Miscellaneous News

zbb said:

A DPP MP screams "why you want to be Chinese dogs" at Pan-Blue MPs when a reporter points out the writing on her jacket about loving Taiwan is written in Simplified Chinese and likely purchased from Taobao.

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Several presidential terms ago, as acting speaker of the legislative, this Qiu person rushed through passing bills by pretending not to hear opposing MPs during the readings. She'd ask "any disgreement on clause XYZ of blah blah bill?" KMT MPs would scream "we disagree, we want to debate", she'd pretended not to hear, struck her speaker's gavel and said "passed!"

Taiwan democracy is a joke.

Bellum_Romanum said:

New Demand and Filing from a leading U.S. Think Tank arguing for the banning of any Chinese made displays in the U.S. both for the interest of National Security and Economic development. China is guilty of massive IP THEFT as an example Samsung has won a court cases in South Korea that support the accusations of tech stealing.

Chinese display producers have also benefited from extensive foreign IP theft. In July 2023, Korea’s Supreme Court found executives and employees of Toptec, a key input supplier to the display industry, guilty of leaking key technological assets to BOE. In July 2024, a former Samsung engineer was sentenced to six years in a South Korean prison for leaking $24.5 million worth of display technology secrets to China.3 And now, the ITC’s administrative law judge has determined that certain Chinese displays infringe Samsung Display’s U.S. patents relating to innovations in active matrix organic light-emitting diode (“AMOLED”) display technology.

The rest of the report can be read here:

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Laughable stuff. Too many publications, I did not find the one you are citing.

The main thing I want to say, patents are not proof of "innovation" due to the convoluted IP protection system of the US. Being found guilty of infringement is also not "proof" of IP theft.
If you can obtain a patent for something sufficiently broad like "biologic-reactor based process for production of compost" in the US, you are going to sue anything that can take a dump. That is how the system works. You have entire entities created by rich lawyers that buy patents from bankrupt companies and try to sue people/companies. That is not innovation.

If you invent a robot that can clean an average 2 storey house in 20 minutes using an innovative system of springs to traverse the stairs, you're going to be sued by whatever company holds the rights of the Slinky toy and possibly lose the case.

If anyone has truly been keeping up, Chinese companies avoid outright infringement and theft nowadays. Most are strictly commercial entities and are not stupid. They know if they want to export a high-tech product globally, IP law violations will expose them to liability. In addition, they know that licensing out IP can be an equally lucrative revenue stream.

If the stakes are high enough, any company is willing to skirt legality. Look at something far more pedestrian like Airbnb. It operates basically illegally in many cities, but they don't care.

So yea, I guess Iran is just waiting to be the last piece.

Some information about Apple's upcoming M5 chip series.

quim said:

In Iraq, the US invaded the territory with ease, but were unable to win, so they reached a stalemate and today the US continues to have military bases controlling territories in Iraq, sharing the territory with the Shiite government. It's a stalemate in every sense.

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I guess the British and French invasion of Canada is also a stalemate because the First Nations (natives) still control land (Native Reserves).

Bellum_Romanum said:

New Demand and Filing from a leading U.S. Think Tank arguing for the banning of any Chinese made displays in the U.S. both for the interest of National Security and Economic development. China is guilty of massive IP THEFT as an example Samsung has won a court cases in South Korea that support the accusations of tech stealing.

Chinese display producers have also benefited from extensive foreign IP theft. In July 2023, Korea’s Supreme Court found executives and employees of Toptec, a key input supplier to the display industry, guilty of leaking key technological assets to BOE. In July 2024, a former Samsung engineer was sentenced to six years in a South Korean prison for leaking $24.5 million worth of display technology secrets to China.3 And now, the ITC’s administrative law judge has determined that certain Chinese displays infringe Samsung Display’s U.S. patents relating to innovations in active matrix organic light-emitting diode (“AMOLED”) display technology.

The rest of the report can be read here:

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I found the paper you are looking at
It is specifically referencing BOE and (mobile) AMOLED displays.
This is pretty hilarious...

First he mentions BOE receives heavy government subsidies, 3.9b over 11 years, this allowed it to become a top manufacturer of AMOLED panels.
Foxconn received a subsidy of 3 billion originally to manufacture display panels in Wisconsin and has done basically nothing in six years.
Maybe we should ask how BOE can do so much more with almost the same amount of support?

This guy also talks about how Chinese companies drove Japanese companies out of business. This is simply not true. It was the Koreans that killed the Japanese companies. They put all their eggs into the LCD basket and were able to drive the price down and put the Japanese out of business. The final coup de grace was delivered by Apple when they stopped buying iPhone LCDs from JDI (Japan Display Inc.) and went with Samsung OLED. In the early 2000's, Sony still wanted to produce the profitable CRT Trinitron (Discontinued only in 2004), Pioneer and Panasonic wanted to produce Plasma displays (too hot, too prone to burn in, too thick and heavy). In addition, Taiwan companies were also on the rise (Chi-Mei, AUO).

He also quotes John Moolenaar, a congressman on the "Select committee on the CCP". I don't need to get into detail about how useless these kinds of congressional committees are. Perhaps abolish all the congressional committees and use that money saved to subsidize flat panel manufacturing...

There is more nonsense (FBI investigations on Chinese nationals, because they are definitely not racially motivated at all...), but I think those are the meatier ones.

coolgod said:

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1871355273404883195

So yea, I guess Iran is just waiting to be the last piece.

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If Iran gets couped, that's a pretty big loss for China and Russia.

Not too concerned about external war destabilizing Iran but rather internal conflict. Seems to be moderate risk in Iran.

They need to stabilize their internal situation asap.

I guess there are enough hardliners in Irma to hold the line for now.

The electric shortages are also blamed on the new liberal president by the hardliners.

We will see how that goes and whether Houthis buckle this time around. They survived in the past. Likely will survive in the future.

MortyandRick said:

If Iran gets couped, that's a pretty big loss for China and Russia.

Not too concerned about external war destabilizing Iran but rather internal conflict. Seems to be moderate risk in Iran.

They need to stabilize their internal situation asap.

I guess there are enough hardliners in Irma to hold the line for now.

The electric shortages are also blamed on the new liberal president by the hardliners.

We will see how that goes and whether Houthis buckle this time around. They survived in the past. Likely will survive in the future.

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Who knows what will happen after Khamenei though. Is Iran just waiting for China to finish reunification? What if the US just drops Taiwan without a fight, then maybe they would focus their attention back to the middle east knowing the west pacific is lost.

gadgetcool5 said:

Iran faces energy shortage as factories, schools, govt offices close​

Iran is now facing a major energy crisis that is forcing schools, government offices, and factories to shutter and cutting power and heating to ordinary Iranians. The New York Times (NYT) reported on 22 December that the Islamic Republic has found itself in a “full blown energy emergency” coinciding with recent regional setbacks.

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Very bad news for Iran, which does not have the capability to transport its own presidents in helicopters newer than 1970s American models that crash, or to repair its own pipelines that get blown up by Israel. People have talked of a "China-Russia-Iran" alliance, but if China really wants an alliance with Iran, it is going to have to step up and provide money for Iran to invest and do things like repair its pipelines & restore its power generation capacity. Remember, it was economic stagnation that killed Assad's popularity and led no one to be willing to fight for him. The Iranian government may also be toppled unless its economy can turn around. And if Iran falls and is replaced by a pro-American government, China's geopolitical status in the region will be badly weakened.

Also, it sends a terrible message to the entire world when countries that get sanctioned by the Americans keep falling into an economic abyss. It tells everyone to stay in line for fear of being sanctioned.

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Except Iran has a better economy on per capita basis than Pakistan and India, who are both to some extent darlings of the west.

There is no objective indication that US sanctioning someone really affects their economy on a macro scale. It's the same as with EU, the economy is doing badly due to several geopolitical factors but non-UN sanctions are probably not really a measurable part of that, or at least very premature to draw the conclusions that it is.

The reason Iran does worse than China/East Europe is more likely that it's just not an efficient government system to have religious leaders running the show. China even warned these various Muslim guys with their actions in Xinjiang that they do not consider Islamic led politics valid.

Countries who adopt a para-socialist/state led economy structure have been the big economic winners in the last 20 years (China, Russia, Japan, SK). Various types of oligarchies have been able to keep their living standard roughly the same unless they come under pressure (EU, US, Brazil, Argentina etc). Then further below that are various types of fundamentalists like Iran, Turkey. Then even further below are corrupt 3rd world basket cases.

There's a reason China's approach in the middle east is focused on Saudi first, because a personalistic dictatorship is easier to reform than the religious/conservative cluster fuck that is Iran. Ultimately the goal for China in the region is to control the resource supply and shipping routes. What US did wrong when trying at the same goal is that they didn't work on the people, they just used violence or bribes on the leaders. A succesful middle eastern policy must include reform away from the negative tendencies of the region, opening up those nations to economic improvement. Otherwise China will just be thrown out at a later date like US is being.

coolgod said:

Who knows what will happen after Khamenei though. Is Iran just waiting for China to finish reunification? What if the US just drops Taiwan without a fight, then maybe they would focus their attention back to the middle east knowing the west pacific is lost.

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You do know that Khomeini and Khamenei are two different people.