Limited protection. The actions don't seem to be having a huge effect, at least in the medium and longer term. Certainly not in China, and time will tell how effective the protectionism will be outside once Huawei start to expand its focus worldwide.
The sanctions have helped China focus its development on certain things that it previously didn't need to due to them being readily available for a fair price. They had other more things to focus on, but the sanctions changed the priorities.
The problem is that Americans seem to think that they are exceptional and that the Chinese are stupid people who can't work out how to do things themselves without American help. Americans seem to be especially hung up on copying, when it is clearly the most efficient way to make progress, and their IP system has so obviously become broken to the point where it is no longer fit for purpose and just serves to keep others down/subservient.

Clearly, you're joking. Western companies have made massive profits from China. China has played its hand well, for sure. As for {,m}any developing country, they trade market access for things that benefit them, including IP. They correctly recognised the eagerness of (eg) the USA for China to open up, and that the value is in their massive market, and rightly took advantage of it. Imo, they did so quite fairly, on the whole, while they developed their country, including wrt IP laws and enforcement. TRIPS ftw.

Imo, a lot of those super apps you referred to also base their "miniapp" ecosystems on web technologies and a webview.
As such, Apple only allows use of Webkit /safari which doesn't work too well, or at least it works "different". So, since Apple is smaller than "everyone else" developers target "full functionality" at everyone else (where chromium works) and reduce the offering in terms of functionality/features for Apple.

I don't know for sure that this is the wht, but it is absolutely noticeable that offerings on Apple is worse. Even my non-techie wife has noticed - actually, she pointed it out (since she was forced to use the iPhone because it was the best unused "test" phone I had lying around). Maybe there's some other reason...

On my Firefox Nightly I have an extension to set Yandex as an allowed default search engine. Makes it easier to pop up another browser for a session.

Somebody fix that extension to work on mobile, eh?

They don't - something like this needs an Act or Congress.

SCOTUS made up some BS "Chevron Deference" in the 80's which has been abused like this since.

The current /Maine Fisheries/ case should dissolve Chevron deference.

We may like the FTC proposal on this one but with that kind of power and no representation it's only counting the days until they do something we absolutely detest. And then there's no effective recourse.

Well, it's like in Econ 101 when you studied equillibrium prices. At $3500 the number of units demanded is small, but if you dropped that to $1000 there should be more units demanded, assuming consumers are economically rational.

There is a tech adoption curve in which different groups of people play important roles in each stage of a new product's life cycle. At the stage Vision Pro is at now, you'd be focused on only about 1% of the potential market. The linked article calls these people "innovators", but that's unduly complementary; these are the people who want something because it's *new* whether or not it actually does anything useful. This is not irrational per se; they're *interested* in new shit, but it's not pragmatic, and the pragmatists are where you make real money.

Still, these scare-quotes "innovators" are important because set the stage for more practical consumers to follow. Perhaps most importantly, when you are talking about a *platform* like this people hungry for applications to run on the doorstop they just bought attract developers. And when the right app comes along the product becomes very attractive to pragmatists. This happened with the original IBM PC in 1981, which if you count the monitor cost the equivalent of around $8000 in today's money. I remember this well; they were status symbols that sat on influential managers' desks doing nothing, until people started discovering VisiCalc -- the first spreadsheet. When Lotus 1-2-3 arrives two years after the PC's debut, suddenly those doorstops became must-haves for everyone.

So it's really important for Apple to get a lot of these things into peoples' hands early on if this product is ever to become successful, because it's a *platform* for app developers, and app developers need users ready to buy to justify the cost and risk. So it's likely Apple miscalculated by pricing the device so high. And lack of units sold is going to scare of developers.

But to be fair this pricing is much harder than it sounds;. Consumers are extremely perverse when it comes to their response to price changes. I once raised the price of a product from $500 to $1500 and was astonished to find sales went dramatically up. In part you could say this is because people aren't economically rational; but I think in that case it was that human judgment is much more complex and nuanced than economic models. I think customers looked at the price tag and figured nobody could sell somethign as good as we claimed our product to be for $500. And they were right, which is why I raised the price.

Weren't the founders and top management of Google citizens of Israel?

It dozen't seem all surprising from that perspective.

These protesters should have gone back to writing code to surveil Americans, I guess?

Sometimes a Good paperback at ThriftBooks is $1 less than a new one at Amazon so I just get the new one.

Weird market!

PS unless the recent printings have been Trust & Safety'ed.

Me too, kinda.

Some might be lucky if they choose the dominant tech, but there are so many smart arses around that think they know better that whole genres of tech get fragmented to hell, so picking one with longevity is a challenge/gamble.

I just got fed up with the churn - it's just not fun any more - and have enough savings. Maybe.

It isn't.
Next.

There is ample evidence that we screwed up an entire generation of kids with constant exposure to screens and social media. The addictions we're seeing right now are just the tip of the iceberg, compared to what we're going to see as Gen Z grows up. Kids are growing up and missing out on very important developmental milestones because of what we're willingly exposing them to.

We can't sound these alarm bells loud enough. We have plenty of evidence of what kids who miss out on actual socialization end up as when they become legal adults, and it's not great.

Chinese Flying Taxi Sector is the name of my 3rd ep where i explore the intersection between old school jungle and modern minimalist ranchhouse

Good flick if you want to get a feel for how Pharma sales work.

I'm surprised it hasn't be Pfbanned yet based on who it highlights.

Iinm, there are several providers in the UK that don't charge extra for roaming in the USA. Three and O2 are ones too look into, and there are probably others.
I'm not sure how viable such options are for long term usage, but it's something.

Technically speaking the crime of fraud has three elements: (1) A materially false statement; (2) an intent to deceive the recipient; (3) a reliance upon the false statement by the recipient.

So, if you want to lie to people and want to avoid being charged with fraud, it's actually quite simple. You lie by omission. You distract. You prevaricate (dance around the facts). You encourage people to jump on the bandwagon; you lead them to spurious conclusions. It's so easy to lie without making any materially false statements that anyone who does lie that way when people are going to check up on him is a fool.

Not only is this way of lying *legal*, it happens every time a lawyer makes an closing statement to a jury. It's not a problem because there's an opposing counsel who's professionally trained to spot omissions and lapses of logic and to point them out. But if a lawyer introduces a *false statement of fact* to a trial that's a very serious offense, in fact grounds for disbarrment because that can't be fixed by having an alert opponent.

We have similar standards of truthfullness for advertising and politics because in theory there's competition that's supposed to make up for your dishonesty. In practice that doesn't work very well because there is *nobody* involved (like a judge) who cares about people making sound judgments. But still, any brand that relies on materially false statements is a brand you want to avoid because they don't even measure up to the laxest imaginable standards of honesty.

Now investors have lots of money, so they receive a somehat better class of legal protections than consumers or voters do. There are expectations of dilligence and duties to disclose certain things etc. that can get someone selling investments into trouble. But that's still not as bad as committing *fraud*, which is stupid and therefore gets extra severe punishment.