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Comment by jacquesm

5 days ago

> that is very unlikely to ever happen.

It's already happening.

> They are politically and societally paralyzed from building even basic things like datacenters which are essentially just industrial compute factories and the foundation for anything pertaining to data sovereignty and technology sovereignty.

No, they are not entirely blind to the consequences of this buildout and are trying to find a balance between environmental concerns and technological progress.

I agree that we should probably do more but to use words like 'societally paralyzed' is rather uninformed about what actual democracies look like.

edit: never mind, I just checked your comment history, this seems to be some thing that you are repeating over and over and getting the same kind of answers but you just keep doing it.

If Europe can't even build data centers, which come with low to moderate environmental impact, they won't manage to deploy a Starlink alternative either.

Even though they could use SpaceX launch capacity to deploy such a constellation, Europe has no such plans.

Your comment seems to reinforce the parent's opinion about societal paralyzation.

Europe can claim to be cleaner or more democratic, but it doesn't change that they get nothing done.

  • We're building data centres, there are several massive ones in my tiny little country (NL). We're also quite capable of putting satellites into orbit. We have swarms of these small satellites just not quite at the scale of StarLink and they're doing science.

    Your claim makes as much sense as saying that the US can't even build airliners. Sure they can't build good ones. That was a decision to replace the technically capable management at Boeing with an army of MBAs. Sure Airbus are a decade ahead but the US can still build them.

    The thing which many people forget was that, up until the current POTUS decided to reverse course, we were best buddies. We've invested a huge amount of money in US-based companies and generally worked together to increase the size of the pie for everyone.

    • Sure, but are we building them fast enough?

      Our current global share of AI compute is estimated at 5%, US at 78%, China 11%.

      We're projected to briefly rise to 8% around 2028, and back to 5% for 2031.

      That does not look like sovereignty and independence from the US.

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  • > If Europe can't even build data centers, which come with low to moderate environmental impact, they won't manage to deploy a Starlink alternative either.

    You must be trolling. Even US cloud providers have multiple regions in Europe, and the likes of Eutelsat precede SpaceX for a couple of decades and have been around for half a century already.

    > Europe can claim to be cleaner or more democratic, but it doesn't change that they get nothing done.

    I don't think you're noticing the US is plunging into self-imposed irrelevance. It can't even manage to properly fight a war anymore,as can be attested by the whole Iran fiasco. But keep parroting your alt right pipeline tropes pushed by Russian bots. Don't forget to complain how Europe is freezing and how minority rights are a societal problem.

>edit: never mind, I just checked your comment history, this seems to be some thing that you are repeating over and over and getting the same kind of answers but you just keep doing it

I've noticed this with people in tech who spend too much time on Twitter. They have a very weird view of Europe. It used to be the Fox New boomers but it has spread to people who you'd assume were pretty smart.

To be honest it's part of the reason I left Twitter and only visit this site rarely. Sucks as I've had some awesome discussions here in the past.

My suspicion is that it's related to the drop in standards in tech since the big ramp up in the 2010s and the way Meta and the crypto folks don't want regulation so a lot of their employees have a vested interested in bashing the organisation capable of actually introducing some good regulation.

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  • Rayiner, you are not going to bait me into giving you a piece of my mind because unlike you when you cross the lines (repeatedly, egregiously) I would likely get banned from HN.

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  • Sclerotic eh?

    Wow.

    "grown rigid or unresponsive especially with age"

    As opposed to what?

    What's next, a 'greed is good' sermon?

    • > "grown rigid or unresponsive especially with age"

      > As opposed to what?

      As opposed to the famously agile and youthful atmosphere of American legislation in technology.

      /s

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