aclsid

This is spot on, and I'm going to call it for what it is. Just another way of Google creeping on user data to improve their products. The same way they do with fonts, email, ads, etc etc etc.

I for one I'm appalled that nobody really cares too much about this because of the covenience provided by Google tools, but we clearly have a situation building up where another RMS will come up with the equivalent of the free software foundation but from a privacy perspective.

They don't really need to do that since they have the great firewall in place.

You definitely haven't been in China. Even when they blocked some VPNs, Apple devices are a million times better in China because it has the official app store.

You cannot begin to understand what it means to be forced to use one of those non-Google Play stores. Even if you set your device to English, Firefox will be in Chinese and you get a weird Skype version as well.

I mean it is a pretty interesting experience living Google-free on Android, and you could resort to APKPure to install some stuff like Whatsapp. But honestly, unless you get a Xiaomi phone or equivalent that you can switch to an international ROM, the whole experience is pretty annoying. Spam calls and text blockers on Android are the main highlight though.

The licensing is not the issue. It is the middleman charging fees for simple transactions that they will totally skip. Building that before was hard but the blockchain solved that

As a counterpoint, we can agree that the sea has lots of resources as well and that does not mean that we are all going to live in an oil platform because that is simply not ideal. There are well paying jobs to be had in those regions, but I do believe the parent post has a point on limiting stuff. Is it economically viable to build a underwater community? towns in the middle of the mosquito infested Amazon? etc etc

Why? I'm honestly bothered by this Cold War mentality that has settled in people due to the amount of repetition that Huawei somehow is doing something bad yet no single piece of evidence has come out to support those claims.

Restricting competition by using FUD is nothing new to the Linux community, but seeing this being done at the govt level and people buying into this whole tribal mentality is astonishing. I have more issues with some monopolistic tendencies that companies like Google or Microsoft in the 90s had, especially with how Android is effectively becoming closed source through the Play Store and Services, yet you do not see that level of collective paranoia going on.

Sorry to disagree but what you said is simply not true. If she stays long enough in the US with her spouse, and she gets a green card or citizenship then you are not obligated by any means to stay forever with that person. Tricking the system might be immoral but it is by no means illegal, pretty much the same way tax lawyers find loopholes in the law to help corporations pay less taxes.

I seriously doubt that CamScanner wanted that kind of publicity. As for Kaspersky, they are like gun makers, selling you a false/real sense of security depending on who you ask.

In Venezuela as part of the universal history subject that starts with the Greeks all the way to the modern age, there is no mention of specific bombs but nuclear bombs overall and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I do remember that at the time they had a picture in the book of a nuclear submarine and I thought, sure it has nuclear weapons therefore a nuclear submarine :)

Well, people were doing that with horses and natural resources like wood, sperm oil and others for centuries before us. I do love our modernity but as far as being sustainable, there is no way on earth we are not going to destroy this planet with all the plastic packaging and the short-term throwaway mentality of modern electronics. All-electric from renewable sources is such a small part of that equation that it is mostly lip service. After all, you will still need batteries with all the pollution that implies.

I don't think you know a lot of Chinese people. They use Baidu when they are outside continental China. It is mostly because the search results are finely tuned to local stuff and it has the big plus of not giving you links that are censored if you are in China so you don't waste your time. I ended up using it myself a couple of times for that reason.

I don't know which country are you from, but I think the world has far bigger problems than to "liberate" China. Especially when the US turns a blind eye to a journalist murder because it was done by an ally.

Trade barrier? Since when services offered through the web are paying taxes in the places where they are rendering their services. If anything, expect a lot more governments to wisen up, like the US did with Amazon and taxes, and create these barriers to have people actually play by local rules. That I don't agree with Chinese rules is one thing but it is their country.

But let's be perfectly clear that the Chinese did this out of censorship and the trade part happened to be a side-effect.

I think what you want is already here. Android is Linux on the phone. LineageOS was built on top of AOSP.

What we really need though is a replacement for all Google Play Services that is free software, including push notifications.

Buy Chinese brands like Oppo, Meizu or Xiaomi (mix 3 is awesome). If you get the one with the Chinese rom Google has been removed to an extent that is not possible by end users or are least without switching ROMs which is generally a PIA. The issue then becomes installing something like ApkPure as a replacement for Google play unless you enjoy your Firefox in Chinese. TouchPal is a terrific keyboard as well if you manage to get rid of their ads.

The same attitude applies to Russians and I doubt you can call racism on that one. Seriously, Chinese call up the racism card far too often for unrelated things for me to take those statements seriously.

That there might be corruption in a prison system that leads some corrupt officials to do perverse acts like selling organs is one thing, but stating that this is a state sponsored practice is a bit extreme don't you think? Any links to what you are claiming would be good.

Taking that moral stand should also go for other things I believe, like not buying oil from Saudi Arabia and as a consumer, demanding to know where the gas you are using is coming from so you could make an informed decision.

Nah, nobody is complaining about Taiwanese or Japanese investment, so that is moot point, mostly made by Chinese from the continent when things don't go their way.

Having lived in the US, I feel the police is non-corrupt and competent, which is a major step from places like Latin America, some places in Asia, Africa or even Eastern Europe.

My main complaint is that they are being used as tax collectors instead of counties solving their issues through other means.

In South America, such an attitude would be followed by thinking immediately, this guy wants money somehow.

You seem to forget that China has like 50+ minorities that are encouraged to rise up in society, with preferred employment in the regions they are from or better chance to get at top universities. That some Uyghur have been trying to create domestic terrorism and that the central government response is blunt that is true, but the same can be said of how a lot of members of the Muslim community are treated in the West, especially in places like Gitmo. As for pioneering, just by seeing what happened with digital payments, I think you are in for a surprise. The worst thing one can do in general is think that you are so superior that no other people can overcome you. China suffered greatly from having such delusions in the past and so will the US if they don't get any wiser.

As a counterpoint I would say that the old people that in that high level language called C, (real men use Punch cards ;) ), had no clue about user interfaces, developer productivity, used waterfall models for planning, and in general, creating something that was somewhat horizontal and useful ended up being a titanic task, and also with crazy price tags. Wait let me write that client/server software again using CORBA :(.

One of the new AR15 with .300 AAC Blackout munition, maybe. But there are some really good rifles out there and, especially of the 6mm breed. Beretta has the ARX-160, IMI and the Tavor is a awesome, the Russians have the A-545/A-762 which solves the AK's recoil issue.

In general it is a bold statement to claim something to be the best with so many new options out there.

If money and logistics were not an issue, I believe the FN Five-SeveN with the specialty 5.7 cartridge would win hands down. It very much has done for the pistol what the AR-15 did for the rifle.

That tumbling effect sales pitch is the most baffling part of this whole story to me. It is great in a lab with ballistic gel on an uncovered target, but hardly the reality out there.

I think sooner than later this whole fiasco will be in the past once the move to 6mm cartridges become a thing.

Ok in there you have a point. I ended up doing some more reading about this and saw this https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/china-worlds-b...

So you are right with the nominal distinction, and if I was wrong about that, then the downvotes probably reflected that more than any opinion of mine.

Please check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP) where the World Bank, IMF and the CIA, they all agree China is on top now. But I'm truly impressed how that fact seems to offend people here based on the downvotes these replies get.

Their economy is larger, and yes, bigger GDP than America. Per capita, US still leads, but since I'm not interested in a piss competition here, let me clarify.

The point of my reply was that saying that the US has more money does not explain the fact on why people in the US pays more for software than in the rest of the world, which I believe is the key issue when it comes to a social network ability to monetize international markets. You have rampant software piracy in Latin America, Asia and Europe. At least in the EU, things are better for business software. China is so notorious for piracy that a former head of Microsoft R&D for China said: "In China we [don't] have problems with market share. The issue is how do we translate that into revenue.".

Nowadays software companies in China have found success by giving away free games and selling coins and whatnot. So my whole comparison was that if China has a bigger economy (or smaller/similar if you feel offended by that fact), then how do you explain that even large companies like Microsoft are struggling in that market.

If that was the case, then China would be the top market. This has more to do with the fact that Americans are used to pay for software at a personal level, something that not even Europe is fully used to.