The EU has squeezed telcoms on roaming charges which created a lot of howling. The EU also has rather strict regulation concerning gas use of cars, ICE emissions and so on, probably second only to California. The EU approach to food and pharma security is fundamentally different to that of the USA, and it impacts EU companies. Regulations around green GMOs are so strict they basically killed the European market for GMOs.
This was Germany the government, not the car companies. We're not perfect here in the EU either. But indeed the interests do seem more balanced than in the US in general.
The smallest party (FDP) in the coalition went on a solo power trip against their partners. The partners relented because they need the FDP to fall in line with more important stuff.
Also worth noting that the FDP is currently getting voted out of more and more state parliaments because people are not happy with their work.
The ability of computers to control the vehicle should be proportional to their perceptive abilities. No output without input.
But even strict limiters without intelligence are commonplace, here in the EU most trucks are fitted with them. Which can be annoying because it causes trucks to overtake each other ridiculously slowly sometimes. It's not something that causes major safety issues though.
Before we can mandate software to observe the limits, we need proper software-readable signage.
Sometimes signs are placed between two roads running in parallel, and apply to the other one. Humans understand that subtlety in sign position, but computer vision doesn't. Signs can also be obscured by trees, etc.
My car's GPS-based speed detection doesn't understand height, so on crossings with bridges/overpasses it picks one at random. When I drive on a highway it can briefly flip to a speed limit of some ramp, and I wouldn't want this to cause phantom breaking.
That we can pass e-bike speed limit in short time without even asking people if they want it while we can't limit cars, which actually cause hundred of thousands of deaths and injuries per year tells you all you need to know about the state of things.
It's either "let's make everyone look at me by making a lot of noise" or "nobody's looking, I'll ignore the speed limit"
Not arguing particulary in favor of AI here. I just happen to hate the perception of private vehicles as extension of one's individual freedom. The restrictions imposed on e.g. pedestrians caused by this thinking tend to be ignored.
Public transit for everyone, cars for goods, services and emergencies, that would be my utopia.
I know this is a fringe position.
In both cases, Germany had to accept rules they would have never accepted if they were outside of the EU - even if they sadly were able to soften them up.
Like yeah, Germany likes to keep the EU as a consumer of their shit, basically.
France likes to play along 2nd I guess
Last month: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/28/business/france-bank-raid...
A year ago: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/apr/29/deutsche-ba...
A few years ago: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/apr/17/deutsche-ba...
Panama papers: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/29/deutsche-ba...
The thing is most regulation is happening where people actually get hurt. Hey, I am not super pro regulation person, but in comment above, I just tried to disprove something that seemed false. I am not going steelman pro-regulation arguments any more :)
There is no way for me to disable marketing push notifications on any device.
I can’t tell Facebook to remove Reels because it’s too addicting.
Firefox is my primary brower, but 5x per week I have to switch to Chrome because a website won’t let me login or is acting funky.
We have lost control of our devices
I have used firefox and adblock/ublock since literally 2007, and have NEVER experienced this. What websites have given you trouble? What functionality doesn't work in firefox? What functionality is even different in firefox? Is it just servers reading your user-agent and saying no?
A documented gap is my SSO provider (JumpCloud)'s Device Trust Certificate only works in Chrome and Safari on MacOS.
https://support.jumpcloud.com/support/s/article/supported-we... https://support.jumpcloud.com/support/s/article/understandin...
It's called being pragmatic
> will have to allow for more flexibility in what apps are allowed to execute
Of course it won't. There will be 1% of apps that do something that HN crowd will perhaps care about.
The rest will be apps that try to circumvent privacy and security, and/or chase their own goal. Note how much speculation there is about Meta going the side-loading route.
That lightning cable on iOS is stupid, it only benefits Apple.
Both changes are more than welcome, although I don't use iPhones (precisely for this reasons - closed ecosystem, lighting)
We both can both underestimate and overestimate the size
> That lightning cable on iOS is stupid, it only benefits
Apple has had exactly two connector types.
USB has 14 connector types. On top of that USB didn't even have a power delivery standard until after Apple shipped lighting, and didn't have things like fast charges etc. until USB-C.
And USB-C is in itself a big mess of a standard where you can't even be sure if a cable support features you need.
So, no. Lightning benefited Apple's customers immensely.
Lightning was introduced in 2012. So you're trying to say that it was competitive for just a year?
Of course that's bullshit.
> High power charging standards were around since 2012 at least.
And those standards (multiple) are? You're probably referring to Power Delivery which was finalised the year Lightning was released? Or the finally upgraded versions of Power Delivery that only appeared with USB-C (that mess of a standard where you don't even know if a cable is capable of doing anything)?
Apple made their app store incredibly restrictive and took a massive cut of any profits that anyone was making. Not just app sales, any profits. (This happened to hey.com, they wanted a cut of the subscription that users were getting outside of their app). Sometimes apple would just outright steal developer's apps by making their own version, then blocking the original developers by claiming that they were making rip offs of Apple's apps (you'll find a few stories of that happening here on HN).
Then to really rub salt in the wound, they started telling developers in essence: "If you don't like the way we run our app store then you can always make a web app", despite the fact that they had purposefully hampered web functionality on their devices to force developers to use the app store.
It's really strange how their browser only started getting better all of a sudden when they were getting sued for their anticompetitive behaviour and the EU said they were drafting up legislation to break their monopoly.
It is directly due to the efforts of the EU that Apple has been dragged kicking and screaming to add functionality to their own ecosystem that is objectively demonstrably superior to what was available before.
As soon as you have sideloading, you have developers who can't get kicked off the app store for not giving a 30% cut because they're not on the app store.
The amount of fines that Apple wants to choose to pay is up to them. Either they cave, or they pay as large of a fine as for however long they keep fighting.
On the flip-side, T-Mobile has an app to add an eSIM to "test drive" their service on your phone for free, and I look forward to the day I can buy travel SIMs in advance on my couch at home.
[1] https://assistance.orange.fr/objets-connectes/installer-et-u...
I’d argue that in theory, new upstarts ought to be able to enter the market and satisfy the demand if it exists. However, in many fields, there are substantial barriers to entry that prevent this. For instance, in the auto industry, it takes huge amounts of capital to reach the necessary scale, gain enough experience and reputation, etc., to be able to compete with existing companies. Similarly, it would be a monumental engineering effort to produce “iPhone with USB-C” due to the amount of intellectual property, goodwill, Silicon deals, integrations, etc., that Apple provides. It would be impossible, really, due to iMessage and FaceTime being proprietary. There could be new cable providers that don’t run ads, but they wouldn’t be able to compete on cost, and they would have trouble dealing with the regulatory environment for infrastructure, striking deals with networks, etc.
Banning companies from engaging in practices that benefit them once they become sufficiently adversarial to consumers isn’t a scalable solution. There are many instances of this across many industries; regulating them all would be like playing Whack-A-Mike. It also provides no recourse to the group of market participants who don’t care if their phone has Lightning or USB-C, and probably prefer Lightning since they already have a charger. It also leaves less room for innovation since companies will have to comply with standards, possibly preventing superior technology from being developed (that’s how we got Lightning to begin with).
I’d love to hear other/better solutions. I’ll throw one idea/observation out myself. A lot of these misalignments are because providing a better consumer experience today reduces the likelihood they will be a customer tomorrow. Either they will leverage the lower switching cost to switch, or they will be more loyal but purchase less in the future due to the increased quality. What’s a way to manipulate company economics to favor shorter-term views of the company, and disregard higher-growth plans? Higher interest rates. Maybe a higher interest rate environment could mitigate some of these issues by ensuring companies care about the business they have today, more than the one that they could have tomorrow.
It's been a decade since a new port (lightning was 2012, usb-c is 2014). So apparently, they are doing pretty well!
I think my answer here would "enjoy the next decade of benefits and worry about it then?"
And the same arguments were made at the time. "Stifle innovation" and "what innovation, this connector is perfect. No need for improvement."
Well, it's a good thing they UPDATED the bill that eventually became law, right? I guess they could probably do that again, if necessary!
I like USB-C way more, and frankly don't like Apple that much at all, but let's not pretend lawfare doesn't have collateral damage.
Similar to the switch from microUSB-B to USB-C. Budget phones kept using the cheap option for awhile, but eventually costs came down and people settled into the new standard.
Not sure how it's done in the EU, but their legislature could delegate authority to make such decisions to an executive agency if the process of passing an amendment or new law is too slow.
That's how it's done, is my understanding. The actual articles of the "usb-c" law[0] doesn't even mention usb-c. Here's what Article 1 states:
> With respect to radio equipment capable of being recharged by means of wired charging, the Commission is empowered to adopt delegated acts [...] in order to ensure a minimum common interoperability between radio equipment and its charging devices, as well as to improve consumer convenience, to reduce environmental waste and to avoid market fragmentation, by:
> (a) modifying, adding or removing categories or classes of radio equipment;
> (b) modifying, adding or removing technical specifications, including references and descriptions, in relation to the charging receptacle(s) and charging communication protocol(s), for each category or class of radio equipment concerned.
> [...]
> The Commission shall submit a report on the assessment referred to in the third subparagraph to the European Parliament and to the Council, for the first time by 28 December 2025 and every 5 years thereafter, and shall adopt delegated acts pursuant to the second subparagraph, point (a), accordingly.
So the Commission (which is part of Europe's executive branch) can enact delegated acts to add new technical specifications for wired charging. USB-C is not "hardcoded in law". What's hardcoded in law is the Commission's authority to mandate the use of certain ports.
[0] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...
For example the cookie law has made most websites significantly less enjoyable and everybody hates it and yet it has been stuck for years, no hope of improvement in sight.
When it comes to overbroad laws like the cookies thing, lazy malicious adherence is the name of the game. Simply block JavaScript from domains like "cookielaw.org", and you'll never see the dialogs.
Is it legal that the website doesn't ask for your consent if you block random third parties from executing code on your machine? Who cares!
This situation is different. Apple and others are completely unable to upgrade to USB-D when it comes around.
Like a lot of Apple and huge company stuff in general, it's a flimsy reason to change something and introduce many limitations the huge company thinks will make them more money. It sure as hell is not about reversible connectors.
USB Power Delivery 1 was a disaster, launched years after Apple had moved beyond 7.5W charging. Android phones typically also ignored it, using Qualcomm's proprietary charging tech.
If you want fast charging, use the bundled USB-C cable to charge your iPhone rather than the USB-A ones from years ago.
To flip it around, what advantage do you think one gets with official Apple iPhone chargers? Do you know of any evidence that Apple promotes their chargers working better than others? And if none exists, why would they sabotage customers who were never educated that hypothetically only Apple chargers charge fast?
So not fast charging, charging at all. They work on some of the iPads, so they do work.
Why do the phones refuse to charge then? Not fast charging, which I can sort of understand, charging at all.
And Lightning has been charging my iPhones pretty fast
"Many different standards" means "no standard".
> that apple just ignored.
Apple ignored them because none of them were standards until very, very late
But please, reference a USB2 or USB3 standard over a type A connection that enables fast charging too. This will be fun.
At a certain scale of adoption/societal impact, having a common set of agreed standards is much more important than fragmented "innovation". I would argue having a general and common way to charge devices qualifies for that level of importance. The incentive on Apple's side to stay off of USB-C can only be one of profit driven customer hostile design... as there's really zero technical or otherwise reason to have stayed on lightning this long.
One of the biggest annoyances in my daily life is having to swap back and forth between USB-C and lightning cables. These lightning cables being sold today are effectively trash to be thrown away in a year or two. Completely unnecessary, and hard to have any respect for the intelligence of people who defend it. There is no slippery slope here. If Apple wants to build a next gen port, then they do it alongside other industry players rather than monopolizing the technology so they can charge 10x markup on cables/accessories/licensing... which imparts zero benefit to the consumer.
Now, not everybody works in or near a metal shop or a saw mill, but all the people I know with phones wear clothes, which sometimes has lint, especially in pockets where phones are kept, and so aren't totally immune from this problem.
Thankfully there's wireless charging, and it's decently powerful/quick these days, so the whole port can be taped off - when you remember before you go into the workshop, which hopefully is every time.
And as it is it seems extremely unlikely that Apple wasn't already planning Lightning for iPhone...
But somehow we have decided that small computers (aka phones) must only have 1 port.
Because, you guessed it, they are small. And any port you add requires a not insignificant amount of space