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There are EU alternatives to Stripe.

I know what you meant, but I think that there are alternatives, even if they are maybe not as good as the ones made in US.

Also, if the goal is to go all in on data sovereignty, so be it - put the companies in the sanctions list. It will only grow.


> Also, if the goal is to go all in on data sovereignty,

maybe start with DE-CIX ? (or other internet nodes)


I agree with this comment here.

For me the main BIG deal is that cloud models have online search embedded etc, while this one doesn't.

However, if you don't need that (e.g., translate, summarize text, writing code) probably is good enough.


So long as the local model supports tool-use, I haven't had issues with them using web search etc in open-webui. Frontier models will just be smarter in knowing when to use tools.

Ok I need to explore this, I didn't do it yet. Thanks.

> For me the main BIG deal is that cloud models have online search embedded etc, while this one doesn't.

Models do not have online search embedded, they have tool use capabilities (possibly with specialized training for a web search tool), but that's true of many open and weights-available models, and they are run with harnesses that support tools and provide a web search tool (lmstudio is such a harness, and can easily be supplied with a web search tool.)


you can do web searches in lm studio. just connect an mcp that does it. Serpapi has an mcp, for example

Also, I had several experiments where I was interested in just 5 to 10 websites with application specific information so it works nicely for fast dev to spider, keep a local index, then get very low search latency. Obviously this is not a general solution but is nice for some use cases.

I think it was like that some years ago. Now, as you said, it's really useless. 20 months are just the time to find an apartment, furnish it and get used to the place.

Afterwards you have to pay some of the highest taxes in the world....


In DE probably Otto.de is the closest you get (?).

In NL I remember Bol was quite good.


Yeah bol and coolblue are good in Holland

It's the app "stores" that encourage and push for that.

You pay less tax to them when you do subscriptions rather than one time payments, if I recall especially with Apple Store (something like 30% first year, 15% the second year of subscription).

This is why 120$ over 10 years (1$/month) is more profitable to companies than 120$ in a shot.



Actually the Green deal is an attempt at that. Masked as a way to save the planet, its goal is to get rid of deep dependencies like gas oil etc, which we in Europe don't have sufficiently.

The main issue is the way the transition is happening, because I see China doing exactly what we should be doing: build coal, nuclear, etc. while you build tons of solar panels or windfarms.

The self inflicting pain forced by radical ideas is what is killing Europe. We have lost the pragmatism that made Europe move at a crazy speed after WW2.


I never understood why energy independence wasn’t put front and center when talking about this.

Because its not in the interest of the US that EU think that way. Thats what a lot of the trade deals that the US has imposed on the rest of the world.

Because we have lost pragmatism over the last 40 years more or less. The leading politicians like to treat people in a way as if these didn't understand what's going on. So instead of saying energy independent, they call it CO2 tax. Their fake morality is what is actually causing all this.

Radical ideology has taken over, rather than pragmatic ideas. I don't know how that happened, but I know we are paying the price for it, although EU is rich enough to do exactly what China is doing. That alone would put us in a better position.


> I can't fathom how someone designed these things and though, yep, this is a good experience.

My 2 cents: it's the typical "lab" test. It overall looks cool if you think about it, on paper. In reality, they should test with children inside (potentially screaming, because that's what they do!), while pedestrians/bikes are outside near the street so you need to pay particular attention, the traffic light is turning red, and at the same time you need to open the windows to let that f** wasp out, that somehow was inside the car. I wanna see how cool that is. If there are UX standards for accessibility, why aren't there patterns about such things? Oh, right, maybe there are, and someone wants to "innovate" :)

This is the kind of distractions that really can lead to accidents, because you need to actually "watch" whether something got activated or not.

EDIT: my comment was for the other comment that mentioned the buttons for the windows :) somehow I clicked on the wrong "reply". It still applies, though!


I think nobody in the EU believes that America is the country of freedom and privacy and anonymity. (Boolean and)

I guess what the OP meant is that in EU you might have the police knocking at your door for some reasons you don't have in the USA, not because they don't have data about you, but because in the USA you have some very strong constitutional rights that are really hard to bypass.

Twitter, Tiktok, etc could never be created in the current EU.


> because in the USA you have some very strong constitutional rights that are really hard to bypass.

It exists, but it is being selectively ignored by those in charge. Don't assume it will automatically defend you, especially not pre-emptively:

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jail...

https://www.thefire.org/news/lawsuit-fire-challenges-unconst...


Since they can operate in EU, I don't see why they can't be made in EU. There are well known disadvantages that prevents emergence of SV style startups, but I'd argue even that is a good thing.


> in EU you might have the police knocking at your door for some reasons you don't have in the USA

Is there any significant difference where the law gives you fewer rights in the EU in this regard? Speaking of knocking, it's very unlikely that in the EU some SWAT team will knock down your door because someone anonymously told them you're dangerous, kill you, and suffer no consequences.

> but because in the USA you have some very strong constitutional rights that are really hard to bypass

Other than the right to have guns, which keeps everyone happy and gives the SWAT team a legitimate reason to go in guns blazing, kill you, and get away with it, I'm having a hard time finding a right that isn't routinely subject to some exception. Guaranteed when the ultimate authority on the constitution is staffed by corrupt yes-men.


“In the EU” only because some countries might have individual laws, unless you have more information about the EU specifically causing that?

The country with the worst “bad opinion, police comes knocking” is the recently seceded UK.

And I guess Germany has something against nazism?


Netlog was a pretty successful attempt outside the US though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netlog


Tiktok was also not created in the current US.

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


Sure they could. You'd just have to answer subpoenas when the police are trying to identify a user, same as in the USA.

You might get a few more of them. Recently a bunch of French people received jail time for repeatedly posting how the president was a pedophile and his wife was a man. Because, you know, harassment is illegal in many European countries. But the only obligation by the service provider, if asked, would be to delete the posts and give the user's IP address.

The EU Digital Services Act is actually a much wider liability shield than the USA's Section 230. I suggest reading it. ISPs ("mere conduits") have basically absolutely immunity, and caches merely have to ensure they make an effort to delete the cached object when the original object disappears (i.e. they have a reasonable expiry time) to be immune. Social media, since it's a content publisher, has more obligations, of course, but they are also not that onerous and things like automated scanning are only required if your site is big enough to afford them.


The second paragraph is exactly why people don't trust when a platform is based in EU.

I never heard of American presidents going after individuals on Twitter or other platforms. Neither Obama, nor Biden and also not Trump who is receiving so much hatred and bad words, without even touching the assassination attempt. Which is probably the only reason why they threatened to go after people, but that seems to be understandable - and I think that's the line you should not cross in a forum/platform.

The mindset is completely different.


Europeans are generally okay with bullying and harassment being illegal.


We should not mix random unknown person being bullied online with VIPs or politicians being made fun of.

Even during the Roman Republic people could make fun of or heavily insult politicians, and also with ugly things that we could never say today. Even Julius Caesar was mocked heavily (the famous "every woman's man and every man's woman")

...unsurprisingly, this changed when the Republic ended and the Empire started.

And here we're today thinking about our sensitive politicians :)


Exactly, the right to mock one’s rulers should be considered fundamental in a modern society. It’s part of the price of power and an important release valve for social tensions.


In a lot of European countries you don't have the right to mock or insult anyone.


USA does not have strong constitutional rights. It has constitutional rights with zero teeth, little to no judicial backing and about thousands convoluted loopholes that ensure they dont apply to you.

And when, rarely, they do apply, you get no restitution or relief.


Elon Musk mentioned multiple times that he doesn't want to censor. If someone does or says something illegal on his platform, it has to be solved by law enforcement, not by someone on his platform. When asked to "moderate" it, he calls that censorship. Literally everything he does and says is about Freedom - no regulations, or as little as possible, and no moderation.

I believe he thinks the same applies to Grok or whatever is done on the platform. The fact that "@grok do xyz" makes it instanteous doesn't mean you should do it.


I think his target demographic benefits from the degradation of women; a feature, not a defect; ticket closed; won’t fix.

Anyways, super cool that anyone speaking out already has their SSN in his DB.


> Literally everything he does and says is about Freedom - no regulations, or as little as possible, and no moderation.

Weird. Why do people get in trouble for using the word "cis" on twitter?


I think it is completely fine for a tech platform to proactively censor AI porn. It is ok to stop men from generating porn of random women and kids. We don't need to get the police involved. I do not think non-consensual porn or CSAM should be protected by free speech. This is an obvious, no-brainer decision.


Second line of the article.

> X is planning to purge users generating content that the platform deems illegal, including Grok-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

Which is moderating/censoring.

The tool (Grok) will not be updated to limit it - that's all. Why? I have no idea, but it seems lately that all these AI tools have more freedom than us humans.


An AI porn tool makes the world less free, even with post hoc purges. That is the point.

If you want to be an actress and you are 14 years old, you now have to worry about tools that make porn of you.

If you are an ordinary woman that wants to share photos with your friends on instagram, you now have to worry about people making porn of you!


It's the "freedom from/freedom to" thing that always comes up when talking about "freedom"


X terms of service specifically censor things Elon doesn’t want.

It’s against the TOS to post a picture of your own boobs for example.


But then he also gets mad if law enforcement acts on people doing illegal things on his platform...


Why the downvotes?

The one above is not my opinion (although I partially agree with it, and now you can downvote this one :D ). To be honest, I don't care at all about X nor about an almost trillionaire.

It was full of bots before, now it's full of "AI agents". It's quite hard sometimes to navigate through that ocean of spam, fake news, etc.

Grok makes it easier, but it's still ugly and annoying to read 90-95% always the same posts.


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