6 ms·
I don't understand why ensuring general-purpose computing is not a priority of the European Union. All that talk about sovereignty, and we are giving full cont
by develoopest 1mo ago
I don't understand why ensuring general-purpose computing is not a priority of the European Union.
All that talk about sovereignty, and we are giving full control of our digital lives to 2 American companies.
- petra 1mo agoI'm sure Europe currently uses the surveillance capabilities of those systems to prevent bad shit from happening. So maybe they prefer another solution to the sovereignty issue.
- inigyou 1mo agoIt's a regulated market economy. Someone has to actually make the product. They can't force someone to make a product. There's MNT in the EU.
- cmeacham98 1mo agoWhile the EU and its member countries can't (or at least morally shouldn't) force people to make the product, if it was a priority they could incentivise it with funding, tax breaks, etc.
- inigyou 1mo agoNLnet funds a lot of things, few of which get very popular. It keeps a lot of FOSS gears turning but it's not making the next iPhone.
- p0w3n3d 1mo agoThey can make the product according to rules that are imposed on them. One rule: allow privacy. Unless the privacy is not in the field of interest of both the producer and the EU
- toymin 1mo agoThey could give more funding to SailfishOS, for example
- inigyou 1mo agoSailfish would have to ask for it. Possibly via NLnet. Have they? And they need a plan to spend it.
- mosura 1mo agoDo what the Chinese did and fork Android. The EU has enough tech talent to do it, but the political and managerial class lack both the strategic ability or the willingness to adequately reward the effort it would take, almost certainly preferring to, again, outsource the concern, and then be shocked Pikachu later. Anyone doubting this should see how BMW think about their in car software. And that is for a supposedly premium product.
- inigyou 1mo agoThere's GrapheneOS. It's Canadian, not European. I'm not sure where LineageOS is from. BMW isn't the EU government. Like I said, someone has to actually do it. BMW Actually Did It in a really user hostile way, and that's the best we have. Why is nobody Actually Doing It but good? Or why aren't we buying MNT products?
- mosura 1mo agoBMW behaviour is perfectly representative of the EU mentality. As is your comment. It is basically “someone else should do this properly and I will take the benefits” but not actually willing to put up the hard bit themselves.
- inigyou 1mo agoI'm talking about the government of the EU. You seem to be talking about all the countries and the people in the countries.
- drdexebtjl 1mo agoThey can’t force someone to make a product, but they can force someone to choose between making a product or exiting the EU market. In practice they’re the same thing.
- pitchlatte 1mo agoyeah but processors phone home anyway at a level beneath the OS and there’s no european chip development worth mentioning. so i’m not sure real sovereignty is ever going to be possible. crazy considering ASML being in europe.
- fsflover 1mo ago> processors phone home anyway at a level beneath the OS Links?
- polotics 1mo agoI can only assume the parent poster is referring to the so-called baseband, that is running on the modem processor and indeed is underneath all other OS. To know exactly what each baseband does or doesn't do, just ask people who will tell you!
- handedness 1mo agoMy guess is he's talking about the management engine. Which, if one's comfortable with the HAP bit flip as a solution to that problem, then one should arguably also be comfortable with bit flips controlling baseband radios which still haven't been demonstrated to transmit when disabled.
- fsflover 1mo agoSo it doesn't provably fit description "phones home anyway".
- yorwba 1mo agoThere is no shortage of general-purpose computing hardware in the EU. If you need some general-purpose compute to make a car, an oven, or a phone, you can get it. That consumers mostly buy special-purpose devices that don't always allow them to make full use of the possibilities of the hardware is hardly a sovereignity challenge.
- zb3 1mo agoShow me where I can get a general-purpose computing hardware with 8GB+ of RAM that fits in my pocket and has a touchscreen.
- rerdavies 1mo agoMy recently-purchased Google Pixel 10 Pro has an unlockable bootloader. (Although it may be locked if you buy it through a provider). And, for a nominal one-time payment, you can register as a developer, and compile, install and run absolutely anything you want on a non-rooted Android phone with a locked bootloader (within the constraints of the security system, which is, of course, A Good Thing).
- RobotToaster 1mo agoand a 5g radiotelephony MODEM.
- yorwba 1mo agoFairphone? https://www.fairphone.com/the-fairphone-gen-6#f_slide_1 https://www.fairphone.com/the-fairphone-gen-6#f_slide_1 But also, I doubt any polity would have its sovereignty undermined if their general-purpose computing hardware doesn't fit into their pockets.
- officeplant 1mo agoYou mean like the dozens of micro laptops/emulator handhelds from china that can all run linux or hobbyist custom roms? Gonna have to post the storage dimensions of your preferred pockets.
- vincnetas 1mo agoWell that was the original android phone idea. Get a hackable open device that you can write apps for your self. Even attach third party hardware to it for extra functionality with lots of customisation. But this idea has mutated quite a bit.
- mosura 1mo agoEven by 2015 the noise in Google was “the Chrome OS model is better” with reference to them centrally controlling everything. Andy Rubin was no saint, on so many levels, but when he was removed from Android leadership and the Chrome culture effectively took over this was always how it was going to go.
- dainiusse 1mo agoI fully agree with it. But I think Google also understands that the platform is unatractive for businesses. In my case I just don't do Android app because I know it is easy to just take and hack. It is not the case on iPhone. And my app is one time payment so the ability to just copy out the APK leaves me not doing an app at all...
- _imnothere 1mo ago> I know it is easy to just take and hack No you don't, otherwise we wouldn't have banking apps on it.
- graceful6800 1mo agoHave you tried extracting, decompiling, and modifying someone else's app? It wasn't hard before LLMs and it's nearly trivial now.
- hparadiz 1mo agoThe crypographic flow that allows payments to work is straight up pub/priv key encryption with one time use tokens. It's not something you can hack. As soon you see the token it's already been used and thrown away. So whatever nonsense about decompiling literally doesn't matter.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- vlyan 1mo agowhy do you still believe that EU is a benevolent entity?
- legastenigga 1mo ago[dead]
- littlecranky67 1mo agoBecause the EU wants attestation for age verification, digital surveillance and censorship, not free software platforms that wont implement any of those.
- Grimeton 1mo agoThis. These things wouldn't go away if the EU or a company within the EU would provide a phone OS. They would just serve different masters.
- pbasista 1mo agoEU does not want that. Only a few politicians, some of whom happen to be currently in power, in the EU or elsewhere, are pushing for those agendas. But fortunately, they do not represent the majority.
- throw-the-towel 1mo agoIf the majority is unable to do anything then their opposition doesn't really matter.
- littlecranky67 1mo agoBank account register, EUDI Wallet, Chat Control, digital Euro… They might not be the majority but they manage to go through with all of this.
- eru 1mo agoThese politicians are elected representatives.
- monegator 1mo agolobbyist from the usual american companies are convincing "politicians" to sponsor those bills.
- okanat 1mo agoThere is actually a law being made called Digital Fairness Act at the moment. However the working group hasn't finalized it yet. Note that there are competing political groups and MEPs in the EU from far right neo-fascists, to corporate lobbyist right-wingers, to Greens and even digital privacy maximalist Pirates. Lobbyist right-wingers are now the biggest group and they pass laws like Chat Control because it gives the impression that they do something and it makes corporations money. EU has been founded as a maximally neo-liberal union. The broad human rights are remnants of the Soviet scare and world-war trauma.
- fsflover 1mo agoBecause the Free Software Foundation Europe (https://fsfe.org https://fsfe.org) that fights for this has a too low support of people. Please support them if you care about it.
- duxup 1mo agoThere’s lots of cynical takes to answer that, but I honestly think that often regulators and people writing / pushing laws just don’t know any better….
- t0bia_s 1mo agoVery EU thinking like. To regulate everything and do nothing productive.
- hulitu 1mo ago2 ? Google, Apple, Microsoft, Palantir, Meta etc.