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YC China and Qi Lu

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#261

Post by PaulHoule »

claydavisss wrote: post #229
PaulHoule wrote: post #221

Of all places they could go. China appearing to succeed at a time when democracy is on the ropes is a dangerous trend for democracy. When you import goods from China, you import repression. Short-termed capitalists might think the repression applies just to workers, but China is a country with no human rights, no property rights, no rule of law. The Chinese government reserves the right to take anything you "own" the…

> When you import goods from China, you import repression can you please tell us where the goods in your home were manufactured? why not start with the ones with the glowing white apple on them? if you won't change, why should anyone else?

I have.

I own very little Apple hardware and only because I am a software dev.

I certainly buy many things from China because it is hard to never get anything from China, but often you do have a choice.

I was at Target, for instance, and I bought a Samsung branded microwave oven from Malaysia which has a 44/100 score from Freedom House as opposed to China which has a 14/100 score.

I have also gotten into fixing old toasters and things because I've found that recent models from China are based on inferior technology. When toasters started coming from China they would burn up -- multiple times my mother and law would buy them from Wal*Mart and thought she got a deal but it lastest less than six months.

A few years later, Chinese toasters traded toasting speed for safety, then they went from two slots to four slots to make up for lost time. It doesn't help though if you are watching your carbs and want just one or two slices.

Old toasters fail in a predictable way and can be repaired easily. It might be true about new toasters but why bother.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#262

Post by b_b »

kaptain wrote: post #107

The political concerns are real. It's too cynical to say that YC just cares about money, though. There would be better ways to create an incubator than to do it like this, if that were the case. One obvious question that hasn't been raised is: "Why not base it in Taiwan?" It's still "China" (for some definition of China), you can still get access to the talent that you want (you just have to try a little harder), and…

I don't think it's too cynical given this move at this point. They have willingly entered into a market where corporations are sponsored for their loyalty to the state, which has done horrendous humanitarian crimes, without which they could have succeeded economically just as well. Seems to me any semblance of a soul has been lost here in favor of pure VC profits.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#263

Post by bena »

Leary wrote: post #257
tcmb wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Canada also land that was forcibly colonized, by the French and British?

[flagged]

His point is that there is basically no country on the planet that does not have some history of conquest attached to it.

Railing against it just because it's recent is just kind of arguing to a particular status quo. What makes the Chinese takeover of Taiwan any more or less legitimate than the PRC takeover of the mainland?

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#264

Post by PaulHoule »

telltruth wrote: post #24

Sam, this exec BS doesn't look good on you. If Qi Lu is the "one of the most impressive technologiest" you have known then I would say you can be impressed pretty easily. Qi Lu is the guy who couldn't do a squat with Yahoo so he jumped ship to Microsoft. His main achievement there was to rename their product to "Bing". Finally not getting anywhere for almost a decade, he finally got pushed out and so he jumped on the…

I don't what Lu's exact involvement was, but "Bing" was a huge improvement over the "MSN search" and "Yahoo search" that really were the same product.

The genesis of Bing is said to be the acquisition of the company PowerSet which did large-scale data extraction from DBpedia and similar sources to make a knowledge graph.

Google had ridiculed this approach before but when Microsoft came out with Bing which was comparable in quality to Google, Google was shocked and they bought Freebase and started talking about a "Google Knowledge Graph".

Anyhow you should try it. Bing and Google are comparable in search quality -- some people might prefer some SERPs from Google or Bing for certain queries, but the difference between raters is bigger than the difference between search engines.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#265

Post by PaulHoule »

b_b wrote: post #262
kaptain wrote: post #107

The political concerns are real. It's too cynical to say that YC just cares about money, though. There would be better ways to create an incubator than to do it like this, if that were the case. One obvious question that hasn't been raised is: "Why not base it in Taiwan?" It's still "China" (for some definition of China), you can still get access to the talent that you want (you just have to try a little harder), and…

I don't think it's too cynical given this move at this point. They have willingly entered into a market where corporations are sponsored for their loyalty to the state, which has done horrendous humanitarian crimes, without which they could have succeeded economically just as well. Seems to me any semblance of a soul has been lost here in favor of pure VC profits.

See

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/china

China gets a score of 14/100 as opposed to Taiwan

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/taiwan

which gets 93/100.

In my mind we should "Look for the Freedom label" and use this as a somewhat objective measure if we want to have free trade with free people.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#266

Post by claydavisss »

PaulHoule wrote: post #261
claydavisss wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you import goods from China, you import repression can you please tell us where the goods in your home were manufactured? why not start with the ones with the glowing white apple on them? if you won't change, why should anyone else?

I have. I own very little Apple hardware and only because I am a software dev. I certainly buy many things from China because it is hard to never get anything from China, but often you do have a choice. I was at Target, for instance, and I bought a Samsung branded microwave oven from Malaysia which has a 44/100 score from Freedom House as opposed to China which has a 14/100 score. I have also gotten into fixing old t…

"very little Apple hardware" still means you own more Apple hardware than 95% of the world's population, including 99% of the people who manufacture it.

but it sounds like you have rationalized this somehow, so why shouldn't everyone else?

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#267

Post by Leary »

bena wrote: post #263
Leary wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

His point is that there is basically no country on the planet that does not have some history of conquest attached to it. Railing against it just because it's recent is just kind of arguing to a particular status quo. What makes the Chinese takeover of Taiwan any more or less legitimate than the PRC takeover of the mainland?

Okay, I give approval for YC China to be in China.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#268

Post by mattigames »

justicezyx wrote: post #256
ForrestN wrote: post #133

It’s troubling that this statement is so overtly unserious. Has YC and its surrounding culture become so insulated that they cannot see the obviously self-defeating through-line in this statement? “Our mission at YC is to enable more innovation than any other company in the world, and to ensure that the benefits of that are fairly spread throughout humanity.” Do you really think it’s possible to ensure that the benef…

There are majority of society and economic activity that are neutral to policitics. Why cannot YC improve invocation by focusing on those areas?! If your dad said harsh words to you, are you going to claim that you are made inferior to normal citizen or you are working with a repressive parent?

When you help a country get richer and that country has a history of human right violations you are aiding the tyrants running the country even if you declare yourself "neutral to politics" and even if you have the best of intentions.

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#269

Post by Leary »

PaulHoule wrote: post #265
b_b wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's too cynical given this move at this point. They have willingly entered into a market where corporations are sponsored for their loyalty to the state, which has done horrendous humanitarian crimes, without which they could have succeeded economically just as well. Seems to me any semblance of a soul has been lost here in favor of pure VC profits.

See https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/china China gets a score of 14/100 as opposed to Taiwan https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/taiwan which gets 93/100. In my mind we should "Look for the Freedom label" and use this as a somewhat objective measure if we want to have free trade with free people.

Freedom house is a US government funded agency that gives better press to countries allied to the US. A better index is the Democracy Index by the Economist [1].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

Re: YC China and Qi Lu

#270

Post by yumraj »

kaptain wrote: post #107

The political concerns are real. It's too cynical to say that YC just cares about money, though. There would be better ways to create an incubator than to do it like this, if that were the case. One obvious question that hasn't been raised is: "Why not base it in Taiwan?" It's still "China" (for some definition of China), you can still get access to the talent that you want (you just have to try a little harder), and…

I don't think it is too cynical to say that YC just cares about money, as it is not too cynical to say that all VCs and Wall St. financial firms just care about money - unless the VCs charter has some other purpose like social good clearly defined.

Moreover, here, it would have been OK if the political climate in China was improving, but it's not. In fact with Xi getting supreme power, it's worsening. So, with that in mind this does not send the proper message.

Having said that, YC is a private business, and from where I stand this is not PG/SL's YC, and I have no business projecting my ethics and morality on YC.

But, anyone supporting YC in here, should also not be critical of Google or any other company when they do business in China, nor should they be surprised when they hear of atrocities in Tibet, Uighur, Chinese police state etc.

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