Case shiller 100 year chart - <AUTHOR> http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/04/case-shiller-100-year-chart-2011-update/

<comment><USER2> For more information about the index: [http://www.standardandpoors.com/indices/sp-case-shiller- home...](http://www.standardandpoors.com/indices/sp-case-shiller-home-price- indices/en/us/?indexId=spusa-cashpidff--p-us----)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a much more fun visualization of the same data - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUldGc06S3U>

</comment><comment><USER4> Does not apply to Vancouver, Canada.

This beauty on 6000 sqft lot in a very simple neighborhood sold for 2.3 million dollars. With multiple offers. <http://i52.tinypic.com/2i7pkxl.jpg>

Close proximity to China, lots of rich people from Hong Kong and the mainland (and their children) and their unyielding supply of US money that just need to be parked _somewhere_ \-- all this keeps the bubble alive and kicking with no end in sight. Trying to understand why they don't go after prime real-estate in Calgary or Phoenix or Miami is a favourite past time on local real-estate forums. Nobody knows, but the bus-fuls of Chinese "investors" keep touring all open houses every weekend and buying stuff left and right.

Just FYI if Winter Olympics planted any stupid ideas in your head :)

<comment><USER5> All of Canada is in a bubble, not just Vancouver. Thus it's not the Chinese. Things will burst here too, for Canada is not different and is not immune to the simple mathematics of economics.

<comment><USER4> Vancouver is in a bubble of its own. Where else 2M would buy you a 70 year old teardown on 1/6 acre lot in EastVan-like neighborhood? Just talk to realtors, and they will furnish a metric ton of evidence that it's the Chinese who are driving the speculation here. Houses sitting on a market for few months and then suddenly getting sold _over_ asking in a bid war between 3 Chinese gentlemen... yeah, it's not Chinese :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Comparison with Australia:

[http://cdn.debtdeflation.com/blogs/wp- content/uploads/2011/0...](http://cdn.debtdeflation.com/blogs/wp- content/uploads/2011/02/020911_2113_AMotleyCrew4.png)

chart is from article:

[http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2011/02/10/a-motley- crew-...](http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2011/02/10/a-motley-crew- interview-on-australian-house-prices/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Sobering but not unexpected. Remember real estate is still a local market. CS data is also available on an individual city level.

</comment><comment><USER8> The situation is much worse in India especially in the western and southern states. I know friends whoose land prices appreciated 100 times in 5 years...The general buyer expectation now is they expect the price to atleast double in 3-4 years. By that rate a apartment in chennai would cost more than a manhattan apartment in 10 years!

</comment><comment><USER9> The chart is somewhat deceptive because the vertical axis does not begin with zero. With that said, that recent spike to 200 is pretty astounding.

<comment><USER10> Well, C-S Index was begun in 1890 where it was given a value of 100. Notes from the chart:

"The 1890 benchmark is 100 on the chart. If a standard house sold for $100,000 (inflation-adjusted to today's dollars), an equivalent standard house would have sold for $66,000 in 1920 (66 on the index scale) and $199,000 in 2006 (199 on the index scale, or 99% higher than in 1890)."</comment></comment>


The iPhone killer - well, probably not. - <AUTHOR> http://www.ladyada.net/products/microtouch/

<comment><USER2> ew, resistive touch screen.

I've gotten way too used to my capacitative touch screen on my iphone...

<comment><USER3> capacitive touch screens are not available on the hobby market

also, most people just think capacitive touch screens are better because apple told them. they are not significantly more precise, dont have Z-axis readings & multitouch is not that useful on a DIY device

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice to see some hardware hacking :)</comment>


Firefox OS doesn't stand a chance - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/133159-firefox-os-doesnt-stand-a-chance

<comment><USER2> "If developers get on board — at least one Mozilla bigwig has stated that they "want to attract hundreds of thousands of developers" — and lots of open web apps begin to appear, then Google can simply implement the same specification in Chrome, Microsoft can implement it in IE10, and Apple can implement it in Safari"

I don't think the author recognizes that that would be a successful outcome for Mozilla; it'd mean that the web truly is the platform, and developers would be able to create an app using that platform and make it available to users on all the mobile OSes. That's cool!

Although I'm pretty sure we'd also like the phones and OS to be successful, of course. :P

<comment><USER3> Yes, I agree, that would still be a successful outcome. In the last paragraph, I pretty much state that the web is in such a good state today because of Firefox -- I guess I should've explicitly tied the smartphone OS into that sentiment, too.

From a few conversations with various bigwigs at Mozilla, they're definitely not worried about absolute market share. They see themselves as custodians of the web. As long as everything remains open and free, then they feel like they've succeeded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You have to begin where users needs are being ignored. With Firefox is was performance. IMO on mobile privacy is the topic that's most critical for users and most ignored by vendors. If Firefox OS can fill that space it might have a chance

</comment><comment><USER5> I think it's a fantastic thing to try, especially if they can really get smooth animation with CSS+JS.

It's quite simple: web developers will flock to build apps for it, because it's 100x easier than learning Objective C or Java etc.

Indeed, I could easily see Firefox OS becoming a "default" choice for low-end smartphone models, just because it would be so insanely easy to drop-in and customize. I mean, just hire a cheap front-end developer and "skin" your model's OS with just CSS in a matter of days. And from there, it can expand upmarket.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure if as user I want to use a platform where the apps are written by people who think _Java_ is heard to learn. It's not a simple language by any means, but it's also hardly a difficult language to learn.

<comment><USER7> Isn't that like saying you don't want to belong to a religion that doesn't force its priests to learn Latin? Dogmatism and elitism can be equally destructive by helping to entrench an inferior platform. I'd rather use one with fewer arbitrary restrictions.

<comment><USER8> Instead of being restricted to Obj-C or Java, you'd be restricted to HTML/CSS/Javascript.

I'm not sure which is better honestly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The way I see it is this:

HTML5 still early days so it's like a new games console, get some ok things but not alot of wow as people still finding there feet and what you can do and how best to do it. It's also using more CPU/resources than more lower level of approach's.

Now CPU's/resources get faster and cheaper and the bettery life moves on slowly. So eventualy you get a enviroment were you can run various levels of obfiscation to the raw tin and still give a good user experience.

PROS: HTML5 aint going away, can allow developers to more easily port your applications and as for having to do alot of effort into a development enviroment and IDE then 99% of that work is just done for you with a little documentation needed on your part pretty much

CONS: New, different, still being embraced and in many ways HTML5 is being is the WEB 2.0 promised years ago which ended up being part of the reason Nortel broke (they did some cool stuff ahead of it's time, too ahead sadly). But this time it is the right shoe and the right noise with the backing to work this time around. Though it is a resource overhead Android is a virtual machine so that is kinda already covered by hardware. It's just different for mobiles in many ways, but at the same time logical.

So the way I see it is that in many ways it can't fail, even if it dosn't become the next mobile enviroment, the way things are going it could become a virtual enviroment that runs on any mobile and in that be a sufo application- GUI that sits ontop of Android or IOS or the like. In many ways it helps converge desktop and mobile development and in a way that makes sence with were we are today. So in many ways I see it garanteed to do well, though maybe not as the envorment initialy entended, alot of good will come from it.

Now I'd love a phone that had a micro/dual boot OS in that it booted up in nanoseconds allowing me to do a simple make and recieve calls in a sudo micro- kernel approach and loaded up the fancy gubbins in the background on one of the many cores available to do such things. With this type of mobile OS, such things become alot more viable i feel and in that I look forward to the outcome.

Be nice if you cold just buy your phone and had a choice of the operating system as well, manufacturers pay attention, as for you then you could sell hardware and have another company sell the OS and make all the IP trolls have a harder time blocking hardware over a simple software issue in a OS. I realy wished they would. If you gave the OS away then that would also limit certain types of lawsuits fiscaly as well. Also be interesting when Samsung go we want to be able to sell IOS for our new mobile phone as a option to the free bada/android/mozilla/symbian.... options. Fun times ahead - hopefully.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't see a single argument in the article supporting the premise in the title. If anything, it points out reasons why Boot 2 Gecko might succeed.

Is anyone so satisfied with their current smartphone OS that they won't bail immediately for something better? I didn't care for IOS, and the list of problems I have with Android is too long to recount here. But I love having a smartphone. It's become an indispensable tool, replacing several others. I just wish it wasn't so clunky and that _I_ had more control over what it does. I'm intrigued by B2G and the (remote) possibility that I'll finally have the same freedom I enjoy with my traditional computing experience.

<comment><USER10> For me, my biggest reason to love Android is that it is Linux. My phone is rooted. My tablets are rooted. And they all run an ssh daemon and various tools. They're backed up and synchronized via rsync and so on.

To me, to be "better" I need the same control. If B2G delivers that, then maybe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> FTA: _"[It] is because of Firefox and other open-source projects like Apache and Linux that the web, smartphones, and the technology sector in general are so healthy. 15 years ago, as IE6 and Nutscrape fought over various non- standard implementations of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, no one would've predicted that today there would be standard implementations of all three."_

I object. Mozilla Firefox 1 came out in November of 2004. Apple Safari 1 came out in June of 2003. By then, WebKit had already been around for several years. In mobile, Mozilla's browsers play little to no role, nearly all mobile platforms use WebKit. In 2007, Mobile Safari was the first decent mobile web browser. It's silly to credit Mozilla with the advances of the mobile web.

 _"10 years ago, [...] no one would've guessed that today you could write a full-blown program with open web technologies and have it run equally well on dozens of different software platforms."_

Let's be honest, that's still not really the case. In the US, 40% of web usage comes from IE. About half of that comes from IE version 8 or lower [1]. I wouldn't say that full-blown web apps run as well in IE8.

[1] <http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-US-monthly-201106-201206>

<comment><USER3> Hrm, well, it is Firefox that went from nothing to 25-30% in a few years: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Browser_Wars.svg>

Yeah, WebKit is old, but it wasn't until Chrome came along that it actually made inroads in Windows browser share -- and let's face it, that was the platform that developers focused on for over a decade, until the recent smartphone/tablet revolution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _Firefox OS is a nice idea, but it's predicated on open standards: Anyone can take Firefox OS's additions to HTML5 and produce their own implementation. If developers get on board — at least one Mozilla bigwig has stated that they "want to attract hundreds of thousands of developers" — and lots of open web apps begin to appear, then Google can simply implement the same specification in Chrome, Microsoft can implement it in IE10, and Apple can implement it in Safari. Even if you're worried about the commercial interests of Apple or Google — or if you're a carrier trying to extricate yourself — there's nothing stopping you from installing the Android Open Source Project on your phone._

I think this is where the author contradicts his own argument. Do you know how many small businesses can be created on an open platform such as Firefox OS? It let's individuals and small development teams compete directly against Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. It truly levels the playing field, in my view. Or at least, that's what I hope Firefox OS will be capable of.

As a developer and designer, I (for one) can't wait to try out Firefox OS. If it works well, I'll start using it more. And by all indications I've seen, it will probably work pretty well :)

</comment><comment><USER13> This article reminds me just a bit of these: [http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2008/10/22/revisiting-the- dumbes...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2008/10/22/revisiting-the-dumbest- iphone-predictions)

It certainly doesn't have to turn out that way in this case, but for the sake of the open web and software, I would love to be able to look back at the title "Firefox OS doesn't stand a chance" and laugh.

</comment><comment><USER14> Did they seriously use the word "Nutscrape" in this article?

<comment><USER15> It's extremetech. A gawker-like sensationalist, pageview-driven piece of rubbish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't think that Firefox OS needs to grab a significant market share to be a success, as its goal is really to develop the relevant APIs, and to promote the use of apps written with web technologies. Even a minor success could lead others to adopt their APIs, and with 2 or more implementations, these might reach the W3C.

Where Firefox OS needs to get traction is with the networks, which is the first thing they've done. Anything which can be easily customised (and what could be easier than HTML+CSS+JS? will attract a lot of interest from them).

</comment><comment><USER17> That depends on what it is trying to do.

Personally I hope it will become possible to run Firefox OS programs on IOS and Android, so that it is easy to write for both platforms but I guess Apple would prevent that as it would destroy one of the barriers to competition.

<comment><USER5> There are already tools to compile your HTML5 app to a "native" app with JavaScript hooks, etc.

This could just be another one. So while it might not be possible to run them "natively", someone will surely come up with a library so distributing them on the Apple app store will become trivial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This article is a troll rant. Sebastian Anthony is clearly neither a market analyst nor a mobile OS expert. He compiled a bunch of a half-thought, smug driven, psudo talking points; slapped on a controversial sounding title and called it a job well done.

</comment><comment><USER19> One point many people forget is that Smartphone is possibly only one application of such operating systems. There are many more possible applications where Android, Firefox OS etc can be used.

</comment><comment><USER20> Yes Firefox OS might not catch the momentum the expect it to. But other than using words such as "Hyper-Competitive" the author fails to provide even one cogent argument for why he is so sure that the Firefox OS will fail.

Lot of developers are already excited about this and there are a couple of large Carriers that have already announced their support. Apple or Google or MS could indeed "implement the same spec" (whatever that means) but that would prove to be a good thing.

Not worth reading.

</comment><comment><USER21> If nothing else, I think Firefox OS will find a niche in breathing new life into 2+ years old Android phones which would otherwise end up on a landfill. At some point soon, WebRTC will become a viable technology, so I see these devices used for VoIP over WiFi, sort of as the free-as-in-freedom equivalents of the iPod Touch.

</comment><comment><USER22> first of all, what is this extremetech site exactly? it suddenly appears everywhere and the articles i find there are usually of low journalistic quality.

this article is the best example. the author delivers no argument whatsoever to support his/her claim.

" If you imagine a smartphone-sized computer that automatically loads Firefox after boot-up, and the only apps you can run are web apps, then that's a fairly good analogy of Firefox OS."

\- no, this is not a good analogy. although the apps are indeed written in html/css/js they have access to low level apis, thus delivering the same capabilities as native apps currently do on ios/android.

"We weren't at the meeting when Mozilla decided to make Boot 2 Gecko an actual smartphone OS, but I have a pretty good idea of how it probably went down"

\- what follows is pure speculation and adds no value whatsoever to the whole undertaking of proving the article's claim.

"Today, if iOS falters, there are 10 other mobile operating systems that can step into breach"

\- No, there wouldn't. Of all mobile operating systems today, there are only two that have a viable developer base, namely ios and android. No other platform has yet succeeded in attracting 3rd party developers to create useful and beautiful apps for its platform (maybe windows phone will step up it's game). So, obviously, the huge advantage of firefoxOS would be the simplicity to create apps for the thousands of talented and motivated web developers out there. How often to you encounter a headline on hacker news that reads "check out me weekend project x which i made because i was bored/wanted to learn some new technology/whatever"? This happens every day basically. Now imagine these people had the possibility to do "weekend projects" with the tools they already master but this time not for the web per sé but for a mobile platform? That is pretty damn exciting if you ask me.

"Firefox OS is a nice idea, but it's predicated on open standards"

\- but? BUT??? If anything, open standards is a good thing.

"Anyone can take Firefox OS's additions to HTML5 and produce their own implementation [...] Google can simply implement the same specification in Chrome, Microsoft can implement it in IE10, and Apple can implement it in Safari"

\- Yes, i can totally see it, Apple et all will give up their control over the app store and let people install apps from anywhere on the web with access to low level apis.

"Mozilla shouldn't be disheartened, though"

\- Certainly not. Especially after this kind of click bait crap.</comment>


TikTok's Chinese owner offers to forego stake to clinch U.S. deal – sources - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tiktok-bytedance-exclusive-idUSKBN24X3SK <comment><USER6> As someone from the third world this leaves a very bad feeling if it happens. I do expect it runs into legal hurdles before that.

Neither Apple nor Google have found TikTok problematic enough to delist them from their app stores. Neither is there charges that TikTok may have broken US laws.

Banning something which hasn't broken US laws, on arbitrary grounds shouldn't be possible.

The President shouldn't have authority to ban anything at all let alone an app available through privately operated app stores.

Also dictating which apps an individual can install/not install shouldn't be the job of the Federal Government.

All indication is that the president does not have authority to execute an outright ban of the thing.

Also what alarms me the veil of secrecy on the procedings. The proceeding of the CFIUS should be made public in this regard.

At this point US is seemingly acting like a dictatorship with very less transparency.

Policies and decisions should be debated and argued before they are executed, not merely justified after the fact. That's what US and a few oher democracies have turned to doing in recent years.

Ultimately I feel that it is US who has been more to blame (contrary to much of Western media coverage) for the deteriorating US-China relationship, and drumming up the chorus for a new coldwar. Chinese policy seems to have not significantly changed in the last 5 years towards the US, but on the other hand US seemed ever more keen and eger to pursue a hostile attitude towards China.

With the pandemic and with genral economic malice affecting much of the world, I don't think a path of increasing hostility and conflict is what the world needs.

<comment><USER7> > _Chinese policy seems to have not significantly changed in the last 5 years > towards the US, but on the other hand US seemed ever more keen and eger to > pursue a hostile attitude towards China._

For decades, China has blocked U.S. companies from fair competition, reneged on trade deals when it suits them, backed out of industrial partnerships after extracting the IP it deems useful, and generally been a bad trade partner.

I agree that the president shouldn't have authority to arbitrarily block a product or company (and ultimately he doesn't, he'll need broader support among elected officials), but it's absurd to suggest that the U.S. should blindly accept hostile behavior for decades on end without reacting, or else itself be labeled "hostile."

<comment><USER8> The rationale in your comment is unconvincing to me. If Tiktok is breaking the law, that should come to light and be actioned like any other company breaking the law; likewise TOS violations on respective app stores. I haven't seen any reports to suggest that Tiktok is breaking U.S. law, have you? And if the rationale is, as you suggested, a retaliation against 'bad behavior for decades', what precedent would banning Tiktok set for other non-U.S. owned apps and services?

<comment><USER7> My comment wasn't specific to TikTok, but rather OP's assertion that the U.S. is a hostile actor, whereas China is just being China.

Regarding TikTok, foreign-owned companies must follow U.S. laws, which are subject to due process. Additionally, they must not pose an imminent threat to national security. For better or worse, the government tends to be tight- lipped about matters of national security and isn't compelled to divulge details to the public. Normally, this is acceptable because we trust our government to act responsibility and in our best interest. Is TikTok a legitimate threat to security? I don't know, and with Trump's tendency to make everything look like a publicity stunt, my trust in the government to use its power responsibly is not very high.

<comment><USER9> Cannot believe the president has the power without legal battle to ban business activity. If it's national security, let out the cat. Otherwise how could people believe if this won't happen to SAP, Volkswagon, Sony next time.

<comment><USER10> > Cannot believe the president has the power without legal battle to ban > business activity.

I didn't think State Governor's could ban legitimate business activity until very recently either.

<comment><USER11> If your legitimate business activity undermines public health it is no longer legitimate until the threat has passed. We fought this out in 1918 as well.

<comment><USER10> The problem is determining what is a public health problem.

Ice cream parlors? Are they necessary? No, but they're allowed to be open.

Hair cutting? Closed. Restaurants to-go food and alcohol? Open. Bars? Closed. Hiking trails? Open. Camping? Closed.

Very little makes sense, and almost all of it is political.

If the Government wants to prevent you from operating your otherwise legal and legitimate business, they should have to pay you for lost revenue.

<comment><USER11> Can your business take precautions to prevent the spread of an active pandemic? Good you get to stay open. Can your business take precautions, but isn't? You get to close. Does the nature of your business make it impossible to function with social distancing/masks? You get to close.

That's how it's been done in my state, and we've done very well compared to the rest of the nation. If we (nationwide) had actually shut down in the beginning instead of half-assing it we wouldn't be where we are now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The interesting thing is that these platforms come and go. One year it's Vine, another year it's Snap, now it's TikTok. ByteDance bought musically for $1B in 2017 and turned it into Tok.

3 years later, it's grown like crazy because it's the latest fad and would be smart for them to cash out before the next new thing hits

The whole divestment thing is probably a godsend for ByteDance, "forcing" them to liquidate their stake, but in reality let's them cash out on an overhyped app that's easy to copy

Must be laughing all the way to the bank

<comment><USER13> TikTok is not overhyped, it is here to stay, that's why they want to ban it. It's still growing like crazy and is way way more entertaining than any other social network by a long shot.

<comment><USER14> > it is here to stay

That's what I heard about plenty of social platforms like this. Everyone thought Vine was here to stay too. Everyone thought Myspace was here to stay. Snapchat was huge at one point and now I no longer know anybody who still uses it. Maybe it will be like Facebook, but there's a big chance it won't. It's huge now, but its still relatively niche appeal in the grand scheme of tings. These things appear to be fickle. We will see.

<comment><USER15> Just because you don't know anyone that uses Snapchat doesn't make that an authoritative source on popularity of a company. Snap's user base has grown consistently and show's no signs of slowing down, even against increase competition in the space ([https://www.statista.com/statistics/545967/snapchat-app- dau/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/545967/snapchat-app-dau/)). TikTok is the "Vine replacement" since Vine was bought by Twitter and shutdown. Vine wasn't a "fad" that faded away, it was actively shutdown by its parent company, likely would still exist to this day in a non-insignificant way had that not happen.

<comment><USER16> Why did twitter shut it down?

<comment><USER17> They never monetized it despite Vine getting people to join Twitter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> US is doing with China what China did with them. American VCs and business men used to criticize and mock Chinese government for it. Since US is following the footsteps of China, I wonder whether Chinese will be doing what US VCs did?

<comment><USER19> If US successfully force China to open market, that would be a win for everyone. Of course though, this situation would only occur in fantasy land.

<comment><USER20> Thinking that US market forces will open the chinese market after decades of failing to have that effect seems rather naive.

<comment><USER21> It's not 'US market forces' that will open China, and it never was.

It was the opportunity to expand into global economic markets, with a certain perspective in mind, ballpark along the lines of Western Liberal Democracy and Economy.

The Asian countries that followed this path after WW2 were enormously succesfull: South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan.

They are basically beacons of prosperity surrounded by economic mayhem.

China chose 'it's own path' \- which is fine - and there are probably many advantages to the central planning early on (those other nations did that, Korea was an authoritarian state and then opened eventually, kind of 'part of a plan') - but of course the CCP has another agenda, they don't want to cede power, and China has a different historical view of itself which is not just a function of CCP propaganda.

I think it is literally at this very point wherein the 'advantage' of autocracy is starting to be a disadvantage, and that a degree of opening up would actually beneficial.

Basically - once you get the 'easy investments' done - like roads, bridges, and you succesfull rip off everyone else's IP and are 'to some extent caught up' \- then the plan starts to falter. At some point, you have to 'lead' \- and it takes a different kind of approach. At least in many areas, though we should not underestimate them.

There are no obvious economic choices for China now and their 'old plan' won't work. Putting Uyghers in jail, grabbing S. China sea, getting into pissing matches with India and Japan - none of this will bear fruits.

The 'Belt and Road' is actually one 'grand strategy' that a central power like China could have that America could never have (takes a couple decades of consistent vision) - but it seems that the heavy handedness and deep corruption of the system won't allow for it.

Geopolitically, people 'love to hate on America' in the press and in propaganda, but when 'push comes to shove' there is nobody who doesn't understand what side they would rather be on, both pragmatically and for the sake of the good of everyone.

Though Trump is a dufous and blow-hard (sorry), he is actually the only Western leader with the 'crazy like a fox' to take on China, and he's absolutely right to ban TikTok and other entities.

Basically - the West needs to apply trade rules with China that are exactly tit for tat: China doesn't allow foreign competition in certain areas - <USER2> we ban that. They don't allow ownership, then we ban that. They have a lot of controls over content, then we do as well - we ban everything remotely related to the Chinese state. They require foreign companies to fork over IP, and then give it to local champions - then we do as well.

Imagine how the world would react if the US required Huawei to give up all it's IP, held it up in bureaucracy for years, while they gave the IP to Cisco, and then the Treasury and the Fed financed Cisco and their international customers, while the US diplomatic corps acted both as a sales team for Cisco, and did economic espionage to thwart competitors outright?

That would be 'fair'.

There is a Canadian company [1] that lost a contract to the Canadian government for airport scanners - the Chinese bid was 25% lower. The complaint was that the Canadian company would never be allowed to bid on such a sensitive contract in China, moreover, there were state subsidies. How on earth is this fair or free trade? It's not. If China won't allow external bidders for airport security tools - we don't allow them either.

It's really almost a paradox to understand why even China has been able to maintain such a lop-sided advantage.

It started 30 years ago, when China was so poor that the West basically accepted the asymmetrical terms of trade. Like a frog in cool water that's getting warmer never thinks to jump out - Western entities have not been able to 'get it together' to change the terms. China has been acting very aggressively against anyone who speaks out, and of course, we have the useful idiots in the West who will proclaim that any antagonism towards China must be 'racism' etc..

It's just only right now starting to cross a tipping point wherein you see bits of world leaders actually starting to push back collectiely. Merkel or Trudeau might say one small thing, then they see the reaction, then others will say something else.

COVID and the China coverup has presented basically a catalyst for this, wherein it has been fully legit to publicly criticise China because they did act poorly and it cost ostensibly a lot of lives.

Though the Dems actually have not really been against Trump's China aggression, they may not be likely to spearhead it. They are just far to 'systematically naive'. Even if many Dems individually realise what needs to be done - they do not, organisationally, have the political will. Biden might say a few things here and there, but the momentum is unlikely to continue. It takes a certain kind of 'political courage' and consistently so - with a lot of people on board to re-articulate the relationship with China - I'm wary that Biden & his team will be able to do it. Their economic team I feel just won't have enough true hardball players and I don't mean 'jerks for the sake of being jerks' \- I mean 'realpolitik' players who can apply the hard rules necessary with China, that would otherwise seem out of place in a modern world.

Have a quick glance at the difference between Obama/Trump trade advisors Froman [2] and Navarro [3]. Night and Day. (FYI I'm not saying I support either, just highlighting the difference)

[1] [https://nationalpost.com/news/chinese-government-owned- firm-...](https://nationalpost.com/news/chinese-government-owned-firm- wins-6-8m-contract-to-supply-security-equipment-to-canada-embassies)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Froman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Froman)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Navarro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Navarro)

<comment><USER22> Not sure why you're getting down voted but does anything genuinely think trade has been fair for the US, Canada and China? Would love to hear the opposing side.

<comment><USER23> I also like the grandparent post, but I'll take a crack at presenting _an_ opposing side. The idea of a lopsided trading relationship, with the US being the losers, and China the winners, seems a bit dubious to me. Chinese companies work because they have cheap labour, a lot of talent, and massive economies of scale. Blaming the demise of US industry on China is absurd - <USER3> industry started declining in the 80's, because neo-liberal economics basically amounts to industrial sabotage on the policy level. Every country that went hard neoliberal has very little industry today, while the few that didn't (Germany, France, Japan) still have very competitive industry.

The idea of unfair trade is also a bit of a mercantilist trope, so I'm not sure it makes sense on its own terms - but at the very least, it's normally something that requires an unequal relationship between trading partners. Like, I think it would be fair to say that trade deals between first and third world nations are often unfair, because there are ample opportunities for one party to lean on the other. This obviously isn't so between the US and China. If there are conditions that favour Chinese companies, it's because of policies that were, at the time, thought to benefit the US - and which probably do benefit the US, at least insofar as GDP growth is concerned (the US has remained pretty good in this arena).

Trump's whole schtick of 'bring back coal' comes to mind here. Obviously, you could hammer out a trade agreement that would end up with coal mines reopening in Wyoming, with steelworks in Pittsburgh - but would it actually help the US?

As for the whole question of whether or not China is 'playing dirty', or muscling their way through established norms, I think it's obviously not the case - or at least, it's by no means the case that China plays more dirty than anybody else - least of all the US.

I think the politics of China do deserve a great deal of scrutiny, and if there's something that the west should be putting pressure on them for, it's the slide into totalitarianism we've witnessed over the last few years. However, all the stuff about trade seems two parts grandstanding and one part hypocrisy.

<comment><USER21> I'll answer the question in a more standard way, and disagree with your points along the way.

'Fair Trade' does not have to be 'Trade on Equal Terms'.

That is how the relationship started: China was 'very poor' and so the asymmetrical trade rules made sense. Pepsi and Coke and a few others had access to China market, people 'looked the other way' at the IP issues.

But in 2020, China is in a different situation, and the asymmetrical rules are basically 'not fair'.

"The idea of unfair trade is also a bit of a mercantilist trope,"

This is false.

If one nation is allowed to sell into the other, but does not allow the other to sell to it - this is 'unfair trade'. Blatantly.

If one nation uses state subsidies to support fledgling industries, so that they can dump on foreign markets and 'take over the global industry' \- this is obviously unfair trade. China did this with Solar Panel market - subsidising their industry to flood America with cheap products, putting everyone out of business etc.. This is not a 'new' idea, these concepts have been well understood for hundreds of years.

"Blaming the demise of US industry on China is absurd "

Nobody is 'blaming' US economic issues on the US. What I'm articulating is that China is effectively 'cheating' (or rather, has an obvious upper hand) and it needs to be rectified.

"As for the whole question of whether or not China is 'playing dirty', or muscling their way through established norms, I think it's obviously not the case - or at least, it's by no means the case that China plays more dirty than anybody else - least of all the US."

This is again false. We can call it 'dirty' or not - but China plays 'extremely protectionalist' first off, second, they have state intervention, which is not suitable for trade.

There are a million and one things that the US cannot do in China, but that China can do in the US. This is blatantly lop-sided. The US should apply the same rules to China as China does to the US.

Second, and more nuanced, is the state intervention. Again, the example:

Imagine if the US forced Huawei to give designs and IP over to Cisco, and the US Pres had direct authority over major banks, ordered JP Morgan to finance Cisco buyers in Brasil, Germany etc. - and for liquidity, ordered the US Federal Reserve to print money for that purpose. It sounds incredibly bizarre, right? Well that's what China does today!

So it's fine for them to play the game they want to play, but the West needs to respond in kind.

This has little to do with 'bringing back coal mines' obviously. But it may have something to do with bringing back manufacturing - in a highly automated way.

"about trade seems two parts grandstanding and one part hypocrisy."

No it's not, generally speaking the US is pretty good on these things, and has fostered a lot of very important international agreements and ideas along these lines as well. Of course, trade really does benefit the US a lot, so it's to a great extent self interest, but still.

The world needs to trade with China on somewhat different terms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Future startup biz strategy:

Chinese company makes huge viral app for the US market, and lets everyone stoke rumors that it's a spying platform. US gov't tosses a huge subsidy at whatever domestic company can acquire it _at any cost_ \- in the interest of national defense - resulting in massive overvalued purchase. China pockets the profits. Rinse, repeat.

<comment><USER25> But isn't it more likely that said Chinese company will have little to none leverage in the talks, because the choice is between getting banned or getting bought at a token (read: undervalued) price?

<comment><USER26> Potentially but their negotiating position is shutting down completely which would be a loss for a potential acquiring company. I'm sure that TT stole some users from YT, IG, and Tumblr but largely creators are posting everywhere so their existence just increases the size of the pie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Some people here think TikTok is a fad. I used to think FB is a fad but 16 years later. FB is still here. Not as shiny as it used to be but enough to make billions.

I don't know if TikTok is a fad and you don't either. If TikTok last more than 10 years. It already make back its cost and some more.

Heck, Snap is still around and it used to be a meme stock on WallStreetBets.

<comment><USER28> I'm always suspicious of anyone who says "this is a fad" who treats the thing with disdain. If you don't understand what people like about the thing, it seems unlikely you will be able to identify if that desire is going to fade quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wonder if anyone know that TikTok is currently actively blocking access from Chinese users. Even with a US Apple ID, even with a VPN/Shadowsocks service, you cannot sign up TikTok as long as your phone is using a Chinese SIM card. I have to use an iPad.

What you have is something the internet has never seen: unlike Google having to censor its content within China, you now have a allegedly independent US company actively censoring the Chinese people on a social network that identifies itself as non-political, on US (or Free World) soil.

This is a type of censorship that's far worse than anything Google or Yahoo or Microsoft ever had to do. Imagine more and more Chinese-owned companies doing this world wide. This is just absolutely ugly practice that shouldn't be allowed to proliferate.

It's not only a national security issue. It's also a human rights hazard.

<comment><USER30> Umm...there is nothing remarkable about this. CCP wants their citizens to use a vetted service, that's in full control and has surveillance capabilities.

They already ban YouTube, Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc. amongst many other sites.

Tiktok has a local version for Chinese users I believe and Tiktok wants to make sure Chinese users do not sign up for international version of Tiktok app.

Tiktok is owned by ByteDance which is not a US firm. It's based in China.

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER29> They used to do this within Chinese jurisdiction. Now they're doing it on United State soil.

<comment> tom-_- FB, Google etc are also blocked when using a Chinese telecom's SIM card on "US soil" so what is the difference here?

<comment><USER29> TikTok blocks itself. Others are blocked by the government. Name another major application/social network that does the same?

<comment> tom-_- I don't know of any but I also wouldn't be surprised if there were. The NBA and American movie production companies already censor in the US as concession to access the Chinese markets. Not arguing this is a good thing mind you, just that it may not be unprecedented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Great policy. The EU needs to do the same with American big tech.

<comment><USER21> If the EU banned American big tech, they'd be set aback 20 years. Of course where would be a populist revolution.

The difference between the EU and US on this matter, is that the EU has almost no substitutes, and they just don't - for whatever reason (there are many) have he will to do them.

And of course there's no point - what FB is doing is no different from what a EU-based FB would do.

<comment><USER32> Do you really think EU is not capable of creating similar services?

<comment><USER33> From a technical standpoint, no. From a cultural standpoint, yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Tired of the apologists for China. They have been taking advantage of our Western tradition of openness for far too long.

</comment><comment><USER35> The government's behavior should not be allowed in a country of rule of law. We should all wake up to defend our God given right to use apps we like. Guys, please don't fall into the trap of us vs them. The governments are all bullying us, the people. They raised tariff in the name of whatever, yet in reality, they collect more tax and we pay more for goods we need. The same goes with banning apps. The reality is that we are being stripped away more and more choices and freedom. So, we the people need to wake up and stand against it!

<comment><USER36> Or people need to wake up to the security threat.

This is not about us vs them. No apps from Australia, Europe or Africa are on the list of banned apps. Its China where in order to do business there, you have to give the government access to your trade secrets and full server access without a warrant.

While its possible for any company to succumb to government pressure for unreasonable access, it is a prerequisite to do so in China. The world knows this.

Hong Kong's new national security law is plenty proof that China is not a genuine partner and is a bad faith actor. Your right to look at TikTok videos does not trump anyone else's right for security.

<comment><USER37> The solution would be to pass a law akin to the GDPR then. There is no need to go through executive action.

The U.S. is not supposed to be authoritarian like China is.

<comment><USER38> GDPR wouldn't block Tik Tok's data extraction practices, nor is it effective legislation at all.

GDPR is simply EU tech protectionism, nothing more. All it gave consumers was infuriating cookie nag screens.

GDPR utterly failed to prevent data brokers from operating with impunity in Germany and other EU nations. Your cell phone location data is still openly sold when you live in the EU. It's useless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> As I currently recide in a country famous for blocking access to websites, I follow these developments as closely as I can.

Whatever happens, it's probably going to be a recipe on how to force all foreign providers to act the way the local government wants. These days the theme is forcing on the ant-gay stance, they managed to force Netflix a show that had a gay character in it. Besides that charade, they passed laws to control the social media in the name of national security and citizens rights. This comes after Twitter exposed and deleted a pro government troll army.

Anyway, if this happens Facebook, Google, Twitter etc. can start looking into the future of Instagram for Iran, Twitter for Turkey, Google for EU - <USER4> forced to partner with a local company and the global versions inaccessible.

I am sure that the US ban of TikTok would be well rationalised but the US could have chosen the EU approach of enforcing US data being kept on US soil. Sad that US choose the Chinese approach of right our of banning(because somehow becoming like China is the way of topping the authoritarian Chinese order). Something tells me that this is not about national security.

Welcome to the world of partitioned internet in the name of national security. A boring dystopia where the less fre world no longer has a role model.

I hope you enjoy the life where the government is telling you what you can and can't use so that the country stays safe. Brilliant system that served all kind of authoritarian regimes.

Good luck to the start-ups, from now on you are looking to a future where you will have to strike a deal with each country you want to operate.

"Your app just crossed the TOP100 mark in the AppStore, would be shame if something happens to it because of national security. Maybe you should sell it to our crony while it's still worth something"

<comment><USER40> Ironically, this future might be what CCP wished. Their practice won't be regarded as "archaic" anymore and U.S ultimate grip in tech might start to wane, however small will be.

A few days ago Pompeo warned that CCP might change "us" (outside PRC in this context). It seems, however, that U.S. might be the first to be changed.

<comment><USER39> I know right? And this saddens me because my whole life the USA was the role model. I was born in a communist country but it changed to be more like USA at my early childhood, so USA is the dream. Now the USA is becoming this thing that values state security in expense of individual freedoms. I am totally not amused.

edit: unfavourable opinions seem to get downvoted into oblivion. I am actually surprised by the jubilance in the tech community towards state intervention. Had no idea that people dreamed of becoming like China where the all knowing government protects them by telling them what apps can use and which website they can visit.

<comment><USER41> The CCP is a threat to individual freedoms. Freedom to consort with an enemy nation had never been an important individual freedom in any nation.

Don't worry, US has plenty of individual freedom for Enlightening activities like spewing virus on other people.

<comment><USER42> sounds like an excuse to me. How is a political organization in a country that has no jurisdiction over you in any way a threat to your individual freedoms, but the state apparatus in your own country somehow not even when its literally telling you which apps you can use and which ones you can't?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The real reason behind this is that TikTok teens ruined his Tulsa rally and now he wants to get back at them. Simple as that.

<comment><USER44> So why did India already ban it and why is Australia and Japan in talks to ban it?

<comment><USER43> I'm not saying there aren't good reasons to ban it, I'm just saying that's not why Trump is doing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> It's pretty clear the US gvt doesn't care about the monopolistic practices by big tech, the privacy concerns of TikTok, or that CCP has access to user data. It's their lack of access to the private user data of this hugely popular app they lack and are after.

Having MSFT buy it means they'll have a back door to TikTok content immediately just like they do Skype. The US 3 letter agencies have been gunning for this ever since the app blew up, and unlike all the valley apps they have had no access to its user data.

</comment><comment><USER46> This is a game America can't win, either way the CCP gets to keep the upper hand, everpresent threat or discrediting entirely.

<comment><USER47> How?

When China doesnt open up its fire wall for US apps, why should US allow Chinese?

<comment><USER46> When billions of people believe something, it will become a "fact".

Right now the public opinion in China (not mine) is that India and America are hypocritical bullies and abusing the "national security" excuse, while China "never banned" any foreign web services, those "simply refused to comply with Chinese laws regarding terrorism" and their "inaccessibility" totally justified.

You see, here's the logical trap, Tiktok ostensibly didn't refuse to comply with any foreign law, and it will do any "dirty work" if being asked to (unlike foreign companies in China), so by this logic, it's a model citizen and the ban is unjustified and ridiculous. This plays right into the party's hands, right into its "century of humiliation" ideology.

>why should US allow Chinese?

So here's the catch, the CCP sabotaged and overthrew the Chinese Nationalist Party (now Taiwan) government exactly by exploiting its liberal constitution and free speech, the lesson they learned from that epic success is that never allow these freedom, China never touted freedom and rights so it doesn't matter, while the US being the democracy beacon breaching it has everything to lose.

<comment><USER48> > Right now the public opinion in China (not mine) is that India and America > are hypocritical bullies and abusing the "national security" excuse, while > China "never banned" any foreign web services, those "simply refused to > comply with Chinese laws regarding terrorism" and their "inaccessibility" > totally justified.

This is definitely not a public opinion.

Public opinion in US is splited like it always is in every single matter.

I agree on the ban... or, at least, they should take a closer look regarding national security.

Sending a lot of citizen personal info to the opposite super power like China and Russia does seem concerning, don't you agree?

<comment><USER49> > This is definitely not a public opinion.

OP means this is the public opinion in China, not in US. Or at least that's the public opinion that CCP wants to install. And unfortunately most of the people surrounding me agree this. And I can't argue with them without convincing them the "sometimes misguided censorship" is deliberate and people should not accept censorship in the first place (if most of them do China would have already been different). It's literally a trap.

<comment><USER48> Ah yes I misread it.

Public opinion in China is going to be almost always anti-US. That's just regular propaganda for decades.

It's not safe to have differing view in China regarding nationalism.

Not sure why this is news though.

<comment><USER50> because contrary to what you believe, many Chinese looked up to aspects of the US.

<comment><USER48> I doubt that is true. There may be some percentage that supports US. But definitely not the majority.

I'd guess it's a very small percentage.

<comment><USER50> look, things aren't binary.. No, it's not "support", obviously they largely stand by their country over the US. But it's not North Korea; they understand that life is good in the US, propaganda aside. They don't think our systems don't work _in general_, they think it wouldn't work _for them_

to directly answer your question, if you think this is a war of ideology, this move doesn't do the US any favors, regardless of how necessary or justified it is

<comment><USER48> I'd say banning TikTok has a small downside. Sending citizen info to the opposing super power should be prevented (it's not binary like you said, but the risk is high, so the impact is potentially high). The downside is some Chinese will look at US as hypocritical.

Fine.

Here are 3 geopoltical issues that are way bigger than TikTok banning: Hong Kong, Taiwan, disputed islands on South China sea with Vietnam and Philippines. These issues evoke much stronger nationalism.

A large portion of Chineses probably already look at US as very bad guy regarding these 3 geopolitical issues already. Trying to turn Chinese's regular person to be positive by not banning TikTok is not worth it.

It's not like "oh yeah, I like US now because they don't ban tiktok, even though they try to help taiwan, hong kong, and etc. It's fine. TikTok is way more important here." Probably said no Chinese person ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Sorry, under what legal framework does the Executive branch of the US government "ban" an app, and what does that look lik, i.e. what actions does it take, and has it ever happened before?

<comment><USER52> IEEPA. No, it hasn't happened to an app before

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Any fallout from this will be interesting. It can be easily argued that this is a case of the US President (not the US Government) using arbitrary emergency powers-—or the threat of their use—-to interfere with a business deal on behalf of a US company. Even ignoring suits from Facebooks's competitors, effect on existing trade deals, and justification for foreign government interventions against US companies, one wonders if this is the start of a new trade war with China or just a warning to other social media companies ("nice market penetration you got there, shame if something were to happen to it").

</comment><comment><USER54> So how will this work?

Will there be 2 apps? Tiktok US and Tiktok for the rest of the world?

<comment><USER55> Leave it to America to have an app that works just great (Vine), destroy it, let China copy it, and buy it back.

stonks all the way my brother

<comment><USER56> From what I know: Jack Dorsey closed down Vine. It wasn't destroyed by any country. Bytedance bought Musical.ly(Chinese App) and merged it with Tiktok. I have never used either but I from what I can see is Tiktok is an evolution of Vine but not a copy. Vine was probably just too early.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> e-clinton They're banning TikTok because they don't want a Chinese company having direct access to the location, camera, and microphones of hundreds of millions of Americans. I have the app installed and have all those permissions disabled.

I understand that it seems unfair but I get where they're coming from given that China isn't exactly a saint when it comes to spying/civil rights.

I think it Microsoft agrees to take ownership of the data and protecting it, it doesn't make sense to ban it. I'm surprised Verizon or Twitter hasn't stepped up with bid

<comment><USER57> Most smartphones are made in China, so CCP has access to them at the hardware level. My bet is that tiktok has hacked the human psychology: it's an equivalent of addictive sugary drink spiced with coke; it's a problem by itself, but it's a much bigger problem once we realise who manipulates the us citizens. I see tiktok as a backdoor into democracy: it can sway opinions of the masses or it can run social experiments.

<comment><USER58> And somehow it is okay for Facebook and Twitter to wield this power?

<comment><USER57> That's why CCP banned them in China.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Whenever I read an implied claim of someone doing something in my interest in an news article, I assume the opposite of what the claim is.

</comment><comment><USER60> i don't really get how this works. will the US one have global users or just US ones?

<comment><USER41> Global, unless other countries ban an app that US can use to spy on them.

<comment><USER60> but is there a non-US version of TikTok then too? i don't understand how the two versions interact is what i'm saying.

<comment><USER61> It can be the same exact app on your phone, but be communicating with a different set of network endpoints.

<comment><USER60> no i don't think that works

i mean the US one would be wholly owned by someone with own dev team servers etc

the non-US one would have to be a separate app with own team too.

it doesn't seem to work

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> this can be a good way for europe, too. after the last court ruling: [https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/16/european-court-rules-on- face...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/16/european-court-rules-on-facebook-vs- schrems-case.html) there must be changes. Maybe this means us users can't see eu users in the social networks and vice versa. But then we could finally post our nipples on instagram!

</comment><comment><USER63> To me TikTok feels like ytmnd.com with videos instead of images. I spent hours there when I was younger.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'd like to see any YC users come by and claim the US has a "free market" at this point.

<comment><USER64> No-one argues that the US has an unregulated free market and no-one respectable argues that it should.

Keeping spyware-collected data of private citizens out of the hands of antagonistic authoritarian regimes seems like an appropriate use of regulation, no? Hard to argue its less appropriate than trust-busting or consumer protection regulations.

<comment><USER65> > Keeping spyware-collected data of private citizens out of the hands of > antagonistic authoritarian regimes seems like an appropriate use of > regulation, no?

Possibly, yes. And if your goal was actually to fight authoritarianism, you'd be sure to pass these regulations in some sort of democratic process. You'd send it through Congress and give the people's elected representatives a chance to weigh in. You wouldn't use an executive order outside of very extreme, time-sensitive circumstances, if you actually gave a shit about fighting authoritarianism.

<comment><USER64> >give the people's elected representatives a chance to weigh in

Is POTUS not an elected representative? Congress can overrule the president if they want to, there's nothing stopping them.

Also, who said the goal was "fighting authoritarianism"? I'm pretty sure the goal is to let americans use TikTok without MSS having all their personal data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> From a Chinese multinational to an American multinational. I'm not convinced that any sort of data safety will arise from this. This is really just US giving China a taste of its own medicine.

</comment><comment><USER67> If they get paid in MS stock with a little cash that's probably the best exit they could hope for. Hopefully MS doesn't kill it off like Skype - <USER5> should have been Zoom.

</comment><comment><USER68> if you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you

</comment><comment><USER69> _social media app that has up to 80 million daily active users in the United States._

Crazy that one person can ban something over 1/4 the US population uses every day. The implications of that are staggering.

(for any politically trigger fingered voters who think this opinion is derived based on current administration, you would be incorrect. I do not think something like this should ever be decided by a single person, it should go through congress and if a new law or decision is the result of that, the party which is to be banned should have the ability to make their case to SCOTUS)

<comment><USER41> Crazy that one person controls an app that over 1/4 the US population uses.

Crazy that over 1/4 the population uses one entertainment app. I don't even see how that's possible, even if all tweens/teens/teen-aspirationals use it.

<comment><USER70> The simple answer is the age penetration in older ages has grown. You can use these numbers to get a rough estimate, [https://www.statista.com/statistics/1095186/tiktok-us- users-...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1095186/tiktok-us-users-age/)

Disclaimer: I work at US tiktok.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> So is there going to be a US TikTok and a World TikTok?

<comment><USER72> There has been a China version of so many apps and websites for a very long time, where China companies have to have full control of the data.

US is doing to China what China been doing to US companies since forever.

In Amazon, Microsoft etc, US engineers of those companies aren't allowed to access the China servers directly and have to go through the Chinese operators.

<comment><USER73> Another viewpoint is the US is doing to its citizens what China has been doing to its citizens since forever.

I don't see that as a good development!

<comment><USER72> Having US data in US hands doesn't seem like a terrible development to me.

In China, the relationship between tech companies and the government is very close, and none would question any data requests. Its nothing like Apple which openly fights the US government in the supreme court..

<comment><USER73> Apple fights to not be forced to unlock phones, which is admirable, but they'll happily turn over your iCloud data.

To me the greater outrage is that the president can arbitrarily decide which apps citizens may or may not use. I would like to make that choice for myself, thank you very much.

<comment><USER72> Is that an abuse of power? Probably yes. Do I agree with it? Absolutely yes, because it is for the greater good of the citizens of the country.

Do I like Trump in general? Absolutely not, but I also don't automatically start cursing any decision he makes just because its made by him without trying to use two brain cells to analyze it first.

I feel safer knowing US data can be accessed by US government entities than foreign ones, specially ones that have a documented track record of industrial espionage against the country. Can't imagine what good can come off the Chinese government having access to PII and potential backdoor capabilities (e.g. the clipboard scandal) of tens of millions of children of US engineers/politicians/workers.

Is there a single reason why that can be good for the US citizens?

The choice of the president wasn't about the "app" itself. It was about the data being stored in foreign lands. If the app didn't have copious amounts of data of US citizens, he wouldn't have cared, even if it had a 100% user base in the US.

Europe has very similar rules on EU data being stored in EU data centers. Germany is a good example of those policies and no one seems to critisize them, because no one "blanket-hates" European leaders like they do to Trump.

The decision to ban was because TikTok didn't seem to be willing to cooperate to fix the data locality problem. Had they promised and started moving their data centers to the US, I doubt this would have happened. The acquisition by MS if happens, would do just that and allow the app to continue being used.

<comment><USER70> They've already done that. Currently there are a couple major data centers being in US/Singapore. US data is not permitted to go to china. The data currently is stored in a mix of US/singapore so can't claim solely US. The relevant blog post is here, [https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/statement-on- tiktoks-conte...](https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/statement-on-tiktoks- content-moderation-and-data-security-practices). I'd guess if US requested data to be solely US, that shift would probably be fine as currently singapore is mainly used as a backup and it'd be doable to have data centers in more distinct regions as currently US data is in just virginia.

Also trump already announced he does not intend to permit microsoft acquiring tiktok to be enough to not ban them. I'm doubtful he'd have any chance winning a court case if tiktok did sell to microsoft, but sounds like he'll push on the ban regardless.

Disclaimer: I work at mountain view tiktok.

<comment><USER73> Do you have any insight/theories into _why_ Trump is so opposed to tiktok?

Just as a political calculation it seems curious. (Rile up young voters who tend to swing against you, eliminate a social network that from what I can see is relatively conservative-friendly.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Is there any way to know with certainty whether the president has any financial interest in Microsoft? If there is, does he?

</comment><comment><USER75> TikTok is horrible. Less then a day after signing up I was getting spam text messages with Chinese writing.

</comment><comment><USER76> Another step in the balkanization of the internet, to the cheers of governments around the world..

</comment><comment><USER77> Which law of the USA has been broken by TikTok?

Or it is banned just because it's an app from China?

</comment><comment><USER78> Will their value plummet if they are banned before an acquisition can take place?

</comment><comment><USER79> What if China stalls and the US administration changes in a few months.

<comment><USER80> Pivot to the pacific was an Obama initiative that was loooong in the making.

It doesn't matter who drives the train, the tracks are already laid.

<comment><USER21> It matters hugely.

Obama's pivot was based on TTP, and generally avoiding direct confrontation with China.

Trump's agenda is completely different - ignoring partnership/bilateral approach, and fairly assertively acting against China.

But those were also strategies founded in different eras: the TTP was create back when China was still not quite powerful enough to be a dangerous world actor. Now it's more of a 'standoff' situation with unpredictable leadership from Trump.

And with only a 4 year horizon after which 'everything changes' on the American side.

<comment><USER81> The TTP is in fact direct confrontation, just not overt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> While this sort of quashing of free markets may be permissible for sovereign nations, it comes with a heavy cost. Trump, and by proxy the U.S., moves to force the hand of ByteDance to divest itself of all interest in TikTok at fire sale prices through threat of shutting them down. The U.S. establishes its reputation for stifling competition whenever a strong enough sovereign interest is in play. China, and other countries, will respond in kind to protect their own interests - Tesla, Apple, Intel and whatever other company has a juicy stake in China are held hostage until they concede their interests of to a China state-run company. Imagine trying to do business in another country when the fear of takeover looms overhead if you ever become too successful? This behavior only serves to encourage more protectionist and isolationist markets.

</comment><comment><USER83> Microsoft to buy? Selling the hen house to the fox?

</comment><comment><USER84> It is funny to see comments like "this will only strengthen the hostility of Chinese people against US" - the fact is most if not all Chinese see US as their arch nemesis.

</comment><comment><USER85> It's interesting that folks are generally giving Trump the benefit of the doubt. There are many comments to the effect of "while there is no public evidence, maybe the US government has secret evidence that TikTok has broken the law."

Trump is incredibly vindictive. Remember a month ago when he hosted a way under-attended rally, because of a fake registration movement that spread on, yup, TikTok? Trump remembers.

</comment><comment><USER86> This thread is hijacked by members of Chinese communist party - they are flagging all anti Chinese messages in this thread. Beware!!! My message got flagged just for saying that the CCP should discover the vaccine for Covid 19 and give democratic rights to people of China and someone flagged my message.

</comment><comment><USER87> what about not collecting user data? isnt that better than msft collecting it?

</comment><comment><USER88> I wonder how long this deal has actually been in the works, and Trump, seemingly privy to this knowledge, saw a good opportunity to take credit by pre-empting the inevitable announcement of a sell off. Why else would he announce his plans of an executive order instead of just doing it?

<comment><USER89> you might be right, but there are other reason to announce instead of doing: getting leverage, getting attention, being someone that talks a lot and does much less, not having a brain/mouth filter... probably a mix of trying to get leverage for something probably unrelated and getting some attention (possibly diverting it from something else)

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> Ok, but for real: TikTok is a propaganda machine for China. End of story.

<comment><USER58> Have you ever used the app, and do you have any evidence of that statement?

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> >We are not an M&A (mergers and acquisitions) country," Trump said.

What? Can anyone parse this?

</comment><comment><USER92> From the US-China conflict perspective, it seems the Trump administration is looking for something that China cannot easily retaliate.

China can easily pick a consulate to close when the US closes consulate in Houston. But businesses from the US in China always require Chinese companies to operate, just like World of Warcraft is operated by NetEase in China.

After Microsoft acquire Tiktok's operation, if China just picks some US business to do the same it would make China looks too soft because China is already doing this for decades, and Trump could claim the US has beaten China in this round. But if China escalates the conflict by retaliating in radical ways, the Trump administration could rally more before the election.

<comment><USER93> Very much that. Beijing is running out of big "American" companies it can retaliate against.

No Facebook in China, no Tviter in China, all major American brands are effectively franchises, or joint ventures, so they will be shooting their own business in the foot.

They can of course order those Chinese joint venture owners to appropriate the American stake in their corporate entities, but those state never been high to begin with, with Chinese JV sides always trying to exfiltrate equity out of them.

Out of big fish, pretty much the only one remaining is Apple, which owns very little in China, but will be crippled if being denied access to Chinese contract manufacturers.

<comment><USER94> It will cripple China even more than Apple .

Apple will have 1-2 really bad years and would eventually be able to move their supply chain to other countries . Apple has the money to whether that storm

The millions of jobs lost in China would be permanent, and start a trend and they loose their manufacturing edge .

<comment><USER95> To add to your point: Apple has been pretty rapidly shifting operations to India, precisely for this reason. I'd be willing to bet Apple has plans in place to move the rest of their manufacturing operations if China were to retaliate against it. Not saying it would be easy, or painless, but perhaps not as difficult as we'd imagine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> Maybe I am blaming the wrong companies/countries but it seems to me that platforms like iOS and Android should provide near perfect sand boxing for all apps, including TikTok. No app should be able to quietly have access to our devices.

The new beta for iOS is doing a better job by having little notifications of what app is using the camera, microphone, your contacts, etc.

I would also like to speculate on something: Peter Theil owns a lot of Facebook stock and TikTok is a market threat to Facebook. Peter Theil is close with President Trump. You can see where I am going with this...

</comment><comment><USER97> That's one way to avoid a US ban.

<comment><USER98> This is what a lot companies who do business in China have to go through.

For example, Activision-Blizzard are pretty much fully separated from The9, which is the only authorized distributor for World of Warcraft in China.

Edit: Apologies, the source I was looking at was outdated and NetEase is the current distributor for WoW in China.

<comment><USER99> But unlike China, America fashions itself as a bastion of capitalism. Borrowing Chinese practices seems a little antithetical to everything I see America as

<comment><USER30> America has been acting neutral for last decades, especially last 15 years where China has asymmetrically taken advantage of American companies. China is getting a taste of their own medicine and I am fine with that.

<comment><USER99> This is essentially admitting that the free market lost and doesn't work anymore. Because the free market has clearly decided that it likes TikTok, even enough to share its data with the company.

I don't think people realize how significant this might be.

<comment><USER100> > even enough to share its data with the company.

How many people do you think have opted into this with informed consent vs clicking through multiple pages of deliberately obfuscated terms?

<comment><USER42> how is this in any way in opposition to the free market? The information is freely acceesible, the fact that its hard to understand is the problem of the consumer no? The free market solution would be to have some kind of independent organization summarize this information and attempt to distribute it in the hopes people read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> At what point do the big tech companies see the real threat of Trump and begin actively campaigning against him?

Feels like they have immense power if they decided to act politically.

<comment><USER102> I don't know why this is getting downvoted; companies in other sectors (e.g. oil) get involved in US politics regularly.

But there's little precedent for media companies to take action in US politics overtly. (IANAL, but I suspect there are legal impediments as well). Taking a political stand, or providing support for one side, might force big tech companies to resolve the ambiguity as to whether they're media companies or not.

EDIT: Actually maybe there is nothing stopping tech companies from choosing a side; apparently media companies _do_ make political contribitions: [https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/08/news-corps- million-...](https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/08/news-corps-million- dollar-donation/)

EDIT 2: I can see I've accidentally opened a can of worms about biased coverage and editorials; but my usage of "support" was intended as overt and consistent involvement in political campaigning, generally through donations. And to my surprise, that does occur.

<comment><USER103> > But there's little precedent for media companies to take action in US > politics overtly

Sorry, but are we in the same country?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER104> So will they be keeping all the intrusive spyware features as a part of this deal?

</comment><comment><USER105> Trump's grudge on Tiktok users apart, could this be a plot of hostile take over?

With all the public threats ByteDance is receiving from president of USA, Msft or any other company which acquires, gets one of the biggest social networking site of the decade at give away price.

<comment><USER106> I don't think it's at a discount at all. They're effectively selling it at the height of the market. Even if they cut valuation in half, it'd still be at a significant premium.

<comment><USER107> I feel like sentiment was similar for when FB bought IG for $1B. Today, we would all agree that was vastly under priced.

<comment><USER108> Well, sure. But similarly, most people today would agree that Tumblr was not worth nearly 1.1 billion when Yahoo bought it.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER109> Why there's a so much hype about blocking TikTok? China blocked multiple US websites by replicating them first and blocking them (Google, FB, Twitter), irony, isn't it? Were those websites against Chinese laws? I'm surprised by some people reacting negatively to this. P.S. I am not a pro Trump.

</comment><comment><USER110> Trump seems intent on this because of the Tulsa Rally fiasco. But at what point does it backfire on him? Tens of millions of pissed off 18yr olds could easily sway the election.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has quietly avoided the anti-trust spotlight recently yet has acquired github, LinkedIn, and now a social network that could rival Facebook. Satya Nadella is a genius.

<comment><USER111> 18yr old are hopefully not pissed off primarily stemming from the ban of this one app.

Regardless, young population have historically been absent from voting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER112> So soon all the tech savvy kids will learn that their favourite apps are only available on the Hauwei app store?

<comment><USER113> it won't really be their favorite app if no one else is using it

</comment></comment><comment><USER114> Just echo back on U.S. doesn't have precedents of blocking software in the article. I don't think that's true. U.S. has both means (file request to Apple and Google to pull software off the shelf, remove the domain from root DNS etc) and done these before for piracy and other reasons.

<comment><USER115> What does "file a request" mean here? Send a letter asking?

<comment><USER114> DMCA is for one. I am not sure for "national security" reasons what options would be. It is definitely challenging to come up with excuses within rules of law. I would imagine that some combinations of failures to meet FCC regulation and "immediate" national security threat probably would do the trick. There is no guarantee that Apple AppStore or Google Play Store won't make a stand and challenge these requests in court though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER116> Us companies like Facebook and Twitter had a chance to operate in China as long as they were willing to follow local laws/policies; they were banned because they didn't want to cooperate. On the other hand, TikTok seems willing to obey us laws and is bringing its team/data center into the us. Banning TikTok in spite of that sounds similar to injecting disinfectant for COVID

<comment><USER117> China is a communist regime. They can do whatever the hell they want, why would american companies spend any time conforming to their demands when they can pull the rug out from under them at any time. Also, they would be under their total control forever.

<comment><USER41> American companies do it for money. Companies like major movie studios, sports leagues, operating system vendors, search engine providers

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER118> [https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/not_new_news...](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/not_new_news_but_tbh_if_you_have_tiktiok_just_get/?sort=top)

<comment><USER117> "removed by mods" \- exactly why I deleted my reddit account. They were conditioning children and young people to be okay with censorship.

<comment><USER119> The thread seems available to me. The YouTube link is broken, which is on YouTube's side.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER120> I'm fine with anything that damages China. The entire western world should be grouping together to fight the Chinese state. Their behavior the last couple of decades is obscene.

Right now, in 2020, China is operating Muslim concentration camps. Their factories are "employed" by de facto slave labor.

The western world should universally shun China. Ban anything that originates from China or anything that contains parts or software that originates from China.

<comment><USER121> In fact, the computer you use to make posts on ycombinator could contain some components from China as well.

<comment><USER120> I understand that. It would be a short term painful switch as we completely pulled the western world out of China.</comment></comment></comment>


How we use Trello & Google Docs to make UserVoice better every day - <AUTHOR> http://www.uservoice.com/blog/index.php/founders/trello-google-docs-product-management

<comment><USER2> Good read, but posted a month ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3853688></comment>


The father of the modern frozen food industry - <AUTHOR> https://thehustle.co/frozen-food-inventor-charles-birdseye/ <comment><USER2> >But the industry's chief pioneer is hardly a household name.

Actually the name (in slightly different form) is probably reasonably familiar to many people even if they don't know it was a person given that Birds Eye is a big international brand of frozen food, vegetables in particular.

<comment><USER3> It's generational. I grew up with Clarence Birdseye commercials so I immediately knew who they were talking about from the article title. Who says you can't learn anything from TV?

[https://youtu.be/HM65j-w0uYw](https://youtu.be/HM65j-w0uYw)

<comment><USER2> Although I'm probably of the right generation I don't remember these. I learned who he was a few years ago when a friend of mine (I think) read a biography about him; he was apparently a pretty interesting character. And he came up again in the context of research for a book I was writing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone know where to read up about advancements and more modern techniques on food preservation?

<comment><USER5> There's an NPR money on storing NY apples for year round consumption by optimizing temperature, gassed and maybe pressure.

Also look into gamma irradiation.

Finally, for shelf life, sterilization by autoclave (ie: pressure cooker).

Lyophilization never really took off outside of pharma except for some ice cream products.</comment></comment>


My Problem with Git: No Abstraction - <AUTHOR> http://www.g33klaw.com/2012/04/my-problem-with-git-no-abstraction/

<comment><USER2> <http://blog.nelhage.com/2010/01/on-git-and-usability/>

"Fundamentally, the way (most) people learn and think about subversion is different from the way git experts think about git. subversion's internal model is fairly complex, but you are not expected to understand it. You just have to know the half dozen commands you'll ever need, and you use them, and everything is fine.

Git's model is fundamentally fairly simple (a DAG of immutable commit objects where branches are named mutable pointers into it), but you are expected to understand it fully to use git effectively."

...

" The other, perhaps more fundamental reason, is that git is designed to be infinitely flexible, and so it's fairly rare that you can give an answer for "How do I do X with git?", since the answer will often depend on, "Well, what are your project's conventions?" "

</comment><comment><USER3> Part of why I like git is the lack of abstraction. Lack of abstraction means the abstraction that isn't there can't leak. I've done some bizarre things in git, mostly induced by the fact the company I'm working for is still on SVN in the core. For instance, on two fundamentally different machines based on the same source tree, I developed a shared feature on one, bundled it all up into one commit, put some work into integrating it on the other, put some more work on the original and bundled it up into one new unified commit, pulled from the second machine and did an interactive rebase to slide the new megacommit under the integration commits. And it all worked perfectly and exactly as I expected, complete with dead-on accurate merge conflicts that truly were conflicts. If you had problems following that description, well, git didn't.

Yes, to the extent that may seem like a bizarre workflow, it is. I know. There are additional constraints I did not describe. The point is, it's a workflow that git doesn't close off with leaky or over-limiting abstractions.

That said, I totally agree that this is irreducibly a strength and a weakness at the same time, and YMWV. But I'm glad it's around so I can use it. It's saved my bacon more times than I can count.

<comment><AUTHOR> For sure, it's nice to have both available: high level and low level. Like Ubunutu's user-add and add-user. (Of course, those are horribly named.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Git reminds me of the Churchill quote on democracy. It's the worst form of version control system except all the others that have been tried.

Despite putting up with arcane incantations, I'm not going back.

<comment><USER5> Is Git actually better than Mercurial[1], or did it just win because Linus forced it on people?

[1] Properly answering this requires imagining an alternative history where all the massive ecosystem was built around Hg instead.

<comment><USER6> I think there are tons of reasons to prefer Mercurial over git (ease of use on Windows in the early days being a big one). I also think there are a smaller number of potentially more significant reasons to prefer git.

But I think it's almost completely impossible to separate the success of Git from the tools ecosystem. I really think Mercurial would have been at least as popular as git in the long run if it had something as good as Github behind it from the beginning.

The benefits of Github are truly astounding.

<comment><USER5> Which then makes me wonder why they chose to start GitHub instead of HgHub. Rails may have been the reason; I'm not sure when or why Rails started using git.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem with git wrappers is that there are a dozen of them but none have critical mass, so all docs and examples are written in terms of bare git. It's like CoffeeScript — it's fine if you already know JS and use it to save time, but you can't use it as a way to avoid learning JS.

<comment><USER7> Which is why I'm a bit saddened to see another wrapper start up. Does OP even know about them, or does he think he's the first person to have the idea of creating a git porcelain?

And then there's always that 1 time you need to do something that git can do, but your porcelain can't. Then you have no choice but to learn git the 'right' way.

Personally, I think I understand git too well for picking up a porcelain to be useful to me, which also makes me a bit sad.

<comment><AUTHOR> I admit it - I don't know about any other higher level command line wrappers. I've only found hub <http://defunkt.io/hub/> which isn't exactly what I'm thinking of.

Ah hah - I've found just one, although it looks pretty good <http://www.git- legit.org/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is Git really that hard to use? I've used ClearCase, Perforce, CVS, SVN, and Git. They all have their benefits and idiosyncrasies. Git is not that hard. I do have to search for its usage and example from time to time for less frequently used commands, but that's the same for the others.

<comment><USER9> The problem with git is that its defaults are suited to large teams collaborating. For example if you create tags then push won't push them unless you specify another flag. This makes sense when there are lots of collaborators (you don't want everyone's tags polluting) but is annoying in small groups (you do want to share). This isn't to fault git, but it is what makes it harder to use.

I'm also confused by the github love. Exactly what is it that people think is so good about it? The ticket tracker is terrible (no prioritization, no attachments), the wiki doesn't have table of contents/document structure, you can't cross link between projects etc. As an example Google Code does quite a bit better on those issues, and they let you have multiple repositories per project so you can share the wiki, tracker and downloads as makes sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand how "mv", with relative and absolute pathnames, is implementation leakage.

<comment><USER11> Maybe it is a UNIX/non-UNIX thing...

I have been using UNIX-type operating systems almost exclusively for the whole of my professional life so have zero appreciation for the troubles people have when approaching UNIX tools from a Windows (or whatever) mindset.

Git (and the whole toolchain and OS for that matter) is much more about DWIS than DWIM and that does not click for a lot of people.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it's not about mindset or command-line unix culture. It's about interface design. The command line interface.

All of the established unix commands do a particular conceptual thing well. "sort" always sorts. Its options affect how it sorts.

But git ... "git checkout" can switch the working branch. "git checkout" can rollback code ... depending on the specified options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In the project's README it says "g add isn't necessary for staging since g commit will automatically add objects. In fact, g does not expose the concept of staging through its interface", which if followed through with will ensure that this project never gains traction.

The staging areas, though foreign to newcomers, is one of the most liked features of git (I should look up the git survey results, but I'm lazy). In fact, it is core to many excellent features of git, not least of all the ability to interactively select which parts of your work you want to commit, even down to different hunks in the same file. Ignoring this powerful concept makes git a less powerful beast, and hobbles it unnecessarily. To say that the concept of staging is complex is fine, but surely throwing it out is the wrong answer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting feedback - thanks!

I started off with that idea because I personally rarely use this feature. I pretty much always commit all my changes. And so I only change things that I want to commit.

I'm sure I picked up this habit from my svn days. I'll look around for those survey results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Shameful plug: <http://gitpilot.com>

We seek to fix the abstraction aspect by focusing on the difficult of collaboration. It's working really well for us. We'll be launching our beta test soon.

</comment><comment><USER14> Git is a Hole Hawg, just like UNIX. That's intentional. Stop trying to change the software to be easier. Instead change yourself. Make yourself stronger and better by learning this complicated stuff, and become a master.

You can't drive a car with a manual, the solution isn't to get an automatic. The solution is to learn to drive stick.

For those unfamiliar with the Hole Hawg:

[http://steve- parker.org/articles/others/stephenson/holehawg....](http://steve- parker.org/articles/others/stephenson/holehawg.shtml)

<comment><USER15> I think I take your point, but we should only put up with having to learn _necessarily_ complicated things. So to the extent that the Git interface reflects a powerful and flexible internal model, I'm with you. But Git is also _unnecessarily_ complicated. The commands are inconsistent and hard to remember until you have them by rote. That's a failure of software design.

<comment><USER11> "That's a failure of software design."

Or the evidence of a differing opinion on what amount of complexity is necessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The author suggests aliases and while I use aliases daily, I don't believe that will solve the problem he references. I think providing a better mental model for what exactly git is doing through visual metaphors is the biggest help to those learning git. I've found something as simple as the chart here to help explain the concepts of adding and staging [http://gitready.com/beginner/2009/01/18/the-staging- area.htm...](http://gitready.com/beginner/2009/01/18/the-staging-area.html)</comment>


Why Americans Smile So Much - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/05/why-americans-smile-so-much/524967/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Did not realize that was a thing, but the 'smile' that the girl in the top picture has looks absolutely fake to me. And for that, indeed, American. Something I do not know what betrays she does not mean it. And that is quite common when running into Americans, while if someone does that here, people indeed are suspicious. Not sure if the science behind this article explains why we think that, but cool to see there are people researching it. A lot of people I know equate that smile with plastic, fake and mcdonalds here (which is also amplified by unnaturally whitened teeth). Personally I always thought it is positivity: if you smile on the outside you feel better on the inside even if sometimes you do not mean it; that is a good thing and I try it when feeling down once in a while.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is acually really interesting and well-written.

I don't find the headshot photo of the American guy as creepy or toothy. And I don't think it's weird for a cashier to smile and have a conversation with a customer.

I can also see the origin of this non-verbal communication as being from our immigration-filled past. Which is great!

But, I'd say, to a decent number of Americans, the walmart chant is extremely fake and contrived. The only people who defend that as genuine are probably truly in love with walmart, whether they know its flaws or not.

</comment><comment><USER4> Xanax?</comment>


Falltergeist: Opensource crossplatform Fallout 2 game engine - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/falltergeist/falltergeist <comment><USER2> I think the most impressive 3rd party engine implementation is FOnline. It has been under development for over a decade and has been used by plenty of actual games for almost as long. FOnline combines Fallout 1 & 2, with some additional stuff from Fallout: Tactics. It doesn't aim to be an exact copy, instead it's an evolution of the original games. It combines them all together into a single game and provides MMO level multiplayer. Lots of fun to be on the same map with thousands of players, scavenge for loot and participate in PvP. [http://imgur.com/a/t6qCm](http://imgur.com/a/t6qCm)

Currently the most active game built on top of the engine is FOnline: Reloaded. [http://www.fonline-reloaded.net/](http://www.fonline-reloaded.net/)

As I write this it has 100 people online. Not as active as the FOnline community was 8 years ago, but it's not abandoned yet.

There are also a bunch of other FOnline games, a selection of them and their status can be seen at [https://fonline-status.ru/en/](https://fonline- status.ru/en/)

For development resources there's [http://fodev.net/](http://fodev.net/) & [https://xp-dev.com/sc/76003/HEAD/](https://xp-dev.com/sc/76003/HEAD/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I love Fallout 2 and would love to see where this goes... However, the main site doesn't work ([http://www.falltergeist.com](http://www.falltergeist.com)).

Also, commits that say "F*ck this shit" don't build confidence in a project. :)

<comment><USER4> What sort of confidence are you expecting in a Fallout 2 engine? Are you looking to deploy it to production or something? :P

<comment><USER3> haha, good point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fallout 2 was the source of many joys and frustrations, I even did some work on the pt-BR translation.

It was very upsetting that Van Buren [0] was not actually the expected Fallout 3, I very much prefer the pure isometric turn-based system instead of the hybrid that was subsequently developed by Bethesda.

Hope this project reaches a high-quality stable release so that the community is able to create great storylines and mods based on it.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Buren_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Buren_\(video_game\))

<comment><USER6> On the other hand, while I love F1&2 I would not like to see such visuals anymore. It drove me crazy not to be able to easily explore some places because of fixed perspective - and I am an explorer. They were great for their times, now FNV is what I consider the best of series. Haven't tried F4 but judging from reviews it won't dethrone FNV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a little younger then most who are on this thread. I grew/am growing up playing Fallout 3/NV. Projects like this give me hope that I will one day see similar things happen with my favorite games.

What I'd give for an open source Fallout 3/NV with some kind of coop feature....

<comment><USER5> You should give Fallout 1 and 2 (preferably 2) a try, specially if you enjoyed NV, which involved many of the original producers. The carefully crafted dialogue and storyline is what sets it apart.

If you require a 'modern' game I'd highly recommend Wasteland 2 [0], it's somewhat of a sequel from the 1988's Wasteland which was the inspiration for Fallout, it also involved some key producers from the original Fallout series.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasteland_2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasteland_2)</comment></comment>