This is too little and too late, but you must give them credit for having the introspection ability to even go this far. Yes, the bar for microsoft is so low as to be handicap-accessible.
> it has been our mission to forever protect our families from any financial misfortune. We hoped we could help the world make time for what matters along the way, but ultimately money comes first.
There's nothing wrong with selling out and getting rich. There's no need to lie about it.
Warms my heart to learn their families will finally be able to afford nutritious meals, put clothes on their backs and maybe even afford a bike to go to school rather than walking 2h everyday. We need more uplifting stories like this one. Thank you salesforce.
Jokes aside though, many (most?) acquihires are for very little $. Often just founders not being able to continue and just wanting an honorable exit + guaranteed jobs for their teams.
I've been inside a couple of these and the founders always do just fine. Rest and vest at the acquiring company for a couple years, earn millions in stock, found another company or go work for OpenAI as an exec.
Rank and file employees who got sub-standard pay for years at Startup get the same comp they would have got coming in the front door at BigCo. It's better than being fired I guess, but it's not some humble, charitable act by the founders. They can always wait a couple years and ride the ride again if they want.
A valuable skill as entrepreneurs, is to know when to stop and move on. Recognizing what you built may not be viable financially long term or is no longer a fit for the market and then making adjustments is what good entrepreneurs do. Sometimes it means shutting shop, while other times it means getting acquired and refocusing on the path forward.
This is one of those things that sounds so good with a quick read, but for every example you give me of a smart entrepreneur who knew when to pull the plug I can gave you a gritty, determined one who stayed focus on the vision and built something successful. In this case did they ever have market fit or financial viablilty?
People keep saying this and it a profound misunderstanding of how the world works.
Nobody likes USA. Nor is that required. It is irrelevant. International politics do not run on emotions. As long as USA is capable of enforcing its will, USA's view will be the one that matters. You may dislike it, but that is what it is.
You don't need to, I have worked with multiple clients that faced this very option.
And yes, the choice was still to do business with US in every case, but I can tell you 100% it was far from a crystal clear easy decision and that the camel is breaking.
It would work until algorithms were adjusted to it, which would happen as soon as significant number of people started doing it. Colors are defeated by desaturating, which is no issue since most face recognition algos run on greyscale data anyways. Blotches of bright and dark are defeated, for example, by a high-pass filter (eg: edge detection) on the brightness data to filter out large blotches but keep small detail
I understand that claim. I will not even argue against it. But, as you pointed out - there are two options only, so they must be evaluated against each other. Ds would need to go quite a bit further in the direction of being fiscally conservative to justify overlooking their other issues (in the eyes of R voters) in order to capture significant voter counts from the R side.
"How tasty would the beer need to be to justify the burned rancid steak, to make this diner better than the other one?" -- basically
Historically, eventually the people realize that the state is doing too little to protect them from crime. Usually, at that point in time, a posse is formed. Having images of repeatedly-encountered perps can be very useful to a posse.
I grew up near there. Agree 100%: that man needed removal from society, and the local law enforcement and judge weren't going to do that. (Rape of a 13yo, forced marriage of same, years of massive drug running, carrying a weapon openly as a felon into bars where no non-LEO can legally carry... He was more evil than you imagined before clicking on that link.)
The town did all they could for his poor widow, and she kept quiet about whatever she might have seen...
And we now again live in a time where such things are done and go un (or under) punished. This is why I expect more of that. I do not celebrate it, but I expect it.
Hungary can leave the EU if it wants. Article 50 exists for this.
If it wants to stay in the EU it has to adhere to the bloc rules. It is not forced to stay in the EU (and, in fact, getting rid of Orban would not be such a bad idea). Hungexit when?
Yes, they were free to leave. No one stopped them from leaving the free trade area and having the exact same status as any other random country in the world. Or did you mean that Uk wanted to leave EU but keep all the good benefits? Like canceling Netflix and bitching about not being able to watch the latest series.
sure. It did just take 3 simple elections over many years, with open antagonizing, fearmongering and interference by the EU until they accepted defeat.
After the referendum, the EU and Bremainers made the 2 following nation-wide elections into single-issue elections. And they burned themselves justifiably from it.
You know that is the problem with the pro EU camp, they tout their opposition as science deniers and worse, yet conveniently pretend hard numbers (ie. election results) don't exist or didn't happen - if it hurts their feelings. It's just intellectual dishonesty through and through.
The EU made UK elections into single-issue ones? Obviously that didn't happen.
I think you're just projecting, to be honest. The "leave the EU" side won; unexpectedly, with no clear vision of what that involved. And then the UK's internal inability to agree resulted in a tumultuous period of internal politics, the result of which is pretty much the outcome we'd've all expected.
>If it wants to stay in the EU it has to adhere to the bloc rules.
What are you supposed to do when the bloc rules imposed upon you now, are not the ones that were agreed upon when you joined? Imagine your landlord or employer changes your contract without your consent and just tells you to walk if you don't like it. It wouldn't be legal anyway, but it would also be a dick move. I'm old enough to see how the EU of today is not the same it was just 20 years ago.
@dosinga False. All those examples you gave, require bilateral agreement to be legal. At least in Europe. You can't unilaterally change a contract for both parties.
Employers and landlords do that sort of thing all the time. Rent goes up, job descriptions change, return to office is suddenly required. And yeah, you can get a different job or a different home if you don't like it.
> What are you supposed to do when the bloc rules imposed upon you now, are not the ones that were agreed upon when you joined?
Those rules are not conjured from thin air. They are proposed either by EU commission or EU council, and the national governments have direct participation on both, including veto powers.
And ultimately, a country can article 50 if the rules are unacceptable.
> Imagine your landlord or employer changes your contract without your consent and just tells you to walk if you don't like it.
Depending on the country where you live there are regulations, but employers in particular do that all the time.
> I'm old enough to see how the EU of today is not the same it was just 20 years ago.
States joining the EU agree to transfer some of their competences to the EU, in exchange for the benefits that being a member brings. They participate democratically in the EU decisions like every other member state. They even have veto powers in some cases. If they feel that it isn’t worth it anymore, they are free to leave.
That obviously makes no sense. A club isn’t a sovereign entity just because it has rules. Hungary is free to leave the EU and set a border policy that conflict with EU law if it wishes - but if it wants to remain part of that organisation, particularly one that has open borders thorough The Schengen area, then of course it needs to follow the rules.
And Poland and Italy and the Netherlands and Luxembourg etc. are all free to voice their opinion as being members of the club.
The EU is walking on thin ice: it doesn't exist since very long (at least not in that form) and the EUR is a very young currency that is already in serious trouble, with most members of the eurozone deeply indebted (and one that already partially defaulted on its public debt, Greece).
The hubris of people who think the EU can bully every single country into submission is insane. Many people aren't happy at all with what's going on in the EU. The EU screwed big times on nuclear (and recently acknowledged they fucked up on nuclear), became dependent on Russia for cheap energy (the US warned them this had potential to SNAFU and SNAFU it did) and now has one of the highest energy price in the world. Making it extremely hard for EU industries to compete with the rest of the world.
There are also many people in the EU who believe that massively importing people from Africa and poor middle-eastern countries (I'm not saying all middle eastern countries are poor: I'm saying middle-eastern countries migration into the EU is mostly from poor middle-eastern countries) won't raise the living standard of the EU.
The entire "we decide which size cucumbers should have, we decide to break encryption to protect the kids, we decide to flood the continent with migrants, etc. and you STFU or you can get out" is not an acceptable posture.
Also please let me laugh at the Schengen borders area: we saw how quickly those borders were closed during several occasion, including Covid. But lastly there have been police controls filtrating cars at the borders in Germany: got controlled twice last summer in Germany. So much for the free movement of people.
My bet is the EUR is going to die a quick death (one of the most stupid currency every invented: cannot work with different fiscal laws and different productivity in the various eurozone countries). And my second bet is that this is going to put a lot of pressure on the entire EU thing.
The EU is not doing well. The US and China's GDPs grew like crazy since the 2008 financial crisis while inflation-adjusted the EU barely moved.
At some point people should do well to wonder if the EU construct ain't the root cause of the problem.
No, EU is not the root of the problem, whatever the problem is. For example, countries are stronger, more resilient and business is more effective together than everyone trying to do it alone. And of course the EU is not perfect and there is room for improvement.
In my experience, one concrete problem is that so many people misunderstand or are unaware of basic things about the EU and why EU even exists. With the former I mean things like how the EU Parliament is put together, the relation of the EU Commission to the EU Parliament, how is the President of the EU Commission chosen (no, it's not "undemocratic"), what does Schengen mean, what is the Euro and WHY does it exist, why was there legislation which mentioned the curvature of cucumbers, and so on.
As there is no big picture, or it is rejected due to ideological reasons, the lack of knowledge and misunderstandings then manifest as fear of the unknown (=the EU). At this point, these people become against everything in EU: whatever new things are proposed from the EU side, it is somehow "lousy", "bad", "failing", "won't work anyway", and so forth. Any EU company has "bottom-barrel products" and "can't succeed", euro cannot work between countries, Europe is "weak" and "gay" and "collapsing".
Also, some people look at an individual member state and confuse it with the whole EU. For example, the nuclear power stance of Germany is seen as an EU-mandated position and then the whole EU is seen to be against nuclear power. This can also work in reverse: Poland sends generators to Ukraine, well done Poland and why is the weak and failing EU doing nothing (except the generators were from RescEU stores, and one such store was located in Poland, so EU was sending them).
When people understand what the EU is and know the basics, of course they might still disagree with things, that's normal, but at least the arguments are more factual.
EU didn't fight UK. UK fought EU to not lose their exorbitantly privileged status and benefits while leaving the club itself. They wanted to have their cake and eat it too. When they realized and decided that they will get none of the benefits, the finalization of the exit took merely weeks. EU is a huge privilege / opportunity for smaller countries. EU-6 doesn't need the other ones to be the second biggest market. If Hungarians want out, it can be done by the end of 2026 and you can enjoy being a proper vassal to neo-Soviets by 2027.
>EU-6 doesn't need the other ones to be the second biggest market.
That's where you're wrong. Where would German industry be today without the labor, suppliers, export market and cheap energy imports from the other non-EU-6 members? Especially after they denuclearized and derussified their energy sector and nuked their birthrates, and so rely on importing energy and workers from everyone to stay afloat. You can't claim you don't need them while you're importing their energy, labor, resources, doctors, etc. You can't treat your country like an economic zone, while ignoring all the economic transactions.
Germany had its biggest boom when there was no Schengen agreement. Most of the German labor came from Turkey, not from the smaller and less developed EU countries. Its immigration policy was targetted and more selective even. Germany doesn't import much energy from less developed EU countries either: https://www.iea.org/countries/germany/energy-mix#where-does-... most of them come from EU-6 and UK which makes sense since those countries have technology and resources to produce extra capacity. It's the same deal with France with its former and current colonies. They truly do not need to be in a union with the less developed countries to get those benefits. Same for Canada, Canada doesn't need to enter a union with a less developed country to get lots of immigration.
I'm not saying that Germany (or other EU-6) doesn't need immigration. I'm an immigrant in Germany and I do support it for qualified and even non-qualified jobs. However, it is not a clear cut benefit to be in a union with emigrant source countries either.
The current setup of EU is a toxic relationship for both sides though, it is a benevolent colonization setup. Allowing smaller post-Soviet countries without significantly investing and improving their economies and industries and their political stability before ascension, ended up very badly for the other ones. EU-6 siphoned out all the labor, younger population and educated classes of post-Soviet countries, so now their populations are mostly old, resented people, the biggest businesses owned by EU-6 for only cheap labor. Those populations are really susceptible to authoritarian overtakes and the authoritarian governments like Hungary and Slovakia of today and Poland of past can block significant decisions with the veto right.
EU is very beneficial for smaller countries however at a significant cost for both sides in a bad way. It worked best when the candidate / new member nation was already a significantly developed and industrialized part of Soviet Union like Baltics or Poland (for the most part, they are not 100% clear yet).
>Germany had its biggest boom when there was no Schengen agreement.
I'm talking about the state of the German economy of today, how it's deeply tied to non-Eu-6 countries in a big way. Their past economic success of a lone wolf, is irrelevant today when they're struggling. Different times. China wasn't even on the radar as a competitor back then and German cars were all the rave worldwide back then. Times have changed.
> Its immigration policy was targetted and more selective even.
So why doesn't it want to be as selective anymore today? You know, like back their economic boom days you mentioned before.
>They truly do not need to be in a union with the less developed countries to get those benefits.
Then what's the point of the EU if they can get everything they need without a union? Why doesn't Germany and France just leave the EU and take their money with them?
Because you only focus on the argument of the German EU integration being all about importing cheap labor with your argument, but my argument is beyond that. For example, countless suppliers to Germany economy are in Poland, Romania, Slovakia, etc. And such trade and IP collaboration NEEDS an union. Same for defence parts for French companies that are now made in post-communist countries.
>The current setup of EU is a toxic relationship for both sides though, it is a benevolent colonization setup.
It wasn't always like that though. Only in the last 10 or so years did the EU start to be authoritarian towards member states.
>EU-6 siphoned out all the labor, younger population and educated classes of post-Soviet countries
True, but guess what, for the first time ever, more post-Communist EU migrants are now leaving Germany and returning home, than the number migrating to Germany from post-Communist members. Reasons are many, but it seems like the days of Germany (and others) being the lands of milk and honey are over.
>Those populations are really susceptible to authoritarian overtakes
And German population ISN'T?! They just prefer a different flavor of authoritarianism, one with nicer PR, where the jackboots are eco friendly, as they take you to court for "hateful" Tweets, stuff that doesn't happen in the post-Communist states.
>authoritarian governments like Hungary and Slovakia of today and Poland
Why are they considered authoritarian? Because they do what their voters want and not what the EU wants?
>can block significant decisions with the veto right.
Good? Shouldn't nations be able to have a say themselves from EU decisions that might negatively impact them?
I didn't hear many people calling the Austrian regime autocratic for constantly vetoing Romania and Bulgaria's Schengen memberships, despite those countries having met the criterias long before.
So the "autocratic" label keeps being applied very inconsistently across the EU. Dare I say hypocritical.
The EU will fight you? If Texas tried to secede from the US, the government would send in the military. The EU "fought" them by not giving them a sweetheart trade deal on their way out the door?
It was super easy for UK to leave EU? No one tried to stop them. The ”hard” part was that they wanted to keep some benefits of the membership after canceling the membership.
Of course leaving the EU is hard. Membership has a significant effect on regulation and governance. The fact that something is hard also doesn’t mean you aren’t free to do it.
It being “fought” or countries being “penalised” is a matter of opinion but not one I share.
That is incorrect. Leaving EU is super easy. Leaving written accords with USA is hard, and that's what UK tried to pull off. Since the oligarchs pushing for EU exit to hide their black money were dumb, they forgot they have an agreement with USA making a UK-Ireland border transparent. And they basically spent 4 years trying to either tear down a USA deal or EU law, without having any leverage for either, since they are dumb. Since there no such things in other EU countries, their leave can happen much faster.
> The objective is to enable innovative companies to operate under a single, harmonised set of EU-wide rules, covering relevant aspects of corporate, insolvency, labour and tax law.
A good idea in theory
> legal framework provides faster (within 48 hours), cheaper (maximum EUR 100) and fully digital company registration, simplified procedures throughout the company life cycle
Did not expect this
.
If they deliver, this might actually make startups in europe a bit more common
> If they deliver, this might actually make startups in europe a bit more common
Just in time for AI to make startups no longer possible for labor capital to undertake as financial capital alone (plus the hyperscalers) take the reigns.
Once there's a $1M Claude Code button to implement an entire business, it's over. Engineeers and business folks and the startup hustle are over.
I was hoping open source would save us, but it's not keeping pace with the leading edge of foundation models. Plus the hyperscalers own all of the infrastructure to run and scale anyhow. Piddly RTX cards are nothing in the face of this.
This is tech (and humanity's) final "embrace, extend, extinguish".
Nah. Very few start-ups succeed or fail because of speed of writing code, or lack thereof. And there is huge opportunity in areas where LLMs are barely helpful at all: for example new low-cost guided missiles (disruptive innovation in military affairs).
Brick and mortar stores, as well as service oriented businesses do exist and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Tech is not the entirety of business.
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