3 ms·

I was trying to play the middle to make folks happy but in general I have zero respect for the industry of IP and really enjoy seeing what comes out of Chinese

I was trying to play the middle to make folks happy but in general I have zero respect for the industry of IP and really enjoy seeing what comes out of Chinese Shanzai culture. Rather than a handful of worse products protected by a copyright, the rapid pivoting by copying and improving has made a lot of cool tech. The nature of disrespecting copyrights also allows for niche products to be made for smaller consumer bases, compared to the focus group driven "jack of all trades master of none" products that you see when copyright is stronger. A few months back I was trying to reverse engineer a small Chinese bluetooth tx/rx device and found myself on the chinese side of the internet. I found many sites/blogs that only did teardowns of consumer devices, analyzing design choices, identifying and sharing datasheets normally kept behind NDAs, etc. These were datasheets of chinese origin mind you. The openness of information was refreshing because on the english internet, all I could find was press releases with pictures of young couples enjoying their individual bluetooth headphones. If you're a western engineer and want to make a bluetooth device, you're stuck with a handful of vendors who protect their IP to the extent it makes market research impossible. If you're a Chinese engineer, you've got a bunch of custom ready-to-go chips for various purposes. Yeah the range or quality wont be as good but design start to finish is far quicker.

mschuster91 3y ago
> Yeah the range or quality wont be as good but design start to finish is far quicker. The problem with this kind of China "gongkai" stuff is not just the quality but also sustainability. Fly-by-night operations that last a few months may produce innovative stuff indeed - but what value is it when you can't get spare parts or firmware fixes for security vulnerabilities? Or when you can't legally sell it anywhere in the developed world because no one has bothered with certifications? Or when shoddy li-ion batteries make it into the supply chain and suddenly it turns out a couple ten thousand units are effectively time bombs ticking to go off?
- MSFT_Edging 3y ago
  Sure, I think those concerns are real, but also not a "stop the presses" issue. American firms aren't all that concerned with sustainability beyond donations that are tax deductible. No firm wants to seriously end planned obsolescence aside from some indie companies like framework. I don't need a firmware fix for a 10 dollar bt adapter I cut to bits and soldered leads to traces. Better polish eventually comes from these innovations anyway.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    At least the EU is stepping up and actually mandating proper support durations for security firmware. And Apple's stuff at least is supported software-side for many years and, staingate/keyboardgate aside, the build quality is long-lasting as well.

mschuster91 3y ago

> Yeah the range or quality wont be as good but design start to finish is far quicker. The problem with this kind of China "gongkai" stuff is not just the quality but also sustainability. Fly-by-night operations that last a few months may produce innovative stuff indeed - but what value is it when you can't get spare parts or firmware fixes for security vulnerabilities? Or when you can't legally sell it anywhere in the developed world because no one has bothered with certifications? Or when shoddy li-ion batteries make it into the supply chain and suddenly it turns out a couple ten thousand units are effectively time bombs ticking to go off?

MSFT_Edging 3y ago
Sure, I think those concerns are real, but also not a "stop the presses" issue. American firms aren't all that concerned with sustainability beyond donations that are tax deductible. No firm wants to seriously end planned obsolescence aside from some indie companies like framework. I don't need a firmware fix for a 10 dollar bt adapter I cut to bits and soldered leads to traces. Better polish eventually comes from these innovations anyway.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  At least the EU is stepping up and actually mandating proper support durations for security firmware. And Apple's stuff at least is supported software-side for many years and, staingate/keyboardgate aside, the build quality is long-lasting as well.