701–710 of 755 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not what I asked... What does it look like in google earth when you look at the islands? from OUTSIDE china... Are these same islands 'cencored' in these apps outside china as well in the same manner? (specifically in SATELLITE view)
You can just look yourself? https://www.google.com/maps/place/Senkaku+Islands+%2F+Dioyud...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s awful easy to armchair in from afar. On the ground that is a hell of an expectation.
yeah, tell me more. I was one of the students in Kiev, Ukraine during “Orange revolution” in 2004. Yeah, it is scary but not fighting for your future is scarier.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Congress and the US government take many aggressive actions against China. Recently, members of Congress personally visited Taiwan to express support for them. A current bill imposes sanctions on China for Xinjing human rights abuses, and President Biden imposed a 'diplomatic boycott' of the upcoming Olympics for the same reason. The Pentagon is openly focusing its efforts on China, including providing nuclear submar…
A diplomatic boycott at the Olympics during a pandemic and sanction of a dozen or so people are meaningless virtue signals. The other actions align with American geopolitical interests. What is suggested upthread is that Apple ought to sacrifice interests in order to fight China.
> 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.
Clearly Congress (and the Executive Branch, which is responsible for foreign policy) does plenty that is meaningful.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why would anyone hold such an assumption. Because that is what Tim Cook Apple's marketing and PR suggest Apple does. The force of good. Social Responsibility and Justice. Standing up against the government. ( They didn't explicitly say this but the message is something fairly similar ) Instead of creating "insanely" great product for our customers, friends and family. It is now about product that "enrich" people's…
I know a fair number of Americans who are over 50 years old, and appear fairly intelligent - but who, a while after each election, seem actually surprised and offended that the recently-elected politicians are not energetically living up to their campaign promises of squeaky-clean ethics, plentiful jobs, open & responsible government, etc. Do corporations have so much better a record of living up to feel-good marketi…
Honestly the US Govt should be helping solve this with a trade deal. Instead they put the corporation in a position to have to pay this protection money.
This is the purpose of a national trade deal, so an American company has the weight of the US government for contract enforcement with foreign entities, regardless of size or influence, and so all American companies operate on a level playing field with regard to US law.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anyone who has worked in mapping/GIS at a company that sells in China has seen this in action. The "display these islands larger" requests, the obfuscated coordinate system for geo-aligning maps, and other map content regulatory issues[1] all need to be dealt with if you want your map product available in the country. Not excusing it, but every company with maps there is required to do this, not just Apple. 1: https:…
ryandrake your function in this conversation is apologizing for these actions while simultaneously signaling your acceptance. you are more than excusing these actions, you are teaching others to rationalize away the need to be a good person who is kind to others no matter how badly their dictator asks you to treat them. so, ryandrake, i hope you wash all traces of this stench off of your face before you kiss your chi…
Since you've unfortunately been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly (and egregiously, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29237513), I've banned this account.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A diplomatic boycott at the Olympics during a pandemic and sanction of a dozen or so people are meaningless virtue signals. The other actions align with American geopolitical interests. What is suggested upthread is that Apple ought to sacrifice interests in order to fight China.
I was responding to this claim: > 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. Clearly Congress (and the Executive Branch, which is responsible for foreign policy) does plenty that is meaningful.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
1) This article is about Tim Cook negotiating deals to help the Chinese economy to avoid bad press that they aren't a team player over there, and so this has nothing to do with "complying with laws". 2) FWIW, to reply to that anyway: while this article is not about this, Apple does go far out of their way to make themselves a bottleneck that would be subject to these laws in the first place. As a trivial example of t…
1) Yes, this article is about Apple's secret deal with China. But this is exactly the way deals are done in China. They are not going to be public about it and they are not going to admit that this investment has anything to do with keeping Apple's business going in China, but in reality, they absolutely are related if not causal. 2) This is not true. Apple used to allow VPN apps on the Chinese App Store up until one…
Obviously, I understood this, right? This was the entire reason I can make a point I about how Apple decided to go down an immoral technical design with the goal of making more money than can be morally justified, because we know there were common alternative designs.
> Technically speaking, Chinese Android phone companies could just block 3rd-party apk installation anytime they want in the name of security (They already do that by default) and 99% users won't know how to circumvent it.
And yet, they don't.
I guess the big problem I have with your comment (the original one also) is that there is a certain scenario where you think you have a great point, and the idea that the other people arguing here or the article we are reading might not fit your enemy template is I guess so confusing or maybe frustrating that you are willing to just start smashing reality until it fits.
That you are pulling out theoretical futures here to fix your narrative is then telling: that Chinese companies could change something... well, a big part of my point is that they have not already changed something, and we can thereby use that to understand the boundary of what the law in China--not just the written ones but anything unwritten as well--are actually saying.
The reality is that, as far it seems both of us know, the only company with much marketshare--INCLUDING OF THE ONES IN CHINA--that outright block your ability to install VPNs on their phones is Apple. This is because Apple has gone to great lengths to design a system where all data and control over hardware is centrally managed by Apple, which causes problems the world over.
> Strategically, the most morally-reasonable way is to help the people in these countries by actually trying to be present even under severe pressures from the regimes to comply with their demands.
Google didn't even leave China over moral reasons: they did it because China was directly messing with their data centers. It is a move that comes off to me as purely defensive. It thereby isn't at all clear to either myself or many of the other people posting here that Google actually cares to take a stance against China due only to some ethical stance.
But like, you do realize I wasn't applauding such an action, anyway, right? While I am not sure I would be against such, I don't actively think Apple should leave China over their inability to host VPNs... I think they should allow people to install VPNs that they don't host, because apparently that's currently allowed in China and the only reason I see that changing is if Apple sets such a strong precedent that it is even possible or reasonable to control an ecosystem from top to bottom that we lose the practical ability--likely throughout the entire world--to even own general purpose computers anymore.
> And god knows how many malicious apps are in those app stores to eavesdrop users' private information.
As for this whole argument path, you seem to be arguing that people don't deserve freedoms because they are... I guess, dumb? If we don't believe people should have freedoms anyway, maybe we should just accept that authoritarian regimes are a force of good? I mean, the Chinese government is going to make tons of similar arguments about the good they are doing. Could it just be that you are pro-authoritarianism? :(
Regardless, you here claim that the possibility of malware people might accidentally install on these devices is somehow a 100% (a number you use later) guarantee of surveillance but ignore that Apple is just handing their centralized collection of user data to China anyway via stuff like iCloud (which is absolutely "in scope" if "users are dumb and will install malware is"... we can't make decisions based on the idea that elites running tech companies have the job of being smarter than the unwashed masses: down that road likes authoritarianism).
At this point I felt I should maybe dig into your comment history to try to better understand whatever your position here result is, and in the process of digging through a hunger of pro-censorship positions and defenses of Apple ( I came across something fascinating from a mere three months ago: you are against Apple's CSAM work (which I would expect you to be for, given your arguments here, as it is essentially the exact same scenario).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28230499
> This part is legit though: governments around the world could pressure Apple to add other forms of surveillance. Be it hashes of non-CSAM, or simply pressure NEMEC or other hash providers, or extending its capabilities to all messages or photos on device. > In my opinion, this is the biggest concern, not the technology. Before, Apple could simply refuse by saying we don't have the capabilities. But now, that excuse is gone. Apple's promise to human review content and only report CSAM is the weakest link.
^ This. This is you making my EXACT ARGUMENT for why having centrally managed software distribution is bad: that once you build such a mechanism, "governments around the world could pressure Apple to add other forms of surveillance" by using that mechanism you didn't have to build, and which all but a totalitarian regime (North Korea) would never force you to have built. "Before, Apple could simply refuse by saying we don't have the capabilities. But now, that excuse is gone. Apple's promise to human review content and only [block scams] is the weakest link."
Here is a talk I have at Mozilla Privacy Labs about centralization and the evils thereof, which attempts to link together a ton of these kinds of thoughts. Maybe it would be helpful to sit back and really consider your positions and whether they are at all consistent :(.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
You are thinking of all employees as fungible replaceable units, but employees are capitalistic units that can get monopoly power or economic rents.
An employee can provide a function that can’t be replaced, and that employee can capture a lot of the business profits, well beyond their actual “value” to the business. For example, Tim Cook’s personal relationship with Chinese officials might be very hard to replace.
Alternatively there is a kind of blackmail value, where losing a prominent employee can have high costs to the business, and the employee can get paid more than they are “worth” due to that. For example, perhaps Tim Cook leaving would cause more than a few billion damage in profits or valuation due to perceptions.