Denixen

It is not trivial, the existence of you job makes that self-evident. If it was trivial companies wouldn't need a DPO, would they? I would love to see you walk up to your employer and tell them that your job is trivial and anyone can do it...

You might not see this yourself, but the fact that even a small company needs a DPO in order to interpret data protection regulation IS the problem! But I am sure you are not complaining... It needs to be simplified so a small company can be GDPR compliant without requiring a DPO.

This problem is recognized in the report from the EU commission linked in the article, which is why they are acting.

The fact that small startups cannot even take off because they cannot afford to hiring the bureaucrats required to interpret and be compliant with regulation is a massive problem and one of the reasons Europe's economy is stagnating. It is not about exploiting personal data, it is about the cost of bureaucracy killing European startups in their infancy.

They intend to simplify compliance, not axe the law. And this is needed if Europe wants to make itself independent of USA and China on the tech front.

You who are against this, have you ever had to deal with GDPR? It is a nightmare and I am certain American big tech is secretly celebrating it, because it kills any European startup alternatives, because they cannot afford to employ enough people to be compliant with the law and if they try to do it with existing personnel they don't have enough time left over to actually run their business.

If you have ever complained that there aren't enough European alternatives, GDPR and other legislation is the reason why. USA shoots itself in the foot with tariffs and we Europeans shoot ourselves in the foot with regulations. I am just really glad the EU commission has realized this and are fixing it.

I don't really understand much about this, but it sounds very exciting! I would love for Europe to start making a lot more advanced high performance chips. I know there are a few foundries, but they seem low key and only making basic chips. Not that I know much about chip designs and manufacturing...

Where did you get these numbers? I cannot find any sources to support them. Active personnel of mentioned countries is half to 2/3 of mentioned numbers. And this tells us nothing about these countries ability to produce new personnel.

Also, that's all on paper. When UK and France discuss a 'coalition of the willing' to act as peace keepers in Ukraine they are able to scrape together no more than a few tens of thousands, even though it is believed that 100-200K is required to be a deterring force.

We are talking about a force of several hundreds of thousands to be trained, armed and moved to a front to fight within a few months or at least within a year, in addition to already existing forces, a large part of which are unavailable to train new recruits because they are deployed.

I don't know that it is quite that bad, I think people will surprise you. Europeans stuck with Ukraine even though it costs and while some are turning their back they are a minority and they consider Ukraine none of the their business.

I think when another NATO or EU country is affected Europeans will see it very differently. It is an existential threat then. Russia wants to paint Europe as decadent and lazy, but Europeans stand firm when it really matters. We've proven that with Ukraine.

The bigger problem for Europe is to produce armed forces in the hundreds of thousands within the next few years. Making the hardware and training the soldiers in that small off a time will be difficult.

As for Americans... I don't really know where we have them. I do think there is a non-negligible chance they will be in a civil war by the end of the decade or the start of the next.

Let's just imagine what it would look like if Europe mobilized and armed 160,000 soldiers. The fact that it sees undoable for most tells us how badly situated we are...

Or rather Michelle Obama running for her first term. She is ridiculously popular in polls amongst both democrats and independents. The only downside about her is the fact that she doesn't want the job, which really just makes her perfect for the job (:

The way I think about is that people like Stubb are OUR assholes and they are useful to keep other's assholes from hurting us.

We just have keep him and his likes faced outwards, not inwards 😅

Also, I think all politicians disappoint sooner or later, let's just hope they do netto more good in the end :/