Why not a similarly brave stance in China? In China Apple claims it "obeys all local laws" except in the UK it wants to be courageous? I guess it's a brave state unless the $$$ are good.
Apple claims that messages sent with their Messages application are end-to-end encrypted, even in China, and that they have made no concessions to government of China.
But... Everyone in China has their iCloud backups stored in China and Apple holds the keys to these backups. While Apple cannot read E2E encrypted Messages content, they do upload an unencrypted (but encrypted with keys they control) backup of all of the phones Messages data.
It seems likely China can ask Apple for a backup of a citizen's phone and Apple will comply with that request. Or they have access to these data centers.
That is a good point. It's also possible that Apple has made some kind of concession but has found a weasel-y way to do it that let's them feel like they can claim no concessions have been made.
Maybe the difference is that Apple feels they may be able to talk the UK out of this idea.
Yea, pretty interesting point.. seems like either the uk market isn't big enough for them to implement a solution or they don't care about the market and they care about people in the uk but they don't care about people in China.
in advance I agree with a more cynical point as well, but I think we need to consider that there's equally plausible and more positive potential reasons
- if there is success in the UK, relevant persons at Apple can make a more compelling argument to push back on China and other governments a lot more
- perhaps apple is still pushing hard on china and using the UK as an example that they're willing to drop a long time strong market over the anti-encryption legislation
I'm not saying either is the case, but there are benign or even positive reads on why apple is more aggressive with the UK
It's not super interesting. Apple's reliance on China in many ways, and thus hypocrisy, is reasonably well known.
"At least" companies can put up a fight in the UK (or US, see Apple in the San Bernardino case) and they have a reasonable chance they can lobby to block the efforts.
Apple isn't foolish enough to believe that China will fold, it is obvious that if Apple refuses and iPhone will be banned.
However there is a great chance that if they threaten to pull out of the UK that the law won't pass. Even if it does it is good marketing. Who knows what will actually happen if the law comes into effect. The UK market definitely isn't small, for all we know they may back down. Or maybe their reputation is more valuable.
Google owns 90%+ of search, Android, and the Ad side. The three together allow it to crush competitors from both ends all while taking a 35% cut. The most lucrative part of the ad business is paid downloads. how many of those searches start in Google with e.g. "Download Spotify". Google makes money selling that to Spotify and they can do it at a much higher rate because no other ad seller has access to search inventory for "download Spotify" or similar searches.
> no other ad seller has access to search inventory for "download Spotify”
I think that behavior should be broadly illegal on the basis that it’s tantamount to false advertising and extortion.
Google claims to be a search engine; if you search for something very specific and well known like Spotify, providing you a paid advertisement as the top hit is essentially fraud.
Imports into Russia have dropped by over half. meaning they can't use their currency to buy anything. And they import pretty much everything except food and natural resources. Any currency which could not longer be traded internationally would rise as well but it's of little good if you can't trade it for anything.
so before you dismiss all that "propaganda" make sure you don't spread it yourself.
Outside of North America and the EU other regions such as Asia, SouthAm, Africa and ME still trade with Russia.
Yes, it means no luxury goods from the EU and no tech from NorthAm. But the embargo isn’t as broad as one might imagine.
There are some important tool and equipment from the EU and NA that if sanctions remain for years could result in a mega Cuba situation where lots of things are under maintained.
Merkel wanted a pipeline that just happened to terminate in her district you forget to mention.
She may have a physics degree but she is a politician and I have a feeling she used her political education more than her physics on this one.
First of all, the most dangerous word in the world is "safe"- there is no such thing. It's an illusion. You are not safe, you will get sick and die one day. We all will.
Also, people have been having "unsafe" sex for over 40,000 years. There's been gay unsafe sex and straight unsafe sex going on all that time.
I am not a scientist or any kind of expert. But I thought I read somewhere that there are some ape species for whom SIV is endemic and harmless. Others get sick and die.
So maybe it just takes time for a species to adapt and it's very deadly right now because humans haven't been exposed for very long.
"We" are subject to survivorship bias. Plenty of people did not make it and their bloodlines are long extinct.
The difference between Stone Age and today is that our civilization managed to conquer most really serious risks that used to shorten the lives of people under, say, 70. Famines, unsafe water, most bacterial diseases are well under control. So, of course, the roster of threats now changed, some of them being civilizational (road accidents), some of them being relatively small holdovers from the ancient days, such as STDs, plus the very aging that makes our mortality curves shoot up in the old age.
But yes, realistically, people are going to bareback one another all the time. Which means that vaccines and cures for whatever bug is transmitted like that are necessary.
