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

politico.eu

351–360 of 507 posts

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

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand why everything else is suboptimal but why do you want them to migrate from Cobol to Java? What problem is that going to solve for them?

It's about human capital. Not that I favor Java, or even that I dislike Cobol. It is rather their existing human capital that makes anything more fancy than Java even harder to migrate to. At the same time, job postings looking for Cobol-Devs in 2020 are useless and even if they manage to find people capable and willing to work with Cobol per se, their existing code-base is an additional deterrant. This further fossi…

Isn't it the 'legacy' systems are supposed to be left operating as-is, almost like black boxes with defined properties? Some kind of a known seam in the process. Meanwhile, all extensions to process are to be handled by other means.

Given the current capacities, there could be additional layers added to filter or enhance whatever comes out of the legacy processes.

Sure, there needs to be a "keeper" for those legacy systems, but migrating off them may be asking for too much of a manager's beef to get an approval to accomplish.

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

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Closer to home country. 2) No visa needed. 3) Less anti-immigrant rhetoric. 4) Better work/life balance. 5) Free healthcare. If 10 years ago there were predominantly outfits servicing larger US/UK/Scandinavia companies, now it's shifting towards building their own products/services. Basically the guys learned how to do it and not they start spreading the wings. The only thing missing in Europe is active and mature…

Less anti-immigrant rhetoric... In France?

I didn't say there's none. Every single country in Europe has varying levels of it but nowhere near to what the US have been having over the last few years.

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

#353
post #103
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also see Quaero

Right, that was pathetic. IIRC they burnt 400 million € without producing any tangible results.

I do have some VC backed companies that did the same recently. Dog-walking, for example.

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

#354
post #334

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I think you did not get the purpose of the project and its context. 1. What should we copy ? We already have cloud companies in Europe. The issue is not about a lack of knowledge about cloud technologies. It is a matter of market share. Our companies are not big enough to provide adequate services to european states and sensitive industries. 2. The goal is not to create from scratch a European cloud giant that would…

True, I don't think we need to copy the technology: that is probably easily available, you just need good engineers and money. The problem is exactly the second you mention: why is it that EU companies don't have the market share that US ones have? Why are our companies not big enough? What prevents entrepreneurs in Europe from creating tech giants such as the US ones? These are the things we need to copy- not the te…

> These are the things we need to copy- not the technology.

This is only my own subjective opinion: the worst thing that we could copy from the US is their business mindset. It destroys society, states, fair competition, and at the end the core values of capitalism. Their mindset gave them leadership but now is about to destroy their society. We have to find our own path.

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

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today I was looking at some job ads for mid-senior devs in London. £50K and 200+ applicants. And then it says:fruits, free parking, private healthcare after 1 year.. And this suppose to be the tech center of Europe..

Mid-senior devs in most of the USA don’t make 400k total comp either. Solid experience and skills will get you offers around 100k GBP from bigger, well funded startups and if you want to sell your soul to the finance industry you can get like 300k GBP total comp. Those are both real offers I’ve had in London.

> and if you want to sell your soul to the finance industry

What do you mean when you say the finance industry? It's a pretty big field. Is an online bank the same as some real time trading platform? Also, why is it selling your soul? Is Google / Facebook "better" (that is - more moral) than a fintech company ?

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

#356

American internet companies can address a large, relatively homogeneous market of 300 million people that all speak the same language. This alone is a big competitive advantage over any European company.

Indeed. And not only common language, but ease of doing business with companies across the continent in general. Here in Europe, due to legal/language/cultural differences, and due to laziness, the default mode of operation for small companies in services is to avoid or neglect doing business with strangers from other parts of Europe. It is safe and comfortable, but does not create big multinational juggernauts.

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

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Be careful what you wish for: if we move towards a genuine globally-integrated tech market, where work can be done from anywhere, then companies might start asking the complementary question: "why would I, as a company, pay US-level (or even EU-level) salaries when I could hire someone from Russia or India or the Phillippines for much cheaper?" That particular knife cuts both ways.

That argument from consequences is common against remote working but isn't an actual arguement against the utility.

If there is no benefit for paying a premium why not go with the commodity? Why go with an outmoded restriction to only hire blacksmiths in bounds of the south side of the original city limits? (Because they didn't want to smell the smoke in the posh north side while requiring the smiths live within the innermost set of city walls so they were available during a siege).

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

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chip and pin hs been broken for 20 years, its security theatre.

Still far better than swipe and sign.

Or "enter these magic numbers, get money" which is how much of the US operates.

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

#359
post #164

As a German who's been exclusively working in the US tech space for the past few years, there's so many anecdotes that come to mind to highlight how far behind the old world is, both in tech as in spirit: - Article about Gaia-X in major German newspaper FAZ explained that on AWS you can spin up your own infrastructure, "sometimes even without talking to anyone from sales", from your home! - When I tried to read or wa…

"University-educated people in my social circle are often woefully unaware of economic trends that have swept the US, be it the gig economy, X-as-a-service, the nature of Venture Capital, the idea of scaling a company aggressively, the value of information, mobility of labor and paying market rate for experts, the high profit margins of offering a software product vs. (for example) doing one-off consulting for a German industrial company, etc."

I know you caveat all this with the fact that we aren't necessarily worse off (I say we but am British - I will always think of myself as European though) but I would argue that the fact the Europe has been behind the curve on any of these "innovations" is because society is less obsessed with the quick buck and that this is good. None of these financial/technological innovations have provably made life better for anyone apart from VC's and founders, though I am willing to entertain counterpoints.

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

#360

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…

Credit cards are much less used in Europe. France pioneered chip cards with the Carte Bancaire.
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