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Comment by moffkalast | Hacker News Reader

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Well it is same thing that people complaining about low tech salaries in Europe and people praising EU privacy laws at the same time. Without ever thinking that million dollars TC at SV companies comes at cost of privacy and livelihood of billion less fortunate people.

I've worked with US and EU companies extensively over many years and my experience is that low (it depends greatly where you are what this means) tech salaries have effectively nothing to do with EU privacy regulation, and everything to do with historical cost of living and culture, and the large amount of inertia it takes to change especially the latter.

There are businesses in the US that rely on wafer thin privacy regulation to exploit people's data, but it's very very possible to build a business that doesn't require it to function.

But people private data is soooooo easy to make money from

Also not considering that it's not that salaries in the EU are low compared to global standards, it's that the USA has absurdly ridiculous salaries. The outlier are US salaries, no other country (I think not even Switzerland) can get that high.

FWIW Switzerland is the only country outside the US where Google pays comparable salaries to Mountain View / NYC (as in: over the past 4 years or so, it's actually been hovering around 99-104% of Mountain View salaries, depending on exchange rates).

(The only other location that keeps pace with any US salary bands is Israel / the Tel Aviv office.)

The cost of living in Zurich is quite something, though...

Granted, the EU is pushing back against some of this. But it's far from enough, it's only one continent, and like others mentioned, their solutions often have technical problems.

I'm still glad they're at least trying to do the right thing.

I've seen the patterns you mention, but yes, they're not coming from the same people. It's indicative of differing opinions, so the hive mind comparison is not a good fit (in this case :).

The EU isn't even a continent. It's a trade/political block, making up a part of a continent. And the part of the EU pushing back is generally just the European Parliament, not the whole organisation.

On HN, hundreds of devs worked for FAANGS and this includes working on all the projects we also claim are immoral.

If you start discussing this topic here, you will get a wall of people defending their position and a ton of downvotes, but the bottom line is, they are like the politicians or CEO they blame: if the money is good enough, morality is flexible.

No amount of BS in their beautifully worded code of conduct will change that.

> EU: creates regulation that makes doing that thing illegal

That’s a huge fallacy. For the most part complaints about the EU regulatory fetish are about the way regulations don’t make it clear what is legal to do.

So yeah, the EU outlaws some bad behavior, but also lots of innocuous behavior, with a “spirit of the law” enforcement regime. So nobody actually knows what’s legal.

I’m surprised that’s not well understood. The complaints aren’t about regulation, they’re about intentional uncertainty that allows for selective enforcement (coincidentally always against non-EU companies) with outcomes that can’t be predicted in advance and penalties that far outweigh potential profits from a medium sized market.

> but also lots of innocuous behavior, with a “spirit of the law” enforcement regime.

This is great, and you're only mad because it's the perfect riposte to Apple's "loophole around the spirit of the law" mentality. Cry more!

We got into this mess because Apple illegally manipulated their implementation of normal software; App Stores, browsers, messaging apps, you name it. The point of this legislation is to make businesses think twice before pushing a product competitors are blocked from competing with. In that sense it is about as clear as you could ask for, unless you're an Apple sycophant demanding "clarity" in the form of clemency.

I'll just be honest; people like you are the only reason I read HN anymore. I've gotten tired of the moonshot posts and the idiot investors, but corporate apologists? That one's evergreen. Ever since the DMA you people have crawled up to the surface like worms after rain to defend your almighty benefactor and the power they wield. Now I get to enjoy less-and-less coherent posts from people that don't even get paid to attack the government on behalf of big business. If any one of you had an ounce of faith in Apple, then you wouldn't feel the need to speak on their behalf. Alas.

What an insulting post. Do you talk to people IRL that way?

To people with emotional attachment to businesses? I upset them pretty often, no matter how I police my tone.

Sorry if I hurt your feelings, they'll be hurt quite a bit more if you insist on excusing all of Apple's deficiencies in the same way. It's best to not make a habit out of defending companies that incessantly lie, lest you start taking the truth personally.

One of us is emotional, and it’s not me. Chill.

> So yeah, the EU outlaws some bad behavior, but also lots of innocuous behavior, with a “spirit of the law” enforcement regime. So nobody actually knows what’s legal.

There are edge cases but the directives are quite clear most of the time. It's much better than regulations that are interpreted literally, and have huge gaping loopholes to be exploited by companies spending millions on lawyers.

Ok, so would it be legal for Apple to ship Apple Intelligence in the EU, or would it be illegal unless they allowed e.g. Google to plug in and provide the same features?

I've read the DMA cover to cover twice and I honestly can't tell you. There are pretty convincing arguments in either direction as far as I can tell. I don't think it would be possible for Apple (or anyone else) to know the legality before the trial.

Laws cannot describe every single intricacy of all possible human behaviour and activities, news at 11.

There is no moral equivalence here.

> EU: creates regulation that makes doing that thing illegal

Ah, yes. The cookie banners will save the children.

Because when they try to solve it the solution is us navigating a cookie dialog puzzle where if we lose we give up our privacy.

The setting could have just been a browser toggle, but because of government incompetence every publisher gets to skirt the guidelines and trick or frustrate people into clicking accept.

You can be against the problem and against incompetents forcing bad solutions at a government level or using it to build income streams through fines.

> Because when they try to solve it the solution is us navigating a cookie dialog puzzle

Please show me where exactly EU laws mandate the cookie dialog puzzle.

> The setting could have just been a browser toggle,

Yes, it could've, and browsers have now had 6 years to implement it. Instead, the industry decided that obnoxious cookie banners are the way to go.

> against incompetents forcing bad solutions

Which solution is forced by EU laws, and can you quote me the exact wording that forces this solution?

I mean you seem to know a lot about it so how about you provide the sources rather than trying to impose work on others as an argument strategy.

You are free to enable Do-Not-Track and then sue a company for not respecting it, which will create precedent that companies must default to "reject all" if this header is present, if you win.

Seems sensible, which makes me wonder why it hasn't already happened

When Do Not Track was introduced, the industry immediately used it to fingerprint and track users. In the end Safari ended up removing it.

As to why no one sued, it's really hard to prove that a company doesn't respect the header.

It's almost as if companies implementing these systems have a vested interest in making the most adversarial implementation and/or flouting the law.

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