Very much similar thoughts. The examples provided are not nerds, except a few. It is just tech is a lucrative path to make money and it attracts a variety of “interesting” personalities, specifically those that can captivate and persuade masses to invest in them. By all means tech is just a means to an end to such founders. A nerd is someone who is interested in tech for the sake of it, because it is beautiful, not because it will aid drones in killing targets more efficiently and not because it will land a great contract.

This takes me back close to 15 years ago: using backend session management in Grails and the html forms that were enhanced with “some” JS, using responsive CSS. The difference at that time was browser tech not being as advanced as now, we had to care for different browsers and deal with IE7 and even IE6, it was difficult and we needed extensive QA (Browserstack would appear later). There is a reason why we had JS library evolution. Dude there was no npm, not even bower. Then we had Backbone.js - loved it, then AngularJS - amazing, then Angular version which had huge breaking changes then React, Polymer etc. Native browsers can do a lot these days, it is easy to enhance the functionality as well. But it was not always the same, the decisions to use React made sense for a variety of reasons at the time, maybe it was the case here as well.

PCC is supposed to work only on Apple silicon. You are supposed to trust that the input will be decrypted within the enclave which is next to inference engine on the same box. This way you know the input does not leave the server. If they offload to another server (eg google) then the privacy boundary is broken, once it leaves the enclave. Microsoft does it differently, where inference is confidential so more guarantees if that could be replicated.

Google has a similar thing they announced a year or two ago that uses the various hardware security stuff in the PC world that Apple is working with them to add to the list of approved stuff that gives PCC level security.

Europeans support that by and large. So either agree or have no ability to sell. This idea that companies know better about their users’ needs including privacy and choice is ridiculous. Apple is not a small company which is bullied as well.

> innovating at this level

At what level? Improve Siri which is lagging behind, then add llms?

At the level Apple does, I mean broadly and their peers, there is not an European company at those levels.

Isn’t ASML something like it?

In 6-12 months you could ship a new product or a large feature. This strategy might actually put you on a performance improvement plan instead.

A company/manager that would PIP you during onboarding doesn't understand the craft and does not deserve you.

OMG the planning system is definitely an issue in this country. I did try to wing it but had to demolish a small structure, retention was not approved. Their letters are insanely threatening, like you can go to jail or pay a fine in millions. But then another time I just did the planning permission in my own name, drawings and all and it was approved fairly quickly despite me not being an eng or arch. It depends on the town/city you are in and the planning department. I used to deal with planning in other European countries and Ireland just lacks technical supervision step, hence the dependence on neighbours notifying the council and on the front loading of the initial application process.

There also are a lot of things that could help a lot with reducing heat gain in the summer that planners are strongly opposed to, like eaves (which let in the sun in winter but not in the midday in summer), and I can't fathom why.

I would not be surprised if their system breaks somewhere between us clicking submit and some storage system. Their HR stuff is terrible.

I have so many mixed feelings about it. I mean there OSS software already, nobody prevents its use. It would have been better to just give OSS grants to SMEs who use OSS that originates in EU. But this is internet we are talking about, if I have an OSS repo and it contains contributions from Chinese or US citizens, is it still EU OSS? The core underlying issue is that nobody is incentivised to use EU “only”, if that changes the you will see the results. It does not even talk about devs like me who create such software.