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Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

politico.eu

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Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#291

Post by Fiahil »

Havoc wrote: post #9

>One important concept underpinning Gaia-X is “reversibility”, a principle that would allow users to easily switch providers. Switching providers would imply some new tech or standard, no? A bit like docker is portable. Except for all parts of the cloud. So are they thinking a FAAS standard, a load balancer standard? Bit confused about where they're going with this

Kubernetes is your answer. For parts like blob storage, DNS, and identity provider, you can already use a few commercial or open source products (Minio, Keycloak, ...)

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#292

Post by fauigerzigerk »

KineticLensman wrote: post #283
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe me, the UK is ages ahead of Germany in terms of digitization.

Can't comment on the UK / Germany comparison directly, but I still continue to be pleasingly surprised by the quality of access to functions provided by gov.uk. E.g. I recently renewed my passport wholly online, registered my car, checked that the Govt had a record of my car's MOT (roadworthyness) certificate, etc.

I agree, gov.uk works really well.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#293

Post by jpfr »

rcarmo wrote: post #285
zeeZ wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GAIA-X: Technical Architecture: https://www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/EN/Publikationen/gaia-x-techni... More on the project: https://www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/EN/Dossier/gaia-x.html

The "technical" architecture reads like an extensively annotated UML diagram about... generics. There are a lot of guiding principles, a lot of references to data sovereignty, but after reading it I have zero clue of what they are going on about.

That's because in such a big project, you have to start with the goals and the guiding principles.

More concrete specs and technologies are being built, but not ready to show.

One of the authors of the "technical architecture document" here. AMA, but I cannot share in-progress work.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#294

Post by tomp »

viraptor wrote: post #256
thecleaner wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech salaries in Europe really are a joke. Even American companies don't pay well here because why would they, the market itself sucks. Combine that with easy immigration to US for Europeans and good affordable education it seems unlikely that talented people would choose to stay here. Part of the reason is the old money in this ecosystem. The problem with digitization in Germany specifically is that our paperwork is…

> Tech salaries in Europe really are a joke. Don't look at just the number. Once you consider the cost of living, health coverage, days off, sick days, long service leave, parental leave, and lots of other benefits, it's actually not that impressive. > easy immigration to US for Europeans "Europeans" don't exist. UK has drastically different immigration rules than Poland for example. > good affordable education Some…

People keep saying that, and I keep not believing them. AFAIK American companies tech offer comparable benefits to salaried employees, even though it's not required by law. And more and more of the "lifestyle" perks are disappearing, e.g. people are working more and more (8-6, 10-10 etc.) but still not getting paid US-style.

The only real deal-breaker, for me, is the risk of health insurance - I'm sure I'd be getting top-notch health insurance for myself and my family, but will it be useful when I need it? Will I know which provider to go to, is "in network", will bill me correctly, insurance company won't reject the claims, ... (but I guess these things are solvable, otherwise top-paid US employees would complain a lot, or emigrate). And of course the fact that I'm paid EU-style (well, better than EU-style as I work in finance with shittier quality of life, but still below US salaries) so I'm guessing US employees would either try to underpay me.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#295

Post by jpfr »

ksec wrote: post #81

If they want Competition to "HyperScalers" then why not just use OVH? Generally speaking, I dont think any of the Europeans have technical problems, I think they have a Product Placement, Marketing and Sales problem. And I think it is more or a cultural issue. ( Not saying it is a bad thing )

The goal is not to built yet-another-hyperscaler. The existing hyperscalers will integrate in GAIA-X.

Rather we want to give users the power to see where their data is stored and to control the use of their data if they choose to share it in an "ecosystem".

Many EU countries are scared to put their data from public administration / hospitals / ... into a cloud where lawful interception could be enforced via the US Cloud Act or similar.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#296

Post by martius »

realusername wrote: post #126
thiht wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how it works, not everyone wants to move country just for a (way) better salary.

There's definitely an IT brain drain in France due to low salaries, very few people of my former school actually work for a french company anymore, they almost all went somewhere else to get a better pay. In the post-covid world of increased remote working, the brain drain will likely increase tenfold since developers won't even have to leave the country anymore.

There are "good" French companies where you can grow a career and get a good salary.

What surprises me is that these companies seem to either hide their French roots, and are often ignored by the academic world. When I was student in engineering school, the only companies we would hear from where the big French corps like Orange, Cap Gemini, Thales and co.

I'm sad to see that these French companies don't get the support and publicity they deserve. I hoped that the French tech thing would help these companies, but I only ever hear about startup with vague pitches founded by business school graduates which don't know a thing nor care about any "tech".

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#297

Post by distances »

mtberatwork wrote: post #199
sildur wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they do have all to do with low salaries. My salary is low for American standards, but I can rely on public hospitals, public schools, and public transportation systems. I do not need to save for retirement either. Or for my kids tuition.

> My salary is low for American standards but I can rely on public hospitals, public schools, and public transportation systems. I do not need to save for retirement either. Or for my kids tuition. I think about this quite a bit, while the median middle class salary is higher in the US, the burden to fund everything out of pocket here is enormous. If salaries are 10-20% higher in the US, much of that goes out the win…

Reading by the HN comments the salary difference in IT is 100-200% though, so there you start getting some difference.

A medium/median salaried person would be much better off in Western Europe for sure.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#298

Post by jpfr »

thamer wrote: post #14

It's no surprise the French government is involved in this. They love these moonshot projects that aim to create the French X for any X that is a successful service by an American company. Qwant[1], launched as "The French Google" with a focus on privacy, serves 10 million searches a day (a ridiculously small number). No one has heard of it, no one uses it, and it's another project with a dream of restoring France to…

The French minister of economy (and finance) is very clear on the goals of GAIA-X. Just watch these two minutes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9kJrwkfNp4&t=1320

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#299

Post by [deleted] »

cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #258
joelbluminator wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are "a joke" because you're comparing them to the U.S. If you compared them to Japan / Australia / Canada let alone to the developing world they are great. Immigration to the U.S never was and probably never will be easy and the education there isn't affordable. Also, the work culture would be quite a shock for an European. Some people will always try to gain a "better future" , I don't see big numbers leaving G…

>If you compared them to Japan / Australia / Canada Can't speak for Japan, but the tech salaries in the big cities in Australia and Canada are far more competitive than those in Europe. The European tech industry is an absolute joke overall, and I say this as a European. It would take an utterly massive overhaul to correct without relying on outright Chinese-style protectionism, and as more companies move remote and…

[deleted]

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#300

Post by ripdog »

mandevil wrote: post #289
4636760295 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counter point, I have seen technology adopted in the EU in ways that the US has lagged far, far behind. Probably the best example of this is chip & PIN for credit cards. In the US we finally have chips, but still no PIN.

Isn't that because credit cards came later to the EU, so they had better standards because they didn't have to worry about supporting huge quantities of obsolete technology? I don't know the exact details on credit cards, but I know that's true for CDMA vs. GSM and NTSC vs PAL. In the US there were so many black and white TV's already out there that they couldn't abandon them, hence NTSC (which allowed the older blac…

>Isn't that because credit cards came later to the EU, so they had better standards because they didn't have to worry about supporting huge quantities of obsolete technology?

In New Zealand, credit card machines are basically required to be replaced every few years as security standards improve. Is this not the case in USA?

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