511–520 of 728 posts
The woman in the pink smock-like clothing: In the video there are Chinese characters on the clothing above the front pocket area. In a picture of her later on in the news article the Chinese writing is gone. Has it been photoshopped out for the press release images?
It says 富士康科技, Foxconn Tech
Helene survivor here. What's wild to me is that, regardless of the small scale of this facility, it's only a few hundred meters from a 1% flood zone: https://msc.fema.gov/portal/search The address I found for the facility is 9101 Windmill Park Lane Hudson, TX 77064 This seems ill advised given recent events like Hurricane Harvey
https://www.swg.usace.army.mil/Missions/Dam-Safety-Program/A...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Authoritarian central planning isn't an inherent trait of engineers and nor should we aspire for it to be.
Have you met an engineer? I'd say "being an engineer" is probably the single most predictive trait for authoritarianism in my experience.
And this flows in other areas. If I need a functional vehicle with cheap upkeep I optimize for it. I invest in low risk products since the income is limited. I know that people with plan and confidence are scary, you don’t meet them every day.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This reminds me of a great freakonomics podcast that talked about China being run by engineers and America being run by lawyers. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/china-is-run-by-engineers-a...
That guy is so annoying his subpar analysis has become such a trope. America used to build things too. Lawyers have been part of the founding and fabric of both societies. Trying to reduce China v America to engineers vs lawyers is so reductive it's just mind blowing this keeps getting repeated.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As mentioned upthread, if you go to an American machine shop, they'll take two weeks to get back to you, and generally be a PITA to work with, vs China's jumping at the chance to build stuff. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTjEVB5p2/
> As mentioned upthread, if you go to an American machine shop, they'll take two weeks to get back to you, and generally be a PITA to work with, vs China's jumping at the chance to build stuff. Probably because the Chinese are working 996. I know people who work 996, in China, and they dislike it as much as I would. That's "jumping at the chance."
Meanwhile, you start talking to the Chinese machine shop guy, and he's all yeah my brother's does powder coating, his uncle does cardboard boxes and styrofoam inserts are another relative. The American attitude could go that and not work 996, but that's why it's not just about the money.
Apple is very tied to Chinese manufacturing in a way that is hard to replicate in US. They will agree to make some high margin simple to assemble thing in the US to appease government, but if it goes as well as last time, they will stop as soon as they can. In china they were often able to iterate on designs and have custom screws and other parts made and ramped up in very short times. Something about having the whol…
I chuckled out loud at the huge-ass-safety-hazard-in-any-manufacturing-environment US flag thumb tacked to the factory wall. It's all wafer thin gold leaf to appease the toddler in command.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/2026/02/apple-accelera...
It doesn't say the Mini will be exclusively produced at this US facility. I wonder in say 2 years what % will be "produced" in the US? 1%? 0.1%?
> It doesn't say the Mini will be exclusively produced at this US facility. What's likely to happen is Mac minis for North America will be made in Houston. Otherwise, the ones for the rest of the world will be made at the same facilities they are now. Just like iPhones for the US are made in India; iPhones for the rest of the world are made in China.
I'd guess it's a small percentage of the Mac minis for North America. Just enough that they get exempted from tariffs on the ones coming in from overseas...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No amount of time will let the U.S. - a country of 348 million people - replicate what China - a country with 1.4 billion people - a can do with manufacturing. This isn't "working harder". This isn't "rebuilding infrastructure". This isn't "training people in trades". The numbers are so cartoonishly lopsided as to be a non-starter for categorically replacing Chinese manufacturing.
600 million people live in North America. 1 billion people live in the Americas. Another billion live on the Pacific rim in non-Chinese countries. Establishing regulatory harmony across all those countries is obviously not possible in the same way it is in a single authoritarian state, but if the US made it a priority to create a trade bloc capable of replicating China’s manufacturing capacity, it probably could.
Now it's the CPTPP and doesn't include the US.
Canada is looking to the Pacific and EU for trade now (and China as well), so is Mexico.
It's likely that the EU/UK trade bloc will connect with the CPTPP via both the UK and Canada, which connects them to the APAC/ASEAN nations.
Everyone is aware of the power of the Chinese economy and the idea of the CPTPP is precisely to build up a trade economy that can compete and co-operate with China on an equal basis.
In the meantime, China is using its Belt & Road Initiative as a sort of "Marshall Plan" to extend its influence by building infrastructure like ports and rail.
These trade initiatives are at least focused on increasing trade, as opposed to the US "trade policy" which is to use tariffs as a crude form of protectionism and extortion to "bring manufacturing back".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
we don't have to entirely replace Chinese manufacturing to build back American manufacturing that's a false dichotomy.To compete we'll just have to be more revolutionary than the manufacturing industry already is.
And what exactly will stop China - a country infamous for copying U.S. technology - from copying whatever the U.S. comes up with?
It's at the point now where it is self-sustaining, which is why you see China starting to enforce IP Rights, precisely because it is now generating its own IP that it wants to protect.
Any economist would say that if China did just "copy" US technology to make itself more productive, that's good economic practice, from China's perspective.
Moats only worked for a while to protect European castles, they don't exist now.
