I empathize with this but curious what would make any other country a better safehaven for your data? I personally like the EU's approach to data safeguards, but are there other locales/data protections you have in mind that would keep your data "safe".
It is a commonly accepted "fact" right now, outside the US, that the US is not to be trusted (right now), due to some orange guy, and his mates, manipulating markets, running their mouths, doing all kinds of criminal and/or infantile shit.
I'd say there is quite a bit of evidence for this all around.
Frankly, I'm surprised there's not more urgency on the part of Europeans to reduce dependence on US tech. I don't like it. I'm an American in tech. But, the US can't be trusted, at this time. And, given how irresponsible tech leadership has been, in kowtowing to Trump, I don't see how they can reasonably be trusted, either.
I am also assembling the largest in home robotics training data set available which will be open source.
Want to help?
I was hoping the European AI companies and projects like Mistral and Apertus would, you know, do something good. But, their models trail not only US models, but Chinese models, including smaller ones, by a significant amount. I guess there's also the ethical component. Mistral is reportedly not plagiarizing like US companies, and isn't distilling US models like the Chines companies. Cheating gives one a leg up if there are no referees.
Anyway, I work for a robotics company, and I'm always interested in what's happening with open robotics stuff, including AI.
and really, the topic here is reducing a transgressive President from infringing tech activities elsewhere (used to be mainly about surveillance, but then trump happened).
I invest in startups and companies at every stage are losing contracts in Europe specifically for this risk. I can’t say who but it’s a multi front trend.
Ask intel, paramount, TikTok or anthropic if they feel law will be applied equally to all companies.
Ask the blue states that had fema funding withheld when it went to red states.
Ask black families that haven’t gotten reparations when Jan 6 rioters that beat and killed cops to over turn an election will get almost $2b in reparations and then had the Supreme Court throw out their votes in Louisiana in the middle of an election to overturn the voting rights act, redraw districts, overturn their own case law and the principle that judicial review shouldn’t happen too close to an election so they could redraw the districts.
Business leaders are sucking up to curry favor. That by definition isn’t the rule of law it’s the rule of dispensation. It’s the spoils system.
If you have a counter argument you’d better make it now or you will tip your hand.
I think it’s valid to not trust the US with your data. But if the reason is some TDS “Orange Man Bad”, it’s you that’s acting infantile.
I could go on and on.
HN should be a place for serious good faith analysis not shrill insults. So leave the trump derangement comments out of the dialog next time.
Compel you to reveal your secrets, including your passwords by threatening to arrest and detain you without legal proceedings for an unspecified period.
Deny your basic human rights, particularly at the borders, especially if you aren’t a citizen.
And more.
How about deporting people without a hearing or opportunity to present evidence about their charges. And then violating the judges order to turn the planes around.
How about systematically ignoring judicial rulings.
How about detaining people based on the color of their skin and spoken language/accent.
How about violating the emoluments clause of the constitution by accepting a personal airplane.
How about sending your son in-law, who hasn’t been appointed to any office with the advice and consent of congress as required by the constitution.
How about refusing to seat elected congress members for reasons for months.
How about singling out companies like intel for targeted trade restrictions and then demanding equity in order to lift them.
What about threatening to delay or deny a merger of a media company unless your ally is allowed to buy them.
What about refusing to enforce the TikTok ban until you can arrange a buy out to an ally.
What about a formal market with a known price for pardons and commutations.
What about stating multiple wars without congressional approval.
What about creating a fake department named Doge that withholds funds apportioned by congress and breaks contracts that have explicit obligations for payment that results in more termination fees and losses than the savings. All without congressional approval.
How about threatening to withhold federal funds from states with governors of the opposing political party but not your own? Remember the president is supposed to execute the law congress passes not make law or arbitrarily enforce it based on their own political needs or values.
Not to detract from your general point about the US, your first point is something that's happened recently in Switzerland:
https://truthout.org/articles/swiss-police-arrest-deport-pal...
There are always incidents in all democracies with millions of people, that contravene the expectations of rule of law and integrity of its systems.
The US has degenerated significantly in the past few years, to the point that when someone asks “can you give examples”, I expect a disingenuous ploy more than genuine ignorance. The list of breaches is so long, that listing it results in numbness and exhaustion of the mental muscles responsible for being aghast.
[1] https://www.bvger.ch/en/newsroom/media-releases/fedpol-must-...
Was any of the people responsible for his detention and expulsion actually face consequences? e.g.
* Accused of a criminal offense,
* Dismissed from their positions, or
* Brought up on internal disciplinary charges?
and again - not detracting from the valid description of the horrid state of affairs in the US.
An equal example in Europe would need the facts to be more similar
They decided that spying on me in a commune in Hawaii, and then following me after to other public spaces was fine. I'm certain something was put in my food based on behavior I saw in communal meals, and I can't say I took video or photo evidence though I wish I did.
I'm of Pakistani descent, held a former secret clearance, and I did not break any oaths or violate any laws though the way I was treated was certainly how the above person described rule of law: our spy agencies for example operate completely without accountability and regularly commit atrocious behavior against US citizens beyond just me.
I purchase open model tokens for agent programming assistance, and I like lumo+ for everything else.
Another option is DuckDuckGo’s Duck.ai subscription, but I slightly prefer ProtonMail’s lumo+ packaging as a product.
Let's say Gemini gets to AGI by tomorrow, will my Google account access, or Gemini apps access and data be blocked if I'm not a US citizen? (Anthropic did it with a 5% better model).
If US is classifying the model access based on citizenship, that's similar to treating it as a Defense capability.
You can already imagine Anthropic working with a bunch of shady brokers to "remedy" this situation.
This particular order wasn't actually about citizenship at all. It seems the administration simply believed restricting the order to non-citizens would make it easier to defend in court, but they made it knowing full well that the only way to implement it would be to completely shut off access for everyone.
Stallman was correct in the 80s and is correct now about libre software
From a practical perspective, I'm not sure any servers are safe anywhere...depending on who may want your data.
I'm surprised there isn't a lot more attention to encrypted, distributed, erasure-encoded stores.