Wait I'm confused I was told that it was China that's stealing US tech? 🤔

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/21/why-us-companies-struggle-to-replicate-chinas-wechat-super-app-.html

103 comments

Hot take: Even if China did "steal" technology from the US, who cares? Why are we defending US corporations all of a sudden? You don't think they haven't done their fair share of stealing? In fact, I don't care if US companies stole tech from China or any country stealing tech from any other country. All competition benefits us peasants in the end, and you, fellow nobody who's probably not a Fortune 500 CEO, are not the one being stolen from. China making something with alleged US technology will not deprive US citizens of said technology. And get this, if China "steals" your tech to build something better than you have now, you can then "steal" their improvements right back, because "stealing" or more formally, copying of technology is an ancient phenomenon that only started being vilified with the copyright and patent era. People have openly copied each other's innovations for the vast majority of human history, and the most important inventions of the human race have arisen from people copying other people's ideas and building on them. Imagine how ridiculous it would be if China was able to patent their invention of paper, or the compass, or gunpowder, and prevented Europe from "stealing" those technologies. Imagine if Ancient Greece patented bronze and successfully prevented the technology from proliferating into a brand new era of humanity. The second person to figure out fire probably watched the first person behind their back.
- Indeed, the whole narrative of China stealing is rooted in a racist narrative that aims to dismiss the technological progress that China is making.

We’re all sick of the dozens of apps on our phones
That day when I realised I'm not part of "we all".
Do I really need my calculator to have maps function?
- Yeah, also, how does that make any sense? How is it better to have dozens of apps but inside a super app instead of directly in your app drawer?
  
  Because the owner of the overarching app will make more money and have more control. Don't you want that for them? /s
  
  Yeah, that's like app drawer inside an app drawer lol.
- Do I really need my calculator to have maps function?
  Might wanna check where you got that app, then

@yogthos "Super App" never made sense to me either. It's just an operating system and a dozen apps in a trenchcoat.
- It's about integration, the amount of actions it takes to do something in a single app is vastly reduced compared to having to juggle multiple apps. For example, you want to go out for food with your friends. With WeChat, you can message your friends, find a restaurant on the map, book it, etc. all completely seamlessly. This is a really good video explaining the benefits https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSMFnJnY7EA
  
  So, similar to Emacs?
  
  You're literally just describing apps that have open APIs and can integrate with each other.
  That used to be the norm here too. The problem is entirely one of capitalism encouraging anti-competitive walled gardens.
  
  Same thing you can do in the Google app ecosystem, but in that case we say 'hey maybe I don't want this company to know everything about me, my plans, and what I like'.
  
  @yogthos I'll give it a watch. Regardless, a good operating system should be capable of such seamless integration. That's why "Super apps" are an operating system in a trenchcoat.
  
  Have you ever tried to use one of those superapps? It's still a clunky experience overburdened with dozens of useless UI elements eating up screen estate of what I actually care about, and then whenever I wanted to do something for which there's no sub-app in the super-app it would be difficult due to lack of integrations with "the outside". That's even before we question the idea of putting all the ~~eggs~~ functionality in one ~~basket~~ centralized app with one developer entity, allowing them to ultimately control all aspects of one's online life.
  And more philosophically, I'm surprised that as a functional dev you prefer one big tightly coupled combine to a collection of small but useful on their own utilities lightly coupled to produce more than the sum of their parts.

I have been working in tech since 1995. The one constant in the industry is that everyone is stealing everything all the time.
- Well, that's the magic of open source 🤷

The "struggle" is because Apple and Google refuse to do so as they built the platform to give themselves priority.
One can trivially do so on a Linux phone, e.g. PinePhone with PostMarketOS.
Source: I did it. Plenty of others do through the usual ways, e.g. pipe in the console but also with things like https://sxmo.org/docs/user/sxmo.7.html#HOOKS
- In my opinion the whole notion of coupling the UI to the API was a step in the wrong direction. It makes it effectively impossible to compose apps the way you can compose command line utils with piping. Apps should be designed as client/server by default, and then you could always leverage the service API for the app any way you want, slap a custom UI, use it in automation scripts, etc. It's just way more flexible that way.
  
  Some apps are still done this way, e.g. transmission the BitTorrent client, but also ALL self-hosted Web apps. Sure it might feel a bit much to install containers on your phone "just" for that, or having to go through REST API despite being on the same actual device, but still it provides a TON of app.
  Anyway, yes I agree that it is often a better model. Still a lot of apps, e.g. Blender, Inkscape, etc do provide a CLI interface. So one can both use them with a GUI or without. It's not decoupled like transmission but arguably it covers most needs.

The fact they even try is beyond me...

Because it's not an intellectual property problem, it's a behavioral economics problem. And also, it's not a problem. 🤷

103 comments