Comment by oblio
1 day ago
Hint hint to what?
South Korea is a very dynamic, tech heavy country and it hasn't managed to push any software product as a market leader.
The EU is bigger, but it's fractured, so functionally it's basically 2-3x South Korea in terms of "software power". And that's not enough to compete with the much larger US juggernaut. Only China has managed to hold its own by simply banning US software all together.
I'm actually all in favor of the EU banning all American software. Fairly sure that after a huge initial tumble a healthy EU software market would thrive.
Edit: I need to brace myself, the Americans are waking up :-)))
Hint hint, if you're European, wake up and make some good software!
The EU needs a real single digital market with single patents, copyright, IP licensing.
The EU also needs easier financing of risky ventures, probably with tax incentives associated.
The EU needs specific regulation to facilitate accelerated scaling across all its countries. This last part is the hardest to do because by definition startups are challenges to big and rich incumbents.
I would just ban US software companies like China did (I'd obviously also ban Chinese software companies, too). The resulting chaos would end up with some pretty solid EU software companies, the know how is there.
You can't have good regulations and also have all the world's evil billionaires pouring their money in. You get to pick one of those.
1 reply →
Europe had the opportunity to create a silicon valley 30 years ago. They fumbled it so badly that most euro tech talent went to the US and worked or even founded their companies there. They still have not (and likely never will) implement the general reforms needed to create fertile grounds for tech to compete with the US.
If the current EU mindset existed 150 years ago, they would have banned steam engines because they are too loud and annoying. That's the level of shortsighted immediate gratification we are dealing with.
I don't know what SK has to do with this, they are basically still close to an emerging economy. Europe had a roaring economy when SK was still mostly farming.
You will actually find European HN users who will unironically say that we should have never started using fossil fuel engines at all.
starting was okay but it got way out of control.
The environment can absorb pollution, just not as quickly as we're currently polluting. It's okay to emit pollution sometimes. I'm totally in favor of heritage railways running their ancient smoke-belching steam trains on the third Sunday of every month so we can see them go. Just not every day.
Let's assess that opinion in a hundred years. Maybe they're just Michael Burrys.
1 reply →
We shouldn't really want a silicon valley. See how much trouble the US has trying to get meta to stop abusive practices to minors.
Not having a silicon valley is a good thing.
The US isn't totally dependant on foreign states to have a modern economy.
Delete the US and China and all Europe has left is 6 weeks vacation.
3 replies →
> Europe had the opportunity to create a silicon valley 30 years ago.
I really like history but nothing like this come to mind, I'd be happy to read about it, what exactly did they do/not do?
Not exactly that, but one thing that comes to mind: Germany was about to switch the phone network to fiber with data service in the late 80s(!), but then Helmut Kohl (CDU chancellor) decided to build TV cable instead. He wanted to promote private TV stations because the public ones weren't conservative enough for him. Spoiler: Private TV stations ended up doing barely any political programming anyway.
Technical note: For some years, the few regions that got the OPAL optical network had the worst internet, but that problem would not have occurred with OPAL everywhere: Fiber can always be upgraded at the endpoints, the numbers were just too small to develop the technology.