EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member' • Hacker News Board

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#871

Post by mitxela » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 11:27 PM UTC

method_capital wrote: post #814

mitxela wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all copium. Harris was a perfectly average Democratic candidate and an improvement over Biden. Yes, if they'd run Bernie they probably would've won, but there was zero chance the Democrat party would ever run a far-left presidential candidate - it goes against all their interests. It's like saying the Republicans should've run Chuck Schumer.

Clearly not an American. Bernie has literally zero chance in a nationwide election. Read it again: ZERO.

He was literally winning until the DNC de-primaried him partway through the election.

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#872

Post by theplumber » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 11:46 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #682

gizajob wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is what will kill it in Canada too. There’s maybe only a million Canadian citizens who would be interested in the idea of freedom of movement to Europe. There’s probably 10-20 million Canadian citizens who would be a hard “absolutely no way” to opening their borders to 250 million random Europeans in return.

44% of Canadians support re-opening immigration; I'm willing to bet that a larger number would support immigration from EU nations.

Yeah but you have to wonder why the EU nations themselves are not very happy with the EU immigration.

One part of the answer is that some are more open to out of EU immigration than others. A while ago that was Germany who got 1 million plus of refugees and economic immigrants from Syria , Afghanistan and other non European countries.

Now it seems that Spain is that willing to take immigrants and of course also provide them citizenship after 3-5 years. So you may end up with a disproportionate amount of immigrants that come from Europe but are not really European in terms of looks and behaviour. I really fail to see how EU will continue unless far right wins all over Europe and a common restrictive immigration policy is agreed.

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#873

Post by raydev » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 11:48 PM UTC

harhargange wrote: post #68

From Blackberry to a budding VFX industry and many other sustainable businesses to come out of Canada has always made it seem like a very EU-like philosophy. This will be great for fair trade.

From a shadow-of-its-former-glory-20-years-ago company to a budding industry reliant on dollars from outside Canada?

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#874

Post by anenefan » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 11:55 PM UTC

nickslaughter02 wrote: post #245

phs318u wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet NordVPN and Signal both continue to work in Australia (I don't know who/what Windscribe are), so all other things aside, I suspect this is a hollow threat.

They have not asked yet or companies (Fastmail for example) just provide access and keep quiet. > Australia passes world’s first law authorizing encryption backdoors > The law authorizes police to compel companies to create a security vulnerability, often called a backdoor, that would give investigators access to an individual’s communication without that person’s knowledge. It marks a major milestone in the so-calle…

>> Australia passes world’s first law authorizing encryption backdoors

First only as far as a law known to the state's citizens.

I was working on a compression and encryption idea late 80s, very early 90s albeit with too higher a price on compute power which I was hoping to improve -- fortunately I bumped into a bloke though attending a module to improve design who also worked for a company developing software which used encryption, primarily targeting a particular market overseas which would also see sales flow into other countries eventually. On telling him what I was working on he took the time to have a long chat as he lay out the difficulties he and the company he worked for had to deal with especially in regard to this country; as to be able to market the product there, the programs would need a back door ... from what I heard, I'd assume that all sold there at that time had a back door. It was a significant moment for it changed the path I was on, being apparently more or less pointless, I reluctantly moved on as it wasn't worth any more time to provide a free open source program that got around the sale aspect.

Funny thing is, myself online I couldn't give a rats if whomever in those 3 and 4 letter organisations around the world could see my emails, mailing lists etc.

Edit: clarity

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#875

Post by theplumber » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 12:06 AM UTC

teamonkey wrote: post #834

theplumber wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is was about immigration. I don’t understand why people are still in denial about this. I am pretty sure it would have happened anyway regardless of what economic concessions UK would have got. It’s worth to note that the immigration is still an issue in the UK and the EU and I think more EU members will leave because of this.

It was about money. People were poor, wages had hardly grown after years of austerity following the 2008 crash. A huge campaign pointed the finger squarely at the EU: they are taking our money, they are the reason you’re poor, you would be richer without them. People believed them.

I have seen it differently. I’ve seen it about immigration, the party driving it being UK Immigration Party. Boris “party” put some economic spin on it but it was fuelled by immigration.

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#876

Post by Henchman21 » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 12:32 AM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #840

Henchman21 wrote: post #803

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American I can tell you absolutely people around me are entirely delusional. It’s sad to see and I know I am not immune. Near as I can tell we are , in fact, the baddies .

There are no good guys. The foxes are in charge of the hen house in every country. E.g. Carney is using all of this as a chance to completely gut every climate change initiative possible and slash corporate taxes, shore up existing Canadian oligopolies etc. etc. The nationalism is a drug which can be used by elites in all places for their own purposes. It's just a matter of degrees I guess.

Each of us has the capacity to be good and evil. I guess the thing I am lamenting is that no one is bothered to try and hide the evil anymore. Or maybe I see it clearly now for the first time. But regardless of what others are doing, what we are doing in the United States is absolutely shameful. I hope someday humans are able to move beyond nation-states, the economics of scarcity, capitalism, greed, hate, the need some have to control.

We need to deal with the power hungry and the continued ramifications of them ruling over the rest of us.

I’m not sure where to even begin.

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#877

Post by enoint » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 12:39 AM UTC

WarmWash wrote: post #734

mcv wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much oil is Europe still importing from Russia? I'd rather have Canadian.

You know how despite climate change being very real, in day to day discussions with other level headed people, they still very regularly say stuff like "We ran the numbers for an EV, and right now gas is still cheaper, so we are holding off on the switch until it makes financial sense" Canadian oil would need to be shipped halfway around the world. It would be more expensive. Price is always the top factor for everyo…

The politically-important Alberta oil mostly goes to the mountain states down here. Coincidentally, those same states rely heaviest on coal for electricity. So, the choice is recharge an EV on coal (think arsenic and mercury accumulating somewhere nearby) or good ol gasoline (which is piped from Canada).

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#878

Post by dpc050505 » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 1:42 AM UTC

adi_pradhan wrote: post #452

Not sure what it really means but Mark Carney is turning out to be one of the the most consequential prime ministers of Canada. He has an exceptionally poor hand of cards to play but is maximizing any opportunity. Very creditable leadership - even for those who don't agree with everything he does. I do think this is a lesson for political parties all over the world. You can be pragmatic.

Canada's geopolitical position might be a bit fucked but we're still a very rich country with highly educated and resilient people. An exceptionally poor hand would be trying to govern a place like Haiti.

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#879

Post by nonethewiser » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 3:45 AM UTC

mitxela wrote: post #349

nonethewiser wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PPWR is an obvious one. Its such a dysfunctional law that they actually told people to ignore it.

Programmers keep thinking law is if/then, it's not, it's a set of instructions to judges, which may contain obvious errors or conflict with other instructions, which is why we allow humans to interpret them instead of computers.

Do you grant that there are poorly written laws?

Are you defending PPWR? Not in spirit but actual implementation?

It will never get so-far as the judge because the EU has already admitted the law cant be followed and arent going to be taking people to court over it.

Regardless of the intent, it's an abject failure.

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#880

Post by mmmmmbop » Thu, Sep 17, 2026, 3:48 AM UTC

sajithdilshan wrote: post #797

throwaway283737 wrote: post #481

This is the same EU who once reduced the Canadian trade minister to (literal) tears, and made her denounce the (accurate) fact that, and I quote, "Europe is not capable of signing a trade deal". Notably, the EU has never ratified the Canada FTA and everyone's just sort of pretending it did for convenience's sake. Nice symbolism, but this is merely being used as leverage in Canada's negotiation with the US. "See, we h…

I think a lot of non-europeans have this illusion that EU is this one big liberal, open-minded continent. It is mostly true if you look at certain cities like Amsterdam or Copenhagen, but in general most EU countries are way more conservative, and traditional. Not only abortion, some EU countries still have laws to discriminate people based on their sexuality. One recent example is that one of the prominent openly ga…

> openly gay German politician (Jens Spahn) had to give up his position (although he had it coming because his other political scandals) because he used a surrogate mother in US to have a kid with his husband.

That's misleading. The issue was hypocrisy. Spahn was a chief advocate against surrogacy. He publicly supported a motion keeping surrogacy illegal in Germany while simultaneously secretly using a surrogate mother in the US. That's not a great look.