And yet whenever the EU is brought up around here its "draconian" regulations are blamed for stagnating tech innovation. At least there are governments that try to protect their citizens from the habitual privacy and rights violations by Big Tech.
I made a remark over on Reddit some time ago about how I'd prefer to live in the EU because I'd prefer the quality of life there over a bigger number on my paycheck (that mostly goes to rent anyway)
People were borderline out for blood on such a defiant worldview
Yeah, people go ballistic when I mention costs from rural northern Germany. Average software developer salary is 5000€ net per month. Renting a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom house is about 1000€ per month. If both adults work, that means the family home is about 10% of the income. 20 minutes by car/bus to the next city center, though.
> Average software developer salary is 5000€ net per month
Huh? That is far above the average developer salary. Even in a big city this would only be plausible in a highly demanded specialty and high experience level. Far from average.
Sounds like an outlier to me, unless you can provide some statistics.
All good jobs are limited and you'll need a certain amount of skill and competitiveness to get them.
But remote work in software development is pretty widely accepted in Germany, too.
That said, especially in the countryside, there are a lot of companies actually building or producing stuff. And they need IT services, too. Any food batch that's not properly accounted for in your warehousing software is effectively unsellable and, thus, a pure loss.
Actually they are. It was ruled that if you can accept all in one click, you must be able to reject all in one equally easy, equally prominent click, or you're violating the law.
Ha nice! They should start to enforce then, because what you get is "accept" and "configure", and if you select the latter here starts the click galore.
While the GDPR was le grand coup, it’s sad they can’t revert mistakes. Which begs the question: Why doesn’t every site put the EU flag as a background of the cookie banner, until the EU reckons?
No one forced site owners to suck out personal information from customers to sell them to the highest bidder. A normal, human respecting website doesn't even need a consent banner.
I wish there were browser apis for cookie prefs already. Just set it at the browser and all sites just use that setting. But of course Google can't do that since they want people to be bombarded by cookie banners and agitate for an end to GDPR
Can you just communicate like a normal person instead of a redditer trying to win an argument? There's a growing body of snarky responses that are not literally denigrating, but tacitly assume you're such an idiot that you have to be reminded of things like "objects exist after they leave your sight". It wears me down. I'm tired of it.
Except they do make a good point here. As much as I understand and share the sentiment 'imiric expressed, the comment is sloppy with its implications, and GP is right to point out that the regulation can have both good and bad effects, be praised for the former and criticized for latter, all at the same time, without any one being incorrect.
Unfortunately, normal people do have to be reminded of the basics, because they seem statistically unable to process nuance in any argument they already have an opinion on. The whole idea of winning an argument is a kind of weird normie thing, a sportsball game with words, which is fine as entertainment, but problematic when it gets confused for reasoning about things.
> The whole idea of winning an argument is a kind of weird normie thing, a sportsball game with words, which is fine as entertainment, but problematic when it gets confused for reasoning about things.
Arguments as soldiers. Win at any cost, doesn't matter if what's said now contradicts what came before.
I didn't know about the idea until someone else explained it to me; talking about it with my much older brother, he had noticed it spontaneously.
It was a neutral statement. If you read it (ha!) in "reddit snarky style" that's on you. Maybe reduce your reddit time?
Maybe it would be time for you to reflect on how much you implied in that simple sentence. None of what you said I implied or desired to do. It was simply my comment and opinion and contribution to the comment.
It was not a substantive contribution. Hacker News guidelines [1] discourage sneers, shallow dismissals, and non-substantive snark, swipes, and cross examination.
I can’t stand this either, also “source?” thrown into the middle of discussions for information that’s broadly known or available within the context of what’s being discussed. This often just demonstrates the person arguing with you isn’t well read on the topic.
"Broadly known" information in such discussions is typically just everyone sharing the same hearsays they picked up over the years, without ever verifying any one of it themselves. If one finds a request for source annoying, it suggests the claim is actually one of those - broadly-known true and accurate information has plenty of definitive sources to back it up.
There's lots of dumb things "people in general" believe. The infamous list on Wikipedia[0] is just the tip of an iceberg. Everyone is vulnerable to this; if you aren't occasionally discovering and correcting such dumb "broadly known" things in your own beliefs, you aren't paying attention.
I mostly agree with your comment so I don't think we're talking about the same thing exactly. I'm refering to true and accurate information that should be the baseline requirement for entering a discussion or argument being requested and find that annoying.
It is a fact that companies like Apple, Meta etc are not bringing AI technology to the EU specifically because the regulations are not clear of their obligations.
And if they don't comply it is a ridiculous and unprecedented fine of 10% of global revenue.
I disagree. To me it looks like Apple is trying to put the EU into bad light. They have already said they’ll bring AI to European countries in 2025 but for the whole summer the news was “the EU won’t let Apple bring AI to the masses.” Even my mother told me about it.
They are a trillion dollar company, it’s not like they don’t know what is and isn’t allowed by the law.
How can they safely bring it when they don’t know what regulation they precisely will have to deal with? It seems like instead of both sides pointing fingers they could have talks in earnest on what are the requirements for AI on personal devices in the EU. Some decision can’t be simply “we’ll know it when we see it” by the authorities
OpenAI did it so I don’t see why Apple couldn’t. They process data on the device and already have the Siri precedent, which receives, stores and analyzes data from every invocation. I don’t think there’s anything inherently new and unknown as far as data is concerned.
> specifically because the regulations are not clear of their obligations.
"unclear obligations":
- do not use people's data without their consent
- disclose and document your training data
Of course it's "unclear" to companies like Facebook who opted everyone on their platform in to training their AI models by default.
Apple's "AI" is coming to all users everywhere eventually. As many of their products it's rolled out to US, English-speaking, rest of the world, in that order. And it won't even fully ship to the US until sometime next year. Their "boohoo EU" is marketing and PR bullshit aimed at gullible morons.
> And if they don't comply it is a ridiculous and unprecedented fine of 10% of global revenue.
It's a fine up to 10% of global revenue. And that number can only be reached when the company willingly and willfully continues to break the law
This is the problem with the DMA and AI acts. The specifics are not written into law. Everything is left up to the EU Commissioner to decide as each case presents itself. Which makes it impossible for companies to predict what their decisions will be. And why would they take the risk with such massive fines on the table.
This kind of regulatory uncertainty is toxic to business.
Also Apple didn't just not release Apple Intelligence in the EU. They've geo-blocked it so you specifically can't use it even in English. They would only do this for legal reasons.
- people would complain about government overreach and that government dictates technological solutions
- no laws would ever be written because there are so many aspects to consider, and it's impossible to predict the future
Facebook, for instance, could easily start with complying with the two bullet points I posted. They don't, and they fight the EU in courts claiming they have god-given right to user data.
And yet you pretend that these companies are somehow victims. They are not.
> Which makes it impossible for companies to predict what their decisions will be.
This is PR and marketing bullshit. EU Commission literally talks to all the involved and interested parties, listens to their positions and invites them to present theirs.
This approach works just fine in Australia which is renowned for having the best consumer protection regime in the world. It's just harder to do in EU/US when there isn't an appetite for pro-consumer regulations.
And it's hilarious that you think that having to talk to the EU Commission to determine what is the law is somehow good. Businesses need certainty and predictability. Everything the EU regime is not.
> And it's hilarious that you think that having to talk to the EU Commission to determine what is the law is somehow good.
No, it's not hilarious. This is literally what industry says it wants: instead of dictates by uncaring government you get a dialog with the industry that shapes the policy and lets the authorities adjust their approach.
