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>> Casper Klynge, a former Danish and European Union diplomat who worked for Microsoft, said the episode was in many ways the “smoking gun that many Europeans h
by bigtones 1y ago
>> Casper Klynge, a former Danish and European Union diplomat who worked for Microsoft, said the episode was in many ways the “smoking gun that many Europeans had been looking for.”
Damn right. Strong evidence that Europe should look after their own, and not rely on the good old US of A. Written by an Australian who thinks we should do the same down here.
- conradev 1y agoThey’re working on it! And they’re making it open source :) Our goal is to offer a privacy-focused, vendor-neutral alternative to platforms like Microsoft Exchange. https://stalw.art/blog/nlnet-grant-collaboration/ https://stalw.art/blog/nlnet-grant-collaboration/
- spwa4 1y agoGreat, but look at this. This is a joke. Let's see ... the EU funded Microsoft to the tune of 234.26 billion USD per year, and have been funding it for 50 years (starting at 0 of course). How much software does the EU expect to get for "between 5000 and 50000 euro"? (one-time). A software engineer in Bangalore can expect to make more than that, even after tax! The EU got INCREDIBLY lucky after Microsoft's rise. Linux gained marketshare. Linus Torvalds and a team. So you could probably get away by paying 100x less to Linux and really make things happen. Did they do anything? Support it, say with half the money they paid to Microsoft? No. Anything at all? Perhaps, but not worth mentioning. Yes. They immediately tried to push extra expenditures on Linux. To solidify the position of Microsoft. Tried to declare Linux illegal due to supporting copyright infringement/piracy. They tried to force "software warranty". Tried to make software without accessibility features illegal. Oh wait! Linus Torvalds got paid! But ... by a US company. Plenty of companies tried to push Linux. All but one are US companies (the only real one that tried, SUSE Linux, was not just not supported, it was bought out by a US company after effectively going bankrupt). So now we're here: if the US wanted to force Linux to implement sanctions against the ICC, they are in a much better position to do it than the EU is to stop them. No US or US ally is allowed to furnish the ICC with a Linux distro ... so who would do it? The EU doesn't control THEIR OWN BANKING SYSTEMS! This is a repeating problem in the EU, not just for software. They utterly, absolutely, completely refuse to pay for any software at all, and as a result the EU economy pays more by literally a factor of millions. Then they refuse to see this as a problem ... and effectively US companies levy a tax on EU business, for decades. Where's the problem with that? And this is actually an underestimation of the problem. The Microsoft ecosystem isn't just the software. It's the network, it's the applications by other firms. It's even the CPUs. SAP, Oracle, Adobe, Intel, AMD ... spending should be added to to the total. As should the spending on computers. Fucking Taiwan is in a better position than the EU when it comes to software independence. And the EU "is working on replacing them" by spending less than ONE software engineer makes in Bangalore? Sorry, no. They aren't. This just means the EU doesn't care about software independence, and doesn't even care that the US taxes all software and hardware in the EU. Also they don't have a chance in hell to change it at this point. It would have been extremely cheap to do it 20 years ago, but now it'll cost tens of billions at minimum. The ICC will be working without email, the EU can't change that and it's 100% the EU's fault. Hell, EU politicians have chosen to pay hundreds of billions EACH YEAR for the privilege of having the US control EU computer usage!
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoThis, 100X this. The EU wants to have the shiny SW toys the US has spent decades and trillions building, but without forking up the money needed to develop them. They want everything done on cheap labor. Paying rank and file engineers shit tonne of money is not part of European business owner culture (barring few exceptions). You're expected to be grateful you've been given a job. Expecting to make several times the national average gets you ousted as an evil greedy capitalist pig that wants to gentrify society, even though EU is full of stealthy elite royals and billionaires who own most of the continent's wealth, cosplaying as average people. So as long as you have a financial/tax system and a social contract that vilifies those seeking enrichment and upwards mobility through work and innovation, you're not gonna get FAANG competitors sprouting up thin air. China could do it and become independent of US tech and they started off financially way worse than the EU. So the EU's tech failure is 100% self inflicted from policy short sightedness and mismanagement, by catering policies to the well off boomers and retirees, instead of the youth. Stop taxing income, and start taxing inherited wealth more and you might see a change, just get off your asses politicians and actually do something, less talking and more doing. Otherwise keep buying American software running on Chinese hardware, while you hold grandiose speeches of tech independence. There are reason why Linus Torvalds, Bjarne Stroustrup, Guido van Rossum, Anders Hejlsberg packed their toys and moved to the US to work for big-tech, instead of enjoying the amazing quality of life back home in Europe. Maybe the EU should talk to them and put them in charge of EU tech leadership, instead of the clueless unelected career bureaucrats like Von der Leyen and their lobbyists who's biggest success is selling the most diesel engines.
- whatshisface 1y agoA $200B grant would be globally unprecedented. The LHC only cost $5B. European countries are market economies, moving more in that direction, and would like a local competitor.
- spwa4 1y agoLHC is funded by more than just the EU. A 10 million per year grant starting in 2000 would easily have done it. That it's such an amount is entirely, 100%, the EU's own fault. Taking linux and developing it, plus an office suite for it could easily be done for 100x less.
- HenryBemis 1y agoUS has never been "good". Listening to Sachs and Measrheimer they keep saying (in these or other words) that "you know a US president is lying because their mouth is moving". Microsoft is just one more cog in the power-hungry apparatus of the US. And of course they cannot be trusted. (Same applies for Google, Apple and any other entity in the US that can be served with a gag order and a subpoena. The masks sometimes drop and we see the true face of who is what. And when Microsoft pulls a fast one like that it shows us the real face/where the loyalty is (and it is never to the client).
- ITDoofuses 1y ago[flagged]
- Aliabid94 1y agoThe US continues to burn its soft power capital to defend Israel - this guy was only targeted because of his investigations on Israeli war crimes.
- revnode 1y ago[flagged]
- jeremyjh 1y agoThat sounds...appropriate? I would have no issues with every living former US President being accountable for their crimes, and I expect they would all be convicted.
- SllX 1y agoIt’s not appropriate for an international court that we’re not even a part of to put our Presidents and their subordinates on trial, nor is it something we should meekly concede to.
- jeremyjh 1y agoWas Germany a part of any such treaty? Or was it inappropriate for those Nazis to be held accountable for their crimes?
- Veen 1y agoThe Hague Conventions and the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Although, in reality, it was a matter of the winners deciding on a suitable punishment for the losers. They did, however, go to considerable lengths to find legal justification in international law for the prosecutions and punishments of Nazi leaders. They could have just shot them: Churchill and Stalin both supported summary execution, although Churchill later changed his mind.
- SllX 1y agoGermany also lost the war. Their highest ranking officials and military were not in a position to prevent it; moreover I’m pretty okay with having applied the winner’s justice over Nazi Germany. Put us in the position where we can’t say “no” before you apply your own justice, but we’re still going to do everything in our power to defend ourselves.
- dybber 1y agoDanish digitization ministry will soon attempt a move away from Microsoft because of this. We can only hope that this is only the first step, and that broader move away from US tech companies will follow. https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/13/danish_department_dump_microsoft/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/13/danish_department_dum...
- StefanBatory 1y ago[flagged]
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoWhen did the US make that threat?
- jey 1y agoGreenland is an “autonomous territory” of Denmark
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago1) That's avoiding to answer my question. 2) And it's still false.
- borosuxks 1y agoTrump, not the US, did
- StefanBatory 1y agoAnd Trump is President of the US..
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoThat's still for rage-bait. Trump says a lot of things, most of them aren't true. Everyone operating in good faith, knew this wasn't true. Nobody above a room temperature IQ would think the US would invade Denmark. Edit: @danieljacksonno answering your comment from below here: >He repeated it several times. Trump repeats everything all the time. So what? That's what all politicians do. Your brain (if you have one) is supposed to filter that. >Germany and France has spoken out officially against it, with Macron even visiting Greenland to show support. That's you typical politician virtue signaling, because speaking is free. Since EU politicians are toothless all they do is talk to look good and score brownie points in front of their voters on $CURRENT_ISSUE. France and Germany can't keep their countries safe from illegal migrants, what are they gonna do against Trump if push comes to shove? Talk him to death about how orange he is? >Denmark is freaking out, and want to remove all dependencies on the US as quickly as possible. Are they also removing the F35 jets from their military and H100 Nvidia GPUs from their supercomputer? Who's gonna buy all that Ozempic that makes Denmark rich if not the US? I feel like you're talking fantasy politick instead of realpolitik.
- mikewarot 1y agoI see it as strong evidence we should all run our own servers. Internet Access instead of internet connectivity needs to end. It is possible using IPv6 to make end to end connections without having to do weird hole punching through NAT, etc.
- boredatoms 1y agoEach house with its own ASN
- cnames 1y agoI’m in the U.S. and don’t want to rely on this stuff either, but I don’t know that I’d really trust any sufficiently complex software. Anything can be compromised. Even if you build from source, your compiler might be compromised, or you buy a cool new usb peripheral and plug it in- boom! Compromised. Bought a new device? Compromised already. That printer you bought years ago? Compromised and in your secure wireless network. Your sniffer and firewall? Compromised. Firefox? Compromised. Tor? Compromised. Wikileaks? Compromised. Your dishwasher? Compromised. You drive out in the woods without any devices and live in a tent. Hiker comes along and takes photos. You and tent are compromised. Walking out in the middle of nowhere naked hiding under a bush my ass.
- GTP 1y agoOf course you can't protect yourself from everything. But you can still pick a reasonable threat model and act accordingly.
- fsflover 1y ago> Anything can be compromised. This sounds like security nihilism: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27897975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27897975 > Even if you build from source, your compiler might be compromised This problem can be solved by the bootstrappable builds: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41368835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41368835 > or you buy a cool new usb peripheral and plug it in- boom! Compromised. This is why Qubes OS has been developed (my daily driver). It isolated the usb devices into a separate VM. > Your sniffer and firewall? Compromised. Try security through compartmentalization: Qubes OS. Last time a VM escape in the modern Qubes implementation was discovered in 2006 by the Qubes founder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Pill_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Pill_(software)
- xvilka 1y agoSame about GitHub, it's better to push for federated or truly decentralized system instead, like in Forgejo's roadmap [1]. This way everyone can benefit instead of ceding control to a sole organization wherever it might be. [1] https://codeberg.org/forgejo-contrib/federation/src/branch/main/FederationRoadmap.md https://codeberg.org/forgejo-contrib/federation/src/branch/m...
- pfdietz 1y agoThe US could save an enormous amount of money if the US military were sized to defend the US and only the US.
- mbac32768 1y agoI can see the Microsoft board room meeting now. A: The Europeans grow restless that we are suspending email accounts of Trump's political enemies. B: What are they going to do, host their own email servers? [maniacal cackling]
- MPSFounder 1y agoEurope is very pro-Israel. You act as if you have been champions of human rights and a subjugated people like the Palestinians. As far as I know, Ireland is the only exception. Israel could have executed Greta on camera and the Swedish embassy would have sent a strong worded letter. Europe has no power whatsoever in any of this
- ptero 1y agoPlease do. Some real competition would be good for all sides!
- belter 1y agoWhy stop there? You have a call, its a Rafale: https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/no-us-in-nato-thats-ok-rafale-calling-says-emmanuel-macron-on-x-8718116 https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/no-us-in-nato-thats-ok-rafal...
- koakuma-chan 1y agoNo AI features in Rafale?
- oldpersonintx2 1y ago[dead]
- aaron695 1y ago[flagged]
- bigyabai 1y agoThe parent comment never mentioned any of that. You're chewing them out for living somewhere you disagree with. And unless that parent poster's name is Rupert Murdoch, I guarantee you they cannot do anything to change these issues for you. Where do you live? Since you're so confident in the righteousness of your politics.
- tuwtuwtuwtuw 1y agoThe guy you replied to are anti-academia, anti-ICC, defends Trump and mostly uses Twitter posts as source for his claims. I don't think his location is so relevant.
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]