throwaway4good

Edit: A bit about why Shein is special and what makes it "tech":

https://sourcingjournal.com/topics/logistics/shein-supply-ch...

Shein May Open Up ‘Supply Chain As a Service’ to Brands and Designers

...

The small-batch, on-demand manufacturing model has been the bread and butter for Shein’s rapid growth, with the e-commerce retailer reportedly making more than $30 billion in revenue in 2023.

Partnering with roughly 5,400 third-party contract manufacturers in China, Shein can churn out tens of thousands of new styles daily. The company places orders to suppliers to be delivered in days, shipping roughly 5,000 metric tons of goods via air freight per day, according to data from Cargo Facts Consulting.

The fashion firm also leverages real-time data to quickly analyze demand and replenishes orders as needed, while also allowing it to quickly boost production of popular items and drop products that do not sell as expected. Using this data, Shein can reduce storage costs and limit inventory waste—further allowing the company to maintain low prices in the form of $10 dresses and $5 shirts.

http://okjike.com/

(?)

I tried signing up - couldn’t get pass the sms verification - I am in some European country.

While the tech described probably has merits, anyone who has been near DB lately would instinctively go: why are you doing this when you cannot get the basics right?

There should be innovation in vehicle form and size now that electric batteries and motors have become cheap and abundant; cars such as the depicted would already be whizzing around town if we were free to buy them but of course we are not.

Perhaps innovation will happen outside the west where the politics of this is less locked down by special interests and overall conservatism.

The US kills off Huawei’s access to Google Android and TSMC. Almost completely killing their consumer business.

But then hands them a lifeline: you can buy chips at Qualcomm (but not Mediatek) and Intel (but not AMD). Allowing them to maintain a presence in consumer phones and laptops.

Now 5 years later when they have finally built their own operating system and setup their own fabs - the US kills access to Intel and Qualcomm.

Why?

Mapping is explicitly regulated so no need for an indirect barrier.

AFAIK it is the same other places. If a Chinese company wanted to do an extensive commercial map of the US it would face all sorts of regulative hurdles.

This is thinking from a military apparatus stuck in the 1950es.

https://github.com/googollee/eviltransform/blob/master/java/...

https://github.com/googollee/eviltransform/blob/master/java/...

And converting the other way by a kind of binary search, I guess using a flaw in the obfuscation:

https://github.com/googollee/eviltransform/blob/master/java/...

All seems very silly by today standards and I would think it hardly made sense back in 2002 when this was apparently devised.

"War prep is why Xi Jinping is afraid to unleash China's consumers"

Is different from the article it links to:

"Why Xi Jinping is afraid to unleash China’s consumers"

It is also fairly unjustified given the content of the article.

China doesn't do broad stimulus spending as it would re-ignite the old property bubble. Instead it does targeted industrial policies so that its industries can climb up the value chain. Given the size of its economy, its military spending is modest.

The time zone is consistent with Western Australia and the work starts by "branching out" a not widely used Australian test framework.

The actual attack is probably done by someone else.

Which Jia Tan turns into "s-test".

https://www.wired.com/story/jia-tan-xz-backdoor

The Mystery of ‘Jia Tan,’ the XZ Backdoor Mastermind

The thwarted XZ Utils supply chain attack was years in the making. Now, clues suggest nation-state hackers were behind the persona that inserted the malicious code.

...

At a glance, Jia Tan certainly looks East Asian—or is meant to. The time zone of Jia Tan’s commits are UTC+8: That’s China’s time zone, and only an hour off from North Korea’s.

Here is my speculation.

I would look at the test framework - the attacker needs the complexity of it to hide away the attack and it is first thing he publishes - probably has been planned from the very beginning.

This is a homemade thing based on something called "Seatest".

How common is Seatest? Not that common as far as I can tell - maybe someone can correct me?

Usually Microsoft etc. don't hold back identifying "threat actors".

Is there a US police investigation ongoing that could ask Microsoft? The target of this attack has been US firms / persons so if they report it, I assume a US police investigation would be required.

For example "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" is a great sci-fi on its own. But the background of McCarthyism and the red scare of its time makes it much cooler and much more entertaining and thought provoking.

I am slightly annoyed by Netflix's adaption of the book which takes the technocratic communist China out of it. I understand why it has to be like that but still we would have better TV if everything didn't have to be boiled in the same generic soup.

But as I wrote. This is a controversial subject. And there are economists out there who will tell you that the special status of the US dollar makes no difference at all and this de Gaulle guy just was upset about losing some colonies.