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It's not clear that anything will be kneecapped. You need more than a desire to not use these products, you also need a viable alternative. Using products from China or Russia probably isn't deemed viable if the concern is politics, which leads to a need for Europe or Canada to build alternatives. They have not been good at this for a long time, maybe that will change, but it's not clear that it will.

India.

Today India invited President of EU commission on its republic day & I feel like there are discussions on signing free trade agreement.

I was in my car watching it live when I recognized the President of EU commissioner and I was like hey!!

I feel like friendly relations of EU and India are definitely on the rise & I have said this previously as well and talked to my other cousins/family who works in Coding and most agree that a deeper India-EU ties are possible.

One thing we were discussing is if EU could directly invest funds in Indian companies instead of going through 10 layers of councils/commissioning companies but to people who want to either build private solutions (Preferably open source?)

I do feel like that's inevitable too. EU's financing is something which I have heard is tricky within EU itself but there are some recent initiatives to stream line it and perhaps India can even integrate into it if its actually net positive for India.

Overall I feel like I am pretty optimistic about India EU relations (though I feel like I have bias but what do people from EU think respectfully?,I'd be more than happy to answer as I talked to my developer cousin about it for almost 2 days on how EU India integration especially in tech feels so good and inevitable haha :>)


Good call out, India is likely the most viable option.

India's position on Russia means it's a non-starter as a serious trade partner.

India doesn't really have a position on Russia/Ukraine itself but wants peace within the region.

Yes, India does seek russian oil but that's because I feel like India and russian trade deals have been from the start of cold war where America supported pakistan.

If you actually observe our history, we were hesitant about joining any block but it was the fact that America started investing in Pakistan which made us closer to russia.

I feel like the average person is either Ukraine supporting/Neutral for what its worth.

That being said, I feel like India's just looking out for its own interests. (Ahem America's attacking venezuela for oil)

I feel like if this is such an non-starter, then India has made its stance clear that its always willing to co-operate to grow its country and if EU gives a more lucrative deal to India. I feel like India can slowly decrease its dependence on Russian oil as well.

The thing is, EU right now is in this position because it got so reliant on America. We had seen this during cold war and we have always kept our cards open while still maintaining peace. I feel like India should look after its own interests first and foremost and see when objectives align (something canadian's PM said recently too and Trump got so angry on him that he's again talking about raising 100% tariffs)

Honestly full support to Ukraine. I hope a peace deal can be arranged in Ukraine-russia.

That being said, if you feel like EU's gotten a better partner (Americas invading Greenland, China's authoritarian, which other country has the tech innovation close to India?) then sure, I hope EU does whats in best of its incentives as well.

But my honest bet is that India is EU's best bet to move from American techno-dependence given recent Greenland crisis.


I can't wait to see how many indians we are going to be forced to import due to that "free trade deal". They must have looked at how well it went in canada and said among themselves "now that's how you destroy a country we gotta get some of that". [EDIT] Hopefully national politicians get balls, more balls, and tell their MEPs to vote against it like the mercosur deal.

This BS should stop (even if you vote for AfD or National front)

It is so difficult we still to get a working visa into Western EU. The way this is done is by total bureaucratic nature of Ausländerbehörde.

When he was CTO from Netflix, Gaurav Agarwal Could not get a visa to relocate to Germany. (No more with Netflix)

So even of one has > €80K salary and working in Apple or MS hq in Munich it is pain in the arse.

On the other hand this is encouraging people to apply and get passports. I for one would have never naturalised as German if the residence permit was quick and easy.

In summary, there are encouraging people to migrate.


Then EU citizens should support undocumented immigrants, as we do in the US. It is inhumane not to give them full welfare.

Is your first sentence sarcasm or you don't see news?

Sadly I would consider now that America's just not an ideal position for immigration right now and this will remain a scar for America imo.

Many of people I know (or friends of friends/brothers) are migrating from America to either Europe or shifting back to India.

I don't think that America can particularly do something about it. Trust's pretty fragile.


What little immigration we have from India are highly educated and thus quite productive individuals.

You’re (deliberately?) confusing the issue with e.g. illegal immigration or asylum seekers who often come from poor, war-torn areas with little education and possibly a very different mind-set.

I haven’t been accosted by roving gangs of well-educated IT Indians, I find the thought funny ;)


For what its worth, I have to mention that India losses more on this deal than Europe because India's actually for the first time iirc imo giving up tariffs or reducing them. India has the highest tariff rates for a developing country from the start (indiscriminant) and is only offering upgrades to EU mostly fwiw in terms of this free trade deal.

I have heard this deal be described as EU beneficiary from EU sources.

Ah yes, I feel like what you want for an EU is a connection with America which has been a very unreliable partner would even be an understatement in today's geopolitical environment.

It's saddening to see if you are from EU who actually believes so. I am more than happy to answer your queries in good faith but this just feels like pushing some of your own agenda or straight up racist.

We come with open arms even though the massacre of jallianwala bagh is still in our memories. There is just no question regarding the fact that EU primarily british forces had extracted immense wealth from India and India had to primarily rebuild it from scratch healing from the scars of its colonial past.

There's actually an internal pushback from some people i feel like who feel like EU is still imperialist & want to shut down this deal from India side given India hasn't lost much after the trump's tariffs compared to EU whose greenland was in some serious sovereign threats.

But I guess the point is that EU India deal is inevitable in this multi polar deal. India wants EU to be the financial hub where EU can then reinvest in India and India can create technological innovation.

I have tried to respond with as much calm as possible but I must admit that your message felt like a must admit,ragebait to me in start but I hope that this detailed message can help clear up on the details.

If you have any reasonable questions man, feel free to ask!


Both may benefit. Some will lose. If benefits overweigh losses then ok.

Well Rapido bike means Auto-wallas are angry. That is reality.

The highest tariffs are holding India back. A decent original nike shoe is about €50 here but why it is Rs5000 there (with lower Purchasing power). Local businesses have too long bribed Indian politicians. Recently I replaced the gate of my house here in EU. It was 20 years old. No rust despite old. I remember the steel supplied by our companies is crap - we repaired our gate every few years. Or it was not properly painted.

Costs of computer etc are too high for any startup etc. and with our talent more cheaper imports from china would be great to build a local giant.

On the other hand our people do

- exploit Digital Ocean T-shirt give away to create stupid pull requests and burden maintainers in GitHub open source project

- curl dev stopped bug bounty due to many sending AI reports

- clone AOSP and IIT Chennai said it have created a independent OS.

Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmai founder) recently said we have become users not creators.

Even Ambani with all his money can't do a good tech company.


I am not saying India's perfect. Far from it.

All the issues you mention are valid and I guess it all boils down to some aspects of over population and also crowding within the CS market too which impacts passionate people in CS too (something I wrote about as well)

But like I feel like leadership skills in India will go far. It's time to go and build things instead of trying to be consumers. The people who do this in India are gonna get rewarded disproportionately in my opinion.

I will just do my work building new things which isn't work for me but fun which I enjoy. So yeah!

Edit Leadership skills don't mean leading people but rather like I guess I meant Innovative skills in the sense of building new things and everything ykwim tho leadership skills can go far too, I feel like innovation skills are more needed too and the same point goes for both essentially imo.


> not saying India's perfect. Far from it

The is the reason it will never change.

Talking in double negative.

Citizens are so shameful to admit issues.

In most of the West, that I know of, people admit to issues. Brazenly say, yes , German train system is under performing, no investment in the last 10 years from both parties. Then there is chance for change. It is happening.

Ego issues need to cleared away.

Mic drop


You do know that the UK literally isn't in the EU, right? A lot of your rant is really weird.

I mean perhaps, yea I must've got sidetracked by India's colonial past but for the average Indian I would consider for that passage that they generally equate UK to be part of EU usually. (Perhaps from the pre-brexit era's or just in general)

I wouldn't consider it a rant per se but rather that India's trying to move towards an multi polar deal and EU and India actually has a more net negative and Indians are wary of this deal even more so but on aggregate the deal would be extremely beneficial if seen from both sides with reason.

Also isn't UK trying to pester back into the EU again. It's super complicated to follow even as someone who follows geo-politics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_re-accession_of_the_...

> I mean perhaps, yea I must've got sidetracked by India's colonial past but for the average Indian I would consider for that passage that they generally equate UK to be part of EU usually. (Perhaps from the pre-brexit era's or just in general)

When I started writing about jallianwala bagh I probably got distracted because I used to be part of drama club and we had this act when we were young and literally the amount of people dying and everything truly shocks one & genuinely disturbs one.

I recommend this documentary to know more about Jallianwala bagh massacre: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9JZJx67cvo

I think my point which kind of got muddied up is that India wants to cozy up to EU and build things together but not to UK so much. India's extremely sensitive regarding UK given its past and in this deal,is cautious about EU and UK making ties again or any such discussions too.


India has literally just finished agreeing a significant new trade deal with the UK.

I guess I can only give anecdotal evidence as there aren't any surveys about it but India posseses a historical resentment towards UK.

I guess only time will tell how the Indian public perceives such deal.


Judging by the very large Indian community living in the UK, and the extensive community and business links between the two countries, I imagine “very well”.

I really think we (as OCI/NRI) should move on from using Jallianwala or whatever. This doesn't help. Don't use BS to justify.

Every damn guy that get visa refused uses this and in a way insults those sacrifices.

Come to reality. Present or at least last 10 years.

Who did what? You need to fix your own country. Even if British didn't invade - the princely states of India were feuding. Fighting. If it was not one country then TN and Karnataka would have gone to war.

UK were open minded to elect a non- white as PM in UK. Though he was very bad for for UK.

Do some creative things instead of using colonial things. Nobody cares. If some from that family hate UK or west then why come and live a happy life here (being UK/EU citizens). As an OCI holder, I get better treatment at immigration than I was an Indian citizen.

While lots of things exist like ISRO etc there is still abject poverty, pollution, health care issues.

Yes, India sends talents. Myself living about 10 years here.

But note. TCS etc employees gain more coming here than they contribute. Yes, skill shortage etc. at the end while using the fantastic TGV here in France - I am benefiting more than contribute despite working in a high tech scientific industry.

Eventually Bihari in TN will say I did so much work in Coimabatore mills but you guys are treating me shit; and for the non-hindi speaking Tamil in Pune they treat like shit.

If all these are better the internal economy will be great. On path to some self sufficiency. No. Instead you come here to insult current EU UK citizens. It is of no use.

The point is even if Sundar Pichai was in India he would not have built a Google.

You can be cautious but at the end people like Bhavish Aggarwal or biju or l&t CEO etc are the ones you get there. They don't give a shit about people. Until then people will try to move here. Fix that.

Otherwise people will come here to work. Just 9-5. No sat/sunday work. No fking Manager would call you after office hours.

(Again, there will be YouTube videos of NRI telling - it is better life in India than USA/EU. Yes, true. If you are 10%top earner in India or at the


Wtf am I reading...

How can you even suggest moving from Jallianwala bagh when so many people were killed in the most gruesome way. I suggest you to watch the documentary once and then go ahead and suggest the same.

> Come to reality. Present or at least last 10 years.

??? No, it is our bloody past that we will never forget what the British did that day.

Even British historians from documentaries mention that people in Britain think that British empire was "the good guys" but in reality, the atrocities committed were equal to nazi germany levels and they really tried to suppress this information getting out.

Would you say to a Jew to come to reality right now? Do you realize how in-sensitive things are you talking about right now??

Heck, Even Germany apologized about the genocide that it took against the jews (holocaust) but Britain has never issued an true sincere apology about it in much capacity.

> Every damn guy that get visa refused uses this and in a way insults those sacrifices.

Those weren't only just sacrifices. Those were cold hearted murders by British people to "fire higher" & a calculated attack to kill.

Now you mention some problems within India.

UK extracted $64.82 trillion from India during colonial rule & we are still improving. I am not kidding when I say that UK left us in freaking shambles and the partition day echos screams too.

You mention Indian states fueding. Well, firstly they are now Indian states but they were sovereign nations comprising the now Indian states. Suppose EU and America are feuding over greenland too, so would your suggestion be for say China to occupy both to create peace? Do you realize the ludicrousness in your comment?

Do you realize that Britain tried the rowlatt act and so many other acts which was the FREAKING reason that Jallianwala bagh massacre took place.

People were humiliated on a street where they had to rub their noses and walk on all fours and crawl. There can be no justification for this.

Do you realize that whole of India voted against any British law that restricted Indian freedom yet they still passed the law iirc?

India has its issues right now some because of its colonial past. I am Indian. I am trying to call a spade a spade and you aren't. If I am wrong, feel free to correct me about anything.

So even if India has its issues and I will admit nobody likes talking about Indian issues than Indian themselves. My point is, we are working on fixing them. We have a multi party system with decentralization & we are seeing growth and India has 0 angel tax, 0 startup tax, insanely good seed funds by GOVT itself and green tech cities and startup cities like bangalore, gurugram etc.

But in no way of form does India having problems try to justify the bloody past and not even Britishers try to justify it now so its crazy to see your wild response (let's admit UK's having problems too, Every country does and that's okay and that's my point)

As I have mentioned repeatedly, I am not against EU but you can absolutely see why some people in India are worryful of the deal given UK was part of EU (pre-brexit) and wants to come back (like tf?)

I am not saying that UK people are all like this. What I am saying is that they take pride in the former british empire from what I can gather when it was established on mass exploitation and blood bath.

Building railways in India would be beneficial “to the commerce, government and military control of the country”, Governor General Lord Hardinge had said in 1843. The fact that it was not Indians that urged the rapid construction of railways in the country, but the Chambers of Commerce of Manchester and Glasgow, and the European Chambers of Commerce at Calcutta and Bombay, underlines why the British built railways in India — to make exploitation of raw material more efficient.

Read more at: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/transportation...

Britain was very much racist during that time (from what I can gather, there are still certain parties and people who are racist towards Indians)

Simply put, Britain extracted 60 trillion $ worth of our wealth, built railways to only exploit us further, killed people in massacres and humiliated them, tried to really really put down the revolutionaries for so long.

This is our past. The scars of our past still haunt India. If you can't show sympathy or have to say things like this is what people say after not getting Visa then that's so disgusting to say.

I hope I have made my stance clear. Out of our respect and sympathy to elders and our nation's sovereignity, India generally suggests to distance ourselves from UK.

India prefers a partner like EU much much over UK. We really don't want to negotiate much with UK from what I can tell. But once again, the question is if UK wants to pester back into EU, we will be questionable about any such free trade agreement.

I have nothing against the genuine normal UK people and businesses tho. I talk with UK vps providers on quite a frequency but just, I want to point out that we are aware of our past. We always will be.

I am just saying that even those UK provider would be/have been more sympathetic than you because literally not even british historians argue anything and the question they ask is if they should apologize or not but I feel like the apologies if insincere would be worth nothing.

It's saddening to see people with such mentality as yours in a forum I enjoy. I have tried to put forth reason first.

Propaganda works man, I don't blame you, When enough things get repeated, we repeat the same.

But I know that you are smart, so use reason not propaganda to answer such query. I highly recommend you to enlighten yourself over what happened in Jallianwala bagh massacre from the youtube documentary that I provided.

I am willing to have a good faith discussion (only after you watch the documentary), have a nice day.


FYI, you seem shaken by what you saw, but I do have to point out a few things:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre

1. This massacre happened 107 years ago. None of the people involved are even alive any more. In some cases even their children or grand-children are no longer with us. Judging children by the sins of their parents leads nowhere.

2. Holding grudges for so long does not seem healthy for the person holding them.

3. Another commenter points out that India is looking for a trade agreement with the UK... I guess the government of India doesn't hold the same view point as you (as an outsider, your viewpoint seems very extreme).

Edit: found the trade agreement: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/uk-india-trade-dea...


So continuing from my past comment which did get extremely long but I hope that I could capture the nuance.

My point's probably that EU and Indian relations feel the most easy to form out of any major world right now and honestly I do have a bit of bias in here as I wish to create private solutions or open source solutions from India and the EU market and its privacy conscious users feels better connection if EU and India themselves are connected better and I am feeling like the chances of that happening is quite high.

But I guess politics tricky and I can be wrong, I usually am so yeah. But I am just gonna build private (or Open source solutions) and have a bit of focus within EU market as well.

Politics isn't really my best suit because I like to come to agreements and politics in this case is trying to tangle the untangled which feels pretty tricky to do such I guess but I also really like talking about India-EU relation so yeah. Probably sacrifices must be made & looking for hopefully a healthy discussion of politics which I didn't witness in the GP's comments being honest.


See I want to thank you for this comment because we can approach something new on top of it man.

I will try to respond to each of your point but before that I have to say something.

The Jallianwala bagh massacre fundamentally showed to us that we cannot co-exist with British Raj. We have to demand for purna swaraj & such demands were what led us to our independence. So any historical book of ours mentions the massacre starting from 4th grade to all the way to 10th maybe even till college. We learn more and more gruesome details as we progress mentally.

You can go ask any Indian about Jallianwala bagh and we would all know it. I can bet on that.

(IMP): My point of extreme frustration is with people who somehow try to lessen its historical significance or somehow say factually in-accurate words like the OP did & I took my sweet time trying to explain everything. There is just no justification of what happened but you can just observe from the original parent on how some justifications were trying to be given (we gave you trains, you were fighting etc.)

What your 1) and 2) point are is about the fact that its very historically old & that's a valid point on which I will come. But you can just see even today, we have people who somehow are (propagandized?) about it. This is what annoys us as a community & why we still judge children sometimes if they are taught about the glory of british empire (this is what I feel like I have heard from people in UK) & they forget to read about the bengal famine, the jallianwala bagh massacre and all the atrocities committed whether in India or in the colonies of our African friends.

And this is why India and British relations have never really been repaired after the massacre (Quoting a british Historian)

Also, India isn't alone in this of what you consider "extremism".

Like, in China something approximately 100 years ago happened the extremely sad and depressing event we call rpe of nanking by Japan.

China still remembers it & you can see how it still impacts Chinese-Japanese relations even to this day and it impacts the whole region.

Taking a chinese article from Chinese media: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1099911/agony-endure...

Let me read you the wikipedia article of China-Japan relations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Japan_relations

As a result of Japanese war crimes during the Second Sino-Japanese War such as the Nanjing massacre, and the Chinese view that Japan has not taken full responsibility for them, the bilateral relationship between China and Japan continues to be a sensitive issue in China.[2]: 24

Coming to American Civil war. You can still observe how even after a 100 year old war. People of color are having issues in America even to this day & the problems still persist to this day.

My biggest issue which you might consider judgement is the fact that I feel like UK still romanticizes this era (and teaching children to romanticize it too), like they treat it as when UK had all colonies and it was all good and everything. And this is why I have an issue to this day. I have only heard that UK people still don't know the gruesome details of all the massacres which took place.

Every country have these sensitive nerves. Time really doesn't have an impact, in fact as more and more time passes on, the impact deepens in my opinion.

I just wanted to say the post to all the people who ever thought that India benefitted from Britian's colonialism. Nil nada, (negative) India was extremely exploited and India would've been better off without colonialism without a doubt of anybody's including historian's minds. I have given sources in the past detailed comment too.

This is an extremely sensitive issue to India and we don't like people who are reductionist in this approach just as China regarding Nanking massacre.

Now regarding 3) the point is that just as how China and Japan's relations have improved over the years and gotten worse as well, India and Britain's official relations are the same as well.

That being said, every Deal somehow reflects back to an average citizen in country. I am not over-exaggerating when I say that people's blood especially nationalist/political people boil over this instance. I wouldn't consider myself much nationalist and I am mostly moderate (Heck I am complimented for my moderacy) but this is literally the one point where whole India went extremist. I seriously can't explain how much sensitive this topic is.

So at some point if UK and India FTA does pass consider a huge resentment from Indian side. Politically I doubt something like this would happen but perhaps, I can be wrong I usually am but I haven't seen any one person who is enthusiastic about having stronger ties with Britain out of all countries.

It's part of our history and no matter how bloody, quite frankly we will not forget it.

I don't know what you want me to say but I will say what my heart feels in the moment. We aren't against the normal genuine people of Britain. But we are simply cautious and have our guards up because of the bloody past regarding our agreements with Britain. Britain came to India out of free trade agreements and slowly started expanding military. Of course, something like this rehappening feels implausible but not exactly off the table given some romanticization of british empire being observed from outside.

Now my point isn't to bring hate towards the normal genuine people of british state and we don't have a grudge towards the normal people. Because even British historians are really apologetic about the whole scenario and provide no single justification ever. I personally continue to have customer relations with British VPS providers etc.

I don't know how to explain this, feels a little contradictory but just as how Chinese trade with Japanese, India trades with Britain & we set aside our differences at the moment and even make friendly relations & in no way as an Individual I am saying that you britishers are responsible for what your grand parents might've done. But i am just simply reporting it on why there is a hard limit on the amount of trust and relations which can be established in the first place given the bloody past.

I really don't think that many are completely anti british but just cautious. We would still somehow prefer more EU (non British) products than say British simply something akin to how EU is now preferring to move over from America in the first place.

Sure one can argue about the events of time here again but I hope that I have done a fair job at explaining how from an Indian context time really isn't part of the equation so much as one is imagining from outside.

I don't think I am doing a great service telling. You just have to be an Indian to really know what I feel like I am talking about.

I can be wrong, I usually am. But I am speaking this comment from the experience I witness around me.

If you ever visit India, Visit Jallianwala bagh. You can say that I am from that state, those were my people & if you really want, I will be more than happy to guide you this one time.

Honestly Britishers were racist [not sure about right now] (during that time, something which British historians point out once again) and hated us and you could see that. I don't intend on answering hate with hate and that never was the intention. But the reasons are so extreme (in details and everything) that it might make the answer feel extremist.

Honestly Idk, India's answer to hate has always been an open arm or peace. We always try the peace route first (tho I feel so obligated to point out that in Jallianwala bagh, They ordered to shoot on peaceful people enjoying some festival WITHOUT any warning, just straight up shooting bullets and killing people)

I think India still runs on Gandhian principles for the most part. And that's honestly how we got our freedom.

Yes, India still has its issues (Overpopulation leading to an extremely hard competition in exams and all the other issues) and there are lots of issues and nobody likes talking about it more than us ourselves.

But overall, I still feel like there's some real optimism and hope for India and Indians kind of feel it.

Have a nice day man.


There are plenty of viable alternatives. Perhaps not all are as polished as some of the mainstay US companies, but the funtionality is there. It's no surprise that people in the US are ignorant of the existence of the many excellent EU software companies and services.

Then why aren't Europeans using them?

Not sure why you're being downvoted, Europe has been mostly bad at software and services for a long time now. There's a reason Linus lives in Oregon.

There's always this occasional chatter about being more competitive, and certainly some good ideas -- for example, the Draghi Report -- but then nothing happens, or you get a few half measures at most.

I guess the one upside of Trump being such an aggressive jackass is that it might finally provide enough impetus for European countries to take further integration more seriously.


Europe has good software companies. It's just that the US has bigger VC funding which makes European companies unable to compete when US/EU companies are "fighting".

There's a reason Linus lives in Oregon.

What is the reason Linus lives in Oregon? By his own admission, 90% of his workday is reading and answering email. We have email in Europe, so that can’t be it.


Which dynamically typed languages perform like a statically typed language?


It says "more like", not "like". Javascript now performs more like a statically-typed language, as one example. That wasn't always the case. It used to be painfully slow — and was so when Go was created. The chasm between them has shrunk dramatically. A fast dynamically-typed language was a novel curiosity when Go was conceived. Which is why Go ended up with a limited type system instead of being truly dynamically-typed.


It depends what the alternative is. A vacuum is worse for example.


There's no power vacuum. There's now a Mastodon nonprofit organization with an executive director and leadership team.


Right, and it's TBD if that will turn out to be more or less effective. I'm hopeful, but more voices isn't always better.


So worse... a committee.


A committee from the beginning would definitely prevent something from really ever starting. Could you imagine Linus working under a committee to get Linux running?

At some point, you do have people that need to step back. If you turn it over to another single person, they could pivot and "ruin" the product. By turning it over to a committee, hopefully, any ruinous ideas get overruled. At least in theory


It's an open source project. What exactly are you expecting?

Keep in mind that every for-profit publicly-owned corporation has many shareholders, as well as a board of directors, which is, gasp, a committee!


yes, but they typically hire a singular CEO to drive a cohesive vision and strategy with the check that they can fire the CEO at anytime.


Yes, and Mastodon has an executive director (as I already mentioned), which is basically the nonprofit equivalent of a CEO.


Thanks for clarifying. I wasn't sure that's what that role was intended to do.


It's been winning for a while


The other issue is that it's expensive. You can put a video on youtube for free and they carry the cost and cover it with advertising. If you self-host and your videos get a LOT of traffic it gets expensive quickly.


I feel people are often unreasonably scared by this sort of thing, so here are some numbers to give perspective and aid in decision-making.

Bunny CDN charge $5/TB for their volume network, which should be pretty good for video distribution, reducing after 500TB/month.

At a bitrate of 5Mbps (respectable for 1080p, significant overkill for more static types of content, as technical stuff will tend to be), 1TB is 444 hours. If, like OP, you publish 90-second videos, that’s 17,777 complete watches per terabyte. Depending on your situation, that might sound like not much or like a lot.

Put the other way round, at 5Mbps and $5/TB, each watch-hour costs $0.01125, a bit over one cent, and it takes 3,555 people watching your 90 second video to cost one cent.

For the sort of scale that most people are dealing with, it’s simply not an issue.

I don’t know if bots upset this balance. They may.

If you actually are spending more than a terabyte per month on it, then for technical audiences at least, I suspect that if you invited donations to specifically cover hosting costs (something along the lines of “I host these videos myself because ads and relying on YouTube are both bad for society; if you feel inclined, you can donate to help cover the cost, currently about $X/month”) you’d very quickly get a surplus. Or for longer-form content, charge something for 4K video (which costs 4.5¢ per watch-hour at 20Mbps and $5/TB) and let that subsidise the free 1080p (costing 1.125¢ per watch-hour) stream.

(On the $5/TB figure: my $5/month Vultr VPS includes 1TB per month, and charges $10/TB after that. Some VPS providers include a lot more; a Hetzner €3.49/month VPS in Europe includes 20TB then charges €1/TB. But remember, if you host video from one point only, that it is unlikely to work well for people halfway round the planet. See another of my comments in this thread for description.)

As for storage: each 90-second 5Mbps video is 56.25MB, and at a rate of $0.01/GB/month, each one will cost you $0.00675 per year to keep. Were you to post one 90-second video every single day and keep them all online, your monthly bill would grow by about $0.20 each year.


Another way to estimate upper/lower bounds for hosting videos is by considering the grey market adult video industry. It seems like there are hundreds, if not thousands of websites providing access to video, and from a unit economics perspective I remember reading those advertising CPMs are on the order of $0.01-$0.05 even for the biggest and least illegal websites like the Mindgeek properties. So I would assume the more shadowy websites operate at a budget of less than $0.01 per thousand views in revenue.

I’m assuming their CDNs are just specialised low cost hosting providers as opposed to p2p IoT botnets, but you never know.

I wish someone had the time and motivation to do an investigatory technical deep dive into the infrastructure they use.


You're showing it's expensive to get a lot of views on a video, or as you say, it's not expensive if you get a small amount of views.

I want the fediverse and open web to be viable, and we need a solution to hosting high view count videos.


LOT of traffic is a big if. A lot of videos only have 1k+ views and I will believe those are mostly drive-by viewing. Using a CDN can help you if you go viral.


A video CDN isn't cheap though, so outsourcing that to YouTube is the best option for most people.


If we want the fediverse to take off we need a solution to the "LOT of traffic" issue.


Cloudflare egress is (somehow) free.


He says that as if he's certain it can't possibly, even a remote possibility, lead to societal collapse. First, there is no way he can be certain about that. Second, what is an acceptable probability for an existential threat? That's the real question to answer, and he didn't attempt to answer it.


societal collapse != humanities demise.

Climate change could do a lot of damage it’s just not extinction level damage. Even large scale nuclear war based on current stockpiles isn’t going to result in extinction.


We're splitting hairs, but that still leaves the question, "what probability of societal collapse do you think is acceptable?


IMO it’s about minimizing harm at this point.

There’s levels of societal collapse, mass migration can destroy the existing social fabric without necessarily being that terrible. Fertility rates being so low means developed countries will likely want large numbers of immigrants.

At the other end stopping all CO2 production tomorrow would result in severe consequences. We can’t transport food to cities without burning fossil fuels. Obviously that doesn’t mean every current use case is worthwhile, but we can’t ignore the short term here.

The good news is we’re actually making a lot of progress on climate change. The electric grid being ~90% very low carbon emissions by 2050 is a realistic goal and would avoid the worst predictions.


I don't see any progress in terms of the rate of increase in atmospheric co2 over time.

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...


That graph is well below earlier forecasts. Accurate predictions require more than simple extrapolations which 30 years ago suggested exponential growth. Instead CO2 per capita and especially in terms of GDP resulted in a different story.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita

Add in more kids being born in 1985 than 2025 and per capita numbers matter. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-births-per-year

Poor countries are rapidly becoming wealthier which is obviously a good thing. Meanwhile wealthy countries are becoming a lot more efficient with their carbon emissions. Where those lines intersect is what matters in the near term because poor countries aren’t copying 1950’s technology. Skipping power hungry CRT screens and inefficient engines etc just makes economic sense. China emissions spiked as they industrialized but they are currently minimizing their investment in outdated fossil fuel based technologies in favor of solar and EV’s etc.


Co2 levels are the best metric for progress, and progress would be a steady lowering of the rate of increase. We are not seeing that, and AI's power hunger is likely to make it worse despite all of the positive things you mentioned.


CO2 levels tell you nothing about future progress, the legacy of soon to be removed infrastructure built 40+ years ago still impacts it. Meanwhile the vast majority of power brought online in the last decade is ultra low carbon. We know how that story plays out.

AI powered by renewables has ~zero impact on the climate.


I hope you're right, but I'm not optimistic. The demands for power by AI is immediate and extremely large. We can't bring nuclear online fast enough so it will likely keep co2 output high.

Assuming you are right, when would you expect the rate of atmospheric co2 increases to start to decline?


I expect the global peak annual CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry to occur sometime in the next 5 years largely dependent on economic activity. I’d give it something like 90% odds.

CO2 from land use (deforestation etc) has already dropped by half since the 1960’s, but I know less about that so I’m unsure of the details. That said it’s well under 10% of total emissions so probably not a major factor for now. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-land-use?mapSelect=~C...


Is infinite growth really a positive thing on a finite planet? Are native populations replaced physically and culurally the answer to making an imaginary number go up annually?


My point was about a declining global population concentrating in a few areas not being a major issue.

Globally more babies were born in 1985 than 2025. Population growth at this point is all down to people living longer but that’s a one time correction, we’re already in a steady state situation and heading to decline. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/number-of-births-per-year


There is a non-zero possibility of Taylor Swift causing societal collapse.

That's not a reason to take such a scenario seriously.


Non-zero describes the chance of everything, sure. Infinite improbability drive and all that. But the chance of climate collapse causing social collapse is pretty much just a function of how bad we let it get measured in degrees C.


Your example is infinitesimally small, climate change is not. But you didn't answer the question either, what probability of societal collapse do you think is acceptable?


You also didn't attempt to answer it. What probability of societal collapse (however you define it) do you find acceptable?


What existential threat to society do people/society really take seriously?


Having grown up in the 60s and 70s, I'd say people took nuclear war seriously. People had different opinions on how likely it was and whether it was an extinction event, but there was near unanimity that it was "a really bad idea." The obvious difference was that was impossible to doubt it was man-made and it wasn't something that slowly built up over decades--there was no way to say it was "normal"


I think it’s a fair point to say it was considered as a serious threat to certain countries(US/Russia/UK/China etc). And militaries certainly did prepare for it. But other than Switzerland with all their bunkers - which society in all facets prepared for it, really?

WW2 with it’s restrictions & rationing, and almost all civilian economy/effort being redirected to the military is I think what a lot of people are wanting in my honest opinion.


Trends change. There is still no hard evidence that static types are net positive outside of performance.


People say this all the time, but I've never seen any data proving it's true. Should be rather easy too, I'm at a big company and different teams use different languages. The strictly typed languages do to have fewer defects, and those teams don't ship features any faster than the teams using loosely typed languages.

What I've experienced is that other factors make the biggest difference. Teams that write good tests, have good testing environments, good code review processes, good automation, etc tend to have fewer defects and higher velocity. Choice of programming language makes little to no difference.


I think there are two reasons.

1) Some books have images, charts, tables, etc. The screen size makes a big difference for these.

2) The format of the "book". Reading a PDF for example is much better on a bigger screen.


I don't believe it's entirely the result of bad policies, but you also left if vague. Which bad policies are entirely causing this in your opinion?


For starters we have cancelling and ripping up clean energy projects, introducing serious uncertainty about tarrifs, increasing unease for any immigrant (and even non-white citizens).


Courtesy of AI

Avg monthly "clean energy" jobs so far: - 2023: ~3.38M - 2024: ~3.45M - 2025: ~3.42M

Any impact to the economy due to "green job project cancellations" wouldn't have surfaced yet.

Uncertainty about tariffs: it was already on the books to earn $2.3T (conventional) / $1.5T (dynamic) over the next 10yrs, and inflation is far more under control than it was last year despite the tariffs. Of course legal challenges have disrupted it now. This is also completely ignoring the massive investment foreign countries/companies are making on US Soil to employ US employees.


Those are bad things. It doesn't mean there aren't other contributors to our economic challenges.


So where’s your list of these “other contributors“? People answered your question, and your response was “wrong, try again.”


Debt cycles would be one example that's not a policy decision. https://youtu.be/SoKr0QVCLPA?si=kKcXNetb-kAPr1S8

Edit: having said that, "these economic problems are ENTIRELY the result of bad policies". That's a very bold claim, which warrants some strong evidence. No one has provided any strong evidence that it's ENTIRELY from bad policies.


Re: your EDIT - fair enough, thanks for the additional information.


Firing thousands of skilled and qualified federal employees, gutting research grants and funding, spitting in our allies faces.


Those are bad things. It doesn't mean there aren't other contributors to our economic challenges.


At this point I think the ball is in _your_ court to start suggesting reasonable cofactors.



I don't the current economy is "entirely" the result of bad policy, but I do think it is the primary contributor. I read/listen to a lot of economic commentators as an interest of mine, and there is pretty broad agreement that tariffs are the main cause of inflation failing to tick down to target this year. There also seems to be consensus that the manufacturing sector has been harmed by tariffs and immigration policy rather than helped.

In my opinion, the AI hype cycle has temporarily buoyed the economy from more serious pain. If significant economic gains aren't realized from it soon I think we'll begin to see that pull back.

I do, however, think a return to ZIRP by the Fed would result in a significant economic boost. Psychologically, everyone remembers how advantageous low interest rates are and I think it could result in real investor/borrower optimism, temporarily, if we go back to that. Unfortunately, that would likely mainly stimulate the demand side of the economy, and not as much supply. I don't have high hopes for how that would affect inflation.


Yes, no major disagreement here. You can also point to the Us debt/deficit as another major storm cloud on the horizon. Trump is the worst offender on that, but far from the only one.


That is a bad thing. It doesn't mean there aren't other contributors to our economic challenges.


Glad you agree with me! The person I originally replied to said, "these economic problems are ENTIRELY the result of bad policies"


He’s not going to if he’s already done this “actually you’re wrong but I won’t tell you why” comment in defense of this admin multiple times.

God at least back in the day partisan hacks tried to hide it a little bit


I'm as anti-trump as anyone. He's doing tremendous harm to our economy and our society. Your anger is making you see things that aren't there. All I did was question the assumption that our economic problems are ENTIRELY the result of bad policy. Some how you jumped to some very wrong conclusions based on that tiny shred of information which wasn't even about Trump.


Nah man, I have eyes.

You coyly suggested that there were other contributors at play to multiple people who suggested what bad policies are causing the economic issues and then didn’t provide them until called out.

You’re running partisan defense when you act that way


I questioned the use of ENTIRELY in this sentence, "these economic problems are ENTIRELY the result of bad policies", that is not partisan.

You aren't trying to have a conversation. Have a good day, I have better things to do.


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