261–270 of 423 posts
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Ah also no roaming across countries and having aligned ALL phone producers on the micro USB phone charger standard have been really nice news
Is that slowing the uptake of USB-C with its standardized Power Delivery fast charging? What does Google ship with Pixels? The same USB-C fast charger and USB-C cable, then toss in a micro-USB to USB-C adapter for regulatory compliance?
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I'm torn on this. On the one hand, I agree, the EU legislates privacy to a degree that no other political entity does as far as I'm aware, but on the other hand, they often do so with poorly designed policies. As an example, I'd point to the cookie notices that appear on almost every major website, which must have absorbed, globally, many careers worth of man-hours to implement while offering virtually no real-world…
When I looked into the cookie stuff I came to the conclusion that you only needed consent if your cookie tracked the user (except auth cookies) Basically everything that isn't invading their privacy requires no notice.
True, but who bothers to actually read the legislation?
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I live in Munich, Bavaria, and, to give an example, in most restaurants you will not be able to pay with a credit card. Having said that, you can pay once you reach a minimum amount with what they call an "EC-Karte", a sort of debit card.
Yup, this was quite surprising to me having travelled a fair bit but not been to Germany in 10 years or so. "I'm supposed to pay my dinner bill at a fancy restaurant.. in.. cash?"
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The cookie popup is terrible, I agree. Some pros: Being able to force social networks to provide me with a physical copy of my data is alone a reason to get an EU citizenship. I don't even use the social networks, i just demand my data every 3 months to FB, Tinder and Linkedin to punish them for being so aggressive in their spamming and tracking. Being safe from throttling, censorship and all the nice stuff that US I…
I'm an EU citizen and was not aware of this "demand for data" thing. What does physical copy mean? Are they going to send me 20 boxes full of papers?
I believe in Germany you can have someone send all your private data once a year in physical copy and you only need to pay for undue transport costs.
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Are you mad? Miss out on a market of 740+ million of the world's richest consumers, twice the size of the US, the bulk of the western world and most of the developed economies on the planet?? No, that's absolutely not going to happen. Additionally, they'd never risk withdrawing from a market and letting a local competitor develop, take hold, expand, and attack them on home turf. Look at social networks and search eng…
"EDIT: I see you are fairly highly placed in Google. I'm quite surprised if you genuinely think what you wrote, given the raw numbers you must surely know, but given your legal training, I am not at all surprised that you would posture as if you were unaware of this." Character assassination, awesome! Please leave the company i work for this out of this, always. I never speak for my company on hacker news unless i sa…
I have no side in this debate, and I’m sure you already realize this, but having the company you work for (especially when you are at a higher than IC level) is the surest way for people to not do that.
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I'm torn on this. On the one hand, I agree, the EU legislates privacy to a degree that no other political entity does as far as I'm aware, but on the other hand, they often do so with poorly designed policies. As an example, I'd point to the cookie notices that appear on almost every major website, which must have absorbed, globally, many careers worth of man-hours to implement while offering virtually no real-world…
I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. I'm European, and I sure miss my perceived greater freedom and innovation of economical activities in the US. Things like having UBER banned for example in France or Germany completely throws me off. And in Germany you don't know yet what's living without cash and only with a credit card. And those damn cookie notices!! Because they show up in every page, everybo…
That's because we had our own system established in 1984 (ELV, electronic direct debit based on the EC cards mentioned elsewhere). From a German point of view, a credit card is a downgrade.
- The system covered all German banks (private banks, public banks = Sparkassen, credit unions) because they got their act together and set up a single standard.
- It had lower fees than credit card transactions.
- Pretty soon the card was included with bank account fees, while credit cards cost extra.
- It worked with a magnet stripe and automated electronic clearing in a time when credit cards were merely a slight convenience over manually writing a check which needed to be mailed around the country (you do know why credit cards have name + card number embossed to this day, right? Check out credit part imprinters).
All that made it more attractive to merchants, and credit card companies weren't used to competing in a market that already had a big incumbent.
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I'm torn on this. On the one hand, I agree, the EU legislates privacy to a degree that no other political entity does as far as I'm aware, but on the other hand, they often do so with poorly designed policies. As an example, I'd point to the cookie notices that appear on almost every major website, which must have absorbed, globally, many careers worth of man-hours to implement while offering virtually no real-world…
I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. I'm European, and I sure miss my perceived greater freedom and innovation of economical activities in the US. Things like having UBER banned for example in France or Germany completely throws me off. And in Germany you don't know yet what's living without cash and only with a credit card. And those damn cookie notices!! Because they show up in every page, everybo…
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I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. I'm European, and I sure miss my perceived greater freedom and innovation of economical activities in the US. Things like having UBER banned for example in France or Germany completely throws me off. And in Germany you don't know yet what's living without cash and only with a credit card. And those damn cookie notices!! Because they show up in every page, everybo…
Last I heard, Uber works just fine in France > And in Germany you don't know yet what's living without cash and only with a credit card. That's on the Germans (especially Berliners), rest of Europe uses cards a lot more. And I'm glad the US finally took their head out of the sand and are using Chip Cards But yeah the cookie notice is pretty much useless (and I think it's been implemented badly by websites as well). N…
How this came about is a textbook case study in government-industrial nepotism, including the family [1] controlling 60% of the taxi companies (edited) literally hiring the head of the French FBI to transfer a couple of months before retirement in the transport ministry, pass anti-Uber legislation, and then retire to a cushy job as the chairman of I think the second or third largest taxi company (owned by the same family). This was exposed in a long article in the Nouvel Obs, a real piece of journalism, which was taken offline about a week after publication (edit - seems to be back! [2]) and before I could take a copy (only the URLs I sent friends remain as testimony of its existence). [1] also claims that the Rousselet family blocked a direct rail link between CDG and central Paris (my Uber on that route last week cost 99 EUR), and has kept the number of taxi licenses "near 1930s levels". edit - [2] claims Paris has 1/5th as many taxis as London or New York, and that no new licenses were given between 1990 and 2002, during which CDG passengers increased almost 50%.
There is an embryonic version of Pool, in the form of Blablacar, an app that arbitrages the very high cost (for French citizen) of SNCF and Air France domestic intercity travel. You post your approximate trip, and riders can ask you to pick them up for a portion of the way. I've travelled 5 hours for 10 EUR this way, and used it frequently between Geneva and Annecy (about 45 minutes, no train link, infrequent buses). Since this app is effectively useless for last minute short trips within a city, it does not compete with taxis, which may explain why it is still around.
[1] Note that the father of the current chairman was the executor of the will of President Francois Mitterrand - https://www.challenges.fr/entreprise/pourquoi-il-est-impossi...
[2] https://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/economie/20150212.OBS2398/de... - on the former security head: "fin 2007, le gouvernement Fillon demande un rapport sur les taxis au préfet Pierre Chassigneux [...] Coïncidence ? Ancien directeur des Renseignements généraux puis directeur de cabinet de François Mitterrand, l’homme est une vieille connaissance d’André Rousselet via le corps préfectoral. Son travail, publié en avril 2008, est si conservateur que la presse le qualifie de "contre-rapport Attali", qui vient, lui, de prôner une véritable libéralisation du métier. Mieux : ce même Pierre Chassigneux devient ensuite… président des Taxis bleus, poste qu’il occupe encore à ce jour !"
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The cookie provision will probably be changed very soon [1]: > Simpler rules on cookies: The so called "cookie provision", which has resulted in an overload of consent requests for internet users, will be streamlined. New rules will allow users to be more in control of their settings, providing an easy way to accept or refuse the tracking of cookies and other identifiers in case of privacy risks. The proposal clarifi…
10th of Jan. 2017, and nothing has happened.
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Per European Privacy Law, you only own the data for the specific use-cases that you asked it for in your terms of use / privacy policy. I agreed to that when signing up. If you change that in the future, you have to ask for my consent again. If I deny, then you cannot use my data for your new use-case.
Then its a joke. The EULAs already contain huge outlays of information and are frequently amended with more. In the US they like to contain restrictions on your basic rights that you don't really expect. The EULAs will just all be amended with terrible terms as take it or leave it for all services just like they are in the US.
The user has to explicitly give you consent to use the data for a purpose for you to be able to.
Basically, for every purpose you want to use the data for, you’ll need a separate button.
If the user chooses not to consent to data usage for some purposes, the rest of your service still has to work.