[gip]

Surprised by this take. Building a startup is already insanely hard. So I wouldn’t like to add more challenge by spending time integrating with non-US services if they are not top just because of my political views.

I feel a better answer is for Europe to build real, competitive alternatives to US services.

[shofmn]

This is just one example, but I think worth sharing:

I've been running a new solution in beta for a while and am about to go commercial (Germany). In my solution, it's essential to keep personal data safe and ensuring the customer it's not shared with anybody else.

I used Azure and AWS in the past, but stopped. Using only German data centers & services is a selling point for my customers and builds additional trust. Aside the initial effort, I don't see any big technological disadvantages for my use-case and actually pay less now for operating everything.

[cineticdaffodil]

The eu can not move and function in any capacity standalone. The moment the is dropped out the eu tried to fill that hole with the other allies atoll.

[tinodb]

So now you know how much it matter :)

[cbeach]

I love seeing companies set meritocracy aside for partisan political posturing.

All people who run companies should relish their competition behaving sub-optimally.

[port11]

I love seeing regular people defend meritocracy as if we didn’t have plenty of examples of how the game is rigged and money-is-power-is-political-influence.

God forbid a business makes some ethical choices.

[Schmerika]

> sub-optimally

Optimal for society? Optimal for the Epstein class? Or do you mean optimal for the owner, personally, in the very short term?

Because that's the choice people are making these days. It's not really "partisan political posturing" to divest from countries running pedo blackmail rings on the world, or arming genocide, or bombing hundreds of schools. Targeting journalists, then lying about them to try and justify it. Pulling the plug on incubators. Targeting entire families with shoddy AI. Bombing civilian power plants and ambulances and hospitals and so on and on.

There's nothing partisan or posturing about saying "fuck all that". That's just your duty as a human being, the basic bare minimum. That duty doesn't get discarded just because you run a company or have evil competitors trying to race you to the bottom.

When companies are complicit with committing heinous atrocities at scale, and screwing up the world economy for their own gain, I find very little 'merit' in that. Is 'meritocracy' a purely financial term in your view? Do 'respect for life' and 'trust' and other nebulous concepts (which don't immediately affect the balance sheet) have merit?

[cbeach]

> Optimal for society? Optimal for the Epstein class? Or do you mean optimal for the owner

No. Optimal for employees and customers, which is, in turn, optimal for society.

Making technology choices based on political ideology rather than merit is bad for the interests of both employees and customers.

The hyperbolic statements in your comment suggest your worldview comes from an online echo chamber. With respect, I think you'd benefit from consuming news from a variety of different sources. Think critically about the biases and agendas of the media.

I suspect none of your favourite media sources mentioned the illegal cluster munitions that Iran used to destroy an Israeli kindergarten (among other civilian buildings) on Saturday: https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-us-israel-war-updates-...

War is an ugly business. Outcomes are rarely so pure that we can single out "good guys" and "bad guys". But hopefully once you've examined the facts objectively you'll see that the Israeli government is more ethical than Hamas, and you'll see that the American government (yes, even Orange Man Bad) is better than the Ayatollahs of Iran and their IRGC.

[Schmerika]

> The hyperbolic statements in your comment suggest your worldview comes from an online echo chamber.

No, nothing hyperbolic whatsoever. Everything I said is trivial to source.

If you believe otherwise then you might follow your own advice - this is all well documented stuff. You can even see the video of those premature babies that were left to rot by Israel, if you don't believe me.

No, I'm not saying that to shock you; it's an important documented fact. Like the prison rapists being celebrated on national Israeli TV, or the zip-tied teenagers run over by steamrollers, or the ambulances shot up and buried in a shallow grave, or Hind Rajab being used as bait for another ambulance, or any of the other thousands upon thousands of well documented atrocities which the US has helped to arm and enable.

> I suspect none of your favourite media sources mentioned the illegal cluster munitions that Iran used to destroy an Israeli kindergarten (among other civilian buildings) on Saturday

A kindergarten! Wow. That really is atrocious. Were there 100 schoolgirls in it, like the elementary school America blew up? Your source says no, but you seem really incensed by this property damage.

Is that worse though, in your view, than the 498 Iranian schools [0] targeted in the last months? Is it worse than destroying just about every school and hospital in Gaza?

> War is an ugly business

Being at war doesn't excuse war crimes - especially when the war begins because you don't like how well negotiations are going so you bomb a school killing 100 little girls, while killing the leader of a country with his grandchildren and torpedoing an unarmed ship.

> hopefully once you've examined the facts objectively you'll see that the Israeli government is more ethical than Hamas

To say this after the last three years requires something fundamental to be missing within you. I can not help you find it again. I wish I could; I truly do.

> you'll see that the American government (yes, even Orange Man Bad) is better than the Ayatollahs of Iran and their IRGC

Even if that were true, by whatever undefined metric you're defining as 'better', how does that give you the right to commit hundreds of war crimes and atrocities to change their government?

You might want to read up on recent US history btw - and how we're perceived right now [1]. There are many very good reasons why the world considers the US to be the greatest threat to global peace, stability and democracy [2], [3]; not just since "orange man" but since 2003 [4]. Iran never even come close.

0 - https://truthout.org/articles/us-israeli-attacks-have-damage...

1 - https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/14/america-allies-divi...

2 - https://truthout.org/articles/people-worldwide-name-us-as-a-...

3 - https://brilliantmaps.com/threat-to-peace/

4 - https://www.democracynow.org/2003/10/31/headlines/poll_israe...

[cbeach]

Thank you for being honest about where you get your news from (the links at the bottom of the post). This helps explain your worldview.

(non affiliated - not an advert) I would recommend trying Ground News, which helped me understand the biases within sources, and helped showed me the blindspots in news coverage that I'd missed.

I'd like you to cast your mind back to the acts that started these two horrendous wars - Gaza's genocidal invasion of Israeli towns where they massacred teenagers at a music festival, paraded raped women through the streets of Gaza to the cheers of onlookers, and forced young people to watch as their parents and siblings were blown up with hand grenades.

This isn't hyperbole. This isn't a politicised Western interpretation (a la "truthout.org") - this is an account of the videos shared by Hamas themselves, which were shown to Western journalists.

Hamas had to be stopped by force, and I support Israel's right to defend its own existence. If Hamas wishes to use human shields (as it has outright admitted it does), then the tragic collateral civilian deaths are the responsibility of Hamas.

And in Iran, the systematic rape and torture of young people and LGBT people. The massacre of 30,000+ peaceful protesters. And the outright genocidal intent of its leadership ("Death to America, Death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews").

The Ayatollahs had to be stopped before they built nuclear weapons. There will be tragic collateral civilian deaths, but fewer in the long term than if the IRGC are allowed to continue roaming the streets unchecked.

[Schmerika]

> Thank you for being honest about where you get your news from (the links at the bottom of the post). This helps explain your worldview.

What a weird leap to make. Nope, I just searched to find those; with a search engine.

> I would recommend trying Ground News, which helped me understand the biases within sources, and helped showed me the blindspots in news coverage that I'd missed.

I know Ground News; thanks though. I assume you're unaware how patronizing you're coming across, but trust that my media literacy is not the problem here.

Now, if you can point to where anything I said is falsifiable, great and thank you. Otherwise, maybe drop the insinuations and assumptions.

> I'd like you to cast your mind back to the acts that started these two horrendous wars - Gaza's genocidal invasion of Israeli towns where they massacred teenagers at a music festival, paraded raped women through the streets of Gaza to the cheers of onlookers, and forced young people to watch as their parents and siblings were blown up with hand grenades.

You think everything started on October 7th? ... You think there was evidence of mass rape? You have credible evidence of these young people "forced to watch"?

Do you also still believe in the 40 beheaded babies, the baby in the oven, the boobs being cut off?

... And you are out here questioning the media literacy of others? Physician, heal thyself.

> This isn't hyperbole. This isn't a politicised Western interpretation (a la "truthout.org") - this is an account of the videos shared by Hamas themselves, which were shown to Western journalists.

There is no widely verified reporting that the videos shown to journalists contain:

* Women being paraded through Gaza streets after rape

* Crowds cheering raped victims in public processions

* Families being forced to watch grenade executions of relatives

Yes, there were some videos shared by Hamas of them doing murder and other bad stuff. But that's not what you claimed.

> Hamas had to be stopped by force, and I support Israel's right to defend its own existence.

Very few people thought Israel had no right to respond to October 7th by force.

Responding with genocide? No. No they do not have the right to do that.

> If Hamas wishes to use human shields (as it has outright admitted it does), then the tragic collateral civilian deaths are the responsibility of Hamas.

A, Israel uses human shields too. They have done for years; long before October 7th. Not to mention their long history of mass rape, child abuse, torture, false flags, terrorism etc.

B, Even if human shields are used, the attacking force must still distinguish civilians from targets; avoid disproportionate harm; take precautions to minimize civilian deaths.

There's simply no way to claim that's what Israel has done and believe it without some form of lobotomy.

> And in Iran, the systematic rape and torture of young people and LGBT people. The massacre of 30,000+ peaceful protesters.

The 30,000 figure is widely disputed, and Israel have openly admitted to having had agents there stirring up that specific trouble.

And if you want to bring up systemic torture, you're going to have to explain why that's ok for the US and Israel - but not Iran. Myself, I'm consistently against torture.

> And the outright genocidal intent of its leadership ("Death to America, Death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews").

Calling it “genocidal intent” in a strict legal sense is debatable and probably overstated. However, killing tens of thousands of children and bombing entire cities into rubble; bombing 500 schools in Iran and basically every school and hospital in Gaza, etc - that's more than genocidal intent. It's genocide. So I'm very confused how you think Iran is somehow worse in this comparison.

> The Ayatollahs had to be stopped before they built nuclear weapons. There will be tragic collateral civilian deaths, but fewer in the long term than if the IRGC are allowed to continue roaming the streets unchecked.

A 40 year old claim, with absolutely no evidence. Let's try comparing that to Israel's nukes, and their 'Samson option'. Or, try comparing it to the only country ever to actually use nukes during war. Again, I just don't see how Iran comes off worse in this comparison without massive baseline racism and ignorance of history.

... There's a good chance that I'm wasting my time here, but hey - maybe some of this will stick with you. Try sourcing any of it on Ground News, if you like.