Comment by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | Hacker News Reader

"Europeans could end up living in an online backwater with out-of-date phones, cut off from the rest of the world's search engines and social media sites, unable to even access high-performance computer chips."

Sounds like a paradise. More healthy lifestyle. For most people much of this stuff is unnecessary. If one wants to live life "online", glued a screen digesting garbage and propaganda 24/7, then one can relocate to some country where that's what people do. Chances are, tourists from such countries will want to visit Europe even more.

We are all living in an "online backwater" in case the author hasn't noticed. The web is a sewer of surveillance, marketing and ads. Despite the information access possibilities the internet presents, the distribution of factual information seems to be at an all-time low, at least in the lifetime I am living. I have never seen people who were so detached from commonly shared reality as a result of "search engines and social media sites". To access facual information, cf. marketing and propaganda, worthless opinions, and "AI" generated garbage, one did not and does not need the latest "phone" or "high-performance computer chips". This stuff is not making people smarter. Is it is not making society better.

I would be willing to bet the countries that have the populations that are most reliant on "search engines and social media sites" and "high performance computer chips" are going to have the highest rates of mental illness and other complications that arise from too much screen time, and the lowest test scores. These will be dumbed down, whacked out societies. They will have the worst quality of life.

I was listening to an interview with Jonathan Kanter recently and the interviewer tried to get him to comment on Europe's approach to regulation of "Big Tech". He was hesitant to accept any comparison. But I am confident there are plenty of folks, generally _not people who comment on HN_, who are envious of the direction Europe is taking.

The idea that regulating Apple and Meta, companies that exploit people commercially as they use computers, e.g., as data collection sources and ad targets, is going to contribute to cause "poverty" or deprive Europe of useful networking and computer technology, e.g., the type used for national defense, is absurd.

What an interesting point of view. Very European. I wonder what will those Europeans do that do need the high-performance computer chips to create something new, to innovate.

They will probably move to those whacked out societies.

> What an interesting point of view. Very European. I wonder what will those Europeans do that do need the high-performance computer chips to create something new, to innovate.

You mean the ones fabricated with European photolithography machines?

I think you missed the GP's point: a lot of so-called "innovation" is crap, providing as much true value as a parasite (maybe one of those lovely ones that will kill you if you try to kill it).

> You mean the ones fabricated with European photolithography machines?

Interesting discussion recently, I forget if it was on here. Those lithography machines are built with the worst spaghetti code imaginable and the engineering is so close to black magic that development is painfully slow. In other words, that space is ripe for disruption and there might be some attempts at that in the near future.

If you think EUV lithography is 'ripe for disruption', then sir, I wish you and your VCs all the best. :)

> Interesting discussion recently, I forget if it was on here. Those lithography machines are built with the worst spaghetti code imaginable and the engineering is so close to black magic that development is painfully slow.

It sounds like "spaghetti code" is not actually the competitive disadvantage software engineers imagine it to be.

I say that as a software engineer.

Pretty sure there's a lot more to those machines than software.

> In other words, that space is ripe for disruption and there might be some attempts at that in the near future.

Not because of "spaghetti code," but because of US-led sanctions. China has technical talent, a lot of money, and now motivation to enter that space.

And I think you missed mine.

I agree with you. A lot of innovation is indeed crap. But there are times when they are not crap, but brilliant instead.

So these crappy and brilliant innovators are going to move to the whacky societies. It's for Europeans to judge if that is a net loss or a net gain.

A lot of “crap” is innovation too. In the past some considered video games to be crap, rotting children’s brains, promoting violence, etc. Look what happened when we figured out that add on cards for projective rendering could also multiply matrices really quickly.

Whether or not an innovation is crap can only be judged in hindsight.

If we (EU) are not allowed to have high end AI chips strapped on quadcopters and Russia is, well, good luck to EU.

Well, that stupid government isn’t “allowed” to import chips either. How has that materially changed anything? (Please use specific examples.)

Putting limitations on technology is really stupid from a defense point of view.

In Europe we don't have anough capacity for ammo production. Lack of AI chips is the least of our security problems.

I thought we were talking about future policies here, having effect 20 years from now.

A (very hypothetical) war is not going to be won by AI chips and quadcopters.

Furthermore all of this applies to consumer tech, not military tech. Consumers are not allowed to have military drones, attack fighters, and tanks either.

You don't seem to know what is currently being used in Ukraine right now.

It’s a short term paradise. You’re not going to be able to keep it that way when the rest of the world is more technologically advanced and you slip into poverty.

Exactly my thought here. Such a privileged view of the world to not appreciate the luxuries that internet technologies have bestowed us.

It's also naive in that they somehow think they wouldn't get invaded the second some dictator decides they want some lebensraum. You can't have an entire continent (save Poland, Finland, Britain, France, and a handful of others) more or less ignore defense (via technological advancement) and hope to keep pax liberalism

> It’s a short term paradise. You’re not going to be able to keep it that way when the rest of the world is more technologically advanced and you slip into poverty.

I think you're failing to make important distinctions. Being "less advanced" in algorithmic addiction machines, ad targeting, personal privacy invasion, or monopoly is not going to cause any of those things.

As an American, a good chunk of American consumer technology is more akin to a parasitic burden than any advantage.

Things like Facebook, Meta, Uber and whatnot are not really innovative technology. Almost none of the tech the DMA regulates is innovative as such, other than some "innovation" to deal with the scaling, and the only reason they need to scale is due to the dubious business activities that allowed them to grow to this size.

The DMA is really about regulating basic common sense free market rules, not regulating technology as such.

There is no equivalence between (a) "internet" or "high end computer chips" (much less "technology" or "innovation") and (b) "search engines" or "social media sites". Except if one is Silicon Valley VC, Big Tech employee, "tech" journalist, payola recipient or other supporter of "Big Tech". This is false quivalence, a flawed premise. Arguments relying on a flawed premise are, of course, inherently flawed.

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