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Ha! I work with some talented engineers at a big tech company. This topic sort of came up at a happy hour event. Their culture is different. In the west, we th

Ha! I work with some talented engineers at a big tech company. This topic sort of came up at a happy hour event. Their culture is different. In the west, we think you’re really something if you invent or innovate something on your own. Their view is it doesn’t matter if you take something from someone because you still have to work to do something with the concept or technology. I get their perspective. On one hand, yeah it sucks if you work hard or invest massive capital to innovate in some area. On the other hand, if your economy is at an advantage, others in the emerging world are left behind and they’ll always be playing catch up, paying royalties, or locked out completely.

thereare5lights 8y ago
Don't bother, the anti-Chinese sentiment on HN is rampant and mods don't care.
- tjpnz 8y ago
  >Don't bother, the anti-Chinese sentiment on HN is rampant and mods don't care. The anti-Chinese Communist Party sentiment more like. And I would be worried if the mods did care.
- chapium 8y ago
  HN is open to dissenting opinions, and many of us have them without being anti-something.
  - busterarm 8y ago
    Let's be honest here. HN is only open to _certain_ dissenting opinions. If you hold others, people will flame you and then dang will time you out claiming a rules violation without any clarification as to which ones and despite honestly not knowing which ones. Other users flagrantly violate the rules without issue because they hold the prevailing opinion.
    - thereare5lights 8y ago
      It's very rare to find truly neutral moderators. dang and the other mods are just catering to their core audience, otherwise they would alienate them.
- gotocake 8y ago
  When people make critical observations about how my country is run and my government, I don’t assume they’re anti-American. Why would you assume that my critique of how a relative handful of elites run a country of over a billion translates to “anti-Chinese”? I don’t trust people who conflate how governments operate, with the populace itself; they are usually trying to gain some rhetorical advantage dishonestly.
- arcticfox 8y ago
  Why would mods care? The Chinese hold some uniquely unpopular positions, I'm not sure why the mods should defend them from that. There are plenty of things Western countries get roasted on here for as well.
- sctb 8y ago
  Could you please stop? Asked and answered: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18758864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18758864.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - thereare5lights 8y ago
    Stop what? Pointing out the reality of rampant anti-Chinese sentiment on HN? Even with: > We moderate HN to mitigate the worst aspects of this, but there's no hope of eliminating it. HN is controlled by its community. All that moderation can do is adjust the margins. it's still rampant. You mitigate the worst aspect of it but you're still left with a anti-Chinese circle jerk.
chapium 8y ago
>it doesn’t matter if you take something from someone because you still have to work to do something with the concept or technology. Thats a rather convenient rationalization for poor behavior.
- solidsnack9000 8y ago
  Yeah, if you steal wheat from the farmer you still have to work to mill it, make into dough, knead it, bake it in the oven...
  - robomartin 8y ago
    Or sell the wheat to someone else for less than market value because you don’t have to own land, equipment, hire people, learn to grow it, plant the seeds, look after the crop, deal with insects and other issues, manage regulatory requirements, pay property taxes, provide health insurance, carry liability and property insurance, deal with the losses during a bad season or failed experiments, have a financial buffer to deal with market fluctuations...and more. Yeah, aside from that stealing something from someone who created it takes the same effort as that expended by the rightful owner.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      Except this analogy doesn't make any sense, because what's "stolen" here is the IP. So it's not like stealing wheat from a farmer. It's like a farmer stumbling upon a plant useful for food production, calling it "wheat", figuring out how to plant and harvest it, and then demanding that he be the one who controls who can or can not grow or use this new "wheat" thing, and that he gets paid by all other farmers who grow it. And then someone else (the "thief") calls bullshit, and grows this "wheat" anyway. Applying language for material items (like "stealing") to IP only muddies the waters. There's plenty of cases where one could find moral justification for compensating the "inventor" (e.g. countless of hours invested in try-and-error search, use of expensive equipment), and there's plenty more of cases where the purported "inventor" is just a greedy asshole trying to get rich by abusing the society (e.g. patent trolls, DMCA abuse, speculative patenting by companies and individuals alike). In times where IP frameworks are both misaligned with the nature of information, and frequently abused to prevent the very things they're ostensibly meant to promote, this whole space needs a total overhaul. China's approach may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but taking a global view of technological development, it's probably for the better.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

thereare5lights 8y ago

Don't bother, the anti-Chinese sentiment on HN is rampant and mods don't care.

tjpnz 8y ago
>Don't bother, the anti-Chinese sentiment on HN is rampant and mods don't care. The anti-Chinese Communist Party sentiment more like. And I would be worried if the mods did care.
chapium 8y ago
HN is open to dissenting opinions, and many of us have them without being anti-something.
- busterarm 8y ago
  Let's be honest here. HN is only open to _certain_ dissenting opinions. If you hold others, people will flame you and then dang will time you out claiming a rules violation without any clarification as to which ones and despite honestly not knowing which ones. Other users flagrantly violate the rules without issue because they hold the prevailing opinion.
  - thereare5lights 8y ago
    It's very rare to find truly neutral moderators. dang and the other mods are just catering to their core audience, otherwise they would alienate them.
gotocake 8y ago
When people make critical observations about how my country is run and my government, I don’t assume they’re anti-American. Why would you assume that my critique of how a relative handful of elites run a country of over a billion translates to “anti-Chinese”? I don’t trust people who conflate how governments operate, with the populace itself; they are usually trying to gain some rhetorical advantage dishonestly.
arcticfox 8y ago
Why would mods care? The Chinese hold some uniquely unpopular positions, I'm not sure why the mods should defend them from that. There are plenty of things Western countries get roasted on here for as well.
sctb 8y ago
Could you please stop? Asked and answered: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18758864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18758864.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- thereare5lights 8y ago
  Stop what? Pointing out the reality of rampant anti-Chinese sentiment on HN? Even with: > We moderate HN to mitigate the worst aspects of this, but there's no hope of eliminating it. HN is controlled by its community. All that moderation can do is adjust the margins. it's still rampant. You mitigate the worst aspect of it but you're still left with a anti-Chinese circle jerk.

chapium 8y ago

>it doesn’t matter if you take something from someone because you still have to work to do something with the concept or technology. Thats a rather convenient rationalization for poor behavior.

solidsnack9000 8y ago
Yeah, if you steal wheat from the farmer you still have to work to mill it, make into dough, knead it, bake it in the oven...
- robomartin 8y ago
  Or sell the wheat to someone else for less than market value because you don’t have to own land, equipment, hire people, learn to grow it, plant the seeds, look after the crop, deal with insects and other issues, manage regulatory requirements, pay property taxes, provide health insurance, carry liability and property insurance, deal with the losses during a bad season or failed experiments, have a financial buffer to deal with market fluctuations...and more. Yeah, aside from that stealing something from someone who created it takes the same effort as that expended by the rightful owner.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Except this analogy doesn't make any sense, because what's "stolen" here is the IP. So it's not like stealing wheat from a farmer. It's like a farmer stumbling upon a plant useful for food production, calling it "wheat", figuring out how to plant and harvest it, and then demanding that he be the one who controls who can or can not grow or use this new "wheat" thing, and that he gets paid by all other farmers who grow it. And then someone else (the "thief") calls bullshit, and grows this "wheat" anyway. Applying language for material items (like "stealing") to IP only muddies the waters. There's plenty of cases where one could find moral justification for compensating the "inventor" (e.g. countless of hours invested in try-and-error search, use of expensive equipment), and there's plenty more of cases where the purported "inventor" is just a greedy asshole trying to get rich by abusing the society (e.g. patent trolls, DMCA abuse, speculative patenting by companies and individuals alike). In times where IP frameworks are both misaligned with the nature of information, and frequently abused to prevent the very things they're ostensibly meant to promote, this whole space needs a total overhaul. China's approach may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but taking a global view of technological development, it's probably for the better.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]