[HN Gopher] Huawei Tops Intel as Top Linux Kernel Contributor fo...
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Huawei Tops Intel as Top Linux Kernel Contributor for 5.10
Author : AdmiralAsshat
Score : 153 points
Date : 2021-01-06 15:10 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.itsfoss.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.itsfoss.com)
| cosmiccatnap wrote:
| Icing on the cake for an all around bad year for intel
| tristor wrote:
| This doesn't surprise me. I've been working in the open source
| software space for a good while and many many many of my former
| colleagues now work at Huawei. All of them report to me that it's
| a great place to work where they're well compensated and put on
| teams of smart people with ample resources to get things done,
| including doing things in the open.
| infocollector wrote:
| How is security taken care of when contributions are being done
| by Huawei (backdoors in 41k lines of sourcode?)? But I am
| guessing there is no real fight between open source software and
| state actors - perhaps someone who knows more about the security
| of the kernel can comment.
| harikb wrote:
| If a state actor really wants to do it and someone could get it
| past reviews, I am sure they could bribe any contributor from
| any country (including US). Why single out China? We never
| raised concerns with Russian contributors.
| b0rsuk wrote:
| Maybe not single out China, but many people think China is
| particularly untrustworthy: they insist
| Chinese law is used outside China, and lecture people how
| they should refer to China in public; they operate
| concentration camps; the Chinese language has no word
| for *mutuality*, China benefits from free speech and access
| to institutions in the West but doesn't allow the same in
| China for journalists or businessmen; China treats
| Chinese-speaking minority in Western countries as Chinese
| citizens, and even blackmails them by threating their family;
| Winnie the Pooh is extremely thin-skinned and can have games
| like Devotion removed from Steam and GOG even after the
| reference is removed from the secret area in the game;
| there are many instances where businesses with Chinese
| shareholders were pressured not to publish anything mildly
| critical of China. BBC team visiting China
| investigating covid19 faced obstacles reminiscent of The
| Truman Show; WHO scientists investigating covid19
| recently not permitted into China; China doesn't even
| formally frown at corruption; Journalists disappear or
| regularly get sentences in China;
|
| Western liberal democracies have flaws, but I'll take Western
| values over Chinese values, thank you very much. Also, the
| West has less leverage over China than over Russia so it's
| important not to yield any ground.
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| Some of your points feel off to me: "they
| insist Chinese law is used outside China, and lecture
| people how they should refer to China in public;"
|
| Not really sure what examples you had in mind, but I would
| imagine most communities would have a preferred way for
| other people to address them; I don't think it's wrong for
| them to demand that. If you don't like China's demand then
| you can refer to it however you want; but they also have
| the freedom to dislike those who do that.
| "they operate concentration camps;"
|
| In my unpopular opinion: I would call them brainwashing
| camps, or re-education camps if there is no need to appeal
| to Western audiences. I don't think I have seen evidences
| that people have been systematically terminated in those
| camps, which I believe is a key characteristic for
| concentration camps. "the Chinese
| language has no word for *mutuality*"
|
| Did you mean what you said seriously/literally? Or is it a
| phishing question to see which commenter speaks Chinese? ;)
| "China benefits from free speech"
|
| I would argue that they didn't benefit much from "free
| speech", otherwise China would probably be mentioned in a
| more positive light nowadays. IMHO, China's state machinery
| is pretty good at internal censorship and propaganda due to
| their long authoritarian history, but their methods for
| manipulating/spinning narratives is rather unsophisticated
| compared to societies with more democratic traditions.
| "Winnie the Pooh is extremely thin-skinned and can have
| games like Devotion removed from Steam and GOG even after
| the reference is removed from the secret area in the game;"
| "there are many instances where businesses with Chinese
| shareholders were pressured not to publish anything mildly
| critical of China."
|
| Capitalism has no backbone, I guess? "BBC
| team visiting China investigating covid19 faced obstacles
| reminiscent of The Truman Show;"
|
| Your neighbour doesn't like you, and he thinks you are
| guilty of theft. You told him you have not done that and
| turned down his demand to enter your home to investigate.
| Your neighbour informed the police, and they come to your
| door with a warrant; this time you have to let them in. Is
| BBC the world police? If so then I guess China is at fault
| here. "WHO scientists investigating
| covid19 recently not permitted into China;"
|
| I think WHO is much better qualified than BBC for
| investigating this, so not a great move from China. They
| should let them investigate. "China
| doesn't even formally frown at corruption;"
|
| I can see you don't know China at all. China does formally
| frown at corruption. The problem is China informally
| doesn't frown at corruption.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| > they insist Chinese law is used outside China
|
| They're touchy about people recognizing what they view as
| separatist movements, but that's relatively minor compared
| to, say, the United States forcing its sanctions policy on
| the rest of the world. Everyone around the world is afraid
| of doing business with Cuba, Iran, Huawei, and other
| targets of US sanctions, because the US aggressively
| applies secondary sanctions. The US is even sanctioning
| Germany, its own ally, in order to try to force Germany to
| back out of a pipeline deal with Russia.
|
| > the Chinese language has no word for _mutuality_
|
| There are many ways to say "win-win" in Chinese, and if you
| ever listen to Chinese diplomats, they say that phrase
| incessantly.
|
| > China doesn't even formally frown at corruption;
|
| One of Xi Jinping's most highly publicized policies (inside
| China) is his anti-corruption campaign. This is practically
| his signature policy. You can argue the policy isn't in
| effective or isn't sincere, but to say that corruption
| isn't formally frowned upon us just wrong.
|
| > WHO scientists investigating covid19 recently not
| permitted into China;
|
| China hasn't processed their visas quickly. I'd wait a bit
| before passing judgment.
| esbranson wrote:
| > The US is even sanctioning Germany
|
| The US has not sanctioned Germany. E.g. a US company
| subject to the EU Global Human Rights sanctions regime
| does _not_ mean the EU is sanctioning the US.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| This is a major project that the German government is
| heavily involved in. Major German companies are under
| threat of sanctions. The US is using sanctions in order
| to try to force the German government to change its
| strategic and economic policy. This is a bit more than
| the US sanctioning some random German company.
| threeseed wrote:
| > They're touchy about people recognizing what they view
| as separatist movements
|
| I love how you refer to mass kidnapping of protestors
| from Hong Kong "touchy".
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| I didn't say anything remotely like that.
| mainstreemm wrote:
| >One of Xi Jinping's most highly publicized policies
| (inside China) is his anti-corruption campaign. This is
| practically his signature policy. You can argue the
| policy isn't in effective or isn't sincere, but to say
| that corruption isn't formally frowned upon us just
| wrong.
|
| No, sorry, saying that it isn't sincere IS the same as
| saying corruption isn't formally frowned upon. And "anti-
| corruption" is the euphemism used by many authoritarian
| regimes to remove political opponents, which I'm sure is
| what is really happening under Dictator Pooh-Bear.
| b0rsuk wrote:
| Ever heard that Taiwan is doing a stellar job holding off
| coronavirus? No, because China presses WHO into not
| mentioning Taiwan. We could learn a lot from Taiwan.
| China doesn't just boycott Taiwan, it makes others act as
| if the country doesn't exist.
|
| https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/taiwan
| zm262 wrote:
| Taiwan is not a country in China's eyes. Technically
| Taiwan is really not a country but works like one since
| 1949. If you follow Winnie the Poh closely enough, he has
| claimed "Taiwan problem will not be passed onto next
| generation". My personal estimate is that Taiwan will be
| taken by force within 20 years.
| fakedang wrote:
| My personal estimate is that Taiwan will become a
| forgotten remnant after Pooh Jinping goes into the void
| in 20 years.
| danbolt wrote:
| Do you feel it'd be an amphibious invasion would be a bit
| of a pyrrhic victory within 20 years? I feel like the PRC
| would be unpopular with the citizens of Taiwan and not
| look good internationally.
|
| My impression is that the PRC was sabre-rattling to rally
| the public.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| There's a frozen civil war in China. The government is
| obviously touchy about other countries recognizing what
| it views as a breakaway province. China views such
| recognition as meddling in its internal affairs.
|
| In Western news coverage, though, I see precisely the
| opposite of what you see. Taiwan is often listed as an
| example to follow, while China's combating of the
| epidemic is largely ignored. A lot of people even seem to
| think that the epidemic is still raging in China, but
| that it's all just being covered up.
| threeseed wrote:
| a) It's not Western news coverage but international.
|
| b) No one believes anything China has to say because they
| have a history of coverups and suppression.
|
| c) The lack of an independent press or judiciary means we
| don't have mechanisms to independently assess the truth.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| It's not actually difficult to know what the basic
| situation is in China right now. Go on YouTube Twitter,
| or any other large social media platform and look at what
| people who are currently in China are saying. Even in
| this thread, I'm sure that some of the commenters are in
| China.
|
| You can also look coverage by Western press in China. A
| German-French public broadcaster did a report from Wuhan
| not too long ago that shows how different the situation
| is there from Europe and the US: [1,2].
|
| By the way, documents from Hubei province have leaked,
| and the number of people testing positive for SARS-CoV-2
| in internal government records roughly matches the
| numbers that were published each day.
|
| 1. German: https://youtu.be/LmsI7lc2_Vg
|
| 2. French: https://youtu.be/OyHt7-KmK7Y
| jjcc wrote:
| Since you mention YouTube, I quickly compile a list of
| Westerners who have lived some time in China, i.e. not
| tourists. To help people make decision if they are
| brainwashed. But usually "Brainwash" means brainwashed
| people can not find they are brainwashed.
|
| List A: These 2 guys are thinkers then others. They
| should be working on different job. Expecially in Western
| intellegence to help westener better undrestading China)
|
| 1. Cyrus Janssen(American)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxEQsjgRRfGWiJJu_PDygxw
|
| 2. Daniel Dumbrill(Canadian)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Bl8MTbW9M9MQoPhxbarpw
|
| List B: (Positive)
|
| 3 Matt (American)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Ykci4MKSSdTJYuYp53G7A
|
| 4 Gweilo 60 (Canadian. Mainly positive. He also talked
| about negative side)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChXOhG9bRDb3vSTg-qkPAZg
|
| 5 Jason(British)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzDE2LGSmJnw53WrZ7mM_Aw
|
| 6 Nathan Rish(American. Seem a little opinionted)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaSlyjhR4WC7QhYuaivxb6g
|
| List C: (Negative, but was positive)
|
| 7 serpentza (South African, the oldest vlogger about
| China)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/user/serpentza
|
| 8 laowhy86 (American)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/user/laowhy86
|
| (edit) reformat
| berdario wrote:
| I'm not the GP, but:
|
| Yes, I heard about it plenty of times.
|
| It's great that they're doing well, but that doesn't
| diminish the Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Newzealandese
| accomplishments in tackling covid19
| legulere wrote:
| > China doesn't even formally frown at corruption;
|
| That is such a ridiculous claim considering that Xi Jinping
| strengthened his power through anti-corruption efforts:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-
| corruption_campaign_und...
| abfan1127 wrote:
| as someone entirely in the dark on this particular
| campaign, it seems pretty easy to me to label people
| corrupt and remove them when they disagree with me. They
| don't have to actually be corrupt, just not align with my
| goals. What's to say this isn't the case?
| [deleted]
| netsharc wrote:
| Here's me being European and thinking, how many of these
| could be applied to USA as well. At least Xi Jinping is a
| properly ruthless politician, his thinner-skinned
| equivalent in the USA is just a fucking idiot running
| around screaming.
|
| Yeah, yeah, "whataboutism". BTW, Chinese values, or Chinese
| government values? I'm sure the average Chinese would speak
| up if they knew they wouldn't end up in reeducation camp.
| Yeah I'll give you one thing, at least in the West it's
| still possible to speak up.
|
| Meanwhile, in Washington DC at the moment, there are
| violence-ready Americans openly demanding democracy be
| ignored and to install their preferred fuckwit as ruler.
| Seems like they're just as brainwashed as a Chinese who's
| been fed CCP propaganda.
| b0rsuk wrote:
| I'll give you another example. A man was removed from a
| Polish reality TV show because he had been accused of
| rape outside Poland. The TV station was TVN, owned by US.
| The participant had received a sexual favor from a 16
| year old. The age of consent in Poland is 15.
|
| I'm not impressed by ruthless politicians. Ruthlessness
| is good for action movie thrills. It takes much more
| skill and leadership to forge compromises and unite
| people using respect. By the way Spartans sucked even at
| combat, they just had really good PR. No matter how you
| slice it, they were completely average, even if you
| exclude naval battles or battles which included their
| allies.
|
| (extremely long reads for those interested in history)
|
| https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-
| sparta-p...
|
| https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-
| mirage-...
|
| re: whataboutism. Whataboutism has no place here because
| it's not even on the same order of magnitude. You're
| comparing tons to kilograms. We don't even know the full
| extent of what China is doing because free press is not
| allowed to operate there, doctors and journalists get
| sentences.
| brianwawok wrote:
| > I'm sure the average Chinese would speak up if they
| knew they wouldn't end up in reeducation camp
|
| What is the average standard of living in China 50 years
| ago vs today? There has been remarkable growth for
| millions of people. If your standard of living was 10x
| your parents, you might not view life as that bad?
| cosmodisk wrote:
| This is exactly the point a lot of people miss: as long
| as the quality of life keeps growing, nobody will do
| anything about it. However, once it starts slowing down
| or even going down, then the government will start having
| really hard time. This repeats throughout the history
| again and again.
| [deleted]
| raverbashing wrote:
| Reality check: if a state actor wants to add a backdoor it's
| easier at the parts closest to the consumer: the integrators,
| not the fundamental technology
|
| Of course you could be playing the long game as well like
| with Dual-EC-DRBG
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| It's not even necessary to mention China and Russia, the NSA
| is equally interested in placing a backdoor in the Linux
| kernel. People were paranoid about it already 20 years ago
| [0], but according to Linus' father, NSA actually tried to
| pull it off [1].
|
| [0] https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2013/10/09/the-linux-
| backdoor-...
|
| [1] https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/11/nsa-ask-linus-
| torvalds-i...
| secfirstmd wrote:
| Eh you may want to read up about the NSA history of backdoors.
| barbacoa wrote:
| Saving people the google search, I believe secfirstmd is
| referring to:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gRsgkdfYJ8
|
| For anyone not good with faces the guy responding is Linus
| Torvalds who created and still manages Linux.
| curiousgal wrote:
| Honestly, people seem to forget that this happened. They lose
| their shit at the slightest mention of Huawei/China but don't
| even have an issue using software released by the NSA[0].
|
| Unpopular opinion, but if I had to choose between China and
| the U.S. spying on me, I would pick the one who's less likely
| to have me extradited from whatever country I am in or ban me
| from flying.
|
| 0.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghidra
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| > I would pick the one who's less likely to have me
| extradited from whatever country I am in or ban me from
| flying.
|
| Frankly, I despise what the American government did to
| Assange and Manning. However, you can't even remotely
| compare their fate to what is happening every day to
| hundreds and thousands of people in different parts of
| China like Tibet. You have no chance of escaping, no chance
| of trial not to mention any appeal, your life can be
| destroyed in an instant. Several people in Tibet each year
| prefer to self-immolate than live under the terrible
| conditions imposed by the Chinese government.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| For sure, China does awful things to many of its
| citizens.
|
| But for an American, China doesn't have the ability to do
| any of that stuff. Nor are they likely to have any reason
| to care about my actions. While on the other hand, the
| USA has direct powers over me, and is likely to care more
| because I'm here.
|
| So sure, China and the CCP are evil, probably much more
| evil than the US government. But even at that, the danger
| they pose to a typical US citizen is much less than that
| of their own government. So it's rational prefer, say, a
| Chinese-made phone to a US-made one.
| somurzakov wrote:
| You can't just compare what US does to some individuals,
| and what China does to the entire minority populations of
| Uighurs (13M people) or Tibetans (7M), like harvesting
| their organs for example
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/china-harvesting-organs-
| of-u...
| synnejye wrote:
| Yeah, the US just kills civilians around the world at
| will, invading whatever country they think they own.
| trasz wrote:
| Interesting opinion, given what Tibet looked like before
| Chinese invasion (tl;dr: it was a totalitarian hellhole,
| not comparable with the current situation).
| dash2 wrote:
| If it's so improved, you have to explain why Tibetans
| regularly risk their lives escaping over the border to
| India, where - so long as they are not shot by border
| guards - they join the ruler of that former totalitarian
| hellhole, the Dalai Lama, in Dharamsala.
| berdario wrote:
| I'd like to read more, do you have any sources?
| berdario wrote:
| About self-immolations for "Free Tibet": People in India,
| born in India, who have never visited Tibet are self
| immolating
|
| https://qz.com/india/632077/quietly-a-tibetan-teenager-
| in-in...
|
| To me, this does not speak about extreme suffering in
| Tibet, but rather:
|
| 1- A very strong sense of self-sacrifice and pride in
| their community
|
| 2- A very effective propaganda machine that persuades
| even people who haven't experienced suffering first-hand,
| to make the extreme sacrifice in support of the cause
| philliphaydon wrote:
| So you choose the US?
| rat9988 wrote:
| I understood china.
| aww_dang wrote:
| I didn't read the above comment as dismissing the NSA's
| history with backdoors. It generalizes by referring to 'state
| actors'. The NSA is not mentioned at all.
|
| Perhaps it was edited?
| haukem wrote:
| Normally the identity of contributors is not really checked
| when you want to contribute to an open source project. A valid
| email address and a name is sufficient to contribute to the
| Linux kernel.
|
| All changes to The Linux kernel are getting publicly reviewed,
| so the hard thing is passing this technical review if you want
| to introduce a backdoor. If people know you, based on previous
| contributions, the review could be less hard, so it could make
| sense to build up a reputation before. In the Linux kernel not
| the company builds up the reputation, but the individual
| engineer who contributes. If this is a Huawei hardware it could
| be easier for an engineer with a Huawei mail address to get
| changes integrated, because people assume he known the driver
| and hardware well and people trust claims like, "this can not
| happen because the closed source firmware takes care of this".
|
| If the Chinese intelligence agency wants to integrate a
| backdoor into mainline Linux it would be easier to just build
| up some own fake identities and use them. It probably would be
| easier to just analyze the Linux kernel and use bugs introduced
| by other people.
|
| The NSA also contributed to the Linux kernel, look for
| contributes from a nsa.gov mail address.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I would expect that malicious code would itself not be a
| proper backdoor, but rather a framework or hook or API that
| makes it easier to bypass restrictions. Subtle behavioral
| changes in the kernel combined with user space code could
| empower a state actor to move unnoticed. I think of it like
| 20 parts of a munition. Each piece by itself may look mostly
| harmless. This is all theory of course, but that is how I
| would do something malicious in the kernel. A theoretical
| example would be a simple kernel API combined with something
| like systemd's binfmt mount and a benign looking PNG image
| file that when parsed by binfmt, instructs the kernel to do
| something _interesting_ such as tickle an undocumented CPU
| instruction.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Not just contributed. SELinux is primarily authored by the
| NSA.
| haukem wrote:
| Now Huawei is fixing bugs in SELinux: https://git.kernel.or
| g/linus/68dae71b7cde628a082e982c0abbf6e...
|
| Or reports them, so the NSA can fix them: https://git.kerne
| l.org/linus/3a2f5a59a695a73e0cde9a61e0feae5...
| ronanyeah wrote:
| Huawei has already made some 'careless mistakes':
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/huawei-denies-involvement-in-b...
| mlindner wrote:
| And they follow the "deny, deny, lie" aspect of their
| government as well. Wish they would have some honesty. You
| can't call a project named after your company not involved
| with your company.
| lrossi wrote:
| Original post: https://lwn.net/Articles/839772/
|
| Lines of code are not a good metric for the importance of the
| contributions. You can see that the top developer actually made a
| single 26k loc commit that just removed a driver.
| corbet wrote:
| I would _love_ to find better metrics than changesets and lines
| of codes -- I agree that both are awful ways of measuring
| actual software-development work. I have yet to find something
| better, though; suggestions welcome.
| m463 wrote:
| I wonder if folks should even look for it, because it will
| become an employment metric.
|
| _sorry you spent too much time on "learning", we need more
| "corbet-curve-units" from you._
| lrossi wrote:
| Thanks for replying!
|
| In this case I think a lot of people are wondering what they
| changed. Would it be possible to extract that info from the
| paths modified, filtered with some handwritten rules to
| classify the changes? For example, did they commit driver
| code for their own hardware, or did they touch other areas of
| the kernel? How much of each?
| bluedino wrote:
| Aren't there 2 million lines just for the AMD drivers?
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| Much of this is auto-generated header files e.g.
|
| https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5..
| ..
| giantg2 wrote:
| True.
|
| Wouldn't more lines of code give someone more chance to slip in
| backdoors?
| arthropodSeven wrote:
| Gonna be great when Congress gets word of this
| absolutelyrad wrote:
| What can congress do? They're already blacklisted. The only
| thing left is to shoot your own foot. Maybe avoid that?
|
| I've seen nothing logical that came out of Trumps silly
| blacklisting except cashing out on the reputation the US had
| for pennies on the dollar. China is destined to be Europe and
| the US combined in term of tech. Time will tell if their
| culture causes problem for them.
|
| Smart high intelligence people + strong work ethic +
| competition and not rent seeking by incumbents. They're only
| second to Israel in terms of average human intelligence.
|
| Every top math Olympiad participant representing the US is of
| Chinese ethnicity/descent, this should be noted.
| baja_blast wrote:
| > Every top math Olympiad participant representing the US is
| of Chinese ethnicity/descent, this should be noted.
|
| But conversely, if you look at winners of the Fields Medal,
| Abel Prize, Wolf Prize, Chern Medal etc. There is
| surprisingly few Chinese recipients despite outnumbering
| everyone else in total population.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Suggesting that human intelligence varies by race is a very
| old, very debunked idea that no-one believes any more outside
| of some small racist cliques.
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| Without mentioning how the intelligence is measured, how
| can you decide that it is racist? You're not assuming good
| faith.
| Geminidog wrote:
| This comment should be voted down; it is inline with the
| current social attitudes in the US but it is scientifically
| not true. Nothing has been debunked. What we do know is IQ
| is heritable AND China has people with High IQ. Whether IQ
| is inherited for chinas case or whether IQ is a good
| quantitative measure for intelligence is not formally
| established but the parent-parent poster does not make an
| unrealistic proposition. I may get voted down on this but
| shame on people who voted this up for supporting a social
| ideal over the cold hard truth. Nothing has been debunked.
|
| Genetics control how we look physically across all races,
| there is no black magic that suddenly makes every race
| equal in intelligence and behavior while only controlling
| for physical differences. Uphold your social ideals but
| don't let your ideals blind you from the cold hard truth.
| dash2 wrote:
| I don't read the comment as suggesting that Chinese people
| are genetically smart - just that they are smart. That IQ
| varies by race or ethnicity is an established fact, not a
| debunked theory. The controversial question is _why_ it
| varies - nature or the environment?
| lldbg wrote:
| I haven't seen any good studies debunking it, but neither
| have I seen any studies which prove it. That IQ is
| heritable and has a large genetic component however is
| "settled science" [a], and the current trend in behavioural
| genetics seems to be that a large swathe of cognitive and
| social behaviours are very heritable indeed.
|
| [a]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270739/
| [deleted]
| absolutelyrad wrote:
| If the math Olympiad is racist then so is fashion modelling
| and NFL.
|
| And I called it ethnicity/descent already.
| xtian wrote:
| That's not sufficient evidence for the scale of the claim
| you're making about basic human nature. Many other
| factors can explain China's success much less the
| demographic composition of Math Olympiad participants.
| [deleted]
| rscho wrote:
| China is destined by US and European politicians to take
| power, because those in power are totally corrupt. This has
| nothing to do with the instrinsic abilities of respective
| populations. Same goes for Israel. And you have a strange
| definition of ethics given the amount of IP piracy going on
| with the blessing of occidental politicians.
| [deleted]
| absolutelyrad wrote:
| > _And you have a strange definition of ethics given the
| amount of IP piracy going on with the blessing of
| occidental politicians._
|
| What IP did Huawei steal? 5G?
| chaosharmonic wrote:
| You expect Congress to _understand_ this in the first place?
|
| Sure, the power balance just shifted substantially, but it
| still doesn't change the fact that a significant chunk of its
| leadership (majority party or otherwise) can't be bothered to
| understand how search rankings work, or how Facebook makes
| money.
|
| And this extends at least as far back as the 90s, when Congress
| shuttered the Office of Technology Assessment, whose literal
| job was to educate them on these exact sorts of issues.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Not surprising after I saw how many R&D offices Huawei has in
| Europe.
|
| They basically placed their offices right across their
| competitors like Ericsson, Nokia, Imagination, etc. to the point
| that in every European Tech hub you will find a Huawei office.
| gopaz wrote:
| There is a rumor here that Huawei approaches key personal of
| competitors and offers to match the salary + 12000usd/month
| (which alone is probably more than 90% make)
| cosmodisk wrote:
| This is what happens when business strategy spans decades and
| not from one quarterly report to another.
| mlindner wrote:
| You mean this is what happens when you have a gigantic state
| government bag holding for you with a given mission of wiping
| out all competition.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| Yes, that's exactly what I mean. The entire country sat
| quietly whilst the western companies poured billions upon
| billions into it. Fast forward 30-40 years and everyone is
| super surprised that once humble and kowtowing country
| showing a middle finger to the rest of the world and nobody
| can do anything about it. Huawei has been operating like
| this since its inception.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| You can blame that on the colonialist mentality that
| prevailed in the MBAs of the rich western nations where
| they saw China as this obedient servant that will just
| build our stuff and always do what we tell them to do
| since we have the money and the kow-how and they'll never
| wise up and become a threat.
|
| I worked in the NL hardware business over a decade back
| and that was the exact mentality management there had in
| regards to China and Chinese workers.
| dirtyid wrote:
| Pretty much. Nortel Guangzhou had bamboo ceiling on
| (mainland) Chinese management roles in the late 90s even
| foreign nationals, i.e. (mainland) Chinese Canadians. Big
| surprise when entire engineering teams got poached by ZTE
| and Huawei. Pretty consistent complaints from other
| industries. Emphasis on mainland because it didn't apply
| to Taiwan / HK / SK / Singapore expats. I think
| institutional inertia and seniority played a big part,
| but didn't sit well with people being blocked.
| throwawaybutwhy wrote:
| Agreed, a Nortel for each decade is usually sufficient from a
| business strategy perspective.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Money and strategy talks
|
| If only Nokia hadn't got dragged down by the Symbian fools
| scns wrote:
| Have you heard of the "Burning platform" memo?
| mnd999 wrote:
| It was largely BS to justify the pivot to Windows phone.
| Jolla demonstrated that the problems with Meego could be
| solved with far fewer resources than Nokia put into their
| pointless Windows phone migration.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I just said above that I loved Meego Manhattan, but I
| never liked Jolla's UI. One example of something I
| believe they just got completely wrong is that swiping
| away an app causes it to fade out, instead of actually
| move alongside your finger. This makes multi-tasking
| somewhat easier, since you can quickly peak at what's
| behind an app, but it isn't connected to the gesture.
| mnd999 wrote:
| The UX was, well, Marmite at best but they solved the
| real issues - porting the OS to Qualcomm SOC (instead of
| the discontinued TI OMAP) and adding 4g support.
| mcraiha wrote:
| Have you read "Paranoidi optimisti" by Risto Siilasmaa? All
| the big problems software wise were cause by Symbian.
|
| "Unfortunately, this was only the tip of the iceberg.
| Siilasmaa later learned that the overall build time of
| Symbian was two weeks."
| https://www.flashover.blog/posts/technical-debt/
| im3w1l wrote:
| Holy shit, how did that happen?
|
| Edit: it seems the compilation time was 2 days in that
| article, I wonder what the rest was.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| How the fuck can a piece of software reach a two day
| compilation time without raising alarm bells? Sounds like
| a disfunctional organization where the only goal is just
| to ship features continuously.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Symbian definitely had to go. But that's why Nokia had
| Meego-Harmattan. It's as if Apple announced they were
| going to stop developing their own software, right after
| replacing classic Mac OS with OS X.
|
| And, instead of adopting Windows for future Macs, Apple
| was going all-in on Solaris.
|
| And, Steve Jobs had just stepped down as interim CEO, and
| his replacement just happened to be a former Sun
| Microsystems executive.
|
| And, Apple's investors were apparently okay with this.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Yep, and being in Espoo the week it was published, I can
| tell no one was that happy with it, specially after the
| push to modernize Symbian with Qt.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| You mean the Windows Phone fools?
|
| I firmly believe that Nokia could have become a major player
| if they'd stayed the course with Meego-Harmatton. I owned a
| Nokia N9, the one phone that ran it, and it was _great!_.
|
| The UI was very different from iOS, but it had all of the
| iPhone's polish and purposeful design. I greatly preferred it
| for several reasons: multi-tasking, for instance, was far
| more seamless than what iOS could do at the time.
|
| Nokia's timing was right, too, and unlike Microsoft, Nokia
| had a deep history in the mobile space. They really could
| have made something.
| whomst wrote:
| Yea Huawei has a location right outside NVIDIA in Santa Clara
| that was hit with a DOJ investigation after they gave out
| bonuses based on stealing IP and other nonsense.
| andromeduck wrote:
| Oh that's super interesting, I remember hearing rumors from
| about that building being the local hub for Chinese
| industrial espionage but never gave it much credence.
| FreshFries wrote:
| I do not know why you are down voted... I have seen Huawei from
| the inside and the number of devs and first grade researchers
| is staggering.
|
| The researchers get payed very well, but what (to those I met)
| was even more important: they get all the assistance they want,
| plus 1. As one of them told me "I hate doing things twice. I
| now do not have to. I think of something, try to get it to work
| and I am done. The grinding is done for me." A truly very nice
| environment to do research in, with a boatload of resources at
| their fingertips.
|
| Just check the number of patents Huawei [0] holds.
|
| [0] https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1194023.shtml
| jtdev wrote:
| Seems ironic for a Chinese tech organization to hold
| boatloads of patents...
| justicezyx wrote:
| It's well-known that China is very serious about IPs. At
| least to people actually paying attention to Chinese
| domestic policies.
|
| A lot of Chinese firms knowingly violates IP laws in the
| past, because they understand there is not enough resources
| to enforce them. Additionally, Chinese government has been
| very open about the plan to enforce IP laws gradually to
| the same standard as the global market. A good balance has
| been played to allow rapid advancement without provoking
| the more advanced economies.
| elefanten wrote:
| What would you point to as a sign that they take
| foreigners' IP seriously?
| plumeria wrote:
| > It's well-known that China is _very serious_ about IPs.
|
| > Chinese government has been very open about the plan to
| enforce IP laws _gradually_ to the same standard as the
| global market.
|
| IMHO, these two statements contradict themselves.
| justicezyx wrote:
| IP is a means of commercializing intellectual
| achievements. It's not noble in that it protects people
| actually doing the work, most patent owners get them from
| coauthors of the patent, and has very low degree of moral
| assessment value. Indeed, most innovative corps today are
| the pioneers of only use patent as defensive measure
| (Google Tesla).
|
| Being serious about IP is to respect a rule of game, and
| not actually enforce it is out of necessity (are you
| expecting a sweat shop to actually pay loyalty and
| produces actual profit?) and actual recognition that
| building up the mechanisms of innovation will take time.
| dirtyid wrote:
| IIRC in terms of patent fees: China is massive net
| importer: $6 in patent fees for every $1 they receive, US
| is opposite, massive net exporter. Hence Chinese drive to
| build / buy domestic patent portfolio and slowly
| implementing IP standards until they can play the same
| crooked IP extraction game.
| m463 wrote:
| that doesn't mean it's not a good strategy - acquire IP
| for self, ignore IP of others until everything is in
| place.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| It makes sense when you consider that patents nowadays are
| more like ammo to start/settle potential lawsuits with,
| rather than about actual protection of IP.
| f00zz wrote:
| Yeah, there were some interesting talks at FOSDEM by Huawei
| researchers, e.g.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuFnRg8TH-k
| krona wrote:
| Also, Huawei are building a 500 acre R&D facility next to the
| ARM headquarters in Cambridge, UK.
| timthorn wrote:
| Not quite next door - 15 minutes drive away.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Might take 15mins to simply drive around such a huge
| campus.
| giantg2 wrote:
| This is concerning
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| tbh... "state actors" have been "contributing" to the Kernel for
| years..
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| I don't want to touch anything Huawei contributes to
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