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Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

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Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#951

Post by throwaway2037 »

matt-p wrote: post #946
mortarion wrote: post #856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe has a shitload of homegrown competitors. The problem is that users here in Europe either goes for a national service or for an US service. They don't look up what their EU neighbor has to offer. In fact, most don't bother translating their services to appeal to the entire EU market. If you live in country X, you will only ever learn about services from country X or from the US. No one here knows what goes on i…

I think there's something like 24 national languages in the EU. I can hardly blame hetzner for not translating their services to say polish and think it's entirely the wrong approach anyway. It's really true language is a big barrier but honestly the solution cannot be for every single company to offer services in 20 languages. It can't be. English must be adopted.

    > English must be adopted.
I cringe when I read this. Why not German? There are more native German speakers than any other language in the EU. Also, in the age of LLMs, translating (on a best effort basis) to (at least) 24 different languages is trivial.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#952

Post by morshu9001 »

1718627440 wrote: post #699
nomel wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do this trivially in modern browsers: private browsing. I have one "normal" browser window for "persistent cookie" use (like gmail, youtube, etc) and another "private" window for everything else. Cookies are lost anytime a tab closes.

Private browsing is equivalent to creating an ephemeral browser profile everytime. It might get rid of more browser storage, but for how tracking works now-a-days, it is useless. It is only for what you want to store on your disk, not for how you want to be seen to remotes.

It's still the easiest way to track users. If it were useless, Google wouldn't be so opposed to blocking 3P cookies in Chrome.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#953

Post by throwaway2037 »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #843
vovavili wrote: post #838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument in favor of protectionist industrial policy is almost universally opposed by most modern economists, for a good reason.

Nations don’t outsource critical national security industries even though economists might say that’s more efficient. The question is whether they should outsource critical tech infrastructure to huge quasi-monopolistic US firms that can turn it off or abuse European data at will. I don’t have the answer to that question, but I have to imagine it’s a worthwhile debate. The data we have cuts both ways: China applied p…

"Economists" also love free trade, and we have learned in the last 10 years that it has become harmful to people at middle class and below. Even if GDP does grow, the benefits are not distributed evenly.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#954

Post by throwaway2037 »

hearsathought wrote: post #924
huijzer wrote: post #913

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bureaucracy to fight at European level so we still don't have a real unified market, neither in physical goods (our economy's backbone) nor services which doesn't allow national startups to scale at European level I guess you have been part of software startups and you severely underestimate the bureaucracy that is involved in physical companies nowadays. Farmers, fishermen, factory-owners, and other small to mediu…

> it hard to compete with, for example, China. What exactly is europe competing against china on? Isn't europe's competition the US?

Cars

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#955

Post by throwaway2037 »

energy123 wrote: post #304
rckt wrote: post #270

I get that too many regulations is a bad thing. But when we talk privacy and personal data there should be no gray zone. It has to be black and white. When I see a stupid cookie banner I search for "Reject all". There's no some data that companies can collect and process without my consent, they just shouldn't be able to collect anything without me actively opting in. Business never respects anything, but profits. Se…

I've stopped thinking of regulations as a single dial, where more regulations is bad or less regulations is bad. It entirely depends on what is being regulated and how. Some areas need more regulations, some areas need less. Some areas need altered regulation. Some areas have just the right regulations. Most regulations can be improved, some more than others.

I like this post. I was recently talking to a friend about using surveillance to improve recycling rates. The purpose of the discussion was not to advocate for more state-sponsored surveillance, but rather to imagine beneficial uses of surveillance. More to your point "more regulations is bad or less regulations is bad": Holy shit: Look at environmental protection laws. Consider the developed world in 1960 to today. The environment is night and day. It is so much cleaner and safer than ever. And, yes, most of those changes came about from regulations. I don't want to go back to a world where I come home from work in New York City and wipe my face clean in the mirror, and the tissue/towel comes away smudged with black & brown from soot in the air. (That is a true story that my mother told me from living in NYC in the 1970s.)

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#956

Post by tharkun__ »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #951
matt-p wrote: post #946

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's something like 24 national languages in the EU. I can hardly blame hetzner for not translating their services to say polish and think it's entirely the wrong approach anyway. It's really true language is a big barrier but honestly the solution cannot be for every single company to offer services in 20 languages. It can't be. English must be adopted.

> English must be adopted. I cringe when I read this. Why not German? There are more native German speakers than any other language in the EU. Also, in the age of LLMs, translating (on a best effort basis) to (at least) 24 different languages is trivial.

That sounds like a very German approach to the whole thing.

Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of... and look at the total speakers vs. native speakers.

Now it should be clear why one is better than the other. The shared language of most is English, so you have the least amount of "extra learning" required.

Also, the number for German is generous in that it includes people that speak wildly "incompatible" dialects and accents. While people in Bavaria technically speak "German" and having them talk to other people that speak "German" (with various dialects) is easier than asking either to speak English as their primary language, that doesn't really solve the problem of even intra-German language rivalry.

Of course one thing will unite Bavarian and Saxon and Swiss and Austrian German and other highly accented/dialectic German speakers: They'd rather speak "German" (and deal with weird pronunciation/words) than English as an official language ;)

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#957

Post by varispeed »

oblio wrote: post #712
varispeed wrote: post #326

GDPR was never about privacy, but to legitimise data trade. It was two step process - first train people to Agree to anything by introducing "harmless" Cookie Law, then once people just click Agree to anything, create legal basis for data trade, where it is no longer a grey area as most users give consent. With Chat Controls coming back, never assume EU is doing anything for the benefit of general public. What is par…

GDPR doesn't really work as you describe. Under GDPR data is a liability.

One man's liability, another man's profit.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#958

Post by musicale »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #951
matt-p wrote: post #946

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's something like 24 national languages in the EU. I can hardly blame hetzner for not translating their services to say polish and think it's entirely the wrong approach anyway. It's really true language is a big barrier but honestly the solution cannot be for every single company to offer services in 20 languages. It can't be. English must be adopted.

> English must be adopted. I cringe when I read this. Why not German? There are more native German speakers than any other language in the EU. Also, in the age of LLMs, translating (on a best effort basis) to (at least) 24 different languages is trivial.

It didn't work out well the first couple of times they tried it.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#959

Post by ImJamal »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #951
matt-p wrote: post #946

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's something like 24 national languages in the EU. I can hardly blame hetzner for not translating their services to say polish and think it's entirely the wrong approach anyway. It's really true language is a big barrier but honestly the solution cannot be for every single company to offer services in 20 languages. It can't be. English must be adopted.

> English must be adopted. I cringe when I read this. Why not German? There are more native German speakers than any other language in the EU. Also, in the age of LLMs, translating (on a best effort basis) to (at least) 24 different languages is trivial.

Why work work with native language rather than spoken? According to wikipedia less than 20% of the EU is a native German speaker while 47% speak English. When talking about technical people who may be looking into something like Hetzner it is probably higher than 47%.

Re: Europe is scaling back GDPR and relaxing AI laws

#960

Post by ta9000 »

epolanski wrote: post #936
Workaccount2 wrote: post #884

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joining the rat race isn't worth it, in the near-term, which is why the threat is existential. Europe has been sleeping on it's laurels for 30 years now, and the signs are clear; borderline stagnating economies, low working hours, generous benefits, and most importantly still relying on the exact same industries as 30 years ago . Europe totally missed out on the tech boom, and is now also missing out on the AI boom.…

> Look at the bottom Also look at the top ;) > Russsia invading Ukraine, and the US providing the majority of the weapons and cash That's beyond false, US provided little non-military help, the money mostly stayed in US and went to US contractors. I don't need to tell you that those figures are also insanely inflated by crazy costs. Zelenski himself has stated that he proposed multiple times to, e.g., send its navy t…

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