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An enjoyable read and being prepared is always good advice. I don't doubt that China has great engineers; I personally use a Huawei phone and Huawei tablet. I

An enjoyable read and being prepared is always good advice. I don't doubt that China has great engineers; I personally use a Huawei phone and Huawei tablet. I believe these are banned in the USA. I do doubt that Huawei have created their own operating system to rival android. Unless git clone constitutes an act of creation; if so I have also created lots of new operating systems. Not saying they couldn't develop an operating system; but the rest of the article did a pretty good job of explaining why they just wouldn't. If someone 'cheats', there is a pretty good chance that they also 'lie'. And enough with the cultural relativism. Some things people do are recognizably bad just at the human or even social animal level. Even dogs get embarrassed by their own behavior, if they are caught out.

rmah 6y ago
One of the author's points was that it doesn't matter if Huawei's new OS is a git clone of android. So what? Android itself is, at its roots, a variant (cline?) of Linux, after all. The author seems to believe that Huawei will build on their clone of Android over time and make it their own. The author's other point seems to be that many westerners don't seem to get that it doesn't matter. So what if they didn't "innovate". I'd guess that the author would say that they don't care about innovation for innovations sake. They care about winning in the market. They care about selling product and making money. Finally, about the cheating/lies thing... I think the author explained it rather poorly. Though perhaps he was simplifying to try to get his point across. The real core, IMO, is that what most people in the west think of as cultural differences -- food, clothing, music, etc -- are just a façade. Actual cultural differences are differences in what people of varying cultures think are good and bad, what they view as moral and immoral, ethical and unethical. To accept that other cultures actually exist, you have to accept that they actually accept that something you feel is good, they feel is bad. That something you think is immoral, they believe to be moral. Not everything of course (probably not even most things), there seem to be a lot of shared aspects between cultures. But some things. The author asserts that "stealing" intellectual property is one of these things. But.. don't lots of techies in America spout the whole "information must be free" rhetoric? Or do they mean only when it's someone else's IP? <shrug>
rfoo 6y ago
Disclaimer first: I'm a Chinese citizen who were raised up with (lots of) exposure to the so-called Western culture/value, partly because of the Internet and "the free flow of information", so the article is really really interesting to me. - Edit: except for the "Bloomberg big hack" part, I have to point out it died because it is extremely likely to be a fake story, by amending my comment. > I do doubt that Huawei have created their own operating system to rival android. Unless git clone constitutes an act of creation; As someone who had interviewed a few guys working on their so-called "Android compatible layer for HarmonyOS" and "automatic Android app to HarmonyOS migrator" (sounds like a source-to-source transpiler for mapping calls to Android APIs to mostly-same-to-Android-but-with-some-subtle-differences HarmonyOS APIs, nobody would create such a horrible thing if they really simply git clone), I believe they do. I don't know to what extent, though. I think your comment is an interesting example of the "dismissive tone" Steve referred to.
- emptysongglass 6y ago
  Go read Ars Technica's take on HarmonyOS and then double take on the language Huawei has used to describe HarmonyOS as an original creation. It's absurdist lies all the way down. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/harmonyos-hands-on-huaweis-android-killer-is-just-android/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/harmonyos-hands-on-h...
  - rfoo 6y ago
    Thanks. Was a fun read. Indeed, Microsoft was lying on how they created WSL1! They must be using git clone-d Linux source code, because from a cursory look the "Bash on Windows" looks exactly same to a bash running on real Linux, I even tried grep, they are all the same! Then they finally cannot cover it up anymore so they released WSL2, publicly stating it is vanilla Linux running in Hyper-V, pretending they are not doing this from the beginning to save face, shame! /s
    - emptysongglass 6y ago
      You're not only being snarky, which is against this site's rules, you're also making a nonsensical comparison: Microsoft isn't beating around the bush implementing a Linux kernel inside Windows, it's right there in the name. Huawei has publicly declared HarmonyOS a wholly original creation, which as we can see from the previously linked article, is a total fabrication.
neonological 6y ago
You don’t understand China. They have a saying, “cheat or be cheated” The entire country is a country of scammers where the rules of the game are to cheat as much as possible. Like the article said, literally think of yourself as a member of a gang where killing people gets you “street cred”. Cheating is an aspect of street cred for Chinese people.. if you cheat and get away with it, it’s something to be proud of. The Chinese will ‘lie’ to authorities about cheating, but among friends it’s high fives all around. How do I know this? I’m Chinese. Born in the states but with ties to the east. I don’t know if it’s genetic or if it’s cultural but growing up I never purchased a single game or purchased a single movie or piece of music and I was proud of cheating the system. In fact me and many people in Asia think you’re stupid if you pay money for any form of electronic digital media when all of it can be pirated easily. This is the mentality of basically most of Asia with the exception of Japan and to a lesser extent Korea. I get your mentality though. The rules of US culture is basically fairness. It pervades the mentality of the country but you have to understand different games have different rules. For example in mafia the name of the game is to deceive everyone. Deception is therefore praised and you are proud if you win the game via deception. Just like how a simple game can flip a switch so can culture. China is playing mafia while the US is playing chess.
- powerapple 6y ago
  The reason you don't purchase games or movie or music is that you are poor. Your behaviour is mostly determined by your financial status. I am a Chinese, and I haven't used pirated software since I started my first job. Of course, some people cheat, I hope they are not proud about it.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - neonological 6y ago
    No I pirate because it makes economic sense and also because I feel no shame in doing so. Neither do the chinese. Having money doesn't prevent people from picking lower prices options. The cultural attitude I talk about dominates most of the culture in china. You walk into shenzhen not only is software pirated but entire phones, products and hardware is pirated and sold publicly. It's completely normal in china. Not to mention many people are proud of their own businesses. Whatever your experience is I feel you're telling it from within some social strata that is largely different from the rest of china and this is only a minority opinion. Like the author I say this in the most non judgmental way possible.
webmaven 6y ago
> Not saying they couldn't develop an operating system; but the rest of the article did a pretty good job of explaining why they just wouldn't. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. If Google (or rather Danger) could have forked Android instead of creating a new operating system, they would have done that too. In fact, they did, in a sense, as Android uses the Linux kernel, after all. Sure, Google now actually is trying to create a new OS from scratch (Fuchsia), but it remains to be seen if it will be a success in the market (or if it will even ever be deployed in a commercial product). > If someone 'cheats', there is a pretty good chance that they also 'lie'. And enough with the cultural relativism. Some things people do are recognizably bad just at the human or even social animal level. I share your difficulty in wrapping your head around this idea, but a certain amount of cultural relativism is required here. And your own absolutism isn't a absolute as you think. Here is an exercise that may help: Why is cheating at poker considered, well, cheating, but bluffing (including deliberately faking tells, or other subterfuge) is not? If you say "bluffing is part of the game", try to understand that much of what is called 'cheating' is seen as part of the game in their context, and while getting caught cheating is cause for losing face, it isn't cause for feeling guilt. In fact, whoever is doing the catching is supposed to feel embarrassed for pointing it out, not self-righteous. > Even dogs get embarrassed by their own behavior, if they are caught out. Right. While the idea of 'Face' or shame is something that exists in Chinese culture, and is as powerful a force as guilt is in Western cultures, it doesn't work in the same way, and trying to guilt a Chinese person typically just shames them instead, and makes the shamer a target for anger and even revenge. This point perhaps could have been given more space in the essay. Aside: I think that this is part of what drives the 'social credit score' initiative: In a very real sense it is a system for measuring 'face', but there is never a 'shamer' that can be embarrassed or blamed.

rmah 6y ago

One of the author's points was that it doesn't matter if Huawei's new OS is a git clone of android. So what? Android itself is, at its roots, a variant (cline?) of Linux, after all. The author seems to believe that Huawei will build on their clone of Android over time and make it their own. The author's other point seems to be that many westerners don't seem to get that it doesn't matter. So what if they didn't "innovate". I'd guess that the author would say that they don't care about innovation for innovations sake. They care about winning in the market. They care about selling product and making money. Finally, about the cheating/lies thing... I think the author explained it rather poorly. Though perhaps he was simplifying to try to get his point across. The real core, IMO, is that what most people in the west think of as cultural differences -- food, clothing, music, etc -- are just a façade. Actual cultural differences are differences in what people of varying cultures think are good and bad, what they view as moral and immoral, ethical and unethical. To accept that other cultures actually exist, you have to accept that they actually accept that something you feel is good, they feel is bad. That something you think is immoral, they believe to be moral. Not everything of course (probably not even most things), there seem to be a lot of shared aspects between cultures. But some things. The author asserts that "stealing" intellectual property is one of these things. But.. don't lots of techies in America spout the whole "information must be free" rhetoric? Or do they mean only when it's someone else's IP? <shrug>

rfoo 6y ago

Disclaimer first: I'm a Chinese citizen who were raised up with (lots of) exposure to the so-called Western culture/value, partly because of the Internet and "the free flow of information", so the article is really really interesting to me. - Edit: except for the "Bloomberg big hack" part, I have to point out it died because it is extremely likely to be a fake story, by amending my comment. > I do doubt that Huawei have created their own operating system to rival android. Unless git clone constitutes an act of creation; As someone who had interviewed a few guys working on their so-called "Android compatible layer for HarmonyOS" and "automatic Android app to HarmonyOS migrator" (sounds like a source-to-source transpiler for mapping calls to Android APIs to mostly-same-to-Android-but-with-some-subtle-differences HarmonyOS APIs, nobody would create such a horrible thing if they really simply git clone), I believe they do. I don't know to what extent, though. I think your comment is an interesting example of the "dismissive tone" Steve referred to.

emptysongglass 6y ago
Go read Ars Technica's take on HarmonyOS and then double take on the language Huawei has used to describe HarmonyOS as an original creation. It's absurdist lies all the way down. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/harmonyos-hands-on-huaweis-android-killer-is-just-android/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/harmonyos-hands-on-h...
- rfoo 6y ago
  Thanks. Was a fun read. Indeed, Microsoft was lying on how they created WSL1! They must be using git clone-d Linux source code, because from a cursory look the "Bash on Windows" looks exactly same to a bash running on real Linux, I even tried grep, they are all the same! Then they finally cannot cover it up anymore so they released WSL2, publicly stating it is vanilla Linux running in Hyper-V, pretending they are not doing this from the beginning to save face, shame! /s
  - emptysongglass 6y ago
    You're not only being snarky, which is against this site's rules, you're also making a nonsensical comparison: Microsoft isn't beating around the bush implementing a Linux kernel inside Windows, it's right there in the name. Huawei has publicly declared HarmonyOS a wholly original creation, which as we can see from the previously linked article, is a total fabrication.

neonological 6y ago

You don’t understand China. They have a saying, “cheat or be cheated” The entire country is a country of scammers where the rules of the game are to cheat as much as possible. Like the article said, literally think of yourself as a member of a gang where killing people gets you “street cred”. Cheating is an aspect of street cred for Chinese people.. if you cheat and get away with it, it’s something to be proud of. The Chinese will ‘lie’ to authorities about cheating, but among friends it’s high fives all around. How do I know this? I’m Chinese. Born in the states but with ties to the east. I don’t know if it’s genetic or if it’s cultural but growing up I never purchased a single game or purchased a single movie or piece of music and I was proud of cheating the system. In fact me and many people in Asia think you’re stupid if you pay money for any form of electronic digital media when all of it can be pirated easily. This is the mentality of basically most of Asia with the exception of Japan and to a lesser extent Korea. I get your mentality though. The rules of US culture is basically fairness. It pervades the mentality of the country but you have to understand different games have different rules. For example in mafia the name of the game is to deceive everyone. Deception is therefore praised and you are proud if you win the game via deception. Just like how a simple game can flip a switch so can culture. China is playing mafia while the US is playing chess.

powerapple 6y ago
The reason you don't purchase games or movie or music is that you are poor. Your behaviour is mostly determined by your financial status. I am a Chinese, and I haven't used pirated software since I started my first job. Of course, some people cheat, I hope they are not proud about it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- neonological 6y ago
  No I pirate because it makes economic sense and also because I feel no shame in doing so. Neither do the chinese. Having money doesn't prevent people from picking lower prices options. The cultural attitude I talk about dominates most of the culture in china. You walk into shenzhen not only is software pirated but entire phones, products and hardware is pirated and sold publicly. It's completely normal in china. Not to mention many people are proud of their own businesses. Whatever your experience is I feel you're telling it from within some social strata that is largely different from the rest of china and this is only a minority opinion. Like the author I say this in the most non judgmental way possible.

webmaven 6y ago

> Not saying they couldn't develop an operating system; but the rest of the article did a pretty good job of explaining why they just wouldn't. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. If Google (or rather Danger) could have forked Android instead of creating a new operating system, they would have done that too. In fact, they did, in a sense, as Android uses the Linux kernel, after all. Sure, Google now actually is trying to create a new OS from scratch (Fuchsia), but it remains to be seen if it will be a success in the market (or if it will even ever be deployed in a commercial product). > If someone 'cheats', there is a pretty good chance that they also 'lie'. And enough with the cultural relativism. Some things people do are recognizably bad just at the human or even social animal level. I share your difficulty in wrapping your head around this idea, but a certain amount of cultural relativism is required here. And your own absolutism isn't a absolute as you think. Here is an exercise that may help: Why is cheating at poker considered, well, cheating, but bluffing (including deliberately faking tells, or other subterfuge) is not? If you say "bluffing is part of the game", try to understand that much of what is called 'cheating' is seen as part of the game in their context, and while getting caught cheating is cause for losing face, it isn't cause for feeling guilt. In fact, whoever is doing the catching is supposed to feel embarrassed for pointing it out, not self-righteous. > Even dogs get embarrassed by their own behavior, if they are caught out. Right. While the idea of 'Face' or shame is something that exists in Chinese culture, and is as powerful a force as guilt is in Western cultures, it doesn't work in the same way, and trying to guilt a Chinese person typically just shames them instead, and makes the shamer a target for anger and even revenge. This point perhaps could have been given more space in the essay. Aside: I think that this is part of what drives the 'social credit score' initiative: In a very real sense it is a system for measuring 'face', but there is never a 'shamer' that can be embarrassed or blamed.