That was equally true for previous generations, and all those generations had exceptions -- kids that were excited about it, despite the other kids not being interested. (I figure the majority of Slashdot may have been such exceptions.)
Do we have reason to suspect the current generation is a unique special case, the one generation where somehow all of them make an effort to never learn about computers?
I bet some of them are like some of us, a 2026 minority that we would have recognized 40 years ago.
No action was taken.
Lots of actions were taken. This just happens to be the first that had a meaningful outcome within the legal framework. The ACM looked at this, the government contracts committee looked at this, it was subject to a legal battle in the courts, and ultimately a mix of this allowed the BTI to claim jurisdiction at which point they could issue a legal recommendation which the government jumped on basically instantly.
if they are willing to end the contract for this service early
The contract with Solvinity would have ended naturally in a couple of week since it was due to expire on the 6th of August. Moving the contract to another provider was one of the things that was investigated by the government and the estimated duration for this was over a year worth of effort - unable to be done in the timeframe required. The government renewed the contract for 2 years on that basis. This was subject to a court case where citizens sued the government for renewing the contract, but the contract was lawful and reasoning behind it valid.
It's the government services. They have the power over you to begin with. Have another think about this and tell us why you think Peter Thiel should be in any way involved as a gatekeeper between you and your government (while of course skimming your tax dollars from the top).
Wait... are you Peter Thiel? Because that's the only reason I could think for your post.
And how did they become a "major player" in just five years since they were founded?
You may recognise them under their previous name: IBM.
They were a major player from the day they existed. They birthed onto the New York Stock exchange as a privileged nepobaby with a birthday present of 75% of the Fortune 100 business as "existing" customers, an 90000 IBM employees..
Looks like there is a review process in place. And it caught this move in time.
Not quite. This was more of an intervention. In fact the discussions over the past 6 months have largely been focused on figuring out how to actually block the sale and on what grounds. The final decision may even be questionable. Initially the competition authority wanted to intervene and couldn't. The lower house attempted and failed. There was an attempt to move the contract but time didn't allow so the contract was extended for a short period. That kicked off a legal fight where the courts also ruled that despite how bad of an idea this was there wasn't really anything they could do to stop it.
The final deciding factor came from the BTI - who investigates business dealings with critical infrastructure providers. Solvinity wasn't considered one since all they had was a contract to provide services, but it wasn't really until that contract was extended due to the complexity of moving at short notice that someone convinced them they have jurisdiction to investigate, and now they've issued a legal opinion that caused the government to intervene on national security grounds.
There was no real process in this review. It was more of an "oh FAAAARK how can we stop this?" process.
To be clear there is a legal mandate but that is only to maintain the data within the country. The issue of potential foreign ownership didn't really come into the existing law in any clearly defined way.
Whatever benefit the injection of outside capital into the economy would have been. Someone clearly decided the juice wasn't worth the squeeze, as is their right.
Foreign takeovers don't inject any capital into the economy, they take capital out of the economy by definition. The GDP attributed to Solvinity's operations would be accounted for by a company based in New York.
That's terrifying.
To be clear, you think it's less terrifying to have a private for profit company gatekeep your connection to government's digitial services?
Is that a serious question? Even in the late '70s when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the kids were dealing with the technology the parents didn't understand. While that is starting to be inverted (GenX and Millennials seemed to be peak tech-able), many parents still rely on the kids for that sort of thing.
They don't have two control applications. They have one control application and one fucking horrendous poorly programmed marketing app that serves only to force users to register for an nvidia account.
One is a control panel. The other seemingly exists to offer me a "Marvel Rivals Geforce Reward" whatever the fuck that is.
If anyone every programs a tool which has the "System" menu option next to a "Redeem" menu option I hope you get hit by a bus... and don't die, but spend an eternity in pain.
For those who don't understand what DigiD is, it's the identity verification system used by the Dutch government for... EVERYTHING. Want to change your health insurance? DigiD login. File your taxes? DigiD login. Register a change of address? DigiD login. Get a new driver's license? DigiD login (after which you receive your new license and then use the app to link the new license to DigiD. Heck you want to get your local council to come and do a waste pick-up from your street - DigiD login.
The Netherlands is one of the most digitised countries in the world, but that comes of course with risks, they are very inflexible when the digital systems go down. That there wasn't a legal mandate to keep this company under Dutch control is the most astounding thing that's come out of this debate.
This would be like requiring every single restaurant and fast food place to check photo ID because somewhere in the entire state a bar exists where you have to be 21.
Not really. It's more like requiring all vendors who sell cash registers used in restaurants to support checking photo IDs because some restaurants also serve alcohol.
Because, it's California, and the Governor and mayors can't put the responsibility for actually taking care of their kids and making sure they aren't on a website "that could be dangerous".
There's no safe way to prove your age to a website. Any scheme requires trusting some arbitrary third party that could secretly be the government doing timing comparisons between the verification and DNS queries and stuff to unmask anonymous users. At least with operating system or browser vendors, they presumably have a strong commitment to minimizing the risk of someone publicly posting "John Doe just visited sexwithseaturtles.com" or whatever.
Precisely what benefit would have been provided to Dutch citizens by the datacentre owner becoming American?
Firstly this only covers general purpose computing, so TVs are excluded, but it does apply to mobiles and tablets. Secondly this only permits the elimination of an OS level API check. It does nothing for any device that needs an active account to operate (everything except a Mac these days) as the existing law already requires service providers to perform age verification. So yay, your OS providers Samsung will sell you an Android phone without an OS level API, but unfortunately your device may still be restricted the moment you log in with your Google account.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
