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Comment by leoedin | Hacker News Reader

This really pisses me off. European harmonised standards are effectively legislation. You can't sell a product in the EU without complying with them. Yet they're behind a really expensive pay-wall. If you buy the standard from ISO it's often €150 - and often that's just to find out if you even have to comply.

Even working out which standards you should comply with is a nightmare - often they reference each other, so then you have a cascading web of standards compliance which never seems to end. And viewing each standard, even if it's just to see if it matters, costs €150.

The standards are often written by businesses in the industry - the authors are on their payroll. ISO isn't even paying these people.

Standards should be free and open, or have no legal weight.

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Congratulations! You’ve discovered protectionism and one of its many forms. The worst part is that this type of legislation is preventing east and south european development as well as preventing us companies from entering the eu market. Essentially by forcing endless amounts of standards that cant be met by developing member states due high entry barriers or non member states due to differences in standards the german and french markets are protected.

Oddly enough subpar chinese products are OK. Hint: Germany needs access to china’s markets.

I mean I’m quite cynical about everything these days but this strikes me as over cynical. The EU charging standard forcing Apple to standardize their chargers helps consumers and hardly hurts Apple. I am fairly sure there are tons of standards that have a net benefit on the lives and economies of EU member states. Do you have some examples of this N Europe protectionism?

Would it have helped consumers when the EU was trying to force the micro USB standard which was worse than Lightning in every way?

What happens when a company wants to come up with a better charging method then USB C?

> What happens when a company wants to come up with a better charging method then USB C?

Bottom line: it won’t happen in Europe.

Neither will any AI innovations if another proposed regulation comes into affect. AI based companies just won’t do business in the EU.

> AI based companies just won’t do business in the EU

They probably will. It’s a huge and lucrative economic bloc. But they won’t be started there, or if they are, will be stunted by the fixed costs of compliance. For all the problems with our political process, America is good about exempting start-ups and small businesses from certain regulation.

OpenAI: "Hold my coat" takes seat in meeting room with Congress to help them draft some handy new laws

> which was worse than Lightning in every way?

You mean the proprietary connector that Apple would rather have die than turn into a free standard? Which it had over a decade to accomplish between the EU announcing its intention to enforce a standard and actually writing the law.

> What happens when a company wants to come up with a better charging method then USB C?

There is a renewal period of five years for the connection standard of choice. Why does this question get repeated every time USB comes up?

Yeah it's funny how many HNers come out of the woodworks to defend their favorite corporation's inferior proprietary charging standard that hasn't seen mass adoption beyond one single company and even that moved away from it on some of its higher end products.

This is why we can't have nice things.

What higher end products did Apple move away from it on? Macs never had proprietary connectors again to my knowledge once they dropped FireWire (which technically was an open standard iirc). Apple dropped lightning from iPads but I think that has less to do with moving away and more that iPad volume is relatively small, MFI is not as important in its product segment, it requires high charging rates that lightning probably can’t support, iPad/Mac convergence is a thing and they want to make the charging story between those two compelling (eg connecting your iPhone to your iPad to charge). I seriously doubt Apple dropped iPad because it wants to move away from lightning.

Also, Apple has easily shipped many billions of units with lightning connectors and dominates the profit margin of selling a smart phone. I think that qualifies as “mass adoption” regardless and they very intentionally control the lightning standard. I’m sure there’s many competitors who would haven chosen it over usbc before it became so ubiquitous if they could.

Macs never had proprietary connectors again to my knowledge once they dropped FireWire (which technically was an open standard iirc).

More than "technically."

Lots of devices had FireWire connections. In addition to my PowerBook, my Comcast cable box, my external archive drives from multiple brands, and my Sony camera had FireWire connectors. Many high-end televisions had them, too.

The notion that FireWire was an Apple-only thing is little more than a HN cliche.

I had both a Sony desktop and a high end Dell in 2011 that had FireWire

FireWire (aka IEEE-1394) was an open standard but implementors were charged substantial per-unit patent royalties by MPEG-LA.

This likely a major reason why it lost out to the royalty-free USB, despite technical advantages.

$1 per port was not “substantial”,

https://www.cnet.com/culture/apple-licensing-firewire-for-a-...

$1 cogs per port is indeed substantial.

And this is why people who care enough to afford higher end products shouldn’t be burden by commodity product vendors like PC makers and Android manufacturers.

FireWire was better. Apple and high end PCs had them. If Apple created a better connector than USB C that cost more to include, it would never be accepted by Android manufacturers who want to sell shitty $60 phones.

Apple and high end PCs had them.

Even Apple's consumer-grade basic computers had them. I was introduced to FireWire when my wife bought a MacBook in 2006.

But even those cost more than cheap PCs at the time.

Exactly. Margin control is the main thing. People who don’t think burning an extra 1% of your ASP on something that doesn’t dramatically move the needle isn’t a massive negative have never built products.

That's pretty big, especially if you're selling an external hard drive with two FireWire ports (for daisy chaining). I don't recall what FireWire drive prices were ~15 years ago, but that could easily be several percent of the final retail price.

The first link I could find for contemporary prices was this one from 2012 - in pounds.

https://www.theregister.com/Print/2012/03/14/ten_firewire_ha...

I don't recall what FireWire drive prices were ~15 years ago, but that could easily be several percent of the final retail price.

$2 for two ports would have been a tiny percent of the final retail price 15 years ago.

Today we're used to portable 4GB drives for $99. But back then, drives were more expensive.

According to the Wayback Machine†, a 1TB FireWire drive was almost $400. So those two ports would have been ½% of the retail price.

† https://web.archive.org/web/20080128203022/http://www.lacie....

How familiar are you with how manufacturing works? A BOM (bill of materials)/COG (cost of goods) cost !== the retail price. You have things like NRE costs (i.e. what it costs to pay people to design and bring the thing to mass production, machines you have to buy/manufacture to support your assembly lines, marketing, legal, etc etc) and profit margins to factor in. Apple's 20-30% is rare and PC margins are closer to 2-5% (often even negative for Android phone manufacturers as they try to recoup that through revenue sharing on the software side with Google).

Basically, BOM/COG is things you pay for that you pass on directly to the consumer. However, the retail price has to cover a bunch more than that so you can't compare the two directly. A good rule of thumb is ~2-20x markup depending on the profit margin you are targeting.

A $2 licensing fee in the BOM is thus probably closer to ~$14-40 retail. Considering how thin profit margins are, 3% of retail going to nothing but marketing is not nothing especially considering that Apple doesn't have to pay this fee and also getting a cut of every product you sell to boot. Think about it this way - frequently towards the end of the development cycle as you're heading towards mass manufacturing, companies will look to shave tens of dollars and be trying to find 10-20c here & there to add up to that. $3 is massive.

You see similar dynamics with MFI. It requires a special chip (space within the product, battery costs) and licensing fees (Apple gets a cut of every sale you make making your competitor product more expensive or less profitable). It's why none of the major tech companies have MFI in their products AFAIK. It cripples any competitor product you try to make (not to mention that you're further at Apple's whims around licensing agreements changing if you build your product around MFI).

And why should people who choose to be in an ecosystem that doesn’t suffer from those market conditions be forced to use a substandard component?

I’m not saying that USB C is inferior. But if Apple did want to come up with a better port it couldn’t.

This goes back to when Apple was moving to Lightning, the EU wanted to mandate micro USB.

Firewire drives in 2002 were a minimum of $400 and generally closer to $1000 for 10GB range.

Licensing fees were $1 for historical legal reasons per SKU, for the first unit sold, and then 14 cents for each subsequent unit.

Still stupid, but nothing like what a lot of this thread is condemning.

.07 percent is not remotely close to "several" percent

We old people remember $5000 for first generation IBM PC.

So get off my lawn ;)

Can you source the 14 cents per subsequent unit? Every article I found has Apple charging $1 / port (e.g. [1]). There was also apparently a 50k upfront fee to get the technical documentation. Also, since Apple was the primary PC with a Firewire interface (modulo Sony using it in their cameras & thus putting it in their own laptops), the overall market to cell Firewire-enabled accessories was quite small, which artificially inflated the price. If this was a more common standard, you'd see the licensing fee becoming a larger and larger problem and Apple was small enough then that vendors just avoided getting fully locked into Apple's ecosystem (whereas with iPhone the market is just too compelling to avoid this for most players).

[1] https://www.cnet.com/culture/apple-licensing-firewire-for-a-...

FireWire wasn’t “Apple’s” standard. There were nine companies in the patent pool and Apple wasn’t even the largest one - Sony was.

>The notion that FireWire was an Apple-only thing is little more than a HN cliche.

Nobody on this thread claimed this, so I don't know why you have to make up your own straw man and start a fame war. Famebait is against HN rules.

You do know that Apple was a major contributor to the USB C standard?

Would other companies really use Lightning even if it were a standard? Did PC manufacturers embrace FireWire even though it was better? Sony did and Dell did on their high end computers.

> Did PC manufacturers embrace FireWire even though it was better?

For a time they seemed to, I had FireWire ports even on computers at the lower end of the price range. What I didn't have where FireWire based gadgets and going by Wikipedia that isn't surprising. FireWire style peer networking seems to force a lot of complexity onto peripherals, with every device being equal. USB on the other hand pushed most of the complexity to the host, making peripherals cheap and easy to implement. Given that I am not surprised that USB pushed firewire out, especially when after it came out that most FireWire implementations had significant security flaws.

FireWire on ThinkPads, too... Even one of my low-end TPs (but still a real one, my R61i) has IEEE-1394 (ie, FireWire).

Because apple stans want to make it clear they drank the koolaid. They wasted so much money it's very important for them to feel like it was the right choice.

Apple and VW can afford to conform to complex birocratic standards. They have hundreds/thousands of people on the payroll just for that. Smaller companies or companies from poorer countries can't.

A lot of companies in Eastern Europe were obliterated when joining the EU and our local market was flooded with goods made in the west since the local ones weren't "up to standard" anymore. Even today we still have a huge trade deficit with the west as we import far more than we export.

All you need is a short walk around east european supermarkets and you’ll notice there are rarely any east eu supermarket brands and few east european made goods in them. Despite the quality being far higher than say india or china somehow east eu products dont meet eu “standards” and as such are not good enough. But that’s not an issue for counterfeit chinese goods made using slave labour.

Not to mention that west european products are often of lower quality than in their home countries, and more expensive.

Counterfeits are their own issue. In short: more developed countries, better laws and their enforcement, more risky to manufacture counterfeit goods.

As for low-quality products from China - until recently, Chinese vendors didn't even sell directly to customers in Europe. Most of the garbage products were, and still are, western products, which are only made in China, because... everything is made in China. It's the world's 3D printer. Chinese manufacturers can make goods to arbitrarily high or low quality standards - it's up to the company that orders production to choose how much quality they want to pay for.

That is, if you see a shitty product made in China for a western company, don't blame China - it's the western company that chose to request production of low-quality garbage.

You are right, I shouldn't have made it sound as if I am blaming china. The issue lies entirely with those ordering and selling low quality products made there. But that doesn't imply china is only making low quality products or indeed that it's them pushing their products to europe.

FWIW, Chinese vendors absolutely are responsible for the absurd amount of garbage they put up for sale on Aliexpress (if you order directly, there aren't even dropshippers involved). But that's a relatively recent development.

A lot of those "western European" products are actually manufactured in Eastern Europe by cheap Eastern European labor. You don't have brands but have jobs, often displaced from Western countries.

This was always the trade-off for letting Eastern countries in the bloc: they were meant to provide new markets and new labor for (largely German) established companies. In exchange, they got loads of money to raise their infrastructural standards and overall quality of life.

If these countries think they're not happy with the arrangement anymore, they're more than welcome to leave. Like what happened with Brexit, they would remove a number of political headaches, hence fostering deeper integration between remaining countries.

>A lot of those "western European" products are actually manufactured in Eastern Europe by cheap Eastern European labor.

No. If you go to any supermarket in the east you'll find mostly German or French made products on the food shelves. A lot of the local made products became "illegal" after joining the EU. Now it's better and we have more local products but the trade deficit is still huge.

>political headaches

Funny how poor eastern countries not wanting to be abused by rich western ones and their corporations and using their legal voting rights in the EU, are considered "political headaches".

Ohh, poor rich western companies. How dares the est stand up for themselves and not bend over to their rich overlords?

The west should have realized that you can't have a balanced democratic union when some countries are constantly being milked and treated as second class citizens in a theoretically equalitarian union ruled by the rich for the rich.

>> >A lot of those "western European" products are actually manufactured in Eastern Europe by cheap Eastern European labor.

> No.

Alright, I must have dreamed all that juicy delocalization that basically makes for a whole branch of academic studies nowadays...

> How dares the est stand up for themselves

Nobody denies anything to anyone, but western audiences are a bit tired of the lack of grace and gratefulness exhibited by areas that continue (and intend to continue) to be massive recipients of Union funds.

> when some countries are constantly being milked

Except nobody is being "milked" - every country in the Union experiences tradeoffs. France, Italy, and Spain benefit from financial stability but suffer from job losses; Germany benefits from economic growth while subsidizing the rest of the continent; and Eastern countries benefit from subsidies and job creation while struggling to build national champions. It's a give-and-take for everyone, which is why this continuous self-victimization exhibited by certain audiences is incredibly tiresome.

I find it incredibly amusing when someone from a country that left the eu because of the burocratic burden and unfair policies complains about people complaining about similar issues. Whats even more amusing is when said country is on a fast track to becoming irrelevant.

Pretty sure the eu is making them payments as a means to compensate for the job losses you mentioned that it created and for the trade tariffs they no longer charge when importing them sweet, subsidised, german cars.

> I find it incredibly amusing when someone from a country that left the eu because of the burocratic burden and unfair policies complains about people complaining about similar issues. Whats even more amusing is when said country is on a fast track to becoming irrelevant.

This doesn't follow at all unless you somehow are able to tell that the poster to whom you reply didn't vote Remain. "Your fellow citizens bought into lies splattered on the side of a bus, shut up" is not the dunk you think it is.

I'm Italian and living in UK (for my sins), so I think I can see more than one facet of the argument.

> Pretty sure the eu is making them payments as a means to compensate for the job losses

How do these lies are even invented...?

Development payments are a mean to bring countries up to scratch. They are allocated with formulas that look at development potential per capita, which is why even struggling areas inside western countries (from Wales to Calabria to Northern Spain to Greece) receive them. It just so happens that Eastern countries receive disproportionate amounts because of the state they found themselves in after the end of the Soviet Bloc.

The European Community was built on the principle of solidarity, and those payments are one massive expression of such solidarity. Sadly, the largest recipients seem to avoid expressing any solidarity back in other areas.

> I'm Italian and living in UK (for my sins), so I think I can see more than one facet of the argument.

The giveaway was commenting about gratefulness, lies and audiences, when my comment is strictly about policy and imbalance and what i suspect the reason may be within the EU. Somehow you dragged the whole west in a debate about policy that benefits west europe more than east and south europe.

The european community wasn't built out of solidarity, it was built as a mechanism to ensure we don't resort to barbarism again, as we did our entire history.

The armed conflicts of last century are the economic wars of today, at least within the eu.

Talking about “solidarity” and “recipients” is, i am sorry, amusing. I cant entertain this thought path any further simply because this is not a pub and we are not drunks.

> The european community wasn't built out of solidarity, it was built as a mechanism to ensure we don't resort to barbarism again

You should read the Treaty of Rome before you try to act all mighty about stuff you clearly don't fully understand. The word solidarity is in the founding principles, and it actually comes even before "peace". The Treaty established the European Social Fund as well as the investment bank. Economic solidarity has always been the key policy to achieve progress in other areas. Most of the money the EU handles today, like yesterday, is used towards enacting that.

Everything else, i am sorry, is hot air (and yes, lies).

This is a projection.

Claiming solidarity is in the “treaties” yet your reaction to east europe wanting change in policy is “leave if you don’t like it”. Such is the eu.

Let me understand this: the founding treaties of the community were written in my language, by my elected politicians, and signed in my capital city, but you think you know the principles they expose better than me...?

Economic solidarity is the lynchpin of the EU; it benefited Italy or Spain before, it's benefiting Eastern Europe now. Any country who wants to alter the current setup, will have to renounce this state of things. Surprise surprise, when push comes to shove, nobody wants to - every time funding is threatened, Eastern representatives fall in line.

It has become clear, even in this thread, that certain countries probably never shared the founding principles of the community, and bringing them in as quickly as it was done might have been premature. For that reason, a shrinkage around a more ideologically cohesive core becomes more and more attractive with time.

> Let me understand this: the founding treaties of the community were written in my language, by my elected politicians, and signed in my capital city, but you think you know the principles they expose better than me...?

That is correct.

> Economic solidarity is the lynchpin of the EU; it benefited Italy or Spain before, it's benefiting Eastern Europe now.

In theory, but in practice that's not accurate. Modern day EU is far more corrupt and inefficient than when Spain joined.

> Surprise surprise, when push comes to shove, nobody wants to - every time funding is threatened, Eastern representatives fall in line.

A little bit similar to Italy falling in line around 2010, I believe, corruption, financial crime, fiscal irresponsibility etc where mentioned. I remember around the time there were frequent calls for PIGS to leave the EU since, unlike east europe, those countries nearly collapsed the project and the euro zone.

> For that reason, a shrinkage around a more ideologically cohesive core becomes more and more attractive with time.

A review of the current state of affairs is in order, but I doubt Italy will have much to say in any of this.

> That is correct.

That's not arrogant at all, lol. Particularly when it's based on falsehoods like the ones stated above-thread.

> In theory, but in practice that's not accurate.

Er, no, that's still very much accurate.

Eastern countries are in the EU for the practical advantages, and those advantages are the result of the solidarity framework established in Rome.

> Modern day EU is far more corrupt and inefficient than when Spain joined.

Lol, citation needed.

> little bit similar to Italy falling in line around 2010

Absolutely. The country made sacrifices to stay in the Union, for practical and ideological reasons, and it's one of the main movers behind actual policy-making. Even just Mario Draghi did more for the Union than most Eastern politicians likely ever will.

> i doubt Italy will have much to say in any of this.

Whereas I'm sure the third largest market in the Union will have a say.

> That's not arrogant at all, lol. Particularly when it's based on falsehoods like the ones stated above-thread.

Facts are not arrogance and lies.

> Eastern countries are in the EU for the practical advantages, and those advantages are the result of the solidarity framework established in Rome.

There is no solidarity other than on paper, as the war in Ukraine has proven in its early days. It wasn't until the US, UK and east Europe pressured western europe to get off it's backside and something about it. Particularly since european "solidarity" meant that east european calls for taming russia have been ignored and worse western europe financed russia and forced an unhealthy reliance on their resources.

> Lol, citation needed.

Quatargate springs to mind. Unheard of in the early days of the EC.

> Absolutely. The country made sacrifices to stay in the Union, for practical and ideological reasons, and it's one of the main movers behind actual policy-making. Even just Mario Draghi did more for the Union than most Eastern politicians likely ever will.

Insignificant to efforts made by east EU to rebuild countries, political systems and social structures.

> Whereas I'm sure the third largest market in the Union will have a say.

East Europe is the second largest economy of europe. Larger than nort or south europe. If the trend continues, it may even revert to pre 70s levels - a rather likely outcome - where it was the largest.

Look, i understand you are upset that your country and region is being overtaken, but be fair and play the game. No need for emotions and tantrums, they won't change facts.

>I'm Italian and living in UK (for my sins), so I think I can see more than one facet of the argument.

Great then, let's talk about the south of Italy and it's development. Everyone from the south of Italy I met in Europe said they'd rather be expats in EU than in the North of Italy thanks to they way the north treat them. That's how Eastern Europeans feel in the EU sometimes. People don't like to be treated as second class citizens.

>It just so happens that Eastern countries receive disproportionate amounts because of the state they found themselves in after the end of the Soviet Bloc.

Kind of like the solidarity of the post-WW2 Marshall plan Italy received after siding with the Nazis? Is it equally disproportionate, more, or less?

>Sadly, the largest recipients seem to avoid expressing any solidarity back in other areas.

What kind of solidarity are you thinking of receiving? Are the the minimum wage slaves from Eastern Europe working in Italian and German nursing homes and agriculture fields working in conditions below legal norms for wages below the minimum in order to keep the nursing system and cheap supermarket prices afloat, enough to balance the books?

> People don't like to be treated as second class citizens.

Don't come to me, an European in Brexit Britain, hailing from a country with one of the largest and most-enduring economic diasporas in the world, to talk about the condition of migrants or second-class "feelings".

The stuff you mention is largely bullshit and jokes. There has been no discrimination of Southern Italians since the late '80s, when African migrants became the (easier) target for that sort of treatment. Whereas I'm now on a fucking register and I can lose all my rights with the stroke of a pen by some populist asshole. I swear, EU27 folks don't know how good they have it.

> Is it equally disproportionate, more, or less?

The Marshall Plan lasted 3 years, Italy got around a billion USD. Over 20 years, Eastern Europe likely got several multiples of that - Poland alone received 11bn per year not long ago, so even adjusting for inflation the Eastern bloc is probably way ahead by now.

> What kind of solidarity are you thinking of receiving?

Help with migratory flows and refugees resettlement, to balance demographic pressures. Help with stemming tax evasion (I'm looking at you, Slovenia). Help that costs little and would benefit everyone in the long run.

A rather unsophisticated opinion.

Followed by an even less sophisticated one.

i don't know much about Europe, would you mind adding some sophistication to above comment?

It has been proven that west european products made by west european companies sold in east europe are of low quality and sometimes even more expensive:

https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/2021/dual-quality-food-...

Claims east europeans “displaced jobs” from west europe yet east europeans have been forced to migrate to western europe due to a lack of jobs. How have jobs been moved to east europe when people leave precisely because there are no jobs?

They also claim that east europe was meant to provide “cheap labour” for richer nations in the eu - basically admitting the plan has always been to keep those people poor so they can work in factories. Somehow they should be thankful for that.

The list continues and is a good indication of the underlying issues that plague european “solidarity”.

What was initially sold as a continuation of the marshal plan has taken a very dark european shape where if you dont like it you are told to get out.

Nobody was forced to do anything; migration started almost immediately after 1989-90, simply because the eastern economic and social landscape was depleted after the failures of the '80s. Delocalization took a bit longer simply because it required institutional stability, which some countries achieved faster than others. Volkswagen were already making parts in Chzechia in the mid-90s, do you think they were making twice the parts they needed...?

> basically admitting the plan has always been to keep those people poor

That's not what delocalization does; in the long run it inevitably leads to wage growth in target countries - it happened even in China. The "plan", or rather intuition of some political players of the time, was simply to exploit lower salaries as long as it was possible, knowing full well that it wouldn't be forever.

> What was initially sold as a continuation of the marshal plan has taken a very dark european shape.

As I said, nobody is forced to stay in. If those countries stay in, it's because they know which side their bread is buttered.

It is a sad state of affairs when italians talk about obedience in exchange for bread and butter. Perhaps a skill gained after causing the largest financial disaster in eu’s history, together with other south european countries.

Instead east europe demands a level playing field so it doesnt have to rely on eu funding, partly needed due to misguided policies.

If Italy doesnt like this then it can leave. East europe is increasingly more relevant.

"The evil westerners are keeping us poor and our people are emigrating"

"East europe is increasingly more relevant"

You appear to have some cognitive dissonance.

> The evil westerners

Never said that.

> italians talk about obedience in exchange for bread and butter

I've never used that word, that's your own insecurities talking. What people want is not obedience, is respect: respect for the founding principles of the community they joined, and respect for the solidarity that the founders extend every day to them.

Instead, certain elements in Eastern Europe demand more and more, without ever giving anything back.

> If Italy doesnt like this then it can leave.

Sure, but why should we leave a house we built, that we still fundamentally believe in, and that we know we benefit from in various ways...? Obviously we won't. It's much more likely that we will simply continue to work to improve the house rules.

> East europe is increasingly more relevant.

Lol. I'm not sure you noticed, but Visegrad is dead. In EU institutions, the great killer is isolation. The more you beat your chest, the less you will get.

>A lot of those "western European" products are actually manufactured in Eastern Europe by cheap Eastern European labor.

Please name me 3 foodstuffs you have in your kitchen made in some Eastern EU country.

>You don't have brands but have jobs, often displaced from Western countries.

Goods made in Eastern EU didn't displace jobs from the West. French and German unemployment were record lows. Southern EU had big unemployment but that was due to their own economic issues, no factories from Greece or Spain moved to Eastern Europe.

>they were meant to provide new markets and new labor for (largely German) established companies. In exchange, they got loads of money to raise their infrastructural standards and overall quality of life.

In exchange they also had to suffer a huge increase in cost of living, food and energy prices to the point we're paying German prices at Eastern EU wages. Most of our energy companies are German or French owned, so the profits from the increase prices we paid went to them. So are our banks. The profits made by western banks also far outpace the ones made in their home countries since they offer higher interest rates and charge higher fees than what they do back home to their own countrymen. So are our oil and gas companies, all owned by western enterprises and profits go there.

Yeah, we're getting hundreds of millions from the EU and sending back billions in corporate profits. Heck of a deal. From some angles it looks more like economic colonialism.

> Please name me 3 foodstuffs you have in your kitchen made in some Eastern EU country.

How is it my fault that your stuff tastes bad? ;)

> no factories from Greece or Spain moved to Eastern Europe.

That's because they largely didn't exist in the first place; whereas they definitely did from Italy, which you carefully avoided mentioning, or the UK.

> In exchange they also had to suffer a huge increase in cost of living, food and energy prices

That's just capitalism in action, and it's the same for pretty much anyone on the continent at the moment. (oh, actually, it's worse here in UK, with sustained double-digit inflation, eye-watering energy prices that nobody else pays in Europe, and a house market used as reserve currency by rich foreigners).

> How is it my fault that your stuff tastes bad? ;)

Damn, that’s some high quality trolling right there.

Says the one who ignores all the points he can't argue, lol.

> A lot of companies in Eastern Europe were obliterated when joining the EU and our local market was flooded with goods made in the west since the local ones weren't "up to standard" anymore. Even today we still have a huge trade deficit with the west as we import far more than we export.

This is the definition of colonialism. Expect the deficit to continue as your state is a colony.

I grew up on Maui. The pineapple & sugar cane were farmed there with inexpensive labor. The raw materials were lightly processed & shipped to the mainland to be manufactured. The sugar & to a lesser extent canned pineapple (it was easy to get fresh pineapple) were then sold at retail to the residents of Maui. HC&S (the sugar company) controlled the agricultural fresh water, so no agricultural competition could arise.

The local residents were not happy & conducted social, religious, & political action which included adhering to indigenous cultural practices to gain some concessions.

If you study the history of Hawaii & how its monarchy was overthrown in a coup by US business interests with the help of the US military (to protect the interests of US citizens of course) & the events since, you will have a set of tools to keep what is rightfully yours. Of course Hawaii is now a US State with a large military base & munitions. Aquifers are polluted by jet fuel from the US Navy which it still has not taken appropriate action for. The struggle continues...

Wait, so you're blaming the EU for giving you access to a free market after literally begging to join?

Well gp is referring to the us and maui.

But to your point specifically not being a member of the eu is equal to being embargoed or sanctioned if you are a european country. It covers so much of the continent that it should be a right not a privilege. Either it gets dismantled or is free and equal for all.

It's a rigged market with a free market narrative

>Wait, so you're blaming the EU for giving you access to a free market after literally begging to join?

Because we learned later that the "free market" might be free as in freedom, but not free as in beer, it's actually "pay to win".

It's a palce that flavors the established players with capital (the rich countries with big conglomerates) to easily buy whatever they want from the places without capital (the poorer countries), while having enough expensive moats that price out the poorer countries from doing the same in the richer ones. Case in point: the common energy market.

The "free market" doesn't benefit the consumers in the poorer countries in the sectors of essentials stuff needed for living: healthcare, food, energy, housing.

Not sure it is so cut and dry. Here are 8 different USB-C types:

1. USB 2.0 rated at 3A 2. USB 2.0 rated at 5A 3. USB 3.2 Gen 1 rated at 3A 4. USB 3.2 Gen 1 rated at 5A 5. USB 3.2 Gen 2 rated at 3A 6. USB 3.2 Gen 2 rated at 5A 7. USB4 Gen 3 rated at 3A 8. USB4 Gen 3 rated at 5A

What percentage of customers will be impacted when they aren't using a compatible cable that looks like it should work? Also the whole master/slave hardware confusion might be a step back: https://superuser.com/questions/1140136/how-does-usb-c-affec...

Maybe 2 people who expect to get Alt-DP working with USB 2.0 only cable. For others, things will just work, except not at the max capacity/performance.

> except not at the max capacity/performance

That except is doing a lot of work. Picking up a USB-C cable only to find out it charges slower than the device burns battery, or only capable of transferring data at sub USB 2.0 speed when I need to transfer a lot of data are both real world scenarios I have encountered multiple times. Even got a charging cable for >400GB data transfer at an Apple Store Genius Bar once.

> Picking up a USB-C cable only to find out it charges slower than the device burns battery

You have to try hard for that, as any compliant cable is able to pass 60W, which is what I can comfortably charge my laptop with. You only need e-markers for going higher than that, which is perfectly reasonable as that's plenty of power already.

Cables with no CC lines cannot be called "USB-C cables". They're not complaint at all. They're just broken, and it's no surprise that broken hardware fails to work as expected.

The EU can't regulate that. The device and the chargers already negociate the charging standard to the lowest and safest common denominator supported by both devices and the cable connecting them.

There are several universal chargers you can buy that support all standards under the sun from all manufacturers.

That's a non issue outside of HN mind games people here like to play to draw their own straw men.

Charging cables made it complex, but those aside everyone else gets 5Gbps and 3A, which is an incredibly solid baseline.

People love freaking out about the profusion of USB specs available, but the overall experience is magically great. Just stellar.

Usb has recently gotten a bit better about their new on-cable markings to make things clearer. But overall the baseline is so good.

Personally, I would find it easier to be less cynical if the European Union's charging standard extended to include everyday items such as my German Braun shaver. As it currently stands, the standard appears to be limited to the likes of handheld mobile devices, tablets, digital cameras, and similar technologies produced mainly by non EU corporations.

Right, devices that require expensive chargers

one of my best purchases, great device. but those fucking chargers man. I bought several generations, and I've never noticed the battery the degrading at all really, which is more than I can say for the other shavers that became useless when the batteries quickly degraded to the point where you couldn't use it without a cord.

The braun shavers are also the fastest charging electronic devices I own. So what's the problem? Like apple, the charger may not be compatible with the older generation. So how about they force companies to bundle an adaptor that can work with the older generations. Or better yet, release an adaptor that lets me charge my phone with my shaver charger:)

They have a net benefit on the lives of citizens that live in countries that make the rules.

There isn’t one specific example, it’s the sheer amount, and in some cases the stupidity, that are problematic.

Sure we all want to live in a utopia but at the moment that utopia is causing mass displacement of economic refugees from east and south europe to nw europe and a constant reliance on eu funding, while the industrial base of those parts of europe has to constantly adapt to new legislation made in countries that already meet the requirements. And this constant game of catching up is in my view intentional protectionism.

Did it help Apple's customers? I would generally bet that a company that is engaged in a highly competitive market would have a better gasp of what their customers would like than a regulatory body composed of people who may or may not have any relevant experience. You don't design a custom cable standard without a clear need. A thinner, more durable cable manufactured to a certain spec has a number of benefits for industrial design and durability that should not be overlooked.

But also establishing new standards is also the standard playbook for European industry. There are plenty of examples that are a mere google search away. Two that I find especially annoying are the decision to switch to 50hz AC power instead of using the original 60hz and the decision to create a broadcast TV encoding.

Yes, it did.

I read this struggle as less about consumer protection & more about compliance. Do you have iso x y and z? Are you doc whatever? Do you meet balh blah blah? Governments end up shopping for contracts & products at a very small number of large shops.

> subpar chinese products are OK

Subpar Chinese products are not officially OK, they're just not really stopping individual packages from AliExpress. They generally aren't being resold through EU retailers.

For me, the lack of any de-minimis rules in the requirements is the killer. EU law does not recognize the concept of a "small business". It might be both viable and a good idea for extra safety checks for something where a million units are being sold, but it isn't for a few dozen.

A lot of such products are resold on local "auction" sites. Not sure if that's a loophole or not.

Yeah, it's technically illegal to import and sell new non-CE marked goods into the EU on ebay, but it's basically impossible to enforce. You see a handful of prosecutions a year and only for genuinely dangerous products (flammable e-scooters, illegal vapes, etc)

Customs in the EU have massively cracked down on imports from China in the last couple of years, with new regulations regarding import charges etc.

Every single package I've ordered since then across four different EU countries and multiple Chinese suppliers has resulted in it being held until a fee was paid.

Previously, stuff below a certain value was "free".

You have to pay an import tax. That has nothing to do with standards compliance of the products.

Given the packages are inspected, anecdotally "non compliant" or infringing products aren't making it to the buyer at a MUCH higher rate than before.

No, the EU is entirely sold to big corp. US big corps are doing fine, thank you, but small EU companies can go to hell. I'm developing software in a French 10 people shop, do you think we have any resources to spend on standards, and a legal department to check that we're properly conforming to them ? Of course not. That means that we can't hope to sell our products to any public service, government or EU agency, or any big company. These very big, very lucrative markets are strictly restricted to big corps. Microsoft, Google and Amazon are doing fine in this environment.

can you elaborate on this with some examples? some standards are important, right? the phone charger standardization seems useful, no? it would be ideal to have just a single wall socket/plug, no? similarly for EV supercharger connector. and so on. these are the things that get standardized at the EU level, as far as I know, so I'm very interested in counter-examples. thanks!

I'm neither European nor do I have to deal with their standards, but this seems like a false equivocation.

Physical Engineering standards serve a different purpose than software standards. Engineering standards are a social contract we all buy into because of the incredibly cost and complexity of designing physical infrastructure.

Software is not constrained by the same standards. It's alright if the firmware of a coffee machine and a cell phone run on a different standard, but it's going to cause problems if each of my sockets has a different grounding.

I mean...there is an analogy there.

If standardizing something is a public good, then why are the standard documentation kept locked?

Nobody on this thread said a word against standardization. It's really important. You are replying for some comment that isn't there.

I can elaborate with a very precise example. Of course standards are fine and important. But the amount of red tape they require is mind-boggling. I know of a small company who invested about 1 million € to build their software; they then took 18 months and another million € to make it stamped with some standard, to be able to sell their software to some government administration. The second million was spent entirely on legal fees, documentations, etc. They didn't change a line in their software. Nobody checked that the software actually does what it's supposed to do; only that it facially complies with a bunch of bureaucratically defined requirements, that may or may not be of any use or significance for the people using the software in the end.

Lord almighty

can you please name the standard in question?

also, it's completely okay if no code had to be changed

also there are quality assurance and process related standards, that are about documentation...

and let's not forget that a government can usually require that the vendor sign paperwork, which makes sure the officers of the vendor are criminally liable

... I'm not in favor of them, nor in favor of spending millions on legal and documentation fees, but without knowing more it's yet another "public procurement bad" story (which is completely believable! I mean 1M EUR compliance cost nowadays is not that unusual)

It was in 2016 so I mercifully forgot the details, it's a set of standards for data archival and document classification. There are some compliances rules for security in the mix (people should require proper authorisations to access documents, etc).

At some point some lawmakers (under the influence of some company such as Cap Gemini or Atos) passed a law to force notaries to use only software with that particular stamp.

The problem is that it's typically the sort of standard that should be applied to a particular organisation and workflow, through an auditing process, instead of a global, upfront stamp that is really a way to do gatekeeping, not actually enforcing data safety and security.

Making standards accessible to small businesses smells like a startup idea…

No. Standards for the development of which my taxes paid for should be accessible for free.

Just make it the law.

> Yet they're behind a really expensive pay-wall. If you buy the standard from ISO it's often €150

Really, I'm surprised there's anyone left who doesn't know about EVS (the Estonian Centre for Standards and Accreditation)[1]

They have a nice English website, and you don't have to have any ties whatsoever to Eestonia, or Europe.

The customer service people speak perfect English too if you have any questions.

Just make sure you're looking at the price for the EN version and not the ISO version.

EN just means the regionally adopted version of the standard. For all intents and purposes EN and ISO are basically identical.

[1] https://www.evs.ee/en/

I just looked at this site and you have to pay if you want access. They're not free from this website either. I was looking at ISO-3166 and the different standards documents cost from ~$22 to ~$175.

> I just looked at this site and you have to pay if you want access.

When did I say it was free ?

I was replying to the OP who was complaining about paying 150. I pointed out that most people go to EVS these days where they can get it for a fraction of the cost.

Frankly I'm sick and tired of the modern freetard mentality where people feel they are somehow entitled to the work of others free of charge.

Whilst yes I agree the source 150 cost is high, the fractional cost available via EVS is not. And if your job is dependent on formal standards compliance, then its merely a cost of doing business no different to an internet connection and should be accounted for accordingly.

I've looked for ISO 10218, 12100, 13849, and IEC 60204, and they're $29.76 to $36.23; $138 for the set. That's a lot better than $183, $207, $230, and $575 that the original publishers want, almost $1200 for the set. The former is likely in the discretionary shop tools budget for most clients, especially if you spread it out over four pay periods, but $1200 would trigger lots of restrictions. But you're right, it's still not free.

These are documents that should be on the laptops of every shift lead, maintenance tech, mechanical designer, manufacturing engineer, robot programmer, and controls programmer at industrial plants worldwide. These documents being free would not just make websites easier to use, they'd make human beings safer and reduce the number of industrial accidents that occur. And yet in the hundreds of facilities I've been in and hundreds of customers and vendors I've worked with, I can count on one hand the number of people who had a copy of even one of these documents. The vast majority, in practice, makes do with the regurgitated Powerpoints from various "safety training" presentations that have screenshots of a few tables and critical language.

There's an enormous river of prosperity flowing through society. Everyone involved just wants to dip out or siphon off a little bit, what they imagine to be their fair share, or what they think they can convince people ought to be their fair share, and unfortunately, that includes people like the standards bodies. If they published their standards more freely, the total volume of that river would grow enormously, but they would get less of it, so they selfishly don't do that.

There's also the Latvian equivalent - https://www.lvs.lv/en

But then how would the ISO keep their doors open? Surely you're not implying that these poor organizations are profiteering, nay, rent-seeking in some way?

(*Being sarcastic BTW. There's nothing more infuriating to me than the twin Industrial Complexes that have developed around Compliance and Publishing)

Well they get the government subsides, the membership fees, and a huge lot of small task-oriented fees.

AFAIK, each one of those is designed to be enough to cover for all their real expenses.

In the US, it's been ruled many times that if the government mandates a standard, then it must be publicly available for free to be enforceable.

Which is why, when the NFPA (private org) fire code is mandated, you can use a really shitty web based viewer to view it for free, or pay the normal $200 for a hard copy or pdf. All stemming from a lawsuit.

It's interesting the EU isn't the same

This is substantially less true in practice than you'd think. I'm in automotive, so let's take ISO-26262, one of the main standards used to design your vehicle. The contents of that are encoded in the NHTSA validation tests, basic compliance procedures, and all the certification paperwork, but the standard itself is "voluntary" and hence non-free. It's a massive standard with a dozen different parts that have to be purchased separately for a couple hundred each.

Since group licensing also tends to charge by # of people with access, beancounters naturally silo access to this critical safety standard, with many of the thousands of engineers who work on any particular vehicle designing to a standard they've never read for themselves.

Standards should simply be freely available. It takes time and effort to write them, but the consequences of limited access are borne by society.

The same thing happens in Australia, and there is an exclusive licensing deal with a foreign company to sell them. I wouldn’t mind if they did research or something, but Australian volunteers write the standards, so the only costs to the publisher are web infrastructure.

This only recently changed. Standards Australia had to sue though (or something) you can buy direct from them now. They also have subscriptions which are OK

Imagine if the original international standards of weights and measures charged for access to their master units and restricted data about their quantities. The lack of vision is remarkable, yet symptomatic of the EU.

>The lack of vision is remarkable, yet symptomatic of the EU.

...and the rest of the world, judging by the comments. And also, let's not forget the EU is a collection of countries.

> let's not forget the EU is a collection of countries

Well, sort of. But why is that relevant?

What is outstanding about the EU is that it restricts the economic growth of it's member states. I've seen it argued that this is not merely the fault of poor governance., like the rest of the world, rather it's an inherent feature of the way the European Community was set up. Their lack of concern for Free Market principles is not just due to a contempt for small business but rather an inability to accommodate them. (the sole exception may be subsidising the French farming industry).

Its not just French farmers who are subsidised though - farmers all across the EU avail of various subsidies, grants, etc.

> Standards should be free and open, or have no legal weight.

Yes. And this discussion is much older than it seems. Way older

Merchant guilds? :)

It’s the same bs everywhere. Here in Australia same deal.

It’s even more dodgy. Saiglobal had something of a contract in perpetuity to sell standards that were created by standards Australia. Someone thought that was a good deal back when. They recently sued to get out of it and now can sell directly and have a pretty affordable subscription model. But even then it’s stupid. The standards themselves are developed by volunteer committees mostly, and standards Australia is sitting on a massive cash fund.

We recently had to design some coupling plates for a job and needed to check allowable clearances that were specified in a standard. Problem is the bloody standard has 20 parts to it, each cost $150 each. I don’t even know which part I need!

Anyway makes me angry thinking about.

TLDR: standards should be free

Some state laws in the US I believe are copyrighted and costs money to obtain.

You're probably referencing the Georgia situation,[0] and it's complicated. The actual text of the laws are public, but there exists a (previously; see below) copyrighted annotated version published by a private company and "merged" into the "master" law. Courts would reference this annotated version, but because it was copyrighted, one could not republish it in its entirety, only in ways that followed fair use.

On the surface, the concept of copyrighted laws sounds ridiculous. After all, works of the government are not copyrightable, so why should the law be? However, Georgia's idea was essentially: because it was done by a private company, the copyright was enforceable.

In 2013, Public.Resource.Org challenged this concept by publishing the text in its entirety, and was subsequently sued by Georgia in 2015. The Northern District of Georgia ruled in favor of Georgia in 2017. After an appeal to the 11th Circuit, in 2018, it was overturned in favor of Public.Resource.Org. In 2020,[1] the Supreme Court sided with the 11th Circuit, ending the debacle. The ruling held that "works that lack the force of law, such as the annotations in the Official Code of Georgia Annotated" are uncopyrightable.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Code_of_Georgia_Annot...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_v._Public.Resource.Org....

"Ignorance of the law is not an excuse" is already bad enough. "Ignorance of the stuff we wrote down near the law that we'll basically treat as the golden interpretation of the law and judge you on it" is a bridge too far.

Minor but important correction: it did not find that "works that lack the force of law" are uncopyrightable per se. It found that works created by or for legislators with "legislative authority" are uncopyrightable, even if they lack the force of law.

Yes. I truncated the quote in a bad spot. Thanks for the correction!

Thank you for the explanation. I remember vaguely hearing it somewhere but couldn't find it again.

each time I had to look up an iso standard, I found it on libgen. Thank you pirates!

sci-hub ?

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