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Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

foreignpolicy.com

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Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#471

Post by Moldoteck »

xvector wrote: post #366
fl0id wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

from a personal and social perspective, I see nothing wrong with it. In fact, even in the EU we still ahve a lot of BS startups. We imo need more sustainable businesses, that value actual societal value/value to consumers or businesses over growth and shareholder value.

[flagged]

Regulation can be good. For example car sector and expanding car centric infra including erasing old towns killed a lot more ppl and had a huge environmental impact in us compared to eu where this sector was more regulated. So long term the suffering got bigger in us compared to eu because us had poor regulation and poor decision makers

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#472

Post by Moldoteck »

spiderice wrote: post #336
skywhopper wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, these are problems? Other than #4 they all sound like good things.

A working base that values vacation days over equity doesn’t sound like a place I’d want to start a business. And I’m not the only one. Many companies don’t hire in Europe because it’s too risky to get a dud employee that you can’t fire without having to pay their salary for the next 6 months.

I find it the other way- lots of contracting roles in europe coming from US/Switzerland. There are also many roles coming from different eu countries to other eu countries. In other words it doesn't seem to have such a big impact

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#473

Post by Moldoteck »

LtWorf wrote: post #170
kredd wrote: post #10

I might be talking out of my depth, as I don’t live in Europe, but I’ve heard the same paraphrased headlines like these since at least 2016. Has status quo been swayed one way or another since then? Theoretically speaking, wouldn’t legislating away the top US players open the market to the local companies a la Naver in SK, WeChat in China or Line in Japan? I understand I’m dumbing it down, but assuming such legislati…

Just paid articles trying to push their agenda. We have no tech sector in europe. As soon as a company has more than 6 developers it gets bought by a USA company (that's a slight exaggeration, not by much).

That's not a slight exaggeration, it's a huge exaggeration to try to make your point valid.

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#474

Post by apexalpha »

generalizations wrote: post #470
tivert wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What an interesting point of view. Very European. I wonder what will those Europeans do that do need the high-performance computer chips to create something new, to innovate. You mean the ones fabricated with European photolithography machines? I think you missed the GP's point: a lot of so-called "innovation" is crap, providing as much true value as a parasite (maybe one of those lovely ones that will kill you if…

> You mean the ones fabricated with European photolithography machines? Interesting discussion recently, I forget if it was on here. Those lithography machines are built with the worst spaghetti code imaginable and the engineering is so close to black magic that development is painfully slow. In other words, that space is ripe for disruption and there might be some attempts at that in the near future.

If you think EUV lithography is 'ripe for disruption', then sir, I wish you and your VCs all the best. :)

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#475

Post by tivert »

generalizations wrote: post #470
tivert wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What an interesting point of view. Very European. I wonder what will those Europeans do that do need the high-performance computer chips to create something new, to innovate. You mean the ones fabricated with European photolithography machines? I think you missed the GP's point: a lot of so-called "innovation" is crap, providing as much true value as a parasite (maybe one of those lovely ones that will kill you if…

> You mean the ones fabricated with European photolithography machines? Interesting discussion recently, I forget if it was on here. Those lithography machines are built with the worst spaghetti code imaginable and the engineering is so close to black magic that development is painfully slow. In other words, that space is ripe for disruption and there might be some attempts at that in the near future.

> Interesting discussion recently, I forget if it was on here. Those lithography machines are built with the worst spaghetti code imaginable and the engineering is so close to black magic that development is painfully slow.

It sounds like "spaghetti code" is not actually the competitive disadvantage software engineers imagine it to be.

I say that as a software engineer.

Pretty sure there's a lot more to those machines than software.

> In other words, that space is ripe for disruption and there might be some attempts at that in the near future.

Not because of "spaghetti code," but because of US-led sanctions. China has technical talent, a lot of money, and now motivation to enter that space.

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#476

Post by sofixa »

spiderice wrote: post #336
skywhopper wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, these are problems? Other than #4 they all sound like good things.

A working base that values vacation days over equity doesn’t sound like a place I’d want to start a business. And I’m not the only one. Many companies don’t hire in Europe because it’s too risky to get a dud employee that you can’t fire without having to pay their salary for the next 6 months.

> Many companies don’t hire in Europe because it’s too risky to get a dud employee that you can’t fire without having to pay their salary for the next 6 months.

That's what trial periods are for, within the first 1-12 months (depending on position and sector) you can very easily get rid of employees. That's when you're supposed to evaluate their performance and fit.

And if they don't do their job afterwards you reprimand them and they can then be fired for cause if you have actual causes.

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#477

Post by hcfman »

It’s all European regulation really. The cyber resilience security act is another example. You are compelled to come out with security fixes for the life of the product. If this is embedded hardware this gets increasingly difficult.

Imagine you come out with a secure boot product for the pi. Currently this is considered beta at the moment. In any case it’s quite possible that it could change, making it impossible to provide an update.

So under this regulation do you think anyone will offer any extended warranties ? The small amount of extra money will not be worth the massive extra risk.

15 million euros fine or 2% of your income doesn’t make for a very attractive incentive on platforms where it’s complex and risky to perform low level upgrades for example.

So expect increasingly shorter product lifetimes going forward and more and more products that just won’t be released in Europe, I expect even ones developed by European companies. And what do you think about small players who can’t even afford one court care for example ?

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#478

Post by fooker »

georgeburdell wrote: post #136
thrance wrote: post #77

I wish targeted advertising was made completely illegal here, I am sure our society would greatly benefit from that.

Do you actually get relevant online ads? I usually get ads about the thing I just bought

Statistically this works out pretty well.

If you spent real money on something, you're far more likely to buy it again or buy it for someone or send that link to someone than a completely new product.

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#479

Post by burnerthrow008 »

chmod775 wrote: post #266
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would kill the free internet tomorrow, and the one billion YouTube viewers would likely be quite upset about it. Untargeted ads pay less than 5% what targeted ones do.

> Untargeted ads pay less than 5% what targeted ones do. Even assuming that is true, companies are bidding for user's attention and against each other. What do you think will happen to prices for context-based advertising if targeted advertising goes away? > and the one billion YouTube viewers would likely be quite upset about it Great example. Many of the ads that finance the YouTube ecosystem are context-based and…

> What do you think will happen to prices for context-based advertising if targeted advertising goes away?

It's quite obvious, isn't it? They will stop buying ads altogether.

The entire reason targeted ads pay better is because they have a higher conversion rate, so advertisers can afford to pay more.

> Many of the ads that finance the YouTube ecosystem are context-based and not targeted.

And that's why shovel-ware "personal finance" crap YouTube channels make mega-bux, while actually interesting creators earn pennies. If you want more "junk food content", have at it: Ban all the targeted ads!

Just don't come crying in five years when there's nothing good to watch or read.

Re: Europe is in danger of regulating its tech market out of existence

#480

Post by tim333 »

nottorp wrote: post #231
lolinder wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are storing people's private data and selling primary communication devices. To be clear, I think privacy laws like GDPR absolutely have a place for consumer protection. I just don't think the DMA does. Watching how the DMA applies to Apple, it feels far less about consumer protection than it does about businesses, and that's what makes me uncomfortable. The EU is in this case listening to complaints from a bu…

> The Apple App Store protects users from myriad abuses by myriad bad companies. Does it? Are the $50/month subscription flashlight apps gone? This is just a form of 'think of the children'. Think of all those evil hackers waiting around the corner for the poor unsuspecting iPhone users.

A friend recently lost his life savings though a hack of a crypto wallet on an Android phone. Phone security isn't trivial.
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