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Comment by ncr100 | Hacker News Reader

> Google said in a statement “we understand the concerns” and that it had “fallen short of our own high standards”.

Apple said the same rhetorical non-apology apologetically, recently... about something??

They said this, but then they went ahead and fought Finland in court. They claimed this was mostly planted forest but they also cut down plenty of native forest

What's the source for this? I haven't seen claims of cutting down old growth forest.

That's the entire reason the court stopped construction. It's in the public documents. The ESA was supposed to identify any plots of old growth native forests (especially stuff like bogs and streams). Google rushed to cut everything down to remove any evidence of old growth habitats but they claimed that they did their own internal assessment beforehand and preserved a few of those sites. The Finnish Association for Nature Conservation (aka Suomen luonnonsuojeluliitto) is the group that used satellite imagery to argue in court that they lied and that there were several native, protected strands that were NOT spared.

Which court stopped construction? I have not read that courts are involved at all yet, only that Finnish Supervisory Agency (Lupa- ja valvontavirasto LVV) has ordered Google to stop construction. I found a source [0] claiming that some areas that are important for biodiversity were first spared and then cut down, but this does not mean that they were old growth and the Muhos county official Mikko Kari states "[The areas] are not legally mandated to be protected."

Now, I'm not a fan of Google and I'd much prefer this whole project was scrapped, which is why I'm interested if there are sources that provide something that I've missed from the Finnish media.

[0] https://suomenluonto.fi/uutiset/luonnon-monimuotoisuudelle-t...

> Apple said the same rhetorical non-apology apologetically, recently... about something??

Entirely possible they were advised by the same crisis management firm like FGS Global or Brunswick Group.

There is a whole giant industry around pretending to be sorry effectively.

Yes!

There is a segment on Le Show (The Simpsons voice actor) just dedicated to the practice .. "Apologies of the Week":

https://www.wwno.org/le-show

I think it was their Siri. Apple Intelligence lags a lot behind competitors, and back during WWDC last year Craig made an announcement about how "Siri had fallen short of expectations".

Executives were the world's first slop slingers even before LLMs. No wonder they got infatuated so easily.

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