flexie

Where I live, Uber is effectively banned and local alternatives are quietly doing much the same as Uber used to.

I don't see Uber being anywhere near beating anyone in Europe.

Yes, I posted the wrong data. Sorry. See above :-)

It didn't. Sorry. Clearly I shouldn't post from my phone while cooking. These were the comparisons I meant to post:

https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/cancer-survival...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_quality_o...

The US is barely in the top among developed nations, and it's not much better than the next 10-15 countries: https://www.wcrf.org/dietandcancer/cancer-trends/data-cancer...

And it's notoriously difficult to compare. If cancer is registered as "discovered" early, because a for profit doctor starts treating it early, but the government hired doctor maybe doesn't, the early treated will statistically appear as living longer.

And that's the essence of this: In the developed world, this is all but a US specific issue. Cancer and other life threatening diseases rarely bankrupt Europeans, Canadians, Australians, Kiwis, Japanese etc.

Please stop. You may be critical towards the current American immigration policy, as am I, but it is disingenuous to call this a concentration camp. There is no systematic killing of children inside American immigration facilities, and by comparing with Nazi concentration camps you make a mockery out of holocaust.

As is copyright law.

Again, Europe is many different legal systems, and blasphemy laws are not everywhere. I don't like that limitation to freedom of speech anymore than you, but all countries, including the US have limitations such as libel, slander, pornography, obscenity, etc.

Don't frame this as a free speech issue. Freedom of speech is as protected in the EU as it is in the US, possibly more.

Freedom of speech in Europe is not just an EU question, but also - and mainly - up to constitutions and legislation of the member states. So of course it varies. But there is less surveillance in Europe on what citizens say online, European media is less centralized than American, there are more parties with opposing views in parliaments, much less political correctness in both politics, business life, and social life. Most importantly, European courts is most member states uphold the protection of the individuals' freedom of speech.

This is legislation aimed at Google and Facebook, and other large companies, yes. Go back 15-20 years, and nobody would have thought that Google would get away with using the creations of content providers without paying a fair share. I don't see anything wrong in Google or Facebook being forced to apply filters. We have gotten used to what is truly an disgusting situation where creators of music, journalism etc. don't get paid and their works are put out on Youtube, Facebook etc. I would have liked to see a higher threshold so that only truly large companies had to worry about filters, but again; these filters will likely be easy to find in 10 different versions for free on GitHub in a couple of years, and better ones you can license for a small fee.

But I agree, Europe should finally start to tax Facebook, Google, Amazon etc.

British lawmakers accuse Zuckerberg of spectacular leadership failure? Hmm...

It’s not that I don’t agree, it’s just a funny accusation coming from them.

In its hundred of years history, its admission system has been discriminating against minorities, going far beyond what only those with "sensibilities" would care about.

Recently it has been well documented how Asians have a tougher admission than white Americans. Until the 1930s, and possibly longer, they had a Jewish quota. While Jim Crow laws were being dismantled, there was 1 (one) black student in the 1958-class. Then there was the gender quotas.

Harvard - as other private universities - are benefiting from favorable tax treatment, and from society acknowledging their education for a number of different professions (law and medicine are obvious examples). But even without that, society has a legitimate interest in regulating against discrimination in private universities.

And now Bezos is doing as he preached back then. He is revealing the blackmail instead of going to court over it.

The EU doesn’t see fines as taxes no more than the US does.

The fiscal value of fines is not great. The commission can’t budget how may fines it plans on collecting and from whom. It’s completely different agencies that issue fines and do the budgets.

Warran Buffet did indeed have a couple million USD when he was in his 30s, back 55 years ago when a couple of million were worth around 20 million in today's money. Measured in today's money he probably had 2 million at some point in his mid/late 20s. He became a billionaire at 50-something.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/378439/net-worth-of-warr...

https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=2400000&year1=...

How much space would sufficient supercapacitors require and would they be heavy? Would it add significantly to the cost of a car?

Our kids’ chance of survival and of having a peaceful life with full stomachs has never been better.

That is true in South Korea as well.

True, but Ireland is less than 5M, 13 seats in the EU parliament. They are not seen as a competition to anyone. The UK is 66M with 73 seats in the parliament, member of G7 and one of the most important economies in the EU.

Now if Britain is leaving, English could be considered as a neutral language so no country has an advantage.

It is also still the only language that is taught as a foreign language in close to all primary and secondary schools in the Union. It's the most spoken language in the Union. It's relatively easy to learn as a foreign language. It's also the de facto language of international trade, of science, of culture and of international diplomacy (sorry France).

People come to Wikipedia to get an answer. Many users of Wikipedia are kids, or non-native English speakers for whom contributing is a challenge. Or laymen that don't know about the subject and naturally don't feel like they could contribute anything. Or people who simply don't know how to contribute. Or people visiting via mobiles where it's really difficult to research and contribute. If you adjust for all those users that could not reasonably contribute, the percentage of contributors is much higher.

There are other factors at play at Wikipedia too. In my native language, Danish, Wikipedia is all but dead. Years ago, I tried contributing within my own field. I researched and spent hours adding relevant information to different topics, only to find out a few days after that all my contributions had been deleted by the administrators.

Here is the Danish site for one of the most beloved Danes: https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Laudrup

Here is the English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Laudrup

It's just one example, but it is true for culture, history and many other areas. If you want to know anything on Danish matters, the English Wikipedia is usually a much better option than the Danish.

This is nonsense altogether.

I have only visited the island once but I am happy they are part of the EU.

One of the largest tax evasion / money laundry heavens is Denmark (And I say that as a Dane). Malta’s wrong doings is dwarfed by the recent revelations off what Danske Bank did through its Estonian subsidiary.

In so far as the empire spread the English language. Otherwise, I am not so sure. I have never heard in a negotiation that a party wanted English venue with reference to the British Empire, respect of English courts or similar. It's simply more convenient due to the language.

Usually it's a matter of negotiation. In a contract between a French and a German company, the French lawyer will suggest French law and venue, the German lawyer will suggest German law and venue. If either of them have sufficient bargaining power, it may very well prevail. Among equal parties, a compromise would usually involve selecting a "neutral" legal system and venue. English is the language everyone knows, so usually English is chosen. It's not always UK. Sometimes it Hong Kong or Singapore (typically if a party is Asian). Sometimes it's New York. Generally, European lawyers are wary of American courts and American law with its exotic remedies such as punitive damages. Also, between Europeans it seems unnecessary to go to another continent for arbitration.

Yes, that’s how (some of) you have chosen it should be.

So do virtually all other Northern and Western European countries.

What you have that they don't have is the English language as the native language. Non UK lawyers (as me) chose to UK arbitration etc. because of the language, not because we trust your courts more than the German, French or Dutch courts.

Yes, arbitration and other alternative dispute resolution mechanisms in most other countries could be conducted in English, but with UK arbitration we know that we would be able to read the statutes, court rulings etc that the arbitrators read and refer to, in the same language as them.

When it comes to financial legislation applying to banking, to securities trade etc., English law is largely whatever EU law says it is (it's regulated by the EU). It still remains to be seen what English law will be after Brexit.

As for rule of law in general, it's debatable whether its better in the UK than in the other Western or Northern European nations.

Isn’t German politics ridden with scandals at the personal level? I remember several cases of German top politicians faking their academic records.

It's simply the planning of it. A lot of the 100 mile expansion is not planned to start until 10-20-30 years from now. I guess that's due to financing.

The article doesn't really mention that most of these expansions will be ready 20-40 years into the future (if not delayed).

If you buy a house in an LA suburb hoping that you will soon get subway nearby, you might get it once the mortgage is paid out and the kids have left for college.

What will the technology be like in 20-40 years? Everybody surely have cheap electric scooters and bikes or other electric devices and airbag helmets. Few, if any, combustion engine cars are left on the streets. Truly self driving cars are likely too. Drones that fly you across town? Boring tunnels in multiple levels? Shuttles to Mars?

I am not saying the subways shouldn't be built or that planning decades ahead is bad. I love subways. But in the area of transportation we will see huge changes in the coming decades.

I noticed the same. Other factors played in too.

Around the time the malls came to Sofia, the municipality also started renovating the main streets in the city center turning Vitoshka into a real pedestrian street and building proper sidewalks on others (like Shisman). The renovations are still going on (Solunska, Graf Ignatiev) and this will only accelerate the process of turning the city center into a recreational area. It's really nice to see how new restaurants, bars, juice bars, soup places, sandwich places, and cafes pop up on streets just months after they have been renovated.

Other factors accelerating the process has been the large expansion of the metro, which happened at the same time as the malls were being being built, the renovation of tram tracks, purchase of decent trams, and the almost complete replacement of the old city buses with modern ones, all of which has given people from the neighborhoods easier access to the city center (which has never been very accessible by car).

Sofia is slowly becoming a modern metropolis.

Facebook is far from where Microsoft were in 2003-2007. Most people (90-something percent?) could chose between Microsoft or Apple or no computer at all.

Ordinary consumers could not use a text editor, a spreadsheet, send an email, or browse the internet, without doing it form either a Windows or Apple computer. Apple was a secluded niche for graphical designers and the like. Almost everybody else used a Windows computer. There were whole industries where everybody only used Windows operating system and the Office suite and where you could not work without.

Almost nothing ties me to Facebook and most businesses are not dependent on Facebook in any way. I can use computers, phones etc. without Facebook. I can contact people without it, write to them, see their pictures and videos etc. I can go online without. Most companies nowadays function perfectly fine without Facebook. If Facebook disappeared, only a few niches such as game studios, advertisers etc. would truly lose customers or the ability to work with others. Most advertising could be done through other channels in a matter of hours. Contacts with friends could be made in days using other platforms.

I was going to say that Facebook is where Microsoft were at some point in the late 70s or early 80s when it was just one out of several alternatives, but the comparison is just not good.