I'm surprised that most of the comments here are siding with Europe blindly?
Am I the only one who assumes by default that European regulation will be heavy-handed and ill conceived?
replies(12):
Am I the only one who assumes by default that European regulation will be heavy-handed and ill conceived?
Perhaps it's easier to actually look at the points in contention to form your opinion.
Maybe some think that is a good thing - and perhaps it may be - but I feel it's more likely any regulation regarding AI at this point in time is premature, doomed for failure and unintended consequences.
How long can we let AI go without regulation? Just yesterday, there was a report here on Delta using AI to squeeze higher ticket prices from customers. Next up is insurance companies. How long do you want to watch? Until all accountability is gone for good?
Europeans are still essentially on Google, Meta and Amazon for most of their browsing experiences. So I'm assuming Europe's goal is not to compete or break American moat but to force them to be polite and to preserve national sovereignty on important national security aspects.
A position which is essentially reasonable if not too polite.
When push comes to shove the US company will always prioritize US interest. If you want to stay under the US umbrella by all means. But honestly it looks very short sighted to me.
After seeing this news https://observer.co.uk/news/columnists/article/the-networker..., how can you have any faith that they will play nice?
You have only one option. Grow alternatives. Fund your own companies. China managed to fund the local market without picking winners. If European countries really care, they need to do the same for tech.
If they don't they will forever stay under the influence of another big brother. It is US today, but it could be China tomorrow.
Feels like I need to go find a tech site full of people who actually like tech instead of hating it.
Who's to say USB-C is the end-all-be-all connector? We're happy with it today, but Apple's Lightning connector had merit. What if two new, competing connectors come out in a few year's time?
The EU regulation, as-is, simply will not allow a new technically superior connector to enter the market. Fast forward a decade when USB-C is dead, EU will keep it limping along - stifling more innovation along the way.
Standardization like this is difficult to achieve via consensus - but via policy/regulation? These are the same governing bodies that hardly understand technology/internet. Normally standardization is achieved via two (or more) competing standards where one eventually "wins" via adoption.
Well intentioned, but with negative side-effects.
If I had to pick a connector that the world was forced to use forever due to some European technocrat, I would not have picked usb-c.
Hell, the ports on my MacBook are nearly shot just a few years in.
Plus GDPR has created more value for lawyers and consultants than it has for EU citizens.
It was a decade too late and written by people who were incredibly out of touch with the actual problem. The GDPR is a bit better, but it's still a far bigger nuisance for regular European citizens than the companies that still largely unhindered track and profile the same.
Since you then admit to "assume by default", are you sure you are not what you complain about?
I don't know how this problem is so much worse with USB-C or the physics behind it, but it's a very common issue.
This port could be improved for sure.
You need some perspective - Meta wouldn't even crack the top 100 in terms of evil:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abir_Congo_Company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuPont#Controversies_and_crime...
The odds of the EU actually hitting a useful mark with these types of regulations, given their technical illiteracy, it's is just astronomically unlikely.
Newer regulations also mandate that "reject all cookies" should be a one click action but surprisingly compliance is low. Once again, the enemy of the customer here is the company, not the eu regulation.
The EU AI regulation establishes complex rules and requirements for models trained above 10^25 FLOPS. Mistral is currently the only European company operating at that scale, and they are also asking for a pause before these rules go into effect.
Meanwhile, nobody in China gives a flying fuck about regulators in the EU. You probably don't care about what the Chinese are doing now, but believe me, you will if the EU hands the next trillion-Euro market over to them without a fight.
https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/meta-all...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44609135
That feeling is correct: this site is better without you. Please put your money where your mouth is and leave.
I'm not saying Meta isn't evil - they're a corporation, and all corporations are evil - but you must live in an incredibly narrow-minded and privileged bubble to believe that Meta is categorically more evil than all other evils in the span of human history combined.
Go take a tour of Dachau and look at the ovens and realize what you're claiming. That that pales in comparison to targeted ads.
Just... no.
And that's the problem: assuming by default.
How about not assuming by default? How about reading something about this? How about forming your own opinion, and not the opinion of the trillion- dollar supranational corporations?
We don't like what trillion-dollar supranational corporations and infinite VC money are doing with tech.
Hating things like "We're saving your precise movements and location for 10+ years" and "we're using AI to predict how much you can be charged for stuff" is not hating technology
Fun fact, GitHub doesn't have cookie banners. It's almost like it's possible to run a huge site without being a parasite and harvesting every iota of data of your site's visitors!
The EU says nothing about USB-C being the bestest and greatest, they only say that companies have to come to a consensus and have to have 1 port that is shared between all devices for the sake of consumers.
I personally much prefer USB-C over the horrid clusterfuck of proprietary cables that weren't compatible with one another, that's for sure.
1984 wasn't supposed to be a blueprint.
As in: the EU regulation literally addresses this. You'd know it if you didn't blindly repeat uneducated talking points by others who are as clueless as you are.
> Standardization like this is difficult to achieve via consensus - but via policy/regulation?
In the ancient times of 15 or so years ago every manufacturer had their own connector incompatible with each other. There would often be connectors incompatible with each other within a single manufacturer's product range.
The EU said: settle on a single connector voluntarily, or else. At the time the industry settled on micro-USB and started working on USB-C. Hell, even Power Delivery wasn't standardized until USB-C.
Consensus doesn't always work. Often you do need government intervention.
Are you still sure you want to side blindly with the EU?
And since most people click on accept, websites don't really care either.
True, but now they get to butt heads with the US, who call the tunes at ASML even though ASML is a European company.
We (the US) have given China every possible incentive to break that dependency short of dropping bombs on them, and it would be foolish to think the TSMC/ASML status quo will still hold in 5-10 years. Say what you will about China, they aren't a nation of morons. Now that it's clear what's at stake, I think they will respond rationally and effectively.