From a sovereignty perspective, does a launch from continental Europe actually matter when Arianespace/CNES/ESA has been launching from France for decades?
But French Guiana is a geographically distant ex-colony, so there will always be a higher probability of future inaccessibility. Same applies to New Caledonia, Martinique, etc.
Although you're right about the history of French Guiana, using that term to put on the same level as New Caledonia is nonsense. (Same goes for Martinique.)
I wasn’t talking about the historical aspect. Same applies = the same risk also exists due to geopolitics and distance. Heck, didn’t New Caledonia see a wave of protests that were crushed in the past year or two?
> Heck, didn’t New Caledonia see a wave of protests that were crushed in the past year or two?
Yes, that's why the risk is NOT the same between French Guiana and New Caledonia. Both of them are oversea territories far from the mainland with a colonial past, but their current relationship with the mainland is very different.
Around a quarter of the population of New Caledonia has been calling for independence for decades at this point, with 3 referendum organised during the last 10 years to resolve this issue. Only half of the population was able to vote to the referendums (and some local elections, like Congress of NC), due to local rules than are about to change–this, incidentally, is the cause of the protests you are talking about. On the geopolitical side of things, the independentists are probably propped up by Azerbaijan (https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/geopolitique-n...) and maybe China (https://www.lefigaro.fr/international/ambitions-geostrategiq...).
None of this holds for French Guiana. The risk between these territories is not the same. At all. Putting them on the same level by reducing them to their status as former colonies is nonsense.
Thanks for explaining. But I am not sure how this contradicts my point?
Sure, placing launch infrastructure in French Guiana is probably less risky than setting up shop in New Caledonia. Clearly, the risk profile is not the same for all of Overseas France.
My point is that if the decision is between mainland and Overseas France, the latter introduces elevated risk in the long term in general. French Guiana could be fine today, but it is not impossible that the next few years could see the rise of a populist pro-independence movement that would eventually impact launch infrastructure (similar to how it did for the USSR).
I do not think so, but anyway, it is definitely not a proof that we are further decoupling ourselves from the US, which is the claim made in the root comment. France has launched rockets from France for decades. Being an ocean away does not make Kourou reliant on the US.
I think the opposite because in this specific case we have the US which has the world's strongest navy, and the strongest navy by far in the Atlantic.
My opinion is that there is an implied reliance on the US "allowing" Europe to ship the rockets to Kourou and launch them there.
If our relations ever completely sour, the US might, for example, take over the shipping vessels going to Kourou, kinda like Europe takes over Russian shadow fleet vessels.
Now all of a sudden Europe has no means of launching rockets, except now it can launch to polar orbits. It might seem a stretch, but there is a non-zero chance that could happen, therefore it is better to have an alternative.
“Vulnerable to the US” can mean so many things that it practically loses all meaning. Even with a launchpad in continental Europe, they have many ways to interfere with this project, from disrupting the supply chain to carpet bombing the launch site.
A ship crossing the ocean is much more vulnerable than a launch site with sophisticated air defences.
The US can also decide to “free” and “bring democracy” to the French Guiana because the rich oil deposits of its continental shelf won’t free themselves.
The point is that a slow ship crossing the ocean with hard to replace is very vulnerable in transit.
The sovereignty perspective here is the perspective of the sovereignty of the states that make up Europe not the sovereignty of the entity of the EU/Europe.
Though not every sovereign state has an army, see Iceland, Costa Rica, theoretically Japan, etc.
If they are strictly increasing our already unsustainable emissions level, yes. Eg. I am very much in favour of replacing coal and gas power stations with nuclear power stations, banning cars from city centres, etc.
International companies and institutions parking their money in Switzerland genuinely have as much to do with Europe as Russian Oligarchs in London have with the United Kingdom. The country's always been a financial haven for oligarchs, it doesn't tell you much about the rest of the continent.
Infantino who seems to oscillate between Qatar and Switzerland I assume has a rather strenuous connection to the rest of Europe
No need to wait for the courts’ opinions: controllers must keep the data for a limited amount of time (which can be something like “3 years after the last connection”) under GDPR article 5(1)e.
"kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed"
Keeping "account X purchased game Y" forever is necessary for the purpose of tracking ownership.
Based on how big companies typically behave, I assume that they are storing a metric buttload of other data on their users, which is not necessary for that purpose, and which they aren't inclined to separate out.
This is just like the cookie popup nonsense. You don't have to ask for permission to store necessary cookies. Cookie popups are ubiquitous because sites would rather bother every single visitor so that they can store unnecessary cookies.
> Personal data shall be: kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed. (..)
Note that this does not say "it must be stored for a limited amount of time" - it says "no longer than necessary".
Your basic account data (such as username and password, or an email for password recovery) is still necessary to log in to the platform and make use of your purchases. As long as there is no clear indication that the user will never log in again (such as due to death, or because they explicitly deleted their account), it would be reasonable to keep it around.
On the other hand, it may make sense to delete some data. For example, it may make sense to store your full name and address info to make checkout more convenient. If a user hasn't bought stuff in a while, it makes sense to delete it and have them re-enter it in the future.
There might be a bit of a gray space for things like game achievements (especially when there's a public profile) or savefile backups, but reading it as "you MUST delete all digital purchases because GDPR" is just not true.
I'd consider keeping the other personal data to be still easily justifiable, as you might want to support various account recovery options. And the odds that a user forgot their password only increases for old accounts.
5(1)c seems far more relevant than e. “Data minimization” is what’s relevant here. And the article is sufficiently vague that the onus is on companies to decide what is absolutely minimal - that includes, implicitly, removing inactive accounts. Unless the courts have made a judgement to the contrary.
There is no copyright assignment on wikipedia. You are required to license your work under CC-BY-SA 4.0, so the WMF can distribute it, and other editors can reuse and modify it.
> EU cannot legislate on national security matters
Sure. Legally, makes sense. Practically, if you want to do all those things the legislation purports to be doing for human rights, you just have to get the right general or spy or police chief on your side. That makes the whole scheme a bit of a boondoggle. Lots of friction. Remarkably little tangible benefit.
> Sure. Legally, makes sense. Practically, if you want to do all those things...
If you had just owned up to how you were mistaken about EU legislative limits - confidently stated - I probably would have taken everything else in your initial comment at face value.
Your doubling down into unfalsifiable territory has me thinking your arguments are feelings-based with post-facto justifications.
> how you were mistaken about EU legislative limits
I’m not making any legal arguments. The fact that the EU can’t legislate on those issues doesn’t change that its AI Act has those loopholes.
> unfalsifiable territory
No, I’m not. If the AI Act constrained any actual risks, that would falsify my assertion. I’m saying it in practice doesn’t. Those capabilities are still being built, just not in Europe. And they’ll still be sold to Europe, just to its governments to use however they want, not to its people.
The EU doesn’t have the power to write AI legislation for human rights purposes. It does have the power to throw gum into its AI industry’s works. It did what it could. Which is very little of the former (by constraining B2C and B2B, sort of). It did a lot of the latter.
Congress can’t do a lot of things. Passing something stupid and then complaining that the reason it isn’t competently written is because of Constitutional limits doesn’t absolve the stupid bill.
I’m not an expert on EU law or AI. But I do make capital-allocation decisions around this stuff, and I know enough to know that as currently configured the only main AI business to do in the EU is in selling it things that kill or surveil.
I read their post in the way they intended. Regardless of whether they can, the fact that they fail to cover all the bases makes the legislation almost useless.
The same thing happens on the 777 and 787: if too much opposite force is applied on both yokes, they lose their linkage and are averaged. There is no warning or priority button, unlike on Airbus planes.
Older Boeing planes also have a mechanism to unlink the controls if too much opposite force is applied. The left yoke would control the left side of the plane, the right yoke would control the right side.
I stand corrected. But suffice to say it’s not an appropriate input when you lose airspeed at 35,000 ft.
I read the Admiral Cloudberg article again and saw that it was procedure for other scenarios as well.
It seem like the normal mode (protected flight envelope) is just encouraging bad habits? “Just go full stick back and hold it, don’t worry the computer won’t let you stall the plane…most of the time”
> It seem like the normal mode (protected flight envelope) is just encouraging bad habits?
Maybe, but at the same time it helps avoiding crashes like Sriwijaya 182 or Flydubai 981. Airbus has shown that planes with fly-by-wire and any kind of flight envelope protection (A320 and newer, A220, B777 and 787, etc.) experience less fatal accidents and less hull losses than planes with traditional controls (A300, A310, B737, etc.), even today: https://accidentstats.airbus.com/fatal-accidents/
Unfortunately, these safety improvements mean that we only hear about cases where automation fail to help, like in the case of AF447, but not cases where it prevented an accident.
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