If the way you are building a product requires you to risk the well being of your employees, which these laws are designed to protect, you and your product are not welcome here.
This is a trade of. Startups can be extremely lucrative for people willing to take that risk. These laws exist to prevent abuse, yes, but they also prevent highly driven people from engaging in high risk, high reward economic activities.
As I said Germany does not want startups to exist. The only way the German economy can stay competitive if is the large German tech corporations are able to stay competitive.
If you don't want to work hard (10h+ per day) at a startup, then don't. Nobody's forcing you. Working at a startup and finding it's not for you? Just quit! You can just walk out the door. Nobody's forcing you to stay.
Germany is really great in treating its citizens like infants and it shows.
Don't play naive.. the laws and regulations are not put in place for that percent of business owners/managers that would not abuse their employees out of principle even when they can, it's for the other ones that do.
There are actually employees a company is allowed to abuse more than their "regular" workers, namely managers.
If there was a legal category for "startup employee", with significantly fewer protections, but who can only be employed with a minimum wage of e.g. 3x the average income, would you object to that?
This reads like its a group advocating for exactly the wrong kind of deregulation that turns markets into basically unbreakable monopolys.
The EU directly opposes the growth model of the new-era tech startups (ruthless growth financed by investor money, take over competitors, market monopoly) and the regulations aim to keep markets at least a little bit competitive.
We (the EU) do not need or want this kind of deregulation.
There's ways to make life for small-entrepreneurs easier.
I need this kind of deregulation. Example, i m taking microtransactiosn for my game. Giving out VAT invoices for all of them is an impossible task. You need to account for the different VATs in the area (and how they change over time). The cost of the accountant for all this would be many times more than the tiny amounts of the transactions. So i have outsourced the money collection to a US-based merchant-of-record who withholds a large cut and pays out once.
I think a lot of people can point to friction like this in all the places. This has nothing to do with "rughless growth by investor money", but with common sense. There is too much BS work going on in europe, much more than should be allowed
It’s not good example as technicaly you are required to pay the “digital product tax” in many countries outside EU (and more are comming every year).
Actually if you are based in EU paying the EU VAT is the easiest for you because you collect the taxes (just like any ecommerce store would) and use OSS (One Stop Shop) where you pay them to your country along with your native taxes.
You will probably still need MoR because similar schemes GST (australia, canada, india), russia and yes US sales tax. And those would be a lot harder for you to pay than VAT (US sales tax is particularly complicated ad changing).
Now of course you could not care about paying these (unlike EU that would find out quickly) but it could be pretty unfortunate if one gets stopped on trip to Canada about 7 year old unpayed taxes with fines adjusted for inflation…
Dumb question: wouldn't the USA have the same issue with state taxes varying across the country? Or are state taxes collected from where the company is headquartered and not from where customers are purchasing from?
I am European but ur reply perfectly represents why the EU is doomed to fail. The monopolistic super companies will be created no matter what EU does. They are and will be just created somewhere else and EU will be left with nothing just bunch of tier2-3 suppliers to these behemoths.
I refuse to accept that the only way forward is to join the pointless rat race that ends up with the entire society being enslaved to a handful of megacorporations and their shareholders.
I don't want to live in that world, and I don't think most people do either. Yes, if we don't join them, there's a possibility that we might end up being enslaved to foreign megacorporations rather than domestic ones, but at least we'll have a chance to create something less dystopian instead.
That world would be a cyberpunk dystopia with some large conglomerates with power over many nations. I don't think playing that game is the way forward and if the EU can offer a counterpoint to this future I believe it's worth it, much rather live in a place which attempted to curtail this behemoth-creating machine than be an active participant in creating a dystopian future.
This paints a picture of the future that imo is kind of fatalistic and dystopian. I personally refuse to accept that this is the inevitable end state of our society and markets.
Agreed; this criticism comes from the POV of "the US is richer, so let's do what the US does". Instead, we should see that the US is struggling across many, many dimensions and the inordinate success of American Big Tech / Big Business has a lot to do with it. It's like looking at Dubai and saying "oh they are doing great, let's start drilling".
Instead Europe should focus on what's stopping EU companies from scaling and leveraging their strengths: lower costs, better infrastructure, more diverse customers and employees.
As a founder on both sides of the Atlantic, I would keep it simple:
1. The EU needs a common credit rating system, similar to Duns & Bradstreet in the US (which is a private company mind you, so very possible) and more competition between banks that should be allowed to do business anywhere in the EU. The EU banking system is much better than the US one, but the above stop it from scaling across the continent.
2. EU needs to give higher incentives to EU companies to do business with EU startups. The fragmented EU market means that most valuable European companies end up being very conservative in how they spend their money (because competition is weak / settled). Therefore they are much less likely to do business with startups for normal business risk reasons. That's a chilling effect for B2B companies who are more likely to get traction in the US rather than the EU. A simple insurance or tax credit scheme would go a long way to reduce risk --and would help the EU get their money back from many startup / VC programs they are subsidizing anyway.
Regulation protects old, big incumbents that are slow to innovate. How is that a competitive market? Meanwhile innovation, wealth and power is created elsewhere.
So what is your proposed solution? I'd rather have a sociopath that is upfront about being one to me than figuring that fact out by myself.
Shunning those people from society seems like not an option to me, they are people after all.
I think normalizing sociopathic behaviour is something to be worried about, but I personally don't see that happening anywhere so I am unsure what your point is.
> I think normalizing sociopathic behaviour is something to be worried about, but I personally don't see that happening anywhere so I am unsure what your point is.
The normalization of sociopathic behavior is pretty clear to see in politics and celebrity culture. If you don't see it you have had your eyes willfully closed to it for 10+ yrs.
Maybe you have or are currently engaged in some of these behaviors and you "can't see" them because it would damage your ego's view of yourself as a good person who deserves the success they have experienced.
> Shunning those people from society seems like not an option to me, they are people after all
This is effectively what happens to the victims of the sociopaths. They are driven out from the margins. The way I read this is "sociopaths can do whatever they want, but when others complain they are the problem".
I cannot stress how wrong that last statement is. So much suffering and therapy to recover from people who behaved this way. People at the top. Bosses. Managers.
People who were supposed to be looking out for the group and were not.
Let's genetically profile for it, and if there's a link, screen for embryos that don't have it. This would require a bit more technological advancement of course. But imagine, a world without sociopaths! It would be the biggest generational improvement in the world in history.
Parent did not say they should understand ML on a fundamental level. Reading the description in the comment should be enough for the author of the article to say "oh" and not write this article.
...because the editor understood he misunderstood how the algorithm works? Or becuase they don't know so they shouldn't risk signing off on it?
Sorry I don't see how you could possible challenge this article without a deeper understanding of the technology. That is the fundamental critique here is it not?
Expecting every newspaper to have those domain experts on hand for each topic is naive and highly optimistic. The journalism world doesn't work that way for better or worse.
If it did we would have 50%+ articles never written. Probably more.
This does ignore the damage done to the free market though. Every job that a prison inmate takes up, is a job that could be taken by a non-criminal and which would pay for at least federal minimum wage.
I'd call the difference of prison wage and the minimum wage lost money.
I agree there are externalities to consider for a proper proposal, my purpose here was only to argue that compelled labour without minimum wage compensation isn't intrinsically wrong, it depends on the specific implementation.
I actually like self-checkouts very much and use them every time they are available. The reason is very simple: They typically do not require any social interaction. I like to shop with music on my ears and generally am pretty deep inside my head when I shop, because I like to plan my shopping list and would like to do that in peace. I hate the superficial social interactions at the register like saying hello and wishing a nice day (which is common and expected here in Germany, where I live).
Now don't get me wrong, I'm pretty social inside my own circle or when I go out for a drink for example (although I am Gen Z, so there's that), but I really do not like these interactions when they are forced and imposed upon me while doing mundane tasks like grocery shopping.
I was pretty surprised when the article claimed customers do not like them because that is the reception I've also gathered from friends.
> saying hello and wishing a nice day (which is common and expected here in Germany, where I live).
My experience has been the opposite in Germany. I come from the US where it's not unheard of to be chatted up with full conversation by the Kasse person. When I moved to Germany the social interaction was just a small whisper of what I was normally used to.
It says in the article that the faces are swapped with those of actors. Are those something like film actors? Because that would actually be amazing, completely dodging the drawback several commenters here have mentioned that faces of innocent people could be used.
Actors faces are already public. Then again,I would probably be pissed when my face would be used as a mask to say something I might not agree with. Interesting question if that is ethical or not.
Using actors in news stories is pretty standard when the interviewee does not want to appear on camera, or use their own voice.
There's a long history of this kind of masking:
- Backlighting, with the face in deep shadow. Possibly with the original interviewee or an actor.
- Voice-Masking with some kind of voice-changer
- Using a voice-actor to say the words.
I would see this as the next evolution of this process.
So long as The actor being portrayed has given their consent to do this (they were hired for this specific job), and the facial expressions/behaviors are genuinely recreated I don't see any ethical or moral issues.
It's likely not ethical, and I'm confident it's probably illegal. For example, can you setup a billboard at the side of a highway with Tom Hank's face on it and a quote that speaks to anti-trans rights, has a homophobic remark, or perhaps an anti-CCP statement? Probably not.
IANAL, but in the US you'd need (a) rights to the image being used (e.g. shot yourself, in public) & (b) a damn good argument that your juxtaposition of their likeness and your words doesn't cause them monetary damages (e.g. in the form of lost revenue from reputation).
>IANAL, but in the US you'd need (a) rights to the image being used (e.g. shot yourself, in public) & (b) a damn good argument that your juxtaposition of their likeness and your words doesn't cause them monetary damages (e.g. in the form of lost revenue from reputation).
Well... "need" is, as I often say, quite a strong word.
Might makes right, and money talks, so if you don't want to bother getting the rights, or the person who you want to exploit can't fight back, why not?
This obviously represents an error on how abuse is handled in these power structures.
What baffles me the most, is that this list in particular is not only shared between staff or subordinates, but concerns colleagues. It seems that women feel that they cannot speak out against such forms of potential abuse because they fear they will get themself axed, even if the alleged abuser is power-wise on the same level.
This is very concerning to hear, but frankly not surprising if you speak with any woman that operates in any kind of hierarchy, be it corporate or otherwise.
If you speak out against someone - it’s likely your first time doing so.
But if the person really is a rapist or whatever, they know how to navigate the system because they’ve been spoken out against before - they’ll know exactly how to attack and destroy your reputation.
Game theory leans toward whispering to protect yourself and others without getting destroyed.
I think with the scale requirements of YouTube, we can not assume that the search is powered by one single DB or any traditional, relational DB at all.
Some things that are easy with one DB, get surprisingly hard when you scale up. Lets give them the benefit of the doubt regarding technical issues here.
I don't give them the benefit of the doubt, because they should have had proper testing in place before anything like this reached production. This is either intentional or grossly negligent.
If the way you are building a product requires you to risk the well being of your employees, which these laws are designed to protect, you and your product are not welcome here.
Please build it somewhere else.