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In Holland I see a lot of defeatist attitude. "US big tech is so entrenched we'll never get away". "European cloud will never be good enough". "There's nothing
by wolvoleo 10mo ago
In Holland I see a lot of defeatist attitude. "US big tech is so entrenched we'll never get away". "European cloud will never be good enough". "There's nothing like Microsoft 365". At my work they don't even want to think about alternatives.
I think they hope that MAGA will just blow over somehow. I don't see that happening.
- lateforwork 10mo agoEven if MAGA goes away in 3 years when Trump (hopefully) goes away, the US will remain an oligarchy. Billionaire's interests comes before citizens' interests. This is because of a supreme court decision that allowed billionaires to buy elections. For this reason, even though I am American, I'd like to see European alternatives to US apps and services, because they are more likely to serve my interests.
- okanat 10mo agoThe big picture isn't that different in Europe. Most EU countries are also oligarchies, just with a lot more bloody histories and national traumas. The social safety net is kept to the level of remembrance of those traumas. Once people start forgetting them, the oligarchs will take away the rights one by one. The response to US betrayal is weak because our oligarchs own lots and lots of investments in the US. Our banks invest in US treasuries and especially in the US real estate market. They then leverage those US investments against normal people in the EU and consolidate more and more power (and assets) and blame normal people for not having investments or not working enough. They are the ones who take away EU GDP and park it in US investment tools. Forming businesses is more risky in many EU countries due to extremely conservative policies of those same banks who prefer US investments instead.
- mmooss 10mo agoI think that's overwhelmingly false. Wealth concentration isn't nearly as high in Europe.
- bethekidyouwant 10mo agoWealth concentration doesn’t make his point false at all
- Hikikomori 10mo agoIt likely isn't over with him. Trump is just the frontman and possibly fall guy for project 2025/federalist society. They are his entire cabinet and their plan was to replace all government workers with their own loyal people.
- Archelaos 10mo agoThe problem are not Trump or the billionaires, but the majority of the American people who support them. They knew what they were getting.
- lateforwork 10mo agoNo they didn't know what they were getting. They didn't and can't look beyond the price of eggs at their local Kroger. To a large extend this election was decided by the price of eggs.
- mrtesthah 10mo agoA permanent cult-following minority does want a white christian nationalist dictatorship. Everyone else are low information voters. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/01/trump-roles-supporters-categories/685706/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/01/trump-roles-sup...
- trhway 10mo ago"The price of eggs" was direct result of the screwed response to the pandemics, all that panicked senseless running around like beheaded chickens and the total dismissal of reality. Populists come to power when the ruling elites bankrupt by corruption and ineptitude the trust that the populace had had in them.
- terminalshort 10mo agoThis is a tired old trope that really has no basis in reality. There have been no large scale policy changes favoring billionaires since the campaign finance laws changed. In two out of the last 3 elections, the major corporate money backed candidate lost. The government is run by the 24 hour news cycle and the attention economy, not by the decree of billionaires. We operate firmly under the tyranny of the majority.
- lateforwork 10mo ago> the major corporate money backed candidate lost Elon Musk spent $290 million to elect Trump. Are you saying that had no impact? How do you know this?
- terminalshort 10mo agoBoth sides have their supporters. Everyone knows that. I'm not going to take your bait to prove a negative. In both 2016 and 2024 Trump raised less money than his opponent (massively less in 2016) and still won.
- lateforwork 10mo agoThat was a different election.
- irishcoffee 10mo agoTrump raised and spent less money in 2024. Full stop.
- lateforwork 10mo agoRight, he didn't have as many people giving $10 to $25 instead he had a few billionaires ploughing millions into superpacks.
- 10mo ago
- Spivak 10mo agoGenuinely, what's the sell of Microsoft 365? I get MS Word, Excel whatever lock in but what is their cloud actually adding that can't be substituted? Email, chat, video calling, and file storage? All products that have plenty of competitors. We went with 365 only because it was dirt cheap. I would think weening off Windows and the AD "Entra" stack would be a lot harder than commodity office software but at least they can self host that.
- Yoric 10mo agoAnd frankly, MS Word is really bad. So are pretty much of all their services. Not sure whether Excel is still good.
- hmry 10mo agoBeing good is one thing, being compatible with existing files full of VBA macros is another. Although MS themselves apparently don't realize that, considering how they push the web version which doesn't support them?
- Telaneo 10mo agoExcel is really good for the wizards and for that one spreadsheet full of macros written by a wizard, which thus can't be ported over to Libreoffice or anything else. Many of those probably should Just™ be made into actual databases, but Excel is a lot more approachable than those, so you end up with giant spreadsheets instead. For everybody else, Libreoffice is fine as far as functionality is concerned. UI might be another story, but that's worth getting over anyway, especially since a lot of people for whom this is a problem, would also have problems with getting away from Windows as a whole, just from buttons moving and things being different in general.
- tchalla 10mo agoEveryone has been going gung ho about Canadian PM speech but the banger one for me personally is the Belgian PM. He said it best “Being a happy vassal state is one thing, being a miserable slave is another”. Europe deserves every bit what’s coming to them.
- OKRainbowKid 10mo agoCan you elaborate how this statement led you to your conclusion?
- tchalla 10mo agoI don’t understand your question. I’m assuming you are asking about the part “Europe deserves”. It’s simple really - for decades now Europe has been relying on US for military support. It’s a cardinal sin to do so if one wants an equivalent seat at the negotiating table. But the EU just can’t agree amongst themselves. Mercosur takes 30 years, India defence agreement has taken 20. The warning signs were there during 2016 but conveniently brushed. EU either acts together for the common good even if they don’t like something or continues to be bureaucratic, irrelevant old person. It’s slow agony at the moment.
- rtsil 10mo agoThe EU couldn't agree amongst themselves because the US (and its biggest vassal, the UK when it was in the EU) did everything to prevent such agreement. We'll see what the States that were the most against any form of common European defense will do now that the US has proven unreliable. And if they are still under the delusion that the current US policies will go away, then it's time for Two-Speed Europe.
- terminalshort 10mo agoDon't blame this on the UK. UK leave vote was a few months before the 2016 election, so the timing is convenient. But let's not pretend that it was anything but complacency (that was shattered by Trump) is to blame here.
- Telaneo 10mo agoI'd imagine this attitude would start to disappear as soon as alternatives start being used. It's already happening to some extent, but it needs to trickle down into the general populace. The relevant names just aren't in people's minds yet (although there definitely are areas where there aren't exact 1-to-1 replacements available).
- ummonk 10mo agoIt’s amazing how complacent and weak-willed the European populace and political leaders are. Quite the contrast to Canada.
- trinsic2 10mo agoWhat the hell are you talking about? Canada is in a pretty bad state themselves, just as much as we are in the U.S.
- SpicyLemonZest 10mo agoI think you're misreading the source of the defeatism. It's clear what European leaders should do if they want to compete with US big tech. They should sit down with corporate leaders at Spotify, Ericsson, ASML, etc. and talk though what reforms are necessary for Europe to start minting unicorns as rapidly as the Americans can. But European leaders haven't been willing to do this, perceiving (I think correctly) that European citizens won't tolerate the idea of asking rich CEOs for regulatory advice or making the creation of billionaires a policy goal. So instead they focus on the kind of pointless efforts described in the source article, where government agencies endlessly chase their tails on standards and objectives. To the eternal frustration of governments and advocates around the world, there's no argument for why you should use domestic products that can adequately substitute for high-quality domestic products people want to use.
- api 10mo agoThe answer is simple: simplify and streamline all the bureaucracy. Complexity is a regressive tax. It disproportionately penalizes small ventures and entrepreneurs who don’t have whole departments of people to deal with it. The effect is to prevent the formation of new companies. Large incumbents are able to deal with it, so it actually protects them.
- f30e3dfed1c9 10mo ago"The answer is simple: simplify and streamline all the bureaucracy." Well, that sounds easy! I wonder why no one else ever thought of it. Good thing there are geniuses like you around.
- api 10mo agoPeople think of it all the time. But there’s a giant system full of people whose careers and incomes are linked to the complexity, not just government bureaucrats but also lawyers, accounting firms, expensive consultancies, etc. It’s a hard sell because it would decimate whole industries that revolving around servicing the complexity. But it’s one of the thing the EU could do to win in new industries. Honestly if the EU became more innovation and entrepreneur friendly I think they’d kick America’s ass. Tons of smart people, and the positive side of the social safely net is that it derisks entrepreneurship. America is full of would be founders who can’t afford to take the leap since they could lose their health care, etc.
- gerdesj 10mo ago"In Holland I see a lot of defeatist attitude." I gather that the Dutch government sponsor OpenVPN development and frankly I've generally viewed the Netherlands as a whole as being rather independently minded. You might recall that a few Dutch frigates managed to sail up an English river (the Medway) in Kent and cause havoc back in the day. However we all speak a Germanic language of one sort or another! I remember "Evoluon" in Eindhoven. I lived in West Germany in the '70s and '80s and Eindhoven was a fairly short drive away. That thing was absolutely amazing. I graduated as a Civil Engineer in '91 so I have an idea about how impressive the flying saucer on stilts was as a structure. I'm a Brit and I find myself writing a love letter to the Neths! Anyway, the MS365 thing is entrenched all over. I'm the managing director of my own company and I found myself migrating my email system to M365 from Exchange on prem and years ago from GroupWise. However, our MX records are on site and I still rock Exim and rspamd. If MS goes down I still have our inbound email in the queue and can read them. Our uptime is way better than MS's. I also have a Dovecot IMAPD for mailboxes that should stay local.
- wolvoleo 10mo ago> I gather that the Dutch government sponsor OpenVPN development and frankly I've generally viewed the Netherlands as a whole as being rather independently minded. You might recall that a few Dutch frigates managed to sail up an English river (the Medway) in Kent and cause havoc back in the day. However we all speak a Germanic language of one sort or another! The Dutch tax office is currently busy migrating to M365. They had their own functioning solution up until now. Geopolitically this is the worst time to create dependencies. And yeah the evoluon is cool but that was in a completely different age. All the innovation was shipped to China in the 2000s. Philips that made the evoluon was stripped and sold for parts, the only successful part remaining is ASML but that's a unicorn. Holland these days is governed by the neoliberals and has been for 30 years, and they want to turn the country into another America. It's the most neoliberal country left in the EU since the UK left.
- PontifexMinimus 10mo ago> In Holland I see a lot of defeatist attitude The naysayer defeatist attitude is also very strong in the UK.
- qmmmur 10mo agoI would hedge most businesses don’t need the full offering of 365. You could get away with an email provider, a way to author documents and some file storage which are abundantly offered on other platforms like infomaniak.
- tjwebbnorfolk 10mo agoThey might not need it if they started today. But once you have a few hundred TBs of data in Sharepoint, you've foreclosed any alternatives.
- petre 10mo agoJust wait until he asks for total control of Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten.
- bell-cot 10mo agoBack when the danger was natural and physical - how much defeatism was there in Holland about building the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works ? Why the difference?
- wolvoleo 10mo agoThose were different times. Right now Holland has been governed by oligarchs for the last 30 years. The country is unrecognisable. Also, making something like that would be unthinkable in this day and age of safety and environmental red tape. The same way we have not reclaimed any land in like forever. In fact some of it has been sunk again under pressure from the belgians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertogin_Hedwigepolder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertogin_Hedwigepolder