radarthekat

avon b7 said:

anantksundaram said:

avon b7 said:

anantksundaram said:

Al_ien1 said:

The US has been doing the same thing for decades. There is a Foriegn Technology Division in WPAFB in Ohio whose purpose is to reverse engineer Foriegn Technology! China has invested untold Billions of dollars in technology while the US has SPENT untold Billions on the military. If America had created the 5G technology first they would be pushing it to countries around the world (for spying as well ) and no one would have heard of Huawei. 

OK, you China trolls that are showing up in spades. Here's a simple question that I invite any one of you to answer: Name one -- not two, not three, not four, just one -- product or service created/innovated by China in the past, let's say, three decades that has become a global product or service. I dare you to name one.

I'll wait.

That reminded me of the 'what have the Romans ever done for us?' in the Life of Brian. LOL.

But if we are ignoring what the Chinese gave to the world centuries ago and limiting scope to the last few decades, I'd say China is leading the way in technologies related to facial recognition and exporting them with success but what is perhaps more noteworthy is the progess it has made in innovation and technology during the last 30 years:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w22854.pdf [.pdf]

And I suppose Chow Mein doesn't count ;-)

Joking apart, let's not forget that Huawei is going to be a major player in 5G and everything associated with the technologies that branch out from it.

Ah, I knew that ridiculous stuff like centuries old "chow mein" -- heck, I'll even grant you paper, porcelain, and gunpowder -- would be trotted out.

The only example you can come up with is a yet-to-be proven "..leading the way in in technologies related to facial recognition and exporting them with success...." How exactly are they leading the way except in building the surveillance state? Who are the companies doing this? What are their revenues? To whom are they exporting? What is the value of their exports? How does it compare with their $500B in Chinese exports to the US of other stuff that the rest of the world created or innovated?

Btw, do you know who came up with facial recognition technology, and where? (Hint: It's not China).

That's all you can come up with?! Did China come up with.... let me throw out a few random things from just the last 30 or so years... Laptops? Email? E-commerce? Search? Social networking? GUI? MRI? Flash memory? Lasers? Robotic surgery? DNA testing? RFID? Barcodes? Stents? Smartphones? Tablets? Biofuels? ATMs? LEDs? LCDs? GPS? Large scale wind turbines? PV cells? Digital photography?

If you go back a bit more, did China come up with world-changing things like Airplanes? Fiber optics? Internet? Software/programming languages? Automobiles? The internal combustion engine? Rockets? Satellites? Penicillin? The germ theory of disease? Open heart surgery? Semiconductors? Want me to go on? Want 20 more such examples? 50 more? 100 more?

Name ONE innovation from China -- OK, I'll expand it to the last 100 years -- that's in the same league as any of these. ONE. (I don't wish to single out China -- I'll take any Asian country as an example in the same league of innovative ability, if you can provide it).

Pathetic... please just slink away...

As I said, what is far more important is how they have progressed and where they might be heading over the coming decades. The document I linked to is quite informative. Especially the section on patents

Facial recognition technology is not something people want to speak openly about but Chinese tech is currently in testing or being used around the world in both the public and private sector. HiSilicon is also developing (well it has already deployed) custom AI silicon to advance the technology even further.

Facial recognition wasn't the only thing I mentioned. I also mentioned 5G and the possible developments arising from that.

You don’t even know that the correct term is Face Recognition.  Google a bit to discover how the huge body of technical research papers (hundreds of them) use the terms.  

FACIAL recognition is not FACE recognition.  It can be used as a step in a face recognition process, but facial recognition is simply the process of identifying each feature of a face; eyes, nose, mouth, smiling, frowning, etc, but not used to determine whose face it is.

Facial recognition returns the result, here is the mouth and it is smiling, which is useful to map that feature onto the face of an avatar or game character, or useful in mapping an overlay onto the person's actual face, ala Memoji.  But facial recognition does NOT return the result, 'this is Phil Schiller's face.'  That biometric identification step is done by a method called face recognition.  I know, I know, they sound the same.  But facial recognition and face recognition, and face detection, are all three different things:

Face recognition is the term used to describe the process of identifying a specific person, such as from a database of known persons (no fly list, for example).  This is face recognition.

There's also face detection, which is the process of detecting a human face, or faces, within a scene.  This is typically a precursor to application of face recognition algorithms.

Then there's facial recognition, which is the process of detecting specific facial expressions (smiling, frowning, sadness, etc).  This term is often used in the medical world to characterize specific inabilities of patients to recognize meaning in human faces.  Or, I suppose, one could use the term facial recognition to mean the detection of someone who has recently come from a spa treatment appointment.  (Kidding.)

And now you know the reason Apple calls the feature Face ID, and not Facial ID.

And by the way, if you want to know the origins, they date back to the 70s and 80s.  My own brother filed a patent advancing face recognition as part of his Master thesis, applying blurring techniques and Fourier transforms that today are still used in the implementation of the function. 

DAalseth said:

tbornot said:

President Trump said the stock correction was a gift for those wanting to buy.  Correct again!

I come here to get away from political BS.

That particular comment isn’t specifically political.   Some people don’t like Warren Buffett’s politics, but his opinions are mentioned often.  And he’s often correct.  

AppleExposed said:

Cool. I thought of a better idea that I may send to Apple. Wonder if Cook will read it?

Might as well tell the ideas:

1. AirPower with a rechargeable battery. So you can disconnect it, slip it in your suitcase/purse/whatever and charge anywhere on the go!

2. Rename it: AirPad.

A standard wired charging solution, like that used today to charge iPhones, iPads and MacBooks contains within the power brick a step down transformer, along with AC to DC conversion and other power management circuitry.  Transformers and AC to DC conversion circuitry are not 100% efficient, resulting in losses, in the form of heat.  But direct [wired] charging is going to likely remain the most efficient because there’s only that one step in getting power from the source to the device.

Wireless [inductive] charging, like any Qi charging pad, and Apple’s AirPower, will still come with a brick that plugs into a wall socket, to step down the voltage and manage the power against spikes, but it also adds another step, the transfer of power between the pad and the device, via inductive coupling.  This adds loss to the process, as magnetic fields spread out in all directions, and the device being charged intersects only part of the magnetic field.  I’m imagining Apple, with its environmental bent, is already sensitive to this issue.  

Note that the power brick in this case will perform a different function versus a standard iPhone or iPad power brick.  It will provide an AC output rather than a DC output, because that’s what the inductive charging coil needs, and this is more efficient circuitry versus that found in an iPhone or iPad power brick.

A portable, rechargeable AirPower charging pad would re-introduce the less efficient AC to DC power brick, to charge the unit’s battery, and then add yet another layer of power loss, in the form of a DC to AC inverter needed to convert the DC power from its internal battery back to AC needed to oscillate the magnetic field generated by the pad’s charging coil. The best type of inverter is one that generates a near pure sine wave.  These inverters are efficient, up to 90-96%, but they are also a relatively expensive component, especially those that generate the most pure sine waves, which I think you’d want for driving an inductive charging coil.  So both additional power loss steps and added cost may be a concern for Apple when considering a portable AirPower pad.  

davidmalcolm said:

On the one hand this would be really cool to own. On the other hand, I already bought a bunch of cheap qi chargers. (Though unfortunately they have stupid LEDs in them that are blinding and seem to be locked away inside a device that’s glued together so I can’t tape them over. 

This is is a cool accessory and maybe after I have AirPods with the wireless case and after they add iPad support it might be worth it. 

For it now though, I think there isn’t much that this can do that a few cheaper chargers can’t do. 

Borrow your wife’s/girlfriend’s darkest nail polish.  Dab a bit on those LEDs

saltyzip said:

Apple screws suppliers, all big companies do it to some extent, some are just more aggressive than other. Supermarkets push milk farmers to the point they can hardly make any money. Apple killed GT advanced technologies because it couldn't meet apples demands, screwed some other imaging company to although forgot the name.

Apple is a super aggressive greedy bully, will do whatever it takes to keep generating its billions. Remember they were going super nuclear on android, well that worked out well for them, they lost that war. Apple now trying to screw over Qualcomm, because all they are thinking about is their share price and retaining their ridiculous profit margins.

Here’s the story on GT Advanced Technology, as told from an investor’s perspective...

GT Advanced Technologies (GTAT), a maker of solar manufacturing equipment, is an example of a speculative bet, and one that went terribly wrong for those who made that bet.  In 2012 and 2013, GTAT saw its solar business collapse under the weight of competition from Chinese manufacturers.  Late in 2013, GTAT partnered with Apple to manufacture sapphire display glass, presumably for use on the iPhone 6.  GTAT needed that partnership to go well; it represented GTAT’s lifeline to a corporate reboot, a chance to reinvent itself in a new line of business in which it had little experience.  That reinvention, if successful, would materially enhance the value of the company.  If a failure, it would mark the collapse of GTAT as a viable business.  GTAT did fail, and filed for bankruptcy protection.  In the process, the share price went from a high of about $20 to about 40 cents.  Many of those holding the shares indignantly complained in online forums that their investment was wiped out by unscrupulous actions of GTAT's CEO and management team.  They weren’t wrong about the actions of GTAT’s management, but they were wrong in characterizing their GTAT holdings as an investment.  These people were speculating and paid a high price.

———

Part of the story is how the CEO of GTAT failed to give timely public disclosure of material adverse changes in the business, while he and other insiders were selling their own shares at prices in the $teens.  The stock quickly collapsed to about 40 cents after the iPhone 6/6+ Keynote spoke of ion strengthened glass, but not Sapphire (sapphire was used only for the camera lens cover).  But you, apparently, and others at that time, would have us believe it was Apple’s intend to collapse GTAT, against any logical reason to do so and in full light of the actions of GTAT’s own CEO.  You see a CEO who seemingly shafted his shareholders and still you believe he was the innocent victim.  The Apple blame game was strong with that crowd.