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

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

#611

Post by aivisol »

int_19h wrote: post #283
whatshisface wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That argument would be more appropriate if OSM was about something other than where the streets went.

USSR/Russia also had a very long history of restrictions on accurate maps (of just about anything!), on the basis that it is a national security threat if the country ever gets invaded. Street-level maps were broadly available but deliberately falsified: https://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/03/world/soviet-aide-admits-... Detailed ( A detailed article on this explaining how and why they went about it: http://www.hundzor.o…

True, and people knew it. I used to travel on the bicycle with the help of USSR maps made in early eighties (due to unavailability of other options), and yes, what you saw on the map was sometimes very different from what was in the real life, especially if you were close to the external border.

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

#612

Post by [deleted] »

pembrook wrote: post #501
klebe wrote: post #473

the top comments talking about maps, it's absolutely insane 'The agreement included a pledge from Apple to help Chinese manufacturers develop "the most advanced manufacturing technologies," "support the training of high-quality Chinese talents," use more components from Chinese suppliers, sign deals with Chinese software firms, collaborate with research in Chinese universities, and directly invest in Chinese tech com…

> It aches my heart to be a young man in this country and see this be our so-called 'leaders'. I'm confident the tides have already turned against all this nonsense, though, and I look forward to rebuilding industries of the world with good-hearted men & women I just got finished reading a book about the pre-war climate of 1930s Europe and man this comment sounds scary and nationalist. I’m worried that so many people…

[deleted]

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

#613

Post by jevoten »

EMIRELADERO wrote: post #488
klebe wrote: post #473

the top comments talking about maps, it's absolutely insane 'The agreement included a pledge from Apple to help Chinese manufacturers develop "the most advanced manufacturing technologies," "support the training of high-quality Chinese talents," use more components from Chinese suppliers, sign deals with Chinese software firms, collaborate with research in Chinese universities, and directly invest in Chinese tech com…

Honestly, I'm not trying to sound like I'm speaking in bad faith or provokingly, but why did you ever expect the top executives of a multi-million (or in this case, trillion) dollar corporation to care about anything but profits and their own well-being? It's just like Zuckerberg said, "Company over country". I like to imagine those corporations as a machine with irs unique objective being profit. Every single thing…

> why did you ever expect the top executives of a multi-million (or in this case, trillion) dollar corporation to care about anything but profits and their own well-being?

Perhaps he expected his government to incentivize/compel them to look at more than just profits? You know, like China is successfully doing. While shady when it comes to foreign influence, it is an absolutely legitimate approach for domestic companies, instead of allowing them to sell out their home country for short-term gain in the name of free markets, that the West was duped into believing is the only moral policy.

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

#614

Post by veritascap »

quitit wrote: post #316
gbasin wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I compared the same area in apple vs google maps, the islands don't even show up in google unless you zoom way in. You sure about this?

People outside of China are served a different set of maps. Each country is served maps that conform to their territorial claims. E.g. If you view the map of India while in India, it'll appear different than if you viewed it in China.

We aren’t even looking at the same planet that we’re living on.

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

#615

Post by mynameismon »

aivisol wrote: post #610
dr_dshiv wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should see the Gerrymandering maps in the US. It’s map distortion for political power, not just political posture.

Can you elaborate on this? I am curious to know more about it.

Perhaps the most egerious example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois's_4th_congressional_d...

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

#616

Post by powerapple »

javajosh wrote: post #178
ryandrake wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenStreetMap has a page[1] on this. TLDR: Private individuals surveying is illegal in China, which seems to outlaw the entire OSM project and any participation or contribution. I am not a lawyer or expert on Chinese law so who knows. 1: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/China

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.

Mostly because every year China would arrest a few Japanese for surveying lands in China. It is funny how surveying a country is so important.

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

#617

Post by ctdonath »

aivisol wrote: post #610
dr_dshiv wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should see the Gerrymandering maps in the US. It’s map distortion for political power, not just political posture.

Can you elaborate on this? I am curious to know more about it.

Some US voting districts are very odd shapes, specifically to include/exclude factors which increase the chances of a particular political party winning.

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

#618

Post by rfoo »

gostsamo wrote: post #562
MichaelBurge wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a mistake to treat "China" as one coherent entity with a single unified purpose, which chooses to prioritize the mapping issue front-of-mind. China has over a billion people. That one middle manager in the maps department is personally offended by territory appearing smaller, has zero relation to the rest of the country and shouldn't affect your opinion. Many bureaucrats in the USA draw stupid lines in sand that…

This is not some middle manager's sensibility. This is a deliberate inner propaganda policy. When chinese people ask: "What we are fighting for there?", they can open the map and see some big island and not the shit of a fly visible only under a microscope.

As a Chinese I don't need to open maps or search how large the island is, I learn that it is a tiny one from (printed) newspapers years ago.

OTOH I don't have much confidence in the middle manager theory, either.

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

#619

Post by zczc »

anovikov wrote: post #526
quitit wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People outside of China are served a different set of maps. Each country is served maps that conform to their territorial claims. E.g. If you view the map of India while in India, it'll appear different than if you viewed it in China.

One thing about claims (say display Crimea as part of Russia within Russia and as Ukraine elsewhere), but distorting SIZES of the places on maps according to someone's political preference is well... plain out ridiculous, laughable. It displays how messed up China is more than anything else. It's seriously hard to expect the place that does things like that, as a next superpower. You can't build a superpower on silly…

"In the end, the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then?" — George Orwell, 1984

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

#620

Post by Eelongate »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #469
Eelongate wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You take me for what, a libertarian? Do you think you know me? I never said anything about wanting a "free market cake." Regardless, nothing you said refutes me. "Fiduciary responsibility" does not legally compel Apple to do business in China. If anything, such misconceptions about fiduciary duty are espoused by libertarians online, not rebuked by them.

My point was that if Apple didn't adhere to maximizing profits, they simply wouldn't exist and we wouldn't be talking about their behavior in China. Regardless of whether you are a libertarian or not, you are wagging your finger at the wrong party (or to say, the party isn't really in a position to fix things). If you want change, it has to be via whoever is setting/enforcing the rules (in our case, government). The…

All of that is completely irrelevant to my point, which is that fiduciary duty does not compel Apple to do business with China. You were peddling a falsehood.
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