How do Americans feel about these regionalistic sentiment based posts here on hacker news?. Trump kind helped accelerate this trend but is this generally good for the collective west?
> How do Americans feel about these regionalistic sentiment based posts here on hacker news?
Mutt here. It’s annoying how feckless the European pushback is. Half of these alternatives either run significant rails through America or are insignificantly small. Meanwhile, our ambassador to Greece is busy selling her sugar daddy’s natural gas to Albania and Bulgaria [1]. (Nobody is even pretending the folks buying her corruption will be prosecuted. Athens held up Russian sanctions to get one of their tycoons a carve-out.)
I wish the guy motivating this didn't exist, but I would love for Europe to develop genuinely competitive software products. I don't think it's good even for us Americans that so much software is developed by an American monoculture; we benefit greatly from the existence of Ikea and Toyota.
It's a shame you guys can't benefit from Chinese auto competition. Here in the Philippines there are great choices from BYD, Geely, Chery, GWM, MG, and probably more I'm forgetting. Even the big legacy brands here have had to lower prices to compete.
It is a shame, although I would emphasize that confused thinking on this is not a US-exclusive problem. The EU recently negotiated a trade deal to cut Chinese car sales by 50%.
Huh. I haven't seen that to be the case. But I suppose you can put whatever you like in arrow brackets and it might execute in some people's brains like it does in the browser.
Those watching can see that the oligarchs, the economic platform, and the propaganda delivery system are in position to groom the selected voter base for the long term.
The opposition to this open corruption and mayhem (gerrymandering, voter bribery) is only leading nationally by ... 8 points.
Sure got more visible the recent years but the "trend" isn't new.
When sensitive data was a topic even 15 years ago we built European only solutions because America and it's barely existing privacy laws were not to trust. (Built software for government, universities and other companies back then)
From my POV this has nothing to do with orange guy but it's an ongoing trend of benefiting from our customer and data protection laws.
Google's, Apple's, and Microsoft's profit first attitude has garnered the same resentment in Europe that they enjoy in the US. There's nothing surprising here. What will be surprising is if the push to move away works in Europe, where it hasn't worked in the US, so far.
I think you're attributing Big Tech's bad behavior to politicians where you should be attributing politicians' bad behavior to Big Tech's lobbying.
That doesn't make sense. If the "profit-first" attitude of the company problem, why is booking.com, with it's non-existent fraud-prevention and useless support, recommended as an alternative to Airbnb?
Because it's assumed that booking.com isn't hosted in the US where privacy and data protection laws are looser. Does that make sense?
You can also read the website. It lists reasons why people should move. No mention of Donald Trump.
That makes perfect sense. Half of Europeans vote right, just like Americans. There's no need for injecting super villains and otherism into the conversation.
This is how I feel about it as an American. More options and competition is always good, but fighting protectionism by becoming protectionist and insular yourself is IMO the wrong choice.
It's pretty dumb! I want the best software and the best hardware, no matter where it's made. Outside of extremely niche situations (e.g. military hardware) international trade is a positive good for all those involved. If you sleep on mattress from China, wear clothes from Vietnam, drink coffee from Ethiopia, eat food from Mexico, and use software from the United States, everyone involved in all of those countries wins: you win because you get the best product, and the companies win because they are financially rewarded for making the best product -- not for their postal address. C'mon people, this is basic economics.
We all wanted that! But than we feared that the USA will just cut our payment systems, government emails and basically every online service we have as it tries to take over Greenland.
I don't feel anything yet because these efforts rarely go anywhere. The average person makes decisions on a multitude of factors but price, availability and convenience are the most important.
However, if this ever got big enough to hurt America's economy in a measurable way, the press would be all over it and Americans would retaliate. Considering how our trade is structured, Europe would experience a lot more pain.
In other words, I think it's cool that you raise visibility to your products. I think you should do it. But you'll lose more than we will if this gets too serious at America's expense.
Optimally we should all develop specialities and maintain a local reserve in most key industries. But all out of war isn't in our interest.
The only thing that would achieve is that the rest of the world would decouple even faster from the USA. Incidentally, there are also a lot of things that the USA does not have backups for and this whole isolationism mindset always ends up with the rude awakening that no single party is larger than the rest of the world.
The US is choosing to leverage its position without much concern for those consequences right now. The rest of the world is busy routing around that, and the leverage is slowly reducing.
It will take time: the US was a key member of the world economy. But there’s frequent new reminders of why it’s necessary.
It would seem to me that you are willfully or accidentally commenting in a thread without awareness of the context. You retaliate because you think you have been wronged. If you believe the US is being wronged by Europe aiming to decouple from US tech because it is seen as a threat then I really wonder what playbook you are using.
Neither. You are assuming we haven't been wronged by Europe. I assume you're European. I understand why you feel what you feel, but many people here also feel we've been abused for decades.
I'm not saying you have abused us, but maybe you should try to understand the perspectives that brought us to the current situation. Americans have complaints too.
I won't respond further messages on this thread because I think we should stop fighting. Maybe we aren't brothers but we are cousins. The real threats are elsewhere.
> I understand why you feel what you feel, but many people here also feel we've been abused for decades.
That's on them. If people allow themselves to be misled that is not something that other countries should take into account when determining their foreign policy. If there is an abuser here then it is perfectly clear where that abuser is located.
> I'm not saying you have abused us, but maybe you should try to understand the perspectives that brought us to the current situation. Americans have complaints too.
And that's fine. But then you should do something about the root cause of those complaints and if and when you do you will find that maybe Europe and the bulk of the population of the USA have a lot in common.
> I won't respond further messages on this thread because I think we should stop fighting.
You are the one promoting that attitude with your original comment.
> but many people here also feel we've been abused for decades
These delusional beliefs have already lead to aggression and animosity towards the EU and the rest of the world, which is why this is happening in the first place.
What should the EU do? The current US administration is destroying every partnership you've built, giving up all of its soft power, it's single-handedly driving the world off a proverbial cliff with the war in Iran which will lead to yet another once-in-a-generation economic crisis and a new wave of totally preventable human suffering.
And for what? To persecute a mythical enemy of the Great American Prosperity? To divert attention away from domestic economic failures, unbelievable wealth disparity, from the fact the your country is ran by sadistic pedophiles? To intentionally weaken the rest of the world? To perpetuate a genocide?
The only sensible thing for the EU to do is to get off the damn ride. There's nothing we can do, short of becoming a vassal state of the US, that would appease the current US administration.
Framing this as an attack on the US is just typical DARVO tactics (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) and it's exactly why the EU needs to get away.
Starting WHAT. Seriously, is there something in the water?
The US has gone out of its way to prove that it is an unreliable partner. To Europe, to Canada, to its allies all over the world. It is obvious that that would result in re-evaluation of the relationship. You can't just upend 80 years of building up a relationship and expect that it will be without consequences. Just like your spouse would have a right to re-evaluate their relationship with you if you punched them in the face to remind them that 'you hold all the cards'.
If you believe that the EU is 'starting it' you are exemplifying the mentality that lead us to where we are today: that might makes right and that if you're abused you should just take it and that even an attempt to leave is considered betrayal.
I don't think a good idea to limit yourself to solutions only from your geographical area, but it's also a very ingrained " not from my tribe" human sentiment. It's hard to fight it.
Are you proposing forks of existing languages but in gitlab, and only european can approve PRs? Or a new language and OS? How does that work in practice when open source is public and users can have VPNs?
Any open source software should be considered "international" and there are a lot of European contributions to that universe.
The topic of "European" programming languages is highly interesting in the sense that there were a lot of highly developments done in Europe, but they are often less noticed than the counterparts popular in the US. The reason to look more into them would not be so much today's independence, but more to resurrect good concepts that kind of got ignored by history.
There is the ISLisp standard, of course the treasure chest of languages and works boy Nikolas Wirth and so much more. Europe has many great universities, their creations usually are free.
Of course, you could call Python an European language and Go heavily draws from the Wirth's language family.
The big difference between ISO languages, which were more relevant during cold war days and the modern open source approach is who gets to contribute the code and where are those repos hosted.
Khronos and RISC-V now have locations outside US for a reason.
Would you like to elaborate, if you disagree with my statement? Of course it was very shortened, because the point of my post was an entirely different one.
If you want a longer version: open source software under the normal licenses give you irrevocable rights to use it, as it is open source, you can also administrate it. You have full control over it. That was the core of my statement. Additionally, European authors are major contributors to many of this software. So in what exactly do you disagree with me?
I like the UI simplicity of posteo. They still have quite some advanced features like encrypted address books and more, with good documentation on the implications. No regrets so far, using it since beginning of the year or so.
Proton not supporting third party apps and requiring minimum Android 10 to launch their app can keep their app for themselves, clearly they don't want more users.
Snickers for example shows first "Alprose" which I never heard, it's a small company that's not even common IN Switzerland. It lists Julius mainl which if it does chocolate its far from their actual business. And half of the other companies also seem regional niche stuff.
I can not comment on the vibe coded issue or not, but the name
Alprose is not really a surprising name at all.
Alps are "Die Alpen" in german, and rose is rose too. So, a rose
or a flower in a mountaineous area. It kind of fits to Switzerland.
Renaming operations are often strange: for instance, the name
Raider before it then became Twix. I always found the renaming
part peculiar; guess Twix is easier to market than Raider but
both names are strange to begin with.
I could also swear that Raider tasted better than Twix, but this
could be to my aging cells no longer being as performant as they
once were. Or they changed the recipe to the worse.
Having said that, I guess that website was AI slop generated, so no wonder it has low quality. I try to avoid AI in general, in particular the low quality slops; sadly youtube is being infected with it, I can no longer watch shorts - so many are just AI spam nowadays.
I didn't mean the name is strange, it's just a strange example to show up first as it's a very niche company you won't easily find to buy anywhere in Europe.
My parents also swear raider was the better product. Not sure if I ever tried one.
I wish the EU would promote English as a pan-European lingua franca. Sort of how it is used in India.
Having a common (second) language is a first step towards understanding each other's culture better. And that in turn facilitates a federal EU. It can't be done overnight, but it is a goal I wish we would pursue more actively.
Esperanto has been dead for decades. English is the world's lingua franca in trade, science and technology.
The idea that a language, any language, can be learned in a year or two is not consistent with observation. Just think of any immigrant you have ever ran into in real life.
These days the latest trend is to vibe code Adobe and MS alternatives from scratch and they are pretty good, Europe has a golden chance of dropping US software vendors.
Apparently EU bureaucrats think that the MS office alternatives are shitty[0], well they can just tell an AI agent whats shitty and get it fixed.
"Element Pro" is not Open Source. Nor does it even come from the EU. From the outside it's incomprehensible anyone in EU bureaucracy would want something like this, given that there are good OS alternatives.
Anything is an alternative to anything else if you think about it. Want a Chinese smartphone? Have you considered eating a delicious European made chocolate bar instead?
At least that's the vibe I'm getting from this site.
I guess both produce two-wheeled one-person mobility devices? There is some overlap in utility, but the audience doubting between a petro motorcycle and an electric scooter would be vanishingly thin, I think.
European alternatives - mostly shit produced in China with different badge when it comes to physical stuff. The rest is digital services with userbase smaller than the dev team. It is actually good demonstration how pathetic our production capacity has become. And the industries where we actually punch quite well - Henkel, VSM, Tyrolit are missing.
And lets not with Coca Cola alternatives. It is the funniest joke of the year so far.
Coca Cola is kind of a solved problem since LabCoatz made a good reverse engineered version. If the company decides to leave Europe any of their former bottlers can start making it under a different name, and it's not breaking any American laws because the formula was never patented.
it is kinda not of a solved problem. That is from a person that right now has probably 10 different flavoring cola combinations aging in bottles. You can get an awesome drinks. That are first cousins or fraternal twins. But not identical twins.
Btw - making your own drinks is really great value - it makes you appreciate the margins on soft drinks. 1lt is probably 10c or so with carbonation included.
That's actually where competition is easy enough that it produces something worthwhile. Afri Cola and Fritz Cola aren't bad at all (even if their market share is only a footnote to Coke and Pepsi).
That is not how it works with beverages. They are just not substitutes for your favorite carbonated style drink. Once you are hooked on a subset of them - favorite cola, tonic, bitter lemon - the others will always taste a bit off. I moved from Dr. Pepper to cherry cola is not sentence often heard. Or vice versa.
I wish lists like this were curated more carefully. Just because a company is European doesn't automatically make it better. For example, Gigaset is listed as one of the alternatives to the iPhone. They distributed malware to end users via their official update servers and then failed to inform them about it. Something like this should be an absolute no go for a smartphone manufacturer unless it's properly addressed.
Furthermore for Visual Studio Code it lists only IntelliJ IDEA as an alternative. There are also alternatives such as VSCodium, Neovim, or Emacs. In some cases, the alternative to an American company should not be a European company, but rather free software.
> There are also alternatives such as VSCodium, Neovim, or Emacs. In some cases, the alternative to an American company should not be a European company, but rather free software.
I agree in theory but VSCodium wouldn't be a thing without Microsoft continuing development of VS Code so you're dependent on American software nonetheless. If the goal is true sovereignty then VSCodium isn't it unless it becomes a truly independent fork aka when LibreOffice forked OpenOffice.
Agree. As an european I would go so far to say that a lot of european alternatives are not better at all. Some form of quality/trust indicator would be helpful though. No company that is distributing malware to its customers should be on any recommendation list.
thinker34 | 13 hours ago
JumpCrisscross | 13 hours ago
Mutt here. It’s annoying how feckless the European pushback is. Half of these alternatives either run significant rails through America or are insignificantly small. Meanwhile, our ambassador to Greece is busy selling her sugar daddy’s natural gas to Albania and Bulgaria [1]. (Nobody is even pretending the folks buying her corruption will be prosecuted. Athens held up Russian sanctions to get one of their tycoons a carve-out.)
[1] https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/at-davos-kimberly-guilfo...
gvfsa | 13 hours ago
SpicyLemonZest | 13 hours ago
zhivota | 12 hours ago
SpicyLemonZest | 10 hours ago
georgemcbay | 13 hours ago
But I don't blame any country for disassociating with the US. Not just because Trump is our president, but more so that we elected him, twice.
trimethylpurine | 12 hours ago
This is about privacy and annoying ads everywhere. Europeans hate Google for the same reasons we do. Is that so hard to believe?
People everywhere want the same things you do.
xienze | 12 hours ago
<insert "European right-wing is actually further left than America's left wing" comment here>
trimethylpurine | 11 hours ago
heresie-dabord | 11 hours ago
Those watching can see that the oligarchs, the economic platform, and the propaganda delivery system are in position to groom the selected voter base for the long term.
The opposition to this open corruption and mayhem (gerrymandering, voter bribery) is only leading nationally by ... 8 points.
herbst | 12 hours ago
When sensitive data was a topic even 15 years ago we built European only solutions because America and it's barely existing privacy laws were not to trust. (Built software for government, universities and other companies back then)
From my POV this has nothing to do with orange guy but it's an ongoing trend of benefiting from our customer and data protection laws.
bulbar | 11 hours ago
trimethylpurine | 12 hours ago
I think you're attributing Big Tech's bad behavior to politicians where you should be attributing politicians' bad behavior to Big Tech's lobbying.
hogs_get_fat | 12 hours ago
trimethylpurine | 12 hours ago
You can also read the website. It lists reasons why people should move. No mention of Donald Trump.
That makes perfect sense. Half of Europeans vote right, just like Americans. There's no need for injecting super villains and otherism into the conversation.
trentearl | 12 hours ago
nozzlegear | 6 hours ago
levocardia | 11 hours ago
yoavm | 11 hours ago
carlosjobim | 10 hours ago
glimshe | 11 hours ago
However, if this ever got big enough to hurt America's economy in a measurable way, the press would be all over it and Americans would retaliate. Considering how our trade is structured, Europe would experience a lot more pain.
In other words, I think it's cool that you raise visibility to your products. I think you should do it. But you'll lose more than we will if this gets too serious at America's expense.
Optimally we should all develop specialities and maintain a local reserve in most key industries. But all out of war isn't in our interest.
jacquesm | 11 hours ago
p2detar | 11 hours ago
__d | 11 hours ago
There’s a lot of things the rest of the world has no or bad backups for.
jacquesm | 11 hours ago
__d | 2 hours ago
The US is choosing to leverage its position without much concern for those consequences right now. The rest of the world is busy routing around that, and the leverage is slowly reducing.
It will take time: the US was a key member of the world economy. But there’s frequent new reminders of why it’s necessary.
glimshe | 11 hours ago
jacquesm | 11 hours ago
glimshe | 11 hours ago
I'm not saying you have abused us, but maybe you should try to understand the perspectives that brought us to the current situation. Americans have complaints too.
I won't respond further messages on this thread because I think we should stop fighting. Maybe we aren't brothers but we are cousins. The real threats are elsewhere.
jacquesm | 11 hours ago
> I understand why you feel what you feel, but many people here also feel we've been abused for decades.
That's on them. If people allow themselves to be misled that is not something that other countries should take into account when determining their foreign policy. If there is an abuser here then it is perfectly clear where that abuser is located.
> I'm not saying you have abused us, but maybe you should try to understand the perspectives that brought us to the current situation. Americans have complaints too.
And that's fine. But then you should do something about the root cause of those complaints and if and when you do you will find that maybe Europe and the bulk of the population of the USA have a lot in common.
> I won't respond further messages on this thread because I think we should stop fighting.
You are the one promoting that attitude with your original comment.
dns_snek | 10 hours ago
These delusional beliefs have already lead to aggression and animosity towards the EU and the rest of the world, which is why this is happening in the first place.
What should the EU do? The current US administration is destroying every partnership you've built, giving up all of its soft power, it's single-handedly driving the world off a proverbial cliff with the war in Iran which will lead to yet another once-in-a-generation economic crisis and a new wave of totally preventable human suffering.
And for what? To persecute a mythical enemy of the Great American Prosperity? To divert attention away from domestic economic failures, unbelievable wealth disparity, from the fact the your country is ran by sadistic pedophiles? To intentionally weaken the rest of the world? To perpetuate a genocide?
The only sensible thing for the EU to do is to get off the damn ride. There's nothing we can do, short of becoming a vassal state of the US, that would appease the current US administration.
Framing this as an attack on the US is just typical DARVO tactics (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) and it's exactly why the EU needs to get away.
__d | 11 hours ago
goodpoint | 11 hours ago
jacquesm | 11 hours ago
The US has gone out of its way to prove that it is an unreliable partner. To Europe, to Canada, to its allies all over the world. It is obvious that that would result in re-evaluation of the relationship. You can't just upend 80 years of building up a relationship and expect that it will be without consequences. Just like your spouse would have a right to re-evaluate their relationship with you if you punched them in the face to remind them that 'you hold all the cards'.
If you believe that the EU is 'starting it' you are exemplifying the mentality that lead us to where we are today: that might makes right and that if you're abused you should just take it and that even an attempt to leave is considered betrayal.
Viliam1234 | 3 hours ago
andsoitis | 11 hours ago
It seems like a provincial mindset.
hobo123 | 11 hours ago
andsoitis | 10 hours ago
jurf | 10 hours ago
onel | 10 hours ago
pjmlp | 13 hours ago
lionkor | 13 hours ago
pjmlp | 11 hours ago
Anduia | 11 hours ago
jacquesm | 11 hours ago
pjmlp | 10 hours ago
See how other economies are doing it.
Example,
https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/other-site-policies/g...
https://go.dev/blog/hello-china
yoavm | 11 hours ago
pjmlp | 10 hours ago
_ph_ | 12 hours ago
The topic of "European" programming languages is highly interesting in the sense that there were a lot of highly developments done in Europe, but they are often less noticed than the counterparts popular in the US. The reason to look more into them would not be so much today's independence, but more to resurrect good concepts that kind of got ignored by history.
There is the ISLisp standard, of course the treasure chest of languages and works boy Nikolas Wirth and so much more. Europe has many great universities, their creations usually are free.
Of course, you could call Python an European language and Go heavily draws from the Wirth's language family.
pjmlp | 11 hours ago
Khronos and RISC-V now have locations outside US for a reason.
wolvesechoes | 4 hours ago
This so naive only a programmer could say this.
_ph_ | 3 hours ago
If you want a longer version: open source software under the normal licenses give you irrevocable rights to use it, as it is open source, you can also administrate it. You have full control over it. That was the core of my statement. Additionally, European authors are major contributors to many of this software. So in what exactly do you disagree with me?
onel | 10 hours ago
CodeCompost | 13 hours ago
sebtron | 13 hours ago
DavideNL | 11 hours ago
throawayonthe | 4 hours ago
28304283409234 | 11 hours ago
Pfeil | 11 hours ago
Markoff | 10 hours ago
herbst | 12 hours ago
Snickers for example shows first "Alprose" which I never heard, it's a small company that's not even common IN Switzerland. It lists Julius mainl which if it does chocolate its far from their actual business. And half of the other companies also seem regional niche stuff.
Dunno but gives a very vibe coded vibe
shevy-java | 11 hours ago
Alps are "Die Alpen" in german, and rose is rose too. So, a rose or a flower in a mountaineous area. It kind of fits to Switzerland.
Renaming operations are often strange: for instance, the name Raider before it then became Twix. I always found the renaming part peculiar; guess Twix is easier to market than Raider but both names are strange to begin with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twix
I could also swear that Raider tasted better than Twix, but this could be to my aging cells no longer being as performant as they once were. Or they changed the recipe to the worse.
Having said that, I guess that website was AI slop generated, so no wonder it has low quality. I try to avoid AI in general, in particular the low quality slops; sadly youtube is being infected with it, I can no longer watch shorts - so many are just AI spam nowadays.
mejutoco | 11 hours ago
From your wikipedia link
> The name is a portmanteau of "twin sticks
pavlov | 11 hours ago
For consistency it ought to be called Unix.
herbst | 3 hours ago
My parents also swear raider was the better product. Not sure if I ever tried one.
jcolot | 12 hours ago
david-gpu | 6 hours ago
Having a common (second) language is a first step towards understanding each other's culture better. And that in turn facilitates a federal EU. It can't be done overnight, but it is a goal I wish we would pursue more actively.
Viliam1234 | 3 hours ago
One or two years at school would be enough, which means that the entire problem could be fixed in a year.
But that's not how things work in real life. Just because something is a good idea doesn't mean it's going to happen.
david-gpu | 3 hours ago
The idea that a language, any language, can be learned in a year or two is not consistent with observation. Just think of any immigrant you have ever ran into in real life.
mrtksn | 12 hours ago
Apparently EU bureaucrats think that the MS office alternatives are shitty[0], well they can just tell an AI agent whats shitty and get it fixed.
[0] https://gizmodo.com/european-commission-staff-really-dislike...
steinwinde | 12 hours ago
gandhiandy69 | 12 hours ago
steinwinde | 11 hours ago
ed_balls | 12 hours ago
esperent | 11 hours ago
At least that's the vibe I'm getting from this site.
hobo123 | 11 hours ago
GreyStache | 11 hours ago
genezeta | 2 hours ago
Not scooters though.
ReptileMan | 11 hours ago
And lets not with Coca Cola alternatives. It is the funniest joke of the year so far.
tancop | 11 hours ago
ReptileMan | 10 hours ago
Btw - making your own drinks is really great value - it makes you appreciate the margins on soft drinks. 1lt is probably 10c or so with carbonation included.
hobo123 | 11 hours ago
ReptileMan | 11 hours ago
Markoff | 10 hours ago
but I agree with first paragraph
marvinblum | 11 hours ago
RandomGerm4n | 11 hours ago
Furthermore for Visual Studio Code it lists only IntelliJ IDEA as an alternative. There are also alternatives such as VSCodium, Neovim, or Emacs. In some cases, the alternative to an American company should not be a European company, but rather free software.
Matl | 10 hours ago
I agree in theory but VSCodium wouldn't be a thing without Microsoft continuing development of VS Code so you're dependent on American software nonetheless. If the goal is true sovereignty then VSCodium isn't it unless it becomes a truly independent fork aka when LibreOffice forked OpenOffice.
perelin | 7 hours ago
alkyon | 10 hours ago
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/13/us-governmen...
It's generally beneficial to have more choice both from a free-market and a democratic-safeguards perspective.