Iirc many countries decided to not participate in this. Does anyone know why?

Lets be real, it's to put the power into EU's hands. With iDeal, the dutch company had the power.

Afaik Hetzner has a couple of server locations in the USA. Is it correct to say that Hetzner has to comply to US CLOUD Act and therefore give away any data requested?

Depends on which data center you're hosted.

The one under US jurisdiction operated by Hetzner US LLC must comply, while the German ones are operating under the GDPR, which has extraterritorial clauses can can deny or challenge the request.

It's not that guaranteed.

The reality is that if you have any interest, company or employees in the US you can be coerced to do anything the US government wants.

Either legally through courts, or through business influence, or through harassment (e.g. hardcore checks from the IRS).

Sorry, Stripe rejects you now because you are high-risk (you have to explain why you refuse to help in criminal cases, though there is a court requesting you).

You don't like to comply to US requests and protect terrorists ?

https://support.stripe.com/questions/how-to-resolve-blocks-o...

Still don't comply ?

You are added to sanctions list, end of the game.

https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0185

Even Microsoft acknowledges that these cross-border requests cannot be avoided.

https://www.convotis.com/es/en/news/microsoft-access-eu-data

The same way that EU can force fetching data from the US entity.

Now on the EU side:

GDPR fine of 4% of your worldwide income. Well, too bad, your US entity refused, we will have to punish your EU entity very strongly.

If small provider, oh right you refuse ? Well, we will notify your bank that you do not respect the court orders, etc.

The law is one of the way of enforcement, but there are multiple stages of pressure.

Still refuse ? Well, let's come to you at 6am then.

https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2020/07/10/57...

Any company opting for building digital sovereign systems should build a redundant and decentralized organization so that in worst case the company can split up its operations geographically to avoid being in the crosshairs of any host countries government.

Absolutely, but imagine, Zuckerberg creates a new company:

    "Storm" -> "the European end to end encrypted privacy-conscious messenger app"

Now, an US court, requests data from that project to protect an imminent attack where people are going to die.

He refuses, his company refuses, everybody refuses.

Do you think he can evade US justice even if the company is incorporated in the EU ?

Collaborating is the path of least resistance, and as long as you can claim somewhat "we didn't have any choice, we were coerced" then you are fine. This is also why Apple, Google, Meta, NordVPN, etc, are all collaborating with the infamous FBI DITU group.

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’d start with govs. Governments are mostly running Microsoft. Like your and your friends and family’s health, tax, ownership, pension and other data.

This! I'm Danish and everything in the government is Microsoft. USA is trying to make a hostile takeover of Greenland, a part of the Danish Kingdom, and meanwhile the parliament is migrating to Azure. I hope someone in the government wakes up soon before it's too late.

https://digitaliziran.si/ Do your worst :)

The $15 price tag for Typora seems a bit steep considering the fundamental features it provides.

The price of a fancy burger doesn't seem all that unreasonable for a piece of software one finds even moderately useful (of course, depending on your local exchange rate that may be more or less true)

Sometimes you're a patron of the arts more than an engineer on these types of purchases, I think

It’s closed source but yeah - electron all the way.

Now everyone can make anything - and everyone does.

Me as well, but this could be a great addition to Obsidian (idk about ux part) but [automatic] timestamps are awesome.

Idk, looks like IP squatting

Cannot agree more! AlphaDec is a great example of why we should consult existing standards before spending so much time and resources to develop something inferior.