pyuser583

What does Europe imagine their relationship with Silicon Valley looking like?

I'm looking for examples here - Israel has a very specific relationship with the tech sector, as does Taiwan, China, South Korea, etc. Even within the US, North Virginia, Huntsville, and Manhattan have specific relationships with Silicon Valley.

Is the idea to copy Silicon Valley's stuff into government sponsored, "to committed to fail" operations? Create complementary tech ecosystems? Recruit Silicon Valley veterans and put them in charge, or just fire them after they get their tech?

Just look at how hard it is to come to a decision on something like allow Huawei to build a telephone network. Is it a good idea? Smart people say, Huawei should be allowed to provide the dumb pipes of the system, but not the high level stuff. Anything sensitive needs to be reviewed by domestic security services.

Is that the approach to America?

It seems like the article saying: "copy America's SaaS offerings." Not clear how that makes you digitally sovereign.

You're basically saying Western European countries' relationships with the US haven't changed much since the Cold War.

Is this something that has been rigorously studied? Like multiple follow-ups?

This article is from 2002 - twenty years ago. It cites several other studies, which seem not great overall.

One studied a driving simulator, the others looked at deaths in the single year after lowering blood alcohol.

The one about minors in Maryland seemed especially strange, as minors are usually required to have 0% BAC.

It sounds like cherry picking.

UK Anti‑Corruption Plan 2014-2015

Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 - outlawed bearer shares

UK PSC Registry 2016

Action Plan for Anti‑Money Laundering and Counter‑Terrorist Finance 2017-2022

Money Laundering Regulations 2017

Sanctions and Anti‑Money Laundering Act 2018

Or since the anti-corruption reforms of 2015-2018.

Which frustratingly overlap with Brexit, making it hard to tell whether this is “good driving business away” or “bad driving business away.”

People go back and forth on this. When they are trying to sound "very smart", they'll insist "well actually, the Russians invaded in 2014!"

But something fundamentally different happened in 2022.

Remember, Zelensky was elected on a platform of negotiating with Russia for the dispossessed territory. That was acceptable 2014 - but certainly not now.

Taiwan isn't much of a fortress. The Nordic states are probably better defended than Taiwan.

My experience with GPU failures is they have trouble loading tons of data - suggesting it’s also the stress such a highly performant part puts on the system.

I'm sure fights happen all the time over inter-service autonomy. There was a book written recently about very nasty fighting between the CIA and DEA over whether to support a group of anti-communist guerillas who financed by running drugs.

The CIA and DEA switched positions repeatedly: one day the CIA wanted to support them to fight communism, and the DEA wanted to cut them off to stop the supply of drugs. When communism fell, the CIA saw the group as a liability who knew too much, while the the DEA wanted to pay them to destroy their drug labs and plant licit crops.

The group ended up destroying their drug labs, and focusing on money laundering, ransomware, and crypto-scams, which neither the CIA nor DEA cared about.

But the CIA is very consistent in following state department policies. They jealously guard their ability to delivery intelligence that conflicts with State Department priorities, but they don't have any strong priorities that conflict with those of State.

I'm sure things need to be ironed about by the NSA/NSC. That's normal. But the CIA isn't going fight the State department like they fight the DEA.

I'm open to correction on this. Maybe I'm just not understanding the situation.

CIA is fanatical about following the State Department's foreign policy. Aside from gathering intelligence, they just take the State Department's lead.

A lot "CIA influence" isn't the CIA at all, but the US Government, usually State or DoD, projecting soft power.

I know this sounds pendantic. But whenever someone starts talking about the CIA like it's responsible for "supporting liberal candidates" - all seriousness leaves the room.

The problem isn’t adults only websites. Those are easy to handle - just as you described.

The problem is social media. Reddit isn’t adults only, nor is instagram. They’re just people putting stuff up for their friends.

Some of the nastiest stuff I ever seen was in the comments of YouTube.

Vanderbilt has an acceptance rate of 3-4%, which makes it almost as exclusive as Stanford.

They aren’t having trouble getting applicants.

We have personal relationships with the authors whose work we read.

Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, Dostoyevsky have changed my life. Just as much as family.

You can loudly say “no” and I’m loudly saying “yes.”

Ok, but you're saying two different things. You can't know a minor account is a minor account unless you require age verification.

Don't get me wrong - I support your proposal. But it requires massive state intervention.

Books, newspapers, concert halls, education ...

At the airport they said I wouldn't be able to travel unless I had a real ID by 2019.

> Adult websites self label

Not social media sites. Sites like Reddit are everything. Some also go out of their way to hide certain information from parents.

Reddit (not to be too picky) does some weird things when a logger is in place, essentially making it impossible to know which subreddit is being accessed.

And that's really where the bad stuff lurks - it's peer to peer interactions.

I read, from a semi-reliable source, Lousiana has pretty good system for verifying age and protecting ID. But's focused on in-person ID for gambling.

The system was that they hired a company to make the cards, and assume civil liability for any privacy violations. They also required to the company to hold insurance in case of a claim.

So it fell to the insurance company to sign off on the standards, and allowed investors to make money by avoiding claims.

I might be half-remembering it but that seemed like a very good system.

The President is roughly like a federal version of a state governor. State governors are modeled after Tudor monarchs.

Over time the symbolism has evolved - the American people tend to want more pomp and ceremony than the presidents themselves.

We are looking for something like the Venetian Doge - a very showy anti-monarch.

Me too. Good style says to avoid creating words with dashes - it’s Un-American. But clarity matters more than rules.

We’ve been raised to believe “experiences make you happy, not things.”

Everything as a service is the modern marketing ideal.

Opus 4.5 burns through tokens really fast.

Americans are often shocked when they reread the classics in their 40s. But that's one of the nice parts of the classics - you get something very different from them depending on where you are in life.

"Orgiastic future" - Fitzgerald simply assumed the word "orgiastic" existed, as a more clinical word for "orgasmic". His editors pointed out it did not, but he liked it more and insisted it be used.

And this doesn't include the messiness in the decisions themselves. Judges often edit the decisions for some time after they are published.

For example, Souter was editing his published opinion in Lee v. Weisman nine years after the case was decided.

https://balkin.blogspot.com/2025/05/a-justice-souter-anecdot...

That doesn't really solve the problem - what are the human's parameters? Protect the company from lawsuits? Spit out a link to a suicide hotline?

What does the human know - do they know all the slang terms and euphamisms for suicide. That's something most counselors don't know.

And what about euthanasia? Even as a public policy - not in reference to the user. "Where is assisted suicide legal? Does the poor use assisted suicide more than the rich?"

Smart apps like browser recommendations have dealt with this very inconsistently.

History is filled with countries that wanted their leader gone, but rejected foreign influence.

I think most Venezuelans want freedom, prosperity, peace, and sovereignty.

I’m not sure in what order.

Yeah I remember Occupy protesters. I got trapped in a gaggle of them shouting “Tahir Square!” again and again. I literally lost hearing in one of my ears.

It never really recovered. Probably need a hearing aid, but I can just use the other one.

I am believe me. And I’m always told the same thing by different doctors. So that’s that.

Even when I live in Europe, which I do occasionally, I’m told to follow the vaccine schedule of my home country.

My kids have all received all recommended vaccines, including the one discussed. So I’m not in any way opposed.

It’s just not appropriate to go around vaccines not recommended.

Yeah that’s the way I take it - “you’re probably not going to convince many people to sleep with you.”

Kind of hurts my pride, but seeing as I'm older than 40, and my wife and I are pretty freaking boring, the vaccine is better spent on someone with more opportunities ahead of them.

I really hate these vaccine specific awareness campaigns. Not only do they hurt my vanity, but I know too many people who are anti-vaxers, or into weird fake medicines.

I just go with what my doctor says. If social media says something different, social media is wrong.

But really, don’t get your vaccine schedule from Hacker News.

The activists on these threads should probably be pushing folks to get their kids vaccinated.