Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex” • Hacker News Board

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#141

Post by mitchty » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 11:56 AM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #49

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would mean they pivot from a hardware company to an advertising company; I don't see that happening myself.

I thought they were a design/branding company -- what proportion of hardware do they make themselves. Again I thought they outsourced [most of] that?

> I thought they were a design/branding company

A design/branding company that designs their own chips? Sure then they are a design company. A company that builds brands, also sure.

What proportion of hardware do they have to "make" themselves to be considered a hardware producer? Having TSMC fab silicon doesn't make Apple any less of a hardware company than BMW not being a car company because they buy ECU's from Bosch.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#142

Post by SSLy » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 11:56 AM UTC

Lio wrote: post #136

I think that it's ironic that Techcrunch make it so hard to read the article without agreeing to surveillance when they could just look at the Do Not Track headers.

At least the website is cooperative with a fully loaded uMatrix.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#143

Post by HeadsUpHigh » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 11:56 AM UTC

huffmsa wrote: post #43

nemo846 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they could I believe they would. They rather not be reliant on whoever is providing their speak recognition.

They don't have the dataset needed to train the speech recognition engine, nor do they seem to be willing to deploy some of that $250b in cash to hire engineers smart enough to make a model which only needs the local user's input for training.

It might be an issue with processing power. The new NPU might fit nicely in this case.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#144

Post by xfitm3 » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 12:01 PM UTC

jason46 wrote: post #113

andy_ppp wrote: post #42

Seeing as Google pays Apple $12bn to be the default search engine on iOS devices I’m tempted to call hypocrisy here... http://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-eng...

I'm curious what would apple use if google was not paying, or if google charged apple? This seems backwards to me.

Bing or Yahoo. Google profits even after spending 12b. It’s a substantial amount of traffic and could help put one of the smaller guys back on the map.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#145

Post by SmellyGeekBoy » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 12:02 PM UTC

akuji1993 wrote: post #86

martimarkov wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do get your point and agree but most users are uneducated and will most likely have problems with DuckDuckGo and be confused to what happened to their Google and why is it deleted. So I guess it’s another side to consider. That’s no excuse thou. Apple should at least ask the question in the onboarding.

Also you can't just forget the point, that you will not find the same results on DuckDuckGo and Bing and others that you find on Google. That is my #1 problem with switching to another search engine. It doesn't show me the results that I need, especially for technical questions. Google does.

I tried DDG a few years back and was of the same opinion as you until I decided to have another look back in August this year (which coincided with a switch from Chrome to Firefox). I'd say I find 90% of what I need now - ie I only end up using g! for one in ten searches. Probably fewer, actually.

(and like you, a lot of my work-related searches are technical in nature)

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#146

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 12:03 PM UTC

tomelders wrote: post #105

Well done everyone. Never let the actual content of an article get in the way of some good old Apple bashing. At the time of writing, I can only find one top level comment (by 'dvfjsdhgfv') that's making any attempt to discuss or expand upon the content of Cook's comments. This is one of the most important issues facing mankind, and the ball is very much in our court. We all get plenty of opportunities to criticise o…

> This is one of the most important issues facing mankind

I'm not even sure it rates in the top 50 outside of paranoid tech workers with nothing more important to worry about.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#147

Post by SmellyGeekBoy » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 12:04 PM UTC

jason46 wrote: post #113

andy_ppp wrote: post #42

Seeing as Google pays Apple $12bn to be the default search engine on iOS devices I’m tempted to call hypocrisy here... http://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-eng...

I'm curious what would apple use if google was not paying, or if google charged apple? This seems backwards to me.

They're literally the biggest tech company in the world. Couldn't they build their own? I mean, it wouldn't be great at first but seems like a worthwhile project (and Microsoft managed it with Bing, so there's precedent there).

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#148

Post by nyxtom » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 12:04 PM UTC

nneonneo wrote: post #130

nyxtom wrote: post #69

I originally took this opportunity to critique the idea that Cook can stand to take a strong stance on privacy because their business model relies on selling an actual product and said product can only be affordable if you leverage cheap labor (and given historical context: very questionable working conditions). However, for the sake of maintaining consistency with the article and staying relevant I have revised this…

I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that Apple was in fact aware of those issues, and has in fact worked both on documenting them and fixing them: https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/ This is transparency - following through and actually giving a damn about things like child labor. They found 2 cases of underage labor in 2017 after auditing 756 facilities and over 1.3M workers. They made it a cor…

Indeed, my original comment referenced the transparency reporting that I have grown to appreciate from Apple. I wish more companies did as thorough job showing every piece of the supply chain. I revised the comment because I felt like it was just bashing without relevance to the actual article content. Thanks for the follow up comment to further clarify the transparency aspect. I know not every company wants to show exactly where they get their material from, but it is pretty incredible to see where material is sourced from and how it is manufactured and ultimately made into a product. Supply chains need to be this transparent

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#149

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 12:04 PM UTC

ilamont wrote: post #106

“Our own information — from the everyday to the deeply personal — is being weaponized against us with military efficiency,” warned Cook. “These scraps of data, each one harmless enough on its own, are carefully assembled, synthesized, traded and sold. If personal data has value, and companies are making billions or even trillions of dollars from it, shouldn't these firms be paying the source (us) to use it? Real cash…

For many of them, we get to use their services for free. That's the arrangement.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#150

Post by SmellyGeekBoy » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 12:06 PM UTC

compcoffee wrote: post #110

mark_l_watson wrote: post #32

I like Tim Cook, I think his heart is in the right place and as much as a corporation can, Apple generally does the right thing. I was having lunch with several lawyers at my company a few weeks ago. One of them was talking strongly about quality devices and Apple’s strong privacy stance. He literally said that we as a society should be grateful for having Apple.

> He literally said that we as a society should be grateful for having Apple. Which is utterly cringeworthy. iPhone user thinks iPhone is best thing since sliced bread. News at 11.

I'm not usually one for fanboyism (and I say this as a full time Linux desktop and Android user) but Apple really do seem to be trying to do right by their customers in most cases. Certainly more than the competition. I've been considering switching for a while, but it seems the quality of their hardware and to some extent their software has slowly been going downhill post-Jobs.