OpenAI aren’t using their cloud directly, but have signed data center partnerships with them that are effectively huge amounts of debt not backed up with revenue. That’s all liability that Google doesn’t really have because they have revenue from other areas.
Back then they said Tehran will go out of water if there is no rain in coming weeks and it is raining in Tehran, now. Also they rationed water for a few weeks. Many regions of Tehran only had water during the night.
it's possible,but iphones are apple's flagship product. it would be disastrous for them. i don't think any government contract is worth the cost. They're not google or Microsoft, they're not that big in the enterprise side of things.
I'm sure if such a relationship became public,most Americans will forget about it in few weeks time and half will be surprised what the big deal is. But apple will lose out on Asia and Europe where it has solid competition. Their hardware is their bread-and-butter.
It is more plausible for the US government to have planted or extorted an asset working as a developer at apple than apple itself making such a monumentally foolish decision.
Google and Microsoft on the other hand, that I am fairly certain of.
But... i digress a bit, only because Tim Cook was kissing the proverbial king's ring a lot lately. donations are one thing, giving gold gifts in person and on national tv is another.
Tim Cook gifted trump a gold base with a glass plate on it like some peasant to a king in front of camers. Apple will bend over backwards to please governments so don't be surprised when it turns out not everything is as secure as claimed in their walled garden.
I'm not a particular fan of Apple but the gold thing seemed like a good, cheap way to get on Trump's good side, which led to them somehow magically avoiding tariffs.
I view it more as a ransom / hostage payment or a response to bullying. There was a threat of tariffs; I'm going to hold your business hostage. The ransom was paid and the tariffs weren't imposed.
I think a bribe is better defined as "you cannot have this thing you want, unless you give me this". A quid pro quo.
I guess it comes down to who the "active" party was.
I would definitely call it a bribe if Tim Cook was the one that asked to get special treatment or lower Tariffs than anyone else and the response was give me a "gift".
Even if you believe it was a bribe, the value of it was purely symbolic. What was given wasn't a change in policy, it was a material gift of zero value to anyone else except for scrap. Others that have been subjected to this behavior have given up things like changes in hiring practices and working with "non favored" organizations.
> the gold thing seemed like a good, cheap way to get on Trump's good side
Which, whilst morally repugnant, does make business sense - if Apple got hit by tariffs or other penalties, you can be sure the Carl Icahn style leeches would be popping out of the woodwork complaining that Tim Cook was ruining Apple / the share price / etc. and trying to orchestrate shareholder and/or board revolts.
(And Good Lord, imagine the threads on here if Apple's value dropped just because Tim Cook didn't give a hideous piece of tat to Trump.)
Active serving IDF are also employed by Apple? I know there’s a lot of ex-IDF people in Silicon Valley but since the IDF is mandatory all it means is ex-Israeli people. They could still be secretly working for the Mossad but that’s generally something you can claim true of all foreign nationals - they’re also possibly just normal people with talent and experience.
- Are you saying that you believe apple is picking someone who is a real wizz with css, but because of the country’s laws they had to serve with the IDF?
- Are you saying the formality of having to be a former of your previous employer, as part of taking on new employment is to be unexpected in any way?
I really don’t understand the questions and they bely an ignorance of things or are intentionally provocative (and not coherent) but I’ll try.
Firstly, the exploits in play would not be introduced by a “css whiz kid” first of all. Creating holes for rootkits like Pegasus requires deep low level expertise.
Secondly, AFAIK all the teams that would be involved on working on that are located in Cupertino - so these people had to relocate to the US.
But yes, I think finding anyone who was a child in Israel and didn’t serve in the IDF is very difficult. This is doubly-so for the tech sector since the IDF is often where they obtain their initial technical education and are serving between 18 and 21.
Unless you’re blanket just going to disallow recruiting from Israel or hiring people who moved from Israel to the US and might even be US citizens. But then you’re also going to have to explain why you’re applying this policy to Israelis and not Koreans, Singaporeans, Taiwanese, Norwegians, who have similar mandatory service requirements (plenty of countries do).
I’m not saying that Mossad don’t try to get their own secret agents working long term undercover in these places. But that’s also true of other secret services of enemies and allies alike and I would think they’re less likely to generate exploits intentionally and more likely to gather information and look for exploits by having access to source, documentation, and able to get information from peers. But Israelis having previously worked in the IDF doesn’t really provide any signal to me on the motivations or beliefs of that person.
> But Israelis having previously worked in the IDF doesn’t really provide any signal to me on the motivations or beliefs of that person
You know what, you’re absolutely right. But you’d be wrong if it turns out it’s not the general IDF we’re talking about, and specifically not one all Israelis have to serve. And that Google has all the good stuff.
But anyway I’m going to let you believe what you believe about a corporation that makes “donations” to a military, and I’m going to believe what I believe.
The phrase "someone inside Apple" doesn't really connote top leadership. To me at least it resonates more with "insider threat". If they meant it was corporate policy, they would have just said "Apple". And as you said it's rather implausible to start, so I don't know why that would be your first interpretation. :)
> I'm sure if such a relationship became public,most Americans will forget about it in few weeks time and half will be surprised what the big deal is. But apple will lose out on Asia and Europe where it has solid competition. Their hardware is their bread-and-butter.
Everyone is somewhat aware that their phone are not impermeable to government agencies and it doesn't matter, that's the case for Americans of course because they are well used to it, but also for Europeans.
If they were to purposely make 'mistake' to allow Israeli spying companies to compromise their phone, it most likely wouldn't change anything.
It wouldn't be disastrous. Most won't care. A lot of fanatic fans would buy an i-dildo if that was ever a thing and would say that it's the best thing ever.
It's spectacular how, when Israelis are involved, entire R&D organizations can suddenly become sinister cabals that operate in complete secrecy across ranks.
The mild response shouldn't surprise you. I think the majority of American consumers and developers use iOS and they have little to no problem with the highly controlled and monopolized system.
Apple controls ridiculous detail of your application and there are many developers who think that it is necessary for Apple to keep the high quality of iOS.
Actually I was shocked when one of my coworkers told me that it is a very good idea and Google should have done it sooner.
> I think the majority of American consumers and developers use iOS and they have little to no problem with the highly controlled and monopolized system.
Those users knew in advance what they were buying into, since Apple was honest about the nature of the platform they were offering for sale.
Google's Android customers, in contrast, were lied to -- and it's solely Google's fault that Google lied about Android being both open to running any software you like and open source.
Everyone should have spoken up when they first started moving necessary developer APIs into the Play Store.
> Google's Android customers, in contrast, were lied to
They were, but I think for most users this is a sort of technical lie that they don't really care about, like if a restaurant says you can choose one of these four side dishes and when you ask for the onion rings they say they're out. I'm often hair-raisingly stunned at how little concern, or even awareness, people have about issues of privacy and user control.
> Everyone should have spoken up when they first started moving necessary developer APIs into the Play Store.
No, people needed to speak up long before then. They needed to speak up as soon as the iOS/Android duopoly began to emerge, as soon as advertising began to shift to Facebook, as soon as brick-and-mortar video rental stores started to close, and a million other things like that. The issue is that we have allowed a small number of companies to control too much infrastructure that too many people depend on too much. With that power they will find a way to screw us. If it wasn't this it would have been something else, and if there are workarounds or walkbacks on this it will still be something else later. The only way forward is wholesale dismantling of the system that has led to this. Unfortunately a lot of people would rather have convenience.
> They needed to speak up as soon as the iOS/Android duopoly began to emerge
Android drove the other options out of the market because of Google's fraudulent marketing about giving users the freedom to run anything they liked and being open source.
The fraudulent marketing came first, and truly open Linux based options previously in development were the casualties.
> for most users this is a sort of technical lie that they don't really care about
People have been going on about Android being open and iOS being a closed walled garden for as long as both platforms have existed.
The excuse making about Android becoming a walled garden, so walled gardens are OK now started only after Google altered the bargain.
This is how the Islamic regime in Iran thinks. They argue that "you are free to say whatever you want and we are free to put you in jail and in some cases hang you".
Yes that's your reallity which is obviously different from mine.
One can list 70 years of "one time lone IDF soldier" war crimes. But I wouldn't waste time because you believe what you want to believe. Nothing can't change youe bias. You do not consider Pelastinians as humans.
In the early days of the Web, competition was intens in Search Engine market but eventually one of them won the competition and became the only viable option.
I expect this will happen to AI as well. In future only one AI company will dominate the market and people will have no choice but to use it.
I'm seeing quite a few people on this site recently talking about their Kagi subscriptions, claiming it is sufficiently better than Google to be worth the money.
You should expect quite a bit of novelty from the IMO, given the constraint of high school level curriculum. The problem setters work very hard to avoid problems that are variations of other contests or solvable by routine methods. That's why this is a very exciting result--you can't just regurgitate homework problem solutions to get a high score at the IMO.
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