7 ms·
This is the elephant in the room regarding the big "digital sovereignty" talks in the EU. For the moment in the EU institutions the focus is mostly at the post
by blop 2mo ago
This is the elephant in the room regarding the big "digital sovereignty" talks in the EU.
For the moment in the EU institutions the focus is mostly at the post-acceptance stage that everything must eventually migrate off US clouds. There is still some denial and hope that things will go back to "before" because it's going to be extremely costly to migrate, but at least high level EU civil servants start to see the strategic value of moving out.
However there is ZERO talk about mobile platforms... No alternative solution like linux for the desktop, no money or care given to the few alternative that tentatively exist, and zero talk about forcing companies (at least for the ones shipping android phones) to open up their firmwares and allow users to install alternative OS if they want to sell in the EU.
So whilst the backend guys more or less got the memo about sovereignty, I think there is still a lot of educational work to do regarding end user devices and what kind of digital slavery hole we're digging ourselves in...
- wolvesechoes 2mo ago"This is the elephant in the room regarding the big "digital sovereignty" talks in the EU" The elephant in the room is that it is just talk, as always in case of EU.
- pjmlp 2mo agoYes, spot on, the talk is always around Office and co.
- raxxorraxor 2mo agoChina made its own linux distros almost immediately. And as far as I know it is widely in use (Kylin etc.?). Some nations in the western sphere seem to gladly outsource such critical infrastructure. Thinking about the Korean defence manufacturer whose contact mail was something@gmail.com in an advert I saw a few days ago. Perhaps Google will integrate some fast reply function for some instant AA ordnance delivery?
- roundabout-host 2mo agoI don't think that we should want some locked-down insolution forced upon everyone, European or not.
- cbg0 2mo agoIsn't AOSP a thing?
- spwa4 2mo agoYou mean giving China control over it? (because you still need the hardware made, and it's not like the EU commission is even prepared to fix BSPs for that hardware) The EU has endlessly sold critical infrastructure to US, India and China while actively sabotaging efforts to rebuild it and now want it back - for free. This is criticized as having a low chance of success, as well as being a pretty unreasonable demand.
- notabotiswear 2mo agoWritings on the wall can’t be clearer on AOSP’s future…
- snottynose 2mo agoIt is true that Google (de facto) controls the platform and made themselves (de facto) essential to utilizing the platform by integrating their proprietary services so deeply into the OS that you need to be a behemoth of Samsungs caliber to even attempt to meaningfully re-purpose the AOSP, and this was a brilliant strategy because it has allowed Google to solidify their spot in the duopoly / oligarchy while seeming "open". But. I do believe that Google will continue to publish the AOSP source code under a permissive license and that this code will be indispensible to a European Manhattan project for tech sovereignty, should policymakers ever see the light.
- mytailorisrich 2mo agoBecause this is all a political move. This so-called "EU sovereignty" drive is in fact aimed at further reducing sovereignty of the member states via further transfer of power and control to the EU. These digital ID wallets do exactly that. Member states lose control of the ID infrastructure, which will now be controlled by the EU. There isn't much sovereignty left at national level...
- joe_mamba 2mo agoThis is totally not the EU version of China's social credit score system and WeChat SSO system. It will totally not be used to sanction you the moment you become a nuisance to the EU elites by saying "wrong speech" that goes against their mandated doctrine or pointing out their acts of corruption or dismantling of democracy. The EU building in Brussels even has the word "DEMOCRACY" plastered on the front in large bold letters[1], in case you forgot. [1] https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/media/photo/P-069521 https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/en/media/photo/P-069521
- dlahoda 2mo ago10000 basis points agree. Add here shared border control since 2027 in eu, and chat control now. And prominent names like democratic republics of Kongo and North Korea.
- Chu4eeno 2mo agoThey're already unpersoning left-leaning journalists, look up Hüseyin Doğru.
- marysol5 2mo agoRussian actors*
- joe_mamba 2mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%BCseyin_Do%C4%9Fru#cite_note-Sanciones_UE-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%BCseyin_Do%C4%9Fru#cite_n... https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=OJ:L_202500965 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=OJ:L_202...
- omnimus 2mo agoThis is not entirely true. I don't have much details but I know people who started to work on two separate free software projects aiming to make supported mobile OS. These projects couldn't get funding before but they do now. Afaik it's still a battle with AI companies lobbying that soverign AI is much more important than mobile OS but there is some growing interest. Imho i don't even think some linux based alternative to Android would be that hard to pull off but it's the hw companies that will be skeptical to build hw for such OS. I would have to be some govs puahing it as secure gov devices first.
- AnthonyMouse 2mo agoWhich is all well and good, but who is going to use those projects if the law requires them to use Android or iOS for age verification?
- izacus 2mo ago"The law" requires no such thing and there's nothing preventing those new OSes form providing proper security signals. But is DOES require work - and it's much easier to complain than to put in work.
- hnisnotbenign 2mo agoYes, it is much easier to ignore the unelected bureaucrats than to jump through their ridiculous hoops.
- UqWBcuFx6NV4r 2mo agoSee, you’re just saying what they’re saying, but with emotive, thought-terminating language. Again, it’s easier to complain. Have you been living under a rock for your entire life? Have never ever been involved in a decision being made about certain “blessed” vendors, and the decision is being made for legitimate technical reasons, not “ridiculous” ones. If you’re the sort of person that’s unable to distinguish between something that’s legitimately unjustifiable/ridiculous, and something that just upsets you, then you do you, but don’t bring this here pretending that it suffices as a discussion, because it doesn’t.
- mghackerlady 2mo agoThey could try and put money into funding Jolla/sailfish/whatever
- tokai 2mo agoThat wont help anything. Then you are just force to use Android, iOS, or Sailfish. It need to be a platform agnostic thing, else you're just hitching the fulcrum of civil society on private company.
- izacus 2mo agoPrivate companies providing public services is really not a rare thing.
- pessimizer 2mo agoWho do you think said it was?
- roundabout-host 2mo agoExactly. The app is only inclusive if it is accessible over a standard protocol (Web) without "attestation", so that it works for any platform. If I release a GNU/Linux distribution tomorrow, I should be able to use the app on it with only some work on my part.
- pjmlp 2mo agoYou mean ChromeOS Platform.
- mghackerlady 2mo agoI don't disagree, but the eu needs their own mobile OS alternative in general so if they absolutely need to rely on a private company, it isn't an american one
- account42 2mo ago
- tistoon 2mo agoOk we get new HN articles every week now about migrating to EU solutions and digital sovereignty. At this point EU should just do as China, please: have EU their own cloud providers, softwares, hardwares, phones and also its own closed-EU only mini-internet barrier by a big EU digital policy border. Just like China, NKorea and Russia. They would be finally at peace with themselves.
- api 2mo agoMobile is the UI/UX equivalent of… I don’t even know… a moon landing? A wonder of the world? I’m not saying it can’t be duplicated. I’m saying if you want to build a mobile platform you need to approach it with appropriate respect for the incredible difficulty of making something that usable.
- roundabout-host 2mo agoThere are experimental mobile platforms, and they work fine. They won't appeal to the mass-market but there's really no reason to disallow them.
- account42 2mo agoUI/UX is not the problem at all, app compatibility/availability is.
- literalAardvark 2mo agoNah that's complete bull. It's been a solved problem since Android 2.0. The only thing they're improving on mobile these days are addictiveness and data collection.
- rpdillon 2mo agoIndeed. Power management alone is a massive research area with never-ending complexity across a bunch of domains. And nailing the ecosystem correctly is very hard (both devices and software). Security is another bottomless pit of research and improvement. When trillion-dollar companies like Amazon and Microsoft ceded mobile to Google and Apple, it was a good demonstration of how hard a successful mobile platform is to get off the ground.
- zoobab 2mo ago"zero talk about forcing companies (at least for the ones shipping android phones) to open up their firmwares and allow users to install alternative OS if they want to sell in the EU." Complete public datasheets on how to program the hardware should be a requirement fit a DMA2.0.
- JodieBenitez 2mo agoThe sovereignty thing is a theater. Many french unis use Google cloud because they're broke and can't maintain in-house services, and none gives a damn.