The problem is the expectation that services/apps/radio/tv-channels need to be free when we know that there is nothing really free in this world (except maybe the air we breathe?).
This is the same problem that Firefox is facing. If you listen to the crowd here on HN, Firefox is either evil or dumb or both to take money from Google, yet at the same time, these same people would scream bloody murder if Firefox was a paid only browser that cost 5.99 a month because everything these days is a subscription and this is terrible.
Every product requires maintenance and has ongoing costs. Let me ask you, do you work for free? If not, then why should they?
So instead of spending hours debating over the value of ads in apps and sites, on the radio and so on, what is the solution if:
- ads are a no go
- subscriptions are bad
- donations are unreliable and cannot ensure the proper remuneration of the creators
And let me say, that is is not a comment supporting ads, I am genuinely asking what the solution is because I just don't see it.
But that is a the problem though. You get stronger job protection because its very hard to find a job. If you could find a new job quickly and if the job market was more fluid, you would only rarely need this sort of job protection.
Compared to what I have heard about the US, I'd say it is actually easier to find jobs in (at least Western) Europe. Plenty of jobs, and a way easier interview process. Not 8 rounds of interviews and months of waiting (that I've heard of). But maybe two rounds in the same week and start the next month (if you want).
I mean we are still waiting for the European Apple or Microsoft or Google or anything of that scale aren't we? China has it's own version of all this stuff, where is Europe's?
It's probably better not to repeat the same mistakes that the US made and not have monopolies. Building a diverse ecosystem with strong competition would result in a world leading economy. Essentially there needs to be 10x more Mistrals.
Not OP but to respond to your question, like everything, there is a scale to this question. Would you give to the state 30% of your income to pay for public services? Most people would say yes.
What about 40%? 50%?
Most people agree that taxes need to be paid for the common good of society. However, many people disagree about the correct amount and increasingly about the usage of said taxes.
> Would you give to the state 30% of your income to pay for public services? Most people would say yes. What about 40%? 50%?
I pay about 6% for public services, around 8% for health insurance, and around 25% for the public pension insurance. The issue isn't taxes, it's almost entirely demographics.
It sometimes even forces governments to collect more data on their own citizens like in Romania.
The only difference between the US and the EU is that the EU has somehow managed to convince a bunch of useful idiots (not saying that you are part of it) that it is better than the US when in reality its the same shit just with a different color and smell.
If you want protection from the government, you should most likely emmigrate to countries that really care about that - like United States of America. They spent a lot of time adding laws to protect themselves against the government.
Here we go again with new restrictions on civil liberties. This is Chat Control all over again.
The EU won't stop until it has access to all your data, all your messages, anything you read, save, send will be scrutinized by the the big great EU and it's little minions.
Hey, at least we get the freedom of movement right?
Too easy to dunk on the EU. The UK, USA and Australia seem to have reached the same conclusions. In UK all young males now have a VPN rather than do whatever you’re supposed to do to see porn. VPNs went from “nerd talk” to “vpn=porn” in the space of weeks. Whatever is next will suffer a similar fate.
There is no such thing as the EU wants X. There are huge differences between what the European Commission, the European Council, and the majority of the European Parliament want.
Most of the anti-privacy crap hasn't happened thanks to the EU. Particular countries and lobbying groups have been pushing this through the Commission and Council and most attempts have been rejected by the EP.
If we didn't have the EU, some countries would have long introduced this nonsense (like the UK). But in the EU that does not make much sense, since there is a single market, so you have to enforce it EU-wide.
The European Parliament + courts of justice/human rights are one of the last beacons of democracy/freedom worldwide that resist upcoming authoritarianism. We should support them and remind the Parliament over and over again that they should be continuing the good fight.
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By the way, nearly all your comments on HN are about politics and all trying to sow dissent on Western (and especially European) democracies.
> By the way, nearly all your comments on HN are about politics and all trying to sow dissent on Western (and especially European) democracies.
Disclaimer first: I'm not trying to protect him and I'm not tied to him in any possible way. But since when constantly expressing your own opinion (that's what I assume given the age of the account; maybe I'm wrong, but this seems rather like a person than a bot) is a deliberately malicious activity (as implied by your "trying to sow dissent" expression)? If their opinion doesn't match yours, it doesn't mean that they're evil or something similar. It just means that your views are different.
Even on HN there is been a surge of users who instead of defending their arguments or positions on certain sensitive topics such as the EU prefer to simply smear the opposition.
I write about the EU a lot because I live there and I am especially interested in what the EU is doing regarding tech.
I am especially critical of policies that target my private life and it irks me to no end that some people will claim loud a and clear that I should simply be grateful for what the EU is doing when the EU's actions in a lot of matters that I care about have either been deceptive and/or completely went against the supposed principles that the EU is supposed to have.
> Calling out blatant lying and bot propaganda isn't "smearing the opposition".
I am not sure what you are trying to get at.
Are you implying that this new draft is not in any way related to the recent Chat Control proposal that wanted to intercept all encrypted messages on phones in the EU, this same proposal that has been debated many times here on HN?
If so, then I am sorry if you think this blatant lying. You must have not been paying attention nor have read the many drafts of this law.
This proposal of tightening regulations around messaging apps and VPNs is being pushed as part of the other pushes for digital identity, age verification and potentially linking online identities to your real identity.
This is not happening just around Europe. It's also happening in the UK, Australia and more and I disagree with everyone of them.
This is not a conspiracy theory, this is publicly documented information that has been reviewed by journalist of all sides and has been decried by many human rights organizations who rightfully see all these moves as wanting to remove fully or partially the anonymity that the internet has provided thus far while curtailing freedom of speech.
> It's disgusting that people run here, write utter complete lying bullshit and then you attack folks that say "hey, this is complete bullshit".
I haven't attacked anyone. I am not sure what you are talking about.
I was the one who was attacked ad-hominem by OP who casually hinted that I was either a troll, a bot or working for Russia or China when the truth is that I am simply a EU citizen who is dissatisfied with the way the EU has handled a lot of it's tech regulations and I am simply voicing my personal opinions on these matters just like anyone else does in these threads.
Maybe you don't share my opinions and that's fine, we don't have to be friends.
> Be better
I will interpret this comment as simply someone who sees himself in the right and looks down on everyone else as poor souls needing to be guided to the light. This is not Reddit, you can get off your high horse now.
The recent chat control proposal was shot down by the EU parliament.
It was proposed and pushed forward by member countries represented in other EU inatances. It seems obvious that governments of at least some member countries want this crap and try to get in implemented via EU. When it reached the instance that is more sensitive to public opinion, it was shot down.
This is why I tend to look more favorably on the EU than on any member state government.
The obvious solution is having the EU to be more representative. I dislike how entities like the EU Council and EU Commission are sometimes used to launder some countries' governments authoritarian intentions.
Politics and tech are basically intertwined at this point. Tech is also intertwined with Geo-politics, tax policies, mental health, and a bunch of other issues.
One cannot talk about tech without talking inevitably of the second or third order effects that derive from it which is again almost inevitably linked to politics either in the US or elsewhere.
> There is no such thing as the EU wants X. There are huge differences between what the European Commission, the European Council, and the majority of the European Parliament want.
Of course there is such a thing as EU wants X. The commission drafts laws and presents them to the MEPs who vote on them. The MEPs do not have the ability to propose their own laws. So all these bullshit laws that are voted on originate from the commission.
If I tell you that you can have a red balloon and you only choice is either to accept or reject the balloon, then you don't really have a choice do you? You can't say I want a blue balloon.
> Most of the anti-privacy crap hasn't happened thanks to the EU. Particular countries and lobbying groups have been pushing this through the Commission and Council and most attempts have been rejected by the EP.
Most attempts? And that should somehow reassure me?
When Romania protested that this was illegal under their constitution, the EU sued them and forced them to spy on their own citizens. So thank you but no thank you.
> If we didn't have the EU, some countries would have long introduced this nonsense (like the UK). But in the EU that does not make much sense, since there is a single market, so you have to enforce it EU-wide.
On the contrary, if we did not have the EU then it would not be such a problem because the same people who are pushing for this crap would have to repeat the same process 27 times, one in each country and they would have to convince/bribe their way into each government. Instead they can now push this stuff through the commission and it gets voted on and if approved gets applied to 450M people in one go.
That is the definition of single point of failure if I have ever seen one.
> The European Parliament + courts of justice/human rights are one of the last beacons of democracy/freedom worldwide that resist upcoming authoritarianism. We should support them and remind the Parliament over and over again that they should be continuing the good fight.
Do we now have to resort to this sort of emotional arguments? The EU as a whole is 27 countries, the world has more than 200 countries today. Are you claiming that most of them are hell-hole under some sort of tyrannical government? You can't be serious.
This is my problem with the EU supporters these days, you guys are so quick to shove in everyone throats the amazing stuff that the EU supposedly does for us every day but as soon as someone complains, you revert to using the same tactics as populists with the US vs Them rhetoric, the emotional manipulative language and what not.
Also your last paragraph is in complete contradiction with your previous statement. Somehow the EU/European parliament is the last bastion of democracy/freedom but it stills wants to access my private messages and emails (for my own good of course), and now it wants to force VPNs to record identifying information of its users (for our own good again).
If what you say is true then we wouldn't be having this conversation because anyone who proposes this sort of law should have been ostracized and kicked out of the commission in no time. Yet here we are.
> By the way, nearly all your comments on HN are about politics and all trying to sow dissent on Western (and especially European) democracies.
Ha, yes, you got me! I can see that when the push comes to shove it's easier to go for the subtle ad-hominem or character attacks.
God forbid someone in Europe could have any issues with the way things are going at the moment. Seems highly suspicious.
Should I send you a copy of my EU passports? Maybe that's whats going to be required in a few years time to post online if the all-mighty EU gets its way but I can understand if you want to start doing the policing early. After all we can never be too careful.
By the way, I love the new definition of democracy theses days: agree with us about everything or we will consider you a Chinese/Russian/Populist/evil (take your pick) troll.
Its perfectly fitting with the way the EU is trending down towards authoritarianism and subtle freedom of speech suppression.
As much you love to bash EU, Europe has still much more freedom than China or Russia.
In the past decade one of the favored arguments of ultra-right parties in EU was critisism of EU for lack of freedom. The same parties that are cooperating with and have support from dictatorships of China and Russia.
I a sure it's Russian propaganda that the EU has basically tried for the last 3 years to ban encryption so that it can access all your personal messages without a warrant?
Or is it also Russia propaganda that it wants to force VPNs to collect data on their users or force everyone to use their real identities online so that it makes it easy to prosecute anyone for wrong speech?
Just because their is a a circulation of some misinformation, doesn't mean everything is. No institution is perfect. Also it are the member states, that are pushing for it, while the EU parliament is what stroked it down so far.
> I'm old enough to remember internal borders with passport checks in Europe, before the wall fell and Poland was still on the other side of that. Nice to see them moving on from that.
Europe is the outlier here. The rest of the world checks your passport when you come in their country because they like to know who comes and who goes for a lot of reasons including public safety, biosecurity and so on.
The fact that Europe has basically given up on trying to filter who comes in is not necessarily a model that is desirable for the rest of the world.
> Thanks to the EU free movement of people, I've now studied, worked and lived in four different countries.
You can do that without Europe as well. Do you think people did not move to another country or studied in another country before the European countries decided to remove borders? What about now with all the students moving to the US/UK/Australia/Canada?
Trust has been eroded for the last 30 years for many reasons and most of them are due to how the politicians and public institutions have behaved.
In all western countries, if you dig a little, you will find scandals after scandals from the ruling parties or the so called elite.
Why should a lambda citizen believe that there is any sense of trust anymore when those who are at the top clearly have no problem lying to get in or stay in power?
It's the same problem with the media biases. Newspapers and news organizations have completely stopped providing information and started pushing propaganda. Nothing more.
Then we lament the loss of confidence and the demise of democracy in the west.
Prior to the Internet, it was much harder to keep up with all the dirty details of whatever was happening in your parliament/Congress/government/town hall. Most people defaulted to a certain degree of trust by being happily ignorant.
There is a common note among the old political journalists (I mean 100+ years ago) saying that the practical execution of power was extremely dirty and that blessed is anyone who does not know.
The Fourth Turning argues institutional effectiveness is cyclical and that the US is headeds towards the end of tearing down institutions versus building them up (and towards the end of focus on self versus community).
This does assume the current crisis is successfully resolved as it was for the Civil War and Great Depression/WWII.
> I looked at the 5 examples for a bit. Reading the Wikipedia talk pages, I'd tend to agree that the sources removed are representing a fringe idea and that the Wikipedia process has been followed normally.
Your comment is contradicted by this direct quote from the article:
> In the rejected New York Times articles, Wade was not presenting any controversial hypotheses, but simply reporting the findings of various genetics studies published in mainstream journals.
Maybe Wade put his own spin on the findings in his book/in the articles but does that undermine the credibility of the papers published in the mainstream journals?
In many subjects where we don't have a clear answer, we have different theories, some are bogus and others will eventually be disproved until we finally reach a consensus.
Until such time, it is perfectly reasonable to expect that all points of view are represented.
> When Wade is “the only science journalist to cover a study” [...] around six paragraphs of text were removed from this article
The fact that they removed a point of view/theory on a subject because there are no other competing theories is simply wrong.
Imagine if we applied the same rule to physics. We don't know why the universe is expanding faster than anticipated. It could be dark matter, it could be something else.
Until such a time as we can prove one of the other, then all theories should be presented with caveats/warnings that these findings are not definitive and will most likely change in the future.
Instead of doing that in this case, it was decided that some theories should simply be removed because they do not fit with the conventional wisdom of what we consider acceptable or believable.
But science does not care about what is believable or acceptable. You gather evidence, you create a theory and you or someone else proves your it or disproves it. You don't simply sweep things under the rug because they make you uncomfortable.
And before you take this comment as supporting all fringe theories, we are not talking here about the flat Earth or that vaccines cause autism. Both of these theories have been disproved extensively.
So in conclusion, if there were multiple theories on this subject, I would expect them to be presented on Wikipedia warts and all so that the readers can see where we stand on the subject. Instead what we got is simple one sided censorship.
This is the same exact playbook used by the Church when Galileo came out with his theory of Heliocentricism. His idea made the Church uncomfortable and instead of trying to disprove him, they simply decided to silence him. Maybe we should avoid repeating the same mistakes?
> In many subjects where we don't have a clear answer, we have different theories, some are bogus and others will eventually be disproved until we finally reach a consensus.
> Imagine if we applied the same rule to physics. We don't know why the universe is expanding faster than anticipated. It could be dark matter, it could be something else.
There is consensus around the topic discussed in the article. There is no consensus about why the universe is expanding faster than anticipated.
A consensus doesn't obviously mean 100% of people agree. For the physics example, where we don't have a consensus of opinion, we don't have to mention all alternative theories, as some will be ridiculous or fabricated. Like with the racialist people - most of the scientists and their studies have been discredited, so why put any weight on what they publish?
> And before you take this comment as supporting all fringe theories, we are not talking here about the flat Earth or that vaccines cause autism. Both of these theories have been disproved extensively.
So there is a line we can draw, you just think we should draw it elsewhere.
> And before you take this comment as supporting all fringe theories, we are not talking here about the flat Earth or that vaccines cause autism. Both of these theories have been disproved extensively.
For the Vaccine article, there are 2 sentences about the autism claims even though lots of people still believe in this bullshit. But you don't see any mention in most (as I can't check all of them) articles about types of vaccines like "Subunit vaccine" as it's not a real alternative theory.
There is an article about Time Cube, but it's not mentioned in the Day or Earth articles.
There are a couple of paragraphs about religion and creationist bullshit at the end of the Evolution article because a huge part of the world is stupid, naive, brainwashed and uneducated enough to believe in such bullshit.
There is an article called "Scientific racism", as well as articles for most of the famous scientists the article about censorship mentions. It's not referenced in every article about race and intelligence because it doesn't have to. If there are several big, important, influential studies that aren't flawed or misrepresented, they will be added sooner or later. But what we have so far is people clinging at straws, from what I gather.
> This is the same exact playbook used by the Church when Galileo came out with his theory of Heliocentricism. His idea made the Church uncomfortable and instead of trying to disprove him, they simply decided to silence him. Maybe we should avoid repeating the same mistakes?
I get that some editors are motivated by their beliefs, but I don't agree they suppressed or silenced anything.
Disclaimer: I have edited Wikipedia only 2 or 3 times in my life and have never made an account. I don't follow their dramas.
The problem is the expectation that services/apps/radio/tv-channels need to be free when we know that there is nothing really free in this world (except maybe the air we breathe?).
This is the same problem that Firefox is facing. If you listen to the crowd here on HN, Firefox is either evil or dumb or both to take money from Google, yet at the same time, these same people would scream bloody murder if Firefox was a paid only browser that cost 5.99 a month because everything these days is a subscription and this is terrible.
Every product requires maintenance and has ongoing costs. Let me ask you, do you work for free? If not, then why should they?
So instead of spending hours debating over the value of ads in apps and sites, on the radio and so on, what is the solution if: - ads are a no go - subscriptions are bad - donations are unreliable and cannot ensure the proper remuneration of the creators
And let me say, that is is not a comment supporting ads, I am genuinely asking what the solution is because I just don't see it.
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