I guess this is the end of "sending customer data to the us".
Quite impressive how fast the US-politics can burn billions in $, endanger the technological lead and build a massive opportunity for Europe!
I, as a European could not be happier about this, from a economic standpoint.
Hope you guys over there are not drifting to a surveillance dystopian.
This is a long term international effort where irrelevant Western countries in the peripheries (that’s the EU) have nibbled away at encryption protections to make it easier for the US to do the same. It’s part of a two decades long effort by Western elites to correct their mistakes from the nineties - namely loosening the noose on information and privacy.
Australia, France, UK all have draconian laws that would cause outrage (or are outright unconstitutional) in the US. The only data protection the EU has is because fussy Eurocrats are annoyed that the US (and not them) get to syphon all of European’s data.
The US is really flawed, but I wouldn't move back to the EU for double my family’s income.
> Australia, France, UK all have draconian laws that would cause outrage (or are outright unconstitutional) in the US
at least in those countries you don't have to resign for what you do in your bedroom, consensually, behind closed doors...
> The only data protection the EU has is because fussy Eurocrats are annoyed that the US (and not them) get to syphon all of European’s data.
[Citation needed]
this comes up every single time, but it's false nonetheless.
The term "eurocrats" in Europe is used in a negative way only by people who don't understand how EU works, usually from far right.
Nowadays the term Eurocrat has come to encompass staff from all EU Institutions and not only staff from the European Commission.
Although the term Eurocrat might convey negative connotations for some, specialists of European Union and its institutions Didier Georgagakakis and Jay Rowell use the concept of Eurocracy as a way to describe and analyse EU actors and professionals interactions [1]
“ at least in those countries you don't have to resign for what you do in your bedroom, consensually, behind closed doors...”
No, you go to jail instead for offending someone. But you still have a job to pay off your court debts with (the US, thankfully, doesn’t have looser pays courts).
As to the rest of your comment, I love it. Any criticism of the EU or Brussels is far right extremism and must be ignored. Its working out great for Trudeau smearing protestors and ignoring them.
That's a bit of a oversimplification. What she was prosecuted (not convicted) on was definitely not a just a simple picture of the bible. Besides, that's only one of the charges. Other charges come from the times she implied homosexuality to be a genetic degeneration and later on called homosexuality a disorder.
Also, two years of jail is the maximum for that type of crime. IF she is found guilty, she will almost definitely get some relatively small fine.
It's understandable the christian folks want to paint this whole case as just "two years for tweeting a picture of a bible". But it's much more nuanced than that. Additionally the trial is still ongoing and it's very much unclear what the outcome will be. And this case is still handled in district court, I highly doubt it stays on that level. There's a lot of analysis and comments of the trials in the newspapers, but they are all in Finnish. I found this one in English that explains the case a bit better than "two years for tweeting a picture of the bible". https://yle.fi/news/3-12284380
Calling hate speech and attempts to reintroduce an ideology that sank a continent into war and killed millions a bland "offending someone" is so obviously bullshit that it's a marvel to me how you could write that without disintegrating into a puddle of shame.
Or maybe you did -- do you, at long last, have some sense of decency left?
I speak three European languages at native level (Im ESL. Or is it ETL?) and can get along well enough in a fourth. I have the luxury of choice.
And my problem isn't with Europeans, that is Englishmen, Ukrainians, Russians, or normal people in the EU. My problem is with Europes’ (note the plural, this isn't merely about the EU) institutions, the way they think, the mentality of what a person can do.
At no point in the past two years was I prohibited under the yoke of arrest of going outside. My kids never stopped going to school except for the first two months. My kids don’t have to do security theater or wear masks. No law can, or does, limit my speech. If I had the misfortune of living in a bad neighborhood the law protects my right to defend myself against an intruder.
On the whole, pick any EU country and they all failed on those accounts. Maybe Czechia or Hungary are cool on some of the above.
>> Which of the 27(8) countries did you live in, as they are rather different?
> I speak three European languages at native level
Way not to answer the question.
Also, BTW, you're probably wrong: Very high proficiency, maybe, but almost nobody speaks more than one language (or at the most, two) at a native level. But, sorry, I digress... To get back to the point:
Most don't learn three (and a half) languages by age 11 and use all three often. When I speak any of the three, locals think Im a native speaker and readily spot in what region I learned the language (if they’re good, the town). In any of the three I can also spot where the speaker is from and I can pronounce all the subtle sounds that give foreigners away. Sounds that even natives cant pronounce since they are not universally present in regional dialects.
Anyway, I didn't answer the question because what’s the point? I wouldn't live in Germany, or in Latvia, or in Spain, or in Greece for the reasons stated: restrictions on speech, blasphemy laws, anti-apologia of tyranny laws (commie or facist), laws effectively criminalizing self-defence. I also enjoy the self reliance of Americans; yes its exaggerated, but its more than Europeans anyway.
Ive flirted with Switzerland, but that’s not the EU per my original comment (I wouldn't live in CH either. Love ’em though)
Many US states have ongoing school indoor mask mandates. Also Czechia and Hungary are the two European countries most at risk of backsliding from democracy into authoritarianism.
the problem with being an immigrant, and I have seen this on myself, is that we tend to see the host country through rose colored glasses (best case). Or if we are from a poor / unprivileged background we've been put through hell by trying to survive in the new country. And in the latter case it results in (worst case) those groups becoming the most extreme defenders of whatever that country does. That gets then compounded by having to defend your old customs (from your origin society) even that origin society has meanwhile moved on.
The person who just moved to a new place is very unlikely to speak ill of their new hosts or join an activist group to fight against what is a local issue. It's generally a bad idea to poop where you eat but it's unthinkable when you consider yourself still a guest in that country. The whole thing takes generations usually.
Agreed, its very common. But this doesn’t apply to me. Allow me to explain:
I lived in four different countries across three continents seven different times by age 15. Throughout, middle class. Leaving Europe for Canada as a teen was extremely difficult. I still love Europe the place and Europe the people.
Finally, I moved to the US from Canada - hardly polar opposites - and was reared on a diet of anti-Americanism that took ten years to shed.
I didn't dream of coming to the US, the best grad program that I got accepted to was in the US. I didn’t want to stay, I got married. I came to love the US kicking and screaming.
>I, as a European could not be happier about this, from a economic standpoint.
Please, let me play you the world's smallest violin.
This trope, constantly celebrating that $CURRENT_YEAR will finally be the year of EU tech dominance over US giants, has been on repeat ever since Snowden revealed that the NSA is in bed with every major US tech company and is actively spying on EU users. And that was all the way back in 2013.
Sure, the Facebook empire is crumbling now, but since 2013, we still have no EU competitors for Google, Microsoft, Apple, AWS, etc. despite this knowledge that US tech companies have no regard for privacy and that the US government is using them to spy on us.
What if we don't want FAANGs in Europe? What if it's harder for FAANGs to develop in Europe because they can't be as aggressive and careless as american corps are?
Personally I don't want Europe to allow huge monopolistic corps to take over our economy.
Why would we want Google, the search engine that provides ads and spies on you instead of providing good results?
Why would we want Facebook/Meta, the ridicolously troubled corporation hated by pretty much everyone at this point?
Why would we want Amazon, famous for exploiting it's workforce, using old wild west methods against unions, exploiting its own sellers by copying their products and selling them for less?
Why would we want Microsoft and Apple and their cartel like attitudes, when we could have a different paradigm of software/hardware that goes to benefit everyone, instead of existing only as a competitive advantage to take over the market?
All of this companies will do anything in their power (lecit or not) to increase their market share and avoid paying taxes.
You can keep your silicon valleys and your oligocratic economy, thank you.
>They why are those US tech companies so successful in the EU with no viable local competitors, if nobody wants them?
US tech has too much money they burn it on shit. So any potential competitor is bought, you see some UK AI company pops up then Google buys it and 1 year later you read how Google made huge progress in AI. IMO EU needs to first fix the illegal US companies tax tricks, also fix the Apple software tax or apply a similar tax on closed platforms, "the closed platform tax" , this would mean less money for US SV devs to waste on shit ty stuff and more money for EU devs to try do something better.
For money, I did not say are incorruptible. I explained why you will not see a FB or Google,Intel,Apple private competitor appear , it will be bought, the competitors will appear from China for sure, they have already mastered the smartphone , they are working on CPUs , I am not into social media but I read that they have pretty good alternatives to US versions too.
We can agree to associate social media with drugs, but Microsoft, Apple, AWS and Google are providing consumers with many products for which we have no equivalent competitors locally.
But there are local competitors, they just got smothered and bought up by US based corps.
Why ? Because the US has a lot more money, which translates to more money for investors to dominate the economic landscape.
Why does the US have more money ? Well, if I want to buy an ice cream from the US for a dollar , I first need to sell something to an American for that dollar. US banks can just mint that dollar from thin air
>? Well, if I want to buy an ice cream from the US for a dollar , I first need to sell something to an American for that dollar. US banks can just mint that dollar from thin air
I don't get this argument as the reverse is also true. If the US wants to buy French cheese and wine, it needs Euros to do that and the ECB can just print Euros out of thin air.
I want to start an Apple competitor. I have a plan; it's interesting, fun and deep. But I lack skills (I'm a FED, not an OS or hardware engineer, and I've not done funding rounds and I only have cheap suits). If I exist, there's likely similar-minded folk out there.
(UK here; not quite Europe any more; not my fault or choice)
EU has an over-abundance of talent due to the great free schools. Finding people with skills is not an issue. It's finding the VC and investors willing to burn through billions in losses years on end hoping that maybe they make a profit one day, that's the problem.
I didn't express my concept, I expressed the reality that US tech companies have universally conquered Europe. If the EU would have had the ability to compete in these sectors, then we would have done it already ever since we found out in 2013 that the US is spying on us, or way before that. But nothing changed since then. Almost every EU company and government institution is using Microsoft products and all consumers use Apple, Google or Windows. Where is this EU competition here?
So what? We were talking about companies not individuals. The Linux kernel is not a company, not a product you can buy and neither is Linus Torvalds.
Plus, for the last 20+ years Linus has been working from the US while also gaining US citizenship. Case in point for US tech dominance, talent bread in Europe ends up in the US.
I'm expressing the reality/facts that US BIG-tech has conquered Europe and we haven't had any viable competitors to them that can re-conquer our local market, despite knowing the privacy and surveillance implications of using US BIG-tech for years now.
If you wish to negate the facts and call me names in return, then its your issue.
> I don't think this is going to fundamentally change anything.
me neither.
my in-laws (90+) in Japan are excited about a new DoCoMo phone and always talks about the latest features. He is not an engineer. He is also not a rare case in that country (or that continent).
My own mother back in EU and most of my family are deeply ambivalent at best, or absolutely opposing new Tech / data-driven ideas.
Europe is like the polar opposite of Asia in that sense. The US is some kind of weird middle-ground. When I returned from Asia to EU after 10 years over there I had a reverse-culture shock that lasted at least 5 years. Everything looked backward and stagnant to me. As I get older I realize I'm also becoming very critical. But age can't explain the ambivalence otherwise Japan would be the most Technology hostile society in the world.
Yeah, seems the only country that can dream about challenging the US tech industry is China. But they'll have a hard time with reputational issues.
I mean, how long until a sizeable chunk (+30%) of western tech businesses, or even other major Asian economies, start choosing Aliyun over any of the five big US cloud providers?
I think safe to say not in the next 5 years. But who knows...
The bill hasn't passed yet. It went through a committee, but it has not passed in either the House or the Senate. There's still plenty of opportunity for this bill to get voted out.
It's creeping forward. It seems Republicans are a captive audience, Corporate Democrats are on their way, and Progressives and Libertarians are about the only ones pushing against it.
> Hope you guys over there are not drifting to a surveillance dystopian.
that's not a local problem but a global one. Many EU countries are well on their way into dystopia. The dystopia is an unavoidable side-effect[1] of having technology and categorizing everything in systems (and systems of systems). This argument gets attacked by "BUT everything can be used for good or bad". But Technology is not neutral.
We just pretend it's neutral because we wouldn't know who to hold accountable when dealing with cause/effect in complex systems of systems (emergence). Consider the following[2]:
> In a society such as ours, it is almost impossible for a person to be responsible. A simple example: a dam has been built somewhere, and it bursts. Who is responsible for that? Geologists worked out. They examined the terrain. Engineers drew up the construction plans. Workmen constructed it. And the politicians decided that the dam had to be in that spot. Who is responsible? No one. There is never anyone responsible. Anywhere. In the whole of our technological society the work is so fragmented and broken up into small pieces that no one is responsible. But no one is free either. Everyone has his own, specific task. And that's all he has to do.
> Just consider, for example, that atrocious excuse… It was one of the most horrible things I have ever heard. The director of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was asked at the Nuremburg trials, “But didn’t you find it horrible? All those corpses?” He replied, “What could I do? I couldn’t process all those corpses. The capacity of the ovens was too small. It caused me many problems. I had no time to think about these people. I was too busy with the technical problem of my ovens.” That is the classic example of an irresponsible person. He carries out his technical task and isn’t interested in anything else.
Drifting? We have been there for a long while. The FBI implemented Carnivore in 1997. It is foolish to think surveillance has done anything but grow since then.
I, as a European could not be happier about this, from a economic standpoint.
Hope you guys over there are not drifting to a surveillance dystopian.