I agree with every word you just said, except one.

This will help the US economy, not hurt it. American businesses paying for a commodity as mundane as Microsoft Office, year after year, is an unnecessarily taxing parasitic drag. If this can be eliminated, all the better for every American.

(Well, except for the ones who own a piece of that one company, but fuck them.)

Its like software patents. Its not the patents that are good, but the incentive to work around them.

EU regulators were perfectly capable of blocking any US purchase of EU companies at any time. They were perfectly happy taking US money all this time. It's ridiculous to now complain about all that money the EU earned.

Still as a American, I shrug. Europe should have been allowing, recommending, and actively promoting the creation of their own software their entire time. I think it's great that Europe is finally deciding to truly compete in technology.

The whole thing reminds me of Jerry walking out of the daycare in Rick and Morty. Yes, that was always allowed.

Europe always had the capability and opportunity to create European alternatives to US technology. There was never anything stopping them from going that route at any time. In fact, I welcome this work as an American. As a consumer of technology, I'd love to see some alternatives to the US technologies I currently use. Why Europe is approaching this as some flex on the US seems a bit ridiculous to me. This was always allowed.

Probably in here somewhere: "run locally on your laptop without depending entirely on cloud"

Most carriers are running their own RCS relays now.

Those that don't fall back to Google but Google has said they're not going to allow freeloading for much longer.

But, AIUI, there's a conspiracy to only allow "approved" clients to uae any of them. Certs I'd guess but haven't looked deeply enough. GrapheneOS lacks an RCS client currently. Phones with full user ownership are also blocked.

Most people I know don't care and use Signal.

EU techie: "We did it, we replaced Google!"

Boss: "Good job! Are there any other US dependencies?"

EU techie: "Um, yes, it runs on top of Bing."

Boss: "Microsoft!?"

EU techie: "Yip. We couldn't get our home-grown one to work right."

Boss: "Uhgg, well, don't tell anyone and you can have a Citroen."

Russian citizens have no incentive to push innovation, the war's potential prizes give ordinary Russians no notable advantage, yet Ukraine is fighting for its survival: it's adapt or die.

California joined Canada. The orange thing is now all yours!

Which will come first?:

1. Practical flying cars
2. Practical fusion energy
3. Robot that do can dishes
4. Useful quantum computer

...the Higgs BSOD

Ukraine is affecting their daily lives, by hitting their pocketbooks instead of wasting their attacks on "war crimes," i.e. hitting worthless targets which don't help end the war at all.

Murder a civilian and all you do is slightly sour their family against the war. Blow up an oil storage tank and you just made thousands of people have to suffer through inconvenience.

And worst of all, you heartlessly, viciously left them alive, where they'll remember how much poverty sucks, and they'll complain about it too. Good luck achieving that level of sadistic manipulation through mere murder.

2 may, 16 "ukranian" firepoint drones in 3 waves on starobelsk (lugansk) students dormitory kills 21 and injures 41. this is ukranians killing (ex) ukranians, most of them kids. ofc barely reported in western media.

It was all over the media, just like when Russia deliberately bombed a school in Mariupol on March 16, 2022 which had a message it was being used as a shelter. At least 600 people were murdered by Russia.

24 may, russian explicit retalliation mainly on kiev, an exceptionally massive strike involving 100 missiles and hundreds of drones, most of them passing through and hitting infrastructure. civilian casualties: 4 (by worst-case ukranian accounts (unconfirmed))

On March 9, 2022, Russia deliberately struck Maternity Hospital Number 3 in Mairupol, murdering four people, wounding at least sixteen, and causing at least one still birth.

Shall we discuss the murder of civilians in Bucha by Russia? The mass rapes by Russia?

When Russia collapses due to Ukraine's victory, that will be a glorious day for celebration.

Ex-superpower that can't afford it's lifestyle. Like the US will be in a few years if we don't sweep the idiots out of power.