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Comment by aptidude187 | Hacker News Reader

As an Apple fanboy, I feel deeply conflicted to find Apple on the list and also Tim's approval & visit to one of the factories exploiting forced labor. I feel like a hypocrite, who supports human rights abuses through forced labour.

All the years I stubbornly rejected my friend's and colleague's criticism from the open source & linux community for being eccentric and making 'exaggerated' arguments, but now I am so deeply engrossed in the Apply ecosystem, that I fear a switch to some linux distribution would be unmanageable for me.

Ironically I feel like a slave of Apple myself. What could I do tho? Switch to some other brand and then find out, that they operate with the same unethical behaviour!? I'm just deeply conflicted.

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We need laws that prevent this stuff. If you avoid all companies that have connections with China then not many will be left to choose from. From a company’s point of view it’s also difficult to compete with others who deal with China.

It’s similar to environmental rules. A single company can’t do much as long as it’s possible for others to keep polluting and be cheaper that way.

One of government’s tasks is to level the playing field so everybody can compete while following the same rules. Same thing for workplace safety, child labor and a ton of other things. We need rules for acceptable standards

And yet there are at least some options of companies doing the right thing, or trying to do so. See Fairphone and Shiftphone for examples.

Totally agree. But that comes at the expense of profit. Big public companies who claim they are there only to make money for shareholders won’t do that.

Which is sickening. We need some sort of heavy handed regulation that stipulates that labor up and down the supply chain of a given American company conforms to American labor protections. We also need this regulation to be backed by consequence which would directly harm the lives of those individuals who directly decide to eschew these regulations.

I think we can stand to hold executives far more accountable for them deciding to commit human rights abuses via casual email or shareholder memo, some 3000 miles out of sight and out of mind from the crimes themselves.

These sort of regulations would be very painful for the economy in the near term, but far less painful than continuing the status quo for those being abused.

“These sort of regulations would be very painful for the economy in the near term, “

I am not even sure about that. Companies would adapt very quickly. That’s what they are good at.

You wouldn't think that if you listened to what these neocons have been preaching as scripture for the past 50 years...

You have a very nuanced and insightful perspective, thank you for educating and sharing!

i sure hope thats sarcasm. he just threw out random thoughts with no actual way to achieve anything. laws cant actually to force multinational companies to do anything. how would they be enforced after all?

you'd first need a world government for any laws to apply. and no chance of that happening within the foreseeable future.

You can force multinational corporations to do things by not allowing them into your own market if they don’t follow certain rules. The US does it all the time, so does Europe.

> The US does it all the time, so does Europe.

Please give me an example of a corporation getting serious issues from any government for actions they took on foreign soil.

Companies have got into trouble for violating sanctions. There are plenty of examples for that.

GDPR is a huge one every user of this site should know.

GDPR is a law, not a corporation and is a recent attempt at enforcing something, and spectacularly failed at that.

Almost all eu-foreign enterprises ignore it entirely or don't actually adhere to it, even after showing a big pop-up claiming they do.

And the multinational corporations just started to hide their tracking better. For an obvious example: chrome includes a 24 bit unique identifier per installation to track you and instead of saving your PII they just build a nrr to "predict" them. Such a success, indeed.

What’s your exact point? Are you trying to say that laws don’t work and nothing can be done so it shouldn’t be tried? I don’t understand what you are trying to say.

Turkey can’t enter the EU because it doesn’t meet the EU’s standard for human rights. Standards work.

Turkey isnt a multinational corporation in case you didn't notice.

Nor did they change because of it, so your point makes no sense whatsoever

What kind of law will help? A law that forbids trade with bad states?

Shopping will be hard after that ...

I'm sure things were a little rocky for the cotton industry in 1865 too...

Exactly that law.

Alright, but you know, that quite some people would add the US to that list, too?

You know, private operated prisons, starting wars, torturing, kidnapping, dronestriking around the world called "extrajucidal killing" etc. etc. etc.

This world is not a simple one, so I doubt simple laws can change basic flaws.

> Alright, but you know, that quite some people would add the US to that list, too?

> You know, private operated prisons, starting wars, torturing, kidnapping, dronestriking around the world called "extrajucidal killing" etc. etc. etc.

Sure, and you know what? If that were ever the justification for trade restrictions with the US, it’d be well deserved.

I’d prefer if we as a country took the moral high ground, but in the absence of that, some pressure from outside could be a good thing.

Hm. But pressure from whom?

Russia, india, brasil, pakistan? Probably not ...

The EU? Well, we have for example this glorious law that mainly because of the holocaust, we don't kick people out who come asking for help and have no other safe place to go. But since we don't actually want them, we pay and support other dictators and warlords to keep them away from us, so they cannot ask for help in the first place and we punish people who rescue those wrong people from drowning, when they dare to take them to a safe place where they ask for help.

So who is left?

Switzerland? Maybe, but they for example had never a problem with taking all the dirty money and doing buusness with anyone, as long as its money.

This world is not black and white, but yeah, there surely are places which are a lot darker and if we believe to be in a lighter place, we can't feel superior if our wealth is based on those very dark places.

Maybe just don't buy any new hardware until/unless Apple addresses this. I expect that most of the forced labor goes towards hardware production, and I don't think that continuing to use Apple software makes you (any more) complicit.

Purchasing used devices also good for ecology and don't support Apple/another vendor directly.

Yes, I do that myself! Might still make you complicit (edit: People may be more likely to buy Apple hardware if there's a stronger used market for them) to some extent, but less so, I guess.

Thank you for your constructive input, this sounds very reasonable. I'll try to keep that in mind and will try to desist buying new hardware until Apple addresses this.

Wow... you're really epitomizing the notion of 1st World problems here.

If you're really that moved (and you really shouldn't be surprised after the Foxconn reveal), get a Pinebook and start playing with Linux Mint and go from there. Support Open hardware and Open source software on the side while still working with your old hardware until you realize that at this point the Linux ecosystem and its various distros can do just about everything Windows and Mac could, this isn't the 90s anymore.

I will say, though that if you do video editing that can be a hard one as even I still revert back to a Windows box for that, unfortunately. And I went all-in on Linux after XP in 2004ish.

I'll check out the Pinebook and Linux Mint, thank you for the concrete suggestions!

> at this point the Linux ecosystem and its various distros can do just about everything Windows and Mac could, this isn't the 90s anymore.

That's good to hear! I used Ubuntu in University for a short while and it seemed quite well developed, the problem was that I was bound to some tools that were only available on Windows/Mac, such that I couldn't adopt it as my main OS. Anyways I appreciate your constructive input, thanks.

You could always dual boot Windows if it's critical. You don't need a registration for windows 10. All it will do is put up a little disclaimer in the bottom right corner and occasionally nag you, but otherwise there is no reason to pay for Windows anymore.

"the Linux ecosystem and its various distros can do just about everything Windows and Mac could."

Can you please stop spreading that myth? It is wrong, wrong, wrong. It will just lead to false expectations and then disappointment with linux.

It is not only video-editing. What about audio? Qubase or FL studio? Nope. I like audacity, too. But it is not at all in the same league.

Photoshop? No, gimp is not equal.

And countless other professional software no one bothered to write linux versions, but quite some people need for their work.

And how about driver support on laptops? It is a fckn* gamble and you are allmost allways worse with linux on a laptop, than with the windows drivers. I wish it would be different, than I could dump my chromebook for a real linux laptop that satisfy my use case (small, light, long batterie, no standby hickups)

So yes, we need more people in open source software and hardware to change that for the better, but that won't work with false promises.

Why do you think pinebook wouldn’t be subject to the same slave labor? Isn’t it manufactured in china?

> Why do you think pinebook wouldn’t be subject to the same slave labor? Isn’t it manufactured in china?

'all devices are manufactured and sold by Pine Microsystems Inc. based in Fremont, California. Its founder is TL Lim, the inventor of the PopBox and Popcorn Hour series of media players sold under the Syabas and Cloud Media brands'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Microsystems

It's impossible to make $200 laptops in small batches in US. They really don't like mentioning it tho.

https://www.pine64.org/2020/01/15/pinephones-start-shipping-... - it's about phones, but I believe laptops are produced there too.

> It's impossible to make $200 laptops in small batches in US. They really don't like mentioning it tho.

What? They state they do not make a profit from the sale of these devices on their storefront when you're ordering one, and are probably doing so at a loss to promote the ideology behind open source hardware/software.

But, your claim is mere speculation until you definitively can prove otherwise, and it seems that the phone is the device limited to HK production: not China. And, yes, there is a difference.

https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=8956&page=4

Update: From what I have been able to gather is that the single board computer itself is made in China, the assembly of the finished products like the Pinebook laptop are in CA. The phone, however, may likely be made in the mainland if I read that correctly (its late), which while slightly disappointing is not really a surprise. They're in HK awaiting shipping to Pine US.

https://www.pine64.org/2020/02/15/february-update-post-cny-a...

In your first link, in first post OP says that pine gear is produced in mainland china.

> Factories [in China] producing the PinePhone, PineTab and Pinebook Pro remain closed because they need to undergo a long and complicated procedure that will allow them to resume operation...

I found the confirmation I was looking for; 'gear' was an ambigious term that related to the internal components to these devices, I had read in previous posts that these were made in Fremont as well as the wiki.

However, after another screening of the update it seems that the Pinebook pro is in fact made on the Mainland as its been the cause for the delay in new pre-orders.

You could just buy used gear. Apple doesn't benefit from that purchase.

Better to buy something that's already in existence in the local area where you live, than some new product from some supposedly ethical company that also requires turning natural resources into unrecyclable material via dirty energy and the generation of toxic waste.

The resale market props up Apple retaiy prices and profits.

In what way?

advocate for policies that will return manufacturing to domestic factories

The demise of american manufacturing happened in lock step with environmental regulations. Turns out the only way to have a profitable manufacturing operation is to hire cheap and dump your waste into the water supply, as was done in every single industrialized american city.

Maybe we should figure out how we focus less on making the most profit every quarter and more on how to establish sustainable industries that aren't going to look very profitable at all, and know that this lack of exponential profit isn't a bad thing. Advocating for a return of manufacturing is fruitless without this understanding coming to the business world first, and the only way to learn a lesson like this is to hold abusers of labor and the environment personally responsible.

Calculate the environmental damage, calculate the damage to quality of life, and put the bill right on the executive who oversaw this behavior. Putting it on the company lets executives like this walk off scott-free to their next executive position while the company bankrupts and the working class involved with the company loose their livelihood; lessons aren't learned by going after companies. We have to hold executives directly accountable for their direct decision making.

Fantastic actionable advice, I heard that they assembled the trash can mac pro in Austin, Texas. Unfortunately not any longer tho, if I am not mistaken. Thank you for your advice!

Out of the frying pan and into the fire? With it's wars causing the deaths of millions in the middle east and its excessive imprisonment of people for using near-harmless drugs, maybe the US is worse than China on human rights.

I am sorry you were downvoted. What you need to understand is that unlike China, the US spreads freedom. In the last two decades we have brought freedom to Afghanistan and Iraq.

It's far from limited to one company (or even one country). We can't even have oatmeal at this point without it.

https://www.ranker.com/list/companies-in-the-united-states-t...

https://www.vox.com/2018/8/24/17768438/national-prison-strik...

Next time you buy a phone, consider a different brand. That's about all you can do.

> Switch to some other brand and then find out, that they operate with the same unethical behaviour!?

If you know that Person A has done a misdeed, that doesn't necessarily mean that Persons B and C have done the same thing.

No need to dump all your devices in the trash. But look into a small transition whenever the door opens - eg when your iPhone breaks get a Fairphone or similar. When you tablet breaks maybe Shift has a new tablet out, etc. It's hard when you make it all or nothing - easy when you just go with the flow.

Or buy your iphones used from craigslist, and ride your bike to the sale. That way you aren't contributing to further polluting the worlds oceans and the port of Los Angeles when the shipping container with your fairphone is received by the longshoreman.

This is why I apply a personal philosophy of "separation of powers" when it comes to browsers, operating systems and their ecosystems.

If you're an American paying taxes, you're already a hypocrite for funding their international wars. Either accept that you're the baddie and enjoy life, or actually stop being the baddie even if you have to make huge sacrifices far beyond choice of consumer product brands. But you don't get to have it both ways being virtuous while selfishly doing harm.

I hear your pain but the average American citizen has no say or control over the war machine and many are actually against it. It's also not as easy as "stop paying your taxes" unless you're willing to give up being part of society and live as a social outcast (best case) or be taken to court and ruin yourself. Not paying taxes is only possible if you're already part of the system that made you. US citizens also are taxed on their income even they decide to live outside the US, so there is no escape for them if they disagree (and who would denounce their citizenship unless they're asylum seekers or political refugees). Don't hate the player, hate the game as they say.

I'll give you the answer I gave to myself and my apple-loving friends since 2015, grab yourself a dell(the xps ones are really nice, but I like a cheap laptop, so I went with a latitude e7280), then hackintosh it. It's a bit buggy, but that's better than having a company which is all but cooperative with repairs, constantly abuses human rights and makes laptops which break easily.

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