? how did self regulation fail ? There's nothing wrong with the way iPhone charges. This is an unnecessary intervention. There are plenty of bigger, more relevant fish to fry.
> There's nothing wrong with the way iPhone charges.
Well. I'm lugging around one cable which charges all my devices from bike lamps to powerbanks. And there is a totally different cable I'm also lugging around to charge my iphone. Why is that necessary?
Also my iphone charging cable frays all time, while my "everything else charging cable" does not.
I doubt the charging port is the most important factor in choosing a phone for most people.
Similar to how I voted for Biden even though I don't agree with 100% of his policies. It doesn't mean I don't disagree with him often - it's just that I only get one vote, so I have to prioritize. It's perfectly consistent for me to complain and make my opinion known when his administration does things I disagree with.
Agreed. This is the better way to argue that we vote with our dollars. If iPhone had a monopoly (which they absolutely don't) intervention is welcome. There is no reason anyone is forced to use a Lightning cable and still enjoy the fair marketplace.
You get to vote by not purchasing an iPhone and buying an android that has usb-c. You have no divine right to a device running a proprietery Operating System developed by a company with a port of your choice if said company doesn't want to manufacture it as such.
If you want to buy something with a USB-C then buy that. If you want Apple to change then let them know.
"Get the government to make a company make a choice I want" is really naive and glib.
There is no systematic issue here - if this were household wiring, there would be, but this is not that.
Every product has different configurations, different requirements. In particular, with smart phones, the extra thickness of the USBC actually makes it harder to design around - the issues has side effects.
Governments should be regulating where there is a material necessity or safety concern, not otherwise.
In particular - your 'bike lamps and power lamps' have totally different product requirements.
The government could conceivably help an Engineering body to promote a narrower set of clean standards, but this is too much.
Post-war countries tend to be best served by a truly benevolent, uncorruptable, honest broker who can carry out the necessary plans, which should be fairly obvious if there is decent planning.
China was actually doing well when Xi came along, and there could be a very strong argument that as long as Xi stayed mostly at arms length that they would be doing just fine.
Xi is stepping in hard and it will likely hurt.
Singapore is a kind of authoritarian state and they're amazing in at least many ways.
That said, Putin was mostly hands off on the economy and Russia is not healthy economically, were it not for Gas and Oil they wouldn't be in great shape.
There are services where you can get temp. cc numbers what 'wrap' your 'real' card. You can limit them to certain merchants and limit amounts, cancel them etc..
??? history does not care what is boring and what is 'backed by VCs'.
The most applicable things, those that people find useful and gain market share, will be used. How long they are used depends on other things.
Hopefully, Bitcoin will be seen for what it is in 10 or so years, an experiment gone awry, absorbing far too much time and talent, and in 100 years nobody will fathom what BTC was just as we don't remember the names of any 'spindle' manufacturers from 100 years ago.
A lot of arbitrary complexity in our stacks and it can be totally overwhelming for young people just moving through the drudgery.
Look at an Android project: there are maybe 12 different kinds of files! For a 'Hello World'. You have manifests, gradle (which is yet another programming language), snippets in Kotlin and Java, and entirely different xml 'language' for view definition, massive APIs, massive complexity and 'weight' in the simulators.
It's hard for people to focus on the problems space when were are overwhelmed with layers of tooling and abstractions.
The US does not threaten to kill or arbitrarily imprison family members of those they wish to extradite, and does not clandestinely do even remotely such things with US citizens unless there are huge issues of national security, aka a US Passport Holder running a terrorist camp in some place, plotting to blow up buildings.
The moral equivalence argument with China is tiring, and it's actually part of their horrible communications strategy.
The equivalent would be: 'nobody' US citizen 'Joe Smith', living in Paris, mocks Joe Biden on Facebook. As a result, FBI in USA threatens family with prison for arbitrary reasons with fabricated evidence, and clandestinely threatens US citizen in Paris to come home and 'face justice'.
It's conspiratorial and misrepresentation to talk about this - to the point of it being a lie.
If a very rich American went to South America for a decade and then bombed a building in Rio, he would have 'financial relationship' to the US via a number of investments. It doesn't mean that it has anything to do with US foreign policy, the government, or anything.
Osama Bin Laden was a member of a big, sprawling, super rich Oligarchic family in Saudi. Obviously, there were dealings, and obviously some Saudis probably funded some things here and there. Just like a Texan Evangelical Oil Billionaire might fund Christian Schools in Peru, which may even be good schools. But the charity run by a guy with ties to 'American Rio Bomber'.
Everything at that level is intertwined, it's not sufficient to suggest that proves anything.
The 'State' of Saudis is 'mostly a good actor to the outside world, even if they are bad in many ways internally. They allow the free flow of oil at market prices, 'per the deal' and don't align with China, Russia, or some other crazy state, and they are not trying to invade Iran or get nukes (though there are backup plans). And they play nice with Israel, not directly trying to start a war with them, or 'create' one between them and Israel. Most of their vast holdings are invested reasonably.Also, in the 'war on terror' which is actually a financial network and intelligence war, they have been playing 'on the right side' - as 'terrorists' are more dangerous to them than the US anyhow. So that's kind of what we can expect from them. In 100 years, hopefully things will be a bit better.
> It doesn't mean that it has anything to do with US foreign policy, the government, or anything.
The evidence points to the Saudi royal family funding a terrorist organization. That’s a lot more than just a rich citizen, that is their autocratic ruling family and the evidence is very convincing. Their reasoning probably was more about regional concerns rather than attacking the US, however when you fund fanatics they don’t always follow the script.
>It's conspiratorial and misrepresentation to talk about this - to the point of it being a lie.
this is false. there is a great deal of direct and circumstantial evidence that has come out in the last two years. this isn't "bin laden knew people", this is "the 9/11 hijackers received assistance from saudi diplomats in the US"
The intercepts notions of 'this was possibly a false flag' is literally the definition of conspiracy theory.
While there certainly might be more going on than we know, there isn't evidence of that much.
It's not going to be a surprise that a conduit for clandestine money might have some kind of governmental status or what have you.
It's basically insane to suggest House of Saud would want to do 9/11 or even a 'filed false flag', there is no benefit whatsoever in either. 9/11 did not help the Saudis, and even a 'failed false flag' like a pretend attack on a building in NYC would have the objective of what, trying to get more US troops in the Middle East for who's benefit?
More importantly, the likelihood of such a thing getting found out would be extremely high. The ruler of Saudi Arabia is going to blow up the Trade Centre knowing that the CIA/FBI would be able to nail him, and even all of Humpty Dumpty's men probably could not keep that secret contained? And if the US public found out, literally Saudi Arabia would cease to exist?
For what purpose?
No, this insane.
There are ultra Wahhabi nationalists in Saudi Arabia, they have money. We already know that. They are funding odd stuff around the world, just like many other billionaires. As part of the 'war on terror' a lot of that activity was shut down and now it's really scrutinized.
Even setting 9/11 aside, Saudi Arabia publicly funds numerous madrasah in other countries which have a, shall we say, Wahhabi-aligned curriculum. Which then provide a steady stream of recruits for the likes of al-Qaida (or, these, days, ISIS). This might be indirect enough to evade responsibility, but the countries where such radicalization eventually translates to violence generally don't consider Saudis "mostly a good actor".
It should not be surprising at all - you are 'allowed' to do what you have the power to do and get away with.
China speaks with one voice, Xi, everyone else a thousand voices. US has 10 000 people at least who make up the power of Xi. President, senator, CEO, senior bureaucrat, judge, heads of NGOs, Universities, police, military etc. all 'put in one group and coordinated with an ambitious 50 year plan' in the West. Even in a single country.
Europe, N. America, Japan, Korea, Australia have to partner with 'everyone else' in a comprehensive way to stand up to this. Trans Pacific was a big opportunity that Trump didn't have the foresight to grasp - he wanted to have 'unipolar power' in a world where the US just does not have the leverage it did after WW2 and no amount of 'wishing' or even exceptional leadership will change that. US could 'solve all it's problems' and it would still be the reality that % of global GDP would be declining because other nations are 'coming on line'.
Oddly, a panacea of 'other voices' may serve to counterbalance. Even if they are acting in self interest, to the extent they are not overrun by China, their own voices add up to something. We are seeing the beginning of that in Africa, with their stance on the Ukraine issue. While they should definitely be taking a more assertive stance via Russia, the fact they are where they are (and partly due to the fact Russia is their 'breadbasket') is an indication of coherent self interest on some level.
I don't think it's cause for world wide alarm, but there needs to be a plan.
>China speaks with one voice, Xi, everyone else a thousand voices. US has 10 000 people at least who make up the power of Xi. President, senator, CEO, senior bureaucrat, judge, heads of NGOs, Universities, police, military etc. all 'put in one group and coordinated with an ambitious 50 year plan' in the West. Even in a single country.
This is an orientalist and simplistic take. The CCP is an enormously complicated system and there are many cliques and ideological debates within it. As any sinologist will tell you, the power struggles at the very top are mostly unknown to us (except years later, to historians) but even in Mao's era there was certainly not a single voice.
I don't think it's simplistic and certainly not orientalist, as it has nothing to do with anything Asian or Oriental specifically.
That the CCP is an 'enormous and complex system with many debates within' doesn't matter if the party speaks very directly and coherently, and the party is very tightly controlled and of course they have all of the power.
The degree of centralization of authority by Xi is unlike we've seen since Mao, and due to universal power of technology, you could say 'more power than any leader in history'.
Xi very quickly and arbitrarily grabbed the nations top tech leaders off of the street. Literally disappeared. He imposed aggressive governmental oversight and controls over those organizations (and others) including government ownership, board seats, CCP members as staffers for internal oversight, censorship requirements, etc. etc.. It's unthinkable outside China, in any normal kind of country.
If any 'outside' leader speaks up against China - be it a Dean, or Prime Minster - the CCP will respond assertively and quickly.
When China does some questionable or malign act - where is the response? Who should respond? Is anyone powerful enough to respond? Can there be a coordinated action?
As the Australian political leadership spoke up against Chinese lies over COVID origins, they were slapped with billions in trade damages, and was attacked in a number of indirect ways. Were Australia to have acted in concert and direct cohesion with USA, EU and UK on that, and were policy and actions to be aligned, it would be a different story.
There's nothing comparable to Xi outside of China (in any normal country - I won't say 'western' country because it goes way beyond that), not even Putin.
There are two different ideas here. The fact that the CCP can act decisively and has an iron grip on China does not contradict the idea that it is still a granular organization with its own internal logic. Xi is not the CCP and the CCP is not Xi. And the iron grip and the decisiveness are not as total as you imagine them to be.
This is in fact where the orientalism comes in: the rejection of granularity. If you think about it for a few seconds, it really makes no sense that a single person would be able to entirely control a structure of 96 million adherents, or that this latter structure would have no internal dissension and tumult. The only reason we might come to these conclusions is if we are deeply unfamiliar with the history, culture, ideology, way of doing things that apply and thus reject the individuality and complexity that are part of these systems. Few Westerners would qualify Western institutions in this way. I don't mean in terms of agreeing or disagreeing with what they do, but analyzing them as just a unified blob and thinking nothing of it.
The TPP was more complicated than this and there was bipartisan opposition to it. The opposition to it wasn't merely Trump's isolationism but genuine concerns about the economic affects it would have on domestic citizens
