Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EU countries team up for semiconductor push

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 665 posts

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#441

Post by eecc »

rgblambda wrote: post #348
mrtksn wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe has some successful international projects like CERN or Airbus. Besides, what are the other options? Europe is in this strange place where collectively account for enormous wealth and power but individually no country is a match to the big boys like USA/China when simultaneously are super unoptimised due to cultural/lingual differences. The younger Europeans I met were all very eager to learn English, so who k…

>>the English language can become the lingua franca with less resistance as it is no ones language(Well, there are the Irish but it's a small country). Malta also has English as an official language, though again, it's an even smaller country. On the other hand, in neither Ireland or Malta is English the "first" official language.

Malta used to be an UK colony, hardly surprising. Problem is more the cultural divide between Germanic and Latin ethics that continental Europe is split across... although Germany itself is heavily Catholic and is paradoxically the least German of all the northern lot. (Not sure if I explained myself good enough)

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#442

Post by m000 »

romanoderoma wrote: post #426
rgblambda wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>the English language can become the lingua franca with less resistance as it is no ones language(Well, there are the Irish but it's a small country). Malta also has English as an official language, though again, it's an even smaller country. On the other hand, in neither Ireland or Malta is English the "first" official language.

English isn't an official EU language anymore, the only country that chose it was UK. https://www.politico.eu/article/english-will-not-be-an-offic...

Do you have any references of English actually being phased-out in EU? The Politico article was written just a few days after the Brexit referendum, and 4 years later I can only take it for empty sabre-rattling.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#443

Post by Daho0n »

screye wrote: post #335

Genuine question - Has any major tech innovation/ product come out European industry (mainland EU) over the last couple of decades ? (not Academia) Their biggest tech companies are Spotify and Skype. That's pretty underwhelming given that Spotify's biggest innovations are in product development and Skype became a subsidiary of an American company within 2 years of its existence. Additionally, the 2 companies that see…

>major tech innovation

25% of the worlds research is done in the EU and a lot of that leads to something. Sounds to me like you look for software for the average Windows user only. ESA and CERN alone leads to huge innovations.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#444

Post by romanoderoma »

mrtksn wrote: post #408
iruoy wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is BS. English proficiency is very high in The Netherlands and Scandinavia, but people there are not lining up to emigrate. According to you, who wants to leave and why? P.S. Raising your kids in a British college? As in a school in Britain?

I don't know why OP is so bitter and wants to emigrate but in general, English is not about moving to another place but doing business beyond local. The Netherlands and Scandinavia accounts for the most of the European global tech output and this is not because Spaniards don't know how to code. The Dutch and people in the Scandinavian countries are so proficient in English that they do products like the Americans. Kn…

> English is not about moving to another place but doing business beyond local.

There are "only" 379 million people speaking English as a native language.

But there are 1.2 billion people speaking English as a second language, which means that there are more people speaking English that do not actually speak "proper" English, than people speaking it because they were born with it.

The outcome is that

> About 75% of the world's 1.2 billion English speakers are non-native speakers. However, while non-native speakers often understand each other well in English, many native speakers are bad at making themselves understood by non-native speakers.

> "Often you have a [room] full of people from different countries communicating in English and all understanding each other, and then suddenly the American or Brit walks into the room and nobody can understand them"

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#445

Post by jankeymeulen »

BostonEnginerd wrote: post #350
mrtksn wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe has some successful international projects like CERN or Airbus. Besides, what are the other options? Europe is in this strange place where collectively account for enormous wealth and power but individually no country is a match to the big boys like USA/China when simultaneously are super unoptimised due to cultural/lingual differences. The younger Europeans I met were all very eager to learn English, so who k…

Europe has actually been rather successful with IMEC, their semiconductor research organization.

Europe? Imec was founded and is funded by the Flanders region of Belgium.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#446

Post by floatboth »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #151
nr2x wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finland knows a thing or two, even if not present in the headline.

Are you Finnish? I'm really curious what happened to all those hardware and electrical engineers developing phones for Nokia/Microsoft before they went bust, respawned as HMD, packed up and moved their production and R&D to China. Did they pivot to other industries in Finland? If so, which industries? Were they valued as much in the other industries or did they take significant pay cuts? Or did they have to pack up a…

> R&D to China

Isn't HMD R&D like "across the street" from the old Nokia building?

Also, the telecom equipment side of Nokia still exists as it was, only the phone division went into the whole Microsoft clusterfuck.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#447

Post by Daho0n »

dcolkitt wrote: post #338
flexie wrote: post #297

Isn't the problem that European tech companies are sold to American companies? There are and have been countless of European chipmakers but they are usually bought by Americans. European companies grow to a certain size, and are then either sold to an established American company or relaunched from Silicon Valley with American investments. I think most of this is tax driven. American tax rules allow venture funds and…

> I think most of this is tax driven. Disagree. Research has consistently shown that American multinationals consistently apply better corporate management practices than their European counterparts.[1] This is especially true in IT-intensive industries.[2] This is true even when comparing American multinationals operating in Europe. Any sufficiently large company in a globally integrated, competitive industry, is go…

Do you have any non-American sources? You always needs to hear it from at least two different sides.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#448

Post by ddeville »

yeahforsureman wrote: post #419
TacticalCoder wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Europe has some successful international projects like CERN or Airbus. Besides, what are the other options? If we have to go back to mentioning Airbus (1970) and CERN (1954) to find successful European projects, I think this show how big of a serious problem there is in Europe no!? P.S: a lot of the young in Europe are learning english because they want to get the f--- out the EU as soon as they can. I'm european a…

Not my experience. Away from some parts of Eastern and Southern Europe for lack of opportunities, but generally out of EU, no. And anyway, if your kid goes to college, he or she is very likely to be of legal age and have, like, opinions of their own. Yet you make it sound like you're raising cattle for yourself or something.

Not sure that is what they meant but in some European countries (France being an example), college means middle school rather than university.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#449

Post by s_dev »

nixass wrote: post #427
rgblambda wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>the English language can become the lingua franca with less resistance as it is no ones language(Well, there are the Irish but it's a small country). Malta also has English as an official language, though again, it's an even smaller country. On the other hand, in neither Ireland or Malta is English the "first" official language.

While Irish/Gaelic language is a thing it's mostly ceremonial and people on the street know it poorly, with no knowledge to even superficial conversation. Irish language has no use in Ireland. Even tho it is "official", it's useless

I don't agree it's "useless" but I can see your point. We don't learn it for commerce or for historical/cultural insight. We learn it to know who were are.

Imagine telling a bunch of Jews that Hebrew was a load of nonsense and they're better off learning German, French or Spanish. I would agree though that the level of spoken Irish amongst the general population of Ireland is poor.

For them it's not about more opportunities it's about preserving something meaningful. Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam.

Re: EU countries team up for semiconductor push

#450

Post by 908B64B197 »

nickpp wrote: post #118
tomcooks wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free healthcare, somehow reasonable housing prices outside of huge city centers, proximity to elderly parents, generally higher quality of life, to name few reasons.

The health care in Europe is not free, we just pay indirectly through our taxes.

I don't know why this is downvoted.

Do folks not understand how taxes work?

Post reply on HN