Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

politico.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 507 posts

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

#361

Post by mschuster91 »

heipei wrote: 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…

> the first half of the review is usually spent trying to convince people that moving off paper-based invoices and folders to all-digital is a good idea in the first place.

Paper based invoices are the easiest way to avoid issues with the tax office.

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

#362

Post by sershe »

Alas, looks like a PR move to cobble something together from existing components by consultants for EUR1.5m a year (from the article, unless I misread what that is for).

I've been developing backend distributed systems for a while, and kinda want to have a gig in Europe, so the title got me too excited I guess.

But, my dreams of reinventing the wheel in Europe for a (relatively) high paycheck aside; what could possibly go wrong? :)

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

#363

Post by arcturus17 »

The article seems to conflate cloud services with merely storing data. Of course that's part of any cloud stack, but to the average HN reader it is evident that cloud services are much more than that, such as running software and transforming data.

I think this might be a reflection of a misunderstanding that also happens on a higher level in European politics. Cloud services are much more than just "computers that store data" and the political implications of data sovereignty or what have you.

Cloud services are insanely complex systems built on the latest advances in areas like operating systems, networking, hardware, etc.

You don't get there with political statements of good-will, even when they're backed by what looks like a non-committal, lukewarm coalition of private companies. You don't stumble upon it by just saying "Ha! We need a Europe response to cloud services!"

You get there by being obssessive and single-minded about the problem, employing all your energy and focus on the task at hand, most likely fueled by the ambition of a lucrative or economically strategic incentive.

It saddens me as a European that the latter is what Europe seems to lack sometimes, and this initiative doesn't give me any hope for a change of course.

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

#364

Post by Udik »

Pedrit0 wrote: post #346
Udik wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> why is it that EU companies don't have the market share that US ones have? Why are our companies not big enough? They created the Cloud and we arrived late on this market, so we lag, therefore our companies are not big enough. This FR-GER initiative will secure market shares for european actors, in order they can grow enough to provide a sovereign platform for EU companies which need it. > Are you going to force EU…

> They created the Cloud and we arrived late on this market

Same for the web, for the mobile, and for many other sectors. We seem to be always late on the market, why is it so?

> All defense/sensitive/state owned companies, administration and maybe banking companies will not have the choice

Ok, so if I understand it correctly the EU is going to regulate out from some sectors non-EU companies and has to both come up with a legal excuse and to create some acceptable alternative before the regulation comes in force. And if the alternative is mediocre it won't be much of an issue because there will be no choice anyway. But the idea of creating an interoperable standard is good: it could allow a sane competition between companies to provide a basic standardised service. I hope it doesn't resolve in the next embarrassment. It won't solve our problem of constantly lagging in most consumer high tech sectors anyway.

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

#365

Post by tryptophan »

disiplus wrote: post #190
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…

germany is also one of the only west countryes that uses fax machines. some of our customers are sending orders with fax.

Hah, you'd be surprised at how much of US healthcare runs on Fax Machines (and 30 year old software running in win XP VMs...).

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

#366

Post by Nasrudith »

jason0597 wrote: post #350
jpfr wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faxes are "signature-proof" for contracts. Scanned documents in an email are not. That's the law being broken. Not the tech.

Why not scan a signed document and send it over an encrypted connection via the internet? Why do we have to send it over fax specifically?

Because the law was a special case for fax machines essentially instead of a generic one and they didn't understand the then very esoteric mathematical concept of converting arbitrary inputs to data and sending it in arbitrary ways.

We don't see laws today for unimagined hypotheticals like if governments if carrying a box with a stable frame of reference anchored wormhole inside that leads to a remote island with 1 ton of heroin is drug smuggling or not.

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

#367

Post by tyoma »

ripdog wrote: post #300
mandevil wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In the US merchants own their own machines and the banks have to strongarm them into getting new ones. This is one of the reasons some places still require a swipe to pay.

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

#368

Post by jdm2212 »

PeterStuer wrote: post #161

The problem with European software plays is a monetary problem. EU capital is much more expensive than US capital (ultimately due to the latter's status as the 'world reserve' currency due to the enforced petro-dollar regime). This is why Europe's IT sector is much more focused on B2B servuces/bespoke developments (low risk business models) and hardware/infrastructure (historic manufacturing/telecoms legacy). in term…

Why wouldn't an entrepreneur just borrow dollars in the US and exchange them for Euros? Or just take equity investments instead of debt and not bother with interest rates in the first place?

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

#369

Post by rorykoehler »

joelbluminator wrote: post #239
heipei wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, and I'm glad I started by saying that I'm German because lots of smaller European countries run circles around us in terms of tech adoption. I don't underestimate the value of quality of life, and I don't blame anyone who knowingly works for a stable, "boring", old-school German company which has been the world-leader in its niche for the past 100 years. But I think many people here are not aware that t…

There's a lot of criticism of the US/VC model, sure it brought tremendous success stories but it's not clear if the model actually works.

Ye I’m not a fan. All it does is entrench existing inequality. A few new millionaires are minted but I’m interested in solutions that provide an economic floor for everyone so we can all bootstrap if we want to instead.

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

#370

Post by rorykoehler »

f6v wrote: post #270
gspr wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the two first points are more specific to Germany than to the old world as a whole. Up here in Scandinavia, we often laugh at how much Germans interact with humans, send letters and faxes, and make phonecalls in their business lives. They are woefully far behind. From what I understand the same is true for the south. While I agree with the basic premise of the last point too I think you maybe underestimate th…

Milage varies in Europe. In Germany, opening a bank account "over internet" means sending paper letters back and forth, while in Belgium I didn't have to sign or send anything by post.

I opened an n26 account via their app in Germany. Took me 10 mins including the kyc process
Post reply on HN