> It's just multiple computers keeping a balance. It's not complicated.
It wouldn't be hacker news without a comment like this. I haven't personally worked in finance, but I've had a lot of friends do it.
It _absolutely_ is complicated. It's not too complicated for a nation or the EU to do it in house, but no, there's a bit more there than "Claude make me a ledger"
Trolling is not insightful. A number of other companies already have "done it" and are in use across the world. The question is why aren't western nations ALL using alternates yet? The article is pointing out that a new attempt is gaining political momentum, which answers the question.
Those alternatives are not worldwide payment networks with near-universal acceptance. They’re scoped much smaller. Even then, those independent efforts have either been implemented by law as a political strategic measure or are subsidized. They wouldn’t exist but for those supporting elements. Having federated payment networks may be good politics, but it’s not particularly efficient and it impedes world trade.
At any rate, making someone who haughtily trivializes a problem solve that same problem is a useful exercise both in the complexity of the subject matter, and—perhaps more importantly—in humility.
"regulate them" has mostly translated to "tax the most successful players in the form of non-compliance fees from byzantine EU regulatory structures".
I don't think the thing holding back Europe's tech market is that the US encourages allies to not allow backdooring proprietary software, or the cries that it's unfair that the US doesn't strangle their own tech market with equally burdensome regulation. The problem Europe's tech industry has faced is that the EU killed it in the crib with regulations, and now there's more fear of "what if there are bad side effects in being successful" than there is fear of never being successful.
Yes, it'd be great if there was a thriving market of mid-sized EU tech companies working in a well-regulated and consumer friendly market. There just isn't, though. I'm generally a fan of Doctorow, but the idea that the EU is just a few hackers reverse-engineering a new client for teams/youtube/whatsapp away from that world is hard for me to see.
Taxing the most "successful" players and burdening them with regulations is exactly what is needed (provided those most successful players are large enough in size and few enough in number). There is room for more nuance in regulations in the sense that they can scale up more gently as companies grow, but the regulations on megacorps like Facebook and Google should only become more brutal. The existence of those kinds of companies anywhere in the world is a threat to people everywhere.
> I don't think the thing holding back Europe's tech market is that the US encourages allies to not allow backdooring proprietary software
"Encouraging allies" is a pretty damn generous interpretation of it.
Regarding what's "holding back Europe's tech market", I think that Europe has a different culture. Not having big monopolies is a feature, not a bug. In that sense, the regulations don't fail.
But it is very difficult to compete with monopolies unless you become one and lock your position. If the regulations prevent that (and again, that's a feature), then it becomes impossible.
Trying an analogy:
If we impose strict animal welfare rules on our own chicken farmers, that's a feature. But if we then allow unlimited imports of cheaper chicken raised with no such rules, it becomes unfair to our farmers, doesn't it?
Growing up in the internet age (I'm 28 now) it took me until well into my 20s to realize how many classes of problems can be solved in 30 seconds on a phone call vs hours on a computer.
I was there at the time, for anyone outside of the core networking teams it was functionally a snow day. I had my manager's phone number, and basically established that everyone was in the same boat and went to the park.
Core services teams had backup communication systems in place prior to that though. IIRC it was a private IRC on separate infra specifically for that type of scenario.
I remember working for a company who insisted all teams had to usr whatever corp instant messaging/chat app but our sysadmin+network team maintained a jabber server + a bunch of core documentation synchronized on a vps in a totally different infrastructure just in case and sure enough there was that a day it came handy.
Ah, but have they verified how far down the turtles go, and has that changed since they verified it?
In the mid-2000s most of the conference call traffic started leaving copper T1s and going onto fiber and/or SIP switches managed by Level3, Global Crossing, Qwest, etc. Those companies combined over time into Century Link which was then rebranded Lumen.
A lot of negative comments here, many of which I agree with, but Germany opposing this is a net-good thing given how influential they are within the EU.
Bambu is who's winning this space and largely took 3d printing from a hobby for its own sake to "it's another tool in your shop".
My bambu was FAR cheaper than a comparable prusa, and I took it out of the box, put filament in it, and it started producing effectively perfect prints immediately.
Attributing the actions being taken by the UK (and much of the EU) to a lack of understanding is a quite generous interpretation. That may have been true a generation ago, but it's not now.
Many of us think that they understand a free internet very well, specifically the threats it places on their uses (and abuses) of power, and that the laws are quite well designed to curtail that. The UK currently, without identity verification, arrests 30 people per day for things they say online.
One of my recurring thoughts reading all kinds of social media posts over the past few years has been to wonder how many of the comments boosting <SPECIFIC NEW LLM RELEASE/TOOL> are being written by AI.
Formulaic, unspecific in results while making extraordinary claims, and always of a specific upbeat tenor.
From my perspective it’s very convenient that all the new information and competition supports his existing priors that:
1) we need to do various forms of regulation to entrench US closed source market leaders, which happens to increase his company’s value
2) the best way towards improvement in models is not efficiency but continuing to burn ever increasing piles of money, which happens to increase his company’s value
The situation the author describes sounds like a summer day hike in subalpine terrain at Rainier. I’d do that in a cotton hoodie and jeans, and I recreate in that part of the cascades 12 months a year. Our forecasts are some of the best in the world, and even if they missed the solution to getting rained on in July on a day hike is to walk back to your car a little damp and disgruntled.
Your example actually makes his point almost exactly. The 7 day thru hike is akin to when hiring a data engineering team and investing super heavily makes sense, the day hike is when you’re chatting with users and figuring out the domain. The “wrong” tools are less consequential at the start and when the stakes are lower.
I’m not trying to respond to the article, overall I agree with the advice. just replying to this silly comment saying I’m more likely to need hiking pants in everyday life than when I’m on a hike, and that my estimation of risk of those activities and locations is off.
It wouldn't be hacker news without a comment like this. I haven't personally worked in finance, but I've had a lot of friends do it.
It _absolutely_ is complicated. It's not too complicated for a nation or the EU to do it in house, but no, there's a bit more there than "Claude make me a ledger"
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