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Comment by TrickyRick | Hacker News Reader

Mandated USB-C was good, swappable batteries that's coming in a few years as well. GDPR was mostly useless and the only real consequence is more cookie banners that people accept as a knee jerk reaction and a lot of money that went to lawyers and "consultants" which helped smaller businesses get "GDPR ready".

Chat control is not really tech regulation though, even if it affects tech the proposal is written by people who have no idea what the fuck they are doing. Ylva Johansson (The MEP responsible for it) has even said straight out she has no idea if or how this should be complied with but "They will figure it out" (They being tech companies). With people like that deciding our laws of course you end up with shit like this.

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> GDPR was mostly useless

I would disagree with that. I like being able to download a copy of all my data from all these big websites. Since I no longer use Twitter/X, it's nice to have a copy of everything I have posted there.

They had that before the GDPR.

Yes, but now with gdpr it's enforceable, what if twit decides to stop providing that data?

It was enforceable before too, thanks to the Data Protection Directive from 1995. GDPR is an harmonization of the various national transcriptions of the DPD, plus higher fines, a better cooperation mechanism, and data portability (which is a bit useless but it's nice to have). Cookie banners also predate GDPR (it was the ePrivacy directive).

> Yes, but now with gdpr it's enforceable, what if twit decides to stop providing that data?

Why would you want a law with high compliance costs to solve a problem that was already solved? It makes no sense to impose the costs unless the thing it purports to solve actually presents as a problem.

As someone that worked in an EEA tech company when the GDPR was actually being implemented, it absolutely did a ton for improving how much focus there was on privacy and PII security. That has seemed to be true for the places I've worked since too, from what I've heard. Most companies still have no good process for data deletion or export, and I am fairly convinced it would be even more dire if people hadn't started preparing for the GDPR years ahead.

Mandated USB-C disincentives ever improving on the connector. The EU attempted to enforce a similar mandate for micro-USB back in the day - can you imagine if they succeeded? Fortunately, we got Lightning and USB-C thereafter, but improvement is always possible.

Product design doesn't need to be written into law.

>Mandated USB-C disincentives ever improving on the connector.

Please stop repeating that argument, it's not true. There's periodic review proces built in into this legislation.

>attempted to enforce a similar mandate for micro-USB back in the day - can you imagine if they succeeded?

That would be great. Probably Apple would transition to the USB-C a few years ago with everyone instead current nonsense.

Yes just imagine how long that’s going to take…

Again commonly repeated FUD.

Lightning originated when there was a talk about mandating micro-USB and finally died, after 11 years, when USB-C was mandated. If not for that legislation it would still be alive.

It's actually faster that way.

I keep forgetting how dynamic the EU tech industry is and the great companies that have come out of it because of the wisdom of European legislation.

Not remotely the same for micro usb. It wasn't the same law.

Now it will be a chicken and egg problem. No one will want to put a new connector in phones, because they'd need usb c too anyways. So no new standard will emerge with wide enough industry support. If the micro usb "mandate" was as binding and restrictive as this one, we would not have had usb c.

> No one will want to put a new connector in phones, because they'd need usb c too anyways.

This is why the USB Implimentation Forum exists. If you want to put a new connector in phones, do it; just do it through the proper, standardized and official channels. If every manufacturer had their own competing charging standard, we would be back to square 1 with 15 different ways to route serial data and 15w of juice. As companies like Apple have so gratefully demonstrated, most companies tend to invent those chargers for licensing royalties rather than a willingness to push the envelope on charging or data transfer technology.

The problem is that nobody will be willing to invest in the research and development needed to do so. It's a chicken and an egg problem.

Good. I don't want a company to create and monopolize some arbitrary improvement over the current technology. I want those developments to be forced into standardization to compete, and offer backwards-compatibility just like USB does.

And plus... it's a serial cable. The demand for "research and development" has remained the same since they figured out how to flatten the type B connector. You can't fool anybody by releasing a 'new and improved' cable or connector that is just the same serial bus with proprietary mumbo-jumbo on top.

> Good. I don't want a company to create and monopolize some arbitrary improvement over the current technology.

And this sums up the issue perfectly. “I don’t want improvements. I want design by committee least common denominator”

When it comes to charging and serial standards which have not meaningfully evolved in over a decade... yeah. It would be kinda nice to trade marginal improvement for compatibility and stability. The USB-C connector is not limiting smartphone data or charging speeds anyways.

And no one will ever need more than 640K of memory…

I'm happy to wait for the first iPhone that needs to exceed 60w of charging and Thunderbolt 4 speeds.

For now I see that Apple took USB-C and used it implement 23 years old protocol in it's mid-range device.

I think I'll give EU a chance before I will agree that they created bottle neck by this legislation.

The iPhone Pro is a midrange device?

The EU just mandated a charging standard. It didn’t mandate that Apple go whole hog implementing the USB 3.1 protocol including video over USB C - all things that the typical Android phone doesn’t do.

Regular iPhone is midrange - it has USB 2.0, and yet it just started to be sold. Apparently 23 years old solution is still ok for lots of the people.

When do you think mobile devices will be limited by USB-C? Another 20 years? Is it worth for you to allow mess, vendor locks and ripping of customers for another quarter of century, because some magic connector that solves problem we don't know exists can be delayed by 2-3 years? Really?

Anti-competitive practices from corporations delay progress way more than that.

And yet, the price of a goopd USB C cable from Amazon is no less expensive than a 3rd party Lightning cable.

USB C was created due to Apple donating the reversible connector technology they created for lightning.

If micro usb was enforced, USB C in its current form wouldn’t exist.

I guess power cords and power plugs landed on perfect designs. It's weird how there are so many different "perfect" power plugs though.

A periodic review process won't matter. Somebody has to actually research, design and create an alternative. Why would they spend resources on that if their competitors can just decide that they're not allowed to use it?

> GDPR was mostly useless

Not at all, I think it achieved exactly what it was designed to do. The part where we blindly accept cookie banners without holding companies accountable for doing so much tracking (or put them in place without questioning if they're needed) is totally on us.

GDPR did give us the tools and the means, we just don't take full advantage of them.

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