5 ms·

> Let's hope a form of this law spreads throughout Europe Ummm... this is a EU wide law. The UK, as a member state of the EU, had to implement it into UK law (

by rmc 12y ago

> Let's hope a form of this law spreads throughout Europe Ummm... this is a EU wide law. The UK, as a member state of the EU, had to implement it into UK law (that's how EU laws work). This is already the law of the land in all EU countries. Nearly all good consumer rights laws are done at the EU level.

Someone1234 12y ago
You misread the quote. They said "Europe" not the EU. So presumably they were hoping it would spread to non-EU European countries also.
- pdpi 12y ago
  I find that it's increasingly the case that "Europe" gets used in place of EU in much the same way as people will say "America" when they mean the USA.
  - Someone1234 12y ago
    Then people are "increasingly" using it incorrectly. Europe is a continent, the EU is a political alliance. There are too many countries within Europe but not in the EU to use the terms synonymously. For example: Albania, Andorra, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Norway, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Vatican City I think it is pretty interesting that I got heavily downvoted for pointing out that the person above me conflated Europe and the EU and then tried to correct someone else based on that misunderstanding. This place is turning into Reddit more and more day by day, people are using the down arrow as a "I disagree" button... Which is exactly why Reddit has gone right down the toilet.
    - kome 12y ago
      Croatia is part of the EU.
      - Someone1234 12y ago
        I stand corrected. Seems might list is at least a year old (they joined in July 2013).
    - tormeh 12y ago
      Yes, but a lot of those have strong bilateral ties to the EU. Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway are part of the EEA, which means that this becomes law there. Switzerland has a ton of bilateral agreements, so this law should be expected there as well. Monaco, Mentenegro and San Marino have Association Agreements as well. The EU's reach is a bit bigger than it looks like.
    - avar 12y ago
      For what it's worth when talking about things like consumer regulations talking about the EU is often not the most descriptive term, I'm not 100% sure about this topic but I'm fairly sure this applies to the entirety of the EEA, which is the EU + Iceland + Norway + Liechtenstein.
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      > Then people are "increasingly" using it incorrectly. Europe is a continent, the EU is a political alliance. Well, it's exactly the same as with America (the continent) and United States (a country). You can either argue that both calling EU Europe and USA America is wrong and we should stop, or accept that in both cases, people can figure things out from the context.
      - V-2 12y ago
        Yes, it's a common metonymy, but whether its use is valid or misleading for no good reason depends on the context in my opinion. If somebody said "let's hope this law spreads throughout America", you wouldn't assume they meant just the US, would you? Calling the United States "America" is often handy, but it's sort of a sloppy language all in all. Personally I rather avoid it if ambiguity is likely. People are also often referring to the United Kingdom as "England" (disregarding the existence of Scotland and Wales) and while it's probably fine as a mental shortcut, it can make you misunderstood or get on somebody's nerves once in a while. And that's a fact of life, too. Disclaimer: I'm European / EU citizen / Polish.
        wnoise 12y ago
        In "Let's hope marijuana legalization spreads throughout America", I would indeed assume they meant the U.S.
        Perseids 12y ago
        > People are also often referring to the United Kingdom as "England" (disregarding the existence of Scotland and Wales) More to the point, when I use "England" instead of "United Kingdom" I disregard the separation and jurisdictional peculiarities of Scotland, Wales and England and refer to the whole as "England". As neither I nor the great majority of people in my social circles know how their government works precisely and what their national identity multitude is about, the linguistic separation seems mood anyway. That's not to say that it is actually unimportant, though.
        V-2 12y ago
    - lotharbot 12y ago
      > "people are using the down arrow as a "I disagree" button.." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness." - pg, 2382 days ago http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392347 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392347 "Downvoting has always been used to express disagreement." - pg, 2085 days ago http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691 "IIRC we first had this conversation about a month after launch. Downvotes have always been used to express disagreement. Or more precisely, a negative score has: users seem not to downvote something they disagree with if it already has a sufficiently negative score." - pg, 1898 days ago (If you were not aware: pg is Paul Graham, the founder of YCombinator and Hacker News.) FWIW I did not downvote you in this thread (I actually upvoted you.) I'm just informing you of the principle -- downvote for disagreement is totally cool on HN.
      - Perseids 12y ago
        > FWIW I did not downvote you in this thread (I actually upvoted you.) I'm just informing you of the principle -- downvote for disagreement is totally cool on HN. I disagree. From what I've come to expect from the voting behavior, downvotes are reserved for comments that are badly written (missing punctuation etc.), insulting or objectively false in an easily verifiable manner (like "Java does not include floating point numbers"). As far as I can overcome my personal bias I try to only upvote posts that contribute to the discussion or are greatly written and not those that only agree to my opinions. After all, having yet another echo chamber of the worldview of yet another community is way less useful than a greater diversity of ideas and ideologies. How else can we hone our arguments to make them convincing for anybody but us. I realize I don't fall under the "older than a year" rule so let me quote the top voted comment on your first link: > I have seen quite a few comments that were extremely insightful, and/or interesting that got downmodded due to an unpopular opinion. The reason this is unfortunate is not only that you tend to miss these (assuming that there is a higher probability that you read or think about comments that are rated higher, which I am surely not the only one that is guilty of) but also that it tends to promote groupthink . This is especially important on a forum like this where we are here to learn and share our thoughts, ideas and experiences for a very particular niche: Starting startups. [...] > So I think that the up and down arrows should not express agreement, but insightfullness or truth. Not opinion. That way I will be able to judge the validity of a comment in a field that I do not know well by its points. And hopefully learn something.
    - anigbrowl 12y ago
      I'm European and I conflate them all the time. You're getting downvoted because it's a pointless derailment, not just out of disagreement. You may also wish to read the guidelines, especially this one: If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.) https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - vacri 12y ago
      So in that list you have three large countries that are famously not part of the general european political bloc, noted for usually being part of their own bloc. Then you have a bunch of countries that are so miniscule, that diplomatic relations are handled for them by diplomats assigned for other countries (Monaco? A couple of square kilometers. San Marino? Fewer people than my suburb). Then there's Turkey, which has a technical foothold on the continent, but has never been considered politically part of Europe. Then the Balkan states, most of which are trying to get into the EU (as is Turkey, to be fair). You're left with Norway and Switzerland, neither of which are in the EU, so there's some support there, but they do have strong bilateral links with the EU, such as with the Schengen Area. I mean, you're so desperate to find counter-examples, you've even included an island nation (Iceland) that is nowhere near Europe, especially given your own definition that 'Europe' is specifically a continent. Iceland isn't even on the European continental shelf. It's clear that there are multiple values for the term 'Europe', and that the socio-political one is a bit different to the is-it-on-a-connected-landmass one. Otherwise Ireland and the UK would not be part of Europe...
      - M2Ys4U 12y ago
        >I mean, you're so desperate to find counter-examples, you've even included an island nation (Iceland) that is nowhere near Europe, especially given your own definition that 'Europe' is specifically a continent. Iceland isn't even on the European continental shelf. Plus Iceland is an EU candidate country and a member of the EEA (European Economic Area) so is a member of the EU's internal market.
  - frenchy 12y ago
    I believe "America" is usually an abbreviated form of "United States of America" whereas "The Americas" is commonly used to refer to the American continents. Edit: this is a little different than your case where Europe can refer to the European continent, but "America" pretty much never refers to the two American continents.
  - npsimons 12y ago
    as people will say "America" when they mean the USA. Name another country with "America" in its name.
    - npsimons 12y ago
      (Replying as edit window is gone) So the whole reactionary "USA isn't America" thing seems a bit overblown and misguided at best; see for example http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/a_fine_whine/2013/08/america_the_continent_vs_america_the_country.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/a_fine_whine... And while jingoism, imperialism and US-centrism are good things to oppose, calling USA "America" isn't really an example of them. For one thing, by calling USA "America", you implicitly separate USA the country from the rest of the countries in North America and South America, and make the default assumption that the whole world isn't America. Point the second, if US citizens shouldn't be calling themselves "Americans", then neither should anyone else; at least "America" is in the name of the country for USA. Point the third, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but I've always assumed a kind of racism to go along with over-labeling; cf lumping Japanese and Chinese into the category "Asians". As a final point, if we're really wanting to be more inclusive and eliminate borders and imperialism, shouldn't we all be calling ourselves "Earthicans"?
- legulere 12y ago
  EU directives sometimes also apply to non-member states. (EFTA, countries that are on track becoming EU-members)
wahsd 12y ago
European countries are largely far less fraud based economies and thus do not allow so many practices that are permitted in the USA.

by rmc 12y ago

Someone1234 12y ago

You misread the quote. They said "Europe" not the EU. So presumably they were hoping it would spread to non-EU European countries also.

pdpi 12y ago
I find that it's increasingly the case that "Europe" gets used in place of EU in much the same way as people will say "America" when they mean the USA.
- Someone1234 12y ago
  Then people are "increasingly" using it incorrectly. Europe is a continent, the EU is a political alliance. There are too many countries within Europe but not in the EU to use the terms synonymously. For example: Albania, Andorra, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Norway, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Vatican City I think it is pretty interesting that I got heavily downvoted for pointing out that the person above me conflated Europe and the EU and then tried to correct someone else based on that misunderstanding. This place is turning into Reddit more and more day by day, people are using the down arrow as a "I disagree" button... Which is exactly why Reddit has gone right down the toilet.
  - kome 12y ago
    Croatia is part of the EU.
    - Someone1234 12y ago
      I stand corrected. Seems might list is at least a year old (they joined in July 2013).
  - tormeh 12y ago
    Yes, but a lot of those have strong bilateral ties to the EU. Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway are part of the EEA, which means that this becomes law there. Switzerland has a ton of bilateral agreements, so this law should be expected there as well. Monaco, Mentenegro and San Marino have Association Agreements as well. The EU's reach is a bit bigger than it looks like.
  - avar 12y ago
    For what it's worth when talking about things like consumer regulations talking about the EU is often not the most descriptive term, I'm not 100% sure about this topic but I'm fairly sure this applies to the entirety of the EEA, which is the EU + Iceland + Norway + Liechtenstein.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    > Then people are "increasingly" using it incorrectly. Europe is a continent, the EU is a political alliance. Well, it's exactly the same as with America (the continent) and United States (a country). You can either argue that both calling EU Europe and USA America is wrong and we should stop, or accept that in both cases, people can figure things out from the context.
    - V-2 12y ago
      Yes, it's a common metonymy, but whether its use is valid or misleading for no good reason depends on the context in my opinion. If somebody said "let's hope this law spreads throughout America", you wouldn't assume they meant just the US, would you? Calling the United States "America" is often handy, but it's sort of a sloppy language all in all. Personally I rather avoid it if ambiguity is likely. People are also often referring to the United Kingdom as "England" (disregarding the existence of Scotland and Wales) and while it's probably fine as a mental shortcut, it can make you misunderstood or get on somebody's nerves once in a while. And that's a fact of life, too. Disclaimer: I'm European / EU citizen / Polish.
      - wnoise 12y ago
        In "Let's hope marijuana legalization spreads throughout America", I would indeed assume they meant the U.S.
      - Perseids 12y ago
        > People are also often referring to the United Kingdom as "England" (disregarding the existence of Scotland and Wales) More to the point, when I use "England" instead of "United Kingdom" I disregard the separation and jurisdictional peculiarities of Scotland, Wales and England and refer to the whole as "England". As neither I nor the great majority of people in my social circles know how their government works precisely and what their national identity multitude is about, the linguistic separation seems mood anyway. That's not to say that it is actually unimportant, though.
        V-2 12y ago
  - lotharbot 12y ago
    > "people are using the down arrow as a "I disagree" button.." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness." - pg, 2382 days ago http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392347 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392347 "Downvoting has always been used to express disagreement." - pg, 2085 days ago http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=658691 "IIRC we first had this conversation about a month after launch. Downvotes have always been used to express disagreement. Or more precisely, a negative score has: users seem not to downvote something they disagree with if it already has a sufficiently negative score." - pg, 1898 days ago (If you were not aware: pg is Paul Graham, the founder of YCombinator and Hacker News.) FWIW I did not downvote you in this thread (I actually upvoted you.) I'm just informing you of the principle -- downvote for disagreement is totally cool on HN.
    - Perseids 12y ago
      > FWIW I did not downvote you in this thread (I actually upvoted you.) I'm just informing you of the principle -- downvote for disagreement is totally cool on HN. I disagree. From what I've come to expect from the voting behavior, downvotes are reserved for comments that are badly written (missing punctuation etc.), insulting or objectively false in an easily verifiable manner (like "Java does not include floating point numbers"). As far as I can overcome my personal bias I try to only upvote posts that contribute to the discussion or are greatly written and not those that only agree to my opinions. After all, having yet another echo chamber of the worldview of yet another community is way less useful than a greater diversity of ideas and ideologies. How else can we hone our arguments to make them convincing for anybody but us. I realize I don't fall under the "older than a year" rule so let me quote the top voted comment on your first link: > I have seen quite a few comments that were extremely insightful, and/or interesting that got downmodded due to an unpopular opinion. The reason this is unfortunate is not only that you tend to miss these (assuming that there is a higher probability that you read or think about comments that are rated higher, which I am surely not the only one that is guilty of) but also that it tends to promote groupthink . This is especially important on a forum like this where we are here to learn and share our thoughts, ideas and experiences for a very particular niche: Starting startups. [...] > So I think that the up and down arrows should not express agreement, but insightfullness or truth. Not opinion. That way I will be able to judge the validity of a comment in a field that I do not know well by its points. And hopefully learn something.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    I'm European and I conflate them all the time. You're getting downvoted because it's a pointless derailment, not just out of disagreement. You may also wish to read the guidelines, especially this one: If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.) https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - vacri 12y ago
    So in that list you have three large countries that are famously not part of the general european political bloc, noted for usually being part of their own bloc. Then you have a bunch of countries that are so miniscule, that diplomatic relations are handled for them by diplomats assigned for other countries (Monaco? A couple of square kilometers. San Marino? Fewer people than my suburb). Then there's Turkey, which has a technical foothold on the continent, but has never been considered politically part of Europe. Then the Balkan states, most of which are trying to get into the EU (as is Turkey, to be fair). You're left with Norway and Switzerland, neither of which are in the EU, so there's some support there, but they do have strong bilateral links with the EU, such as with the Schengen Area. I mean, you're so desperate to find counter-examples, you've even included an island nation (Iceland) that is nowhere near Europe, especially given your own definition that 'Europe' is specifically a continent. Iceland isn't even on the European continental shelf. It's clear that there are multiple values for the term 'Europe', and that the socio-political one is a bit different to the is-it-on-a-connected-landmass one. Otherwise Ireland and the UK would not be part of Europe...
    - M2Ys4U 12y ago
      >I mean, you're so desperate to find counter-examples, you've even included an island nation (Iceland) that is nowhere near Europe, especially given your own definition that 'Europe' is specifically a continent. Iceland isn't even on the European continental shelf. Plus Iceland is an EU candidate country and a member of the EEA (European Economic Area) so is a member of the EU's internal market.
- frenchy 12y ago
  I believe "America" is usually an abbreviated form of "United States of America" whereas "The Americas" is commonly used to refer to the American continents. Edit: this is a little different than your case where Europe can refer to the European continent, but "America" pretty much never refers to the two American continents.
- npsimons 12y ago
  as people will say "America" when they mean the USA. Name another country with "America" in its name.
  - npsimons 12y ago
    (Replying as edit window is gone) So the whole reactionary "USA isn't America" thing seems a bit overblown and misguided at best; see for example http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/a_fine_whine/2013/08/america_the_continent_vs_america_the_country.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/a_fine_whine... And while jingoism, imperialism and US-centrism are good things to oppose, calling USA "America" isn't really an example of them. For one thing, by calling USA "America", you implicitly separate USA the country from the rest of the countries in North America and South America, and make the default assumption that the whole world isn't America. Point the second, if US citizens shouldn't be calling themselves "Americans", then neither should anyone else; at least "America" is in the name of the country for USA. Point the third, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but I've always assumed a kind of racism to go along with over-labeling; cf lumping Japanese and Chinese into the category "Asians". As a final point, if we're really wanting to be more inclusive and eliminate borders and imperialism, shouldn't we all be calling ourselves "Earthicans"?
legulere 12y ago
EU directives sometimes also apply to non-member states. (EFTA, countries that are on track becoming EU-members)

wahsd 12y ago

European countries are largely far less fraud based economies and thus do not allow so many practices that are permitted in the USA.