> I have to run FCM to manage the nodes? But I run HVM to manage the roles? But there’s no overall resource management like VMware vsphere or proxmox does natively?
Microsoft hides their best stuff in SCVMM, which is another product and another license they want you to purchase. Anytime I've asked someone from MS why I can't X like I can in vCenter the response was usually, "oh, it's in System Center. FCM, HVM are just stripped down. If you need it you should buy System Center."
SCVMM may technically have the thing you're missing from vCenter... but it's no vCenter. It is a grotesque, MMC plug-in-looking application where nothing quite makes sense to someone accustomed to vCenter or Hyper-V / FCM. Maybe if you're into Azure and slap another layer on top w/ Arc you'll have something that... is less icky but still isn't vCenter.
But, hey, The Reg says that VMware is now claiming that vSphere Standard was never really cancelled.
Microsoft has done a lot of shitty things, including letting Windows Server and SCVMM languish to push/force their customers to Azure. I've been to a few Ignites and the feeling I got was Server development was starving for resources while the things we've asked for were being deployed to Azure only.
I don't think SCVMM is as bad as you portrait. I've used both SCVMM and vCenter. vCenter is so far ahead. And SCVMM was getting there until 2022. When they stopped trying.
Windows development in general, sadly, hence why I refer that Microsoft sees Azure as Azure OS.
If you think about it, all hyperscalers are hardly any different from old timesharing OSes, the only big difference is the way we get to log into the platform.
It's wifi. The client and the base have to negotiate a channel they both can see. If the AP is compliant for it's region than you can assume the client will have to be as well.
BTW, I'm someone that use to by US region coded 802.11b wifi devices to get the 13th channel. Except for exploring, it was rarely useful since none of my other devices could connect on it.
You should listen to the podcast Acquired, specifically Nvidia and then Jensen Huang. They basically lucked into AI. Some researcher was using Nvidia gaming cards, and reached out to them about questions on CUDA. That email eventually turned them into a trillion dollar question.
What year are you talking about? When I was in grad school, around 2007, Nvidia was aggressively marketing GPUs for high performance computing. They would go to campuses, talk to professors, etc.
Yes, the whole Deep Learning thing was luck, but as with most lucky things, they ensured they were positioned to capitalize on it.
Probably cerca 2014 as that's when AlexNet was released, demonstrating that neural networks could beat traditional ML models at image recognition tasks. I recall the researchers used Cuda to optimize their training setup.
AlexNet kicked off a new wave of research around neural networks by demonstrating they could be scaled well and trained on GPUs.
to their credit, there was a lot of work behind "luck". Jensen showed up in person in 2017 in NEURIPS and he and likely a lot of his top brass basically sat down and read the entire conference proceedings/abstracts; there was likely a lot of work behind the scenes to behind the ML research pivot.
And 2017 was _late_ in their pivot. They'd been active for much, much longer. Last winter break I sat down to watch every GTC keynote, going back to 2009[1]. Even then, he's talking about expanding to non-graphics workloads. Google's GPU paper[2] just slotted naturally into their existing narrative and were happy to support it. "fortune favors the prepared" as they say.
They definitely were sponsoring ML conferences before 2017, but symbolically, having Jensen/the CEO actually show up at a dedicated session and demonstrate detailed technical knowledge of the conference proceedings in my mind was a turning point. Albeit I remember his words to the crowd of grad students and post docs at the time: "Only Nvidia would announce their flagship card...to an audience who is completely broke!!"
Yeah, The NVIDIA Way goes into a lot of detail on how and why the pivot from graphics to AI happened. This is a prime example of “you make your own luck.” Jensen engineered an organization that was primed to recognize and pounce on the next big thing, and it ended up being AI. But they saw it coming WAY in advance (like 2011/2012, not 2017) because they were explicitly on the lookout.
Which makes it a Exempli gratia of "an organization that was primed to recognize and pounce on the next big thing." In addition, they also recognized early on some of the weaknesses of crypto-mining as an industry and limited their exposure while making a pivot to the next thing.
They didn't make their GPUs for crypto. Crypto companies just bought a lot of their GPUs.
If they had a choice, they would have sold every GPU to gamers instead because a crypto boom was always followed by a crash which flooded the market with used GPUs and crashed Nvidia's stock price.
Sure they did and still do. They did a good job of managing the bubble but participate in the market nontheless. Read the above article: Nvidia has promised that its new lineup of cryptocurrency mining GPUs, called CMP for short, won't impact the supply of GeForce graphics cards for PC gamers. . . Since these cards are destined for mining rigs they will also lack video outputs. That may mean the resale value is diminished, which has been one reason why miners prefer gaming graphics cards.
Or take it from the horse's mouth [0]:
NVIDIA Cmp Hx
Dedicated GPU for Professional Mining
I might have believe this story, if not at the same time Intel had made an expensive bet on producing not-quite-gaming cards, later looked at the same trillion dollar question.. and then almost decided that this did not bring enough luck to keep spending.
One of the biggest problems that I have in the EU is that it's almost federated. EU will pass laws, countries will adopt those laws, but you end up with 20-24 different versions of those laws. With some countries being strict or lenient about the law that everyone agreed to. And a lot it is written from the perspective that large corporations are the only ones who do business throughout the EU. It's completely missed that small entrepreneurs may also want to take part. Modern technology makes it feasible, but old ideas just drags it down.
Yes. I used to sell objects on Amazon in Europe. You can sell from just one country, but then each sale outside of that country is an "export" that triggers high fees.
For sales to be "local", products need to be stored in warehouses in each country. But that in turn means the owner of said products (the seller) has to be registered for VAT in that country, and submitting annual reports in each country's language.
I went to the trouble of registering in 6 different countries; in some countries, Amazon more or less helps sellers submit reports; in others, they offer to partner with local lawyers.
The result is a mess of reports, injunctions, penalties for late filing, etc. coming to you in Polish, German, Spanish, Hungarian. I eventually gave up.
Europe is not actually a "single market". It's a federated bureaucracy entirely indifferent (or hostile) to small businesses.
Having worked on the inside: this is by design. You know for 100% that Pepsico and Coca Cola unleashed an army of lobbyists to make sure the laws were written in a way where the single market only worked for large business.
It's comforting to believe that large corporations with the greed of the rich and powerful is what makes these inefficiencies but really it's about a million little political negotiations, primarily driven by voters dislike of change.
It's comforting to believe that actual voters have that kind of political influence over these things, but really it's about a million little talls, primarily driven by lobbyists commanded by big companies
You are about 20 years out of date. Modern politicians get almost all of their funding from small donations, in other words, from passionate partisans who care about culture war issues.
That's because megadonors don't give to candidates directly? In order to trigger the unlimited campaign finance guaranteed by citizens united, you create a super pac. They can't openly coordinate with the candidate.
If you add in all super PACs and outside spending, it would make up roughly 30-35% of the overall expidenture. That's a lot but super PAC money is worth much less to a campaign compared to donations because it can't be used for core expenses like labor.
It’s both. Massive regulation is usually driven by good intentions, populism. Large corporations often don’t mind when it means it would prevent smaller companies from competing with them.
Because if it's just a few evil people making the world bad then that's fixable. The truth that it is it's an extraordinarily complex stew of incentives means its harder to fix.
Sure, cynically, you can use the argument that we can’t just limit the influence of megacorps because the problem is more complex than that. Sure, but limiting them will still help.
Why not do the obvious thing that can still help? There are some simple things we as a people or a conglomeration of peoples can do to curb the enthusiasm for state level corruption. It is doable. It will not solve everything - but surely we can still do it.
> lawmakers need to be corrupt and/or incompetent for lobbying to do this.
Not really
Lobbyists get to talk into the ears of the powerful. It is literally their job. They make very sensible arguments for their point of view. So it seems very sensible, for the legislators, to make laws that aid the powerful and impede the weak.
The legislators are very busy with pressures from all sides. The cognitive load of considering views that you do not hear is enormous. It is not "incompetent or corrupt" to fail.
The system has the corruption baked in. It is one of the mechanisms, of many, that wealth and power concentrate in "democracies "
I have seen this process from the inside, good people making terrible decisions
I'm sorry they're so busy, but everyone's busy. Not everyone gets to drag money out of people on threat of jail, not have to pay any corporation tax on it, and spend that money on offices and salaries, do a bad job, and have everyone solely blame other people for their failings.
It's like if a judge blamed one side's legal representative for their terrible decisions. The legal representative is not paid to be neutral. They're paid to represent their client. The judge is paid to be neutral.
That removes the culpability again from the people being lobbied, who are for paid by mandatory taxes, so they don't have to win work - their only job is expertise and honesty.
I don't think it does. Of course they are culpable, that's the whole point.
Them being in that position of power is not god given though, nor set in stone. Replacing them is a single election away. Still, people keep voting for them. So the ultimate responsibility is with the people who keep voting them into office.
Last time I checked, regulators are part of governments which tend to be confirmed in one way or another in democracies.
Different story on non-democratic forms of government. There the hate is justified. But just complaining about regulators relieves those in power (the voting populace) of their responsibilities. Tempting (and convenient) though for everybody part of that populace.
Elected representatives decide who is in charge. For example, in many countries they elect the government. To which the secretary of housing belongs which decides how housing policy is executed which is implemented by the bureaucrats in that department. It's all rooted in the democratic will, albeit some processes are slow to change (which is a feature too so that a crazy person can't trash your country too bad before you have a chance to course correct at the next election). If it were not then you would not be living in a democracy.
Though it seems we are going in circles since the way you phrased it indicates that you are unwilling to even engage with my argument. Nobody claimed that the regulator is in the political party, (except for one-party states perhaps which are notoriously undemocratic).
I think we agree then that given their eternal, apolitical nature, replacing regulators is not "an election away", even if people weren't already voting on a vast array of different issues and thus no one could determine from a vote that a particular regulator needed replacing.
Lobbying is fine, though. Lobbying isn't bribery, although sometimes it probably looks like it. Lobbying is also an industry saying "please don't kill us; here's why that thing will kill us". The people making the decisions have the power (hence lobbyists need to exist) and they need to be better.
The revolving door between politician to made man (lobbyist) seems like a bit of a problem, no? These poor ex-politicians/staffers need to earn those mil+ salaries or they couldn’t effectively save these poor industries from demise? Perhaps the politician being asked to go easy on the regulations is potentially influenced by the ex-politicians rather lucrative position?
Corruption does not need to be overt to be destructive. It’s absolutely pervasive.
I will treat this comment charitably and just say that it's yet another case of "definition of X sounds good, so X can't be bad".
I believe in reality it's less about "please don't kill us" and more about getting officials to set up the "pleas profit us" situation.
Yes, money don't change hands in an office, so it's TECHNICALLY not a bribery.
Well, unlike regulators, companies die without profit. So they do indeed need profit. Smaller companies might want a system currently tilted against them to be changed. Larger companies might spend a fortune on regulation-following that has harmful outcomes, e.g. raising prices, for no benefit. Both of those motivations sound reasonable, and both getting their way may result in more profit for them. There's nothing wrong with profit.
The only thing that can possibly be bad is the regulation-writer, or the regulation enforcer, behaving incompetently and/or corruptly, who decides or enforces bad rules.
The lawmakers are: in the EU you have a block of right-wing parties. The large part are funded by large companies and make laws which favour them. Same thing as in the US.
There are other right-wing (and left-wing) blocks who are funded by the Kremlin and Kremlin-supporters who just try to break things.
At the EC they're not corrupt, they try their best, but they're often given bad advice and are themselves not experts. And their power is limited (they can nudge but not push).
> a block of right-wing parties. The large part are funded by large companies and make laws which favour them. Same thing as in the US.
You need to be mad to think it's the right wing parties in the US who get the most funding. E.g. [0]
> The Biden—now Harris—campaign committee raised $997.2 million and Trump’s campaign committee raised $388 million in total between Jan. 2023 and Oct. 16, 2024, the most recent date for which Federal Election Commission filings are available
Might want to take a look at the news channels you're following as none of them describe the Democrats, outside a bit of performative "socially left" things (like keeping the government out of bedrooms - though as a libertarian I don't consider it a "left" issue at all, more a basic freedom).
The two main US parties are firmly right wing, although the Democrats do have a small number of centralist (like Bernie) and centre-left people (though I dunno if any are actually in the Congress).
I'm surprised that was necessary. A single look at the EU website leaves no doubt that the EU is perfectly capable to create a bureaucratic nightmare all by itself (and incapable not to even if it tried).
I don't think any EU One-stop-shop scheme covers "local" goods sales in other EU member states yet, i.e. an EU company has to register in all EU countries they hold stock in.
That is changing with the Single VAT Registration (SVR) legislation, effective in 2028.
This was 2017-2021. Not sure if One-Stop-Shop covers this as it mentions "cross-border sales" and the problem with Amazon fulfillment and storage was to make all sales local (not cross-border). But maybe it does cover it. I don't know.
If you look at what I responded to then you see that it was about every country having their own rules. "More EU" would mean harmonizing them in the sense that they are all the same and you'd have a single regulatory body.
I don't see how less EU would make this particular problem any easier. It would certainly give you an even harder time to deal with 20+ states that all impose import bureaucracy. That's exactly what the EU was founded to solve, but the menber states are populisting against it, not unlike your comment.
Without the EU you wouldn't have a single set of annoying overly-bureaucratic bloc-wide regulation for trade between member states, you'd have a bunch of bilateral agreements between individual countries. You might not be paying a new tax to the EU, but instead you'd pay much more for your postal service to file customs paperwork based on declarations you'd have to write. And I'd guess countries would still want you to have a local representative for a bunch of things, not to mention compliance with tens of slightly-different safety standards (think CE).
Maybe it wouldn't be that much worse, but certainly not better than what we have today.
The EU existed for a long time now and you could replace all of this with bilateral organisations focused on narrow topics, rather than a bureaucratic body with an open agenda and no real checks and balances.
You think without EU there would be no regulations and everything would be free for all? You must be young or don't remember pre-EU times.
In CS terms, the EU turned an O(n^2) problem, bilateral agreements, into an O(n) problem, everybody trying to get their view into a single body. The advantages should be obvious to anybody knowing O notation.
Again, not to say EU doesn't have problems. But dismantling the EU is not the solution. Improving it is.
I never understand this argument. The same logic would suggest that things like the GPL, CNCF, OCI etc. are somehow harmful when, objectively, it's the opposite. Standardisation and conformity lead to much larger and more efficient ecosystems. Why should it not be the same for the EU?
How does a Californian company compete with a company in Missouri that has lower labor costs and less overhead/ regulation?
They seem to manage this just fine, but it's a pretty similar scenario. You could also push for standardized business costs and regulations eu wide ofc to help.
Standardized costs would just hurt the poorer members more. You’re underestimating the economical difference between EU member states. It’s more like if Californian businesses had to compete with Mexican in a single market, and Mexicans would be paying Californian prices with Mexican wages in the end.
That's the entire point - the Californian company leaves the higher-value R&D jobs in California, while it outsources the lower-value but still necessary manufacturing jobs/data warehousing jobs to Missouri. Both places benefit, because ultimately the union benefits as a whole from the distribution of productivity.
If you concentrated all manufacturing around just a few spots, you end up in a situation like India - inland states with resources get stripped of their resources while all the companies are based in coastal metropolises with port facilities.
One could also go the other way, like China, and let the states compete between themselves for manufacturing prowess, but you need a central planning committee to ensure that the competing provinces still coordinate and work to complement each other. Easier in China, not so much in the EU.
If you are in Munich, how do you compete with someone from Magdeburg?
Also, quite a lot of German business costs are a self-inflicted wound (too much bureaucracy). Maybe taper down the endless paper war a bit, and throw away the fax machines.
You specialize in things that are more difficult to make in poorer countries - you use your advantages they use theirs.
Afterall this is what happened to a lot of Polish industry after we got our EU membership - it died under pressure of already developed competition from countries like Germany.
> And a lot it is written from the perspective that large corporations are the only ones who do business throughout the EU. It's completely missed that small entrepreneurs may also want to take part.
I'm not convinced that's an accident. I think politicians in Europe are just better than those in the US at hiding who they really work for.
There are numerous examples of regulations in many European countries that create a glass ceiling for anyone who strives to be more than just middle-middle-class, while creating effective loopholes for the wealthy to continue multiplying their wealth.
For example, the total (State + Federal) top tax rate for someone living in California or New York is not too different (maybe 2-3%) from someone living in France or Sweden. But the difference is that in California the top rate does not kick in until you earn north of $1M per year, while in Sweden or France the middle class is already paying those rates.
Likewise, in the US you cannot (legally) shelter your income by declaring it to be foreign income, as you can in most European countries. That is a tax dodge not applicable to the middle class.
And then we have the present discussion: The compliance costs are of course too high for any small business, so these regulations are just another form of regulatory capture to prevent anyone new from breaking into the upper class, while allowing those already there to have it easy.
It's a success of the upper class to pit the middle class against the lower class and the immigrants. As long as people on one "side" complain that there is too much foreign culture and they'll all be replaced and/raped and the other "side" sees the racists as their main enemy, the rich have an easy time.
It should be a separate topic, yes. But calling it a "problem" is already the framing that pits locals against immigrants, distracting from what's really keeping people down. In fact, immigration is a solution to lots of actual problems. (For example demography and lack of economi growth.)
Yes, I am pitting locals against immigrants and I am calling them a problem, which they are. Immigration is absolutely disastrous for the average citizen who has to compete for housing and jobs.
Economic growth is pointless if it's only achieved by population growth. It is the wealth per person that counts, which will surely decrease when you import millions of people with few employable skills and their non-working families.
Demography is only a problem because our social systems are completely unsustainable pyramid schemes reliant on endless population growth. Every day that you try to delay its inevitable collapse with immigration will only make the problem worse down the line.
> import millions of people with few employable skills
That's denying reality to a level that's not even funny. For an above-average group like HN folks I'd even assume a bad faith perspective.
The average immigrant is the prime person to boost the economy. They are already born and have gone through childhood, the most expensive time. The society they are immigrating to pays none of that. In contrast, they tend to be young and hungry for work. Exactly what your economy needs. Either they can work right away, mind you often jobs that locals don't want (low level construction, cleaning, elderly care). Or you give them a few years of training and they work harder than the average local. They are on average more law abiding and know that they must succeed otherwise they will be outcasts. No chilling on moms sofa.
Of course there are outliers. But for a fair argument you need to consider the lazy/criminal/... locals too. And the highly educated immigrants that are making the tech sector work which is currently essentially running the economy. Remove all immigrants from the tech sector and the whole western economy would collapse.
Oh and the health care sector without its immigrants. Or farming with its immigrants. If you think they are taking the locals' jobs in these sectors then you are delusional since that's not the reality you and I are living in.
What is the solution to your demand for infinite growth on a planet of finite resources? Sounds like you use immigrants as a shield for your desire to get yours' before the resources run out and the line can't go up anymore.
> What is the solution to your demand for infinite growth on a planet of finite resources?
Um I wrote "lots of problems", not "all problems". Nor did I require infinite growth, not sure where you read that.
Though on a planet with finite resources, what is the point of encouraging women in the west to have more kids because the population needs to be growing again, if otherplace has still more (population) growth than they can handle, so one thing could alleviate the other, win-win. If we were less racist, that is.
It also depends a little on the definition of "growth" of course. Physical growth of course has limits. But services can always improve, so you can get "growth" without more stuff. Depends on what and how you count.
Or you build rockets and go interplanetary, but that's mostly a solution for the Musk cult which I'm not subscribing to.
> Sounds like you use immigrants as a shield for your desire to get yours' before the resources run out and the line can't go up anymore.
That sounds like a good argument, but if you look at government budgets and where come from and where they go that is not at all what is happening. I mean, there is a core of truth in that the rules allow the upper class to go less-taxed (generally not untaxed). But let's be honest here. If the upper class paid 60% on their income instead of 10%, it would improve government budgets by less than 1% (disregarding things like royal families that own oil company profits or rent out incredible amounts of terrible housing (UK) at essentially 0% tax as a specific exemption in the law)
Which means taxing the rich can make the rich poorer than they currently are and bring more equality. Which is a goal in itself. But it cannot fund EU governments. It cannot fund pensions. Not even a little bit.
Everyone knows what the big problem is: right now close to 35% of working people in the EU work, one way or another (usually in bureaucracies, granted), to take care of children, sick, unemployed or elderly non-working people. Of those groups, the elderly group is going up by about 3% every year, and that will keep going until 2050 or later. In the group of working people there is extreme resistance to actually work with the elderly (meaning physically helping elderly people, those jobs are low-status, low-paid, and generally hated with a passion), even against teaching jobs there is quite a bit of resistance (dropout rates are double digit percentages). So how do we take care of the elderly? Hell: how do we take care of kids?
This problem alone makes me say "we don't just want AI to take our jobs, we NEED AI to take our jobs". Because "we" are sure as hell not going to take them. That doesn't preclude that this needs to be regulated, but obviously just saying no to AI is not what we want. And that's putting it politely.
> Likewise, in the US you cannot (legally) shelter your income by declaring it to be foreign income, as you can in most European countries.
Not sure what you mean, most European countries tax residents on worldwide income. You certainly can’t just declare income as foreign and be done with it. Some countries (notably UK) had loopholes for non-domiciled residents but they are being closed now.
That is the issue across the entire world. Large corporations can easily bear the cost of regulatory laws, environmental requirements, rules, and regulations. They can also go to great lengths to promote an environment that is almost nightmarish for a smaller company or entrepreneur trying to enter the game.
They create barrier after barrier through their lobbying efforts. A good example is having to pay $50,000 for an inspector to come and determine whether your automatic door opens and closes properly, or to verify that your facility does not have a chimney. A friend of mine who owns a business in Niagara Falls, Canada, had to pay around $10,000 for a wind assessment to determine where chimney exhaust would go once released. He didn’t even have a chimney. They ended up having to have another inspection to verify they didn't have a chimney.
Many of these environmental laws are intentionally created and applied to small businesses as well, even when the cost of meeting the requirements is greater than what the business could realistically generate in sales.
The result is that large corporations can absorb these costs, while small businesses and entrepreneurs are often priced out before they even have a chance to compete.
Dunno about that. I live in the US. I can start a small business today and the only thing I'd have to do differently is file an additional form on my taxes next year.
Yes, that's a simplification that doesn't apply to every situation, but it is still completely accurate.
That's pretty much the situation in the UK if you are a sole trader. If you set up a limited liability company, that's a separate entity and has its own tax reporting requirement, but nothing onerous. I am a sole trader, and manage a small company separately from that.
One thing I have heard of in the USA is the need for a "business licence". I'm not sure what that is or whether it applies to all businesses, so I'm not sure what it would correspond to in the UK. Neither of my businesses needed any licences or permissions to start trading.
There's no standard concept of a "business license" in the US either. Generally, the corporate registration / LLC filing is all you need to start doing business as a limited liability company, and you don't need to do anything special as a sole proprietor. Sometimes state and local governments have special requirements for particular types of activity, and require registration to begin operating in a regulated field. City and county governments sometimes have a business tax that you have to pay if you're operating a facility open to the public, and may require the tax receipt to be on display on your premises.
That's pretty much the situation in the UK if you are a sole trader. If you set up a limited liability company, that's a separate entity and has its own tax reporting requirement, but nothing onerous.
It's becoming more onerous all the time to run a small business in the UK though.
We just got charged £100 just to essentially tick one box with Companies House saying "nothing changed since last year".
The main tax paperwork is the annual financial statements. These are getting more demanding over the next couple of years with the simplified versions that small companies have been allowed to file looking like they will no longer be acceptable after that time.
You now have to file tax returns like PAYE and VAT using approved software. Most of that software - even the big names - ranges from OK but with significant problems and limitations to simply awful.
I heard recently that personal self assessment tax returns for company directors are about to get more complicated as well.
If you have business premises then you have to deal with business rates. Often these are still based on valuations from a time when dinosaurs roamed the planet. Some small businesses have already closed down due to this becoming unaffordable.
I've lost count of how many different kinds of insurance we now have. All have a cost of course.
If you're working solo or the only person from your company working with a specific customer/client then you need to worry about Off Payroll Working as well. That's still a huge mess of ambiguity decades after IR35 was introduced and likely incurs further expenses for legal reviews and insurance policies that shouldn't even need to exist.
Control any personal data? Make sure you register with the ICO and pay their fee too.
Sell online or even run a website? Make sure you know the requirements for information you have to provide and it's in exactly the right format for compliance. (I've even seen businesses working in the compliance industry failing on this one and risking regulatory sanctions.)
The public sector is increasingly pushing for things like Cyber Essentials if you want to be part of its supply chain. That is an absolutely textbook example of regulations that were clearly written for large businesses using a certain operating system. The only options are 100% compliance or failing and 100% compliance is tricky for sole traders or microbusinesses to achieve without disproportionate expense and administration. If you need the certified version then that's another cost and the disruption of being audited to deal with.
We haven't even talked about everything you have to do if you want to take on employee #1 who isn't one of the founders/owners yet.
I don't think it's realistic to say that the UK is supportive of small businesses today. It never really was but at least the the potential financial benefits used to justify the overheads. Now the taxes are far higher - you end up paying double-digit higher overall rates if you set up a Ltd that can actually grow as a business compared to simply trading as a self-employed sole trader now - and the overheads and costs are also far higher in numerous ways. It's no surprise that people are deterred from going into business here and that's really bad for the country because we need the people willing to take the risks and put in the effort to build the next generation of businesses to support our economy and provide much-needed new jobs.
It's a term sometimes colloquially applied to one or more things that are not actually a "business license".
Some jurisdictions require "Certificates of Occupancy" if the ownership of a commercial property changes. This is more about the state of the structure and modifications made to it.
Some jurisdictions require registration with a state or county tax authority. In my state this is called a "business registration". Depending on jurisdiction, you may not be allowed to legally operate a for-profit business without this registration.
So there are frequently government-issued documents that are not called a "business license" but may be required to legally do business.
Back in college (USA) friends would spin up LLCs for the summer just to buy mowers or vans to do yard work. They would hire all the students who didn't get summer jobs. Those hired students would make about 3x a STEM intern makes in western europe today.
Interstate commerce also seems to be vastly easier inside the US in comparison to the alleged single market of the EU. The most companies seem to deal with is California-specific regulations. Meanwhile, most companies in the EU eventually opt to create a ton of subsidiaries, basically one per state, to handle all the localized duties that the EU requires.
Not sure if you are referencing something else but in the case of VAT (sales tax) this is simply not true, see: VAT one stop shop / moss. There are also no customs duties on inter-state shipments.
Employment regulations are different - if you have a lot of people working for you in another member state you'll need a branch office or subsidiary there (or you can easily outsource it via services like https://www.playroll.com/)
Yup the Constitution here has rightly prevented each State from adding regulations that burden interstate commerce. Sometimes that has resulted in overly broad federal oversight (CFTC versus state gaming boards) but most of the time that’s a good thing.
Starting a small company in many EU countries is a breeze too e.g. Estonia, Portugal, UK and no doubt many others. The rumoured 'EU Inc' entity should also help close the gap for member countries where incorporating domestically traditionally comes with more friction (e.g. Germany).
EU politicians seemed to be fairly captured by corporations generally. Less so than politicians from the countries themselves. Voting turnout for EU representatives is very low compared with voting for local officials. I think its because people know that who they vote for as their chancellor or prime minister can make a big impact on their lives. They see the EU parliament as this distant thing and don't follow it so much. EU representatives therefore don't have as much accountability and can more easily be swayed by lobbying. How else can you explain the whole chat control thing which everyone hates but still keeps getting pushed through. Like who is voting for this a-holes.
It passed on a technicality of present reps voted against in majority but not enough total votes because the president had triggered a special vote for the last session before recess when less reps are present.
Was even one representative that voted for this from a region where the people that they represent wanted it by even the slimmest of majorities? I don't think so. These votes were in full defiance of their constituents.
The one thing EU politicians hate is disruption. Entrepreneurs are fresh entrants trying to disrupt an existing market. The politicians don't even need to be puppets. The fact that these small startups exist and may even succeed is reason enough.
Its not as bad as in the US I think, but yeah, most of the laws are actually (literally) written by corporations. I wouldn't call them puppets, but EU corps have an outsized influence on the outcome of the process.
I don‘t know about EU laws specifically, but national law in Europe is often written by lobby firms in favor of their corporate sponsors. In Iceland for example the main corporate lobby is called Viðskiptaráð, and they brag about the high percentage of laws they write passing at the parliament (in 2007 it was like 90%). I don‘t think things are much different in the rest of Europe (maybe just less obvious due to size differences).
That might be one reason they refuse to be open about their financial supports in their various organizations yes. it is very well known unfortunately..
The entire purpose of EU is trade (trading nations don't go to war etc), trade is more or less defined by large corporations, it's through that lens every decision is made and measured.
Nothing specific to EU here except the specific point is about EU this time. Otherwise just copy paste "most EU politicians are puppets of EU corporations" in some search engine and enjoy, here are the top result of such a search:
So even searching specifically for praising information, one will have to dig deep apparently, or maybe go straight to the official propaganda of what the politicians say about themselves (but probably less so about others).
Everyone is free to go as deep as they want (and can afford) and draw their own conclusions.
The US is wealthier, has more billionaires and has fewer of these barriers for small entrepreneurs. So no, this is not the monocausal explanation that applies equally everywhere.
(YES, the US has regulatory capture, YES the wealthy attempt to use it, YES we should try to eliminate it here too, but it remains true that it is easier to run a small business in the US, while having more billionaires. There are other explanations to the differential here).
Agreed, europe has a culture of "stability" first. The fear of disruption and chaos is larger after two WW and it outsourced the risks of disruption to the US. Basically, use the us as a test-mouse for new ideas and innovations, then when proven safe introduce them and ride those coat-tails to infinity.
> use the us as a test-mouse for new ideas and innovations, then when proven safe introduce them and ride those coat-tails to infinity
What actually happened, and continues to happen, is that Europe and the EU became entirely dependent on US tech and other foreign industry. It wasn't just a matter of "see what works and then copy it domestically". It oursourced basically everything.
To be fair, it was mostly outsourced to China, at least in Slovenia with our electronics development and manufacturing (Iskra and Gorenje). US stuff has also always been more expensive in every category except software.
Is fetishizing disruption good for USA? It did helped to create a billionaire oligarch class, but that class is literally intentionally destroying it. I mean, it may end up destroying Europe and the rest of the world too, but the US democracy seem to be their first target.
The bigger issue in OP's case is they are dependent on de minimis.
The de minimis crackdown [0] and EPR [1] are both being rolled out because Chinese conglomerates like Pinduoduo (Temu) and SHEIN took undue advantage of that while ignoring European regulators on issues such as environmental regulations on packaging [2], dark patterns [2], breaching the Digital Services Act [3], and gacha/addictive engagement mechanisms [4].
All of OP's proposals directly conflict with the goal of de minimis taxation and the EPR.
Seems European HNers are fine with European regulations until it hurts their niche interests or pocketbook.
The issue is that those marketplaces got too mainstream, and the average consumer is too stupid.
10-15 years ago if you were importing stuff from China you'd know that the trade off for cheaper prices is that you'd lose your consumer laws protection and you'd be on your own. If you wanted those, then you'd go to your local retailer and pay extra.
Means nothing though because no European country can produce the goods an impoverished European can afford to pay for the goods so the local store is just the same Chinese goods shipped to that address other than your home address.
And then everyone started doing it, which meant that your local retailer isn't in business anymore (see local high streets in many countries). The choice you had 10-15 years ago doesn't exist anymore because everyone went for the cheaper price, and now the question is where the extra goes that we used to pay to the local retailer.
Living in Europe, I find that with LLMs, it is possible to navigate the federal & law jungle. However, LLMs don't protect you from institutional envy or the resistance of people trying to block progress simply because it is perceived as 'too modern' or disruptive. I find this the hardest challenge. And I have the feeling during times of general decline, like these, it gets worse.
That makes sense given the structure of the society, no? If you were to build an organization whose purpose was a predictable amount paid out to the senior most members committed ahead of time for an indefinite period, you would prioritize predictable income. In the ideal, your contracts would all be long-term contracts that don’t fluctuate very much.
Any entity that seeks to take risks to earn outsize income increases the income variance and makes it hard to organize your committed payouts. So you are forced (by your priorities) to discourage the entrepreneur and freelancer and encourage the 18-60 salaried employee. Fixed fungible production unit can be used as an input to a machine that produces committed output.
Then you import guest-workers etc. to improve throughput. You are forced by your priorities. Probably the expansion of the US welfare state will meet similar constraints soon enough.
It’s a bit just-so so I think there’s an over-claim in there but I think the seed is there.
Right, it's a zero-sum mentality versus a growth mentality. When people don't believe that growth is possible then they focus on guarding what they have.
I personally hate the "reenact" the old- good times to recreate the prosperity cargo cults. What created those prosperous times, where "characters" that would just do things, and ask for forgiveness by the law later. And that was actually priced into the justice system, by giving the judges a range to verdict from. In a way, the rule of law was much less strict in the 50s and 60s and way more informal.
US Sales tax is the exact same way. Each state has a different rate, Texas has multiple rates inside a zip code you have to manage. Each state also has a nexus requirement that is either money, or number of transactions based. Then the filings you have to do and have a Foreign LLC registration, a registered agent in that state, and a yearly annual report to file to tell them you are still in business and here is my $40-200.
Except you can sell through Amazon (or other online store) and they will manage all that for you as a single fee. Exactly the solution that the article proposed for the EU rules.
This article is claiming that his online platform wants to offer that service but they are legally forbidden from doing so. In fact, they suggest allowing services to perform this is a reasonable solution to the whole problem.
It is harder to offer fulfilment as a service, but there are companies that will give you a registered agent in all the relevant countries and help you with the paperwork. It does still look like it's quite expensive though.
The article states that the registered agent needs to fill out paperwork for each country and pay a registration fee. That's the issue, the fixed costs per country making it cost prohibitive to sell just 2 units shipped to France.
Except you don’t have min threshold requirements for neither PPWR nor WEEE, it's before you can sell anything. And you need to register, hire an authorized agent and get contract (which always has minimal amount rather than per-kg pricing) with local recycling company in each member state.
Also you have Streamlined Sales Tax Registration System (SSTRS) for actual registration in US which covers 24 states.
I think this is a big factor. While I would prefer a more federated US, the US as is is a great market to start in. It's 350M fairly wealthy people under mostly the same tech restrictions. That's a great place to grow.
It's important to remember that even without the fact that big companies basically write the regulations, regulations naturally tend to being effectively regressive wrt company stage/size. Every new one is a hurdle that a bigger company has more resources to overcome.
> It's 350M fairly wealthy people under mostly the same tech restrictions
and, on a case-by-case basis, those people are generally happy to adopt other states' standards in the name of convenience and efficiency (California notwithstanding). Look at E-ZPass/I-Pass as a great example of harmonization across states.
It's funny. Ask any Illinoisan how they feel about adopting Ohio's policies and they'd bristle. But say "hey we're gonna make your highway transponder work in every state east of the Rockies" and they're all for it.
I have to wonder if Europe has the same thing going on.
Your example of adoption is interesting. I think California has actually influenced other states on efficiency. I wanted to say disproportionately, but perhaps in exact accordance with their economic and political power.
I don't know the details well enough, but I do know that there is an effective anti-fedaralist force in the US wherever federal funding is concerned, as it comes with rules conditions (rules) attached. I would be interested to what extent this acts as a bias toward cooperation in the case of ez pass, given the interstate system.
> I think California has actually influenced other states on efficiency.
California has a frustrating tendency invent its own systems that are neither better nor worse, but nonetheless incompatible with more widely accepted standards. The highway transponder example actually applies again - Fastrak.
CA has some great ideas too, don't get me wrong (ubiquitous painted curbs: great!) but a lot of the time it's just different for the sake of being different.
The emissions standards themselves? Kinda. The way they go about enforcing those standards? Not even close. CA emissions testing is byzantine and expensive compared to most other states. The fact that you people have to pay money to get tested, and there's 2 tiers of tests, hurts my brain.
Can you elaborate more? When you say "checks and balances" do you mean explicit legal mechanisms or implicit mechanisms like Tiebout-style foot voting? For the latter areas with "almost zero oversight" seem advantages. Also, can you give an example of these low-oversight places and how it manifests? I'm thankful even for some pointers in what to search for.
One example is the effective prohibition on spraying pesticides by air, including drone. Drones allow lower pesticide use than current, legal practices
Oh, so "parts of the EU" wasn't about geographic areas but policy areas? But this sounds like more regulation, not checks and balances either. Are you replying to the right comment?
European Commission is so disjoined from electorate through many layers of elections, that it can disregard it completely - practically citizens have no input on EC's body. Any legislation originates from there which makes it even worse.
Only guarantee of EC doing their job is their Oath, and vote of no confidence is basically impossible to call, nor there's a way to initiate one from citizens side via for example a referendum. There are no consequences for not following the Oath at all so corrupt EC can easily push things that are favorable for bigger voting blocks, while screwing everyone else and get away with it.
The only measure that citizens have to actually affect EU turned out to be worthless(as SKG initiative has shown) - as Citizens Initiative is not binding at all, and can be disregarded.
EU itself creates a system of double loyalty for every politician - do they pursue national interest or do they jump ship to European ones(including appointed positions)? This erodes national systems of check and balances.
European initiatives are impossible to control nor audit form member state PoV, and it's even worse from citizen PoV. And there's no mechanism to counteract bureaucratic bloat growth, nor rampant lobbying.
European Council is used as a way to launder unpopular legislations and push it onto all member states - like chat control.
Most of the times none of those legislations have been a part of internal political campaigns - and even if they were, they were such in only single member state. There was zero input from citizens, even in forms of voting for their own government.
President of European Parliament can act against parliament itself, again with no mechanism for any consequences(ie best example is pushing chat control vote just before summer vacation this year)
Whole institution of EU after Lisbon Treaty was made with assumption that every member state will pursue their own best interests, MEPs will pursue their own best national interests too. But sadly this created system in which it is difficult to purge any form of corruption(both embezzlement/criminal, pursuing personal interests or being purely ideologically driven without consideration of practicality).
This was done to create resistance to populism, but in practice created system that's extremely resistant to purging corruption.
It doesn't help that EU itself is a very top-down organization. Not in form of dictatorship - it's far from that - but in form of committee driven changes by unelected civil servants that operate like a black box.
and one last thing, not related to checks and balances - EU itself moves at glacial pace and is resistant to change by design - which would be perfectly fine for just a Trade Union. Unfortunately it leads to it both not reacting in time, and pushing initiatives that are already outdated.
It’s unlikely because smaller member states wouldn’t want that as they’d be outvoted by bigger members and thus forced to implement laws that might not even make sense in those (smaller) countries.
We had a federation around here called Yugoslavia and we saw how it played out. Forcing different nations to agree on everything down to things that are basically cultural preferences never worked well. Regulations, bureaucracy and laws are often based on cultural preferences. The EU tries to find a common baseline but still leaves a lot to each member state to avoid this problem.
Then the bigger member states will say that they’re contributing so much more but get very little voting power etc. It’s not an easy problem to solve, hence the current indirect system.
I don't see federalism ever working - you have thousand of years of grudges within EU that you would have to overcome, plus gigantic cultural differences that lead to completely different ways of life.
Even medium-sized corporations are not willing to send products across borders to consumers (say, outside Germany), further destroying the single market.
In the EU you have to distinguish between "Directives" and "Regulations".
A "Regulation" becomes "law" in any member state without modification. No member state has to adopt anything. Examples are the GDPR and the new Machine Regulation.
A "Directive" does not become "law" in any member state. A member state has to enact their own national laws to implement the directive until a given date. It does not have to be single law. It could spread many laws. An example is the Machine Directive before it was re-released as Machine Regulation.
Ah yes, let’s give the EU and its undemocratic system in which policy formation is heavily filtered through a relatively narrow professional political class, ordinary voters have weak or almost no direct control over major policy choices, dissent encounters administrative/economic punishment, and central institutions possess and use powerful financial means to discipline peripheral governments should have even more centralised power?
And no, just because voting for MEPs is bolted on there as a pressure valve doesn’t suddenly make it all okay when most of the real decisions happen behind closed doors and adherence to the passed laws, no matter how damaging is ensured through financial coercion.
Not a single person voted or agreed to this law, and yet here we are.
Yeah, that's always been my concern with the EU (I'm American, for context): the long worrying practice where the legal concept of the EU is assembled by a small group who very much want EU citizens to go back to sleep and only wake up once all the laws and regulation has been created.
A federation makes sense to me: I live in one. But how the EU has assembled itself in a way that seems to unrepresentative has been worrying to watch over the last couple decades.
US House term is 2 years, European Parliament is 5 years. The latter is actually proportional at least but you can see how they’d only feel pressure every so often
There is no such a thing as "representative democracy", that’s antinomic bullshit throw at people to lower it down to powerless populace.
Either citizens have the power, exercise it continuously in practice and are supplied with everything it takes to assume that role properly with all the duties it implies, or there is no democracy beyond empty words.
Funny how this questioning of democracy never shows up in topics about USA, UK or any other country - it's always EU that gets assaulted by sudden political theorists despite mirroring pretty much every other democracy on the planet.
UK is a monarchy. It’s actually in the name: United Kingdom. Democracy added as decorum on top of it is not there to change the principle of inequality that is deeply engraved in its underlying core.
USA is definitely described as a mix of plutocracy, kleptocracy, and oligarchy in many sources.
Not sure where this idea that the critics should be exclusive to Europe. TFA is about Europe, so comments will target more specifically EU, but that’s all.
First let's acknowledge that "Has it ever existed before?" is not helping with conclusion outside "it proved not physically impossible for some time in some historical specific context". It would not tell anything about "is that possible now or in near future in this or that specific geopolitical context at such a scale". And if it never existed before, a first in history is always possible.
Now what get often cited as direct democracy is ancient Greek city-states and nowadays Switzerland, which are two vastly different implementations.
> How would citizens even have the time?
That's actually the exact opposite mindset of what it takes to think democratically: how one could be called a citizen when they are not equipped with everything it takes to properly accomplish citizen duties. Of course accomplishing civil duties should be fairly compensated for the time invested. Such a compensation is generally existing and expected by current politician, so the only difference with direct democracy on this regard is that it should not be reserved to a small cast.
Continuously exercised and on everything as a matter of course? Not all is done via direct democracy there (even though it is the ultimate backstop in a way), it also has representative democracy.
Switzerland has a very direct form of democracy thanks to its constitutional referendums. If Swiss representatives pass unpopular bullshit like the EU bottle cap rule, their work can be permanently undone by a citizen initiative writing a constitutional resolution overriding said bullshit. This means that the representatives are on a tight leash and would not even attempt to write the unpopular regulations that the EU gets away with.
One day you piss off the voters with your poorly conceived cookie law, couple years later there's a line in the constitution saying "no cookie laws" and your hands are tied forever.
You cannot compare 10 million people with 450 million people when talking about direct democracy. It cannot be done I think. But if you know a way propose it here.
Just saying lets vote directly on everything will put everything on hold until all goes down.
Direct democracy doesn't mean everyone votes on everything.
At the extreme you could do something like localized e-voting: citizens vote on issues that affect a given geographic radius of where they live. Because the boundaries are purely distance-based, gerrymandering is impossible.
Maybe we could have a decaying distance boundary by some measurement like population density or something like it?
Congratulations, you've redefined democracy to mean something very different to the dictionary and colloquial definitions. That's not very useful though, unless your goal is to confuse people.
Yes, as sure as the dictionary and the colloquial definitions were first altered by propaganda. War is peace, Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength. Democracy is delegation.
There is a EU company registration in the maling. You register your business on that platform and it will be recognized as a EU company wich should make it easier to comply.
Please elaborate on less strict rules for Gdpr? There is Record of Processing Activities exemption for <250, but if you have to comply with Gdpr (and you do), you need essentially same info as Ropa and of course it has to be up to date. How else can you ensure you are in compliance?
Because if the EU tried to force countries into single compliance, there would no end of "EU is trampling national interests" and similar screaming.
It's an unwinnable situation. Again, EU-level politics keep assuming everyone (corporations and states) are adults. Unfortunately, everyone are just a bunch of screaming, scheming petulant children.
>Again, EU-level politics keep assuming everyone (corporations and states) are adults. Unfortunately, everyone are just a bunch of screaming, scheming petulant children.
One in four MEPs are involved in scandals [0] ranging from harassment to organized crime and corruption. The European Parliament also remains a free out-of-jail card through abuse of parliamentary immunity, and they do abuse it [1]. EU politics is a circus.
One of the best example is Ursula Von der Leyen. She was sent from Berlin to EU by Angela Merkle because when she was the defence minister of Germany under Merkle’s government there was a huge scandal of offering contracts (https://www.euractiv.com/news/von-der-leyen-admits-mistakes-...)
She was sent to EU so she can do less harm in the future, but the irony is that she became the head of EU.
> there would no end of "EU is trampling national interests" and similar screaming
To just call this "screaming" is to completely dismiss a real and huge problem. The EU is the idea that countries should fuse into economic areas, but the countries are also individual still. Of course there's a lot of friction.
For example, because Greece was in the Euro, they couldn't inflate their currency to compensate for the fact that they gradually outsourced more and more work to Germany, until they had nothing left and hit a financial crisis because their government couldn't borrow more money. That's not mindless screaming.
They could neither fix the problem with the policy tools a country with its own currency would have, nor did they have the automatic support from a central budget a region or state of a country would have.
They couldn't fix the problem because they were a corrupt country refusing to face their reality and which leadership decided to blame EU for not pumping more money into their pockets instead of fixing the structural problems of their rotting country.
Destroying their peoples lives with inflation so they could continue the parade would be even worse for both Greece and EU as a whole.
Greece could have fixed their problems by cutting spending and collecting more taxes (not necessarily higher taxes, but actually collecting the taxes that were owed). Currency inflation was never necessary.
No, the Greeks were cool and calculating, turning an inflating fake fiat currency into hard assets like real estate, while not working or producing anything.
The introduction of the Euro was the start signal for each country to try to inflate as much as they can for their own benefit - since the first inflator gets the best value out of the currency. Idiots are left holding paper currency worth less and less each day. Having to work harder and harder in a never ending spiral.
Absolutely. But when you inflate your own currency, it is you who have to deal with the consequences. If you inflate everyone's currency you reap all the benefits and leave everybody else with the burden of the consequences.
Inflation isn't controlled by the ECB. Money is created when banks loan out money. Whether that be to people, companies, or governments (municipalities and so on). That's where all money comes from and how the currency is inflated.
The country which by legislation or by other means makes it easier for banks to lend out money will benefit their own citizens and companies, since they get to be the first spenders of newly created money before it reduces in value. That's how national governments can use inflation for their own benefit within a common currency system. But no government involvement is necessary. If a group of people (in this case the Greeks) are willing to take on extraordinary amounts of debts compared to other groups, then we have the same results.
Remember that all money which was borrowed in the European "debt crisis" went somewhere before the loans couldn't be paid. Somebody benefitted, and the idiots were left to pay.
Do you realize that your example actually counters your point? The Greece's example illustrates that a misbehaving minority shouldn't have an outsized influence on the majority, which is a correct thing to aim for, I completely agree with you on that. But the current EU arrangement actually allows minority entities to veto majority's initiatives and improvements, exactly because EU is not fully federated. 1 member country can screech and blackmail 26 other members for any arbitrary reason, and they all must comply with this minority's ultimatum. If EU was a federation, majority would simply outvote any obstructionists.
Except in the Greece scenario, both Greece and Germany are to blame simultaneously as a whole package and not just Greece alone. The misbehaving minority that got bailed out are the German bankers.
If there were exchange rates between Germany and Greece, the problem would never had a chance to grow big enough to require a bailout.
And that's again follows my point - regular French or Poles or Spaniards have zero influence on the German financial system even if they together would be a majority by the numbers and had a same opinion. While German financial system can mess with them if they wish so.
Basically current EU has huge gaps of accountability in multiple directions and areas, even compared to a typical elected oligarchy of the singular developed country. Multiple EU institutions are not elected at all and neither they are accountable to the citizens across EU.
On one hand, I love GrapheneOS and see it as a cornerstone of digital privacy software. I have supported the project financially for years.
On the other hand, I'm worried that the publicity will only make explicit targets out of GrapheneOS users, and that you would only be using it "if you have something to hide".
The best solution to this is if orders of magnitude more people start using GrapheneOS. Once it becomes fairly normal it's no longer a viable reason to target someone.
With this publicity and the coming Motorola phones, there's reason to be at least a little optimistic.
Say that as they may, it’s a whole different slope to fall down if they want to do anything about that beyond pointing and whining. If we cross that bridge, we probably have bigger things to worry about. So I think it should be fine for now.
I, too, would prefer Google not have their hands in a lot of my stuff. That doesn't mean the federal government won't take it personally that I won't let them look at all of it and take action.
I've been playing around with Hugging Face's Lerobot[0] projects and it has been a lot of fun. To me, it has really democratized the field and has made it much easier to get into the subject without having a mechatronics degree and research lab budget. I've built 2 AI controlled robot arms: SO-ARM101 and Koch. I'm in the process of building a dual armed mobile bot[1] that looks very similar to this one. It will be interesting to see what Xiaomi's engineers push to Github.
They get you hooked on a teaser tariff. Like $100k worth of AWS, Azure, GCP credits. Like a good drug dealer, the first hit is free. Once you've convinced yourself that moving to AWS is the right move, based on the teaser rate, they've got you in their jaws. Most of your IT team is gone, most of your on-prem/colo hardware is outdated, and for tax reasons it's better to lease than to purchase capital intensive equipment. But now the low AWS rate is gone, you can't go back, and you'd look like a fool for calling your decision a mistake.
I really like AWS. But I feel like there is a lot of money to be made in consultants overselling services built on it. And a lot of traditionally expensive IT teams are being replaced with even more expensive cloud "architects".
Does the model account for the blatant favouritism in the refs? We used to laugh about it before but as the cameras have gotten better it has become a lot more visible. And in this case, is turning the tournament into a bit of a joke.
It's not at all surprising: the seeded the winners and the three highest ranked teams to make it impossible for them to meet until this stage if they won their group in the group stage, with the group stage having its own seeding system to make it very winnable for them.
They also missed a potentially tricky first knockout round tie against local rivals Uruguay because Uruguay underperformed and Cape Verde unexpectedly overperformed.
It's quite unlikely football is one of the few sports without a doping problem and with only very few cases where the referee was paid off.
Since ancient times in Rome where they said "bread and games" are needed to keep the commoners happy, many generations of rulers had time to optimize large-scale sports events.
My personal theory is that these kind of extremely unfair decisions in football are a net benefit to stability of society, and there's no incentive for the leadership to aim for full fairness in sports.
Hear me out: When a team loses in unfair manner due to bad decisions of the referee, large masses of people feel the psychological pain of being robbed of a win. This feeling of "unfairness" makes the masses more resilient to experiencing "unfairness" in their day-to-day life, for example when a billionaire is not prosecuted in the same way than a common person.
If we turn the logic around and assume that football would always be perfectly fair, then the masses would demand the same kind of fairness also in their day-to-day lives. Obviously this demand for fairness is not aligned with an establishment class that wants to extract the maximum value possible from their citizens, and push as far as they can without risking stability of the country.
From an establishment perspective, it makes a lot of sense to condition the masses for "unfairness", and sports is the perfect way to do it. I'm not saying that the individual referees are paid off to let a certain country win, just that the establishment who runs each country (and thereby also run international sports organizations like FIFA) have no incentive to actually create total fairness.
This might also explain issues like the IOC re-instating russia for olympic games, even though they have not retreated from Ukrainian territory yet. It triggers people who strongly feel about morals and ethics, and it brings the point home that the world is unfair and it makes no sense to push for fairness in the greater context.
The benefit is psychological conditioning for people to accept unfairness.
Probably because the sport is called [association football] of which soccer is one of the short forms (from the British) same as football, and is generally used to distinguish itself in places where other sports from the same football category are prevalent.
FIFA is an association that governs various association football variants including futsal. Using acronym expansion on FIFA as a canonical source for what to call any particular variant of association football would be misguided.
Microsoft hides their best stuff in SCVMM, which is another product and another license they want you to purchase. Anytime I've asked someone from MS why I can't X like I can in vCenter the response was usually, "oh, it's in System Center. FCM, HVM are just stripped down. If you need it you should buy System Center."
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