Posts by fxkeh

160% inefficient?

Over 100% inefficient must mean the car doesn't move at all. Though the bigger question is where does the EV car absorb the other 60% from?

Apple have a long track record of refusing to pay out for anything, and have just as deep pockets as he does, so good luck with that.

Re: Someone clarify please ?

Strictly, they've not outright banned any non-Chinese apps / social networks... they just demand all companies follow Chinese laws. Which involves following whatever censorship and monitoring the government requests, and that ends up being either too expensive or politically unpopular for most American companies. For example of the latter, Microsoft offers Bing search within the Chinese mainland and complies with the government's take down requests; Google pulled out because at the time they were still claiming to "do no evil". For an example of the former, Microsoft offered Linked-In in China for many years, and only recently pulled out because the cost of complying became too much.

If the US actually had federal privacy laws they could demand all apps / social networks didn't collect too much personal information, and publish their algorithms, promotions, etc, to prove no bias or undue influencing. But that would be lobbied furiously against by Google, Facebook, Musk, etc, so instead we have this.

Re: But why?

You're not wrong about market differences, but I just want to point out that Grab isn't a Chinese app (and I doubt even available in mainland China) so the CCCP has no hand in it's success.

Re: "sophisticated encrypted communication methods"

Whatsapp, probably.

Mmm, but having recently done this...

> This needs a WeChat app that requires a WeChat account to download

There's a website too. You don't need to use the WeChat app

> WeChat requires a Chinese phone number, bank account and Chinese Id to register

WeChat didn't need a Chinese phone number, or Chinese bank account last time I tried it, and certainly doesn't need a Chinese ID.

Re: Comparing apple pie to mandarins

If this happened I'd expect the Chinese government to pay a little more attention to a foreign national who immediately wants to join the military tbh. Especially given how complicated and costly it is to gain citizenship, compared to the forces salary.

Or maybe the US Government did pay attention and just waited for them to do the inevitable.

Re: "bought [..] in 2020 for $27 billion, hauled in $1.5 billion [..] for its fiscal 2022"

$1.5 billion in *revenue*, not profit. So who knows when/if they will get enough profit to get a return on that $27 billion investment.

non-standards compliant measurement

I'm disappointed the article is continuing to use "postage stamp" as a measurement of size, rather than using the correct standard, which as any fule kno, is the nanoWales for area - https://www.theregister.com/Design/page/reg-standards-converter.html - or grapefruit for volume.

Re: WOW!

And don't forget the massive $5,000 fine for the business - however will they avoid bankruptcy!

Not having a formal extradition treaty doesn't mean much except extra talking between diplomats. Unless there's a law against extraditing him, he's a Montenegrin national, or a particularly sympathetic character with the public, (none of these afaik) the government there can just hand him over to whoever they want really.

Re: Confused

Even if he only got 50%, $7.5m is still a huge chunk of money. I don't know how much his salary was, but even with silicon valley wages thats got to be the same as decades of work.

Re: Hmm

Fwiw, the South China Morning Post is Hong Kong based and nominally independent of the government (as much as it can be these days)

Re: "Because it works"

Unfortunately (for someone who, like yourself, does not enjoy seeing adverts everywhere) it *does* work for some products/companies, and can all be tracked with various codes and cookies. It's very possible to see that the $100 (or whatver) you paid resulted in X impressions where your ad was shown, which lead to Y people going to your website, and Z purchases on the back of those impressions. So you know what extra sales your ad money drove, and if it's more or less than the profit margin on those sales; and you know what your normal sales were direct from the webstie without the ads the previous months, etc. It's crappy, but it works, because some people do buy things after seeing and then clicking on adverts.

If you don't like it, just don't click on the adverts. Ironically, if everyone who hates adverts - and wasn't going to ever click on them - who blocks the adverts from being shown at all then the impression -> sales rate increases, giving advertising better returns... which leads to more advertising.

What is especially wrong about the implied link between unions and communism is how actively hostile communist countries are to any kind of organised union activity among the workforce.

>How long before everyone realizes their phones were all made in China?

Everyone already realizes their phones (and pretty much everything else) is made in China. How long till everyone realizes that any spying taking place is from the software on the phone, and questions who is in control of the software is the actual question. (Answer, one would assume, is the company making the operating system and the company making whatever apps are on the phone - who are approved by the company making the operating system...)

Re: Not just about spying

A backdoor that shutdown the network is pretty useless though, unless it's used in a country that you're planning to militarily attack.

Think about it: If you're going to attack the country then the mobile networks going down would certainly cause disruption that could make your military attack more impactful, or likely to succeed. But if you're not attacking them then activating the hidden backdoor would realistically cause only some short-term public disruption - until the country were able fix it or switch to alternative hardware. They're certainly not going to back-down on any sanctions - the public anger alone would make this impossible - they're going to escalate sanctions and other actions instead.

China is absolutely not going to attack Germany, a country half-way around the world, NATO member, and key ally of three nuclear armed countries. So if there was one, then activating a hidden backdoor will only make things worse for China.

The only value of that kind of backdoor is as a threat _before_ the sanctions - but that's a one time threat, that would be just as likely to lead to the information being made public, and then every country will stop using Chinese equipment rather than just the US and whatever countries it can strong-arm into following suit.

source?

> what about South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Philippines, etc? One way or other, China claims sovereignty over parts of all those nations.

Source for that? I've seen their "dash line" map that claims parts of the sea near other countries but nothing that claims parts of those nations themselves. (China does claim some territory that India and Pakistan control however)

Re: What did he know two weeks ago?

Apparently he had to file the notification that he was going to sell the shares back in January, so it's more like what did he know 6-7 weeks. Whatever it was, I would guess his salary is high enough have made it a better idea to keep the bank afloat for at least another 6 months or so if possible and pocket that income instead/also.

Re: Not just Chips

We absolutely do not need to thank Mr Putin for anything.

We "beat" our competitors by making better products than them, rather than enacting trade restrictions under the guise of national security and then strong arming other countries to do the same.

Re: Cue Bono

Perhaps it was deliberate - but if you were a VC and saw a potential risk of the bank going under, then telling your clients was to get their money out was the responsible thing to do - for both their interests and your own. The problem is that becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Re: Optional

It's available - go to the lenovo website and chose build your own - just the bundle ids are country specific.

Re: key parts of critical infrastructure might become dependent on foreign technology

> For starters the US is not engaging in genocide and does not run concentration camps.

Well, it did previously - the genocide of the native peoples and the WW2 "internment" camps of anyone looking a bit Asian - but one would think the primary concern of the German government would be how this affects Germany and German citizens, rather than what another country is doing within their borders to their citizens.

Re: Marketing notwithstanding, it's not taking of from "European Soil".

To be more pendantic, French Guiana is part of France so part of the EU but is not in Europe so not European soil. Cornwall, however, is part of the UK so is not part of the EU but *is* in Europe so is European soil.

Re: Generally never a right time to buy for lots of stuff

I can kind of see their point if they've paid and Tesla havn't delivered their car yet. I'd be annoyed too - though likely not annoyed enough to actually go protest.

The house price example is an interesting one because in England both sides generally _can_ pull out of a property sale (or attempt to renegotiate) between accepting the sale price and actually handing over the money and getting the keys.

Re: American trade protection

yes, I said something similar in a comment on another story - that US policy doesn't have anything to do with human rights so even if China changed how it treated it's citizens the US policies wouldn't - and got heavily downvoted, then my comment was deleted by a moderator.

Re: Tips?

I can see a reason why you'd give your local postie (or refuse collector, newspaper delivery person, etc, etc) an annual christmas tip as a way of being festive. I can't see tipping each delivery person for each and every delivery.

Re: What do we expect?

There's little chance most people will be retiring at 60 these days, but I thought a similar thing - that 22% doesn't seem far off what you'd see from a normal distribution. And that it's a little lower could be just be that 30 years ago there were less IT jobs around so less people started a career in IT.

"making people walk is cheap."

Normally creating terrible workplace conditions so people just quit is much cheaper than paying redundancy, but genuis CEO Elon offered everyone at the company the option of taking the redunancy payment. And he made it an opt-out choice too (everyone who _didn't_ sign up got the payout to leave)

Re: Historically

Oh, where did you live in Beijing and Shanghai then? You must have some personal experience to back up your claim that they're unpleasant places to live in. Or some other objective score based on all the factors that make a place pleasant or unpleasant - air quality alone is not the universal criteria for desirably (nor is your dislike for the government).

If Meta hadn't bought Whatsapp and effectively stopped it from innovating or adding any new features, it very likely would already be like WeChat (the Chinese app you're thinking of) or Line (the Japanese app that's also popular in other Asian countries). The takeover killed any chances of that so we in the west are left with apps that only know how to make money by selling our personal data, rather than making money on integrations and leaving your data alone. It's sad.

Inflation

A small amount of inflation is a *good thing* in an economy. Inflation discourages hoarding of cash assets (because they loose relative value) over investment in businesses; encourages buying today over the future (when prices will be higher); and reduces the absolute value of debt. An economy with no inflation - or even worse, deflation, which is what many cryptocurrencies are aiming for - is a dead economy.

they had collateral for the loaned funds... it's just the collateral was funny money and actually worth (near) nothing