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Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

theintercept.com

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Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#311

Post by lugg »

jacobush wrote: post #265
grey-area wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the OP is explaining, not attempting to justify.

Yep - difference between empathy (explaining) and sympathy (justifying).

The only reason one would share their empathy for these people is to garner sympathy. That is what I took issue with.

Let's try this again,

You said you haven't found effective ways to do anything about it.

How about you stop calling them friends for a start.

Secondly, say something. You're literally the only one who can.

Don't just sit there and try to justify their shitty actions so you can let yourself off the hook as if you tried but couldn't do anything because you know, what about their lifestyles.

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#312

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

president wrote: post #130
scrumbledober wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

perhaps not quite the same level but I would assume anyone with any FAANG on their resume wouldn't be in the category of "need their job."

Not all FAANG are created equal

You're repeatedly arguing that Apple employees are prisoners in their jobs because they only work for the 4th or 5th most impressive looking company to have on one's CV instead of the first? Do you not see how ridiculous that sounds?

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#313

Post by pimmen »

yadongwen wrote: post #79

This is a great loss to Chinese people who have to use worse products such as Baidu and so.com. I was hoping Google's re-entering could result in a better Internet (or Intranet) ecosystem in China but alas...

This is just one of many great losses for the Chinese people brought on by the Chinese government. Their government enjoys the benefits of permanent UN Security Council membership but don't respect the very human rights this organization works to uphold. This makes China a less attractive place to do business in.

So, if the Chinese people are so concerned about attracting Google, they could maybe understand that they need to change their government into something that respects human rights.

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#314

Post by lostlogin »

fipple wrote: post #251
reimertz wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

It would completely set up my family and children for life. I’d get to quit my job and spend all day with my kids. If some people I don’t know get fucked over for that, whatever. And that kind of thinking is why the world is such a wretched place. But I can’t say I wouldn’t jump at the opportunity.

Would you xo it for $4.95 million?

It’s a very slippery slope.

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#315

Post by ineedasername »

erikb wrote: post #226
ineedasername wrote: post #162

Title seems wrong, it sounds like Dragonfly is still undergoing active development, just with reduced data access (no more access to 265.com search data) but the article references ongoing development, even though some developers were removed. That doesn't sound like it's actually ended. And the title's quote of "Effectively Ended" seems only to be quoting itself, there's no one in the article the said those words. P…

The political battle against Pichai made a success. So now the public support can be tuned down and Google can move on to do the only thing they could do in their current situation: building tools for the chinese gov to enter the market. They'll probably do the same thing behind closed doors and without the public Google label on the final result. Maybe baidu will suddenly provide better search results or something.…

I think Google does have choice, they could forego revenue when it's knowingly generated by efforts to censor and oppress people. "how this world works" absolutely includes people & companies that betray their ideals for money, but there are those that stick to their principals too [0],[1]

[0] https://moxie.org/blog/saudi-surveillance/

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18292327

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#316

Post by ganzuul »

icebraining wrote: post #138
ganzuul wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less colored than your take, but; Each time they cancel a beta, a vast amount of engineering work gets laid to waste. These engineers could be making the world a better place in other industries.

Other industries cancel products too. Something like 80% of all drugs that start being test never make it to market, for example. Other industries will have multiple draft proposals being drawn up, often at great cost, only to dismiss all except one.

I know, I just don't think it being common makes it right.

There are also untold numbers of fascinating patents which never see commercial success, duplication of effort, and arguing about who gets the biggest slice of a cake that doesn't exist yet.

It's ineffective, and therefore I don't like it.

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#317

Post by ganzuul »

snaky wrote: post #141
ganzuul wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less colored than your take, but; Each time they cancel a beta, a vast amount of engineering work gets laid to waste. These engineers could be making the world a better place in other industries.

Or worse place. In other industries.

I must ask; which industry could be worse than software for this?

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#318

Post by analognoise »

pimmen wrote: post #290
analognoise wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but that isn't the same hypothetical.

I know, but it would expose a lack of empathy for the victims.

The original author was directly pointing out that his empathy didn't extend that far.

The US sells more weapons than anyone else - obviously a LOT of people make a living selling them.

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#319

Post by randaouser »

raincom wrote: post #243
randaouser wrote: post #240

I started working on fuzzy matching searchable encryption for this very reason; you can send an encrypted search term and match using jaccard similarity to an encrypted index of similar documents without information leakage of the search query or the encrypted document. This is the state of the art at the moment and would be useful for such things as: 1)Private search over encrypted documents 2)getting your FICO scor…

is it related to homomorphic encryption?

I imagine a decentralized search service for a particular set of search queries that users want privacy against.

it leverages Additive and Multiplicative Homomorphic Encryption with Elliptic Curves. I wanted a fuzzy searching algorithm so went with a minhash implementation on document bigram vectors which were then converted to a locality sensitive hash.

Unfortunately, it is an interactive protocol unlike something like zksnark/starks :(

I have written it in Javascript and plan to deploy it as a plugin in Brave Browser. Sundar really disappointed me recently with his rhetoric; he claims googles pursuit for information accessibility but also want to censor and allow authoritarian governments to profile users.

This would also allow location services without revealing your location

Re: Google’s Secret China Project “Effectively Ended” After Internal Confrontation

#320

Post by est »

Dragonfly is the only project that carries empirical study of exactly which keyword triggers the GFW, at a large scale.

This could be useful in business like suggest what kind of Ad content are "safe" for the Chinese market, automatically.

Also one can harvest blocklist, there can be some very interesting new discoveries, useful intels can be made into updates and alerts.

Google can not disclosure this strategy publicly because the Chinese might masquerade the firewall's behavior accordingly.

Traveling into darkness can be used to fight against darkness. I feel sorry for the engineers.

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