If you're comparing Xianjiang and what's happening at the border then this is not eve remotely 'equal opportunity' criticism - it's classical Chinese moral relativism.
In Xianjiang people are being rounded up for their religion or ethnicity, thrown into concentration camps, made 'non-persons', tortured, killed, if they die on trumped up charges their organs are harvested. It's Nazi-Germany level stuff.
The US is not 'putting children in prison' - the US (was previously) holding people who are trying to enter the country due literally to the prosperity of the nation. They are well treated and are free to leave any time.
Now that the rule has been discarded, migrants bring their children specifically on the dangerous journey because they know if they bring their kids, they don't have to go into detention.
This year there there has been a massive upswing in illegal migration precisely because migrants now know the golden legal loophole: bring a child - and they won't have to be held, they can immediately enter the country. And of course, the irony of the fact these people are desperately trying to get in to the country should not be lost on anyone making morally relative claims comparing that situation to Xianjiang.
The China stuff aside, I wish I had time to address all of the points made in this comment in full. Frankly it's a severely misleading explanation that edges very close to misinformation.
Quoting the grandparent comment exactly, the US is in fact "locking up children". They are also not "free to leave". Most detainees are required to wait for their hearing. In addition, no rule has been discarded. The push for zero-tolerance policy at the border led to family separation, and is precisely what's happening to these people, which makes this "golden rule" completely bunk. Further, illegal immigration isn't even as high now as it was in 2014.
This is not even taking into account the issue with illegal immigration and seeking asylum being a criminal issue, the fact that people within the US are being deported, not just those attempting to come in the southern border, and lastly, the reasons why people are fleeing these countries as well as the historical context and the US's role in that.
> This is not even taking into account the issue with illegal immigration and seeking asylum being a criminal issue, the fact that people within the US are being deported, not just those attempting to come in the southern border, and lastly, the reasons why people are fleeing these countries as well as the historical context and the US's role in that.
The difference is that the are people in the US calling out and protesting the horrors occurring and those protesters do not wind up with their organs harvested.
This is kind of a big deal and highlights the differences between the US and China.
"USA steals a lot of stuff too. But of course the American press won't tell you about that. Or if they mention it, they will put phrase it like "America liberated the population of Irak "
This is complete rubbish.
The US is not in the business of industrial espionage for commercial purposes - either on a corporate or governmental level, where China is.
Second - geopolitical issues have nothing to do with theft of IP, and usually not even resources (at least not in Central America).
'Central American countries' or 'Iraq' definitely have nothing to offer the US or anyone else in terms of the kind of IP theft one might be concerned about in China.
America did not 'steal' anything from Iraq - their Oil is their own, they receive 100% of the revenue, not only that, they are free to partner with any company they use, in fact, they ended up going with entities like Total (France), Statoil (Russia) etc. instead of US companies. (I guess as a 'thanks' for the fact they are now free to do as they please, and the Oil belongs to the people of Iraq instead of Saddam Co.)
"China is bad" because they steal IP, there is no rule of law, there is widespread corruption, pollution, there is total control of the people by the state and people dissapear of the street for no reason.
Literally, as we speak, China is incarcerating 100's of thousands, possibly millions of people due to their ethnicity or religion, and harvesting their organs as they are killed on trumped up charges. [1]
When we use the term 'Nazi' or 'concentration camps', usually it's hyperbole - but it's not: we now have a major power rounding up people by the millions due to ethnicity and culling their organs. This is actualy Nazi level stuff.
The level of moral relativism implied here is repulsive.
The most poplular examples are probably German Enercon and Dutch Airbus, but our own Belgian Lernout & Hauspie was also targeted by something you are in complete denial of.
It's Europe here, we're supposed to be allies, no? So why is your government literally stealing business using industrial espionage? That's like sleeping with your best friends wife.
So yeah, get your facts straight please.
"No I didn't sleep with your wife, I would never do such a thing! But THAT guy, THAT guy does it!"
I have no clue what level of industrial espionage takes place in the US or China but the fact that it _has_ occurred in both places does not speak to the frequency and severity that these types of actions are taken. All your examples could be true and still the Chinese govt. could be orders of magnitude worse.
To me all of this is nearly irrelevant to OP's original point which was taking an American company's manufacturing to China is a risk. I don't think OP was implicitly making the claim that moving a Chinese company's manufacturing to the US is less of a risk. That seems to be the tangent that the comment thread has taken but it was not part of the original comment. I think there is more of a risk that the Chinese government will steal the IP from Apple in China than the US government will steal the IP from Apple in the US.
I was reacting to this statement: "The US is not in the business of industrial espionage for commercial purposes - either on a corporate or governmental level", which is obviously false. I wanted to rectify that.
We'e asked you repeatedly to stop using HN for political and ideological flamewar. Instead, you've done more and more of it. That's a serious abuse of this site, because such flamewars actually destroy this place for thoughtful and curious conversation, its raison d'etre. Since you've ignored our attempts to get you to use HN as intended, I've banned this account.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. But please don't create accounts to break the site guidelines with.
Nazi level stuff？ really? 100 of thousands, that’s close to how many people died in Iraq now. Why don’t we just start World War III is you all think it is really Nazi stuff.
So they will soon be rich like the Saudis in the near future ?
You are kidding right ? This is what your medias are telling you ? Do you know what lead to the refugee crisis and other IS* organizations in the middle east ? The Banana Republics in South America ?
Why is Saudi a saint while other nations in middle east are bad actors ?
The rhetoric on China sounds like sour grapes to me.
Snowdon is not in 'hiding' - if the Russians wanted to hide him, they probably could. But they are not, ergo, the US knows anything they want to know about him.
Russia does not need this or any other reason, they are already doing this to the extent they can. The public nature of this will provide some political cover, but that's it.
As to 'what it gets' it entirely depends on the kind of information that was obtained, the inherent risks and cost, the targets etc..
Maybe there were specific targets, a specific needs, maybe they were casting a net - who knows.
Personal attacks, flamebait, unsubstantive comments will get you banned on HN. Can you please not do those? We're hoping for a site that's a bit better than internet default.
Espionage against a country that has 1000 nuclear warheads pointed at you, and practices using them, is a very responsible thing to do, and very much sanctioned by government.
Well then by your logic, spying on US citizens by the US government is perfectly fine, since it would count at 'espionage against a country that has 10,000 nukes, used it a couple of times to incinerate a few 100ks people, and is very much sanctioned by government".
Seems the exact same reasoning to me. Especially since we're talking about US, which just revoked visas to international court prosecutor, which dared to suggest an investigation, which would look into any possible war crimes that US soldiers may have commited in Afghanistan ( https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47822839 ).
A country which so aggresively attacks a person that merely suggests to look into possible breakage of a law cannot have clean hands or be trustworthy.
The reason they gave you might be an excuse. If they were worried about '6 integrations' they could limit you to one.
My bet is they are trying to position themselves as a 'luxury good' of software.
Given there's no unit cost for software, that's always going to be a weird one. It makes more sense for supposedly 'exclusive' social networks (remember those?), but email doesn't quite have the same network effects.
Their 'laser focus' maybe going to be on people for whom $30/mo is an irrelevant expense, but more importantly they want 'status' individuals, who will personally market the product to those within their 'status' circle.
There's a class of higher-net-worth individuals who almost define themselves by specific things: their school, their car, their address, their job title, their activities, the club they belong to. To be fair, in some ways, it's important they do that because in some career trajectories, appearances are everything.
But key to building any kind of luxury brand is scarcity (or, it usually is, there are some that defy this), and of course brand, so they want the 'right people' to be using this.
If regular plebs use this, well then it's not much of a status signal.
All of this seems very cynical, but the reason I believe this might be the case is that the marketing collateral doesn't focus on anything materially relevant.
Yes - it's fine for companies to talk about very high level things like 'getting things done faster' - but ultimately, there has to be some kind of material translation there: what features etc. actually drive that productivity?
I don't see anything at all.
In fact, the screen shoots that we can kind of see in the marketing collateral provide not much information at all. I don't see the 'there there' - at least not from those shots.
Many startups make the opposite mistake - tons of features which they don't map well to 'problems solved' (and sometimes it's not bad communications, it's often features that actually have no value) - but the article in a16z - and the Superhuman website are just way too limited in terms of any details, to the point where my 'red flag' is raised.
About 50% of office workers spend '3 hours a day' in email. Maybe more. And so yes, any 'improvement' in email is worth something, possibly even $30.
But my 'spidey marketing sense' is telling me this is all about selling a 'decent' and 'nice looking' email client to aspirational people who are desperate to signal their status.
Possibly not for HN types, possibly not even for true, email warriors.
Either this, or they could really trying to pull the exclusivity/insider thing to the max as a launch strategy.
Should note 'The Information' is a $50/month news site - which has really set the bar for this kind of stuff. But the difference there is 'The Information' does get really juicy 'insider' kind of stories. The $50/month is probably easily written off as expense by every subscriber, there's materiality there.
Anyhow - the level of curation going on here is a little odd.
They say 'Superhuman' - that's totally fine, good on them, but I'll wait to see it to draw any conclusions.
Also - aren't we past the 'false scarcity' thing these days?
If you're going to talk about it publicly, why can't I try it?
"Ooh, you can use it sooner if you know someone who is using it"
Sorry that I'm not already in your club, but I was excited to look at it, now, I'm a tiny bit miffed, but most importantly I may not remember to come back.
...
The author lamented 'decision making' 'getting back to someone' etc. which we can all empathize with.
The marketing collateral of Superhuman talks about 'speed' i.e. not having to wait 100ms for anything ...
I'm not sure how the two are deeply related. Yes, a refresh and speed will be great, but I personally don't think that's the issue.
It's a rather difficult thing for orgs to try to magically organize information, Google seems to be trying a few things and while novel and impressive, ultimately I think they are futile.
Anyhow, I'm stoked that people are trying to re-invent old things, excited to try it. I guess when my 'klout' score gets high enough?
All you need to know about this thing is this idiotic sentence: "It’s the kind of innovation that can only happen in startups, and with special, once-in-a-lifetime founders."
Seriously? Once-in-a-lifetime founders? For an email client? That's how you know this is marketing garbage.
