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Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors

nytimes.com

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Re: Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors

#121

Post by matthewmacleod »

sangnoir wrote: post #117
mistermann wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Africa is tiny, China is an 800 pound gorilla upon which the majority of the world's manufacturing depends. The decision of whether to "play ball" with China needs to be made at the government level, and 10+ years ago. It's too late now, the horse is out of the barn. China, and only China , will decide how they act on the world stage.

Why are you acting like Apple is the first company to face this dilemma? Google faced a decade ago and chose not to play ball with China with no assistance from any government.

… and subsequently capitulated anyway. That's kind of key here.

Re: Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors

#122

Post by askvictor »

CountSessine wrote: post #77
askvictor wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So fits well with companies from the US, which also specifically has an appalling human rights record.

Interesting ... how many dissidents are currently rotting in Google's prisons?

US prisons; Political dissidents not so much, but instead look at the general prison situation, particularly blacks and impoverished, and you start to see what I'm talking about. Then there's the whole Guantanamo bay thing...

Re: Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors

#123

Post by matthewmacleod »

askvictor wrote: post #69
veidr wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take your point, but China specifically has an absysmal, wretched human rights record.

So fits well with companies from the US, which also specifically has an appalling human rights record.

This is one of the reasons that it's so hard to have constructive conversations about this sort of issue – the gross hyperbole.

The US judicial system, prisons and government obviously have many flaws, arguably getting worse, and has a difficult relationship with human rights. However, the US government does not do things like nationally censor particular children's cartoons because they might insult the president (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/17/winnie-the-poo...) or jail human rights activists for 'subversion' (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/dec/25/china-jails-li...).

The US has a human rights problem in some senses; China has an objectively worse one. It's okay to criticise the latter as well.

Re: Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors

#124

Post by askvictor »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #123
askvictor wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So fits well with companies from the US, which also specifically has an appalling human rights record.

This is one of the reasons that it's so hard to have constructive conversations about this sort of issue – the gross hyperbole. The US judicial system, prisons and government obviously have many flaws, arguably getting worse, and has a difficult relationship with human rights. However, the US government does not do things like nationally censor particular children's cartoons because they might insult the president (…

Wasn't trying to stop people from criticising China's; I agree it's appalling. But many seem to forget that the US' is also terrible.

Re: Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors

#125

Post by ttflee »

mistermann wrote: post #105
adventured wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlikely. Even now China has a surplus of 300 to 400 million people that work as subsistence farmers. There's nothing else for them to do. China's manufacturing is no longer expanding meaningfully. They have a truly massive supply of inexpensive labor still accordingly; however those people working as impoverished farmers have nowhere to go, and are held in place by the government, with no rights to property ownershi…

Exactly, everyone who says China is doomed due to demographics overlooks the huge pool of under-utilized labor. People are looking at percentages when they should be looking at raw numbers.

With a shrinking demography, one problem is that the size of pool of elite is also shrinking. Physics professors in top universities of China has complained on social media that the younger generation lacked both dedication and intuition, that he had to lower the bar for his final exam to extremely easy.

Re: Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors

#126

Post by yoz-y »

It is sad that Amazon does concessions for China while being blatantly hidered by them. For example amazonaws links are blocked by WeChat due to "This page has been reported multiple times as it rewards users for sharing on social network or following a brand." (This particular link was a direct link to a bus ticket in PDF format).

The explanation is especially shaky since the whole point of wechat is to share stuff and follow brands...

Re: Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors

#127

Post by mstaoru »

dheera wrote: post #100
mstaoru wrote: post #28

When you apply for ICP beian license at Aliyun (Alibaba's cloud), you either choose "I use Aliyun" and give them the server ID, or you choose "I use another server" and two additional fields appear: your server log in, your server password. You need ICP license if you want to integrate any kind of service. Wechat, Alipay, other payment systems, SMS notifications etc, everything needs the ICP. I guess AWS China also h…

What password? SSH password? What if you use SSH keys? None of my AWS instances have passwords and even in the days when I had EC2 instances in Beijing a couple years ago there were no passwords to them. (I wasn't hosting a public-facing service so no ICP was necessary. But still, any non-idiotic sysadmin won't be having password authentication to all their servers.)

Then you don't get the license. I have an app built on top of Zappa, using Lambda + API Gateway, I don't even have an IP address! :)

Anyway, for NOW, the possible workaround, as I've heard, shall we say, is to use a temporary server, get the ICP and then change your DNS to point to the real server. For NOW they don't track it, but you need to re-apply every 12-24 months (rinse & repeat). However, it gives them every ground to shut your service down without any warning.

Re: Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors

#128

Post by am1988 »

ttflee wrote: post #125
mistermann wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, everyone who says China is doomed due to demographics overlooks the huge pool of under-utilized labor. People are looking at percentages when they should be looking at raw numbers.

With a shrinking demography, one problem is that the size of pool of elite is also shrinking. Physics professors in top universities of China has complained on social media that the younger generation lacked both dedication and intuition, that he had to lower the bar for his final exam to extremely easy.

An older guy complaining young people are lazy?

I am shocked. Absolutely shocked.

Re: Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors

#129

Post by am1988 »

cooper12 wrote: post #27
sergiotapia wrote: post #4

What are they supposed to do? Either they comply or they leave the Chinese market. It's that simple. I hope people don't fault these companies for playing ball with a communist government.

Not the dreaded "C" word! Thank god capitalist countries have such outstanding human rights records.

China has an appalling human rights record and they aren't trying to get much better.

Re: Joining Apple, Amazon’s China Cloud Service Bows to Censors

#130

Post by am1988 »

askvictor wrote: post #124
matthewmacleod wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the reasons that it's so hard to have constructive conversations about this sort of issue – the gross hyperbole. The US judicial system, prisons and government obviously have many flaws, arguably getting worse, and has a difficult relationship with human rights. However, the US government does not do things like nationally censor particular children's cartoons because they might insult the president (…

Wasn't trying to stop people from criticising China's; I agree it's appalling. But many seem to forget that the US' is also terrible.

That's called whataboutism and it's a common tactic to try and divert attention and excuse appalling behaviour.
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