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
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. For countries that support ICC, avoiding United States is also appropriate.
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.
And reducing exposure to US sanctions (for example by investing into alternatives to Windows or Visa/MasterCard) is an appropriate response for the affected countries.
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).
Cryptocurrencies in general are a good alternative. They're strictly unsanctionable and, depending on the currency selected, also untraceable, so secondary sanctions would be extremely difficult to apply with any kind of granularity. National-scale sanctions, evidently, would still be quite feasible.
Alas, that kind of anonymity runs counter to the very soul of the European bureaucratic ethos. They absolutely want to know in detail where every single cent goes, plus the power to block transactions at will, so they're looking into some magic solution that allows them full purview and full control while perfectly denying the US and its spy apparatus the possibility to also see into it, an impossible combination of requirements.
And I say all that as a fan of the EU. It's one of their many blind spots they need to overcome if they ever want to become a technological superpower.
I've never seen Wero before. Is it similar to Zelle in the US?
Edit: it looks like Wero requires Google/Apple device attestation [1]. So this is basically a non-starter in terms of "sovereignty" from the US government. Anybody on the wrong side of US sanctions still can't use this since they get their iOS/Google Android devices shut off too.
It gives the Zelle UX to the underlying SEPA Instant infrastructure across the EU. The EU is using Wero to migrate off of Visa and Mastercard. Parent's werotracker tracks not only banks supporting it, but merchants as well.
> Edit: it looks like Wero requires Google or Apple device attestation. So this is basically a non-starter in terms of "sovereignty" from the US government.
You don't replace the entire stack at once, you replace it piece by piece. Each piece gets you closer to sovereignty. Payment infra, payment rails->tech infra and foundational systems next. If US Big Tech pulls the rug, that Jira ticket goes to the top of the stack. It will take time, but we're headed in the right direction for Europe to decouple from the US. You eat an elephant one bite at a time.
Any revenue and capital that can be kept in the EU versus being sent to the US is capital that can be recycled into further decoupling, versus ending up as US shareholder profits and tax revenues.
My new vocabulary word for today: Hormesis is a two-phased dose-response relationship whereby low-dose exposures have a beneficial effect and high-dose amounts are either inhibitory to function or toxic.
The many war crimes the US has committed are the main reason they don't want to participate or recognise the ICC. They don't like it when their people get punished for their war crimes and will threaten their alies with invasion to make sure nobody dares to try.
Murdering people on international waters is not even the latest war crime, IIRC the Hague Invasion Act was created because of the war crimes they were comitting in the Middle East 25 years ago.
Trump isn't sweaty about the ICC. There is next to 0% likelihood that an American president would be sent to the ICC to be tried or something. Anyone who thinks that might happen or thinks the ICC might have the power to compel such a scenario is quite delusional or just misunderstands how the world actually works.
Trump has a lot of domestic enemies, and not just in politics. Unless he goes all-in and refuses to leave office, it must concern him that some future US president might decide to Milošević him to the ICC - either as score-settling or to simply get him out of the way.
> 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.
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.
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).
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
After being heard to exclaim "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?", Henry II subsequently explained that the 4 knights each came to their own individual decisions about how best to deploy their swords.
Being a democracy does not make countries immune from the phenomenon where under their own judgment, private actors decide with information provided to them in part by their own government, it’s more often than not in their best interest to be with them rather than against them.
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 judiciary is always a part of the government. It may be notionally separate from the executive, but that's (a) a different thing and (b) not always meaningful from the perspective of normal citizens. And it's not at all standard that the judiciary is meant to keep the government in check. Historically that's not been the case at all, and the growth of US Supreme Court style powers to invalidate legislation is a relatively recent phenomenon that governments can decide to end or restrict arbitrarily at any time.
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.
He was debanked by every bank in the UK, for entirely political reasons, and then they lied about it.
To what extent this was explicitly coordinated by the government versus people who are merely strongly ideologically aligned with it is unclear; in systems as totalitarian as the UK is becoming it's a distinction without a difference as anyone not so aligned is quickly removed for one plausible reason or another and replaced with someone who is.
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).
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.
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...
> 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.
I think it's true but only in equitable societies.
Putin or Trump are totally isolated from economical and political consequences so they have no problem severing ties. If there are genuine co-dependencies, including for the leaders, they it's much harder to break peace.
I imagine the ideological aspect is the deeper motivation but it only matters with the right circumstances.
I mean, we in europe did a a lot of trade with US too, and between other (then and still) EU countries, but the americans (and brits, and a few others) decided to attack Iraq for example ("Iraq has WMDs!"), and there were no sanctions and trade went on. And many other conflicts and bombings all around the world.
So it's not actually caring about the war and dead people (if we did, we'd do something about what israel is doing in gaza), but "us vs them", and russia is "them" while US was traditionally "us", until daddy Trump came along.
Someone probably told the EU politicians that russia will cave after a month or two of sanctions, there will be some kind of a "revolution" there, someone "pro EU" will be set there, and gas would be even cheaper.... A similar scenario was probably given to Trump for iran (just bomb the government, they'll cave, and you can set up a new pro-US leader there again).
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.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That is true but I mean individuals can use that stuff for free. The micosoft 365 has a zillion copies. Most of the stuff that companies use is applications they developed that they load on azure are probably java or C++ based applications about a decade or two old.
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.
Microsoft is now charging monthly fees.. It is not about tolerance, it is like countries are paying rent to USA for something that their own people can provide at far lesser cost and there would be less bullying too and more independence to top it off. Once there is a momentum worldwide to transition away from Microsoft or American centric suppliers, the there would be more diversity too and more interoperating tools.
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).
"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
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).
The other costs are the same or maybe less because they will in local currencies. The other costs are virus detection and updates. The updates are usually related to viruses or new interfaces that Microsoft is modifying for its own sake which is typically cloud related. There is competition in cloud delivery you know. Microsoft is not the cheapest solution.
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.
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.
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.
> Are you seriously suggesting America's influence is increasing?!
I'm not sure. In some ways yes, in other ways no. It's also changing. Negotiation doesn't always look like two countries come together and have a handshake and photo opportunity and declare some thing. But the OP is implying "it's all gone". That's just incorrect. America by virtue of simply being America always has a seat at the table.
The NixOS foundation is Dutch, probably felt like a safe starting point (esp considering that the French has already gone that way).
Besides, technically, if you're chosing an OS in 2026, it sounds like a good plan to start with a system that has many reproducibility, correctness properties and separated packages designed in from the start.
Now, I'm not a NixOS user (altering mostly between win,fbsd,osX and some debians), maybe there's some horrible dragons lurking in using it in practice (do share in that case), but from reading about it sounds like a plan for a system used in a future where people don't need to curse too much about legacy decisions?
No, unfortunately NixOS will prove unworkable. It's a classic case of bureaucrats making decisions about things they don't understand based on random political factors like where the creators are based.
Nix has numerous properties that make it unsuitable for a normal desktop OS:
(1) It has no concept of libraries being backwards compatible, so if a 200kb core library changes in a backwards compatible way e.g. security hotfix, it will rebuild/redownload pretty much everything you have installed. This kills your ability to roll out security fixes quickly and ensures that updates are far more painful for end users than even on Windows.
(2) Nix advertises its main benefit as being that you can easily roll back bad updates, which is just false. It makes this false claim because Nix treats user state as being out of scope. Try upgrading Postgres across major versions with Nix and then rolling it back and see what happens, or really any program that stores stuff in $HOME and doesn't support rollback. It'll just die, make a mess, and Nix will wash its hands of the affair by saying it did the bit it wanted to do (change the binaries on your path) and the rest is just out of scope.
(3) It has no working concept of native plugins, related to point (1). If two plugins depend on slightly different versions of their host program, they'll just load incompatible libraries into the address space and things will crash.
(4) It cannot run binaries shipped for generic Linux without lots of fragile hacks like binary rewrites. But in the real world lots of important domain-specific programs are shipped as binaries, if they support Linux at all.
Not just the foundation, the inventors of Nix and NixOS are Dutch too, it came out Utrecht University. Even the name is from dutch "niks" for "nothing", the snowflake came later and is basically a retcon.
As for practical use, sure there are some rough corners (this is true for every Linux distro), but I don't think there's any horrible showstoppers. In fact it's particularly well-suited for use by organizations (as opposed to private individual use) because it's great for making highly customized but reproducible setups.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
> 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.
>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.
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.
Yes, they are neoliberals, which are hardly left by international standards. European social-democratic parties, which are the traditional Euro center-left, are generally on the back foot right now.
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.
I think NixOS is also just much better suited for this particular job than SUSE. We use NixOS for everybody at work even though we're a German company.
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.
It didn't ban US tech except in very targeted ways, when they already had a competent local competitor. There are, for example, iPhones and Androids everywhere in China.
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.
No, but there has to be a sense of belonging strong enough to make it clear that, on any given problem, the approach should be "what is convenient to us as Europeans vs American companies" rather than "what is convenient to us as <state X> vs American companies". And Americans (and not just them) ruthlessly exploit this state through basic divide et impera.
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.
> 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.
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.
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
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.
> 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.
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 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 US has lost every war after World War II, it is also lost in Central and South America when it comes to long-range infrastructure, having a rail system stuck in the 1950s is not gonna go anywhere, not leading the charge in Central and South America and getting that Pan American highway or Pan American railroad built from one end to the other?, and where is that highway or railway leading all the way to Nome, Alaska? The billions, trillions of dollars wasted, and US Steel which is now, owned by the Japanese.
By the way, if it wasn’t for the Russia’s ill fated war, the Chinese would have high-speed rail built out all the way to Europe, and would be making plans to build out all the way to South Africa, the Chinese have even taken the lessons of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and are gonna have Thorium up and running sometime in the early 2030s.
When it comes to Mercantile and Infrastructure China is one step ahead.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
> [...] 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.
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.
Alas, that kind of anonymity runs counter to the very soul of the European bureaucratic ethos. They absolutely want to know in detail where every single cent goes, plus the power to block transactions at will, so they're looking into some magic solution that allows them full purview and full control while perfectly denying the US and its spy apparatus the possibility to also see into it, an impossible combination of requirements.
And I say all that as a fan of the EU. It's one of their many blind spots they need to overcome if they ever want to become a technological superpower.
1: https://wero-wallet.eu/
2: https://www.werotracker.eu/
Edit: it looks like Wero requires Google/Apple device attestation [1]. So this is basically a non-starter in terms of "sovereignty" from the US government. Anybody on the wrong side of US sanctions still can't use this since they get their iOS/Google Android devices shut off too.
[1] https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599098295...
Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48207004 - May 2026 (777 comments)
Wero – Digital payment wallet, made in Europe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47038965 - February 2026 (132 comments)
Europe's Banks Launch Wero Payments to Dislodge Visa, Mastercard - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41666833 - September 2024 (88 comments)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Euro_Payments_Area
> Edit: it looks like Wero requires Google or Apple device attestation. So this is basically a non-starter in terms of "sovereignty" from the US government.
You don't replace the entire stack at once, you replace it piece by piece. Each piece gets you closer to sovereignty. Payment infra, payment rails->tech infra and foundational systems next. If US Big Tech pulls the rug, that Jira ticket goes to the top of the stack. It will take time, but we're headed in the right direction for Europe to decouple from the US. You eat an elephant one bite at a time.
Any revenue and capital that can be kept in the EU versus being sent to the US is capital that can be recycled into further decoupling, versus ending up as US shareholder profits and tax revenues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49632470
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49225112
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/11/28/...
[1] https://www.mediaite.com/media/tv/cnns-elie-honig-points-out...
Murdering people on international waters is not even the latest war crime, IIRC the Hague Invasion Act was created because of the war crimes they were comitting in the Middle East 25 years ago.
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.
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
You can see this when people say “[X] is unable to form a government”. They don’t mean unable to form a judiciary.
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.
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.
Wait ‘til you find out what some of my friends mean when they say “pavement”.
To what extent this was explicitly coordinated by the government versus people who are merely strongly ideologically aligned with it is unclear; in systems as totalitarian as the UK is becoming it's a distinction without a difference as anyone not so aligned is quickly removed for one plausible reason or another and replaced with someone who is.
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).
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.
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...
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.
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.
Putin or Trump are totally isolated from economical and political consequences so they have no problem severing ties. If there are genuine co-dependencies, including for the leaders, they it's much harder to break peace.
I imagine the ideological aspect is the deeper motivation but it only matters with the right circumstances.
So it's not actually caring about the war and dead people (if we did, we'd do something about what israel is doing in gaza), but "us vs them", and russia is "them" while US was traditionally "us", until daddy Trump came along.
Someone probably told the EU politicians that russia will cave after a month or two of sanctions, there will be some kind of a "revolution" there, someone "pro EU" will be set there, and gas would be even cheaper.... A similar scenario was probably given to Trump for iran (just bomb the government, they'll cave, and you can set up a new pro-US leader there again).
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.
Though, it's nice to see in this particular case that a near monopoly player gets unseated and creates room for innovation.
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.
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
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.
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).
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...
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.
If you haven’t noticed, Microsoft has trouble competing when the playing field is even remotely level.
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.
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.
I guess you're in the 22%
> Are you seriously suggesting America's influence is increasing?!
I'm not sure. In some ways yes, in other ways no. It's also changing. Negotiation doesn't always look like two countries come together and have a handshake and photo opportunity and declare some thing. But the OP is implying "it's all gone". That's just incorrect. America by virtue of simply being America always has a seat at the table.
Besides, technically, if you're chosing an OS in 2026, it sounds like a good plan to start with a system that has many reproducibility, correctness properties and separated packages designed in from the start.
Now, I'm not a NixOS user (altering mostly between win,fbsd,osX and some debians), maybe there's some horrible dragons lurking in using it in practice (do share in that case), but from reading about it sounds like a plan for a system used in a future where people don't need to curse too much about legacy decisions?
Nix has numerous properties that make it unsuitable for a normal desktop OS:
(1) It has no concept of libraries being backwards compatible, so if a 200kb core library changes in a backwards compatible way e.g. security hotfix, it will rebuild/redownload pretty much everything you have installed. This kills your ability to roll out security fixes quickly and ensures that updates are far more painful for end users than even on Windows.
(2) Nix advertises its main benefit as being that you can easily roll back bad updates, which is just false. It makes this false claim because Nix treats user state as being out of scope. Try upgrading Postgres across major versions with Nix and then rolling it back and see what happens, or really any program that stores stuff in $HOME and doesn't support rollback. It'll just die, make a mess, and Nix will wash its hands of the affair by saying it did the bit it wanted to do (change the binaries on your path) and the rest is just out of scope.
(3) It has no working concept of native plugins, related to point (1). If two plugins depend on slightly different versions of their host program, they'll just load incompatible libraries into the address space and things will crash.
(4) It cannot run binaries shipped for generic Linux without lots of fragile hacks like binary rewrites. But in the real world lots of important domain-specific programs are shipped as binaries, if they support Linux at all.
As for practical use, sure there are some rough corners (this is true for every Linux distro), but I don't think there's any horrible showstoppers. In fact it's particularly well-suited for use by organizations (as opposed to private individual use) because it's great for making highly customized but reproducible setups.
Why did those not work out? Why do they think things will be different with NixOS?
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.
As a positive thing, maybe at least nixos will get a serious security pipeline rather than the current best-effort community approach.
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.
The Dutch government can famously prevent sales of German and Luxembourgish companies yes.
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 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.
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.
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!
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/12/02/us-blocks-chi...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think this has a lot to do with how the case against Putin was built and Trump used his influence to disrupt it.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
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
I am wondering if every war time leader should expect an ICC indictment.
One can only hope. It may actually reduce the numbers of wars if our "leaders" knew they would have to justify their actions in court.
NAZA
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.
Neither are Israel or Russia, so the point is moot.
It's the ultimate expression of US corruption. There's not even a pretense of fighting for justice any more, just fighting justice.
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?
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.
By the way, if it wasn’t for the Russia’s ill fated war, the Chinese would have high-speed rail built out all the way to Europe, and would be making plans to build out all the way to South Africa, the Chinese have even taken the lessons of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and are gonna have Thorium up and running sometime in the early 2030s.
When it comes to Mercantile and Infrastructure China is one step ahead.
The US has been getting their shit rocked by people in sandals for the better part of 70 years.
Would NATO change the equation?
Could doesn't reopen hormuz.
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.
This is an honest question, I'm trying my best to word it to not sound like a troll.
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
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?
> [...] 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?