I was going to ask why something like mail.gov.nl doesn't exist but it turns out [0] (edit: wikipedia is full of lies) that they don't have a reserved second level domain for official government services to use? Is this really one of the countries pushing digital IDs?
> Official second-level domains do not exist.
Gov.nl is just a domain owned by the Dutch Government, like gov.ie or belgium.be.
Yes, this results in enshittification.
If the government needs trucks then they should just buy trucks, not build a factory to make trucks and then another factory to make lead acid batteries for the trucks and then start mining lead to make the batteries etc.
At some point they have to interface with the market and you still have to solve the problem of keeping the market competitive and keeping the bidding process from being captured. If you're not doing those things then you're screwed either way; if you are doing them then it's better to just buy finished goods than to have civil servants manufacturing doorknobs and operating rubber tree plantations to make weather stripping.
The two big ones I see off the top of my head are:
1) Once the government has paid for digital services from some private company, they are then providing those digital services to their country's public.
2) Because of that, they are then also storing their people's data in those systems.
If (say) Ford decides they don't like the government of (say) Belgium, and don't want to sell them any more transit vans (or whatever), that's not really a huge deal. Belgium has the vans already, and they can just get another supplier for the next set.
If Microsoft decides they don't like the government of Belgium, even if they don't decide to do anything nefarious with the data (which is absolutely a real concern, both from malice and incompetence), they can shut off their services overnight and then the people of Belgium have no governmental websites or digital services. (And if they have a contract that says they can't...well, what's Belgium going to do about it? Ask Trump real real nice to make Microsoft keep the lights on?) Or, even if they're perfectly polite and commit to an orderly transition, Belgium still has to put in absolutely massive amounts of time, effort, and money to select a new vendor and migrate all their data and retrain all their people on the completely different interfaces and such.
Whereas when they start buying new vans from Mercedes...the drivers might have to remember that the radio's volume knob is 5cm away from where it was in the Fords...?
That's a pretty significant problem if Ford was the only places you can get certain parts or the only company that can do certain types of service etc., because then you have a huge fleet of vehicles you can't efficiently continue to operate.
But then it's the same solution. Before you buy something, require it to be using standard interfaces and have multiple viable independent suppliers for parts and service rather than being locked into a monopoly.
Which is how it should be for digital services. It's fine to pay some company to run physical infrastructure as long as it's a fungible commodity that allows you to switch providers like you can switch brands of toilet paper.
America was supposed to be the next step of humanity, a new land stripped from the ills of the old world where you invest or you go to build things, where your past or identity wasn't the primary concern but your dreams your abilities were. It wasn't nationalistic place, it was open to all and pretty much it was the group work of humanity. When aliens arrive, they arrived to US and even if not, they certainly wanted to speak to the US president as the leader of humanity.
Unlike Europe it wasn't stuck into petty identity conflicts, unlike Russia or China it was governed by the law and the law would protect you from the sneaky politicians. Unlike Europe, US companies were fair businesses that could protect you the customer from bad things even if America developed European or Asian habits.
Why wouldn't you use anything from America? Americans don't understand how transactional they are becoming and that from now on they will need to perform. Like the Tesla boycott, suddenly Tesla had to price their vehicles to match the functionality they provide in order to be able to sell cars again.
Currently the US tech tools are better as they were refined for decades with huge resources and user bases, so it is hard to switch away and at this time it's the perception of risk and US no longer being cool are what pushes for the transition but if EU is lucky Trump will invade Greenland and will make people take the inconvenient path and US tech industry will compact into 350M US market. Europeans will have a few years of sub-par tech and then will have good sovereign tech.
wat
They’ve (just like any powerful country) never been good though they do have excellent propaganda.
All throughout my adult life the US (for all its apparent faults) was to me a shining example of progress and humanity. It was the best large scale implementation of human rights, laws, and democracy. Sure it was far from perfect but “as good as it gets, for now”
Became very disillusioned with that image of the US in the last couple of years. Maybe it’s always been like that - but the recent cronyism, the blatant openly displayed corruption and complete disregard for all the values it used to champion really destroyed the good image I had of the US.
In years to come they will realise what this loss of image (or “aura” as the kids would say) really means in a very practical and blunt sense.
Which country was the US bombing to the ground at this period you're reminiscing on?
That literally never happened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haditha_massacre?wprov=sfla1
> By June 17, 2008, six defendants had their cases dropped and a seventh was found not guilty.[5] The only one of the eight charged to face punishment was Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich. On October 3, 2007, the Article 32 hearing investigating officer recommended that charges of murder be dropped and Wuterich be tried for negligent homicide in the deaths of two women and five children.[6] Further charges of assault and manslaughter were ultimately dropped. Wuterich pled guilty to the only remaining charge, one count of negligent dereliction of duty, and was convicted on January 24, 2012.[7][8]
...
Labeling 300+ million people as "the good guys" grouping then by nation (I assume with "Americans" you mean US American citizen and not, for example, Mexicans?) but then trying to detach a nation from its politics is wild and the notion of "they are the good guys even when they do terrible things" is some weird circular or contradicting argument (depending on how I've wants to play that).
American soldiers trained their weapons on those Americans to halt the killing.
America has always contained multitudes, but chose to see the best in itself and the world saw it reflected in that light.
One of the most shocking things to me was visiting Vietnam and going to the Museum of American War Crimes in Ho Chi Minh City and almost the first thing you see walking in is the words of the US Declaration of Independence in enormous letters, printed across an entire wall: "We hold these truths to be self-evident..."
They are throwing America's own principles back in its face, castigating America for behaving in a way that is un-American. The world believed in what America claims it believes.
Principles have never been about that. The world has never been about that. It's never been something anyone who wasn't "that kind of nerd" could believe in. Not even up for debate.
It used to be that when the US did something bad, people would point to the constitution and the American ideals and say "this isn't living up to our promise".
Now instead when people point to the constitution and American ideals people say "those were written by dead white men" as if to justify cynically discarding them in favor of something heinous.
What other promises have you ever had? What did you think justice meant? You losers talking of WW2 and Rome. Now sit back down.
Meanwhile abandoning freedom of speech or due process because of the skin color of the persons who penned the original documents can only be described as some kind of wackadoodle nonsense and evokes suspicions of arguing in bad faith.
But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check.
When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.
We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
Bitter cynicism is a dead end: for you personally, and for societies that embrace it. You have nothing to offer, and people will follow those who give them something to believe in. Right now, the far right is promising a herrenvolk restoration and what is your answer? Hollow trolling.
Incel want a cookie?
I firmly believe that the dominant feeling towards US today isn't anger or hate, its heartbreak and disappointment.
It might be different for US Americans themselves and a lot of other countries as well; but for a large part of the west this was/is true
As I grew older, I'd learn more about bad things US did throughtout history. Downsides of its policies. Some of the burdens it placed on other nations. Shortcuts it took to enhance the American way of life @ the cost of people elsewhere. Examples are just too many. The shining beacon became a grey area. But overall, tended to regard US' influence as a net positive.
These days, it's crystal clear to me why so many people cherish a deep hatred towards the US. Again: reasons are many & complicated. I don't happen to be among them, but understand their reasons.
US has fallen from being a shining example for the world, to a dumb & selfish kid doing damage everywhere. Damage the rest of the world scrambles to route around.
Sadly, this is not the result of external pressures on the US. Nor the (sole) fault of its current leadership. It came from within. It's damage the US is doing to itself, and to others.
This will not improve any time soon, I think. We'll take Lady Liberty's flame on your way out, thank you very much.
We dreamed of America
where the soft wind lives.
We dreamed of America
where honey flowers grow,
where the sky is vast and blue
with stars and stripes upon it too.
We dreamed of America,
but not anymore,
no, not anymore.
I don't know when people first began dreaming of America.
Long before Columbus, people dreamed of America, I think.
A place of everlasting flowers where everyone was free and happy, and
no one had to take off their hat for anyone unless they wanted to themselves.
A smiling paradise where love lasts forever,
and old age is beautiful, a place without any smell.
In 1945—before that too, but certainly in 1945—I knew what I was going to be
when I grew up.
I was going to be an *American*.
That spring, the first films from the Pacific War arrived,
where the Americans stood with bent knees on jungle paths and shot Japanese soldiers with U.S. carbines.
The Japanese were ugly, with protruding teeth and protruding ribs,
while the Americans were brave, handsome, clean-cut, and immortal.
And even if they did die, they died with a courageous smile and said:
"Give this letter to my mother; she will understand."
While the Japanese died like grubs and worms,
and we felt no pity for them.
Besides being ugly, they were portrayed as horribly stupid—so stupid that they spoke broken English even when talking to each other.
I know that we dreamed of America well into the 1960s.
A scentless land beyond the sea,
where everyone had cars and white teeth.
I don't know exactly when it stopped.
But one day in the 1960s, we not only stopped loving America as a god;
we began hating America as a fallen god.
And nothing falls so heavily, so hard, and so deep
as a fallen god
who turns out not to be a god at all,
but merely America.
Then America was blamed not only for the Vietnam War and environmental disasters,
but also, for example, for car culture.
And the greatest share of the blame fell on the man who discovered America.
Now, 487 years after his death, Christopher Columbus is blamed not only for the slave trade from West Africa,
but also for the murder of Kennedy,
and for all the worlds traffic accidents.
Now they say Columbus was a bastard.
Because it was he who discovered America in 1492.At least they cannot read this ridiculous load of propaganda.
This is ignoring that AI also, of course, lets spying agencies move from having every email ever sent in most countries to actually reacting to every email ever sent in most countries. They can move from helping Boeing make foreign airline companies ignore door closing issues to influencing every last restaurant's drinks buying decision individually.
I mean, I doubt they're there yet, but that's what they'll want to do.
Disaster, meet Catastrophe.