Which country has an anti-complaining bias? I’m guessing it would be somewhere people are empowered to solve their problems. High purchasing power countries?
The US and UK used to both be kinda stiff upper lip countries in the 90s but now are full of complaining.
Does anyone have experience moving somewhere and noticing it was much less complainey?
I'm from the UK and currently living in Lithuania, and I'd say it somewhat has an anti-complaining bias.
In the UK people get upset and make a big deal about even the tiniest things. I read an article yesterday about someone who moved to a new area and got upset that a farmer kept their bins opposite their driveway (at the entrance to the farmer's land). They ended up in a court battle - which they lost - and had to sell the house to pay the legal fees.
Here in Lithuania there is an attitude of 'that's just the way things are, and there's nothing you can do'. So people don't bother complaining, as it's a waste of mental energy. I guess this comes from Soviet times, as with younger people it does appear to be changing.
I had a colleague from Lithuania who worked in the UK for a bit and was always impressed by the NHS here, mostly because she didn't have to bribe the receptionist with gifts and then the doctor with actual money, just to be seen.
I think selling hard drugs being criminal is OK. But the US should actually do something with the severe addicts rather than just tossing them in prison, or creating laws against that and leaving them on the streets.
Mandatory rehabilitation would do a lot. But rehabilitation would work much worse in an environment where relapse is easily attainable, anyone who has had any kind of addiction will tell you that.
I think part of the problem is people with no real experience pushing their narrative. Many honest drug addicts will tell you the actual solutions that will be around wholistic rehabilitation: withdrawals treatments, reintegration into society, no permanent records, removing stigma. And some would prefer to be funneled into that rather than go to rehabilitation by free will. Free will stands no chance against a heroin or meth addiction.
My family member works in a psychiatric clinic in Central Europe. They deal with severe addictions. They have proper rehabilitation programs with dedicated facilities where people with severe addictions that have led to mental disorders learn to reintegrate with life, attend job interviews, take care of themselves, and so on. I have spent my childhood around these people as family members of clinicians would attend various events (Christmas parties, weddings, funerals, other outings, etc) and I have not felt threatened by anyone in rehabilitation.
But yeah, what I see in West Coast cities is threatening. It’s a day and night difference between that and proper care for hard drug addicts though. West Coast is what ignoring the problem looks like. Central Europe is what solving the problem looks like. In both cases, hard drug sales are not legal.
And the solution is ridiculously simple. If someone is acting out in public due to drugs, police would be called. The police would deliver them to a psychiatric clinic in a municipal hospital. The clinic would put them in a ward and on a rehab program, start withdrawals management, set up a social worker for employment, and so on. It would take several months to rehabilitate someone and some people would go through the program a few times. Not all of it is easy and the taxpayer pays for the healthcare. But that’s the cost of solving this problem, and that does solve it.
Well, it’s common law, not civil law. So lawyers, juries, judges and so on all heavily influenced the Epic Games v Apple outcome, as they did in Epic Games v Google.
The next time someone sues Apple for this, there will be precedent. But then again, Epic Games v Apple might be used as precedent in Google’s appeal.
EDIT/correction: Apparently, only appellate and higher courts can set precedent for case law. So it might take a bit longer for Epic Games v Google to set a precedent, while Epic Games v Apple has already been dealt by a higher court. The next time someone sues Apple, there might not yet be precedent set by Epic Games v Google.
In theory. I’m not an expert on this. But this doesn’t happen as often in civil law countries I lived in (EU), where the law doesn’t apply before it’s written, and when it’s written, it applies universally.
Things will even out in the US over time, I think. There will be case law for what’s allowed and what is not for everyone.
>The next time someone sues Apple for this, there will be precedent.
Trial courts don't set precedent, only an appellate court or higher can set a precedent, and that precedent is only binding on lower courts.
Since trial courts are the lowest courts, their decisions are not binding on any future trial and as a general matter do not set any kind of precedent.
Appellate courts set binding precedent, but district courts routinely look to eachother for guidance on how to rule on questions where there is no circuit/SCOTUS ruling.
Similarly, a judge in one circuit may look to the decision of a different circuit court when their own circuit has yet to rule on an issue, even though a different circuit’s opinion does not bind them.
In this case, however, the issue was ultimately put before a jury which doesn’t produce the kind of written decision that other judges would look to when deciding similar cases.
I clearly stated “I’m not an expert on this” and publicly corrected my mistake to not mislead readers.
Don’t fulminate, my brother, see comment guidelines on HN for more info. There’s need to act like this and your comment doesn’t contribute anything to the discussion.
> There’s need to act like this and your comment doesn’t contribute anything to the discussion.
Does yours?
I mean that in earnest, not as a dig. You're posting legal analysis without even rudimentary legal knowledge, and I think that's worth noting and responding to.
It's also worth noting you only admitted you were not an expert once your initial post was debunked, and that in your corrigendum you manage somehow to add many additional substantive legal claims. Without any apparent additional legal knowledge.
If you did the same on a programming topic, there'd be an army of people ready to downvote you, because most of the wonderful folks here on HN are versed in programming, and could easily see through that. But this doesn't hold true for law, and you're in a position to mislead. Noting that contributes to the discussion by helping a reader discriminate signal from noise.
> It's also worth noting you only admitted you were not an expert once your initial post was debunked
No, that was in the original comment. I added only the paragraph prefixed with EDIT.
My friend, you are just picking a fight on the internet. You don’t actually know what the comment was and yet you say you do. Please do not.
Alternatively, please tell me how my comment is misleading now, if there truly exists an argument in your comment beyond an ad hominem. That would be more useful.
With respect, you seem to be the one struggling to let this one go. In two short comments you've accused me of: fulminating, not being constructive, posting against site rules, picking fights on the internet, posting ad hominem attacks, etc. All I've noted is that you're not legally trained, which you yourself admit.
My respectful advice is that if you're not legally trained, but wish to write legal analysis, (1) pause and consider how useful this actually is to others, and (2) if you must continue, preface (!) your statement with a disclaimer that you're not legally trained.
Lawyers are trained that with knowledge comes responsibility - people tend to rely on what lawyers say, often in unanticipated ways. Not only does this often lead people to go off half-cocked, but it can have legal consequences for the person giving the advice (there's such a thing as negligent advice). Generally these laws apply equally to lawyers and non-lawyers, and simply because you don't have any legal training doesn't mean you're not giving 'legal advice', it just makes your advice all the more dangerous. It seems reasonably unlikely you'd be sued for negligent advice for random comments online (not impossible!), but you should reflect on the ethics of confidently leading people on, from a position of relative legal ignorance.
I realise you may not be receptive to what I am saying to you - you appear to have become somewhat defensive and might be perceiving my words as further attacks - but I'm genuinely not here to diss you, and I'm absolutely not looking for a fight. Perhaps my initial comment was a little glib, but not knowing what precedent is and giving legal advice is rather like not knowing what a variable is but nonetheless giving confident programming advice. Generally best avoided.
Be mindful that in practice there is very little difference between civil and common law systems: the ceremonies appear different but the spirit is the same: past decisions heavily impact future decisions since that's the only way to keep things fair, society changes decisions in a softly evolving jurisprudence in both systems, juries are consulted but not all powerful since they can be driven by revenge sentiment etc.
Like you I was born and raised in civil law (France) and now have been living for 10 years in common law (Hong Kong), and the difference is almost invisible: Judges obey parliamentary decisions in both, whether you call that laws or constitutional amendment or even political pressure. They also ensure consistency of decision when needed but are ready to launch a little revolution if they feel society has changed (gay marriage in Hong Kong is in the air, for instance)
Yes, ultimately our morals, culture, and sense of justice gets enshrined in law. But I did feel a big difference between living in a common law country and a civil law one.
There was a sense in business circles in the latter that what is not legally a crime, one cannot be punished for. So there was a bit of a drive to exploit that for profit. If something becomes forbidden by law, it’s “verboten”. It cannot take place, no matter how ethical it might be.
It’s much less clear in common law countries, where you could be tried and be unable to defend yourself for immoral things. Or you could break the laws but have such a strong moral argument for it, it is possible to defend. So generally, people and business are more considerate of each other, less stone cold bureaucratic. But that invites ambiguity in the legal process, even if the ultimate forces shaping it are similar to civil law. And you can get different outcomes in similar cases, like Epic Games v Apple and Epic Games v Google. These cases started out very similarly.
In civil law countries, if something was prohibited by a code, then it would be penalized, there wouldn’t be much debate in the courts. I think this is why the EU keeps fining these large tech companies all the time, it’s like a non-event, whereas it’s much more difficult in the us.
That is what I observed. Of course, what you say is also true.
Games are always pirated if they are even a little bit popular. I work in the games industry, and games I worked on are always pirated, but the more popular they are, the more copies will be sold legitimately.
People make two choices when they pirate - moral, and economical. If economically they cannot afford the game, they weren't going to pay. If morally they are against paying for a game (like if the game company is associated with suicides, etc), they weren't going to pay. There are some people that will pay if piracy isn't available, but not that many.
Anyways, after the income goes around, and all the exec, upper management, and publisher salaries are paid, the piracy or lack of it probably makes about a $1 difference to my weekly earnings. I put a lot of artistic and creative effort, blood, sweat, and tears into it. If it costs me $1 to make people enjoy it, so be it.
In the AAA games industry, piracy is a thing. People talk about it. And most people have only very mild things to say about it, except for execs. Execs make a disproportionate amount of money off games for what they do, and they do kinda have a lot of time to sit on their hands sometimes, so they can fight these piracy battles, die on these piracy hills.
My example was a illustrate a point. It could be a game or a productivity software, movies, music anything.
You can find any reason to steal, economical, hunger etc the point I making is that the motivation to make a copy does not make it legal.
Do we tolerate some form of theft for moral or other reasons ? Yes sure. But because I, as an individual, have my own reasons not to pay for something and decide to make a copy of it, that does not transforms my action to a perfectly legal thing.
Maybe we can’t do anything about software being copied but that doesn’t magically make laws and IP disappear with it and makes copying software legal ?
I was answering to the comment « nothing is taken ». Because the content is the result of an effort from other people being paid, the content has value. The fact that we can make infinite copies of it makes a single copy worthless because it’s not being burnt into a piece of plastic ?
There are moral principles, and legal principles. Legally, you are right. But the moral perception of piracy is shifting, and broadly speaking, this entire debate is in the moral/philosophical realm.
Legal systems ultimately enshrine the human morality in law. Common law - through case law, civil law - by committees that the legislators consult, religious law - by morality described in legal texts. We're not talking about any of it though. We are talking about day-to-day things, like what does it mean to steal, what kind of consequences it has, are these consequences real or supposed, and other such things.
Law is generally blind to externalities of an action. An action itself is legal, illegal, or undefined in law. We're not in this domain if we talk about the consequences of piracy or how someone might feel about it. We are having a conversation on morals.
Shifting morals will eventually shift the law, of course.
I completely agree with you.
It’s shifting but we cannot consider it as already shifted.
Some comments are going into this direction of the whole debate behind us and laws not applying anymore. Our feeling about it has changed but my country can still sue me if I make a copy without respecting the terms of the seller.
Maybe tomorrow a global business model will emerge and the whole notion of possession will kind of disappear because everything will be a subscription.
Or maybe we will pay a flat fee to whatever organization and use anything as much as we want and copies will be worthless because they won’t be sold individually anymore
The jailbreak patches are for the walled garden, too. Security is not a concern for those who use jailbreaks. They want to get their devices in the insecure state and go to lengths to do it.
It's similar to how OpenAI uses "safety" to make sure their LLMs don't get them in hot water, and PlayStation uses "safety" to make sure their consoles do not become associated with piracy and make publishers think twice.
This kind of "safety" is about business interests. :) Some companies can say it openly that they wish to protect their business, as fundamentally there is nothing wrong with that. Others can't as that will bode poorly for their monopoly status and they will suffer (overdue) legal repercussions. So it becomes "safety".
Notice how companies that argue against user freedom for "safety" are always in circumstances where bringing up business interests behind "safety" won't bode well.
I was not mislead by that comment. It was clear that most people have their messages accessible to Apple, which is what the article also talks about - how privacy of "blue bubble" messages is at the center of this.
There are ways to opt out. But that's for the margin of people who worry about these things. So what that comment said is very relevant and accurate.
Wouldn’t this cause more pollution? Lower fuel efficiency, increased congestion, more half-clutch inching, more stopping, more time spent by each vehicle on each road…
…At least assuming the number and routes of travels stay constant.
I used to drive a 2010 Diesel VW Golf, about 55kW, in Central Europe. It would take 4l/100km at 70kph and closer to 11l/100km when maneuvering slowly. 2.75x pollution diff per km in these scenarios.
Sound is important, but cars also pollute the air.
- people travel half as many miles per day than the US [3]
Unlike most cities, especially in the US but also elsewhere in Europe, other forms of transportation are actually dependable and more convenient alternatives to driving. Making driving less convenient will actually entice mode shift in Amsterdam, rather than simply be a nuisance.
I don't think the three points you made are a consequence of speed limits or making cars inconvenient. They are a consequence of city planning and making public transit and bicycle transit convenient.
I think cars are in quite inelastic demand for many people who use them in Amsterdam. There are people with cardiovascular conditions, people who need to transport others, carry heavy items, and so on.
Incentivizing works better than punishing generally.
Why do US banks do that? I’ve never had a UK or EU bank call me to verify a transaction.
Do you have the IdentityCheck/SecureCode/3-D Secure stuff (2FA for online transactions and at certain terminals)? Are these calls for transactions without chip + PIN?
I’ve had some transactions declined while travelling but maybe about 1/1000, and still no call, and nothing the bank support could do to allow them if I called. I’d just have to use a different bank with a vendor. It’s very much a “computer says no” situation then. Otherwise, the payment just goes through in the 99.9% of all cases.
But the banks in central EU, the Nordics, and the UK don’t seem to monitor the transactions I make while travelling to the point that there would be an actual person involved (calling me or reaching out in some other way).
I’m mostly curious about what problem these bank calls are solving. Is it for credit card fraud? In that case, I wonder why this seems to not be a practice in Europe. Is it because we do chip & PIN in physical payments, and 2FA for online/some kiosks?
> I’ve never had a UK or EU bank call me to verify a transaction
That probably just means that you never made transactions that crossed the banks' suspicion threshold. Which might be quite high if the bank is confident that it won't be on the hook for credential abuse and does not care if their customers lose money to identify theft. That confirmation call would be an indication of good service, not of bad service.
I'm not saying that calls would be preferable to better authentication schemes like chip+pin (in skimming is very much a thing though), calls are just another second factor after all. And not even a particularly safe one. But defense should be layered and that layer stack should absolutely contain a form of confirmation call on some level if you are a bank.
The US and UK used to both be kinda stiff upper lip countries in the 90s but now are full of complaining.
Does anyone have experience moving somewhere and noticing it was much less complainey?