Apple Censoring the News App - <AUTHOR> https://langui.sh/2019/03/26/apple-censoring-the-news-plus/ <comment><USER2> These discussions are pretty weird.

It's _China_ that is censoring the news here. But for some reason we're mainly blaming Apple for it? It's makes no sense.

And what the heck does the API Apple uses to determine location have to do with it? If Apple had the choice, they would use _no_ API to censor the news.

Anyway, for the people who really are worried about censorship (I am) it's worth understanding and acknowledging what's actually going on here. This problem is not an Apple problem and if you try to treat it like one, that's actually worse than doing nothing at all since it draws attention away from the actual problem.

(There are Apple problems, of course, but this isn't one of them.) This is a big China problem.

<comment> xkcd-sucks Apple is famous for fighting anything which might associate the brand with a degraded user experience. So shipping an apple branded product which tacitly accepts censorship seems like tacit complicity, which is the most cynical type of complicity.

<comment><USER3> Apple ships products that conform to local regulations and this is absolutely normal. Do you think entreprises should choose which laws they comply to and which they don't? Good luck financing your state with that because I'm sure they'll all opt out of tax regulations...

<comment><USER4> They shouldn't conform to local regulations that are contrary to their publicly stated company ideals. One way to do so is to not do business in countries where it's impossible to conform.

<comment><USER5> > One way to do so is to not do business in countries where it's impossible to > conform.

Keep in mind that we're talking about China. If Apple pulls out, there's no shortage of Chinese companies that the Chinese government is buddy-buddy with who will happily go all-in on spying on consumers.

Apple obeys Chinese regulations, but it's reasonable to assume (based on their actions in the US) that they don't enjoy it. Which means they're not going to go out of their way to give the Chinese government more than they need to. This is potentially in contrast with the Chinese technology companies who would be more than happy to provide extra data to the government.

Apple is able to hold their position in China only because they comply with regulations, but in so doing they provide consumers with a better option than going through any of the Chinese government-friendly companies. Yes, it sucks that they have to comply, but in a scenario where Apple either chooses or is forced to withdraw from China it is the Chinese consumers who will suffer the most, because they will be left with only government-friendly alternatives.

<comment><USER4> It's an ages-old argument: "if I won't do this evil thing, somebody else will, and they will be worse at it". It also makes you complicit in and responsible for whatever you help with, though.

But I don't have a problem with Apple here, because they did exactly that - they're not providing their News app/service in China at all, rather than providing a censored version where they would be implementing the censorship. Yes, this means that local competitors will offer their own apps, likely censored even more. And it's up to Chinese citizens to hold them to account. But when it comes to American companies, it's our job to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > To accomplish this censorship Apple is using a form of location > fingerprinting that is not available to normal applications on iOS. It works > like this: despite the fact that your phone uses a SIM from a US carrier it > must connect to a Chinese cellular network. Apple is using private APIs to > identify that you are in mainland China based on the name of the underlying > cellular network and blocking access to the News app.

Does anyone know if this claim is true? I would have assumed this is as simple as serving the not allowed response to any request from a Chinese address range, and it seems like it would be easy to test using a VPN.

(In general, while I don't approve of censorship this seems like an odd hill to die on — the problem is that a repressive government is still sovereign and there aren't exactly many options for a company with such extensive business ties other than complying with that government's laws within its borders)

<comment><USER7> _> while I don't approve of censorship ..._

I always believed in absolute freedom of expression. I cheered Google when they prioritized values over revenues and abandoned mainland China because of censorship requirements.

But maybe I need to update my beliefs based on new evidence.

When free expression enables disinformation campaigns, when false rumors get amplified into mob violence, when stochastic terror organizes online, maybe the side effects of unlimited free expression are too severe for a modern civilization.

Is it completely unreasonable to think that there might be something to learn from China's policies of censorship and social control?

<comment><USER8> In my opinion this is one of the saddest and most dangerous trends of modern times, the desire to give up any and all freedoms in exchange for perceived safety. We've welcomed 1984 with open arms.

<comment><USER7> _> the desire to give up any and all freedoms_

That's not what I said. I said "there might be something to learn".

Maybe my belief in unlimited free expression at any cost isn't the best way.

Must we must allow terrorist recruiting and incitement to violence and state- sponsored disinformation campaigns and targeted intimidation?

It's a slippery slope fallacy to assume that any restriction inevitably leads to relinquishing "all freedoms".

<comment><USER4> The problem is that slippery slope is not a hypothetical argument in this case. You can be jailed in France, today, for wearing a pro-BDS t-shirt, because it's "hate speech". At the same time, for all the political censorship that Europe has compared to US, it doesn't seem to be doing anything to stem the rising popularity of their extremist parties.

([https://theintercept.com/2017/08/29/in-europe-hate-speech- la...](https://theintercept.com/2017/08/29/in-europe-hate-speech-laws-are- often-used-to-suppress-and-punish-left-wing-viewpoints/))

The problem, as usual, is that there's no "we" in "must we allow". You're not actually the person who's going to be doing the allowing - best case, if you live in a non-corrupt democracy, you'll be voluntarily giving that authority to somebody else; and not even to a specific person, but a role. If the bounds of that authority are too specific, it becomes useless in practice because it's easy to avoid its scope. If they are too vague, and the precise bounds are left to the discretion of the enforcers, it just gives them another channel to manifest their biases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> China is their biggest market. Would be a bit stupid to get your products banned from your biggest market over something so simple.

Not that I agree with Chinese practices.

<comment><USER10> I think it's more that in a device that's so locked down this is a bad precedent. Cowtowing to governments is detrimental for everyone.

<comment><USER11> > Cowtowing to governments is detrimental for everyone.

So should Apple News allow Nazi stories in Germany? Should they allow stories disparaging the Thai king in a Thailand? Should they allow speech that creates an immediate threat to a person in the US? Should Apple pay taxes? Should Apple prohibit child porn?

All of these are examples of "kowtowing" to governments. What's the difference between kowtowing and following the law? How can someone expect Apple to pay a "fair share" of EU taxes but then expect them to not follow Chinese law? If a company boycotts countries based on ideology, pretty soon every country gets boycotted over something or another. There are exactly zero perfect countries.

<comment><USER12> According to the TFA, Apple (or any foreign company) is not obligated to block traffic at the device-level in the manner described by TFA:

> _This censorship occurs despite the fact that when in China a cell phone > using a foreign SIM is not subject to the firewall restrictions (all traffic > is tunneled back to your provider first), so Google, Twitter, Facebook, et > al all work fine on a non-mainland China SIM even though you're connected > via China Mobile or China Unicom's network_

<comment><USER13> This is only partially correct. One has to have a foreign sim and have data roaming turned on (which implies paying the higher rate). The author didn't state if they did both.

[https://www.freedomsurfer.com/firewall/](https://www.freedomsurfer.com/firewall/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Apple is using private APIs to identify that you are in mainland China based > on the name of the underlying cellular network and blocking access to the > News app. This information is not available via public APIs in iOS > specifically to improve privacy for users.

Regardless of the merit of the argument of Apple censoring News in China, this is a stupid argument. For Apple, there is no private API: they wrote the thing themselves; for privacy they prevent third-party applications from accessing it. What would you like them to do, remove the API entirely or open it to third-party developers?

<comment><USER15> remove it. there, happy? :)

<comment><USER14> No, because now my phone doesn't work. I can't send text messages, I can't use most of the hardware, I can't change basic settings…none of these can function without the APIs that Apple currently keeps private. It's obvious that there should be functionality to say set the device's passcode–but it's also pretty clear that normal apps should _not_ be able to access this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There's not enough information here to think this is a major scandal. Does Apple News respect your home region everywhere in the world except in China? Or is this just the typical international content licensing tarpit? I would blame copyright hell before I would assume Apple is kowtowing to China somehow. Given that China apparently allows foreign mobile devices an exception to the Great Firewall network blocks, it seems unlikely the Chinese government is specifically targeting the Apple News app for being blocked. I'm struggling to see how it makes sense to think of this as "censorship" rather than just "software and content licensing are both complicated and terrible".

</comment><comment><USER15> Perhaps one day we can stop talking about "feature-gating" (and "geoblocking" for that matter) and just treat these censorship mechanisms as the attacks on the freedom on the web that they are.

<comment><USER17> That'd be the best move here. If the author wants Apple to operate according to their (US-based) ideals in China, that's a perfectly valid argument to make. So make it.

Instead, the author does some overly verbose and hot take dance to propagate clickbait, which is then shockingly submitted to HN. Call this garbage for what it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> They also censor or at least filter out content they are not comfortable sharing on their iTunes movie platform. I'm not sure how appropriate the word censor is here in this context. They are a private company that can choose which content they release in which area, or at all, especially to adapt to local customs or laws. Similar to how you can get rice and a chicken leg at McDonalds in Indonesia, but can't in America.

</comment><comment><USER19> I remember back in the day when UK Newsagent WHS Smith kept pulling Private Eye off its shelves if there was content it didn't like.

</comment><comment><USER20> Just noticed in the screen shot that the poster's wifi was on. In which case they had a Chinese IP and it wouldn't work. Did the OP test on cell network only?

</comment><comment><USER21> Any chance this is enforcing a content licensing restriction?

</comment><comment><USER22> _China_ Censoring Apple's News App

FTFY

</comment><comment><USER23> I lived in U.S. for eight years and found out about this fact after I came back. It's deeply concerning, the fact they don't block news app but block news feeds in China is weird.

I used to use News App with U.S. sim card, but the restriction got tighter and tighter.

</comment><comment><USER24> isn't it possible to identify the location from the IP alone?

</comment><comment><USER25> Google gets a whole different level of scrutiny on HN wrt their business practices than any other company it seems. Apple can do whatever the Chinese government asks, yet almost all comments in this thread are aimed at justifying their innocence using business and sovereignty arguments. However, the yet to launch dragonfly project gets huge opposition. Are there any other companies getting the same level of scrutiny.

<comment><USER26> I'm pretty sure that if Apple had Google's privacy-busting business model they'd be loathed too. If as a bonus they also worked on drones with the Pentagon you'd have even more hate. As it stands I'm yet to see an Apple article here that isn't filled with people talking about the "Apple tax" and trying to define them as a monopoly.

<comment><USER25> Microsoft works with the DOD and gets minimal scrutiny. Also all the posts about apple tax also have similar number of posts talking about the google tax, even though google atleast allows people to download apks and install, like the route fortnite took.

<comment><USER26> Microsoft is one of the more loathed companies for what they've already done, never mind what they do now. I'm not sure where you're getting "minimal scrutiny" from, except as another attempt to mitigate an understandable reaction to Google's "winning" combination of hypocrisy and dominance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why pretend like China isn't the one censoring this.

<comment><USER28> The issue is that normally, Chinese censorship does not apply to travelers with a foreign cell phone and foreign SIM. However, the way Apple implemented censorship for News+ goes beyond the norm, such that even foreign travelers are impacted.

It's not a good thing for Apple to be innovating on ways to enforce Chinese censorship (although if I understand correctly, it doesn't matter—China could already censor roaming cell traffic, they just choose not to).

<comment><USER29> > Chinese censorship does not apply to travelers with a foreign cell phone and > foreign SIM

Really? Travelers with a foreign cell phone and foreign SIM are excepted from Chinese censorship laws? I find this very difficult to believe. It's more likely that censorship laws are simply more difficult to enforce on travelers, which doesn't make it any more legal.

<comment><USER30> "difficult to believe" leads you to your own conclusion rather than researching on how it works...that's how internet works, sadly

<comment><USER29> While China, even as a tourist, you are still subject to Chinese laws and regulations. Just because a rule isn't always strictly enforced doesn't mean it's nonapplicable. Any unsubstantiated claims to the contrary are "difficult to believe"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The title mentions News+ but the article is all about News App so this is not specific to News+

<comment><USER32> Thanks! We've replaced that in the headline here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Interesting that this was flagged for a minute there but came back. Did the mods manually unflag?

<comment><USER34> I vouched it after it got flagged dead which resurrected, but it hasn't returned to the front page.

<comment><USER32> It ended up flagkilled again, so we've just turned off the flags to give it a shot.

<comment><USER33> Just out of curiosity, did you "collapse" this comment thread since it's just a meta discussion, or is it somehow getting affected by user voting while still remaining at +1?

<comment><USER32> The former!

<comment><USER33> Makes sense, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Apple pisses when China growls. I personally think their claim of being privacy guardians is a bunch of PR & marketing BS. Didn't they also handover the encryption keys for iCloud in China to the Communist Regime ?</comment>


Jack Ma: 'If trade stops, war starts' - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com.au/jack-ma-if-trade-stops-war-starts-2017-2 <comment><USER2> I think it was the Economist that used to say "no two countries with a McDonald's have gone to war", until the bombing of Serbia by NATO in the 90s.

It's a strong argument. Integrating supply chains across borders means that there's a big section of the business community ready to lobby against war that might threaten that investment. Not to mention that modern industry is much less "capturable"; you can capture farmland and mineral resources (especially oil!) in war, but fixed plant and creative businesses are just obliterated, not captured.

<comment><USER3> Often suggested as one of the reasons Europe has experienced its most peaceful period in a thousand years. The EU means we can't afford to go to war with each other. Although some are intent on dismantling that progress, sadly.

<comment><USER4> My favorite factoid: the Baby Boomers are the first generation to go from birth to retirement (and I might hope: to death) without witnessing a war along the Rhine. The first, that is, since the death of Charlemagne.

The EU has its issues, but its core accomplishment is a singularity.

<comment><USER5> Why is everybody so certain that the EU is the reason for this?

Many other things changed in the same time England, France, Germany were no longer the powers they were before. The US and Russia dominated. There were nuclear weapons. The internal politics of many of these nations changed quite a bit as well. Idiotically changes of the people and even the political elites changed.

Also the EU has not always been the EU it has now. There were many iterations and those that are against the EU might not be against the general idea of a more united EU but rather against a specific iteration of these contracts.

These other visions of the EU might also have prevented war (and they might have in the time they were active).

<comment><USER6> EU was built on the ECSC which has been created with preventing war as one of its primary goals:

> The ECSC was first proposed by French foreign minister Robert Schuman on 9 > May 1950 as a way to prevent further war between France and Germany. He > declared his aim was to "make war not only unthinkable but materially > impossible" which was to be achieved by regional integration, of which the > ECSC was the first step. The Treaty would create a common market for coal > and steel among its member states which served to neutralise competition > between European nations over natural resources, particularly in the Ruhr.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Coal_and_Steel_Commun...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Coal_and_Steel_Community)

it is a spectacular success by this measure. there were other factors contributing, of course, but free trade is the primary one.

<comment><USER7> I must have missed the history class about the wars Europe waged with the UK in the 50s & 60s? /s

The reality is that the cold war prevented intra-EU state wars, not the EU. Shared enemy.

If you had to point at something, isn't Nato a more likely candidate than ECSC? In my view the EU's taking credit for other people's achievements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> He wasn't the first. It's the whole "Capitalist Peace" theory: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_peace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_peace) proposed by Professor Erik Gartzke, that economically developed countries (capitalist - but in this case even something like China can qualify) don't fight with one another.

<comment><USER9> > that economically developed countries (capitalist - but in this case even > something like China can qualify) don't fight with one another.

France and Germany? WW1 / WW2?

Japan and the US in WW2? IIRC, at the time, Japan and the US were trade partners, and Japan imported the bulk of it's oil from the US.

Yet in both cases, they still went to war.

I think the lesson is that ideology trumps economics.

<comment><USER10> I think the word "capitalist" might have been better than "economically developed".

One could argue that Capitalism was the reason Japan went to war against the US. Japan was worried that the US would cut off all oil exports to Japan, so they attempted to gain control of the pacific in order to solidify access to oil. They needed to keep their machine going.

Idk if I would call (pre-wwII, post rise of Hitler) Germany truly "Capitalist" though.

<comment><USER5> That seems strange to me. Its not like the west cut of oil from Japan for no reason. Japan was fighting a war with China. They were not willing to give that up and escalated the war.

Capitalists (as in profit seeking companies and people) seem to have very little to do with it. That is a political decision on the highest level.

<comment><USER10> I guess. The way I viewed it Japan made a move to protect their markets. But you could be right.

<comment><USER5> I guess they did it to protect their market and war machine. The question is where did the pressure to do so come from, was it from the political class or the business community.

<comment><USER10> I agree, that is the question. In capitalistic societies, business and politics are often intertwined.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That was also Victor Hugo's idea in his description of the "United States of Europe":

> "A day will come when the only fields of battle will be markets opening up > to trade and minds opening up to ideas."

[http://www.ellopos.net/politics/hugo-addresses- europe.asp](http://www.ellopos.net/politics/hugo-addresses-europe.asp)

</comment><comment><USER12> I wish I could be more sure that people in power saw that as a bad thing.

<comment><USER13> China stands absolutely no chance in a direct war with US and her allies.

Not only do we absolutely decimate them in nuclear and naval capabilities, our combined allied forces would decimate them technologically, on the ground, and through strategic embargoing, attrition, psychological warfare, etc.

We and our allies literally surround them. Not only that, look into geopolitics, Trump getting a call from Taiwan pisses China off more than giving them weapons. Why? Acknowledging and reaffirming our commitment to protect them, angers them more than physical capability of defense for Taiwan.

China enslaves a portion of its citizens, jails activists, kidnaps Taiwanese, support DPRK, among other things.

Trump is remapping Asian relations, because China isn't strong, nor are they suicidal. Rewriting our trade relations will help us, and if they continue being friends with us, good for them as well.

A restructuring is likely, and a war will only happen if our Asian allies or China forces our hand. If so, we win, based on any strategic viewpoint of might.

<comment><USER14> In any all-out war between two nuclear nations there will be no winner, just two losers.

<comment><USER15> Well, we better get pretty good at shooting down missiles because North Korea has a bit of the crazy and nuclear weapons. I get the feeling that someone has looked at the Aegis combined with XR standard missiles.

I'm not worried about China. I'm worried about the last days of a dictator.

<comment><USER16> Shooting down one missile is a lot easier than shooting down a hundred. The US has had the ability to defend against an attack from North Korea since the W Bush administration. That capability would barely dent a Chinese attack.

<comment><USER15> I wasn't talking about China, just the "any" nuclear power is hopefully becomes a false statement given NK's instability.

Do you have a source on the "The US has had the ability to defend against an attack from North Korea since the W Bush administration." for ballistic missiles?

<comment><USER16> This is the system in question:

[https://www.mda.mil/system/gmd.html](https://www.mda.mil/system/gmd.html)

The interceptors are expensive, so there aren't very many. That's why it can defend against a country like North Korea but not China.

<comment><USER15> Ok, but why do you keep mentioning China, I said I wasn't worried about China. I'm worried about the crazy folks (e.g. NK) with limited launch capability. China is pretty stable.

<comment><USER16> Because the overall context here is China, the potential for war with China, and the devastation that would result. I want to be clear that our defenses would not prevent that.

<comment><USER15> Fine, but that wasn't the parent message I was responding to and had nothing to do with my original reply.

<comment><USER16> Really, you think "In any all-out war between two nuclear nations there will be no winner, just two losers" in a discussion about war with China wasn't talking about China?

<comment><USER15> I provided a counter-example that is much more likely and frankly a lot more worrisome. Plus, I specifically mention what I was worried about. Comments on HN expand out from the topic all the time, and I was pretty specific in my response.

<comment><USER16> Ok. I responded to what you said and tied it in to the larger conversation. I don't get what your problem is here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's dangerous to assume the contrapositive of this claim is actually true (war doesn't start if trade doesn't stop). The best example of this is World War 1 Europe. It was held as common knowledge then that a world war could never possibly break out because of how interdependent the European economies were becoming. Nobody was going to kill the golden goose over some silly land dispute. We all know how that turned out, and it had nothing to do with whether jobs were being created or destroyed.

If the contrapositive isn't true, then the original claim may not hold any actual weight.

Dan Carlin talks about this in his Hardcore History podcast and does a great job telling the story of WWI, definitely would recommend.

<comment><USER18> The contrapositive is "if war doesn't start, trade doesn't stop."

<comment><USER17> You're right, thanks.

<comment><USER19> just edit your comment to say converse instead of contrapositive. The contrapositive of a statement is logically equivalent to the statement itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Jack Ma says the darnest things. What is happening now is the (almost) same thing that happened as a prelude to Opium War(s). China want people to buy their stuff, but the other way around only through tight control from China. That's not how trade works. Of course, opium war had such a perverse blowback from the English via India that it's not possible in this day and age, but who knows. One thing is sure, something is going to happen. My bet is on (slight) collapse of economy from within China and then opening up their economy a bit more towards everyone else. This will happen after the currency war. I don't see any actual combat conflict happening. But, who knows.

</comment><comment><USER21> Ma notwithstanding, history shows that trade does not prevent war (and that the idea that it does springs from unbridled optimism about the nature of man). This has been much discussed:

"Can Free Trade Really Prevent War?": [https://mises.org/library/can-free- trade-really-prevent-war](https://mises.org/library/can-free-trade-really- prevent-war)

"Trade Can Bring War": [http://blogs.reuters.com/breakingviews/2015/01/09/review- tra...](http://blogs.reuters.com/breakingviews/2015/01/09/review-trade-can- bring-war/)

</comment><comment><USER22> The old saying was 'If goods don't cross borders, armies will'.

</comment><comment><USER23> It is a bizarre twist to claim Jack Ma is somehow threatening US with war over trade frictions. After all the highlight of his trip was to donate $20 million to an Australian university (Newcastle), in return for generous help and friendship he received as a young man over 30 years ago from an Australian family (the Morleys).

"I am very thankful for Australia and the time I spent there in my youth. The culture, the landscape and most importantly its people had a profound impact on my view of the world at that time," Mr Ma said in a statement on Friday.

[http://www.theherald.com.au/story/4444710/an- extraordinary-g...](http://www.theherald.com.au/story/4444710/an- extraordinary-gift/)

[http://www.afr.com/leadership/innovation/alibaba- billionaire...](http://www.afr.com/leadership/innovation/alibaba-billionaire- founder-jack-ma-gives-26m-to-university-of-newcastle-in-memory-of-australian- mentor-20170202-gu4fg3)

<comment><USER24> Unclear what Ma's trip has to do with the his statement, is there a connection to you?

<comment><USER23> Does it feel like Jack Ma went to Australia to deliver a threat to the US? He went there to unveil headquarters for Alibaba and to make a donation to an Australian university. He talked about how grateful he was to Australia (as a Western country). To read war threat into a cliche comment is too much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What exactly is old mate Jack proposing will happen here? Apple moves some of it's manufacturing out of Shenzen death camps and into California, so China attacks mainland USA?

China would be very silly to initiate a conflict with America in the next 20 years - they simply don't have the capacity, experience or training to fight a very large and very sophisticated adversary. I know we all like to rag on America, but the fact the US military is staggeringly big, well funded, experienced, and well organised.

</comment><comment><USER26> >"Trade is about trade of values. Trade of culture," Not sure what Mr. Ma means here, considering the barriers the Chinese have erected against foreign culture, e.g. The Great Firewall.

The increasing intrusiveness and paranoia of major US institutions - e.g. NSA and Google -- suggests the US is also running a value trade deficit with China.

</comment><comment><USER27> China refused to trade arts, and was stopping to trade its citizens as sweat workers in America, and boom 2 wars. Right on spot!

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

</comment><comment><USER28> I think the original 19th century quote was 'If goods dont cross borders, soldiers will.' Attributed to Bastiat, but hasn't been found in his notes.

</comment><comment><USER29> Ma seems to be saying to the United States: Continue running trade deficits with China, subsidizing China's ill-conceived domestic social and economic policies, or war. If this is what Ma is saying (it essentially is) then war with China is inevitable and better engaged in now, while the US still enjoys a qualitative advantage.

Anyone doubting this interpretation of Ma's comments needs to read Michael Pettis' commentary on Chinese economic policy:

[http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/22/chinas-currency- manipula...](http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/22/chinas-currency-manipulation- actually-enhances-the-global-role-of-the-dollar-sdr-rmb-balance-of-payments/)

[http://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/66485](http://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/66485)

UPDATE: Comments claiming Ma only says, "keep trading"... don't understand how trade works between US-China (read Pettis links above), and are not paying attention to coincidental news from China about new DF-16 ICBM's pointed at the United States. Its almost as if China plans to negotiate trade with a gun pointed at the Trump administration's head.

<comment><USER30> _Ma seems..._

And that's where it stops. Ma made a general observation and that's it. Historically countries who trade less tend to be hostile toward each others, while countries who trade in bigger volumes are friendly.

Also Ma isn't saying or implying "keep the trade deficit". He says "keep trading. period" (a surplus or a deficit, doesn't matter in the context of his argument.) By the way it's weird that people seem to think it's China's problem that the US have a trade deficit with them. The deficit can be solved by the US selling products and services to China. It's the US' problem to find what to sell. And only the US can solve it.

<comment><USER31> > It's the US' problem to find what to sell. And only the US can solve it.

Well there's the problem of China not respecting copyright or any type of intellectual property. And that's not just a problem for the Facebooks of the world, they are stealing our agricultural and industrial knowledge as well. And while it's not officially sanctioned by the CCP, it's unofficially encouraged.

<comment><USER32> This implies that the American way of looking at these things is the ONLY right way of looking at things and that Chinese need to accept western companies on western terms.

<comment><USER31> If they are going to be part of the global economy then they need to accept the terms of the global economy. Yea their practices are mainly harming western countries at this point, but in the future maybe it's India or Singapore that has the lead in these areas. Would you think it's alright for China to do it then?

Like it or not the global capitalist economy has to be built with some form of protection for content and IP producers. I fail to see how China's model is the 'right way of looking at things'. In fact if we all acted like China I'm guessing the global economy would collapse.

<comment><USER33> "If they are going to be part of the global economy then they need to accept the terms of the global economy."

This is an absolutely marvelous way of looking at things.

For once, it ignores that the "global economy" may profit a lot from revising its own terms (especially regarding copyright/IP).

Or that the "global economy" is more like the interests of the few powerful ones who say what it is.

<comment><USER31> Sure there are theoretically better ways of doing things. If there are theoretically better ways of distributing food does that mean I get to go rob a grocery store?

You can't flaunt the rules and regulations of world trade because you disagree with them or want to change them. Besides that's not what China wants. China wants to eat its cake and have it too.

Edit: Wow looks like it's ok to lie, cheat, and steal because "the other guy does it and I think the system is unjust on top of that." Really spectacular arguments from the anti-establishment crowd.

<comment><USER32> And so does USA, EU and others. Isn't that how foreign diplomacy and trade works? Steal, murder, take what you can, behave well only when someone forces you to?

Because from current perspective I can't seem to find a reason why China would back down and let their own economy be taken over by western companies, when protectionism works well for them and their manufacturing is holding the world world by the proverbial balls. It's the tactic USA employed mercilessly (and still does) to get the best position - forcing everyone else to drop their rules to trade with them. Of course, now when China does it it's suddenly a problem, because Facebook, Google and others can't monopolize their market and transfer money to their offshore accounts? :)

<comment><USER31> >Steal, murder, take what you can, behave well only when someone forces you to?

And the US is forcing China to. I'm not trying to hold one side up as some kind of moral victor. Yea China's doing the same thing the US would in their position. This isn't some kind of moral equivalency contest.

Your post is the equivalent of Trump excusing Putins behavior because the US has done some pretty bad stuff too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> If trade stops (read, if the US trade policy starts giving a shit about its working class, trade is never going to 'stop'), it's certainly bad for Jack Ma.

So I would take what he says with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER35> Yet somehow we have unprecedented relative peace since the rise of global capitalism that can only be explained via the long tail of trade policies being a disincentive to conflict and an incentive to working things out peacefully.

Worse, Trump supporters have followed nothing but a narrative of appeasement for Russia. Its amusing to see their hypocrisy with China. The bias here is obvious.

> giving a shit about its working class

The idea that the Trump administration is fighting for the middle class is asinine. From repealing Frank-Dodd, to putting in Goldman Sachs employees into cabinet positions, putting in billionaires into cabinet positions, removing regulations that protect workers, raising mortgages on FHA loans, etc its obvious that the middle class worker can only lose under Trump.

<comment><USER31> >via the long tail of trade policies being a disincentive to conflict and an incentive to work things out peacefully.

Can you explain what you mean by long tail in these circumstances? I started taking a course on stats and understand generally what a long tail is, but I can't parse what or how you're applying the concept here.</comment></comment></comment>


Fairwai All-in-one instant messaging for B2B - <AUTHOR> https://www.fairwai.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Feel free to talk more about it. We are based in Paris (Station F) and would like your feedbacks.</comment>


A Man Who Sued Red Bull for Not Growing Wings - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/better-marketing/the-man-who-sued-red-bull-for-not-growing-wings-237ac356d46b <comment><USER2> [https://outline.com/y3AYAm](https://outline.com/y3AYAm)</comment>


The PC's Death Might Also Mean the Web's Demise - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/business/2014/01/death-pc-also-mean-end-web/ <comment><USER2> I couldn't possibly disagree more. I don't think apps are going anywhere either, but I'd limit their days before I limit the web's.

* As the web gets faster and gains more capabilities, it will encompass everything apps currently consider their domain.

* By default it contains no gatekeepers, whereas apps on mobile devices primarily go through one central source. This carries with it safety, but also a higher barrier to entry: And generally, higher barrier to entry is something people are only willing to endure if given good reason to. Having the web replaced by apps doesn't leave _any_ room for that.

* The web is open and universal. This gives it infinitely more resilience than apps- if Apple were to fall into the sea, an entire ecosystem would be lost. As is, the web practically guarantees nothing can ever die permanently.

About the only weak point that the web has, is that it's more difficult to effectively monetize one-time payments, but that's why everyone and their sister is going to subscription models, or are working within an established marketplace.

<comment><USER3> Mobile has all kinds of problems:

1\. Battery life is a joke and that's not going to change.

2\. Tiny screen is still tiny. Big screen is more useful.

3\. Finger is not the best pointing device.

4\. 90% of mobile is games. The market has spoken, smartphone is a toy. Only people that can't afford Internet access (kids & 3rd world) use their phone for everything.

5\. Privacy/security is bad from so many angles. Still waiting for an Ubuntu phone.

6\. Android is a Linux OS that blocks Linux applications--what BS. If you work at Google, shame on all of you.

7\. Processing power is weak. As we're seeing with cryptocoins, don't forget the value of raw computational power.

8\. Limiting keyboard. Pressing alt-function to get something simple like an "=" sign is a huge waste of time.

<comment><USER4> (1) 1.5h used to be good enough for a laptop, not that long ago.

(2) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_High- Definition_Link](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_High-Definition_Link)

(3) [http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Tablet-Mouse- Android-910-0026...](http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Tablet-Mouse- Android-910-002626/dp/B0058SRNZ4)

(6) No, it doesn't. I'm running ssh, git-annex and other Linux applications on my Nexus 7.

I won't disagree about the privacy problems and poor processing power, but I doubt those are real impediments for mobile devices to become the standard, even if it means I'll keep my desktop.

(EDIT: Of course, the "death" of the PC is a silly idea. But I can see it become a professional tool with a small hobbyist market, instead of the consumer market we have now.)

<comment><USER3> As far as ssh, I bet it was already installed on the device when you got it. Can you uninstall ssh and install it again without rooting Android? If you downloaded some ssh "app" from Play you probably just downloaded a cute interface to the real ssh--which must place nice with the Google proprietary JVM in order to work. Does the real JVM work on Android? Why not? There was a presentation posted on HN recently from a Python developer explaining why he can't code Python apps for Android. He explained it pretty well--you must use Eclipse, you must use the Google Virtual Machine. If you do a few searches for "code Android app" the only way is to download Eclipse and compile through the Google Virtual Machine. I'd rather pluck out my eyeballs.

<comment><USER4> No, ssh wasn't installed, yes, I can install it again without rooting Android, it's a matter of copying the binary to a directory with executable permissions and running it using at terminal.

 _f you downloaded some ssh "app" from Play you probably just downloaded a cute interface to the real ssh--which must place nice with the Google proprietary JVM in order to work._

I didn't need an SSH app, and no, Dalvik is not proprietary. Also, you don't need to get apps from Play, you can just download them from the web or use another repository.

 _Does the real JVM work on Android? Why not?_

For the same reason it doesn't work on Glendix - nobody ported it to that userspace.

 _There was a presentation posted on HN recently from a Python developer explaining why he can 't code Python apps for Android. He explained it pretty well--you must use Eclipse, you must use the Google Virtual Machine. If you do a few searches for "code Android app" the only way is to download Eclipse and compile through the Google Virtual Machine._

No, you don't. You just need to cross-compile it to ARM, copy it and run: [http://benno.id.au/blog/2007/11/13/android-native- apps](http://benno.id.au/blog/2007/11/13/android-native-apps)

And this is nothing new: if you take notice, the post is from 2007.

Joey Hess writes git-annex in freaking Haskell, compiles the binary using Cabal and I run it just fine on my non-rooted Nexus.

<comment><USER3> That's fascinating, especially the C compiler, maybe I'll try it. But how to get C applications into Play?

Still the "Allow UNSAFE Binaries?" setting is BS "WARNING: You are about to open your device to hackers! Are you sure? Y / N." You were more patient than I was. I downloaded F-Droid, researched the APK format, almost got an Android emulator working in Debian, even looked at "PhoneGap" yuck. Call me crazy but I prefer Debian over Android. Millions of people rooting their phone I think proves my point--people are willing to risk destroying their device to get root access. Maybe Android would be better if Google had not sold out to the carriers? I don't know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a consumer, I hope he is wrong. As a producer, I believe he is wrong.

As a consumer with a high-spec PC with multiple large monitors, a good phone, and two tablets, I _strongly_ prefer consuming all content on my PC. It's faster—by a massive margin, easier to navigate, easier to read, easier to simultaneously consume two or more content items (video + text content, for example), easier to pair consumption with production. It's better in every single content consumption metric that matters to me. It has a lot of room for improvement (see my previous rants about monitors), and I feel the lack of innovation in desktop computing is precisely why it's flagging. But that has more to deal with lack of innovation in desktop computing and less to do with mobile versus desktop.

As a producer, there is no comparison. In a pinch, I can produce work product on my Surface Pro or, in an even tighter pinch, on my Venue 8 Pro. But every moment I do so, I will be longing to be back home in front of my desktop computer. Unless of course I am on vacation in some beautiful environment.

Speaking of, I often feel there is a myopic view of computing that says mobile is workable for work production because the people making the decisions are those who _can be mobile_ —they travel extensively and don't produce a whole lot. They may be creative, but they are not the creators. For the rest of us, we spend a lot of time at home or at an office, two locations where we easily can install high-performance desktop computing in one form or another.

Like others here, I don't care a whole lot precisely what is behind the screens, keyboard, mouse; behind the projectors, hand gesture inputs, and so on. I don't care if it's a PC in a big ATX case, a NUC or Brix, or a mobile device that I dock on a charging plate with wireless HDMI. What matters is that I can break free of its _mobileness_ , making it a device with a large screen, a full-size keyboard, and a high-precision pointing device such as a mouse. That is desktop computing, and it will evolve.

Yeah, for me, I hope he is wrong because his model of computing is one that doesn't align with my preferences. Furthermore, in the computing model I long for, all my mobile devices become subservient to a singular "computer" that runs my applications. One of those applications will be a web browser.

<comment><USER6> > _Speaking of, I often feel there is a myopic view of computing that says > mobile is workable for work production because the people making the > decisions are those who can be mobile—they travel extensively and don 't > produce a whole lot. They may be creative, but they are not the creators. > For the rest of us, we spend a lot of time at home or at an office, two > locations where we easily can install high-performance desktop computing in > one form or another._

What kind of "work" are you reffering to? I know top programmers, photographers, musicians, video editors that work from their laptops, either at home but also on the road. Work as in, deliver final results to customers.

If they, with their increased demands, can do that, who wouldn't, and what exactly do you do?

<comment><USER7> A laptop is a mightily different beast than a tablet or a phone. Laptops are PC's. There's a full-sized keyboard, high precision pointing device, and even a very decent screen.

None of that exists on things people think when they say "mobile".

I'm trying to say that a laptop fits every single specification parent poster gave for a useful device that can break free of its mobileness. It's even got magnificent _practical_ support for multi-tasking.

Yeah sure we can "multitask" on tablets and phones these days, but the UX is a joke. Just trying to cross-reference two different websites, or a skype conversation and a website, is downright painful on a true mobile device.

<comment><USER6> Oh, I'm sorry, thought the comment was also meant against laptops (them being mobile too and with the ending talking about having "high-performance desktop computing" at home).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This will end up not being even remotely accurate. In fact, the web will continue to expand, but at a slower rate. Homes and offices will continue to have the big screen web experience, and this will actually become cheaper and more awesome (simultaneously the traditional PC will decline in sales volume while not decimating the home web browsing experience; the author doesn't grasp the obvious).

Why? Simple: there's no way to properly distribute the truly vast array of unrelated information the web contains, via mobile apps. Nobody is going to want to download the thousands of mobile apps it would require to get comprehensive access to all that information at their finger tips. I'm not a huge fan of the mobile browsing experience, but I use Chrome constantly for stray information tasks on my S4.

How? Smart phones will be powerful enough to begin treating them like true home computers in the next five years. Some would argue they're already there. We're obviously going to replace the home PC + big screen with a smart phone + big screen, or equivalent. Android sticks and or a future more powerful Chromecast equivalent, five years from now, will be like plugging a desktop into your big screen. The same will be true for work monitors, eg. in a personal office. A $50 stick for your big TV in the living room, and maybe one for your work monitor, and optionally just use your smart phone. In this formulation, nothing changes in the home with regards to the web except the death of the PC as we know it today (powered by Windows), replaced by a better solution.

<comment><USER9> Hmm, I'm not sure about the "but we'd need thousands of apps!" argument. I agree that a versatile set of markup, scripting and styling languages is always going to be a valuable free-form, but that doesn't mean 95% of what people use the Web for right now can't be rapidly reimplemented.

As an example: there are 100s of millions of blogs out there right now... but most are just Wordpress with a theme. Develop a generic skin-able blog viewing app, win people over, and you've suddenly knocked hundreds of millions of blogs off the web and in to mobile sphere.

And what about shopping? One credit card handling interface would be a lot more consistent and trustworthy than putting everything in to 100 different sites that could be prone to phishing and all kinds of nasty CSRF and XSS bugs.

I think moving a lot of things to mobile could really improve the user experience, which is frankly awful in a lot of areas on the web.

<comment><USER8> I'm not downloading an app for all the following (off the top of my head):

game hints, movie times, stock quotes, business news, sports scores, sport highlights, sports stats, weather information, famous quotes, game reviews, gaming faqs, movie & actor information, tech news, hacker news, gadget reviews, programming Q&A, movie reviews, concert info, concert reviews, music, movies, books, book reviews, music reviews, music news, web hosting discussion, home fix-it crap, countless shopping circumstances, diet & health & exercise sites & discussion, drug information / supplement information & research, cooking recipes, cooking videos, photos, political news, political discussion, stray funny shit, local news, random blog posts on random blogs with random engines behind them (I'm not downloading six or eight apps to cover the blogosphere), and on and on and on and on and on

I'm not downloading apps for even the, let's say, 50 sites I visit each week covering a couple dozen topics. With almost every one of those items, a different site does it best (eg rotten tomatoes on reviews and imdb on raw info).

Now that's just a tiny list, and just from my personal list, and it's not comprehensive. There are hundreds of sites that contribute to that tiny list. A few of those items are covered comprehensively (eg Pandora in streaming music let's say or instagram), the rest aren't. And even in the case of instagram, there are dozens of sites that deal in images or photos that I want access to.

Today I wanted to know who makes rail tanker cars, and who might benefit from their updating due to safety concerns, there's no app for that, the information was on the web among a dozen very different sites, and that's exactly where it'll remain. There are a thousand subjects I could spend the next few hours rattling off as examples, from auto repair to home repair to cooking to porn, that will not be even remotely covered by a single king app.

The web will live long and prosper, and a very select few categories will get smashed by killer apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there a name for ridiculous fallacious arguments like this, the "x is on a slight decline... so x or y is going to completely disappear"? It's just basic errors in extrapolation, like these, just the inverse:

[http://xkcd.com/605/](http://xkcd.com/605/)

[http://xkcd.com/1007/](http://xkcd.com/1007/)

Go to any coffee shop, or any workplace, and you'll see a sea of laptops. The PC isn't going anywhere. Neither is the web. The PC isn't even turning "niche". Tablets have their place, maybe purchased devices will settle down into a 50/50 or even 80/20 balance of tablets/laptops, but then it'll just stay there. Tons of people's jobs, tasks, and hobbies depend on full-fledged PC's -- _normal_ everyday people I'm talking about.

<comment><USER11> I recall this obvious reasoning error, because that indeed is what it is, is listed here: [http://www.logicalfallacies.info/](http://www.logicalfallacies.info/) (sorry I don't have time at the moment to go through it, so I'll leave that as a small exercise for you)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The PC and the web aren't dying anytime soon. PC sales aren't going to 0. They are simply at a point where they are good enough to last a bit longer than they used to. With the replacement cycle getting lengthened, sales go down. They will plateau though. Nobody is stopping using pc's altogether. At worst people will be buying convertible laptop/tablets. iPad is awesome, but it doesn't solve all problems.

The web, like pc's, is also not going to die anytime soon. Linking between apps is far too complicated, and finding things without Google would suck. If you know exactly what you are looking for, perhaps apps work for that. It is the equivalent of type in direct traffic though. Otherwise, you are going to google to find something specific, or twitter/facebook, to find something random. Each of those things require the linking of the internet. You may or may not use the built in browser much, but you will use the browser view in those apps to consume the content that is out there.

<comment> mark-r Short term you're probably right. Longer term I think tablet capabilities will increase to a point that is unimaginable today. Meanwhile the contraction in PC sales will absolutely stall the innovation that PCs will need to compete.

<comment><USER13> At that point what is the difference between a PC and a tablet. There are hybrid devices now, are they PC's or tablets? I think when people say PC they often mean the brown box under a desk. I agree that they days of that are limited as increasingly powerful machines can fit in a small box, you can already hook up a Surface tablet to multiple monitors and keyboard and operate just like a PC. As a developer I don't think we should even think about these things, we just need to support them all popular platforms without getting hangups over the names.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So the most powerful tool for the open sharing of information since the advent of the printing press, that has transformed the way we live forever, will now be discarded because people are using computers in the form of handheld devices instead of Windows PCs? Is that what they are trying to say here?

I disagree.

<comment><USER15> The game is called "which is cheaper", and mobile wins.

<comment><USER16> desktop is cheaper. for the price of one top smartphone, I can have a top notch desktop that would serve me for 5 years, which cannot be said about smartphones

<comment> daniel-cussen Are you saying that, for ~$600, you can have a top-notch PC? Really? Maybe if you're going for state-of-the-art of 2008.

Although given the slowing progress in PC's, that could well serve you 5 years...

<comment><USER16> Top notch smartphone is closer to 800$ in my book, and that gets me cpu ram and ssd. No top gpu of course, but I was thinking about my needs - browsing, media, webdev

<comment> daniel-cussen Fair enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe the real reason for the decline in PC sales is that we're keeping them for longer, because the hardware has finally gotten well ahead of Microsoft or Apple's best efforts to bleed every cycle out of the machines with more "features"?

I'm still running the same Dell Precision T5400 workstation that I got back in early 2008'ish. It's got 2 x Xeon E5450's (3Ghz 4 core), 12GB of RAM, an nVidia GeForce 8800 GTS card and a pair of SSD's (these were a recent upgrade). In fact I have two of these boxes, the other has a single processor. The dual processor one I picked up for a song on ebay as a refurb. There's a lot of good solid refurb/second hand kit to be had out there still under warranty for peanuts. As a consumer, why buy new?

To this day it still runs Windows 7 (was Vista), VS2012, VirtualBox and a load of bloaty stuff without feeling slow. Hell I can even run four Eve clients at a decent quality across two 24" displays and the box doesn't feel sluggish, though my video card could probably do with an upgrade.

I have a tablet as well but I still prefer (as do many of my non-techy friends) doing serious work on a desktop.

<comment><USER18> PC sales are declining because more people are realising that they do not need one. They can do most things - surf web, consume content - more comfortably on a tablet which is a fraction of the cost of a decent computer.

Your point also holds true, PC owners are upgrading less often also.

As for the web dying it depends on your circle I guess. My partner doesn't have a smart phone.. she does have an iPad but doesn't make use of the App Store and instead uses the camera and Safari daily. My parents have smart phones and tablets but hardly use apps. Instead relying on browsers and their laptop do any real work. I can only think of one or two friends who use apps out side of standard mail, navigation, twitter and facebook.

I think a lot of tech people are stuck in a bubble, surrounded by other tech savvy people who are ultra dependant on technology and app's in particular which leads to sweeping statements like "the web is dying." I see little evidence to support such an idea at the moment.

<comment><USER17> "I think a lot of tech people are stuck in a bubble, surrounded by other tech savvy people who are ultra dependant on technology and app's in particular which leads to sweeping statements like "the web is dying." I see little evidence to support such an idea at the moment."

Totally agree with this (from the perspective of a web hoster), I think there's a few folks who need to get out of "the valley" a bit more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is the most witless piece I've read on Wired for a long time. The web is the lowest common denominator of content delivery, and is the foundation of many apps and most content - whether the content is delivered to a browser or an app.

The embedded tweet that says: "twitter will be for content. The web is going away because laptops and browsers are." is hilarious. Is all our content going to be in 140 character chunks? If not, in the absence of the web, how will a tweet link to content? That very tweet nicely illustrates the uselessness of a tweet to say anything of substance or with precision.

</comment><comment><USER20> I see PC sales, as they have been, as a sort of blip bubble, which happened while proper simple consumer devices were developed. Now we have such devices, PCs are less and less necessary for day to day uses. So, as time goes on the PC sales should shrink back to the people that actually need them. But then the problem there is that PCs would become more expensive since the volumes go down massively.

My experience has been like that. 20 (these number are very guessed) years ago, no one cared. 15 years ago people began to get interested. 10 years ago, everyone in my house had to have a PC. Now, most of us use tablets or phones, but we still have 2 PCs that get used when tablets are not appropriate. I personally use a PC 95% of the time. One of my kids who is a heavy gamer uses his PC 99% of the time. The rest of the house, however, use tablets 95% of the time. All those old PC are now gone. (Much better round the house now, less desk space and wire required. Mrs Me is now much happier!! Also, less power consumed. Less noise, less heat.)

The bit that bothers me is that back when all my kids used PCs, they nosed around the machine and discovered things like programming. Using a tablet is so focused, that natural discovery is lost. The tablet is just a thing they to use to consume. Another problem is that if a tablet user asks about how to program, they have to leave the tablet that they are used to and have to sit at this big PC box thing, which is for them a whole mental shift, and is there for possibly off putting.

But overall it seems to me that PC sales will and should decline in favour of tablets because PCs are OTT for the task of consuming the internet. Game wise, consoles are over all easier to use.

Using a PC is or was like using an aircraft carrier instead of a speed boat, until someone invented the speed boat. Now most people buy speed boats, and the navy can have their carriers back!!!!

</comment><comment><USER21> Question for anyone really: how many different websites did you visit today, and how many different apps did you use today? Is that number even remotely equal? Do you think you'd ever want as many as the former as apps installed on your phone?

<comment><USER22> Probably 30 websites and 1 app, which happens to have a very good web version (Google Maps).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> PCs and non-general-purpose computing are headed for a divorce, and rightly so.

PCs started as general-purpose computing for people who needed general-purpose computing. Now, 90%+ of PC users, if asked if they need general-purpose computing will go "Uh. Sure. Whatever."

The population of the open Web, with open standards, will shrink alongside the population of people who actually need a Personal Computer under their total and complete control.

90% of people want a game, a pop song, and a movie. And the publishers of those products don't want them to steal their products. Some of that 90% will break in the direction of open culture, on an open Web. But not most of them.

</comment><comment><USER24> I believe with the rapid advancements in mobile frameworks and responsive design the desktop and mobile web will converge. Not every startup needs a native mobile app.

If you believe the desktop web is dead... Throw out all your desktops/ laptops and give everyone in your company iPads and see how productive your company is. It won't be pretty.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is a silly deduction from flawed assumptions. PC sales don't necessarily correlate to PC usage! I don't know a single person that doesn't use a PC from day to day, including my nontechnical friends.

</comment><comment><USER26> They still sell 300+ MM of the things globally; PC's aren't going anywhere. The market will shrink to allow room for other players (tablets, etc), but it will never die off.

I've been reading about the death of the PC since the early 90's...and I'm still waiting for them to go Tango Uniform.

I'm not going to hold my breath.

</comment><comment><USER27> It's hard to think of an app that is more device-centric than Dropbox, which exists solely to sync files between devices. And yet, it has a web interface.

Think of the most popular mobile apps. Do they have a web interface? Chances are, unless it is a game, the answer is probably yes. Facebook, Gmail, Instagram, Twitter, Google Maps, Pandora, YouTube, etc.

The Web is not going away. It's just becoming the default, lowest-common- denominator channel.

</comment><comment><USER28> Apps will kill the web exactly like T.V killed radio and cinemas.

</comment><comment><USER29> This seems to be a really important question out there and I'm somewhat scared by the silence on HN about this. The silence makes me think that folks are going "oh shit!" with frozen fingers.

It does looks like the incentives are aligned in the direction laid out in the article. Companies can better control their user experience on mobile through uncrawlable apps. You hear "mobile first" a lot these days. These things are with users for longer than desktops/laptops. Anyone can carve out a section of the web where content gets created, but cannot be linked to.

The two gaps I see are -

a) mobile devices are good for _consumption_, but are not yet on par with *tops for _creation_, and

b) reputation systems on the internet (currently) require linking, and there's nothing to replace that in the mobile world.

</comment><comment><USER9> The Web frankly just isn't evolving as quickly as mobile app platforms. HTML5 feels like ancient history, despite not even becoming a final recommendation yet and, imho, the rise of the gigantic javascript frameworks just shows the existing platform is sorely lacking... all it really demonstrates is the power of having a client you can push code to easily.

Where's my standard, secure browser UI and API for secure payments using my credit card? We've been using the web to shop for 20 years and it still sucks.

Where's decent standard authentication worthy of this millennium, let alone this decade?

Why don't we yet have date picker and other form widgets that actually work across browsers?

Why are bespoke markup languages like MathML and SVG actually failing or seeing less and less adoption?

<comment><USER30> When things are new they tend to evolve very fast. It's normal. The web is evolving nicely for something that's 20+ years old.

By the way why do we need a "standard UI" for taking credit cards? Is there a single open platform out there that has a "Standard UI" for making payments?

<comment><USER31> I prefer to use PayPal on websites that accept it so I don't have to go find my wallet. I buy stuff on Amazon instead of other sites because it already has all my info and I don't have to type it. Making processing payments as simple as possible helps streamline them and make them easier on the consumer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Name me one app hat doesn't use HTTP.

The web is more than websites. Personally I believe apps will be long gone before the web will be. It's already starting with the gazillion of apps you need to install these days with most of them that should just have been websites.

</comment><comment><USER33> This seems like a non-argument. Most apps are used to access the web in some manner. It's like saying cars will kill roads.

<comment><USER34> They're distinguishing between the web (DOM, browser space) and the internet. So the claim isn't that services will go away, it's that people will increasingly write apps instead of HTML.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, that sort of makes sense. But if that's the angle then web browsers are just another app accessing the internet. I don't think any of it is going anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think PCs sales are going to continue to go way down, if you are not including laptops as PCs. Can't imagine people will stop buying laptops anytime soon. I don't really know about the web.

Its better to have a simple API for standard things that can work across platforms without coding multiple versions of the same application. We basically have that now in the web platform.

Its also better to be able to quickly load an application on demand. Again, we have that with the web platform.

Its better to have a straightforward way to look up information (Google, on the web) and to link between information and applications (the web).

What the web platform is missing is native performance and some (not all) native mobile capabilities like easy payments and application access. Its also missing some things like the security model of mobile applications.

The internet is an open system, but it is still using a centralizing client- server model.

What we need is something like the web/internet that is not server-based but data-oriented, peer to peer, and encrypted. Not centralized.

I believe that there are a number of technologies that could come together to merge all of the features we want into a new platform.

Whether we will actually end up with this idealized platform I don't know. I wouldn't assume that will happen. If I had resources I could try to push things in that direction.

</comment><comment><USER36> Keith Rabois certainly seems to think so.

The mainstream, browser-based web has been around for some 20 years now. I like the web, I use it everyday so I want to think it will last forever. But I wonder, were people saying the same things about BBS'es and AOL-like portals, or whatever came before them? I don't really know, as I was so young when these things were happening. All things must pass, right?

<comment><USER37> [http://catb.org/jargon/html/I/Imminent-Death-Of-The-Net- Pred...](http://catb.org/jargon/html/I/Imminent-Death-Of-The-Net- Predicted-.html)

Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted!: prov.

[Usenet] Since Usenet first got off the ground in 1980--81, it has grown exponentially, approximately doubling in size every year. On the other hand, most people feel the signal-to-noise ratio of Usenet has dropped steadily. These trends led, as far back as mid-1983, to predictions of the imminent collapse (or death) of the net. Ten years and numerous doublings later, enough of these gloomy prognostications have been confounded that the phrase "Imminent Death Of The Net Predicted!" has become a running joke, hauled out any time someone grumbles about the S/N ratio or the huge and steadily increasing volume, or the possible loss of a key node or link, or the potential for lawsuits when ignoramuses post copyrighted material, etc., etc., etc.

</comment></comment><comment> grey-area The web is not tied in any way to the desktop PC, in fact the rise of mobile is partly down to the ease with which people could switch to a new device and still have access to all their data, _via the web_. All Apple had to add to the iPhone to make it incredibly useful was a usable web browser, and the same will be true of our watches in 2018, paper thin news readers in 2020, or phones in 2030.

Mobile binaries written to a specific binary API will have a hard time competing with the web, because of its radical simplicity and backwards/forwards compatibility. Of course the web will change, but I don't think it has much to fear from binary applications (desktop or mobile) - we've been down that road before, and we know where it leads.

Platform independence is the web's most important feature, and as mobile ecosystems proliferate then consolidate, and hardware improves performance, I think we'll see consumers and producers reevaluating their choice to stay locked in to a world overseen by one corporate vendor.

</comment><comment><USER38> The PC isn't dead. And it's not dying. Will people stop repeating that.

Sales have reduced because - 1) Some tasks that never needed a PC people can do on other devices now. 2) People don't need to buy a new one every 18 months any more.

It's SALES of new PC that's have dropped, not the PC is dying. People still use their PCs... They just keep them for longer.

Ugh

</comment><comment><USER39> Rampant humbug again from Wired (a web puplication, written and editorialized on personal computers).

Even if you discount the horrible fragmentation in mobile devices, and the difficulty this creates for developers to deploy apps, any apps, there still remains the sheer growth of the web.

"The Web", what is that? A simple answer is it's: The internet + a browswer. So is the internet going to die? Nope, that's growing every year, and a majority of the worlds population hasn't gotten in on it yet. Are browsers dying? Nope, any device imaginable these days comes with a browser. It's become unthinkable to make a device without a browser.

So if neither of those is dying, how come the web should be dying? Because Wired, that's why. It doesn't have to make sense, just has to be sensationalist enough to drive more web-views, how ironic, really, wired.

</comment><comment><USER40> Well, I certainly hope that future tablets have general purpose docking stations and enough capabilities to drive MS Windows forever from the home. I can do quite a bit on my Nexus 7 with a bluetooth keyboard already, but it needs a way to set it on a table and connect (with or without wires) to a larger monitor and other peripherals when I'm home. And it needs 200 to 300 GB storage instead of 32 GB.

How having an OS that doesn't drain the life out of low wattage CPUs will kill the web I'm not sure. Mac and Windows have apps, but we still use the browser for a lot of things on those. (Linux sort of has apps)

</comment><comment><USER41> There is a sense that more of something means less of something else. Perhaps this is true in terms of market share, but it doesn't happen to be true in devices.

TVs didn't kill talk radio, though radio may have shrunk.

The PC didn't kill TV, though TV may have been augmented, and perhaps shrunk.

Mobiles didn't kill PCs, though PC use may have shrunk.

This idea that the web will be completely replaced by Facebook and mobile apps is crazy. It's just another layer in a multi-technology world.

</comment><comment><USER42> Yes, the media people need a 'story'.

Yup, media people whose first and only personal contact with computing was a smart phone can buy into the idea that "The PC's Death".

That's about as likely as a Tesla car putting SUVs, pickup trucks, delivery vans, 18 wheel trucks, and freight trains out of business.

A smart phone can't replace my PC, not nearly.

Let's see: 'Wired' is owned by Conde-Nast which also publishes, what, women's fashion magazines? Figures!

</comment><comment><USER43> Why everybody is giving PC shipments as arguments FFS? Give total commissioned PCs in use that connected and using internet. Total bandwidth consumed by PC. It is much more important metric for the health of the PC ecosystem (and not market).

A PC bought now could last a decade for web browsing. When the number of decommissioned PCs start outpacing the total shipments - then it is time to worry.

</comment><comment><USER44> I'll believe it when I see it.

Phones and glorified browsers will only ever be useful as dumb terminals (and the latter becomes a brick when away from a connection). Even if it goes back to the 90s where many people don't own a (real) computer, computers will still exist as many things aren't possible to do without one.

</comment><comment><USER34> I actually agree with this article. It's a lot more trouble to wait for the web to standardize than it is to support a couple different versions of an app, which usually has potential to offer a better user experience anyway. (More developer jobs, too!) This really shouldn't be troubling to anyone.

<comment><USER22> People who make things don't want to have to make them multiple times. That was one of the main reasons that devs hated IE6 - you essentially had to redo or make a shadow version of whatever you'd already done to get it to work for everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think the PC's Death in the marketplace is due to the PC being given over to more and more web apps and the power of current PCs being nowhere near the bottleneck it once was.

When there are compelling apps and net bandwidth that requires higher performing PCs, we'll see PC sales trend upwards again.

</comment><comment><USER45> So we're going to stop publishing to the web and squeeze all of our content into 140 char tweets? Right.

</comment><comment><USER46> One reason that at least partly explains the decline in new PC shipments is that nowadays, a three or four year old (or even older) PC is still plenty good enough for what most people do with it. My newest computer at home is a mid-2007 iMac and it's absolutely fine for everything I do.

</comment><comment><USER47> This article is about Windows!

Only Windows laptop sales have declined, Apple had a big increase. Linux numbers aren't reported but wouldn't be representative anyway because it's usually forcibly bundled.

Nobody is going to miss desktop Windows. Except your corporate IT department, and maybe gamers.

<comment><USER48> > Except your corporate IT department, and maybe gamers

Ah, just the two major _mass-markets par excellence_ then..

<comment><USER47> Yeah, from hardware trade POV but not from the consensual user base point of view.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> PCs probably will go the way of dodo bird but not the web.

Nowadays you can built cross compatible mobile and desktop web apps. Ones that are cutting edge.

We just released our streaming web app and launched it on iOS and any device running Chrome.

Further as an interactive/audience participation app it's much easier to get people to join/use your app via a URL then asking them to download an app. Here's some recent press if interested [http://bit.ly/1l6QCoH](http://bit.ly/1l6QCoH).

Anyway this article's tone is a bit over the top.

</comment><comment><USER50> This is inflamatory and wrong on so many levels. Don't forget that the web is the network platform on which apps are built upon.

</comment><comment><USER51> Curious - How do you get the ability to downvote articles?

</comment><comment><USER52> Watch what the kids do to predict the future of the web.

</comment><comment><USER53> The web is searchable. Apps are not. Case closed.

</comment><comment><USER54> let the html5 vs native debate start in 3..2..1..</comment>


Isaac Asimov Explains His Three Laws of Robots - <AUTHOR> http://www.openculture.com/2012/10/isaac_asimov_explains_his_three_laws_of_robotics.html

<comment><USER2> Define "human"? (also see "Robots and Empire")

Also, define "harm" \- and eplain how humans exploiting humans would not fall under that definition, and who could build such a robot and without it instantly turning on its masters.</comment>