[HN Gopher] TikTok has an open computational chemistry position
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       TikTok has an open computational chemistry position
        
       Author : ISL
       Score  : 166 points
       Date   : 2022-10-14 13:40 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (careers.tiktok.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (careers.tiktok.com)
        
       | cavanasm wrote:
       | The title of the job opening says computational chemistry, but
       | the details indicate they're looking for someone with credentials
       | in one of a few different computation / simulation specialized
       | fields. If I had to guess, it seems possible they think those
       | types of simulation design skills may be useful for simulating
       | user social behavior somehow?
        
         | c7b wrote:
         | No, it's really about material science and biology, just read
         | further in the ad:
         | 
         | Responsibilities
         | 
         | * Follow the latest progress in computational science such as
         | material and biology.
         | 
         | * Solve real-world problems in material and biology, with
         | computational approaches such as molecular dynamics, quantum
         | chemistry, and machine learning.
         | 
         | * Optimize and speed up classical molecular dynamics and
         | quantum chemistry algorithms with artificial intelligence and
         | high-throughput computational methods.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | ackbar03 wrote:
           | That will be cool if their really looking to expand into
           | something useful like biochemistry r&d, similar to Google
           | with deepmind.
        
             | harveywi wrote:
             | They are going after the hundred billion dollar pet
             | industry, focusing on electronics for pets. With a TikTok
             | flip-flop, give a dog a phone.
        
               | jspann wrote:
               | Watch your posts on a dog-themed clone.
        
               | konfusinomicon wrote:
               | and we thought spam calls were bad, now instead of
               | extended warrantys and political surveys, my dog is going
               | to be calling and texting me every 10 minutes asking for
               | treats and belly rubs
        
               | knodi123 wrote:
               | or just to say "hey", like the old far side comic with a
               | canine decoder
               | 
               | https://elorganillero.com/wp-
               | content/uploads/2014/01/canine-...
        
             | mradek wrote:
             | TikTok brain implant?
        
               | yeasurebut wrote:
               | I don't think manufacturing of computing parts (in this
               | case, a brain implant) is the future.
               | 
               | My money is on bio-engineering "experience" into human
               | memory.
               | 
               | It's the least materially wasteful as the materials are
               | in the process, not outputs. The outputs are not stuff
               | but modified organic matter state.
        
               | [deleted]
        
             | powerapple wrote:
             | I am pretty sure they are exploring AlphaFold, potential
             | growth opportunity. ByteDance has been exploring games,
             | education, online office suites and many more.
        
         | jollyllama wrote:
         | Modeling user brain chemistry? Ominous.
        
           | kirykl wrote:
           | self-aware General AI who's existence is entirely made of
           | simulated eons of watching tiktoks
        
             | throw827474737 wrote:
             | All much too complicated, they are just interested in
             | someone coming up with more "what happens if you put mentos
             | into coke"-type reactions for their content creator's
             | inspiration..
        
         | dcolkitt wrote:
         | Yeah, this isn't really that different than quant hedge funds
         | hiring theoretical physics PhDs. It's not like you're actually
         | going to be doing Yang Mills field equations to trade some
         | stocks. They just need a guy to run some linear regressions,
         | and can afford to find someone really really overqualified so
         | they don't screw up.
        
           | blululu wrote:
           | Not sure if these people are overqualified as much as the
           | fact that people who check the box on paper are generally
           | unqualified. Generally good people can only really do math up
           | to a few years below the highest level that they learned in
           | school. If you actually need someone to do basic linear
           | algebra you probably want somehow who took classes that went
           | well beyond the freshman/sophomore level that everyone has.
        
             | VirusNewbie wrote:
             | Is this something unique to math? I've never taken computer
             | science courses in school, but I'm fairly good at it...
        
               | SuoDuanDao wrote:
               | I'd suspect someone who was self-taught in mathematics
               | wouldn't have a disconnect between apparent and actual
               | ability either; teaching math to people who primarily
               | need it to pass an exam is a very different process from
               | learning the same material out of personal interest.
        
             | DimitriPetrova wrote:
             | Well if you have a mathematics undergraduate degree you
             | would have taken classes "that went well beyond the
             | freshman/sophomore level that everyone has."
             | 
             | I don't see why it's necessary to have a potentially
             | unrelated PHD to do basic linear algebra.
        
               | lotsofpulp wrote:
               | Perhaps a PhD signals a higher probability of something
               | the employer is looking for.
        
             | idontpost wrote:
        
           | bee_rider wrote:
           | Black-Scholes comes from Brownian motion, maybe they are
           | fishing for the next idea in that fashion.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
       | People seem to forget that TikTok was originally a pharmaceutical
       | startup...
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | Ok. But why don't they operate under a different name?
        
           | aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
           | I've heard they received some kind of government healthcare
           | grant early on, which requires them to keep providing
           | services under the TikTok name for at least 15 years.
        
             | [deleted]
        
       | wdutch wrote:
       | I wonder if they would leverage users devices for computations,
       | similar to folding@home[0]
       | 
       | 0: https://foldingathome.org/?lng=en-US
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | chazeon wrote:
       | Tiktok/bytedance already have large ML infrastructure in place
       | (GPU clusters), and since quantum chemistry simulation is moving
       | towards ML based simulation, they have an edge there. Open source
       | ML simulation software such as DeePMD-kit is already seeing
       | contributions from Tiktok employees.
        
         | Melatonic wrote:
         | I would guess they are planning to offer ML infrastructure as a
         | service type stuff for chem simulation to various firms - would
         | make sense they would need a few people in house to help build
         | the systems and act as the "sales engineers" types who can
         | interface with the chemistry super nerds they are trying to
         | sell to.
        
         | chazeon wrote:
         | In case HN readers doesn't know, ML based MD scales O(N) and
         | traditional DFT based simulation O(N^3) where N is number of
         | atoms.
         | 
         | From first hand experience: what used take weeks with
         | traditional DFT MD on CPUs are only taking few minutes with
         | GPUs right now if you have trained a good ML potential. They
         | achieved near DFT accuracy.
        
           | 11101010001100 wrote:
           | But the dynamics are still classical right? You are just
           | using a highly accurate interatomic potential.
        
             | chazeon wrote:
             | There is path-integral MD with imaginary time you can use
             | to address quantum effects such as tunneling when you have
             | protons in the system. But yeah, basically are still doing
             | ionic dynamics and ignoring the electrons. The electronic
             | effect needs to be "baked" into the ML potential when you
             | are training the potential with DFT data.
        
               | 11101010001100 wrote:
               | Are there examples of this baking in when using an ML
               | potential?
        
           | ivalm wrote:
           | Can they do dft+u/strong-ish correlations?
        
             | chazeon wrote:
             | I know people are exploring this front currently. Basically
             | you could use results from DFT+U to train the potential;
             | but I am also told that strongly correlation can now be
             | better described by SCAN functionals better than LDA+U etc
             | so it would be even easier then.
        
           | goethes_kind wrote:
           | Can you point me to some papers? I'm quite curious since I do
           | something adjacent but with fluids.
        
             | chazeon wrote:
             | See this one, for example, you could look at the method
             | description section:
             | 
             | Modeling liquid water by climbing up Jacob's ladder in
             | density functional theory facilitated by using deep neural
             | network potentials
             | 
             | https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.14410
             | 
             | The software that are used are DeePMD-kit:
             | https://github.com/deepmodeling/deepmd-kit the
             | corresponding paper is https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.03641.pdf
        
               | goethes_kind wrote:
               | Thanks. At first glance it looks very different from what
               | I am doing, but nonetheless very interesting.
        
           | mirker wrote:
           | This type of complexity argument is also used in graphics
           | rendering as far as I am aware. In graphics, it just has to
           | look ok. Is there any concern for bounded error in MD?
        
             | chazeon wrote:
             | Well in MD you always have to compare to experimental
             | measurements from a macroscopic level.
             | 
             | And you have to repeat DFT results as far as you can do DFT
             | on it.
        
       | tsjackson wrote:
       | I'm really curious about this.
       | 
       | Hypothesis 1) Tik Tok believes AI/machine learning algorithms
       | themselves are converging across fields, and the company is
       | finding that its internal AI innovations can be applied to
       | biology and materials sciences algos and, possibly, vice versa.
       | We'll call this one the "data are data" hypothesis.
       | 
       | Hypothesis 2) Tik Tok has decided that it's an AI company, not a
       | content platform company. This is subtly different, as the locus
       | of intersection between social media and materials sciences is in
       | the company's human capital, not the algorithms used. Call this
       | the "Data Scientists are Data Scientists" hypothesis.
       | 
       | Hypothesis 3) Tik Tok, as an avatar of the CCP, is deliberately
       | adding fuel to the narrative that its a national security threat,
       | thus baiting Biden to shut it down, which would be hugely
       | unpopular with one of his critical voting blocks. Call this the
       | "Troll Biden" hypothesis.
       | 
       | All of these hypotheses seem really important from a geopolitical
       | perspective. If social media companies become our primary engines
       | of applied sciences, that would be a pretty huge shift. If the
       | CCP is using Tik Tok to use cultural popularity to play chicken
       | in the trade war with the US government, that's a pretty major
       | development as well.
       | 
       | Any other ideas? Am I missing something obvious?
        
         | powerapple wrote:
         | ByteDance, as a company, it actively looking to expand to new
         | growth area. The original product was a news reader, then
         | TikTok, also other video platform, it also publishes games,
         | acquired a VR headset company Pico, developed the most popular
         | Google Works clone. I think it is looking into something
         | similar to AlphaFold, it is a big market. It is the never end
         | mission of Internet companies with lots of money, where is next
         | growth.
        
         | kuramitropolis wrote:
         | Experimenting on people. It's the new sex, drugs, and
         | rock'n'roll revolution, delivered straight to your optic nerve,
         | so get with it. They already got the monitoring and analytics
         | in place - ain't no regulator got sufficient resolution to stop
         | them from figuring out how to make that dopamine hit _just_
         | right.
        
       | czl_my wrote:
       | It's probably a cross-hire for one of their Parent company's
       | biotech arm. https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/23/bytedance-ai-drug/
        
         | whymauri wrote:
         | Most likely answer, I think.
        
       | eunos wrote:
       | Bytedance wanted to enter Biotech for a while
       | https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/23/bytedance-ai-drug/
        
       | intrasight wrote:
       | They hired a friend who's a neuroscientist who specializes in
       | reading minds. At least I know what they're up to.
        
         | LeonTheremin wrote:
         | Users have been noticing Google's ads are based on thoughts
         | they had and without any chance of correlation to whatever
         | Google's AI could infer from previous interaction. Same for
         | Twitter, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, TikTok.
         | 
         | Big Tech's algorithms have long been tapping into illegal
         | surveillance of an unprecedented kind - besides the cliques of
         | insiders who misuse this for stalking and harassment of
         | children, human rights defenders, activists, minorities and
         | everyone else.
         | 
         | Don't expect them to be honest about their surveillance.
        
       | addcn wrote:
       | TikTok, Facebook and Twitter are pharmaceutical companies. They
       | peddle quick dopamine hits. We're all junkies that can't/won't
       | pay for the hits so they wrap up the drugs they give us in ad-
       | paper.
        
         | tenebrisalietum wrote:
         | This analogy is cringe because it's overstretched. Argument:
         | For example, are books considered pharmaceutical products
         | (typically not quick--that would be like "delayed release"
         | medicine) just because you get pleasure from reading them?
        
           | drooby wrote:
           | Not that cringe to me.
           | 
           | Tiktok and the like are highly addictive for some people and
           | the dopamine kicks are real and unhealthy.
           | 
           | Reading books does not give the same release of dopamine as
           | TikTok/Instagram.. hence why most people don't read for 2
           | hours a day but many people _easily_ spend that much time on
           | insta /tik.
           | 
           | Modulating behavior can cause physical withdrawals.. you
           | don't need a pill. I.e lovers, gambling addicts, porn
           | addicted.
        
             | tenebrisalietum wrote:
             | Should we require prescriptions for porn magazines then?
        
               | drooby wrote:
               | Porn was perhaps a bad example because I don't think
               | evidence suggests conclusively that it is addictive.
               | 
               | But take gambling.. gambling is considered addictive and
               | its disorder classified in the DSM-5. (Gambling is
               | probably also most like TikTok/Instagram in terms of
               | activating reward seeking and pleasure in the brain). In
               | the US we do heavily regulate gambling and some
               | legislations have required warning labels for the risks
               | involved with gambling.
               | 
               | So no, if would not be unreasonable to me if we as a
               | society discussed potentially regulating social media in
               | some way.. be it as non-invasive as warning messaging.
        
           | humanistbot wrote:
           | It is because of the massive psychological engineering that
           | takes place behind the scenes. Authors or book publishing
           | companies do not hire teams of psychologists to engineer and
           | A/B test their products to try to get you locked into a
           | dopamine reward cycle. The same kind of approaches that
           | casinos do to hook you in and keep you addicted are now
           | standard in these mobile apps.
        
           | Fendii wrote:
           | If you follow the original comment, yes.
           | 
           | I think you need a better discussion tool here.
        
           | sfpotter wrote:
           | Saying things are cringe is the cringest thing of all.
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | "Our brightest minds are making people click ads" ...
        
         | api wrote:
         | A few generations ago many of our brightest minds were building
         | doomsday weapons to incinerate all life on Earth, so maybe this
         | is progress.
        
           | SQueeeeeL wrote:
           | Probably not, if you shoot a man, there's a perpetrator and
           | an end. If you brainwash a man, forever his actions will no
           | longer be fully his own. Plus most people view violence as
           | something undesirable (see Vietnam war protests), but
           | advertising still has many hawks who will never stop singing
           | it's praises while all public spaces are consumed by
           | corporate branding until we have no where uninfected
        
             | appletrotter wrote:
             | > if you shoot a man, there's a perpetrator and an end
             | 
             | I don't know about this assertion. It does not ring true to
             | real life for me.
        
             | thih9 wrote:
             | I'd say the state of "forever his actions will no longer be
             | fully his own" is easier to reach with doomsday weapons
             | than with ads.
        
             | dryd wrote:
             | Is the claim here that working in the advertising industry
             | is worse than working on "doomsday devices to incinerate
             | all life on Earth"? What a hot take!
        
           | goatcode wrote:
           | Is it? Would you rather be dead or a zombie?
        
             | lghh wrote:
             | Would I rather be dead or use TikTok? Come on now, you know
             | the answer to that.
        
             | TobyTheDog123 wrote:
             | Dead.
             | 
             | "Better to Die on Your Feet Than Live on Your Knees" as
             | they say.
        
             | paxys wrote:
             | I'd rather have the choice to do whatever I want with my
             | life instead of a bomb dropped on my head.
        
         | thih9 wrote:
         | TikTok was not the first company that came to my mind when I
         | read that comment. I see way more ads on Instagram, Twitter,
         | not to mention YouTube.
        
           | cmelbye wrote:
           | TikTok will make $11B in ad revenue this year. It is their
           | business model. This is twice as large as Twitter's business,
           | and a third of Instagram or YouTube.
        
         | otabdeveloper4 wrote:
         | "Making people click ads" is just applied computational
         | sociology.
         | 
         | Which is a good thing, since the sociology we had before
         | clickable ads was unequivocally less scientific and useful.
        
           | amelius wrote:
           | But the knowledge we gain is only about triggering the bad
           | paths of human brain, like addiction, greed, FOMO, etc. And
           | who is "we" anyway, this stuff isn't public.
        
             | otabdeveloper4 wrote:
             | No, because literally every business that exists wants to
             | advertise. (And also organizations that aren't businesses,
             | like NGO's and government agencies and non-profits.)
        
               | amelius wrote:
               | Well, advertising only stimulates consumption, to the
               | detriment of our planet.
               | 
               | Also, it is a loudness war, that is a race to the bottom
               | in various ways.
               | 
               | As an individual business owner you want it, as society
               | you don't.
        
           | ggpsv wrote:
           | "good" and "sociology" are surely carrying a lot of weight in
           | that statement. What does "good" mean applied in this
           | context?
           | 
           | I'm not sure I see the connection to sociology though, do yo
           | mean behavioral economics?
        
             | otabdeveloper4 wrote:
             | Advertising today is figuring out the preferences and
             | behavioral patterns of different social groups. It's not
             | based on economics, it's mostly stats and probability
             | theory.
        
         | vladf wrote:
         | I've seen and heard and said this before... where is this quote
         | from?
        
           | ashleyn wrote:
           | Jeff Hammerbacher.
           | 
           | https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/06/12/click/
        
           | crucialfelix wrote:
           | It's from a reworking of Howl by Allen Ginsburg, reframing it
           | for our era.
           | 
           | The original is an amazing poem well worth reading
           | 
           | https://poets.org/poem/howl-parts-i-ii
        
       | varelse wrote:
        
       | goldenchrome wrote:
       | What could that possibly be for?
        
         | dahart wrote:
         | Just imagining a couple of possibilities...
         | 
         | It could be for helping them moderate vaccine or climate
         | misinformation, e.g.,
         | https://www.tiktok.com/safety/en/covid-19/
         | 
         | It could be part of establishing or expanding their research
         | division mainly devoted to getting smart people inside the
         | company, having publications and patents in their portfolio, or
         | inventing algorithms that scale better with big data. There are
         | open quantum computing and scientific computing jobs too.
        
         | max_ wrote:
         | You can think of it the way Finance people hire Astronomers &
         | other physicists.
         | 
         | Physics may have nothing to do with financial markets but the
         | math tools and research skills physicists have are useful in
         | finance.
         | 
         | The same goes for Computational chemistry and analysing of data
         | for a video streaming site
        
         | tkk23 wrote:
         | This could be used to verify the quality of TikTok's data
         | scientists.
         | 
         | They cannot verify them directly because they cannot publish
         | their algorithms and data. So let them do science and figure
         | out who knows his algorithms.
         | 
         | *edit: actually:
         | 
         | >Optimize and speed up classical molecular dynamics and quantum
         | chemistry algorithms with artificial intelligence and high-
         | throughput computational methods.
         | 
         | They are building an algorithm library
        
         | tclancy wrote:
         | Dating site spinoff.
        
           | junon wrote:
           | At face value this seems like a silly suggestion. But
           | actually, I could totally see TikTok doing this.
        
         | DoktorDelta wrote:
         | Maybe they're looking for someone who can leverage
         | computational neurochemistry to make the app more addictive?
        
           | sh4rks wrote:
           | That would rank pretty far up in the "unethical jobs" list
        
         | pcmill wrote:
         | Tracking viral videos?
        
       | Sommer wrote:
       | Maybe they are looking into what problems they can solve with
       | side door access to 750 million phones worth of compute power.
        
       | ProjectArcturis wrote:
       | Is this like when Google started throwing off massive amounts of
       | money, and Larry and Sergei were like, "I dunno, let's solve
       | aging"?
        
         | aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
         | And it was a resounding success! (Not)
        
           | fullshark wrote:
           | It was a resounding success for Google's brand perception
           | among job applicants.
        
         | melling wrote:
         | Let's hope so. Not enough of this in the world:
         | 
         | "We choose to do these things not because they are easy but
         | because they are hard"
         | 
         | But I'd be happy with a little Bell Labs at a few more
         | companies
        
           | hotpotamus wrote:
           | I wonder if the Google Graveyard is full of things that
           | proved to be too hard?
        
             | latchkey wrote:
             | Makani is a fantastic documentary.
             | 
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd_hEja6bzE
        
           | ta988 wrote:
           | They would have to spend a LOT more to go bell labs. Until
           | now they spend way too little to achieve anything. And for
           | companies like Google have real managers for those groups
           | instead of people only good at optimizing metrics.
        
             | aliqot wrote:
             | Bell Labs is a good example of Icarus syndrome, I'd say
             | they're doing that just fine.
        
           | bismuthcrystal wrote:
           | More like:
           | 
           | "We choose to do these things not because they are easy but
           | because they are profitable"
        
             | marcosdumay wrote:
             | Hum... That's clearly not the case.
             | 
             | That's why there isn't a lot of it around.
        
               | spiffytech wrote:
               | There are a lot of things that _would be_ profitable,
               | that are held back by either belief that they can 't be
               | done or by failure of imagination on their ramifications.
               | Or because people profit from the status quo remaining
               | unchanged.
               | 
               | Non-scientific example: I just read The Box, a history of
               | container shipping. It's remarkable how many
               | transportation incumbents tried to put the kibosh on
               | containerization because they believed it was either not
               | practical or not profitable.
               | 
               | In the end containerization hurt many existing power
               | structures, but it reinvented global commerce and opened
               | unfathomable financial doors for the world as a whole,
               | creating financial empires that were impossible before.
        
       | omoikane wrote:
       | Maybe they already have a list of individuals that they want to
       | hire, and they are trying to write the job requisition to fit
       | those individuals' backgrounds.
        
       | beshur wrote:
       | (Happy Jesse Pinkman noises)
        
       | Apocryphon wrote:
       | They've noticed the large segment of videos about mental illness
       | and decided to go into the pharma business.
        
       | JohnJamesRambo wrote:
       | I'm thoroughly confused. I've worked with many computational
       | chemists and nothing they did matches anything TikTok is into
       | that I'm aware of.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | case0x00 wrote:
       | [techcrunch article from
       | 2020](https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/23/bytedance-ai-drug/). I
       | guess its not actually tiktok, but bytedance
        
       | abdullahkhalids wrote:
       | They also have a internship for Quantum Research [1]
       | 
       | > Our team studies the electronic structure and other quantum
       | chemistry topics using machine-learning-based ab initio methods
       | as well as quantum computing technology. We aim at applications
       | intractable for classical methods and expect to achieve
       | breakthroughs in areas like chemistry and materials.
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://careers.tiktok.com/position/7150350193095002382/deta...
        
       | helsinkiandrew wrote:
       | So does Facebook and Google - once you get large enough you can
       | create departments that are much less production/profit focussed
       | and more long term.
        
       | baybal2 wrote:
        
       | bovermyer wrote:
       | I wonder if TikTok is investigating alternative display methods
       | beyond just screens. Computational chemistry might be useful for
       | figuring out a way to rearrange molecular structure as a display
       | method.
        
       | kuu wrote:
       | In the description:
       | 
       | Team Introduction
       | 
       | Scientific Computing team has been focusing on tackling
       | challenges in natural sciences including biology, physics, and
       | materials, with computational tools such as Machine Learning,
       | Computational Chemistry, High-throughput Computation. Our goal is
       | to create breakthroughs in natural science with new methodology
       | and help the world.
       | 
       | Responsibilities
       | 
       | * Follow the latest progress in computational science such as
       | material and biology.
       | 
       | * Solve real-world problems in material and biology, with
       | computational approaches such as molecular dynamics, quantum
       | chemistry, and machine learning.
       | 
       | * Optimize and speed up classical molecular dynamics and quantum
       | chemistry algorithms with artificial intelligence and high-
       | throughput computational methods.
       | 
       | ---
       | 
       | Maybe they do some research related with biology and they need a
       | Computational Chemistry expert?
        
         | photochemsyn wrote:
         | This sounds like an entirely _in silico_ research effort. It 's
         | also kind of weird, there's apparently no public history of
         | ByteDance or Tiktok doing any kind of work like this. The
         | closet thing is the "ByteDance AI Lab" but that seems to be
         | recommendation-algorithm-focused, nothing about computational
         | chemistry.
         | 
         | It looks like some of their people have recently left for
         | academia, so maybe it's just trying to get people into their AI
         | lab with the necessary skills? Honestly doesn't seem like a
         | very promising role for someone primarily interested in
         | chem/bio applications, though.
        
       | civilized wrote:
       | I don't like 'em putting chemicals in the water that turn the
       | freakin' frogs gay.
        
       | kqr wrote:
       | Most of these "computational X" people do one thing really well:
       | solve partial differential equations. Incidentally, PDEs are also
       | a useful modeling tool for all sorts of simulation and
       | optimisation. It's why you see physicists in finance, for
       | example.
        
       | muaytimbo wrote:
       | I suspect they are interested in doing graph ML, computation
       | chemists are good at that.
        
       | raydiatian wrote:
       | Never click links from TikTok.
        
       | whoisjuan wrote:
       | If you buy the theory that Bytedance is a covert operation by the
       | Chinese government, then this fits the narrative.
       | 
       | Use the TikTok brand to attract top global talent and perform
       | research in areas of general interest for government agencies.
       | 
       | They only need to build a backdoor for Chinese officials to
       | access the research data.
       | 
       | Sounds far fetched but I believe this is well within the realm of
       | possibilities.
        
         | causi wrote:
         | _at some levels a covert operation by the Chinese government_
         | 
         | It isn't covert.
         | 
         |  _They only need to build a backdoor for Chinese officials to
         | access the research data._
         | 
         | If it's located in China the Chinese government can access it,
         | period. It's not secret or a conspiracy; it's how business is
         | done.
        
         | freewinz wrote:
         | Please stop the attitude of pandering to low-IQ redditors when
         | proposing plausible theories with self-deprecation and
         | incorrect use of the word "conspiracy"
        
           | whoisjuan wrote:
           | This is not pandering. I don't have any information to
           | categorically claim any of this, so why would I say it in any
           | other way?
           | 
           | I'm self-deprecating because I'm on the fence on whether or
           | not this is real or just some fictional plot I want to
           | believe.
           | 
           | Chill, alright?
        
         | kube-system wrote:
         | Chinese law requires companies to make provisions for
         | representing the interests of the CCP within companies of
         | significant size. This isn't a conspiracy, it's routine
         | business law.
         | 
         | There is no need for the CCP to conspire to control businesses.
         | They have ultimate control of business law.
         | 
         | The idea that companies and governments are independent things
         | is a pretty capitalist perspective. There's a wide range of
         | other perspectives on this issue.
        
           | trasz wrote:
           | It works the same way in capitalist countries - except it's
           | enforced with money and patriotism instead of democratically
           | introduced, officially existing rules.
        
             | kube-system wrote:
             | They're "the same" only in a reductionist sort of way that
             | isn't very conducive to productive conversation.
             | 
             | Varying economic and legal systems are different in the
             | specifics about how they work, even if self interested
             | individuals exist everywhere.
        
               | trasz wrote:
               | They are the same in every practical sense, in particular
               | in their end results.
               | 
               | The differences you mention are an implementation detail
               | - in some countries you have the rules written down as
               | law, in others you got shady three letter agencies,
               | kangaroo "FISA courts", and In-Q-Tel.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | kube-system wrote:
               | The end results are not the same. There are many
               | observable differences between doing business in China
               | and in the US or other western market democracies. For
               | instance, executive action is regularly challenged in the
               | US, and successfully so.
        
               | trasz wrote:
               | >For instance, executive action is regularly challenged
               | in the US, and successfully so.
               | 
               | And? How's that different from China?
        
               | kube-system wrote:
               | China does not have a judiciary independent of the ruling
               | party.
        
               | trasz wrote:
               | [citation needed]
               | 
               | US, on the other hand, definitely doesn't - everyone from
               | the top is chosen by politicians.
        
               | kube-system wrote:
               | The US has a judiciary comprising of judges picked by
               | politicians from two competing parties.
        
               | [deleted]
        
       | jonathankoren wrote:
       | Either they're keyword stuffing for gullible science people to
       | get them to click ads or build out ETL pipelines, or they're
       | drunk on money.
        
       | nickpinkston wrote:
       | Interviewer: "We see you've extensively modeled molecules
       | dancing, so we thought you could molecularly model models
       | dancing. Does that make sense?"
        
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