Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Ban Oracle and Microsoft from public procurement and start supporting the European equivalent of Baidu or Yandex. Neither of those are EU either, are they? Baidu is Chinese and Yandex is Russia (admittedly they are in Europe, but not part of the EU). How is that any different, from the EU's perspective, to supporting Oracle and Microsoft? Unless I'm misinformed, which is entirely possible.
The commenter said equivalent . They were not saying the EU should fund Baidu or Yandex. They were saying to either find or create an equivalent in the EU and fund that. Curious as to how one expects to will such a company into existence, but whatever I guess.
Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling
111–120 of 157 posts
Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling
#112Its very hard. Even if you build an EU Facebook that is awesome, how do you make users switch? All the data is in the old Facebook. Not just your profile: groups, pages, marketplace etc etc
Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling
#113Provided the GDPR now actually gets enforced, this would clean up the web from all the obnoxious consent flows (remember those are not compliant with the GDPR to begin with).
This will also make Facebook and similar monopolies less toxic as they'd have to either obey the law at a loss or start charging for their services, opening themselves up to competition.
Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling
#114How about actually supporting the European Tech industry instead of just adding endless bureaucracy? Ban Oracle and Microsoft from public procurement and start supporting the European equivalent of Baidu or Yandex. With ARM (prior to the acquisition), Linux, MariaDB, etc. - Europe was in a great position to do this. We need to stop this digital colonialism where massive, monopolistic US corporations pay no taxes in E…
I wouldn't ban the company (there's no way to make that sound right). Just ban the practices they follow, which makes them unqualified to participate unless they really change that. For example, public procurement should always require software be open source as a hard dealbraker. This is actually the case in [too few] countries.
Some things can be open source, the government already uses a lot of open source in many countries, but the government has little recourse if providers of critical software capabilities refuse to do business under those terms.
Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling
#115The world's countries at a party, tech edition: US: We'll bring the software! China: We'll bring the hardware! EU: We'll bring the regulation!
The difference is that the EU tries to protect people in different aspects like social rights or privacy. The US does not offer similar protection, so in some sectors you don't hit the bureaucracy.
Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
London is an exercise in marketing, to see how far peoples suspension of disbelief can be stretched whilst being a net drain on a country it isn't even strictly part of, and a drain the world as a whole. It is amazing to see how Brits outside of (hell, even in) London live, the British countryside has some of the poorest areas in western Europe. Evidence marketing is effective!
> the British countryside has some of the poorest areas in western Europe All rich countries have impovrished areas that have been left behind. > It is amazing to see how Brits outside of (hell, even in) London live, The same can be said for California, New York, Florida, Dublin, Paris, Barcelona, etc.
Check which countries make the top 10 lists in QoL. You'll find their ghetto's are as nice to live as some of Britain's good neighbourhoods!
Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMHO, the taxpayer funding aspect is a red herring anyway. There is no reason that a small team of founders or even a solo founder should not be able to start and grow a tech/software business well. The natural barriers to entry are very low in this industry. If you have a useful idea, the technical skills to implement it, and the willingness to try, you should never need lots of external help to build a viable busin…
I see this comment a lot but I have never seen any evidence for this. What exactly is the barrier that a tech startup faces in Europe vs US? Which regulations are in the way (and are they EU or national ones)? There is a lot of bs thrown around e.g. GDPR is far from evil or bothersome, as well funded lobby groups have made it out to be. You don't need cookie warnings if you use cookies to log your users in, only if y…
While this is not intended as a criticism of you personally, you have ironically just demonstrated a big part of the problem. I might reply that I have seen this response a lot, no matter how often I have previously given detailed examples, sometimes even in the same forum. A lot of people who haven't themselves tried to run a business in this environment are almost completely unaware of the hassle it can be. Here in the UK, this is a particularly poignant issue because of the poor quality of "debate" around Brexit a few years ago.
Now, to answer your question, here are a few of the different barriers a new tech business would face here in the UK right now.
1. It's been difficult-to-impossible to open a new business bank account for the past several months. The big banks have (they claim) been so busy administering government support schemes for existing business customers that they couldn't take on any more. Government have been mostly ineffective at dealing with this problem.
2. To hire anyone (other than owner-directors, when some of this might not apply) means drawing up employment contracts with all the required elements, establishing formal grievance and disciplinary processes, being aware of numerous employment regulations, arranging all required insurance policies, identifying what evidence you need to keep to confirm a candidate's legal right to work for you, understanding any relevant minimum wages and time off including many kinds of statutory leave and pay, understanding your health and safety obligations including things you must say/provide/fund for your employee, establishing a payroll system and integrating that with the government's real-time information system if you haven't already done this, setting up a compliant company pension scheme if you haven't already done this, and who knows what else because this sentence is already half a screen long.
3. All of your personal data processing needs to be GDPR compliant. Its defenders like to say this isn't a big burden because it "just" means you have to do a few reasonable-looking things they can type out in a single comment. However, the main GDPR document alone is nearly 100 pages long and that's before you consider all the supporting material and the views of 28 different regulators. One of these things is not the same scale as the other.
4. If you're selling B2C, the consumer rights rules will apply. Again, on the face of it, that's fine. Who can object to fair protections for consumers, right? But when you actually read them, they are full of things that aren't well considered, like defaults that probably no-one would ever want, long and highly context-sensitive lists of information that must be provided at different times, obscenely disproportionate penalties for minor infractions by merchants, etc.
5. VAT. I'm not going to elaborate much, though I could write a pretty long book on the subject at this point. You're welcome to Google the numerous extensive criticisms out there. I suggest starting with #vatmess. Pay particular attention to how the EU changed the rules so what used to be a single market where merchants treated customers anywhere in Europe the same as in their home country got turned into a situation where merchants had to understand and comply with the tax rates and rules in every one of 28 member states. This is literally the opposite of the EU promise of creating a single market.
6. The IP landscape is unclear. Attempts to standardise it have repeatedly failed. No-one really knows what you can or can't get a patent for, or even what types of inventions you can or can't get a patent for. Copyright rules differ significantly with geographical location, and in some places additional related rights exist.
7. Lots of relatively minor stuff like the "cookie law", which is a tiny and yet totemic issue. It was well-intentioned but written by people who didn't really understand the technology and its implications. It doesn't do much to protect anyone. It annoys almost everyone. Non-compliance is widespread, whether deliberately or through simple misunderstanding or ignorance of what is technically required. There is little enforcement in practice, so operators who do make the effort to comply are left at a disadvantage. And years later, all of this still hasn't been properly fixed even though just about everyone agrees on it.
Edit to add:
8. How could I forget PSD2/SCA? There's nothing like putting obstacles in the way of actually collecting money from your customers to help a business grow.
Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
But why is a high stock value the ultimate goal? Shouldn't the goal be producing tech that's beneficial?
Beneficial to whom?
Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling
#119The world's countries at a party, tech edition: US: We'll bring the software! China: We'll bring the hardware! EU: We'll bring the regulation!
Ah yes, the country of the European Union
Re: Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
What parts of the British countryside are poor? Anecdotally, the stereotypical British farmer is a wealthy Tory, and low income populations are concentrated in council estates in postindustrial northern towns and cities (i.e. not the countryside).
From my US PoV, most smallholder farmers in the UK are not rich or wealthy, but almost subsistence --perhaps better than break even but do not generate enough income so one partner has to keep a professional job. As for post industrial rust-towns, I think of the northeast/Newcastle, Humberside & Scotland --maybe influenced by 'The Post War Dream' and Kris Killip's photography.