EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US • Hacker News Board

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

#341

Post by diggan » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 9:29 AM UTC

bgorman wrote: post #305

diggan wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is "modern devs" the modern "No true Scotsman"? Plenty of developers and organizations get by without managed databases. Although in "7-day sprints on loop forever" world of startups, any effort to require less knowledge to run the stack is probably welcome, hence it seems "most devs can't live without" for a lot of things, like managed databases, containerization and yadda yadda.

Having a managed database is the sweet spot for productivity/efficiency between maintaining a full time database administrator and having engineers learn how to do it themselves. How can a serious company using a relational database get by without paying for database expertise in some way or another?

Yes, of course once the company reaches a certain scale you need specialized roles and/or software that you use, that makes sense.

But is "companies of scale" what "modern devs" refer to? What is a "serious" company?

There is a lots of parameters that goes into the choice of self-hosted DB / managed DB, not just if the devs are "modern", or the company is "serious".

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

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Post by nicbou » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 12:53 PM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #222

WanderPanda wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What afraids me is, that here in Germany nobody seems to care anymore. The big numbers are just thrown around and everyone (especially the younger generation) has lost any sense as the media is just cheering along.

I wish I could upvote you more. This is what I noticed in Germany as well. The government keeps tooting their own horn on how in every statistic they're the best in Europe and the media parrots that while the younger generations just takes it for granted and doesn't bother questioning the poor decisions the government makes while they spend the public tax money like drunken sailors because hey, "we're Europe's no. 1,…

Then they spend a few days refreshing a webpage to get an appointment to register a vehicle, three weeks from now.

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

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Post by nicbou » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 1:05 PM UTC

christophilus wrote: post #32

pdimitar wrote: post #15

As an EU citizen, I don't believe for a second that this will result in anything useful, ever. There's too much vested interest that's quietly making the politicians do what the big business wants. Has been the case for a long time now. The only thing that's going to happen is that those big and old companies will get their hands on that funding while fulfilling exactly zero of their promises.

It’s pretty similar here in the US. What do you think the solution is? I don’t like the consolidation and regulatory capture I see everywhere.

Personally, I think various quality of life improvements would help a lot. Make running a business simpler!

Your first year in business should not be spent on lawyers and accountants, but in Germany, it's unavoidable. It's a serious barrier to small entrepreneurship.

I run a simple website, and keeping it online takes a surprising amount of time. The law is damn hard to follow, even with the best of intentions. I don't even want to think about hiring people.

Simplifying immigration would also help. I need to renew my freelance visa. I can't get an appointment. Nobody can. I have to go to a government office at 6 AM and queue until 10 AM to get an appointment. It takes 2-3 months to get a visa in general. If you don't speak German, you'd need an interpreter.

There are a few other steps I didn't have to go through, but they're not easier. Everything involves fighting for an appointment 2-4 weeks in the future, then trying to figure out your position in an opaque system. If you're in trouble, good luck emailing or phoning anyone. The immigration authority answers in 3-4 weeks, if at all.

The list goes on and on. I can't imagine building a disruptive business in such an environment. Running a blog is already a pain in the ass.

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

#344

Post by 908B64B197 » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

throw0101a wrote: post #200

throwaway7281 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recent COVID-App is a prime example of that. SAP plus German Telekom, neither of which is known for innovation, grab a 60M plus deal to develop a single app. In Italy a startup took over the job for 1/50 of the price and with at least as good or better job. Is the above play a problem for Germany? No. Do you they even understand an problem? I don't think so.

> The recent COVID-App is a prime example of that. SAP plus German Telekom, neither of which is known for innovation, grab a 60M plus deal to develop a single app. Meanwhile in Canada Shopify and Blackberry got together and helped the federal Canadian Digital Service in coding up an app, with the code available on GitHub: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID_Alert * https://www.covidshield.app * https://github.com/C…

It's mostly a fork of Google's contact tracing app, with some regionalization added.

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

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Post by 908B64B197 » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 2:30 PM UTC

ajmurmann wrote: post #242

amelius wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU just needs an investor climate similar to the US. The only problem is that investors like the idea of cornering markets, which, due to regulation, is harder in the EU.

Another problem is that the needed investments are about similar, but the expected market is much smaller. For to language barriers we are really talking over a dozen separate markets. All these languages are killing the EU as a market. I'm German, but would always start a company in the US and not even consider starting in the EU for this reason even if everything else was equal.

I feel it's never been cheaper to operate in several languages. Isn't it harder to deal with the tax rules and laws of individual countries?

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

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Post by 908B64B197 » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC

petre wrote: post #75

christophilus wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s pretty similar here in the US. What do you think the solution is? I don’t like the consolidation and regulatory capture I see everywhere.

The solution is de-regulation. In France if you want to run an open WiFi you need a license from the national comms authority for instance. But it won't happen. Too much bureaucracy. It's in the European mindset.

Keep in mind that bureaucracy creates (unionized) low skill white collar government jobs.

Doesn't matter the private sector is crippled by endless regulations if more and more jobs are created!

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

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Post by 908B64B197 » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 3:40 PM UTC

bsaul wrote: post #6

As a european, i still think those kind of measures are trying to cure the symptoms by throwing huge pile of cash, rather that fix the core issue : that the private sector in europe is currently unable to produce GAFA-sized companies in the IT sector. My intuition is that once again the money will be grabbed by existing big companies that proved unable to innovate, but are the best at capturing public fundings. EDIT…

I'm not certain it's the way forward.

I've never raised capital or founded a startup in Europe, but from what I've been told by Europeans there are several challenges that the continent should try tackling

- Talent and Pay gap with the US

- Risk averse investors

- Over-regulated markets

I don't see how this plan will solve any of the above.

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

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Post by odiroot » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 4:16 PM UTC

brazzy wrote: post #333

odiroot wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can easily pay ~42% (yes, contributions included) and still not be considered rich.

The specific number of 42% sounds like you're talking about taxes, but it's the second-to-maximum marginal tax rate, not the effective tax rate (which is below 30% for the vast majority of people). If you include social contributions, you can go above 50% - but those are things which benefit yourself quite directly, most notably health insurance. Which gives you the benefit of not being one medical emergency away fro…

I paid effectively 42.5% in the last year.

I'm not talking about progression and the brackets, as it doesn't help comparing to other countries.

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

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Post by xxpor » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 8:06 PM UTC

kazen44 wrote: post #268

xxpor wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even referring to them as "IT companies" shows how out of touch Europe is.

this might just be a language thing to be honest. ICT/IT is a very broad term, and usually used for anything technological in my experience.

But if you're using English, it's important to use the term that's widely understood. I don't really care how French/Italian/Romanian/Albanian use it.

If I hear you work in IT, it makes it sound like you work in corporate IT, e.g. the help desk, corporate networking, etc.

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

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Post by rad_gruchalski » Tue, Oct 20, 2020, 1:23 AM UTC

brazzy wrote: post #332

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everybody, no. I pay 42%. If one pays agewerbesteuer, it’s around 49% total.

No, you don't, not unless your income is about half a million EUR. 42% is the marginal tax rate (and 45% above 250k). The effective tax rate only exceeds 30% above ca. 71k EUR.

When you’re Selbstandig and not Freierberuf, there is also Gewerbesteuer. Depends on the location one has the Gewerbe registered. NRW being the most expensive one. Yup, taxes are progressive but one reaches that level.