Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016 • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#411

Post by zepto » Thu, Dec 09, 2021, 2:17 AM UTC

joakleaf wrote: post #241

misnome wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are they deceiving people outside China when only showing the difference inside China?

Well, for one thing because we outside China would automatically assume they are showing the same thing inside China as we see. Now we know that is not true. That is deceptive. ... And a a shareholder, I was also kept in the dark -- Which is actually also pretty problematic and deceptive.

That just means you don’t know about China and the CCP. Anyone who did would never ‘automatically’ assume such a thing.

As for being a shareholder kept in the dark, that’s absurd. I am a shareholder too, and almost no operational details about apple are available to us, which is totally normal.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#412

Post by hogFeast » Thu, Dec 09, 2021, 2:17 AM UTC

twobitshifter wrote: post #368

hogFeast wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked on the buy-side. I would make this assumption 100% of the time, 100%. Every single time I have seen a company ignore stuff like this, it has bitten them in the end. To flip this on it's head, I have also never seen a management team under pressure for failing to do something like this. The weird thing about your viewpoint is that it gives the perception of capitalism without actually understanding anything a…

I agree with most of what you wrote, but regarding Tim Cook working for a wage, most of his wealth has in fact come from Apple stock. He just received 5 million shares. His $15M non stock compensation is a lot of money for most but I wouldn’t classify him as being purely out for his own wealth. https://nypost.com/2021/08/26/apples-tim-cook-gets-750m-payo...

The key word there is "received". He didn't buy stock himself, he was given it, he is a wage worker.

He is purely out for his own wealth. He is one of the most absurdly overpaid execs in the US. How anyone can become a billionaire as an employee is utterly beyond me. Taking no risk, getting all the reward.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#413

Post by Aunche » Thu, Dec 09, 2021, 2:17 AM UTC

wolverine876 wrote: post #150

qeternity wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally get that people want companies to act with dignity, but the idea that a company, even one as large as Apple, is going to make any sort of difference with respect to China's oddities is wishful thinking. Apple has a business to run. They abide by all sorts of requests in various countries in which they operate. Of course there has to be a line somewhere, I'm just not sure this is it.

It seems fashionable to preach helplessness. Apple can't change China by themselves, but they are not by themselves. If we all follow that reasoning, then nothing ever happens. To surrender and retreat from the field of battle is a sure way to lose. Despair is a leading psyops tactic - targeted at enemies; let's not help them. It would be interesting to talk about what organizations like Apple can and cannot do; what…

Imagine getting an email from Apple telling you that you're laid off because you job is less important than sending a stern message to China. Apple then loses billions of dollars of revenue to Huawei and Xiaomi, but can you really place a price on feeling warm and fuzzy on the inside?

If you want to control what maps Apple shows in China, then ask the government to do it. Assuming you can convince Congress to do anything at all, they still wouldn't take any meaningful action against China because they aren't going to voluntarily widen our trade deficit. We barely have enough economic leverage to pressure them to be slightly better at enforcing IP. We aren't going to spare any for meaningless virtue signaling.

> It would be interesting to talk about what organizations like Apple can and cannot do; what is effective and what isn't. Is there any research?

It took extreme sanctions and the most sophisticated cyberattack in history to get Iran to make concessions on its nuclear program (until Trump decided to reject the agreement). China has a much stronger economy and more allies.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#414

Post by justicezyx » Thu, Dec 09, 2021, 2:20 AM UTC

claaams wrote: post #408

Tim Cook came into my bar and did not tip very well either. Why are billionaires so fucking disappointing constantly?

Give some facts about the stats please?

Average? Average in billionaires? Etc etc.

Did not tip very well, what does that even mean.

For example, maybe he is just stopping by, haven't use much of the waiters time, and thought it's OK

Or maybe he thinks the service was poor

Or even you just misremembering the details...

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#415

Post by WillPostForFood » Thu, Dec 09, 2021, 2:20 AM UTC

detaro wrote: post #399

jay_kyburz wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it was literately illegal for publicly traded companies not to put profit first unless they were registered as a non profit (or similar special business classes)

This is mostly a myth: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-co...

“utterly false” to quote the article.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#416

Post by fnord77 » Thu, Dec 09, 2021, 2:23 AM UTC

so how is this going to work out for apple? will the CCP start making bigger and bigger demands?

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#417

Post by anshumankmr » Thu, Dec 09, 2021, 2:29 AM UTC

option wrote: post #373

blahgeek wrote: post #367

I’m a Chinese. I’m glad that apple did this. While I want apple to keep its dignity as much as you do, I cannot change our government (we don’t get to vote, so we literally cannot). Given this situation, if apple don’t do these kind of things, worse case scenario, it get banned in china just like google and many others. As a user, apple products are still the most privacy protecting products I can buy and use in chin…

you absolutely can and should change your government. Otherwise your children or grandchildren will have to and it will be even harder for them.

I am assuming blahgeek is middle class and as far as I know now sucessful revolution (in the traditional sense)has been led by the middle class ever. It's the impoverished people who have led such things.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#418

Post by gonehome » Thu, Dec 09, 2021, 2:30 AM UTC

ktsayed wrote: post #342

simonh wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’ll, what Apple built with CSAM checking is a tool that checks images uploaded to their servers, and only those images, against a digital fingerprint. There is no novel technology in this. It’s very basic stuff doing a specific thing. It’s in no way a meaningful stepping stone to doing anything else. If you’re against Apple scanning images uploaded to iCloud for CSAM that’s fine, say that, but it’s no stepping ston…

It was not only their severs, they scrapped plans to check local user content. If it was only their servers, there would have been no uproar.

It was only when upload to iCloud was enabled which is functionally equivalent to a check on server (and enables future roll out of encrypted content on the sever).

The CSAM issue was mostly misunderstood by HN imo.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#419

Post by javajosh » Thu, Dec 09, 2021, 2:31 AM UTC

uuidgen wrote: post #365

javajosh wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is rather chilling, is it not? That a nation would prevent its citizens from looking around and measuring what they see? I can't help but wonder how the chickens will come home to roost.

They're preventing citizens from publishing that info, not looking around and measuring from what I found. Imagine a country that prevents its citizens from recording a song they hear and sharing it with their friends. Oh, wait, US more or less does that and forces other countries to implement policies that prevent it or they will ban trade with those countries.

>a country that prevents its citizens from recording a song...

False analogy. No-one claims copy-write on the physical world. Well, not except the CCP.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#420

Post by gonehome » Thu, Dec 09, 2021, 2:32 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #397

ipv6ipv4 wrote: post #50

Daring Fireball [1] has another passage from the article which is illuminating with regards to any promises Apple makes about how it will resist governmental pressure to compromise its products, vis-à-vis Apple's CSAM scanning tool. "Sometime in 2014 or early 2015, China’s State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping told members of the Apple Maps team to make the Diaoyu Islands, the objects of a long-running territorial di…

The CSAM controversy is dumb. The real “folding under pressure” example is the neutering of iMessage. Notice the FBI doesn’t whine about iPhones anymore.

The irony is the CSAM measures they were doing may have enabled them to encrypt the iCloud iMessage backups since they’d still be able to help the feds with CSAM.

Instead everything remains unencrypted.