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Europe's Software Problem

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Re: Europe's Software Problem

#551

Post by amilios »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #538
amilios wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a) how are these regards cherry-picked? b) it doesn't no, you are right. However the "third world country with a gucci belt" phrase is intentionally tongue-in-cheek and used to call attention to the fact that the US is behind other first-world countries in many different important ways, which it is. Personally I consider healthcare, worker rights, and infrastructure pretty key issues of extremely high importance, and…

They are important, but ignoring every contrary indicator (per capita GDP, life expectancy, quality of life, etc) in order to exaggerate the extent to which the US lags other nations is the very definition of cherry picking. The US is squarely a first-world country even if it lags various countries other first world countries in certain regards. No doubt this “third world country” business is hyperbole for many peopl…

Out of those three examples you gave, Western Europe still wins on 2/3 (higher life expectancy, higher quality of life). Granted the second is subjective somewhat, but I believe most would agree. The first is objectively lower in the US compared to Western Europe, you can check the statistics. Per capita GDP is only high in the US due to massive wealth inequality and a ridiculous concentration of billionaires. It's not "ignoring every contrary indicator", it's that most of the indicators that are used to support the idea that the US is "better" (e.g. per capita GDP) are fundamentally flawed in different ways, and don't amount to a proper comparison of the quality of life.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#552

Post by b20000 »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #470
b20000 wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved roughly 10 years ago to the US from europe. In my experience, raising small amounts of money is possible in Europe and not too hard. Once you need more money, it becomes extremely difficult or nearly impossible, unless you can spend all your time networking, which is not going to happen if you are busy building a product. I would say that banking in Europe is much better developed than in the US. In the US, w…

I assume you went to ETH Zurich followed by Stanford?

no, different EU school

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#553

Post by throwaway894345 »

amilios wrote: post #551
throwaway894345 wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are important, but ignoring every contrary indicator (per capita GDP, life expectancy, quality of life, etc) in order to exaggerate the extent to which the US lags other nations is the very definition of cherry picking. The US is squarely a first-world country even if it lags various countries other first world countries in certain regards. No doubt this “third world country” business is hyperbole for many peopl…

Out of those three examples you gave, Western Europe still wins on 2/3 (higher life expectancy, higher quality of life). Granted the second is subjective somewhat, but I believe most would agree. The first is objectively lower in the US compared to Western Europe, you can check the statistics. Per capita GDP is only high in the US due to massive wealth inequality and a ridiculous concentration of billionaires. It's n…

For the third time now, being behind (some parts of) Europe doesn’t make a country “third world”. Also, I agree that GDP is imperfect—no one is claiming any indicator is perfect. However, the median US adult also has more wealth than the median European adult, and that figure isn’t skewed by billionaires. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_...

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#554

Post by dmitriid »

nickpp wrote: post #512
dmitriid wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no definitions, no guidelines. There are both definitions and guidelines. You just didn't even care to read it. For example, cookies: https://gdpr.eu/cookies/ Popups: https://gdpr.eu/recital-32-conditions-for-consent/ === start quote === Consent should be given by a clear affirmative act establishing a freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s agreement to the proce…

Please tell me the consensus and guideline for website analytics. Please tell me the consensus and guideline on how to store the rejection for using cookies so I don't ask the website visitor every time he visits. Please tell me the consensus and guideline on what "legitimate purposes" are. With examples per industry please. And most of all, please tell me the consensus and guideline for cookie banners and popups, co…

> Please tell me the consensus and guideline for website analytics.

Literally described in one of the links.

> Please tell me the consensus and guideline on how to store the rejection for using cookies

You can use a cookie for that. If it's for a logged-in user, you can store that in the user profile.

> Please tell me the consensus and guideline on what "legitimate purposes" are.

Text in one of the links literally contains a link to further reading on legitimate interest.

> And most of all, please tell me the consensus and guideline for cookie banners and popups

Literally described in both links.

Once again. It's painfully clear that you never bothered to read and understand anything about the law in the past 6 years. Your clueless questions about "why does gdpr and europa sites have cookie banners" only serve as further proof.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#555

Post by rad_gruchalski »

pvaldes wrote: post #544
rad_gruchalski wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are forced also to be a tax collector, collect money from your clients, keep it safe and pay it to the mobs... to the government before 100 days, either you have it or not. Well, you raise an invoice with VAT on it, you get paid, you put the VAT money on the side because it is NOT YOUR money and you pay the VAT to the financial system. Your invoice goes into accounting only when it's paid. Can you explain what'…

> Haven't seen widespread "HATE" anywhere. I'm really happy for you. Could you repeat that to my customers, please?

That’s fine but how could I possibly do that without being introduced?

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#556

Post by donkarma »

yesbabyyes wrote: post #243

I must say that I lack the Scandinavian/Baltic perspective here. Some successful software projects founded in Scandinavia and the Baltics some of you have heard of include: Linux Skype Spotify Mojang (Minecraft) Rovio (Angry Birds) SoundCloud Klarna MySQL Opera Qt Even Tidal, Rdio and Beats Music can trace their ancestry to this region. Not to mention the only(?) remaining competition to Chinese telecom, Ericsson and…

Now let's start counting US startups

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#557

Post by jlokier »

nickpp wrote: post #511
dmitriid wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cost of implementing it was in the billions. Cry me a river. If you was careless with users' data, who cares? > The human time cost paid for all those damn cookie popups we keep having to click on is probably already in the thousands of life-times wasted, and it keeps on growing. Ah yes, and the problem is the law that protects users' data, and not the companies who couldn't care less about privacy.

The very https://gdpr.eu/ website has a cookie banner!!! When everybody breaks a law, including its creators, it's the law that is broken.

Cookie banners are fine when done appropriately.

The one on https://gdpr.eu/ is very well done. It does not break the law.

It's an example of excellence others should follow. Unintrusive. As easy to opt out as to opt in. Clear buttons, simple language. Clear text. If you prefer to ignore the banner that's fine too. On desktop it's unintrusive and you can just ignore it. I tried scrolling, it just stays out of the way. Each button is clear: "Ok", "No", "Privacy policy". Perfect. (It could be better on mobile for size, but it's still easy to click away.)

No dark patterns, dirty tricks, misleading controls, no "yes means no" controls, no "visit our 1000 partner sites to opt out" insanity, no other dirty tricks. You will not "accidentally" end up tracked when you didn't want to be. You will not be misled into believing a 70% screen size, deliberately slow panel is required.

Panels on other sites are deliberately slow and harder to opt out of. They want you to be annoyed. That's because they want you to believe the GDPR requires stupid, slow, large, intrusive, complicated banners. So that you will tell everyone how bad the GDPR is. But the GDPR doesn't require those things. In fact, when you see a banner that says "due to the GDPR we must..." it is often a straight up lie, and parts of the banner are against the law, not required by it.

https://gdpr.eu/ - thanks for highlighting that great example. I will take that as inspiration next time I need a good quality, sleek, fast, easy, compliant and user-friendly banner.

Such banners are not required, though. My sites don't have cookie banners and that's fine. They don't track users against the expectations of the users. My sites do have optional logins, user identification, and use cookies for those things, but logins don't require cookie banners because people expect their identity to be tracked by the act of logging in. And, importantly, their identity used only for what users would expect. My sites do have basic request logging and monitoring too, as you would expect for security and ops, but again those don't require cookie banners if they are done respectfully.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#558

Post by YeezyMode »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #541
YeezyMode wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the data, the sample size is quite pathetic. https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/bli/ The amount of responses is skewed largely to 2-3 countries and the self-report guide is unreliable. On top of that, by their own admission here: https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/how-s-life_97892641... their empirical data does not account for factors like wealth distribution, and a lot of the subjective indicators…

> Data and science doesn't make something objective Well the “US is a third world country” take is based on no evidence whatsoever and defies all common sense, experience, etc, so I guess I’ll take the significant but imperfect evidence.

The idea of the US "turning into a third world country with a Gucci belt" is just a caricature; you are taking it extremely literally and I'm not sure why. But assuming large amounts of the population believed this to be a fact, this evidence from the website is not significant whatsoever. It's imperfect and insignificant. Any meaning you extract from it would be the equivalent of obtaining a desired trend from a plot full of randomly placed dots.

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#559

Post by jlokier »

jbverschoor wrote: post #382
emj wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might have been true at some point, but nowdays even smaller payments are easy to send between EU banks. VAT payment is done in your home country, and you can deduct the VAT. The social aspect is harder; the amount of work to get a consistent revenue stream from another EU country can be enormous compared to doing buisness in another city in your own country. There are people who specialize in sales between EU states…

Plain incorrect for consumer VAT. You have to charge VAT based on the origin of your customer. Different percentages, different ways to figure out the origin of your customer. For businesses you can do reverse VAT, and you’ll have to ask and check that. Bank payments are easy yes, but credit cards are not ubiquitous, online payments are different in all countries, direct debit is not always supported across countries…

When trading between EU countries, although you have to calculate and charge VAT based on the location of your consumer customers, if your business only does a small amount[1] of goods trade with various EU countries, or if it's supplying services[2], or if it's supplying online services[3], or if it's supplying goods or services to other businesses[4], it isn't necessary to have a company presence in each individual country.

So for businesses expanding into new EU countries it's not as onerous as needing a local presence would be.

(Disclaimer: I'm not an accountant and may be wrong. I'll take it on the chin if so. This is just my understanding, having needed to look this stuff up occasionally.)

[1] https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/taxation/vat/cross-bor...

[2] https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/taxation/vat/cross-bor...

[3] https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/taxation/vat/vat-digit...

[4] https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/taxation/vat/cross-bor...

Re: Europe's Software Problem

#560

Post by anoncake »

nickpp wrote: post #387
dmitriid wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The absolute vast majority of "GDPR popups" are actually illegal under GDPR. Unfortunately, law enforcement has been asleep at the wheel.

Unfortunately the law was so bad even its creators can’t implement/understand/respect it.

gdpr.eu is not official. This has been mentioned on HN dozens of times.
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