Beep boop - this is a robot. A new show has been posted to TWiT…
What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!
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They kept on talking about the new Samsung and other Chromebooks having “deskop class” processors. It has an Ultrabook class processor, a desktop class processor wouldn’t even fit in the new Samsung’s case, let alone the cooler!
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Another thing that got me was Jeff being dismissive about the EU and data protection. For him, it is always “the EU wants to collect the data, they just don’t want US companies to have it.”
That shows how little he has actually looked at the issue. There are hundreds of EU based companies that are in trouble for over collecting data, not protecting data properly, not conforming to GDPR. The same for non-US, non-EU based companies. It is just the size of the US megaliths that causes them to get the brunt of the publicity.
The same with search, why shouldn’t there be native language search? Google is great at English search, its German search is OK, and much better than Bing, for example, but it still isn’t great. So I can understand the EU wanting to fund native language search.
They are also trying to regulate online to be the equivalent of offline. There are strict rules on what can be sold - products have to reach certain safety levels, whether it be CE, DIN or other standards for electrical safety, hazardous products etc. and also counterfeit goods. Physical retailers are subject to physical inspection of goods on sale and the goods can be confiscated and destroyed, if they are dangerous or counterfeit - last year a couple of children’s plush toys were removed from the market because they used banned, poisonous chemicals in the fur and stuffing.
Those same products were still being sold through online shops. Why should online retailers get away with selling hazardous or dangerous goods, when physical retailers will be prosecuted? Just because they are in a tax haven that doesn’t recognise product safety laws?
A lot of the goods are intercepted by Customs as they enter the EU. But they customer has already paid for the goods and then has to go to the Customs office, sign a paper and be told the product will be destroyed. Their only avenue then is to go back to the retailer and try and get a refund, but as they aren’t subject to the same laws, they just laugh and let the customer take a bath.
“The EU should create an attractive policy environment so that, by 2030, the EU’s share of the data economy – data stored, processed and put to valuable use in Europe – at least corresponds to its economic weight, not by fiat but by choice,”
They want more competition, not just the big 5 collecting all the data and they want real choice and, at the end of the day, it is the user’s data, so they should be in control of what happens to it.
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