and not as a free handout because of their skin).
Not 20 years ago, like 90% of Americans would have agreed that it's insane to use racial quotas and different standards of qualification for different groups. Today, the 20% or so who disagree with me on that have dragged the DNC into this unpopular position, abandoning a lot of their previous voters. This has consequences.
And for that you threw the entire country away? Based on mostly fear and misunderstanding? There was another user I saw on here who defended voting for T because, despite apparently having always voted D in the past, he "could not look his white teenage sons in the eye and tell them he voted for people that would make them the enemy" - what absolute nonsense.
DEI may have gone too far in some areas, but that would largely be corporations trying to cash in, not anything planned by the possible Harris administration, and nothing demonstrable by the Biden administration.
DEI went too far the second it violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which explicitly bans all discrimination based on race in hiring. It doesn't matter if Biden or Harris or any other democrat leader didn't explicitly initiate any of these policies. Their failure to prosecute for these obvious (and sometimes even publicly bragged about by the companies) violations of civil rights law that is supposed to protect me is more than enough to lose any chance of getting my vote. I am willing to watch quite a lot of things burn if the alternative is a racist regime against me.
The fact that you are white and claiming to be a victim of racism because minorities are getting more opportunities is laughable, but also absolutely means you were part of the problem.
The only way for the US is to progress is to eliminate the electoral college so views such as yours count for as little as they should.
Yeah you're right, I'm gonna be a big problem for you because I'm going to keep voting for Republicans no matter how much I hate some of the stuff they do. And the more cruelty towards progressives the better because I have nothing but contempt and malice for the people who want to institute racism against.
> Yeah you're right, I'm gonna be a big problem for you because I'm going to keep voting for Republicans no matter how much I hate some of the stuff they do.
You obviously don't hate it that much lol, you clearly want white people to keep the unfair advantages they have had for most of modern history.
They wrote a book about people with you views: 'White Fragility' - you should check it out.
> And the more cruelty towards progressives the better because I have nothing but contempt and malice for the people who want to institute racism against.
Giving oppressed people equal opportunities isn't racism. We'll get rid of the EC eventually, and the votes of people like you simply won't matter.
Sure, go ahead and keep telling yourself that comforting myth that it was all because of lies and dirty tricks. But according to polls the general public, even during the chaos today, supports the Republicans over the Democrats on most of the major political issues: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/poll-americans-trust-rep...
It was absolutely due to lies and dirty tricks at least in part - I'm sure I can find objective analysis of people who said they voted because they believed various lies and disinformation if you like?
But, let's say you're right to an extent, that's just incredibly depressing and shows that the problem ultimately lies with the people.
Listen, Trump won almost every single demographic. His numbers increased % wise among them vs 2016. To claim it was all lies, racism and sexism is just wrong.
Now you can claim that Trump is bad, we'd agree with you. We're saying it's VERY dangerous to state why people voted for him because it enables it to happen again!
DO not double down on the mistakes of the Harris campaign again and then put fingers in your ears and blame the voters for being misinformed, please.
> Listen, Trump won almost every single demographic. His numbers increased % wise among them vs 2016. To claim it was all lies, racism and sexism is just wrong.
I'm not claiming it was all that. For example, some people are single issue voters on abortion, so of course they are going to vote R. But a lot of people bought into the trans panic ads, the xenophobia, etc.
> DO not double down on the mistakes of the Harris campaign again and then put fingers in your ears and blame the voters for being misinformed, please.
The voters were misinformed, though. Without a doubt the last election showed the people are much more of a problem than any party.
With the way the current administration is screwing things up, I don't think we'll need luck. Besides, with no cult leader to blindly follow, things will be drastically different.
> They just don't want what the Dems were selling in 2024, specifically: the dems' adopted ideology surrounding gender, plus using race and gender to pick who gets jobs and into schools, rather than merit.
Except that, none of this is true. Democrats did not run on such policy at all. They heavily tried to appeal to center.
Republicans run on culture war. And won, because it literally did not mattered what democratic party run on - republican lies won. And they will win again with the same tactic.
I don't think we conceptually live in the same universe if you think those things about the democratic 2024 messaging. I just don't understand how you and your opposing commenters can have any meaningful discussion if you're so wildly differing in interpretation of such a public topic.
It is simple, what "opposing commenters" are talking about, is what REPUBLICANS said that democrats are saying. You know, what Trump, Vance and the rest of Fox news were accusing democrats of. I would note that these are not exactly notorious truth tellers.
The person I responded to likely never listened to or cared about what democratic politicians are saying.
But you could say the same thing the other way, that's the point. I.e. you're not listening to what Republicans are actually saying but rather what "Democrats" are saying the republicans are saying.
Even your response is oblivious to the point, and you're doubling-down on "only the other side (Republicans) is liars, my side aren't liars" as a way to address the fundamentally different realities you and them seem to occupy.
I am saying what republicans are saying and were saying. You are either not listening to them or just lying about what they said.
> I.e. you're not listening to what Republicans are actually saying but rather what "Democrats" are saying the republicans are saying.
You can do that, but you would be lying.
> you're doubling-down on "only the other side (Republicans) is liars, my side aren't liars"
Yes, republicans lie more. That includes situation around the two murders in Minnesota. That includes claims that European NATO members never helped USA.
> as a way to address the fundamentally different realities you and them seem to occupy.
There is one reality and one "side" is lying about it a lot. Starting to lie the same way as they do wont solve the problem, it will make it worst.
It's straight from the horses mouth mate. Plenty of dems were on social media vocal how the issue is many white men.
Here:
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) "I would say our country should be more fearful of white men across our country because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country. And so if fear was the driving force of policies to keep America safe, Americans safe inside of this country, we should be profiling, monitoring and creating policies to fight the radicalization of white men."
Krysten Matthews (D-SC, U.S. Senate candidate) "Treat [white people] like sht... I mean, that's the only way we're gonna get concessions out of them... It's like that white woman in that movie 'The Help,' you know, she nice as hell to them white people, but she a btch to that girl."
Adina Weaver (Housing official appointed by NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, D) Described homeownership as "a weapon of white supremacy masquerading as 'wealth building public policy'" and called for political action to "impoverish the white middle class."
Point to where she blamed straight white men for all social economic issues in the country (OP's words), or where a similar phrase exists in the Democrat party platform, and I'll take back my comment. There are a small handful of wacky politicians who are indeed on this "straight white man" kick, but it's not even remotely a position accepted by the broader party.
I think that your outlook on US politics and future leadership is naively optimistic (though I very much hope to be wrong).
First and most importantly, I don't think it should be considered a given at this point that there will be a democraticly elected successor to Trump. It's clear from past attempts and current declarations and actions that the Trump regime will try to maintain power instead of ceding it at future elections - whether they will succeed or not will depend a lot on American institutions and the power of the people.
Secondly, your assertion that only Trump and Jon Bolton agree with the current policies seems deeply wrong. First of all, the VP (with a real chance to be President, given Trump's age and apparent health), seems very much on board. Secondly, much of Trump's policies are based on the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 document, including at least some of the foreign policy decisions. Thirdly, a desire to re-orient US foreign policy away from Europe (and thus NATO) and towards China exists in a large part of the traditional foreign policy establishment. Fourth, the leaders of the Democratic Party seem to have learned entirely the wrong lessons from the last election, looking more at which of Trump's policies they should adopt rather than what alternative solutions they can promise to the American people.
Every official or aligned pundit in the GOP is obliged by Trump's universally-known vanity to make a show of supporting literally every dumbass thing he does, knowing he'll purge them if they even question things. So I will say we can't actually get a read on what they truly think until Trump is gone, preferably by passing away peacefully of old age rather than hanging around live-tweeting his takes on the next administration's actions. Of course this means I'm speculating as well, and I admit that.
I just think that I've never seen anyone approaching the Trump levels of pettiness, vanity, and most of all, what looks to me like pure foolishness. Including even his inner circle. Most of them are single-issue extremists.
I actually agree that re-orienting foreign policy and military toward China is just plain smart. But it's idiotic to do that by picking fights with allies, and anyone less dumb than Trump can accomplish a pivot to China while at minimum not causing hostility across the Atlantic. Ideally the West should instead be firming up our alliance and working together to counter Chinese influence, plus, it'll be better to have NATO intact leading up to a potential hostilities with China when they invade Taiwan. Of course, China is working hard on amplifying and promoting division inside the US to destroy NATO in the hopes that Europe will run to their arms economically and thus be unable to oppose China. Kind of like how much of Europe has/had dependencies on Russian petroleum which complicated their ability to respond to Crimea and the rest of Ukraine invasion.
> leaders of the Democratic Party ... looking more at which of Trump's policies they should adopt
I haven't witnessed any adaptation at all from the DNC. It seems that all their beliefs are still summed up as "We ran a perfect candidate and she ran a perfect campaign. It's the voters who are the problem!"
I can't emphasize enough how collossal the DNC's screwup in 2024 was. We have a system that has been running for hundreds of years where the idea is a primary election gets you two candidates who are at least spitting distance from electable, and then we have to pick one of those two in the general election. It's wildly imperfect in that it entrenches exactly two parties at a time. But the DNC in 2024 took this system and operated it with utter incompetence by just installing the biggest loser of the 2020 primaries as the only alternative to Trump. Many people were so disgusted they stayed home. If they've admitted this, it hasn't been publicly.
It seems optimistic to me at this point that he could be replaced by a Republican not largely crafted in his image. It's possible, but I certainly wouldn't take it for granted.
It's something of an open question whether MAGA will follow him or not. I would bet against it, for the same reason few of them followed Jeb after George. I would bet on some in-fighting between Don Jr, JD and some of the others, and a new MAGA champion will emerge (maybe not for a decade) who we aren't really paying too much attention to right now.
Neither did Biden, and he won. Neither did Clinton and she didn't, but still got more votes than Trump. And the Republicans are leading on the issues: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/poll-americans-trust-rep.... In an election between a boring Republican and a boring Democrat, the Republican probably wins.
Vance will "have the charisma" of being the focus of the palace cult (around a quarter of the country) while Trump's corpse is still warm.
These people aren't people anymore, they're cultist NPCs. They have suspended personal agency and independent reasoning about their interests in favor of the vibes, in favor of the grift, and in favor of arbitrary Strong Executive Leadership. They will say literally anything Fox News et al tells them to say.
Vance's job was always to end democracy by replacing Trump with somebody more subservient to capital who could stay on-script, while seeming less crazy to liberals. He was practically raised for this. MAGA has been trained to water at the mouth when somebody jangles their keys, and will happily transfer their utter loyalty and devotion to somebody else who can jangle keys.
This reads kind of like you see half the population of the country as subhuman. This is often used by radicals as the first step in justifying extreme measures to achieve policy goals that would be considered unthinkable otherwise.
I know you think only the Right could be fascist, but most of the extreme left has become so distraught over their recent losses that they are losing most of their own ethics as well. "These people aren't people" is a shitty look when it's a white-supremacist saying it, and it's an equally shitty look coming from Team Blue.
I read the "not people" comment not as describing the general population but rather the collection of camera-seeking characters roaming around the POTUS. Obviously they are human beings but they do demonstrate a remarkable lack of personality and agency.
All administrations have toadies, but cabinet members and proxies now snap to the latest tweet without even a fig-leaf attempt to bridge obvious 180 degree shifts. Sometimes in the same sentence.
Part of what it shows is that traditional DC has debate-club graduates from a culture than prizes verbal fluency, and when you hire based on other criteria, the messaging is incredibly clunky.
I think every American needs to understand this quote:
> "We will never fucking trust you again."[0]
It doesn't matter that Trump will eventually no longer be President, and it doesn't matter that there are still members of the American political establishment that support the old way of doing things. Trump does not act alone, and there is rapid attrition of those older bureaucrats who valued the USA's allies. Trump's allies in the GOP will continue to be in power, and perhaps worse, the partisan appointees that have inundated the public service will remain.
The USA has burned its bridges. There is no more trust to be found.
Thanks for that excellent link. I suppose I have to remain optimistic here, but I think that you and I disagree on one really important thing and time will prove one of us right (I think we both probably hope I'm right): I think that Trump is too different from the others, even people he's ushering into the administrative state. That's my opinion because Trump seems to govern from:
- 1 part petty corruption: stupid stuff like deals that enrich Kushner, his Trump company itself, and that of his close personal allies
- 1 part vanity: stupid stuff that serves no purpose but to exact revenge against people who humiliate him. And let's throw in silly stuff he says just to 'troll the libs' to this group too.
- 1 part just pure inexplicable stupidity. Things like pointless tariffs, or the idiocy around Greenland, that hurt nearly everyone and especially the US itself. Honestly some of this may be just the petty corruption part, where someone who stands to make a fortune from the chaos has cut him in on a deal we don't know about.
I simply don't see that same motivation triad coming from anyone else, even among Republicans. Other Republicans are driven more by political ideology, their own goals, their own ideas about the culture, their belief that X policy makes the economy stronger, etc. So, while you should judge us by what we do in the future, and bearing in mind that more idiots of his caliber may be discovered, I think and hope that you'll find out that Trump was simply the perfect storm of moron, and can never be repeated.
That sort of corruption is endemic to the American political establishment. They profit from their inside knowledge of congress, wielding their insider knowledge to make themselves wealthy; not all do it, but enough do that it's nigh impossible to pass legislation to deal with it.
What you refer to as vanity I consider vindictiveness, and as evidenced by his continued support is something that appears strongly associated with Trump's supporters. Vindictiveness is the point, and it's what they voted for.
And stupidity, well, PISA performance doesn't bode well for most nations. There's a steady decline witnessed the world over.
Yes and no. West-Germany was not trusted enough to allow them to make nukes or to make a powerful-enough army. For a long time, Germany has pretty much been a vassal state of the US. I cannot see that happening the other way around (given the relative powers of the militaries).
Besides that, living in a neighboring country, the generation of my parents and grandparents had a deeply-rooted aversion towards Germans. They would communicate with Germans politely, but when no German was around, they would often use not-so-nice names or jokes. Luckily that aversion is gone with later generations.
When I was young (early 90ies), we would often go on holiday to Czechoslovakia (before the split) and the Czech Republic. The staff at restaurants and shops would be cold and distant until they discovered that we were not German, then they would be very warm and kind. At some point, we would always start the conversation in English. At the time most staff would only speak German, but we would use it as a signal that we were not from Germany.
This kind of distrust can stretch many decades. I think we have mostly healed as Europeans, but it took a damn long time.
That is a sound point. I don't think your comment should be grey. In practice, I don't think geopolitics is played in the style of "Yurusenai!" that a lot of online commenters make it sound like. The world wasn't in some benevolent kumbaya between the various players involved here.
America perhaps pioneered the mutual-defense agreement as an expansion of de-facto borders. America can attack you if you attack any of its mutual-defense treaty partners - e.g. Japan or NATO. This places an encirclement on other unaligned world powers: Russia and China. Smart, but they picked up on it, which is why mutual-defense agreements with nations near world powers are now fraught with danger.
But Europe is not an innocent led to her subjugation. Europe has always attempted to extract their side of the deal: they will buy American weaponry and host American bases but they will expect America to pick up the defense bill, including for things like access to the Suez Canal which is primarily (though not exclusively) a European risk and concern in that alliance.
Other powers have always used the push and pull of changing demographics and waxing and waning power to jockey for more control or more trade concessions, or lower spending on defense for higher spending on welfare and so on. The reason that Western Europe vacillated on Ukraine isn't that they were unsure who the good guys were. It's that it wasn't clear where the balance of power was and ensuring they were well aligned was their priority. Likewise, the participants who benefited from NS2 going up in bubbles were Ukraine and the US and one or both of them likely did what they needed to.
It is true. Germany did elect Hitler. It is also true that that Germany committed vastly greater crimes than Trump's America has. And it is true that Germany the country is not a civitas non grata (if you will) though one could argue that this was offered at the end of a gun (the persistent US bases). I think this point (delivered tersely and risking Godwin) is actually very strong.
I think Western bloc leaders are well aware of the strength of the Western coalition of Europe and the US. They are also well aware of their waning will to wage war as their population ages. I don't think Trump has a sound head on his shoulders - Americans will probably carry the memory of the danger of aged leaders at least one generation - but it is clear from the texts he has leaked of the other world leaders that they are pragmatic and intend to preserve the most powerful military alliance the world has ever seen, and the resulting prosperity it has endowed its constituents with.
Any pressure will immediately be relieved if no actual irreversible damage (e.g. withdrawal from NATO or Anpo) is done and everyone knows it. But to make sure we get there, everyone has to apply just enough pressure to not break the machine. We can only hope they have the skill at diplomacy.
All this "Americans must realize you are now PARIAHS and will NEVER BE TRUSTED AGAIN" business will seem novel to people today, but this was true when I was younger and America had just invaded Iraq right after Afghanistan. People were talking about how they pretend to be Canadian and so on. America was supposedly a pariah then, which makes any threat of "you are now a pariah" not particularly meaningful.
So long as Europe benefits from America and America benefits from Europe and both can put in changes that cement such commitment in the future, I think we will return to a powerful Western bloc - which I (personally) think is good for all humanity.
1. Suez Canal: UK, France, and Israel attacked Egypt for control of that. This stopped very quickly once the USA threatened to turn off the money, and by some measures marks the point where the British Empire became obviously a paper tiger.
2. Iraq/Afghanistan and Americans pretending to be Canadian: yes, I remember this too, but this time Europe and Canada are worried about taking the role of "target", so it hits harder.
The USA can only be trusted by its allies* once again *when we are confident the USA won't turn against us, your allies*.
* NATO and EU definitely; and I assume similar feelings in Japan, Philippines, Australia, South Korea etc.
Kinda overlooking the fact that Lester B Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership in Canada's efforts to lead a neutral force to force peace in the Suez Canal.
Interestingly, as a British person, I've never heard of Lester B Pearson before your comment. Possibly for the same reason it took me so long to find out even a single negative thing about the British Empire: the UK not wanting to talk about anything embarrassing in its history.
> All this "Americans must realize you are now PARIAHS and will NEVER BE TRUSTED AGAIN" business will seem novel to people today, but this was true when I was younger and America had just invaded Iraq right after Afghanistan.
Nobody really cared about Iraq or Afghanistan. Sure, it was fashionable to pretend to care, to get on a high horse and tell the USian rabble how immoral they were. But at the same time, people on their high horses also were glad that there was no Saddam Hussein anymore and that the Taliban were beaten (seemingly, back then).
It's different now because the US threatened to invade the Kingdom of Denmark, a supposedly very close ally. Even the threat of doing that is a red line that will be very very hard to uncross after Trump.
Yes, and I'm sure that the next time the US does something against European interests it will again be the case that the last time was just pretense but this time is real. The thing with terminal declarations is that there is no pathway back. If the US was never to be trusted again after the Iraq War, we are never to be trusted again now, so telling us that we are never to be trusted now is not of any significance. We're now post that declaration. That's what the word 'never' means.
The US-Europe military-economic bloc is a strong structure, but of the two Europe is weaker and the participants in Europe stand and fall according to weak ties. Without NATO, it isn't even clear if Poland will have allies. Each of the constituent countries have leaders aware of this. And I'm sure they'll attempt to keep the structure intact. If they fail, they fail but all these dramatic declarations won't have been significant either way. The declarations themselves are just emotional outbursts without even the semblance of even self-interest.
I mean, think about it. If the US has no pathway back to normalcy in relations ("never be trusted") then the cost for all future Presidents to militarily intervene is low. After all, trust is at its minimum value and guaranteed not to rise. If Greenland is core to US interests and Denmark has decided there is no pathway back to normalcy, invasion is on the table for all Presidents, Democratic Party or Republican Party.
Essentially, once you decide that you will never normalize relations, then you're just an adversary: not even a potential future ally. And those who pitch themselves as guaranteed adversaries had better find allies quick.
Just think of the relations the US has with the British. Back in the day, after the independence war, I'm quite sure that there were quite a few people in the US who said something like "never will we have cordial relations with the Kingdom of Britain"...
I guess that's just the usual hyperbole in these kinds of heated talks. I mean, it is basically the same as all those instances of TACO: Propose something outrageous, outlandish and absolute, later compromise to do something lesser.
> So long as Europe benefits from America and America benefits from Europe and both can put in changes that cement such commitment in the future, I think we will return to a powerful Western bloc - which I (personally) think is good for all humanity.
Problem is, right now America is the biggest threat to Europe. And there is no way to cement the commitment you talk about with America as is - regardless of whether Trump goes. Without Trump, you still have one major party actively hostile to Europe.
Trumps policies are not some kind of aberration, they are exactly what conservatives worked for. Republican party clapped threats to annex Greenland. Without trump project 2025 will be updated to project 2029 or whatever, with more lobbying and "lessons learned" strategy. The threat of this happening again, but this time causing even more harm will be there for foreseeable future.
Preface: Trump's idiocy with Greenland is inexcusable and nonsensical, with NATO already having access to build bases all over that island with barely more paperwork than building them in Alaska. So don't read this as a defense of that BS.
1. Greenland isn't even in Europe and America has no designs on colonizing actual Europe
2. Even Trump in his syphilis-addled head knows that the moment he rolls tanks into a territory with basically no military and a peaceful non-threatening citizenry, his credibility. And this sure isn't Venezuela, where the Nobel Peace Prize winner thanked him for removing the criminal Maduro from his post. He let his dumb mouth get ahead of him when he didn't rule out force, and he was forced to walk that back, a remarkable thing considering his pride. Now, even if he does want to try to use more dumb tariffs, those will hurt the US as much as it does Europe. I wouldn't say these are any major threat to Europe.
On the other hand, Putin would very much like to expand a couple countries over, and geopolitically anyone will tell you that Russia "needs" that in order to have a defensible frontier. America is not a threat to Europe the place. Trump wants to cosplay as a threat to Europe the technical political entity, mainly because our map projections make Greenland look so big that he thinks it will make him a "hero President" in the history books forever, but even most Republicans know this is a stupid and pointless ambition.
The Republicans who make up a lot of the party are not interested in Greenland being US territory, they don't even give a shit about territories we already have like Puerto Rico. They just hate the DNC, whose idea of campaigning is saying that everyone who disagrees with them is a bigot.
Trump has done/is doing generational harm to the perception of the US worldwide, to say nothing of US soft-power influence. It's going to take decades to rebuild that trust after he's gone, and we still have a couple of years of his term to run yet.
> I see this over and over again, wish there was some way to bet on it.
One can play with bond markets and various ETFs or other derivatives, depending on what you envision. But even if your bet is qualitatively correct (that trust in the US ebbs for decades), it's hard to get the timing right to make an actual bet.
Given that a sizeable percentage of U.S. people seem to still support Trump, I don't think trust is going to be rebuilt. There's also the massive issue of the U.S. political system that has been shown to have a fatal flaw - that would have to be fixed along with the broken two party system.
I liken it to Germany rebuilding trust after WWII.
Trump is just your latest excuse, American, but its not working.
The rest of the world saw what Americans did to Iraq, and it has been downhill since then. You don't get to be the #1 funder of terror around the world and keep demanding glory and respect from the lackey nations you push around with those terror networks...
The US may believe the US gets no benefit from defending Ukraine or Europe, but that belief is false.
Even with greedy short-term thinking: The economic connections between the US and Europe are a big part of US wealth, and failing to protect your market and your investors is bad for business.
Ukraine… Europe supports Ukraine to keep Europe safe. Ukraine is not in NATO, nor is it covered by the EU treaty's mutual defence article.
But they EU doesn't make any software... So unless Canada is willing to go with Chinese software which would kinda invalidate any "moral" ground they have and well frankly the USA wouldn't allow it seems like the USA can take it for granted.
Am I missing something when I go to the companies here all of them except SAP are USA companies? So this research is just pointing out that Canada spends all it's software money in the USA?
I'm in public sector IT and yes, Microsoft Canada is considered a Canadian company. And yes, it's dumb as hell.
As a response to the tariffs we were told to use Canadian companies, and lo and behold, all of our big name software companies were magically Canadian.
It feels like France is actually leading on the infrastructure side of things right now. With Mistral and Hugging Face both in Paris, the open source AI ecosystem is pretty heavily concentrated there.
Having worked extensively with OVH and Scaleway, I find it to be a far cry from what American hyperscalers offers. The cloud offering is just too thin and brittle as of now, though I think they will eventually get there because of the CLOUD Act which in the long term might prove to be a gigantic own-goal on the part of the US.
No. You're wrong on all counts. That was not a "huge deal". Canada reduced tariffs on EVs to get reduced tariffs on some agriculture items. This put things back to where they were a few years ago. Canada doesn't have a free trade deal with China like it does with the US and Mexico.
Canada has been extremely closely aligned with US vehicle manufacturing for over a century. I'm not sure if Canada has a bigger lever to shoot american auto manufacturing in the leg. Opening the door to Chinese electric vehicles rattles the very foundations of American manufacturing. If anything, "huge deal" was an understatement.
Europe makes lots of quality software, it just doesn't scale economically. And that's an issue with access to capital and to a lesser extent legal fragmentation, not talent or willingness. That's why there's a constant push for markets reforms in the EU, on top of unified corporate structures (one might even call them "federal") being in the pipeline.
At this point I am praying that one of the things pushing back on this administration will be American Companies that have gotten rich on the back of "American Globalism", learning just how much it hurts when the US doesn't do its responsibility to remain Allies with it's nominal Allies.
And the EU, Canada, and anyone else who the current US administration is slighting, should absolutely be moving cash hard and fast away from the American Economy, if they want change in US policy. TACO, is about economic policy, and it's hard to imagine this administration continuing it's more unpopular global (and even local policies), if it's discovering it's not actually backed by US Mega-Corps.
There is no unringing this bell. Maybe a sane administration would slow the migration, but the damage is done. America is a capricious partner who can flip the table at any moment.
The reason there is no unringing this bell is not just that we have a capricious, vainglorious president, it's that all of checks and balances that are supposed to restrain the executive have proven worthless so far. Republicans in Congress have completely declared their impotence, having fully relinquished their duties that the Constitution specifically delegates to the legislative branch, like tariff power, war powers, etc.
Absolutely not. History has shown again and again that human memory is short and greed is unbounded. If there isn't an active fire burning under people's asses they'll choose the $0.01 cheaper option even if it ends up being much worse for them in the long run.
That, plus massive influence campaigns from Russia, China, and US oligarchs like Musk and Thiel, are how we came to be living through the current general disaster.
Exactly. Trump is just the messenger. The underlying problem, festering for decades, is that a large enough fraction of the US population thought that Trump was even remotely qualified to lead a country to begin with.
The fact that we didn’t immediately remove him after the Greenland letter just demonstrated to our allies that that same fraction of people also don’t value our relationship with Europe.
The CCP looks thoughtful and stable by comparison. It’s too bad that the result of this will be to force more people to align with them, because they’re just as self-serving as Trump, they just have the good sense and temperament to hide their true intentions.
A terrible potential is that US products may find themselves unable to get footing internationally, due to broken trust and increased competition, so instead they'll try to rely on every-expanding protectionism and corruption to stay dominant in the US market.
Just as we've seen in the car industry we'll wind up less innovative, less productive, and less economical.
European pension funds are also slowly getting rid of US bonds. They don't talk about it because they don't want to attract the ire of Trump and they don't want to create panic in the markets as long as they are still invested. But e.g. the Dutch fund ABP sold 1/3rd of their US bonds in 6 months (10 out of 30 billion in US bonds that they have). They reinvested the money in Dutch and German bonds.
The wheels for the great decoupling have been set though. The companies (which are also persons apparently thanks to the perversions of American law) have made their bed and will have to sleep in it themselves.
Of course, there are huge unrealized opportunities to be had in economic powerhouses such as Belarus, Argentina, Russia, and whichever other member exists in the Board of Peace.
I think it's totally great that competing products get produced in the EU. Not a bad thing from anyone's perspective except the owners of those US companies that will now need to compete.
It’s great yes, but if we in the US weren’t proving so untrustworthy, EU startups and tech giants could focus on building things that actually might out innovate us and everyone else. Which would be a win-win.
Instead they will spend a lot time duplicating tools where only US companies are providing options, and maybe not innovating much if anything in those areas. Or not enough to matter much.
I don’t blame them. There is value in trusting your tools and not risk having them weaponized. It’s just sad all around.
Duplicating things is underrated. It's good for there to be multiple operators doing basically the same thing. Innovation can happen at the margins. It will be easier, not harder, for EU companies to innovate in meaningful ways after they've built their own systems and are no longer just following in the wake of big US companies. (Not to mention that half of what passes for innovation these days is actually bad.)
If you’re assessing things entirely on a strategic basis makes total sense. It’s understandable why they are doing it but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s underrated or suggest there are no drawbacks.
Duplicating things without reason is wasteful. With a hobby project sure that’s your own time and is likely more an act of consumption and personal fulfilment. But these are national economic resources being redirected away from other things.
In software in a large codebase where there are coordination costs with reuse due to the organisation structure, there’s a strategic reason not to reuse, but it might highlight a limitation of the organisation structure, but that’s not something someone making the call to reuse code or not can do much about.
Likewise France really can’t do much about the state of the US and dependency is understandably seen as a risk.
I mean there are pros and cons to many things. What I mean by underrated is just that a lot of people say "oh duplication, how wasteful" and don't realize the benefits that may exist in redundancy and diffusion. I think the US would benefit right now if there was more "duplication" in the sense of greater diversity across many industries. More car makers, more film studios, more news organizations, more social media companies, more record labels. Not more stuff --- not more cars, more films, more news, more social media, more records --- but just the same stuff spread over a greater number of entities. The consolidation we've seen over the past several decades is a bad thing.
You know you CAN actually quantify how bad or good these things are in what respect and their second order effects. The trades off are pretty well understood. Increasing returns to scale are a thing, as are natural monopolies where consolidation is more efficient even with the headaches that comes with regulating a monopoly.
Car makers, entertainment companies, news organisations are very different kinds of industries to the ones we’re talking about here. They aren’t natural monopolies and don’t feature increasing to scale (at all output levels). In media, the reasons we’re seeing consolidation is due to entry barriers primarily with how IPs protections work. This is entirely unrelated.
Also you’re talking about this entirely from a consumers point of view. From economy wide point of view, duplication of a product will pull resources away from other industries that might be more profitable for a country. Which is bad for the same reason tariffs are bad. These are real costs that will affect quality of life and crowd out desirable economic activity.
Just circling back to this original article. This is arguably not one of those cases.
But redundancy and duplication purely on principle is dogmatic and shortsighted, and yes wasteful. We don’t have infinite resources in the world.
> It’s great yes, but if we in the US weren’t proving so untrustworthy, EU startups and tech giants could focus on building things that actually might out innovate us and everyone else. Which would be a win-win.
Instead they will spend a lot time duplicating tools where only US companies are providing options, and maybe not innovating much if anything in those areas. Or not enough to matter much.
You could apply this to Slack vs Teams as well. Slack was already good, Microsoft just duplicated their work, came out with an inferior product and won. So, was it worth it?
Teams won by being good enough and bundled into O365. There's probably some value in making a product so available that people can use it where normally they wouldn't have the opportunity.
I was going to comment that teams doesn't have threads and slack may still win long term, but turns out teams added threads in the last couple of months(1). So yeah.
I'll vouch for this. I moved from Slack to Teams and Teams is clearly an inferior product. That said, I don't think SalesForce owning Slack is really a big improvement.
In a way, isn't it what the Americans and even the current administration want? We want a strong Europe who is keen on preserving and developing the glorious modern civilization that it created. We want a strong Europe who can build and innovate instead of regulating and fining. In contrast, we certainly don't want see the disastrous joke like Northvolt. We certainly don't want to see the joke that BASF shut down its domestic factories and invested north of 10B in China for state-of-the-art factories. Oh, and we certainly don't want to see a Europe that couldn't defeat Russia and couldn't even out-manufacture Russia, even though Russia's GDP is merely of Guangzhou's.
The current US administration wants a captive Europe. One that buys its defense, energy and technology products from them. One that sells its territory, regulations and know-how to them.
Ask the Department of State if they'd like a European-sized French attitude and strategic autonomy.
Current admin has been on record for years saying the same thing. Warning EU about russia, warning EU about China, warning them about not innovating.
I don't know if this was planned internally but it seems the way they figured out how to get EU to actually do something is to make it seem like big bad trump is going to hurt them.
Current admin has gotten more out of EU than 20years of asking nicely.
Before:
US: "please increase military spending"
EU: "no"
US: "please do not support our advesaries"
EU: "builds nordstream"
US: "stop killing innovation"
EU: " more regulation"
Now:
US: "We will invade greenland"
EU: "omg we need to invest in greenland and increase its military support, we will send more troops immediately!"
US: "we will pull out of nato"
EU: "omg we hate US we need to massively increase military spending and industry"
US: "our tech companies will not listen to you"
EU: "omg big bad america, we should try to make out own"
I don't like it but at the same time, it works? Let EU rally against US who cares as long as they actually do something.
Simply put absolute best thing for US is a strong EU. China is an advesary that will take the entire US system to challenge if EU can handle the rest then it's a win.
> Before: US: "please increase military spending" EU: "no"
What this meant between the lines for 60+ years is “please increase military spending on US overpriced weapons that we gonna sell you, weapons will be degraded versions of native counterparts and don’t think about making your own independent military industry. Oh by the way bring those weapons when we will do 20 years of failed occupation in Middle East, because we are the only country in NATO that triggered article 5 and bunch of Euros died for nothing. Because that’s the deal, we protect you, for the economic price of helping our imperial hegemony since 1940s stay at the top, but suddenly we decided this is a bad deal after all.”
It really did not mean that -- it meant to increase spending to the targets set by NATO and to meet realistic defense needs.
A lot of EU weaponry was and is produced in the EU and the US has known that all along, cooperated and fostered it. The Leopard tank, the Eurofighter, the Rafale, the Lynx, the FV432, the Gazelle -- there is a long list of domestic weapons systems. I'm not sure if they still can do it, but the English made nuclear submarines. The US has at various times partnered with Europe on the development of these systems, and Europe has been able to produce almost all major weapons systems continuously since the end of World War 2.
Europe's much weakened defense posture -- and weakened defense industry -- are their own fault and the result of their own choices. At one time, European countries had much, much larger militaries and could sustain manufacturing of their specific weapon systems -- their own tanks, APCs -- but not after the military drawdowns following the end of the Cold War. There are at least 3 major domestic European tank types -- the Leopard, the Challenger and the Leclerc -- but only the Leopard is manufactured anymore. Europe should probably have consolidated on the Leopard a long time ago.
The US weapons are not "overpriced", and certainly not compared to European weapons, beyond the sense in which basically all western weapons are overpriced. One reason we see consolidation on US weapons in Europe is that the US weapons are frequently very good, having received a lot of use, but also because the US still has some scale in its manufacturing capabilities.
> I'm not sure if they still can do it, but the English made nuclear submarines.
Not really. The Polaris and Trident SLBM systems as well as the nukes they carry are US designs that the UK is allowed to use. And while their current PWR2 reactor is a British design, it is lacking. Therefore the next PWR3 design will be based on US S9G reactors.
The Trafalgar class were nuclear attack submarines made at Barrow-in-Furness shipyard in Cumbria. The current Astute class were also made there.
A nuclear submarine is one with nuclear propulsion, not nuclear weapons (just like a diesel-electric submarine is one with a diesel engine and batteries, not diesel weapons).
It never ceases to amaze me the contortions some people put themselves through to make this US administration seem sane or even vaguely interested in the flourishing of Europe, Canada or the wider west.
When the US points out faults with what EU is doing, the EU just digs its heels deeper out of spite, instead of self reflecting that maybe the US might be right.
It's not contortions, it's the truth, since these points have nothing to do with this US administration specifically.
Contortions is trying to blame EU's multi decade political faults on Trump.
Germany: Ties its economy to Russia despite warnings from the US
Russia: Invades Ukraine
Germany: Destroys its manufacturing economy after energy prices spike from decoupling from Russian gas
Germany and libs/dems: This is all Trump's fault
Something tells me when the 'something' is a major trade deal with China suddenly it'll be 'oh my god how could you'. The US wants a EU vassal, what they're going to get is an EU that realigned itself to be politically and economically equidistant from the US and China.
The whole point is the USA has been complaining that the EU was/is reducing itself to a vassal. No matter what the USA said or did before they didn't seem to care that they had no power anymore because the USA was there to take care of them.
The EU can't realign itself with China because that would destroy the last fragile bits of the EU economy that are left. They are already having issues with the excess supply lands on their shores even since the USA started tariffs with China. They can't deal with this long term.
No, the USA does not, in any way, and has never wanted or even accepted EU countries being independent. They wanted the EU to spend more on US weaponry, and maybe on their own - but would have vehemently opposed any attempt by any EU country to buy Russian, Chinese, Iranian or any such weaponry. They want the EU to stop regulating American companies, but they certainly don't want EU companies being too successful in the USA. They certainly wouldn't allow EU tech companies access to the US defense market, while of course insisting that the EU and other NATO members buy US built weaponry.
They certainly wouldn't allow EU tech companies access to the US defense market, while of course insisting that the EU and other NATO members buy US built weaponry.
This is really ridiculous. There are many successful EU vendors of defense technology to the US military. Safran, Schmidt & Bender, Heckler & Koch, Saab, Glock, Fabrique National -- there is a long list. The USA has built real partnerships in these areas.
One amusing example is the C7 and C8. These are AR-15 (M16) variants made by Colt Canada and adopted by the militaries of the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway; and used by special forces in the UK.
Where are you getting your information from, that the US wouldn't allow wouldn't allow EU tech companies access to the US defense market?
The right play is to maintain relationships (including arms trading) with multiple major powers - as Canada's PM very deftly pointed out at Davos. Getting closer to China doesn't mean exchanging one master for another - it can and should be a way to increase the alternatives available, without going all the way in the other direction.
> The EU would also have opposed it if the US bought Russian, Chinese or Iranian weaponry.
This is such an implausible counter-factual that I can't even begin to imagine what would have actually happened. Still, I doubt any more than some "public letters" would have been issued, whereas I'm sure that the opposite would have resulted in actual economic pressure from the USA against the EU/NATO country that would have dared, under any administration.
I mean, you offered a basically similar, implausible counterfactual. I think we can agree that it is at least parties that the EU would have opposed purchases of Chinese, Russian or Iranian weapons by the USA and vice versa -- but Russia and Iran have been sanctioned for long periods of time (Iran, basically continuously) by both the EU and the USA, and Russia is the main territorial threat to the EU, so maybe only China is really an interesting possibility here.
Arms trading with China is probably not a good idea at all.
I don't see much sign of the EU becoming a Chinese vassal as in relying on it for defence in return for being told what to do. Trading with China is not the same thing.
I'm not sure that's how it is. Sure NATO countries aren't keen on any of the members being reliant on weapons from potential NATO enemies, for example Turkey buying Russian S-400s but it doesn't mean the countries aren't mostly independent.
Likewise NATO countries aren't keen if one of their members gets a leader who rolls out the red carpet to the Russians and threatens to invade other NATO states. It's not like all the members have to do what the US likes.
No. The US wants the EU to be a vassal, this should be obvious. Why would they want an EU that is more capable of acting against US interests?
The US wants EU to be a vassal, but got tired of paying the protection money for that. Now they are trying, and failing, to keep the EU under their control despite bringing less to the table every day.
Or more obviously the US views China as an existential threat that is about to pop.
US has numerous public docs stating China is prepping for war and has WW2 levels of production. US knows it will be out manufactured in this conflict.
So the US needs:
1. Fully focus on China without distractions.
2. Allies able to handle their own security or help in the fight.
3. Weaken the smaller axis forces as much as possible now before the big event occurs.
Through this lens it alls lines up pretty nicely. Every single world event including US poking europe all work towards these goals.
As of now:
1. EU is finally spending on spending
2. Nato has expanded (sweden)
3. Russia is weakened
4. Iran is weakened
5. Oil production is secure (venuzuela, US internal, middle east)
6. East asia is also spending more on military and heavily aligning with the west (more bases in phillipines)
To me this is going about as smoothly as anyone would expect the buildup to WW3 would go. And it's all going pretty well for western forces. The west is now stronger than it has ever been and getting stronger and the axis forces are all weaker and getting weaker.
You really think EU is going to ally with China over japan, south korea, philipines, and Australia?
You really think Russia's current number 1 ally is all of a sudden going to be best friends with EU?
China and North korea are ACTIVELY supporting a war in Europe! China has openly threatened Australia. There are literal north korean troops shooting Europeans right now. Who is north korea's number 1 supporter?
> US: "We will invade greenland" EU: "omg we need to invest in greenland and increase its military support, we will send more troops immediately!"
> US: "we will pull out of nato" EU: "omg we hate US we need to massively increase military spending and industry"
It's in both the EU and the US's interest to ensure NATO is the strongest partnership possible and the US's actions over the last few weeks have undermined it almost perfectly.
If you look at actions and results the western alliance is the strongest it has ever been and going to be significantly stronger over the next decade.
Again my point is a theory that either EU and US found a way to make EU citizens get behind military spending or the US found a way to manipulate EU to do it.
You'll know if US and EU are actually not aligned if EU sides with China over USA (which would be suprising to say the least)
Tell me which NATO country came crying, triggered NATO Article 5 and as a consequence a good number of EU NATO (and even non-NATO) soldiers have died for the sole interests of said country?
Why are you moving the goalposts from your parent's point?
Yes, the middle eastern wars were a huge issue form the US, but that doesn't explain EU own goaling itself for 20+ years with terrible policies and choices, with or without helping the US in the middle east.
I am saying that for last 30 years actions of European NATO counterparts was not "undermining the relationship".
Also since 2014 there was a 10 year plan devised to get everyone to strictly follow 2% budget commitment. Which happened before you and I even heard about trump starting a presidential campaign (or even if it was there was nothing about NATO, etc). This happened (better later than never) due to ruzzian attack on eastern Ukraine and with a nudge from Obama administration.
Due to 2022 total war from ruzzia against Ukraine - I believe right now there are talks to commit up to 5% in long run, with at least up to 3.5% in next decade.
I know that Europe doesn't have great PR team, but USA is getting better and better at gaslighting (ruzzia has decades of experience in divide and conquer tactics) that Europeans are allegedly freeloading. Europe has it's problems, but it's solving them democratically, whereas USA needs to see herself in a mirror, before it's too late.
My understanding is that the 2% budget commitment was met or exceeded by all NATO countries only as late as 2025. The Obama administration ended in 2017.
Europeans not taking care of themselves has been "undermining the relationship".
If this is some kind of move, fair play, but its ham fisted because rank and file westerners across the world have lost respect and faith in America, that wont be rebuilt by some other president. Nobody will want fighter jets etc controlled by America. Perhaps USA is fine with it but to me it feels severely damaging.
The western alliance as of today is about as strong as its ever been.
No it is not. Very few people in Europe believe that the US would uphold NATO Article 5. The US did arguably not uphold the Budapest memorandum. Allies have stopped sharing intelligence with the US in many areas because they don't trust the US anymore (Trump would burn allied assets in a Truth Social post). Trump has done a lot of bidding for Putin in the Ukraine-Russian war because he does not care about a good outcome for the rest of the Western alliance, he only cares about some peace prize or whatever.
The Western alliance is almost shattered, NATO is on its lasts legs (well, technically, NATO with the US, I think a new NATO with Canada and Europe would rise from its ashes).
"Shattered" as they have together massively increased military spending and weakened their enemies at every step through heavy cooperation. And added sweden to nato.
If you ignored words actions show a big difference.
No. The US does not want an independent EU.
It wants an EU that lets any US company do here whatever it wants.
It wants the EU to split up so it can force bad trade deals on our countries.
We don't want a trade deal that lets you sell chlorinated chicken or other stuff that is currently banned here.
The US wants us to spend more on military but not on our own weapons but to spend all our money buying US made stuff.
Now what the president of the US achieved is that we want to spend more to develop our own local alternatives and improve them, not buy more from the US. Why would we buy from you if your president threatens to invade Greenland?
Also - military spending was increased not because Trump bullied us into it doing it. It was seen as necessary because of russian attack on Ukraine. Trump was not some genius diplomacy mastermind. He is a man child that is pissed of for not getting the Nobel peace price. How childish is that? This is not some person who can be taken seriously in any way.
Regulation is good, Micro-USB and USB-C for phones and computer chargers is better than the dozens of different chargers that was before. Only Apple was unhappy and didn't want it.
We don't want big US tech companies to steal our personal data and do whatever they want wit it.
Also - now trump is pissed off at Canada for trying to get a trade deal with China, when it was he himself who first said Canada should become a part of the US, started with random bs tariffs on canadian goods, etc. What else can you expect from Canada, why should they not try to find a more reliable trade partner? How can it be rational, what Trump is doing?
> I don't know if this was planned internally but it seems the way they figured out how to get EU to actually do something is to make it seem like big bad trump is going to hurt them.
This is an interesting take. You appear to be suggesting that the US has the EU's best interests at heart.
It ignores the fact that, on the rare occasion the Trump administration was not actively trying to undermine the EU, their "helpful advice" has always boiled down to "you should be more like us, and not being like us means you're failing."
My opinion, which I believe is common among Europeans, is that the opposite is true.
I would like to think US has EU interest at heart, a kind of tough love you would hope. But even if they don't all of their reactions have actively helped the US geopolitical goals.
> You appear to be suggesting that the US has the EU's best interests at heart.
The US might or might not have Europe's best interest at heart or the European peoples' best interest at heart. But certainly not the European Union's best interest.
Honestly so often I take my EU consumer and worker rights for granted, only to hear that they simply don't exist for 90+% of Americans. Amd then I wonder how they even live over there.
I looked up to the US as a kid. Then I went to the US about 8-10 times in my teenage years (lost the count) due to my dad's work. We travelled through ~20 states. Only during those trips I realized in what poor life standards most Americans live. My wife lived in the US for a year and had the same experience. She also found that average Americans have real weird believes about the rest of the world (this was in the nineties), like they would ask her whether Hitler is still alive, whether Europe only has US radio stations, and some believed that Europeans don't have fridges.
Another thing that surprised me was the segregation. One time we went out to eat something while crossing some states. Apparently we drove into a black neighborhood, and we walked into a large place with a buffet. And suddenly almost everyone was looking at us completely stunned. Then the other shoe dropped, we were the only white people, and they were probably surprised that white people showed up. They were extremely nice to us, but for me it also uncovered how weird the US is.
Slavery was a major economic drain, it wasnt a boon to the us economy. There is a reason the south remained agricultural and under developed, it was slavery.
They're going to the US for the VC funds and the capital markets, which is America's great competitive advantage globally. In the few industries I went through (PaaS, Health, Finance) what I got was that the regulatory environment in Europe was welcome for being stable and clear, or existing at all in a few cases. There's been one case where I've seen regulation being an issue and preventing business from being fully conducted in Europe, and that was related to banking (in that instance that company had to be set up in Dubai).
Europe will then redirect the 300B euros it was investing in US treasuries annually to Eurobonds, while redirecting the $300M in purchasing from US companies to EU companies. This is biting the hand that feeds the US.
Europe will buy LNG from Canada instead of the US, and continue to purchase imports from China. I agree though that a strong EU is needed, in part to defend against the US, as well as Russia (until the Russian economy reaches failure). CATL is currently building the largest battery factory in Europe in Spain.
>"I agree though that a strong EU is needed, in part to defend against the US, as well as Russia (until the Russian economy reaches failure)."
So after Russia fails "a strong EU" is no longer needed? Also waiting for Russian economy to fail may prove to be forever and not even desirable. Changing the system of government to one that treats people like it should is much better goal
Putin will need to die for Russia to change. Change is not possible in Russia until then. A strong EU is required post Russia.
Until then, starve the Russian economy of fossil fuel export revenue (which funds their war efforts). They have liquidated a majority of their gold reserves and have exhausted a majority of their military hardware stockpiles. If we wanted to wrap this up, we’d be bombing their oil and gas export facilities, but it appears we haven’t made it to that milestone yet.
lol hahaha Europe will "say" and maybe in a few decades they might get around to starting some of that. Europe still buys gas from Russia; can't even ween itself off it during a war.
> lol hahaha Europe will "say" and maybe in a few decades they might get around to starting some of that. Europe still buys gas from Russia; can't even ween itself off it during a war.
> Under the agreement, the EU will halt Russian liquefied natural gas imports by end-2026 and pipeline gas by September 30, 2027.
> The law allows that deadline to shift to November 1, 2027, at the latest, if a country is struggling to fill its storage caverns with non-Russian gas ahead of winter.
> Russia supplied more than 40% of the EU's gas before 2022. That share dropped to around 13% in 2025, according to the latest available EU data.
> The European Commission plans to also propose legislation in the coming months to phase out Russian pipeline oil, and wean countries off Russian nuclear fuel.
Considering Russian's invasion started February 24, 2022, it's fairly impressive Europe has only needed ~5 years to disconnect entirely from Russian gas supplies. Better late than never. They've proven they have the capacity to achieve these objectives in a timely manner, when motivated.
You also previously asserted, without citations, that Canada could not export natural gas to anyone but the US, so forgive me if I don’t take your opinion in high regard as it relates to global energy trade.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45919165 ("This line here makes it clear to me you've never really researched any of this. Canada doesn't have the ability to export that to anywhere but the USA and refuses to even consider building another pipeline." -- tick_tock_tick - November 13th, 2025)
I'm confident you could make more factually accurate and less emotionally driven comments if you tried. Please consider it. Very little of the information I rely on for my comments is paywall gated, they are web searches away for your consumption and mental model enrichment.
I've never argued with you that they can't export any oil of course they can. I'm simply stating they don't have the capacity to shit away from exporting to the USA nor do they plan to build said capacity. Maybe if Alberta's proposal actually gets fast tracked approval and isn't bogged down in a decade of court battles with environmental and indigenous groups and I'll consider changing my view.
lol hahaha Europe will "say" and maybe in a few decades
In the local harbor, they built an LNG terminal in 6 months (Eemshaven, NL).
The Russian invasion was on February 24, 2022. They opened an LNG terminal on September 8, 2022.
My primary lessons of previous crises (2008-2010 financial crisis, COVID, 2022 invasion) is that under pressure EU/EU countries can do things very quickly and do things well. The pundits always say the next crisis breaks the EU, but it always ends up with the EU being stronger and more unified than before.
Even starting from scratch with the software, I'd make the opposite bet. Imported energy on the scale of nations a lot of expensive physical hardware. Given the numbers people throw around when talking about upgrading the electrical grid, think trillions*.
Software also has the potential to be made by forking open source projects. That Canonical Ltd. (London) has Ubuntu is already a decent foundation, a wheel that probably doesn't need to be fully re-invented.
* ironically, one of my hobby-hills on green energy is that I have noticed that a genuinely global electrical grid fat enough to get resistance down to 1 Ω the long way around, would only cost a few hundred billion in aluminium. Currently only China makes enough to consider it, but still, the BOM for such a project is much less than the price of all the manpower needed for the last 100 miles.
I think they should (in practice there could be something in the middle). Yes, they may have more bickering with the US, but that's just part of the messy diplomatic process. At the end of the day, we want to see strong allies that share a compatible value system with us. I'm actually more optimistic too: a stronger Europe will earn more respect because of their strength. And that respect will lead to more negotiation instead of more bickering.
> isn't it what the Americans and even the current administration want?
no, I certainly do not read that at all. This is not what the U.S. wants -- a genuinely free EU that has its own economy and source of tech entirely independent of the U.S. That is quite the opposite of what the U.S. wants but it inevitable that it is what the U.S. will get.
Guangdong Province at the moment has about 140,000,000 people. About the same as Russia so it figures. Also it is not the best idea to estimate GDP of Russia in USD and using US criteria.
Seen from Europe, the current US administration doesn't want a Europe, end of story.
Trump 1.0 already tried to convince EU countries to exit the EU.
Trump 2.0 keeps insulting the EU, threatening the EU economically and threatening it militarily. To the point where even most of the far right EU candidates who were betting on being the ${EU COUNTRY} Trump are now doing their best to display how they're very much not Trump.
> In a way, isn't it what the Americans and even the current administration want? We want a strong Europe who is keen on preserving and developing the glorious modern civilization that it created.
This is a pretty ridiculous statement.
It is clear that the US under current administration is absolutely hostile to EU, and that the US in general is untrustworthy when a good portion of its people see the actions of the current administration as desirable.
What a joke of a comment. Trump and Musk and Vance explicitly support every anti-EU party in a half-dozen EU countries. Cuz they wanna make EU stronger, durrr.
Is it really though?
We have strong labour laws, consumer laws, antitrust laws, personal information laws and so on because the majority of us want it. We understand that this do not maximize growth, and consider that worth it.
In fact, the most of us sees the current US administration as a very big joke.
From a world domination point of view fragmentation is bad. On the other hand heterogeneity is good for choice and freedom as at least on paper if one platform kicks you off due to whatever curbs on freedom, you have alternative choices.
Heterogeneity/fragmentation also makes it harder for companies and countries to impose their mores on others. From that PoV Africa also should develop its own tools so as not to be subject to either North American or European values but their own values.
For sure. But a major goal of US foreign policy was to create an EU so it would be easier for trade. Backsliding on support, wanting to sabotage it, doesn’t help US companies as it just adds burden.
I'm American and sell my software to all 50 states (plus the rest of the world). I don't have a single special market rule for any state, not even my own. My payment providers take care of tax collection for me and my accountant tells me how much to pay the government each tax season.
We’re also pissing off Canada. This administration is actively destroying America to reduce the influence of American liberal values on the world. Destroying America is part of the plan.
It's really not when it comes to the internet. First of all I'm in a very big minority here in Romania because I can read French (I can also speak somehow), but the majority of the people around me cannot. And let's not mention German. So, when the majority of EU citizens cannot speak the languages of EU's two biggest countries by population then it means that the market is not unified.
And, no, using English as a lingua franca across the continent going forward is not going to cut it, that will mean cultural erasure. Maybe in the future some EU bureaucrats will advocate for that, i.e. to replace French, German, Spanish, Italian etc as people's main language, but I think we're pretty far away from that. Also, making everyone around these parts bilingual is also not going to work, it's either English as a first language (or French, or German) or nothing.
Canada is (was?) the single biggest commercial partner of the USA and Trump, in one of his tantrums, threatened to destroy that this week, with 100% tariffs.
> Canada is (was?) the single biggest commercial partner of the USA
It is "is" and it will continue to be is probably for the rest of Canada existence. You can't trump geography here and frankly Canada's decades of under investment in shipping infrastructure means they need to use USA ports for foreign trade anyway.
I do feel as why demands reason and I am not sure if you can reason with the unreasonable which is what the Canadian speech was about in Davos and then POTUS threatened 100% tariffs again.
Kind of proved the point of America being an un-reliable partner which is what I inferred from Canadian PM's speech & his call for middle economies to connect with each other and strengthen together to have more leverage overall.
Because Canada has been in trade talks with China and may potentially lower its tariffs on China which gives them a back door into the US. There are some specifics and it's all conditional. It depends on the kinds of deals it settles on.
It's multiple things. Yes, the automotive manufacturers matter not just for business sense, but because manufacturing base is important to be able to leverage in case of a war. Manufacturing lines played key roles in WW2.
In addition to that, since we're on the car angle, Chinese EVs are basically just privacy nightmares. I mean, all cars are at this point, but that's why we definitely don't want Chinese ones coming across the Canadian border and ending up all over the place.
In the end there are in fact legitimate national security concerns that the tariffs address and Canada risks weakening those. So, that is the actual answer to why.
No it is not. Canada did not try to do anything resembling Free Trade with China. It is btw prohibited by NAFTA / CUSMA. Canada pursues reasonable targeted deals like every normal country should. Trump is just getting hysterical because some country does not want to suck his dick. He should learn to be civil when dealing with neighbors, well it might be too late for that.
Because after the US threatened to destroy our economy and/or annex us by force and/or cancel nu-NAFTA and/or impose tariffs on us regardless, we realized that Americans don't actually want us as friends so we started diversifying our trade partnerships and negotiated a mutual tariff relaxation deal with China.
The previous Canada-US relationship is gone. Months ago I wrote on HN that purely by virtue of having to weather this storm, the nature of Canada-US relations will be irrevocably and fundamentally altered. Even if Trump and his cronies were jailed tomorrow, it's too late. The rest of the world understands that Trump is just a symptom of the disease affecting America and it's going to get worse, not better.
Probably bummed because nearly everyone (rightfully) praised Mark Carney's speech in Davos (in contrast to Trumps incoherent ramblings). I am pretty sure he can be that petty.
US perspective: EU looks like a great place to expand into once I've reached some critical size threshold. But I can't imagine starting a business there. In the US we have effectively limitless capital, tons of tech talent, and many fewer regulations.
Just about everything I'd want to do in a startup appears illegal or otherwise infeasible in the EU because of the morass of data and AI and energy regulations.
On the other hand, I could never imagine moving to the US. It seems like such a third world country in so many ways. The amount of households that cant afford a sudden $400 expense without borrowing. The childhood poverty rates. The maternal mortality rate. The traffic deaths (en even worse, the pedestrian traffic deaths going in the wrong direction fast), people dying at work, the fact that you managed to get hookworm BACK, the power grid (I love in a small society in Sweden and I have averages 6 minutes of power outages per year), people being functionally illiterate.
I am pretty sure that would not affect me if I moved there, but I am completely dumbfounded that nobody seems to want to change things. One party wants the status quo and one party seems to want to make things worse.
> Just about everything I'd want to do in a startup appears illegal or otherwise infeasible in the EU because of the morass of data and AI and energy regulations.
Sounds like you're doing some shady, disgusting bullshit or you're exaggerating the regulations. I hope it's the latter.
building a simple business in south east asia is drastically easier. there are effectively no privacy laws, no class action lawsuits (a big US problem not EU), no gdpr, energy is cheaper, no punitive labour courts, much looser zoning laws. almost no restrictions on international trade, no withholding taxes, no major issues with transfer pricing, no capital gains taxes, relaxed packaging laws. of course, there are different challenges.
When you go from an open market to EU mode it is insanely stressful having to suddenly deal with these enormous regulatory regimes that simply dont exist anywhere else, and to figure out how to deal with them. this stress is an energy cost, which becomes a capital cost, which makes it much more difficult for small businesses to be created. I also find supranational regulatory regimes difficult to understand, unlike other parts of the world where each country has its own law and thats it. I think its generally a good thing for the people who live there though!
when i am driving around in ASEAN i don't look at my speed. in EU i am anxiously making sure i am 1km/h below the limit to avoid a fine in the mail.
I'm on a high horse because I like that the EU tries to regulate big tech? I wish they went further and actually enforced it. Some of you seem to live in a parallel universe.
Elaborate what's so bad about the EU instead of assuming who I am or how I live. I'm criticizing your ideas, not your person. Make some effort and do the same, "bro". Don't be such a stereotype.
- Business law is in its infancy and local courts excessively favour the Indian side. In the event of a dispute, enforcing the terms of the contract can be very complicated or even illusory.
- Banking and insurance services are complicated, slow and expensive.
- There is not one but many different sets of legislation per province. There
are gaps in the legislation and it is necessary to go through a long compliance process based on the manufacturer's or supplier's legislation, involving translation, negotiation, etc.
- Each time there is a change in decision-makers, at least part of the process must be repeated.
I work for an energy company and we have a team that has been working on an Indian project for almost ten years, without the project really seeming to have progressed.
The Indian market is a bottomless pit if you don't have a very high-ranking political sponsor in the Indian government.
1. extremely price sensitive; zoho is regarded as expensive
2. 121 major languages in active/business use, with 22 formally recognised by government. These people may understand limited english.
3. 28 unique states plus 8 unique territories.
so in many ways its like expanding across the US, except there are 22 languages as well as 36 state law regimes, plus federal law, and then indian city law, transfer pricing regimes, currency settlement issues... etc.
China is also possible, but still price sensitive and strongly culturally prefers local solutions
I think they are a decade or two late to migrate away. They will end up developing their own in a time where these are loss leaders. It’s likely they will pay for it in a bundle while just not using it.
Not to mention in my experience EU companies don’t know how to migrate away from anything as their tech companies operate at the efficiency of a US government agency.
EU market is _very_ regulated comparing to the US one, and also don't dismiss the language barrier in the european countries. Not everyone speaks English.
It's not clear that anything will be kneecapped. You need more than a desire to not use these products, you also need a viable alternative. Using products from China or Russia probably isn't deemed viable if the concern is politics, which leads to a need for Europe or Canada to build alternatives. They have not been good at this for a long time, maybe that will change, but it's not clear that it will.
Today India invited President of EU commission on its republic day & I feel like there are discussions on signing free trade agreement.
I was in my car watching it live when I recognized the President of EU commissioner and I was like hey!!
I feel like friendly relations of EU and India are definitely on the rise & I have said this previously as well and talked to my other cousins/family who works in Coding and most agree that a deeper India-EU ties are possible.
One thing we were discussing is if EU could directly invest funds in Indian companies instead of going through 10 layers of councils/commissioning companies but to people who want to either build private solutions (Preferably open source?)
I do feel like that's inevitable too. EU's financing is something which I have heard is tricky within EU itself but there are some recent initiatives to stream line it and perhaps India can even integrate into it if its actually net positive for India.
Overall I feel like I am pretty optimistic about India EU relations (though I feel like I have bias but what do people from EU think respectfully?,I'd be more than happy to answer as I talked to my developer cousin about it for almost 2 days on how EU India integration especially in tech feels so good and inevitable haha :>)
India doesn't really have a position on Russia/Ukraine itself but wants peace within the region.
Yes, India does seek russian oil but that's because I feel like India and russian trade deals have been from the start of cold war where America supported pakistan.
If you actually observe our history, we were hesitant about joining any block but it was the fact that America started investing in Pakistan which made us closer to russia.
I feel like the average person is either Ukraine supporting/Neutral for what its worth.
That being said, I feel like India's just looking out for its own interests. (Ahem America's attacking venezuela for oil)
I feel like if this is such an non-starter, then India has made its stance clear that its always willing to co-operate to grow its country and if EU gives a more lucrative deal to India. I feel like India can slowly decrease its dependence on Russian oil as well.
The thing is, EU right now is in this position because it got so reliant on America. We had seen this during cold war and we have always kept our cards open while still maintaining peace. I feel like India should look after its own interests first and foremost and see when objectives align (something canadian's PM said recently too and Trump got so angry on him that he's again talking about raising 100% tariffs)
Honestly full support to Ukraine. I hope a peace deal can be arranged in Ukraine-russia.
That being said, if you feel like EU's gotten a better partner (Americas invading Greenland, China's authoritarian, which other country has the tech innovation close to India?) then sure, I hope EU does whats in best of its incentives as well.
But my honest bet is that India is EU's best bet to move from American techno-dependence given recent Greenland crisis.
I can't wait to see how many indians we are going to be forced to import due to that "free trade deal". They must have looked at how well it went in canada and said among themselves "now that's how you destroy a country we gotta get some of that". [EDIT] Hopefully national politicians get balls, more balls, and tell their MEPs to vote against it like the mercosur deal.
This BS should stop (even if you vote for AfD or National front)
It is so difficult we still to get a working visa into Western EU. The way this is done is by total bureaucratic nature of Ausländerbehörde.
When he was CTO from Netflix, Gaurav Agarwal
Could not get a visa to relocate to Germany. (No more with Netflix)
So even of one has > €80K salary and working in Apple or MS hq in Munich it is pain in the arse.
On the other hand this is encouraging people to apply and get passports. I for one would have never naturalised as German if the residence permit was quick and easy.
In summary, there are encouraging people to migrate.
What little immigration we have from India are highly educated and thus quite productive individuals.
You’re (deliberately?) confusing the issue with e.g. illegal immigration or asylum seekers who often come from poor, war-torn areas with little education and possibly a very different mind-set.
I haven’t been accosted by roving gangs of well-educated IT Indians, I find the thought funny ;)
For what its worth, I have to mention that India losses more on this deal than Europe because India's actually for the first time iirc imo giving up tariffs or reducing them. India has the highest tariff rates for a developing country from the start (indiscriminant) and is only offering upgrades to EU mostly fwiw in terms of this free trade deal.
I have heard this deal be described as EU beneficiary from EU sources.
Ah yes, I feel like what you want for an EU is a connection with America which has been a very unreliable partner would even be an understatement in today's geopolitical environment.
It's saddening to see if you are from EU who actually believes so. I am more than happy to answer your queries in good faith but this just feels like pushing some of your own agenda or straight up racist.
We come with open arms even though the massacre of jallianwala bagh is still in our memories. There is just no question regarding the fact that EU primarily british forces had extracted immense wealth from India and India had to primarily rebuild it from scratch healing from the scars of its colonial past.
There's actually an internal pushback from some people i feel like who feel like EU is still imperialist & want to shut down this deal from India side given India hasn't lost much after the trump's tariffs compared to EU whose greenland was in some serious sovereign threats.
But I guess the point is that EU India deal is inevitable in this multi polar deal. India wants EU to be the financial hub where EU can then reinvest in India and India can create technological innovation.
I have tried to respond with as much calm as possible but I must admit that your message felt like a must admit,ragebait to me in start but I hope that this detailed message can help clear up on the details.
If you have any reasonable questions man, feel free to ask!
Both may benefit. Some will lose. If benefits overweigh losses then ok.
Well Rapido bike means Auto-wallas are angry. That is reality.
The highest tariffs are holding India back. A decent original nike shoe is about €50 here but why it is Rs5000 there (with lower Purchasing power). Local businesses have too long bribed Indian politicians. Recently I replaced the gate of my house here in EU. It was 20 years old. No rust despite old. I remember the steel supplied by our companies is crap - we repaired our gate every few years. Or it was not properly painted.
Costs of computer etc are too high for any startup etc. and with our talent more cheaper imports from china would be great to build a local giant.
On the other hand our people do
- exploit Digital Ocean T-shirt give away to create stupid pull requests and burden maintainers in GitHub open source project
- curl dev stopped bug bounty due to many sending AI reports
- clone AOSP and IIT Chennai said it have created a independent OS.
Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmai founder) recently said we have become users not creators.
Even Ambani with all his money can't do a good tech company.
All the issues you mention are valid and I guess it all boils down to some aspects of over population and also crowding within the CS market too which impacts passionate people in CS too (something I wrote about as well)
But like I feel like leadership skills in India will go far. It's time to go and build things instead of trying to be consumers. The people who do this in India are gonna get rewarded disproportionately in my opinion.
I will just do my work building new things which isn't work for me but fun which I enjoy. So yeah!
Edit Leadership skills don't mean leading people but rather like I guess I meant Innovative skills in the sense of building new things and everything ykwim tho leadership skills can go far too, I feel like innovation skills are more needed too and the same point goes for both essentially imo.
In most of the West, that I know of, people admit to issues. Brazenly say, yes , German train system is under performing, no investment in the last 10 years from both parties. Then there is chance for change. It is happening.
I mean perhaps, yea I must've got sidetracked by India's colonial past but for the average Indian I would consider for that passage that they generally equate UK to be part of EU usually. (Perhaps from the pre-brexit era's or just in general)
I wouldn't consider it a rant per se but rather that India's trying to move towards an multi polar deal and EU and India actually has a more net negative and Indians are wary of this deal even more so but on aggregate the deal would be extremely beneficial if seen from both sides with reason.
Also isn't UK trying to pester back into the EU again. It's super complicated to follow even as someone who follows geo-politics.
> I mean perhaps, yea I must've got sidetracked by India's colonial past but for the average Indian I would consider for that passage that they generally equate UK to be part of EU usually. (Perhaps from the pre-brexit era's or just in general)
When I started writing about jallianwala bagh I probably got distracted because I used to be part of drama club and we had this act when we were young and literally the amount of people dying and everything truly shocks one & genuinely disturbs one.
I think my point which kind of got muddied up is that India wants to cozy up to EU and build things together but not to UK so much. India's extremely sensitive regarding UK given its past and in this deal,is cautious about EU and UK making ties again or any such discussions too.
Judging by the very large Indian community living in the UK, and the extensive community and business links between the two countries, I imagine “very well”.
I really think we (as OCI/NRI) should move on from using Jallianwala or whatever. This doesn't help. Don't use BS to justify.
Every damn guy that get visa refused uses this and in a way insults those sacrifices.
Come to reality. Present or at least last 10 years.
Who did what? You need to fix your own country. Even if British didn't invade - the princely states of India were feuding. Fighting. If it was not one country then TN and Karnataka would have gone to war.
UK were open minded to elect a non- white as PM in UK. Though he was very bad for for UK.
Do some creative things instead of using colonial things. Nobody cares. If some from that family hate UK or west then why come and live a happy life here (being UK/EU citizens). As an OCI holder, I get better treatment at immigration than I was an Indian citizen.
While lots of things exist like ISRO etc there is still abject poverty, pollution, health care issues.
Yes, India sends talents. Myself living about 10 years here.
But note. TCS etc employees gain more coming here than they contribute. Yes, skill shortage etc. at the end while using the fantastic TGV here in France - I am benefiting more than contribute despite working in a high tech scientific industry.
Eventually Bihari in TN will say I did so much work in Coimabatore mills but you guys are treating me shit; and for the non-hindi speaking Tamil in Pune they treat like shit.
If all these are better the internal economy will be great. On path to some self sufficiency. No. Instead you come here to insult current EU UK citizens. It is of no use.
The point is even if Sundar Pichai was in India he would not have built a Google.
You can be cautious but at the end people like Bhavish Aggarwal or biju or l&t CEO etc are the ones you get there. They don't give a shit about people. Until then people will try to move here. Fix that.
Otherwise people will come here to work. Just 9-5. No sat/sunday work. No fking Manager would call you after office hours.
(Again, there will be YouTube videos of NRI telling - it is better life in India than USA/EU. Yes, true. If you are 10%top earner in India or at the
How can you even suggest moving from Jallianwala bagh when so many people were killed in the most gruesome way. I suggest you to watch the documentary once and then go ahead and suggest the same.
> Come to reality. Present or at least last 10 years.
??? No, it is our bloody past that we will never forget what the British did that day.
Even British historians from documentaries mention that people in Britain think that British empire was "the good guys" but in reality, the atrocities committed were equal to nazi germany levels and they really tried to suppress this information getting out.
Would you say to a Jew to come to reality right now? Do you realize how in-sensitive things are you talking about right now??
Heck, Even Germany apologized about the genocide that it took against the jews (holocaust) but Britain has never issued an true sincere apology about it in much capacity.
> Every damn guy that get visa refused uses this and in a way insults those sacrifices.
Those weren't only just sacrifices. Those were cold hearted murders by British people to "fire higher" & a calculated attack to kill.
Now you mention some problems within India.
UK extracted $64.82 trillion from India during colonial rule & we are still improving. I am not kidding when I say that UK left us in freaking shambles and the partition day echos screams too.
You mention Indian states fueding. Well, firstly they are now Indian states but they were sovereign nations comprising the now Indian states. Suppose EU and America are feuding over greenland too, so would your suggestion be for say China to occupy both to create peace? Do you realize the ludicrousness in your comment?
Do you realize that Britain tried the rowlatt act and so many other acts which was the FREAKING reason that Jallianwala bagh massacre took place.
People were humiliated on a street where they had to rub their noses and walk on all fours and crawl. There can be no justification for this.
Do you realize that whole of India voted against any British law that restricted Indian freedom yet they still passed the law iirc?
India has its issues right now some because of its colonial past. I am Indian. I am trying to call a spade a spade and you aren't. If I am wrong, feel free to correct me about anything.
So even if India has its issues and I will admit nobody likes talking about Indian issues than Indian themselves. My point is, we are working on fixing them. We have a multi party system with decentralization & we are seeing growth and India has 0 angel tax, 0 startup tax, insanely good seed funds by GOVT itself and green tech cities and startup cities like bangalore, gurugram etc.
But in no way of form does India having problems try to justify the bloody past and not even Britishers try to justify it now so its crazy to see your wild response (let's admit UK's having problems too, Every country does and that's okay and that's my point)
As I have mentioned repeatedly, I am not against EU but you can absolutely see why some people in India are worryful of the deal given UK was part of EU (pre-brexit) and wants to come back (like tf?)
I am not saying that UK people are all like this. What I am saying is that they take pride in the former british empire from what I can gather when it was established on mass exploitation and blood bath.
Building railways in India would be beneficial “to the commerce, government and military control of the country”, Governor General Lord Hardinge had said in 1843. The fact that it was not Indians that urged the rapid construction of railways in the country, but the Chambers of Commerce of Manchester and Glasgow, and the European Chambers of Commerce at Calcutta and Bombay, underlines why the British built railways in India — to make exploitation of raw material more efficient.
Britain was very much racist during that time (from what I can gather, there are still certain parties and people who are racist towards Indians)
Simply put, Britain extracted 60 trillion $ worth of our wealth, built railways to only exploit us further, killed people in massacres and humiliated them, tried to really really put down the revolutionaries for so long.
This is our past. The scars of our past still haunt India. If you can't show sympathy or have to say things like this is what people say after not getting Visa then that's so disgusting to say.
I hope I have made my stance clear. Out of our respect and sympathy to elders and our nation's sovereignity, India generally suggests to distance ourselves from UK.
India prefers a partner like EU much much over UK. We really don't want to negotiate much with UK from what I can tell. But once again, the question is if UK wants to pester back into EU, we will be questionable about any such free trade agreement.
I have nothing against the genuine normal UK people and businesses tho. I talk with UK vps providers on quite a frequency but just, I want to point out that we are aware of our past. We always will be.
I am just saying that even those UK provider would be/have been more sympathetic than you because literally not even british historians argue anything and the question they ask is if they should apologize or not but I feel like the apologies if insincere would be worth nothing.
It's saddening to see people with such mentality as yours in a forum I enjoy. I have tried to put forth reason first.
Propaganda works man, I don't blame you, When enough things get repeated, we repeat the same.
But I know that you are smart, so use reason not propaganda to answer such query. I highly recommend you to enlighten yourself over what happened in Jallianwala bagh massacre from the youtube documentary that I provided.
I am willing to have a good faith discussion (only after you watch the documentary), have a nice day.
1. This massacre happened 107 years ago. None of the people involved are even alive any more. In some cases even their children or grand-children are no longer with us. Judging children by the sins of their parents leads nowhere.
2. Holding grudges for so long does not seem healthy for the person holding them.
3. Another commenter points out that India is looking for a trade agreement with the UK... I guess the government of India doesn't hold the same view point as you (as an outsider, your viewpoint seems very extreme).
So continuing from my past comment which did get extremely long but I hope that I could capture the nuance.
My point's probably that EU and Indian relations feel the most easy to form out of any major world right now and honestly I do have a bit of bias in here as I wish to create private solutions or open source solutions from India and the EU market and its privacy conscious users feels better connection if EU and India themselves are connected better and I am feeling like the chances of that happening is quite high.
But I guess politics tricky and I can be wrong, I usually am so yeah. But I am just gonna build private (or Open source solutions) and have a bit of focus within EU market as well.
Politics isn't really my best suit because I like to come to agreements and politics in this case is trying to tangle the untangled which feels pretty tricky to do such I guess but I also really like talking about India-EU relation so yeah. Probably sacrifices must be made & looking for hopefully a healthy discussion of politics which I didn't witness in the GP's comments being honest.
See I want to thank you for this comment because we can approach something new on top of it man.
I will try to respond to each of your point but before that I have to say something.
The Jallianwala bagh massacre fundamentally showed to us that we cannot co-exist with British Raj. We have to demand for purna swaraj & such demands were what led us to our independence. So any historical book of ours mentions the massacre starting from 4th grade to all the way to 10th maybe even till college. We learn more and more gruesome details as we progress mentally.
You can go ask any Indian about Jallianwala bagh and we would all know it. I can bet on that.
(IMP): My point of extreme frustration is with people who somehow try to lessen its historical significance or somehow say factually in-accurate words like the OP did & I took my sweet time trying to explain everything. There is just no justification of what happened but you can just observe from the original parent on how some justifications were trying to be given (we gave you trains, you were fighting etc.)
What your 1) and 2) point are is about the fact that its very historically old & that's a valid point on which I will come. But you can just see even today, we have people who somehow are (propagandized?) about it. This is what annoys us as a community & why we still judge children sometimes if they are taught about the glory of british empire (this is what I feel like I have heard from people in UK) & they forget to read about the bengal famine, the jallianwala bagh massacre and all the atrocities committed whether in India or in the colonies of our African friends.
And this is why India and British relations have never really been repaired after the massacre (Quoting a british Historian)
Also, India isn't alone in this of what you consider "extremism".
Like, in China something approximately 100 years ago happened the extremely sad and depressing event we call rpe of nanking by Japan.
China still remembers it & you can see how it still impacts Chinese-Japanese relations even to this day and it impacts the whole region.
As a result of Japanese war crimes during the Second Sino-Japanese War such as the Nanjing massacre, and the Chinese view that Japan has not taken full responsibility for them, the bilateral relationship between China and Japan continues to be a sensitive issue in China.[2]: 24
Coming to American Civil war. You can still observe how even after a 100 year old war. People of color are having issues in America even to this day & the problems still persist to this day.
My biggest issue which you might consider judgement is the fact that I feel like UK still romanticizes this era (and teaching children to romanticize it too), like they treat it as when UK had all colonies and it was all good and everything. And this is why I have an issue to this day. I have only heard that UK people still don't know the gruesome details of all the massacres which took place.
Every country have these sensitive nerves. Time really doesn't have an impact, in fact as more and more time passes on, the impact deepens in my opinion.
I just wanted to say the post to all the people who ever thought that India benefitted from Britian's colonialism. Nil nada, (negative) India was extremely exploited and India would've been better off without colonialism without a doubt of anybody's including historian's minds. I have given sources in the past detailed comment too.
This is an extremely sensitive issue to India and we don't like people who are reductionist in this approach just as China regarding Nanking massacre.
Now regarding 3) the point is that just as how China and Japan's relations have improved over the years and gotten worse as well, India and Britain's official relations are the same as well.
That being said, every Deal somehow reflects back to an average citizen in country. I am not over-exaggerating when I say that people's blood especially nationalist/political people boil over this instance. I wouldn't consider myself much nationalist and I am mostly moderate (Heck I am complimented for my moderacy) but this is literally the one point where whole India went extremist. I seriously can't explain how much sensitive this topic is.
So at some point if UK and India FTA does pass consider a huge resentment from Indian side. Politically I doubt something like this would happen but perhaps, I can be wrong I usually am but I haven't seen any one person who is enthusiastic about having stronger ties with Britain out of all countries.
It's part of our history and no matter how bloody, quite frankly we will not forget it.
I don't know what you want me to say but I will say what my heart feels in the moment. We aren't against the normal genuine people of Britain. But we are simply cautious and have our guards up because of the bloody past regarding our agreements with Britain. Britain came to India out of free trade agreements and slowly started expanding military. Of course, something like this rehappening feels implausible but not exactly off the table given some romanticization of british empire being observed from outside.
Now my point isn't to bring hate towards the normal genuine people of british state and we don't have a grudge towards the normal people. Because even British historians are really apologetic about the whole scenario and provide no single justification ever. I personally continue to have customer relations with British VPS providers etc.
I don't know how to explain this, feels a little contradictory but just as how Chinese trade with Japanese, India trades with Britain & we set aside our differences at the moment and even make friendly relations & in no way as an Individual I am saying that you britishers are responsible for what your grand parents might've done. But i am just simply reporting it on why there is a hard limit on the amount of trust and relations which can be established in the first place given the bloody past.
I really don't think that many are completely anti british but just cautious. We would still somehow prefer more EU (non British) products than say British simply something akin to how EU is now preferring to move over from America in the first place.
Sure one can argue about the events of time here again but I hope that I have done a fair job at explaining how from an Indian context time really isn't part of the equation so much as one is imagining from outside.
I don't think I am doing a great service telling. You just have to be an Indian to really know what I feel like I am talking about.
I can be wrong, I usually am. But I am speaking this comment from the experience I witness around me.
If you ever visit India, Visit Jallianwala bagh. You can say that I am from that state, those were my people & if you really want, I will be more than happy to guide you this one time.
Honestly Britishers were racist [not sure about right now] (during that time, something which British historians point out once again) and hated us and you could see that. I don't intend on answering hate with hate and that never was the intention. But the reasons are so extreme (in details and everything) that it might make the answer feel extremist.
Honestly Idk, India's answer to hate has always been an open arm or peace. We always try the peace route first (tho I feel so obligated to point out that in Jallianwala bagh, They ordered to shoot on peaceful people enjoying some festival WITHOUT any warning, just straight up shooting bullets and killing people)
I think India still runs on Gandhian principles for the most part. And that's honestly how we got our freedom.
Yes, India still has its issues (Overpopulation leading to an extremely hard competition in exams and all the other issues) and there are lots of issues and nobody likes talking about it more than us ourselves.
But overall, I still feel like there's some real optimism and hope for India and Indians kind of feel it.
There are plenty of viable alternatives. Perhaps not all are as polished as some of the mainstay US companies, but the funtionality is there. It's no surprise that people in the US are ignorant of the existence of the many excellent EU software companies and services.
Not sure why you're being downvoted, Europe has been mostly bad at software and services for a long time now. There's a reason Linus lives in Oregon.
There's always this occasional chatter about being more competitive, and certainly some good ideas -- for example, the Draghi Report -- but then nothing happens, or you get a few half measures at most.
I guess the one upside of Trump being such an aggressive jackass is that it might finally provide enough impetus for European countries to take further integration more seriously.
Europe has good software companies. It's just that the US has bigger VC funding which makes European companies unable to compete when US/EU companies are "fighting".
What is the reason Linus lives in Oregon? By his own admission, 90% of his workday is reading and answering email. We have email in Europe, so that can’t be it.
Regulations are neutral. They can be positive, or negative. And should be pruned occasionally probably.
And yea, we have lots of old lead pipes here in certain places. But let's not pretend we can't find fault with the immigrant ghettos in Europe or myriad other issues y'all have over there.
There's problems everywhere there's sufficient numbers and complexity.
We are still making hardware and feel the same way about the US market. The litigation is insane. Meanwhile the Chinese don't give a damn about any of those.
For electronic products, it should be enough to get the CE mark on your product, and it can be sold in any country. That is the point of the EU, that any company can sell it's products or services in the whole union, there are regulations, but they are union wide, not specific for each country.
Unless you were making something very special, that each country wants to and is allowed to regulate separately.
Taxes can be different, the VAT % is different in each country. But so is it also in each county or town in the US, and your people claim that this is the reason why you can't include taxes on prices in grocery shops, which is difficult to believe here for our people. So dealing with different tax rates shouldn't be big news for you? I mean... there are lots of online shops that know about different tax rates, it's not difficult. Or you could let someone else handle it for you.
If you sell products to all 27 EU members and sell above a certain threshold you will have to work with all 27 tax offices in regard to VAT. There is OSS for B2C but that comes with significant downsides.
Probably there are plenty of regulations related to safety and suitability regarding electricity, water, washing residue on dishes, etc.
Without being more specific, the only thing I can presume is that you were unwilling to follow regulations here.
I furnished and equipped my home a couple of years ago, and I had plenty of options for dishwashers, from multiple brands. Many different models at varied price points.
This tells me that serious companies have little problems to follow regulations to compete here.
Yes, the EU is not a country. Each country has their own government, with regulations of their own.
I am in favor of some sort lf EU federalization for this reason, there's a lot of redundancy.
On the other hand, you could just choose a country to operate, which is a normal thing to do. There are things I could find, for example, in France that I cannot find in the country where I live
China: Everything that puts western buyers off Chinese stuff, same happens in reverse. E.g. translation is really really hard. Every previous time I have illustrated how bad Google Translate is at this by quoting the Chinese output, someone has missed the point and replied to tell me the output is so bad as to be almost incomprehensible.
India: Lots of people, sure, even after accounting for how they've only recently fully electrified and don't all have office jobs where software is even slightly relevant… but the entire economy even in aggregate let alone per capita (and therefore TAM) is smaller, and the linguistic situation is (according to what I was told by Indian coworkers at a previous job) an exciting mix where everyone speaks 3+ languages and intermixes them in basically every sentence.
The announcement is about a tool developed internally by the French government to use internally, too. This is a very wasteful approach that does not create real competitors to US giants, and it is liable to be cancelled at the next round of cost reduction...
An insider view: there is a major push in a lot of state related team & department at the moment to go “sovereign tooling”. With alternatives for a lot of stuff.
This is not just a corner of the universe, most of us are switching tools at the moment, the trend is definitively big.
My point is that you don't achieve that by having the state start developing internal tools (unless it's highly sensitive stuff like for the intelligence services or military) for standard office applications. The French state is already massively oversized...
And that will change in 3 years or even at the end of this year... A lot is blown out of proportion by the EU itself because it serves its own agenda to expand reach and power.
Realistically there is zero alternative to US tech/online dominance in sight in Europe and the credible competitors are more likely to be Chinese (tiktok, temu, shein, etc.) What is happening is EU politics.
The typical mature technology company in the US earns half their revenue from outside the US. Makes it harder to understand even tacitly supporting white supremacy and ignorant isolationism.
A core tenet of the "dark enlightenment" mind-virus that has taken hold of the valley is the idea that civilizational decline/collapse is not only inevitable but imminent, so they don't really mind getting a bigger slice of a smaller cake, as long as they are in charge[1].
However, they also are getting citizenships from other countries or buying pacific island bunkers: just in case.
1. The collapse inevitabilitism absolves them of any guilt when their actions make the world worse, since "it was going to happen anyway"
It's also pervasive. The weirdest thing in the world is watching someone I know who works for a big tech company and moved to the States suddenly wanting to get a New Zealand citizenship "just in case".
They supported it because they saw an opportunity to remove limitations on them, both domestically (see FCC, restrictions on state level AI laws, etc) as well as internationally (regulations, digital taxes, etc in the EU and Canada, for example).
Yeah, assuming Canada is just going to keep going along buying American software and services seems pretty naive. There's less capacity to build alternatives in Canada than there is in Europe, but as Europe builds out alternative ecosystems, Canadians will likely be just as eager customers as Europeans (if not more eager).
The beauty of so many of these solutions being open source solutions also means that it creates avenues for cooperation between organizations that have no official cooperation agreement.
E.g. The Austrian federal Military, the state of Schleswig-Holstein, and the city of Leon have no direct forum for cooperating on software projects, yet all three are contributing to the development and rapid adoption of Nextcloud. Canada can easily get in on this too.
Canada has roughly the population of California, and Aus/NZ combined have populations less than California. For these types of market analyses, these countries are closer to US states in market potential.
Kansas, Arkansas, Nebraska, Mississippi, New Mexico, Idaho, New Hampshire, Hawaii, West Virginia, Delaware, Maine, Rhode Island, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Wyoming and Vermont
put together.
That's the equivalent of 18 states.
Throw in Aus and NZ too and you add another 7 states -- Louisiana, Alabama, Utah, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Nevada and Iowa.
Ontario alone has a larger GDP than 45 of the 50 US states, and a bigger GDP than New Hampshire, Hawaii, West Virginia, Delaware, Maine, Rhode Island, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Wyoming and Vermont put together.
> Ontario alone has a larger GDP than 45 of the 50 US states, and a bigger GDP than New Hampshire, Hawaii, West Virginia, Delaware, Maine, Rhode Island, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Wyoming and Vermont put together.
This is not correct as of 2024. In 2024, Ontario had a GDP of CAD 1.17B. [1] In USD, this is (at .73 exchange rate, which is favorable for these calculations) this comes to US 854B.
In 2024, the following US states had greater GDPs [2]: California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, and tied with Washington. GDP growth in 2025 was worse for Ontario than these states, and it would be expected Ontarios' position to continue to decline.
The figures I provided are for 2024. You would need to compare USD/CAD ratios for 2024 versus 2025. Annual GDP figures for 2026 are not yet available as 2026 has not yet come to pass, so usage of 2026 data is not accurate in this context. To compare, I would consider USD/CAD on December 31, 2024 which was 1.386 [.72] and USD/CAD on December 31, 2025 which was 1.4359 [.69] which are both less favorable than the .73 given.
As stated above, the usage of more accurate figures would render Ontario with a lower GDP than more states.
I guess the point here is to keep high prices. If you lower the prices, you can try to enter even Africa, but it's simply easier to keep more or less uniform pricing, unless you're Steam-size and are able to spend resources on doing this properly.
There's only one thing they need to replace if they want to show independence: ChatGPT. They had their chance with Mistral and failed spectacularly with just creating anti-AI regulations.
As a European I'm happy to use their product (and pay for it), I just ask one tiny little thing from them: build a better model with lower latency.
No. No one really gives a shit about AI other than the tech industry and vocal CEO culture which is just using it to bury recession and regular lay offs. Otherwise it's novelty value and frustration but no one is going to use it or pay enough for it to be viable as an economic backbone.
There are many more important things to consider. Like literally everything else society sits on top of.
I have a friend who's a professional translator. No it isn't. She's forever cleaning up after the mess it left people in. In fact business for her is really booming thanks to people who think that is the case.
And I'm not talking about LLMs here but DeepL etc.
AI translates correctly, with a few minor imperfections which don't impede communication. Compare that to waiting a day and paying hundreds of euros for each message.
AI translation is comparable to the telephone or e-mail in how it improves communication.
The end-user costs are slim to none, but for OpenAI alone they're hundreds of billions USD.
LLMs certainly have their use and are here to stay but it remains to be seen how they can be commercially successful without constant injections of venture capital.
That's mighty impossible for the european mindset - people here are not so risk-eager as to through hundreds of billions on infrastructure for something that might return a profit.
The US capital markets are truly a wonder to behold. There's no way to replace that. For good and ill, you'd only get weird looks in Europe if you asked for €10 billion for an unproven business model in what's somehow also a competitive market.
To be fair this example does look a lot like insanity.
It's not really a wonder, Americans will simply lose their pensions if the AI business models don't work out. The same way it happened many times in the past.
I have a theory about the second part; European consumers have an even more suspicious view of "corporate overlords" if they are domestic/European than if they are American. Not because Americans are more trustworthy, but because they see Europeans as "anonymous masses" and are therefore more "neutral" to the internal struggles in Europe.
Signing up to a service owned by a European "dynastic" family, possibly in a neighbouring country, feels like more of a surrender of autonomy.
Hasn't this also something to do with the cultural dominance that US have had over the EU? We considered US services more valuable just because they where from US. But that cultural dominance might not be as strong anymore, maybe because of social media/TikTok?
>There's only one thing they need to replace if they want to show independence: ChatGPT. They had their chance with Mistral and failed spectacularly with just creating anti-AI regulations.
I think the idea of a Eurostack is more compelling: standard office productivity tools that aren't beholden to Microsoft, Apple, or Google. That means email, calendar, spreadsheets, word processing, slide decks, video conferencing.
Imagine if every government and corporation in the eurozone stopped paying for Windows licenses and O365 subscriptions.
LibreOffice exists, of course, but it lacks an alternative to Outlook and Teams/Zoom. It would benefit from a benevolent corporate sponsor with deeper pockets than TDF which AFAIK is purely volunteer-driven.
EU is a colony of USA. If it would be necessary, US can simply force EU to buy US technology.
If you check the EU politics, they never do or say anything that can be interpreted negatively by US or damage US interests.
In 2025, EU and US signed an agreement that obliges EU to buy energy resources from US at ridiculously high prices, despite that EU is already struggling with the high price of energy.
In the tech sector, EU has been a colony of pretty much every other country which it used to colonize. IMO, the fines that the EU used to collect regularly from US big tech companies were bribes to keep suppressing the EU tech sector.
What was the last successful French software project in the Telecom or Conferencing space?
This project has been forced into the hands of 40k users, but likely due to a plethora of bugs and user experience issues they are picking a date far in the future for broad deployment.
Belledonne Communications has been actively breaking Linphone, conference calling broke back in August 2023 for example and remains broken to this day.
If we look to Québécoise in Canada, SFLPhone would crash after 2 dozen calls, and Jami (formerly GNU Ring) is still a beta quality product with some neat DHT concepts that I'd love to see work.
The French sphere has a software delivery and quality problem. The user rejection factor will remain high until they choose to fix the bugs that cause users to run away.
Idk, VLC is kinda everywhere and while not the super cutting edge of video playing anymore, is still pretty OK. If they'd just attach a chat and SIP client to VLC they'd be set.
I don't know what's the ETA on VLC 4 but it's been entirely usable for me for the past year, and it's pretty cutting edge (internally). Hopefully it's not too long before we'll see beta releases.
And you seriously are saying Teams is the greatest thing since sliced bread? Ok I concede the videoconferencing works, but it's quite a feat to make a text chat window so slow and buggy. Sometimes when I type, it is spelling stuff backwards!
Message texting is a solved problem since IRC or ICQ
This is probably a good day to take time away from social media. Doom scrolling won’t do anything
Instead there’s DHS funding going through Congress which could give Congress leverage to restrict ICE. To be clear ICE will still operate past the funding deadline. But Congress can create limits like mandating allowing states to investigate these crimes. Restrict who can carry firearms.
Write your senators and ask them to block DHS funding
As time goes on, the satire of Eddington becomes increasingly poignant. I'm amazed you could come up with an analogy like this in regards to holding accountable people granted lethal force in a democratic society.
They passed the DHS funding. The day ICE executes a man in broad daylight by blowing his brains out from point-blank, they get an extra $10,000,000,000 in funding.
It's a simple majority and Republicans have 53 votes without defects. Every single Republican voted for it in Congress, so clearly today changes nothing at all. And 7 democrats even voted alongside them.
How do you look at this video and conclude it’s the protestors fault?
What dystopia do you live in where a shoving match, resulting in someone getting restrained, should turn into execution of the restrained person in broad daylight?
I'm saying the administration is aiming to provoke violence from the citizenry so they can declare martial law, and that they were hoping to achieve their aim sooner. It is astonishing that no real violence has yet been inflicted upon an ICE thug, in Minneapolis or anywhere else. I never concluded that the protestor is at fault.
It used to be the big worry among climate activists that you'd never get every country organize and move in one direction. Like you'd need some global body to clean everything up.
That's very fragile.
Luckily, we're moving to a world where a disjoint, self-interested response can be an advantage. Countries decide, for their own selfish reasons, to adopt green energy. For energy independence, affordability, clean air, etc.
So when one country politically rotates out for dumb reasons, other countries pick up the slack and make a bit of progress.
There's also the case in Australia where, despite successive governments that were (likely monetarily* ) opposed to solar and wind, people power kinda took over to get the unexpectedly high penetration of home solar panel installations, going back beyond a decade, and currently home battery installations.
Both were due to government incentives, I'm not sure if both parties may have initiated parts of these incentives, but only one party significantly and constantly talked down solar and renewables (and still would, although they don't currently have the platform)
* I have to assume the reason is money (read: lobbying) for any political party to downplay Australia's potential to lead the world in solar power generation given our natural massive, otherwise mostly useless land mass and beyond plentiful sunshine. Also, Australia's dependence on petrol / oil from overseas should be treated as a national security issue. Australia does have plentiful coal reserves, however, which is where I believe the lobbyists (and therefore unimaginable amounts of money) come from.
> despite successive governments that were (likely monetarily* ) opposed to solar and wind,
What are you talking about?
> Both were due to government incentives,
How can the government be opposed to it, while also providing rebates to rooftop solar?
Anyway, it was all a big bait and switch manoeuvre, as the solar feed in tariff per kWh is only a fraction of what you pay, but it didn’t start out that way.
That continued existence of any incentive to add rooftop solar is dependent on continued electricity price hikes that out pace general inflation.
That’s how intelligent Australian voters are.
We have the world’s largest known uranium deposit, which we’re happy for others to use, but instead we voted for this shit.
Rooftop solar is a scam.
What it does is shifts the long term maintenance costs from the industrial sector, or government if you’re a socialist, to the owner of the roof owner, the residential / business customer. All the while leaving the affordability of the entire fiasco up to whichever bunch of wankers are in Canberra this week deciding the feed-in tariff.
Why would anyone think any of that is a good idea.
And I say that as someone who recently installed solar.
The (now twice dissolved) Coalition of the Liberal Party and the National Party
> How can the government be opposed to it, while also providing rebates to rooftop solar?
I'm pretty sure one government put the incentives in place, whilst another didn't roll them back, but also significantly talked down anything renewable, whilst pulling stunts like bringing a lump of coal into parliament. (from memory, not entirely sure of facts).
> Rooftop solar is a scam.
I beg to differ. I beg to differ even further when rooftop solar is coupled with a battery.
Where I may agree with you, is that solar should have been a much earlier priority for any Australian government due to Australia's abundance of space and sunshine and (confusingly, since we have so much coal) our globally quite high-priced electricity. A better strategy should have been in place for Australia's overall electrification.
I think rooftop solar is great because it's saved me a lot of money in electricity that would have otherwise been sourced from an expensive grid.
I think rooftop solar overall could be considered a scam because it advantages those who already have enough money to afford it and the ownership of their dwelling to be allowed to install it, and disadvantages those who are not in the overlap between those two venn diagrams.
Self Fact check: Australia is around the global average for electricity costs, not as expensive as I thought.
The subsidies given to private individuals and business for roof top solar would have been better off used to build grid scale solar. You get more solar per dollar spent.
Australia silent have around global average electricity costs, we should be a case study in providing the cheapest electricity, given we have the worlds largest known solar reserves (ha!), the worlds largest known deposit of uranium, and we export about the same volume of LNG as Qatar. And there’s the iron ore, the zinc, lead, aluminium, copper, gold.
Why settle for average.
No.
Every Australian citizen should receiver a cheque every quarter for their share of the revenue generated from the proper management of our natural resources.
More than 50% of cars sold in China now come with a plug, on top of the most of the buses and 2 wheelers. Most analysts say they have plateaued and will begin declining in the next few years. They also are beginning to ramp up EV exports to other developing economies.
Although it looks like bad news in the short term, China is building even more renewables than they are coal stations, with the result that the fraction of fossil power consumption in China is actually decreasing: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-coal-power-drops-in-chi...
I find, as a parent, when I talk about it at the high school level I get very negative reactions from other parents. Specifically I want high schoolers to be skilled in the use of AI, and particular critical thinking skills around the tools, while simultaneously having skills assuming no AI. I don’t want the school to be blindly “anti AI” as I’m aware it will be a part of the economy our kids are brought into.
There are some head in the sands, very emotional attitudes about this stuff. (And obviously idiotically uncritical pro AI stances, but I doubt educators risk having those stances)
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