Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management • Hacker News Board

Re: Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management

#411

Post by troupo » Tue, Mar 05, 2024, 4:23 PM UTC

dageshi wrote: post #304

troupo wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you seem to know so much about EU law, can you show me where exactly GDPR requires cookie banners. Or talks about cookies, banners, or even browsers?

I don't know, I can say the EU uses them itself... https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_... If that site needs a cookie banner I'm guessing nearly all sites do.

> I don't know

Exactly. And this doesn't surprise me.

The law states: if you collect more data than is strictly required for your site[1] to function and/or send user data to third parties, you have to:

- tell the users about it

- let the users to opt out, where opt out must be as easy as opt in

- if the users opt out, the site[1] must continue working

So yes, that site does send some extra data to third-parties, and informs the user about it. And lets the user know about it. IMO it shouldn't use third-party services, but oh well.

These days it's a source of my constant amazement that 8 years after its publication the people who complain about GDPR the most have not had even the tiniest attempt to read anything about it or understand anything about it.

[1] I simplified this to sites. GDPR is General Data Protection Regulation. All this equally applies to sites, apps, offline businesses, governments etc. To cookies, local storage, offline paper documents, tape records, cloud storage etc.

8 years. The law has been around for 8 years. It has been enforced for 6. It takes about half an hour to read the most relevant parts of it (chapters 1—5). An hour if you're not too familiar with legalese. And yet... "I don't know".

Re: Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management

#412

Post by zx10rse » Tue, Mar 05, 2024, 4:26 PM UTC

"Remember what I wrote about electrical plugs? The EU is pro-business – often criticised for being essentially a pro-business entity – and not in favour of regulation for regulation’s sake."

Complete nonsense, where is the competitor to Apple in Europe? Google? Meta? SpaceX? Microsoft? Overregulation is completely destroying the market in which the whole power is consolidated to a few big monopolistic players backed, and liked by the EU. They are completely suffocating small, and medium businesses.

Brussels was on fire just the last week if you haven't seen the news, farmers from all over Europe are protesting, because they are being suffocated with regulation to the point they need to throw their productions on the streets, and file for bankruptcy.

I also find pretty funny the USB-C standardization praise as some sort of genius move by the EU bureaucrats, especially since Apple in 2015 decided that USB-C is the future and the whole industry followed.

A single market is a totalitarian market it has nothing to do with free trade.

Re: Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management

#413

Post by epistasis » Tue, Mar 05, 2024, 4:26 PM UTC

RandomLensman wrote: post #365

epistasis wrote: post #328

> But the single market is what it’s for. Without it, the EU would cease to exist. To understand what motivates EU, as an organisation, you need to understand the single market. > Whenever I point out on social media that the single market is the purpose of the EU, I get bombarded by replies saying: “No you’re wrong. The EU was founded to preserve peace in Europe. Gotcha! I think the author is right here, and that th…

The EU was created in 1993, not sure how at that time colonies were anywhere relevant to the creation. The starting point was the European Coal and Steel Communion in 1951 (conceived 1950, with France, W Germany, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) which had as an objective to create lasting peace between France and Germany by making it practically impossible from resource pooling to go to war.

The EU is the continuation of the efforts at integration started in the 1950s.

It took the loss of the colonies to really cement the future economic integration.

The idea that economic integration prevents war has been fairly well shattered by Russia's warmongering.

There are often reasons cited that sound good to the public, but these are not necessarily the same as the true reasons that really motivate the actions of nations and individuals. That's actually the entire idea behind markets: simply asking people what they want or having them vote is not a substitute for putting their actual material interests into play by spending money in a market.

The idea of "less or no war" is a good sell, but "we need to keep prosperity after giving up our colonies" is a material interest that comes down to the basic need to eat.

Re: Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management

#414

Post by perlgeek » Tue, Mar 05, 2024, 4:27 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #51

I quite like the article as far as it goes; but this begs the follow up question - is the strategy working? Because for all their standards and harmonisation, the manufacturing is happening in China and the decisions are being made in North America. This should be an article about how Nokia or equivalent is approaching the US all wrong and not understanding the realities on the ground. I'd put energy in a similar fra…

As someone living in the EU, I'm well aware of the EU's failings, but also of the successes, and I think we don't celebrate them enough.

Some things I really like:

* I can travel in a wide area with just my ID card (and practically even without it), no visa or passports required

* sending packages by mail is really easy and cheap compared to non-EU countries

* free mobile data roaming. Not such a big deal for me (but very convenient), but I have friends that travel a lot or are at home in more than one country, for them it's huge

* no need to exchange currencies when visiting lots of places (though not all EU countries)

* my health insurance mostly works in the other EU countries as well

* pretty strong consumer protection laws

* We've been living in peace for quite a few decades now, awesome! (And that's not how it used to be in central Europe, historically)

Note that national politicians often take credit for things mandated by EU, and put all the blame on the EU, so that kinda skews the public discords more negative than it should be.

Just one more data point: only one country has left the EU so far, and it seems they've come to regret it, mostly. Lots of countries have joined the EU since its formation, with more in the pipeline. Would that be the case if negatives outweighed the positives?

Re: Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management

#415

Post by marcosdumay » Tue, Mar 05, 2024, 4:27 PM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #336

marcosdumay wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's as if everybody just forgot that the world was full of propaganda against electric cars (hey, hydrogen is the future!), regulation was heavily stopping any car startup, and the catch-22 problem of not being able to charge because nobody had electric cars existed. Nobody was making a car startup on that scene. It's been what, a decade and half? It's amazing how people forget.

A hydrogen pump just got installed in my county last month, actually. > regulation was heavily stopping any car startup, and the catch-22 problem of not being able to charge because nobody had electric cars existed. Now we have electric subsidies and replete charging stations, and we're not really any closer to democratizing the technology. I'll be real - the focus on scaling-up lithium-ion has been detrimental to th…

Hydrogen powered cars are so full of problems that they won't happen anywhere.

Nowadays electric cars are a visible minority almost everywhere on the planet. People seriously discuss the charging infrastructure. And there are many companies seriously selling those cars, a few even specialized only on the electric power-train that have no model at all immediately moved by combustion (but AFAIK, only Tesla doesn't do hybrids).

Electric cars are here to stay. Tesla may have made some bad decisions, but they moved the entire political framework.

Re: Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management

#416

Post by kbolino » Tue, Mar 05, 2024, 4:29 PM UTC

silverquiet wrote: post #376

kbolino wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing more smug than the point-and-laugh hit piece, where a journalist finds some ignorant rube for the college-educated to sneer at.

The author is not a journalist, but a doctor who studied public health issues.

I don't think the author's credentials alter the dynamic at play here.

Re: Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management

#417

Post by carlosjobim » Tue, Mar 05, 2024, 4:34 PM UTC

Sharlin wrote: post #388

carlosjobim wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EU citizens haven't been brainwashed into thinking that their government is their enemy, at least not to the same extent as the US. US citizens haven't been brainwashed into thinking that their government is their friend, at least not to the same extent as the EU. Honestly, if you talk to real people within the EU, you'll find that maybe half of them are mostly against the EU. Real life is not the same as HN, becau…

> US citizens haven't been brainwashed into thinking that their government is their friend, at least not to the same extent as the EU. > Honestly, if you talk to real people within the EU, you'll find that maybe half of them are mostly against the EU. Are you sure these two claims aren't contradictory? Go on, give it a few minutes of thought. --- Let us be perfectly clear here. People in the EU love to grumble about…

>That does not mean the large majority of EU citizens seriously thinks the EU should be replaced with something else.

Who are you quoting when you write "large majority"? I wrote "maybe half", and that's my assessment from talking to people. As for the UK, that's still to be seen. The last time they decided to stand on the side of European unification, it turned out they made the right choice – while still paying a very high price for that choice.

Re: Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management

#418

Post by bengale » Tue, Mar 05, 2024, 4:38 PM UTC

dale_glass wrote: post #149

bengale wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the exact problem though, noone really cares what the law says, they care that now they have annoying cookie banners. They don't blame the businesses for this; they blame the EU. The more of this they layer on the more ordinary people get irritated by the EU. This is how Brexit happened, remain tried to explain this stuff over and over again and no one wants to hear it. They want the cookie banners gone, or t…

> This is the exact problem though, noone really cares what the law says, they care that now they have annoying cookie banners. They don't blame the businesses for this; they blame the EU. European here. I squarely blame the business, and often turn back when hit by a particularly obnoxious banner. > This is how Brexit happened, remain tried to explain this stuff over and over again and no one wants to hear it. They…

> European here. I squarely blame the business, and often turn back when hit by a particularly obnoxious banner.

You're in the minority. Most people will not think every business is responsible for that, they'll assume they're being forced into it.

> The bendy banana thing isn't a law, it's a class descriptor.

Missing the point. Even with millions of pounds you can't convince a majority of people that is true.

> Haven't changed my mind in the slightest on that. Brexit was a stupid idea and as far as I can see, the UK failed to profit from it.

Continue to miss the point here. It doesn't have to be a good idea, years of meddling made it so people were willing to vote for a bad idea. That's my point.

Re: Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management

#419

Post by bengale » Tue, Mar 05, 2024, 4:41 PM UTC

doktrin wrote: post #291

bengale wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the exact problem though, noone really cares what the law says, they care that now they have annoying cookie banners. They don't blame the businesses for this; they blame the EU. The more of this they layer on the more ordinary people get irritated by the EU. This is how Brexit happened, remain tried to explain this stuff over and over again and no one wants to hear it. They want the cookie banners gone, or t…

> There actually isn't a point where you can spend enough money to convince people of this stuff when they don't want to hear it. A bit chicken and the egg, this. Persistent and well funded influence campaigns are precisely how people came to hold the views you describe. I personally wouldn't treat "leave" logic as some kind of particularly organic position. Rather its success demonstrates how one form of persuasion…

> Rather its success demonstrates how one form of persuasion was more effective than another.

This is true. I'm not sure anyone has demonstrated it working the other way though so it seems to be infinitely more effective.

It's happening again now with EVs. "The EU is forcing you to swap your car for an expensive EV with their Euro6 rules." There doesn't seem to be any come back to it at all.

Re: Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management

#420

Post by ryandrake » Tue, Mar 05, 2024, 4:42 PM UTC

rkangel wrote: post #409

ryandrake wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simping for big business is a favorite American pastime. Somehow, so many Americans have been convinced that they're actually business owners, just having a set-back and temporarily working for $20/hr stocking shelves or selling cars. But in their hearts they are actually tycoons, and anything that hurts business surely hurts themselves!

Quote from the West Wing: "That is the problem with the American Dream. Makes everyone concerned for the day they're gonna be rich."

I used to trot this URL[1] out a lot, but it's a pretty old survey now. In 2003, 39% of Americans believed that they either were(19%) or one day would be(20%) among the top 1% of earners.

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of-ho...