It is more like self imposed sanction against US made products. There are now tons of open source operating systems and applications that can replace Microsoft products, which are basically some old programs. The replacements cost vastly less for use and support.
Very much. There are a lot of hidden costs in computers. What does IT cost you? If everybody already knows the other program how much productivity is lost before they figure out the slight changes with the new (they will learn but experts will need time to become experts).
Thankfully what you're describing is a switching cost, not a permanently higher operating cost. Once the monopoly is broken and the state is using open source tools, there's every reason to believe it will be cheaper - no expensive proprietary certifications etc.
It would be unbelievable that the US would rather continue facilitating a genocide than retain Microsoft's global enterprise software monopoly, had they not already destroyed the UN, the ICC, and the global economy for that goal.
All they had to do was make keep the other costs lower than the switching costs, and they could've continued setting terms forever.
No monthly fees and most software is available on opensource
windows -> linux mint OR reactOS OR OpenSUSE OR NIXos ( their choice) and many more
excel -> many of them as well as google spread sheet for free
Word -> Gazillion editors on open source; some much much better; and there is free google editor to boot
PowerPoint-> again Gazillion opensource replacements
Paint-> is a joke. Open source stuff is 10 times better
I don't want to advertise these products but you have access to search engines; look it up..
What is it that you think is so special? The only reason people are using the stuff is momentum carried from the past and PC being sold preloaded with windows.
"I'd crawl over an acre of 'Visual This++' and 'Integrated Development That' to get to gcc, Emacs, and gdb. Thank you." -- Vance Petree, Virginia Power
Not at all viable for daily use. Better you said ZorinOS (Linux distro with a very Windows feel; used it myself for a few months during my transition from Windows over 10 years ago).
Not to mention that with WINE you can install Microsoft Office - I could be wrong, but I think OS and Infra are the focus, Microsoft Office is orienting and tolerable. Its bloated but people know it. Besides office, everything important really is a web app now.
I do not know in this case, but I led migration and cost benefits analysis beforehand of very large Windows 3.11 to 95 to 2000; at the time there was nothing else that was considered useful and there still pain and massive cost. Later on we had to consider Linux as alternative; it just wasn’t close ; the stability (yep), easy of use etc was just not feasible. Now that Linux is good and easy to configure to basically be exactly like Windows and now that most custom applications of large corporates are web based and specific ones can be ran via Citrix for a few people who need it, I am guessing it finally is cheaper now. And 90% of users won’t even notice the difference; I remember when I was planning my first 3.11 to 95 migration that people were by far most stressed about users unable to open applications as they remember not the name or the icon but 2nd row, 3rd down is Word. Start, 5 up, 1 right, 3 down is internet. Etc. So as long as that’s the same, you are fine. It’s how most our clients still work so we take care never to move functionalities; only add, no delete.
2nd row, 3rd down is Word. Start, 5 up, 1 right, 3 down is internet.
That's crazy. There's no way that's the case today though as learning about basic computers+office (which implicitly includes how to run apps) is pretty standard in schools, and is a requirement for relevant positions. And the alternatives have a mostly similar UI, so the only differences people really need to deal with is ribbon vs traditional toolbar and a few other minor items, which can be covered in a couple of meetings for the more dense employees.
You'd be surprised. There are still quite a few 40-60 year olds working who never actually learned computers to begin with, and are still working by rote. On the other end of the scale are the 20~ year olds who never learned learned computers so much as they learned a tablet and a phone, and that trend doesn't seem to be turning.[1]
I had computer lessons in school, but I don't think those are universal any more, and that part of the curriculum has just been swallowed up by other lessons always using a tablet or Chromebook, meaning the kids never learn the foundation (to the extent there ever was one. It's not like I learned about common UI elements or anything back then. I figured those out by being interested in computers), but just learn what they have to by osmosis. This obviously varies depending on country and curriculum.
Yeah. Trump has been ripping out US infrastructure globally. Trumps administration and vance(GOP finance chair) elon(doge) thiel(owns vance) need to be removed ASAP.
Of course you would want to procure products that work for all of your employees. The idea that you could just cut off certain elements of a foreign government was really shortsighted.
The US government already exerts extensive control over ASML's business. The Netherlands can't leverage it in any kind of strategic way because a large part of the technology itself is American and it's very hard to untangle. It's the true definition of a "multi national" company.
A tiny fraction of the technology itself started as an ineffective "American" invention, copying a Japanese discovery/invention. In fact when ASML acquired the company, specifically because it couldn't do what they wanted and they needed to vastly improve it, a Japanese company had a superior product in the same space, but ASML saw the Japanese company as too much political baggage given how protectionist the Japanese often are.
Do they exert any physical control (i.e. parts are made and shipped from North America), or is it just "Intellectual Property" and legal agreements that can be ignored?
This is an honest question, I'm trying my best to word it to not sound like a troll.
Yes the EUV/DUV light source itself is researched, developed, and manufactured in California.
ASML was permitted to acquire Cymer in 2013 during the Obama administration under a strict technology sharing and export control agreement with the US government.
The R&D, technology, manufacturing, and all other operations had to remain in the US.
There is a lot of noise for public consumption but the reality is that the US control the Netherlands and most European countries, and in fact while this noise has become louder in recent years so has the dependency of Europe on the US...
I still don't get why EU governments and agencies don't standardize around an already existing industry proven OS the EU already has domestically, which is SUSE, and need to each go reinventing the wheel their own way, which leads to higher costs and more fragmentation across the EU.
I heard the reason was that NL doesn't know if SUSE will be sold off again and might end up in the hands of some US PE, but here's the thing, you're the government, you can just block the sale of companies related to sovereign national security like those making operating systems. You can just do things when you want to. You literally have that power. Exercise it for once FFS.
Yeah well that's why the EU federal idea is and will be a failure. It wishes to be the challenger to the US and China hegemony in theory, but then every individual country wants to be its own special mini-boss in its own playground hoping they'll be at the top of the helm, that develops and uses its own separate things that will hopefully get adopted by the other EU members.
You have it in reverse. A federal EU enables EU countries to pool sovereignty and strength to protect itself from the US and China. It neither needs to or wants to challenge anyone. A federal system allows EU wide decisions to be made quickly and without petty parochial concerns.
Constituent states rightly can choose to make their own decisions in matters like this, it hardly effects anyone else, and they can choose to collaborate.
Is that why US failed while building CP/m, Unix a few, Dos, Windows, MacOs, OS/2,…? A successful market does not impose monopolies. The more, the merrier.
A successful market does not impose monopolies. The more, the merrier.
Yeah but when it comes to national sovereignty you can't let your own products get steamrolled by the entrenched monopolies of your adversaries (Google, Microsoft, AWS, etc) just because you're gullible and still think you can play by the rules of idealistic 'free market' and come out on top, while your adversaries protect their monopolies to weaponize them against you on the "free market", suppressing or destroying your domestic industry and making you indefinitely dependent on them (US big-tech, Chinese EV industry, etc).
China has achieved a SW industry superior to the EU with much less money, simply because it has banned US big-tech from its market, preventing its own small domestic players from being crushed by US giants. It's also how countries like Italy, Japan and Korea built strong car industries post-WW2, as they banned superior import cars (often US ones) from their markets, till their own industry could catch up and be competitive internationally. India does the same.
Cooperation and competition can be partial. Google and Microsoft compete internally and then cooperate when fighting external forces. There is no reason why this cannot work for European companies too.
The problem has more to do with the weak sense of belonging to a supranational identity. Californians and New Yorkers both identify as Americans before they identify as members of their home state; the opposite is true of most Europeans still. Change is slow.
Californians and New Yorkers both identify as Americans before they identify as members of their home state; the opposite is true of most Europeans still.
You don't need to completely erase and crush ethnic and national identities in order to standardize on technical platform for the common market.
When the market is as huge as US, there's lots of space for competition. Sadly in how EU is currently structured it would most likely be just german "Microsoft", spanish "Microsoft", french "Microsoft" etc.
I heard the reason was that NL doesn't know if SUSE will be sold off again and might end up in the hands of some US PE, but here's the thing, you're the government, you can just block the sale of companies
The Dutch government can famously prevent sales of German and Luxembourgish companies yes.
I meant the EU, at EU level, not the Dutch government. Also it's not like the Dutch government can't cooperate with the other EU members like Germany and Luxembourg on such vital topics. Unless of course trust inside the EU is so lackluster that the Dutch government can't be sure where Germany and Luxembourg will stand, in which case it's already over for the EU.
Does the EU have the power to block sales of companies on national security grounds? Or to get member states to standardise on software?
Its probably a good thing they do not have a standard, or at this point it would be Windows and pushing change through at the EU level would not be fast.
Does the EU have the power to block sales of companies on national security grounds?
Not on defense and national security, that's up to individual EU member states, but the EU does veto corporate mergers and acquisitions on Competition Law (Antitrust). So just find a loophole in that and use it to prevent SUSE be taken over by non-EU nations.
The governments "just" doing this or that, are typically the tyrannical or unhinged variety you don't want to live under. If your law is written decently and you have a functioning judiciary, chances of a loopholes surviving scrutiny will be very low.
The European Commission could definitely ask governments (the European Council) to agree a new treaty or protocol that grants them veto powers on "federal security grounds", for sure. The European Parliament would likely rubber-stamp it too. Considering the current (and increasing) right-wing majorities across the continent, though, I find such scenario very unlikely.
As an American, EU politics is such a fascinating bizarro world. Imagine the right wingers being a bulwark against unhinged expansion of executive authority on grounds of national security! It would be like statehouse Republicans blocking the Patriot Act. Unthinkable.
Well, the same in the other direction: imagine the free marketeers by definition, installing an autocrat big on isolationist policies, the dismantling of judiciary separation, and on picking winners in the market... Absurd! And still, here we are. Humans are funny and inconsistent like that.
The governments "just" doing this or that, are typically the tyrannical or unhinged variety you don't want to live under.
You can always "just do things" whenever you want by interpreting or changing the laws first to fit your desired goal. And so there, now it's legal, because I just changed the rules to make it so.
Same how the "we'll now have to accept all those migrants illegally crossing our border without asking our voters if its what they want" was done, they decided overnight that its legal. Or how they can just block the right wing from winning elections in order to "just protect democracy".
We're already under tyrannical rule, except the system abuse just acts on the wrong topics.
For context, the US once prevented that a German company AIXTRON was sold to a Chinese investor in 2016 (perhaps for good reasons). To me it would sound like a good deal for the Netherlands and Luxembourg/Germany if Netherlands would uses SUSE and the Luxembourg/Germany would step in to keep in in the EU.
but here's the thing, you're the government, you can just block the sale of companies related to sovereign national security like those making operating systems
Last time I looked it was a Swedish owned German company. The government of the Netherlands has limited power there. Given its history and performance its quite likely to get sold and might end up in American or Chinese hands or anything really.
The year the ICC was established, Congress passed a law providing enduring authorization for a full scale military invasion of the Netherlands should the ICC imprison any US service member, government employee, or those of allied nations (including Israel).[1] It even prevents any level of the US government (local, state, or federal) from working to assist the ICC. Americans do not want to be beholden to a foreign court.
I'm probably wrong but I could have sworn there was an article that came out when Trump was elected something happened with data on microsoft accounts/server huh. I guess it's ungoogable right now. Might have just been hosted by US gov. Must have been funding related.
Anyway I don't support ICC grabbing power it does not have over other countries who do not sign on.
If the ICC wanted to be consistent they should target Hamas leaders, Iranian leaders, ect
If the ICC wanted to be consistent they should target Hamas leaders, Iranian leaders, ect
Iran is not a party to the Rome Statute and the court has not officially opened a case against Iranian leaders.
However, the ICC has issued an arrest warrant for Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, Commander-in-Chief of Hamas' military wing for war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from the October 7 attacks.
You'd be happy to know that ICC has also indicted three Hamas leaders (Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, Ismail Haniyeh). Granted all three were withdrawn because their deaths were confirmed, but you're presenting it as if ICC only indicted Israeli leaders, which is not the case.
The US has chosen not to project all the power they can. That is send soldiers - likely some to die. However the US has the ability to send them if they want, and could supply them if they did - nobody else has anywhere near that ability ready today.
The US can't even win a war in the middle east without NATO
That is false. The US could win a war in the middle east without NATO.
The US has consistently chosen not to attempt to do so, but there is every reason to think they could. It is good that the US mostly tries to work with NATO on the middle east (and bad that Trump has not).
The US has also consistently chosen to send minimal ground forces, and when they do send them they are very careful to protect the lives of their soldiers at the expense of winning.
However there remains every reason to think the US could make different decisions and win wars in the middle east alone.
The Europeans have some amount of leverage over the Americans, much smaller than the Americans have over them. But they use 100% of it to keep the Americans involved in the Ukraine War rather than to defend their own institutions / economies.
The tricky thing these days is trying to figure out whether messages like this are coming from Russian or MAGA bots ;) In any case, good work comrade! Here's your potato / Trumpcoin. Now back into your troll cave.
No problem. After the next election in the Netherlands, Microsoft only needs to promise to build a local headquarters there and the future government will roll back to Windows at twice the previous cost, which is exactly what happened in Munich.
People make it sound as if Munich flip-flopped on Linux. The then ruling social-democrats and the greens started the LiMux project in 2003! The social-democrats and the conservative christians ruling in 2020 switched back to MS Windows. The current administration is mandating open source but not specifically Linux.
I use Linux since the year 2000 and it has been ruff in the early days, no doubt. The desktop competition were MS Windows 2000 and XP, often lauded as peak MS Windows. Apple had all but disappeared. But 2020 I'd wager that average KDE desktop vs. average MS Windows 10 desktop would be a draw. Today it would be a KDE desktop win, but that's more due to MS Windows 11 suckiness than the leaps and bounds Linux made.
Several International Criminal Court (ICC) judges have been unable to access their bank accounts or receive routine salary payments and financial transfers due to financial blockages triggered by United States sanctions. In the country where they live
Concrete examples to verify such claims please? Also in civilized countries such things are decided by the justice system, not the government (which to the surprise of many simple minded people - like a certain US president and his fanbase - is independent from the government).
In the US it’s common to only use it to describe the entire apparatus for holding, administering and enforcing state power.
But it can also be used to mean the current ruling power in a parliamentary system together with the administrative bodies under its direct control. So something more akin to just the executive branch in the US system. And then certain state agencies such as the judiciary are meant to be independent of the government under that meaning of the term. I believe this is the most common understanding of the word outside the US.
Its a really weird use of the word government to not actually refer to the government but to the executive and saying the “courts are outside of the government” makes it seem like they aren’t a part of the state.
Consider though system like the Swedish system which existed in the Viking age with Things and a king.
Things were courts with huge power, and consisted of a gathering of all free men and had basically unlimited power, because they were the people. Meanwhile, the government was the person of the king.
I think that's an example of a system where the courts (Thing) is clearly not part of the government.
Germany for instance? Google "Bundesverfassungsgericht". I don't think such a separated checks and balances system is all that unusual in democratic countries. A major task of a "proper" justice system is to keep the government in check.
The concrete example would be Canada "debanking" the truckers who protested in Ottawa for exercising their GOD given right to free speech. Another concrete example would be Germany having banks close accounts for the AFD and AFD related people.
1. the AfD thing was the decision of individual banks, not of the German government. Basically, in a free world companies can decide who they want to do business with.
2. the Canadian trucker "debanking" was quickly resolved because the Canadian justice system did their job and overruled the unlawful "emergency" government order
From what I can read on various news sites, not even LePenn blamed the government directly. All those cases were either business decisions of companies who can freely decide who they want as customers, or quickly overturned as unlawful by judges.
It would be good if you did at least a minimal amount of due diligence before spreading misinformation (but I guess spreading misinformation is the whole point).
Are you saying the US government been implementing sanctions to make right wing activists not be able to receive bank transfers? That sounds like friendly fire and backwards, are you sure you understood the "source" correctly?
Wow, I think disagreeing with a lockdown in the face of a pandemic is pretty fucking stupid but even so, freezing people's bank accounts is even more messed up and should not happen over any sort of non-violent political actions in a modern democracy. Seems unblocked now, but still that seems like a bananas reaction.
For reference as I hadn't heard about it before:
Isabelle Jacques, assistant deputy minister of finance, told a committee of MPs that up to 210 bank accounts holding about $7.8 million were frozen under the financial measures contained in the Emergencies Act. - https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/emergency-bank-measures-fin...
I’m trying to remember the last time an international criminal court judge came to my community and brandished a firearm while shouting slurs at me. It has to have been at least a few weeks now.
You mean right-wing terrorists? The ones that forcibly invaded the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and attacked police officers in an effort to distrupt democracy?
Currently in the US, it's not criminal if it's done at the bidding of Trump, or if Trump approves of the violence.
The federal government is still stymieing the investigation of the ICE/DHS killings of Minneapolis citizens, violating their own policies requiring investigation.
There's no more federal rule of law until there's a full change in power, and that requires installing a functional DOJ and a new Supreme Court that is more interested in the law than in furthering partisan politics.
Europe does have domestic payment infrastructure, that's in some ways more advanced than the US. That doesn't matter because US sanctions don't depend on control of the infrastructure itself. They have a recursive structure: if you don't enforce US sanctions, or you trade with a peer that doesn't, then you yourself become sanctioned. FATCA works the same way, as did the deployment of the global anti-money laundering system (a US invention, largely).
would explain why the liar-in-chief is so sweaty about the ICC.
In what world do you think Trump even remembers about the double tap on a fishing vessel more than a day ago? He has no worry about anything, he has escaped prosecution for everything he's ever done, and I doubt he believes he might face a tribunal at the Hague, if he even actually knows what the Hague, or a tribunal, or the ICC actually are.
The United States has never recognized the jurisprudence of ICC anyways. So to the United States these judges are just regular foreigners making decisions they don’t like. Sanctions are an appropriate tool for the United States to meddle in foreign affairs anyways.
Personally I don’t really have much faith in the ICC; its premise is flawed since great powers will never be deferential to a foreign court system anyways.
I dont think Determinate Systems was involved, despite their proximity to the Netherlands (Eelco being Dutch). They work with American arms manufacturers, so I suspect that may play a role.
Golden image deployments and netboot have been around for ages. If you want an unified system and control the infrastructure, it doesn't really matter which system you use.
I'm not sure why they chose nix. But it does make it easier to carry local patches than a lot of other systems. I hope they succeed.
The one that makes it trivial to carry over local patches is Gentoo. I carry a set of patches to every new computer and update them whenever neccesary. No overlay yet :P
it makes so much sense. a small team of experts maintaining a rock-solid base configuration providing the essentials, which can then be built on top of for agency/department or even personal specifics - all declarative, immutable, cachable, testable. I can't think of a better tool for the job.
As a downside, any change to software, version updates, keeping things secure now depends on the team is experts. Most are easy, some are hard (e.g. new software now requires a new Swift version - one person motivated enough to do that project has been pushing it for months), some are annoying (patch to libc means you're re-downloading your whole system).
As a positive thing, maybe at least nixos will get a serious security pipeline rather than the current best-effort community approach.
But it would seem there’s a certain balancing act. Because that kind of economic integration can also create pressure points for an autocrat to exploit in ways that are contrary to peace and human advancement.
This is why many Enlightenment thinkers didn’t just view monopolies as an economic problem; they viewed it as a direct threat to free and just society.
The idea of "change through trade" mostly worked great (see most former socialist European countries), but sometimes not at all (see Russia and more recently the US), and China is kind of in the middle of both extremes and may swing to either side in the future.
For this to work all participants need to play along, not throw a tantrum & actively trying to sabotage the system. In such cases, you need to cut out the faulty participant & continue without them.
The more countries trade with each other and depend on each other, the better things are for peace
I previously thought the same, with Europe and Russia doing lots of trade e.g. Germany buying lots of gas from Russia, and many western companies being present in Russia. It seems obviously true.
But Russia still started a war anyway, so I guess it's not actually true.
Yes, but we (in Europe) cannot afford all the digital infrastructure to be concentrated in one partner country. If you buy something from us and we buy something from you, that's trade. If we have to buy everything from you, that's a dependency, and we need to fix it asap
[...] its chief prosecutor lost access to Microsoft services, including email
[...] the program was aimed at refreshing the technologies used by the Dutch government in such a way that it would no longer be in a situation where it could lose access to critical systems at the whim of a foreign country
How does switching desktop OS help you retain access to email and payment services, neither of which care about your OS?
It will help. because it will kickstart their native software industry and may even encourage others throughout Europe to get back to work seriously in that area and look to compete, because actually there was no real reason for them to give up in the first place. All you need to do is look at the Brits with what they lost in Acorn and Arm technology.
It doesn't in and of itself, but there's no clear reason why the US government could not instruct Microsoft that sanctions include a prohibition on granting OS licenses which are likely to be used by sanctioned persons. They're trying to get ahead of things rather than do the bare minimum.
Some people might consider not having access to Windows 11 as a blessing in disguise when businesses are "forced" to move from Windows 10, now they can see there are other viable options.
It’s a blessing, Microsoft has always been mediocre throughout their entire history. It’s a shame that so many American and European vertical tech companies gave up in the late 1980s, and 1990s.
If you haven’t noticed, Microsoft has trouble competing when the playing field is even remotely level.
On the other hand, the US is still negotiating with lots of countries across the world, continuing to invest and be invested in, continuing to grow economically, and more.
Your personal point of view which primarily exists in a silo on the Internet does not match the viewpoints of most of the rest of the world, including folks in Europe.
So, yes again, America. That's how the world works.
As a US citizen and FOSS lover, I am absolutely pleased about this. Tearing down and tearing out US tech giants will only be good for computing in the long run.
European bureaucracy has a thing for weird technology - Scala, Flatpak, now NixOS. But still better than being dependent on proprietary software not made in Europe
It is more like self imposed sanction against US made products. There are now tons of open source operating systems and applications that can replace Microsoft products, which are basically some old programs. The replacements cost vastly less for use and support.
Citation needed on the costs vastly less to support and use.
Very much. There are a lot of hidden costs in computers. What does IT cost you? If everybody already knows the other program how much productivity is lost before they figure out the slight changes with the new (they will learn but experts will need time to become experts).
That’s not a citation. Of course you want to have actual research to substantiate these statements.
Sorry, I'm saying the things I want a citation to look at. A lot of citations are too superficial.
What is citation; somebody else reporting it?
Here; they replacing windows.. the packages they have listed are open source aka typically free to use https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/germa...
That is exactly my point: what is the cost to those "free" to use things? There are a lot of costs that have nothing to do with the price to get them.
Thankfully what you're describing is a switching cost, not a permanently higher operating cost. Once the monopoly is broken and the state is using open source tools, there's every reason to believe it will be cheaper - no expensive proprietary certifications etc.
It would be unbelievable that the US would rather continue facilitating a genocide than retain Microsoft's global enterprise software monopoly, had they not already destroyed the UN, the ICC, and the global economy for that goal.
All they had to do was make keep the other costs lower than the switching costs, and they could've continued setting terms forever.
No monthly fees and most software is available on opensource
windows -> linux mint OR reactOS OR OpenSUSE OR NIXos ( their choice) and many more
excel -> many of them as well as google spread sheet for free
Word -> Gazillion editors on open source; some much much better; and there is free google editor to boot
PowerPoint-> again Gazillion opensource replacements
Paint-> is a joke. Open source stuff is 10 times better
I don't want to advertise these products but you have access to search engines; look it up..
What is it that you think is so special? The only reason people are using the stuff is momentum carried from the past and PC being sold preloaded with windows.
In my opinion that is.
"I'd crawl over an acre of 'Visual This++' and 'Integrated Development That' to get to gcc, Emacs, and gdb. Thank you." -- Vance Petree, Virginia Power
Google is not a very viable alternative when you're trying to evade US sanctions
Not at all viable for daily use. Better you said ZorinOS (Linux distro with a very Windows feel; used it myself for a few months during my transition from Windows over 10 years ago).
Not to mention that with WINE you can install Microsoft Office - I could be wrong, but I think OS and Infra are the focus, Microsoft Office is orienting and tolerable. Its bloated but people know it. Besides office, everything important really is a web app now.
I do not know in this case, but I led migration and cost benefits analysis beforehand of very large Windows 3.11 to 95 to 2000; at the time there was nothing else that was considered useful and there still pain and massive cost. Later on we had to consider Linux as alternative; it just wasn’t close ; the stability (yep), easy of use etc was just not feasible. Now that Linux is good and easy to configure to basically be exactly like Windows and now that most custom applications of large corporates are web based and specific ones can be ran via Citrix for a few people who need it, I am guessing it finally is cheaper now. And 90% of users won’t even notice the difference; I remember when I was planning my first 3.11 to 95 migration that people were by far most stressed about users unable to open applications as they remember not the name or the icon but 2nd row, 3rd down is Word. Start, 5 up, 1 right, 3 down is internet. Etc. So as long as that’s the same, you are fine. It’s how most our clients still work so we take care never to move functionalities; only add, no delete.
That's crazy. There's no way that's the case today though as learning about basic computers+office (which implicitly includes how to run apps) is pretty standard in schools, and is a requirement for relevant positions. And the alternatives have a mostly similar UI, so the only differences people really need to deal with is ribbon vs traditional toolbar and a few other minor items, which can be covered in a couple of meetings for the more dense employees.
You'd be surprised. There are still quite a few 40-60 year olds working who never actually learned computers to begin with, and are still working by rote. On the other end of the scale are the 20~ year olds who never learned learned computers so much as they learned a tablet and a phone, and that trend doesn't seem to be turning.[1]
I had computer lessons in school, but I don't think those are universal any more, and that part of the curriculum has just been swallowed up by other lessons always using a tablet or Chromebook, meaning the kids never learn the foundation (to the extent there ever was one. It's not like I learned about common UI elements or anything back then. I figured those out by being interested in computers), but just learn what they have to by osmosis. This obviously varies depending on country and curriculum.
[1] https://futurism.com/the-byte/gen-z-kids-file-systems
Yeah. Trump has been ripping out US infrastructure globally. Trumps administration and vance(GOP finance chair) elon(doge) thiel(owns vance) need to be removed ASAP.
Of course you would want to procure products that work for all of your employees. The idea that you could just cut off certain elements of a foreign government was really shortsighted.
Good thing the Netherlands isn’t the most critical single node for advanced chip equipment, cause that could become awkward.
Oh wait, it is.
But it’s ok because Us President has made it clear the the USA doesn’t need anything Europe has. So, not a problem.
USA and Netherlands (alone, and within EU) have signed an agreement concerning that about two months ago.
The US government already exerts extensive control over ASML's business. The Netherlands can't leverage it in any kind of strategic way because a large part of the technology itself is American and it's very hard to untangle. It's the true definition of a "multi national" company.
A tiny fraction of the technology itself started as an ineffective "American" invention, copying a Japanese discovery/invention. In fact when ASML acquired the company, specifically because it couldn't do what they wanted and they needed to vastly improve it, a Japanese company had a superior product in the same space, but ASML saw the Japanese company as too much political baggage given how protectionist the Japanese often are.
How funny it all turned out, right?
Do they exert any physical control (i.e. parts are made and shipped from North America), or is it just "Intellectual Property" and legal agreements that can be ignored?
This is an honest question, I'm trying my best to word it to not sound like a troll.
Yes the EUV/DUV light source itself is researched, developed, and manufactured in California.
ASML was permitted to acquire Cymer in 2013 during the Obama administration under a strict technology sharing and export control agreement with the US government.
The R&D, technology, manufacturing, and all other operations had to remain in the US.
https://www.asml.com/en/company/about-asml/cymer
ASML sold nothing in Europe in 2026, they would implode if they stopped selling to US companies
There is a lot of noise for public consumption but the reality is that the US control the Netherlands and most European countries, and in fact while this noise has become louder in recent years so has the dependency of Europe on the US...
The Dutch government let the USA store their nuclear weapons in the 60s in Vonkel already. We have long lost our sovereignty.
Don't worry. The more they slow ASML's progress, the closer it puts SMEE (China) to parity. Then we won't need to worry about sanctions ever again.
I still don't get why EU governments and agencies don't standardize around an already existing industry proven OS the EU already has domestically, which is SUSE, and need to each go reinventing the wheel their own way, which leads to higher costs and more fragmentation across the EU.
I heard the reason was that NL doesn't know if SUSE will be sold off again and might end up in the hands of some US PE, but here's the thing, you're the government, you can just block the sale of companies related to sovereign national security like those making operating systems. You can just do things when you want to. You literally have that power. Exercise it for once FFS.
Might be related to NixOS being strongly related to Netherlands and them picking local
Yeah well that's why the EU federal idea is and will be a failure. It wishes to be the challenger to the US and China hegemony in theory, but then every individual country wants to be its own special mini-boss in its own playground hoping they'll be at the top of the helm, that develops and uses its own separate things that will hopefully get adopted by the other EU members.
You have it in reverse. A federal EU enables EU countries to pool sovereignty and strength to protect itself from the US and China. It neither needs to or wants to challenge anyone. A federal system allows EU wide decisions to be made quickly and without petty parochial concerns.
Constituent states rightly can choose to make their own decisions in matters like this, it hardly effects anyone else, and they can choose to collaborate.
Is that why US failed while building CP/m, Unix a few, Dos, Windows, MacOs, OS/2,…? A successful market does not impose monopolies. The more, the merrier.
Yeah but when it comes to national sovereignty you can't let your own products get steamrolled by the entrenched monopolies of your adversaries (Google, Microsoft, AWS, etc) just because you're gullible and still think you can play by the rules of idealistic 'free market' and come out on top, while your adversaries protect their monopolies to weaponize them against you on the "free market", suppressing or destroying your domestic industry and making you indefinitely dependent on them (US big-tech, Chinese EV industry, etc).
China has achieved a SW industry superior to the EU with much less money, simply because it has banned US big-tech from its market, preventing its own small domestic players from being crushed by US giants. It's also how countries like Italy, Japan and Korea built strong car industries post-WW2, as they banned superior import cars (often US ones) from their markets, till their own industry could catch up and be competitive internationally. India does the same.
Cooperation and competition can be partial. Google and Microsoft compete internally and then cooperate when fighting external forces. There is no reason why this cannot work for European companies too.
The problem has more to do with the weak sense of belonging to a supranational identity. Californians and New Yorkers both identify as Americans before they identify as members of their home state; the opposite is true of most Europeans still. Change is slow.
You don't need to completely erase and crush ethnic and national identities in order to standardize on technical platform for the common market.
When the market is as huge as US, there's lots of space for competition. Sadly in how EU is currently structured it would most likely be just german "Microsoft", spanish "Microsoft", french "Microsoft" etc.
The Dutch government can famously prevent sales of German and Luxembourgish companies yes.
I meant the EU, at EU level, not the Dutch government. Also it's not like the Dutch government can't cooperate with the other EU members like Germany and Luxembourg on such vital topics. Unless of course trust inside the EU is so lackluster that the Dutch government can't be sure where Germany and Luxembourg will stand, in which case it's already over for the EU.
Does the EU have the power to block sales of companies on national security grounds? Or to get member states to standardise on software?
Its probably a good thing they do not have a standard, or at this point it would be Windows and pushing change through at the EU level would not be fast.
Not on defense and national security, that's up to individual EU member states, but the EU does veto corporate mergers and acquisitions on Competition Law (Antitrust). So just find a loophole in that and use it to prevent SUSE be taken over by non-EU nations.
The governments "just" doing this or that, are typically the tyrannical or unhinged variety you don't want to live under. If your law is written decently and you have a functioning judiciary, chances of a loopholes surviving scrutiny will be very low.
The European Commission could definitely ask governments (the European Council) to agree a new treaty or protocol that grants them veto powers on "federal security grounds", for sure. The European Parliament would likely rubber-stamp it too. Considering the current (and increasing) right-wing majorities across the continent, though, I find such scenario very unlikely.
As an American, EU politics is such a fascinating bizarro world. Imagine the right wingers being a bulwark against unhinged expansion of executive authority on grounds of national security! It would be like statehouse Republicans blocking the Patriot Act. Unthinkable.
Well, the same in the other direction: imagine the free marketeers by definition, installing an autocrat big on isolationist policies, the dismantling of judiciary separation, and on picking winners in the market... Absurd! And still, here we are. Humans are funny and inconsistent like that.
By the way liberals in EU are center right to right :)
I think it demonstrates the extent to which left and right are artificial groupings that owe more to tribalism than anything rational.
In the UK it was the right wing Conservative party which introduced same sex marriage. I am pretty sure the Republicans are unlikely to do that.
Of course some things are clear. Privatisation is right wing, nationalisation is left wing, but you never really had the latter in the US!
You can always "just do things" whenever you want by interpreting or changing the laws first to fit your desired goal. And so there, now it's legal, because I just changed the rules to make it so.
Same how the "we'll now have to accept all those migrants illegally crossing our border without asking our voters if its what they want" was done, they decided overnight that its legal. Or how they can just block the right wing from winning elections in order to "just protect democracy".
We're already under tyrannical rule, except the system abuse just acts on the wrong topics.
The EU level doesn't have enforcement mechanisms, EU law is applied through member states changing their laws.
For context, the US once prevented that a German company AIXTRON was sold to a Chinese investor in 2016 (perhaps for good reasons). To me it would sound like a good deal for the Netherlands and Luxembourg/Germany if Netherlands would uses SUSE and the Luxembourg/Germany would step in to keep in in the EU.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/12/02/us-blocks-chi...
Last time I looked it was a Swedish owned German company. The government of the Netherlands has limited power there. Given its history and performance its quite likely to get sold and might end up in American or Chinese hands or anything really.
Trump attacking the Netherlands means transatlanticism is really dead.
I think this has a lot to do with how the case against Putin was built and Trump used his influence to disrupt it.
It's because the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu for committing war crimes.
The US had issue with the ICC since it first began in 2002. Multiple administrations saw it as a problem.
The year the ICC was established, Congress passed a law providing enduring authorization for a full scale military invasion of the Netherlands should the ICC imprison any US service member, government employee, or those of allied nations (including Israel).[1] It even prevents any level of the US government (local, state, or federal) from working to assist the ICC. Americans do not want to be beholden to a foreign court.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
Taking issue with accountability is a long lived American tradition enjoyed predominantly by those with wealth/power.
And because Trump and co don't want to have to deal with such warrants against themselves.
It's the ultimate expression of US corruption. There's not even a pretense of fighting for justice any more, just fighting justice.
I'm probably wrong but I could have sworn there was an article that came out when Trump was elected something happened with data on microsoft accounts/server huh. I guess it's ungoogable right now. Might have just been hosted by US gov. Must have been funding related.
Anyway I don't support ICC grabbing power it does not have over other countries who do not sign on.
If the ICC wanted to be consistent they should target Hamas leaders, Iranian leaders, ect
Iran is not a party to the Rome Statute and the court has not officially opened a case against Iranian leaders.
However, the ICC has issued an arrest warrant for Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, Commander-in-Chief of Hamas' military wing for war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from the October 7 attacks.
You'd be happy to know that ICC has also indicted three Hamas leaders (Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, Ismail Haniyeh). Granted all three were withdrawn because their deaths were confirmed, but you're presenting it as if ICC only indicted Israeli leaders, which is not the case.
I am happy to know they are at least somewhat consistent however unfortunately it still doesn't change my position on it.
I am wondering if every war time leader should expect an ICC indictment.
The ICC hasn't indicted "every war time leader" because they're not all committing an open genocide.
NAZA
The EU is entirely subjugated to the US. No energy independence, militaries falling apart and out of date, no tech development or investment.
Maybe that's wrong?
The US can't even win a war in the middle east without NATO
What is the US going to do when China starts making their own moves?
Outside the US, NATO countries have very little power projection capabilities. A bit of france, a bit of UK and then nothing.
How's that power projection working in Iran/Yemen?
Would NATO change the equation?
The US has chosen not to project all the power they can. That is send soldiers - likely some to die. However the US has the ability to send them if they want, and could supply them if they did - nobody else has anywhere near that ability ready today.
That is false. The US could win a war in the middle east without NATO.
The US has consistently chosen not to attempt to do so, but there is every reason to think they could. It is good that the US mostly tries to work with NATO on the middle east (and bad that Trump has not).
The US has also consistently chosen to send minimal ground forces, and when they do send them they are very careful to protect the lives of their soldiers at the expense of winning.
However there remains every reason to think the US could make different decisions and win wars in the middle east alone.
The Europeans have some amount of leverage over the Americans, much smaller than the Americans have over them. But they use 100% of it to keep the Americans involved in the Ukraine War rather than to defend their own institutions / economies.
The tricky thing these days is trying to figure out whether messages like this are coming from Russian or MAGA bots ;) In any case, good work comrade! Here's your potato / Trumpcoin. Now back into your troll cave.
No problem. After the next election in the Netherlands, Microsoft only needs to promise to build a local headquarters there and the future government will roll back to Windows at twice the previous cost, which is exactly what happened in Munich.
Sounds very social and very democratic.
People make it sound as if Munich flip-flopped on Linux. The then ruling social-democrats and the greens started the LiMux project in 2003! The social-democrats and the conservative christians ruling in 2020 switched back to MS Windows. The current administration is mandating open source but not specifically Linux.
I use Linux since the year 2000 and it has been ruff in the early days, no doubt. The desktop competition were MS Windows 2000 and XP, often lauded as peak MS Windows. Apple had all but disappeared. But 2020 I'd wager that average KDE desktop vs. average MS Windows 10 desktop would be a draw. Today it would be a KDE desktop win, but that's more due to MS Windows 11 suckiness than the leaps and bounds Linux made.
Related: "Dutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS (dawo.community)" 25.sep.2026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49841563 581 comments
Several International Criminal Court (ICC) judges have been unable to access their bank accounts or receive routine salary payments and financial transfers due to financial blockages triggered by United States sanctions. In the country where they live
ICC judges getting the right wing activist treatment, except the activists get it from their own government.
Concrete examples to verify such claims please? Also in civilized countries such things are decided by the justice system, not the government (which to the surprise of many simple minded people - like a certain US president and his fanbase - is independent from the government).
In what universe is the judiciary not part of the government?
Government is a term with multiple senses.
In the US it’s common to only use it to describe the entire apparatus for holding, administering and enforcing state power.
But it can also be used to mean the current ruling power in a parliamentary system together with the administrative bodies under its direct control. So something more akin to just the executive branch in the US system. And then certain state agencies such as the judiciary are meant to be independent of the government under that meaning of the term. I believe this is the most common understanding of the word outside the US.
Its a really weird use of the word government to not actually refer to the government but to the executive and saying the “courts are outside of the government” makes it seem like they aren’t a part of the state.
The important point is that courts have the power to overrule unconstitutional or unlawful government decisions.
Why is it so weird that a language as widely spoken as English should have dialectical variation?
Wait ‘til you find out what some of my friends mean when they say “pavement”.
Consider though system like the Swedish system which existed in the Viking age with Things and a king.
Things were courts with huge power, and consisted of a gathering of all free men and had basically unlimited power, because they were the people. Meanwhile, the government was the person of the king.
I think that's an example of a system where the courts (Thing) is clearly not part of the government.
I'd say it's weirder to conflate state and government.
Germany for instance? Google "Bundesverfassungsgericht". I don't think such a separated checks and balances system is all that unusual in democratic countries. A major task of a "proper" justice system is to keep the government in check.
It is, but in casual conversation, “government” often means the people/party currently in power (of the executive and/or legislature).
You can see this when people say “[X] is unable to form a government”. They don’t mean unable to form a judiciary.
The concrete example would be Canada "debanking" the truckers who protested in Ottawa for exercising their GOD given right to free speech. Another concrete example would be Germany having banks close accounts for the AFD and AFD related people.
Some basic googling would tell you that:
1. the AfD thing was the decision of individual banks, not of the German government. Basically, in a free world companies can decide who they want to do business with.
2. the Canadian trucker "debanking" was quickly resolved because the Canadian justice system did their job and overruled the unlawful "emergency" government order
This is only really true in certain countries that don't really do democracy. In Britain for example parliament is sovereign.
Farage was debanked. So was Trump and Melania, AfD politicians, Le Penn in france.
I may have misread the topic of conversation but he was debanked by a private bank - I was arguing against juristocracy but possibly incorrectly aimed
From what I can read on various news sites, not even LePenn blamed the government directly. All those cases were either business decisions of companies who can freely decide who they want as customers, or quickly overturned as unlawful by judges.
It would be good if you did at least a minimal amount of due diligence before spreading misinformation (but I guess spreading misinformation is the whole point).
Are you saying the US government been implementing sanctions to make right wing activists not be able to receive bank transfers? That sounds like friendly fire and backwards, are you sure you understood the "source" correctly?
Not from the US, but for example anti-lockdown campaigners in Canada had their bank accounts frozen IIRC
Wow, I think disagreeing with a lockdown in the face of a pandemic is pretty fucking stupid but even so, freezing people's bank accounts is even more messed up and should not happen over any sort of non-violent political actions in a modern democracy. Seems unblocked now, but still that seems like a bananas reaction.
For reference as I hadn't heard about it before:
Previous administrations have yes.
I’m trying to remember the last time an international criminal court judge came to my community and brandished a firearm while shouting slurs at me. It has to have been at least a few weeks now.
You mean right-wing terrorists? The ones that forcibly invaded the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and attacked police officers in an effort to distrupt democracy?
The current admin views right-wing terrorists as brave heroes in service of Dear Leader.
Currently in the US, it's not criminal if it's done at the bidding of Trump, or if Trump approves of the violence.
The federal government is still stymieing the investigation of the ICE/DHS killings of Minneapolis citizens, violating their own policies requiring investigation.
There's no more federal rule of law until there's a full change in power, and that requires installing a functional DOJ and a new Supreme Court that is more interested in the law than in furthering partisan politics.
Frankly I think this is a good bit of hormesis for European countries. It's critical that we have domestic payment infrastructure.
what would be an alternative currently? i know of services like twint but this is a local swiss solution. any more EU wide established solutions??
[delayed]
Europe does have domestic payment infrastructure, that's in some ways more advanced than the US. That doesn't matter because US sanctions don't depend on control of the infrastructure itself. They have a recursive structure: if you don't enforce US sanctions, or you trade with a peer that doesn't, then you yourself become sanctioned. FATCA works the same way, as did the deployment of the global anti-money laundering system (a US invention, largely).
Let's get rid of US dependency for governement infrastructure as quickly as possible please.
In progress.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49632470
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49225112
Killing the survivors of a shipwreck[0] is a textbook example of a war crime[1] and would explain why the liar-in-chief is so sweaty about the ICC.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/11/28/...
[1] https://www.mediaite.com/media/tv/cnns-elie-honig-points-out...
In what world do you think Trump even remembers about the double tap on a fishing vessel more than a day ago? He has no worry about anything, he has escaped prosecution for everything he's ever done, and I doubt he believes he might face a tribunal at the Hague, if he even actually knows what the Hague, or a tribunal, or the ICC actually are.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/trump-calls-all-icc-memb...
The United States has never recognized the jurisprudence of ICC anyways. So to the United States these judges are just regular foreigners making decisions they don’t like. Sanctions are an appropriate tool for the United States to meddle in foreign affairs anyways.
Personally I don’t really have much faith in the ICC; its premise is flawed since great powers will never be deferential to a foreign court system anyways.
True, neither has China, India, or Russia.
The amount of damage US is doing to itself to protect a genocidal regime is unbelievable.
They didn't have to go with NixOS...
Had to be a team of circle jerk external advisories that want to become rich by inflating the effort here
This is my fear.
I dont think Determinate Systems was involved, despite their proximity to the Netherlands (Eelco being Dutch). They work with American arms manufacturers, so I suspect that may play a role.
They previously used openSUSE and then Fedora. But both have companies behind them, where-as NixOS does not. And with NixOS they are more sovereign.
Why did those not work out? Why do they think things will be different with NixOS?
Because it was suse and fedora
Fedora is connected to Red Hat which is a US company, which is exactly the dependence that is undesired
NixOS (or rather nixpkgs) in its current state heavily depends on GitHub/Microsoft at the very least, and switching to anything else is non-trivial.
I think it makes sense? You probably get an easier time reproducing a config on thousands of devices using NixOS?
Golden image deployments and netboot have been around for ages. If you want an unified system and control the infrastructure, it doesn't really matter which system you use.
I'm not sure why they chose nix. But it does make it easier to carry local patches than a lot of other systems. I hope they succeed.
The one that makes it trivial to carry over local patches is Gentoo. I carry a set of patches to every new computer and update them whenever neccesary. No overlay yet :P
it makes so much sense. a small team of experts maintaining a rock-solid base configuration providing the essentials, which can then be built on top of for agency/department or even personal specifics - all declarative, immutable, cachable, testable. I can't think of a better tool for the job.
As a downside, any change to software, version updates, keeping things secure now depends on the team is experts. Most are easy, some are hard (e.g. new software now requires a new Swift version - one person motivated enough to do that project has been pushing it for months), some are annoying (patch to libc means you're re-downloading your whole system).
As a positive thing, maybe at least nixos will get a serious security pipeline rather than the current best-effort community approach.
Well that was the whole problem to begin with! A lack of experts. Hence they went with IBM and MicroSlop. These guys are late.
buildroot
Somewhat related: https://www.thestack.technology/nixos-atomic-os-france-sover...
The more countries trade with each other and depend on each other, the better things are for peace and human advancement.
The zero-sum mindset that's de rigueur at the moment needs to die soon or the world that we'll inhabit is gonna suck.
But it would seem there’s a certain balancing act. Because that kind of economic integration can also create pressure points for an autocrat to exploit in ways that are contrary to peace and human advancement.
This is why many Enlightenment thinkers didn’t just view monopolies as an economic problem; they viewed it as a direct threat to free and just society.
We've gathered decades of evidence in support of this, with commerce and trade supporting global peace.
Though, it's nice to see in this particular case that a near monopoly player gets unseated and creates room for innovation.
The idea of "change through trade" mostly worked great (see most former socialist European countries), but sometimes not at all (see Russia and more recently the US), and China is kind of in the middle of both extremes and may swing to either side in the future.
For this to work all participants need to play along, not throw a tantrum & actively trying to sabotage the system. In such cases, you need to cut out the faulty participant & continue without them.
But now you are not playing along either...
Yes, exactly. Playing along with anti-cooperative and anti-progressive behaviour is not on the agenda. The goal isn’t to get along with everyone.
I previously thought the same, with Europe and Russia doing lots of trade e.g. Germany buying lots of gas from Russia, and many western companies being present in Russia. It seems obviously true.
But Russia still started a war anyway, so I guess it's not actually true.
Yes, but we (in Europe) cannot afford all the digital infrastructure to be concentrated in one partner country. If you buy something from us and we buy something from you, that's trade. If we have to buy everything from you, that's a dependency, and we need to fix it asap
How is that a sanction? seems like a blessing instead.
Hopefully this will cause Denmark and its banks to issue more Dankort cards
How does switching desktop OS help you retain access to email and payment services, neither of which care about your OS?
Because the ICC and Dutch authorities could no longer access their bank accounts or emails because of sanctions Microsoft chose to enforce .
OK, and how does changing your desktop OS help with that? Does NixOS grant you access to a locked bank account where Windows 11 doesn't?
It will help. because it will kickstart their native software industry and may even encourage others throughout Europe to get back to work seriously in that area and look to compete, because actually there was no real reason for them to give up in the first place. All you need to do is look at the Brits with what they lost in Acorn and Arm technology.
It doesn't in and of itself, but there's no clear reason why the US government could not instruct Microsoft that sanctions include a prohibition on granting OS licenses which are likely to be used by sanctioned persons. They're trying to get ahead of things rather than do the bare minimum.
Some people might consider not having access to Windows 11 as a blessing in disguise when businesses are "forced" to move from Windows 10, now they can see there are other viable options.
It’s a blessing, Microsoft has always been mediocre throughout their entire history. It’s a shame that so many American and European vertical tech companies gave up in the late 1980s, and 1990s.
If you haven’t noticed, Microsoft has trouble competing when the playing field is even remotely level.
Never again America.
All your negotiation power across the world, gone, because of one Orange person.
And not because he secretly took power, because you elected him, twice.
On the other hand, the US is still negotiating with lots of countries across the world, continuing to invest and be invested in, continuing to grow economically, and more.
Your personal point of view which primarily exists in a silo on the Internet does not match the viewpoints of most of the rest of the world, including folks in Europe.
So, yes again, America. That's how the world works.
FAFO America
Make sure we find out then! Part of our problem is there is never consequences for the fuck around part.
Move on you won’t miss Microsoft and you will find new opportunities.
As a US citizen and FOSS lover, I am absolutely pleased about this. Tearing down and tearing out US tech giants will only be good for computing in the long run.
European bureaucracy has a thing for weird technology - Scala, Flatpak, now NixOS. But still better than being dependent on proprietary software not made in Europe
Why is it weird?