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While oil was the world's most valuable resource, it has been surpassed by data, as evidenced by the five most valuable companies in the world today -- Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Google's parent company Alphabet.

Why base it on market capitalization? As the dot-com bubble showed, that's an extremely variable and unreliable way to measure a company's success.

Based on annual revenue - you know, how much these companies actually sell, which seems like a more relevant measure if you're talking about how valuable their product is - the listed companies rank:

#9 Apple
#26 Amazon
#65 Alphabet
#69 Microsoft
#393 Facebook

The top ten companies based on revenue are:

#1 Walmart (retail)
#2 State Grid (Chinese electricity utility)
#3 Sinopec Group (oil)
#4 China National Petroleum (oil)
#5 Toyota Motor (auto)
#6 Volkswagen (auto)
#7 Royal Dutch Shell (oil)
#8 Berkshire Hathaway (finance)
#9 Apple (tech)
#10 Exxon Mobil (oil)

So based on value of sales, the world's most valuable commodity remains oil.

The top ten companies based on profit are:

#1 Apple (tech)
#2 JP Morgan Chase (finance)
#3 Berkshire Hathaway (finance)
#4 Wells Fargo (finance)
#5 Gilead Sciences (pharmaceuticals)
#6 Verizon (telecom)
#7 Citigroup (finance)
#8 Alphabet (tech)
#9 Exxon Mobil (oil)
#10 Bank of America (finance)

So based on profit, the world's most valuable commodity is financial services.

Revenue = how much you actually sell
Profit = how strong your sales are (delta between supply and demand)
Market cap = investors (including clueless ones) placing bets

While oil was the world's most valuable resource, it has been surpassed by data, as evidenced by the five most valuable companies in the world today -- Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Google's parent company Alphabet.

Why base it on market capitalization? As the dot-com bubble showed, that's an extremely variable and unreliable way to measure a company's success.

Based on annual revenue - you know, how much these companies actually sell, which seems like a more relevant measure if you're talking about how valuable their product is - the listed companies rank:

#9 Apple
#26 Amazon
#65 Alphabet
#69 Microsoft
#393 Facebook

The top ten companies based on revenue are:

#1 Walmart (retail)
#2 State Grid (Chinese electricity utility)
#3 Sinopec Group (oil)
#4 China National Petroleum (oil)
#5 Toyota Motor (auto)
#6 Volkswagen (auto)
#7 Royal Dutch Shell (oil)
#8 Berkshire Hathaway (finance)
#9 Apple (tech)
#10 Exxon Mobil (oil)

So based on value of sales, the world's most valuable commodity remains oil.

The top ten companies based on profit are:

#1 Apple (tech)
#2 JP Morgan Chase (finance)
#3 Berkshire Hathaway (finance)
#4 Wells Fargo (finance)
#5 Gilead Sciences (pharmaceuticals)
#6 Verizon (telecom)
#7 Citigroup (finance)
#8 Alphabet (tech)
#9 Exxon Mobil (oil)
#10 Bank of America (finance)

So based on profit, the world's most valuable commodity is financial services.

Revenue = how much you actually sell
Profit = how strong your sales are (delta between supply and demand)
Market cap = investors (including clueless ones) placing bets

Of course people will still own cars, just like people own multiple houses that spend most of their time empty. However, most people wont own their own car when it means paying 20x to get around since owning your own car means it will not be used 95% of the time.

The thing to keep in mind is, currently, using your car as a mobile storage unit vs purely for transportation has no cost differential. However, if the mobile storage unit suddenly costs you 20x more than the pure transportation option, most people probably will find cheaper alternatives (like keeping your clubs at a locker at the course or something).

This is the FBI, fer crissakes! The guys who were deeply, deeply penetrated by the Chinese military intelligence during the Clinton/Bush administrations (and are probably still in control). And then there is this: https://www.wired.com/2016/02/... http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/08/... http://fortune.com/2016/02/09/...

While I agree that he doesn't have it as bad as GP stated, you have to admit that he has the worst conditions ever without a major war.

You know who believes otherwise? Donald Trump.

Considering how forceful and near-universal condemnation from women and women's groups in and out of tech has been to the memo, it is extremely difficult to believe that this Ask Slashdot was submitted in good faith. Particularly in light of the extreme ease of finding high-profile responses. Here is a (small) sample from a simple google search:

https://www.vox.com/the-big-id...
https://www.vox.com/first-pers...
http://fortune.com/2017/08/09/...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
https://patch.com/california/m...

If you really are that out of the loop, that should inform you pretty well. If you're begging the question, then the quantity of vile reactions in these comments have likely confirmed that it was worth it. I hope it is the former.

https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/8/11/16130452/google-memo-women-tech-biology-sexism

https://www.vox.com/first-person/2017/8/10/16119334/female-coders-tech-students-respond-sexist-google-memo

http://fortune.com/2017/08/09/google-diversity-memo-wojcicki/

...

- Trump is worth $3.5 billions; that qualifies as being a rich man.

So he claims. He lies about everything. He lied about getting a phone call from the Boy Scouts, for heaven's sake. He hasn't released any proof of his worth, nor the income tax records that would substantiate his earnings or losses.

- He turned a $14 million loan from his father into that $3.5 billion fortune. You don't achieve that without being smart.

If he had simply invested that $14 million into the S&P 500, he would now be worth more than $13 billion. Instead, he made countless bad deals leading to multiple bankruptcies.

- He decided to become President, bankrolled his own campaign

Now you're going into lunatic territory. He did not bankroll his own campaign. You have drank the Kool-Aid, and I'm very sorry.

She most certainly DID NOT call it an "anti-diversity" memo, that was the work of some editor (downstream from Fortune) somewhere, trying to get clicks. Try READING what she wrote.

The actual column does call it an anti diversity memo. Only the titles added by editors who are more than happy to use clickbait titles to get ad-views call it that.

But, then, expecting you to read the column before trashing her opinions based on a headline would be too much, wouldn't it.

Since none of us have seen the private docs and license agreements, all we really know about the above is that's how Apple has spun the PR on it. Qualcomm says that's not the case and spins it differently, to make themselves look like the aggrieved ones. Which specific patents are the each accusing, etc.

First of all, Qualcomm is being investigated by both the US (FTC) and European agencies for anti-trust. This follows South Korea fining the company $854M for unfair business practices.

Second, you can't claim ignorance after an assertion. In essence you're saying "We don't know what was in the agreements" right after you positively alleged the Apple wrongs did with the agreements. Either you don't know or you do know. So how do you know what Apple did?

Who's telling the truth?? That's probably why the ITC actually agreed to dive in and try to figure it out. Potential merit according to both stated positions, need a neutral party to look and decide.

Well I don't believe either party but it's not the first time or party that has accused Qualcomm of the same behavior, so . . .

Sorry I'm so slow witted these years. Took me a while to realize this, by which time the discussion on Slashdot has almost expired. Of course the saddest part might be that today's Slashdot doesn't actually value diversity or insight, eh? Hopefully as I search some more I'll find that some clever folks have already found the horse and flogged it hard. However, I don't see how to label it more precisely than "profitable" or "real diversity", and those keyword searches of currently 496 visible comments came up dry.

The problem the google is having is a PR thing. Lack of diversity looks SO bad that it has created a new kind of crisis. It actually started a while back as a minor crisis, just arguing with the government about the meaning of some regulations to reduce discrimination. Now it's putting the google under the microscope, and the google is HATING it.

REAL diversity would mean including less profitable people, but that is the antithesis of today's google. The google is optimized along the single dimension of profits, and the ONLY concern with diversity is when the public perception of the reality of extremely limited diversity becomes a threat to increasing those profits. Therefore the google needs a PR offensive for a sufficient appearance of diversity to avoid impeding the increase of profits. Not REAL diversity, but just enough of the tatemae for "profitable diversity".

Been reading a lot of books about the google this year, including Work Rules! and How Google Works , and such research had led me to the conclusion that the google wants to optimize around a tiny intersection. The Venn diagram features super-creative innovators, super productive programmers, and people with a nose for money, and the google's objective is for half the company to be from the triple intersection. From the HR perspective, the incentive structure is to reward and retain these people based on their actual track record. It's an extremely peculiar and non-diverse population. Let's tag them "s-googlers", perhaps for star or super.

The google wouldn't mind at all if the s-googlers included more women, but I think it's rather unlikely. I don't think the underlying reasons are sexist or racist or religious or even national, but more along the lines of personality variables that happen to correlate with sexual, racial, religious, and national characteristics. Just to evade all of those stereotypes, let me introduce my conclusion as a joke:

"Nice people need not apply!"

Just in case your history lessons were deficient, that's a reference to "Irish need not apply". Look it up.

Now for the REAL religion underlying this. I've decided that grand joke goes like this:

"There are no gawds but profits, and Apple, JP Morgan, Berkshire Hathaway, Wells Fargo, Gilead, Verizon, Citigroup, Google, Exxon, and Bank of America are their profits."

http://fortune.com/2016/06/08/...

The abundant test drive reviews disagree with you.

Motor Trend - Exclusive: Tesla Model 3 First Drive Review - Motor Trend

Top Gear- Tesla Model 3 review: first drive of Elon Musk's affordable EV

The Verge - A closer look at Tesla Model 3's spartan interior

The Verge - Tesla Model 3 first drive: this is the car that Elon Musk promised

Bloomberg - Tesla’s Model 3 Arrives With a Surprise 310-Mile Range

Bloomberg[/COLOR] - Driving Tesla’s Model 3 Changes Everything

Car and Driver - 2018 Tesla Model 3: Everything We Know | Feature | Car and Driver

CNET - Tesla Model 3 is well worth the hype

Car Advice - Tesla Model 3 quick drive review | CarAdvice

Fortune - Here’s What Reviewers Think About Tesla’s Model 3 So Far

Ars Technica - All the things the Internet hates about the Tesla Model 3 have me excited

Mashable - Driving a Tesla Model 3 is pretty damn awesome

TechCrunch - Your smartphone is the key for the Tesla Model 3

But hey, feel free to live in your own little world and deny reality to your heart's content.

Really? I know the old saying that even a broken clock is right twice a day. But you couldn't come up with a more legit source than glen beck's propaganda rag?

Try:
http://fortune.com/2017/08/01/...

He said that he thinks they should only have to pay 12 a year, not that they already do.

Making fun of Trump is really easy, how did you fuck this up so badly?

Says the apparent new expert of fucking up badly.

"But in one eyebrow-raising moment, Trump told the Times that health insurance costs about $1 per month when you're young. "Because you are basically saying from the moment the insurance, you’re 21 years old, you start working and you’re paying $12 a year for insurance, ..."[1]

Actual Twitler word salad quote: "... Because you are basically saying from the moment the insurance, you’re 21 years old, you start working and you’re paying $12 a year for insurance,[2]

And for good measure [3]

It's pretty clear that he thinks (to the extent he actually thinks about anything) that insurance does cost 20-somethings only $12 per year. Not that he thinks that's what they should pay. That that's what they're paying today.

Sending you back to seventh grade for a redo on reading comprehension.

[1] http://fortune.com/2017/07/20/...
[2] http://www.newsweek.com/donald...
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Ummmm... yes...

http://fortune.com/2015/03/27/...

Fusion reactor
Curing cancer
Life extension (fountain of youth)
Driverless cars
Flying cars
Sentient AI

Did I miss anything?

They just released 20 million modified mosquitos in an attempt to wipe out Aegypti and eliminate Zika in Long Beach Ca.

Before 2030 they will be world largest economy, according to projection.

Jimmy John's is a sandwich place that was in the news last year for making low-wage employees sign non-competes that prevented them from working at other sandwich shops within 2 miles of a Jimmy John's. And it wasn't clear if working at a restaurant that happened to serve sandwiches also count, so Jimmy John's lawyers would blast ex-employees with scary letters just in case.

See this: http://fortune.com/2015/03/27/us-postal-service/. Among other things, the USPS is exempt from state and local taxes.

n/t

Lots of typical knee-jerk reactions to this story. Most automakers do not have EV and car battery manufacturing facilities in China and China has reduced or removed subsidies making imports much less attractive. It seems, after a bit of quick basic research, that the slowdown request is to allow non-chinese car companies time to be able to ramp up the ability to product EVs on a large scale in China. It's not a plot to stay on old tech or to derail EV cars.

https://electrek.co/2017/05/08...
http://insights.globalspec.com...
https://electrek.co/2017/04/27...
https://cleantechnica.com/2017...

Likely Tesla hasn't complained because they are wrapping up their first manufacturing partnership in China and probably expect to be able to meet sales requirements.

http://fortune.com/2017/06/19/...

I don't think there is an all-year-around electric car that can be used in Canada, unless it is to be driven from garage to garage. With 20 below zero weather, batteries drop to 10% of what they can deliver in summer. Just get caught in a traffic jam with -20 and hope for the best. In my view, the best would be the tow-truck.

Likely Tesla hasn't complained because they are wrapping up their first manufacturing partnership in China and probably expect to be able to meet sales requirements.

http://fortune.com/2017/06/19/...

maybe Tesla didn't complain because they will exceed the 8% quota by about 92%?

Likely Tesla hasn't complained because they are wrapping up their first manufacturing partnership in China and probably expect to be able to meet sales requirements.

http://fortune.com/2017/06/19/...

Um, I don't see how a local manufacturing partnership is relevant to the fact that Tesla isn't complaining here.

Of *course* Tesla can meet the requirements: they're based on having a minimum percentage of your sales being electric. Tesla is 100% electric, so they will meet the quotas no matter how high it they're set, and regardless of whether they have local manufacturing in place.

Yes, local manufacturing will allow them to sell a higher volume, but it won't have any impact on their ability to meet a given percentage of their vehicles being electric.

n/t

Lots of typical knee-jerk reactions to this story. Most automakers do not have EV and car battery manufacturing facilities in China and China has reduced or removed subsidies making imports much less attractive. It seems, after a bit of quick basic research, that the slowdown request is to allow non-chinese car companies time to be able to ramp up the ability to product EVs on a large scale in China. It's not a plot to stay on old tech or to derail EV cars.

https://electrek.co/2017/05/08...
http://insights.globalspec.com...
https://electrek.co/2017/04/27...
https://cleantechnica.com/2017...

Likely Tesla hasn't complained because they are wrapping up their first manufacturing partnership in China and probably expect to be able to meet sales requirements.

http://fortune.com/2017/06/19/...

Successful voter fraud isn't detected.

That's a brilliant self-perpetuating delusion, worthy of the best conspiracy theorists. If a voter-fraud study turns up no evidence, it's not because there's no voter fraud, it's because the fraudsters are too good at it! And there are millions of them! Millions, I say!

You can't state that it's rare or a "minuscule" problem without at least a basic investigation into the votes cast and counted.

Well, you have a point there. Oh wait, you don't:

https://www.brennancenter.org/...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
http://www.politifact.com/flor...
http://www.scholarsstrategynet...
http://fortune.com/2016/10/18/...
http://www.projectvote.org/blo...

[Ignoring the remainder of your speculative, strawman-filled, fact-challenged rant.]

I'm not sure if it was the grandparents point, but even Huawei has limited market penetration outside of China.

Enough presence in Asia, Europe, and Africa to put them close behind Apple, in number 3 in terms of cell phones. Probably soon to overtake Apple and start creeping up on Samsung.

Does anyone have a metric on how many unique iPhone users are out there?

There are roughly 700 million iPhones in active use. About 200 million of those are 2nd hand.

Roughly 60% of the people in the world, or about 5 billion people, have a cell phone (more than have toilets). But many of those are not smartphones.

If you exclude all the employees from businesses that have multiple locations, then focus only on single-location businesses that are under pressure by the excluded businesses, you're pretty much guaranteed to get that result.

I'm not saying that the CEO being a toxic dude-bro was the sole reason that he got ousted. I'm not even saying it was the main reason. But the VCs almost certainly considered it along with all the other reasons that they already had.

Yes, the fact that he wasn't pushing for an IPO was probably a big reason. But when a company has that bad of a public image problem, it doesn't help attracting investors for an IPO.

It's always fun to equate the downfall of a large fish to the actions of a little fish, especially when you are one (I'm one too). The problem is that the big fish don't even notice the little fishes and couldn't care less about their ranting and ravings unless there is something to be gained.

In my opinion, the VCs wanted him out to go forward with an IPO. He was dead set against it The fact that the Uber culture was exposed had no bearing on him leaving. They would have gotten rid of him anyway. In my opinion, any attribution to Uber culture issues is just a smokescreen.

http://fortune.com/2016/06/09/...

Selection bias, much? You're clearly cherry-picking your data.

Prove it.

What about virtually every recent Blu-ray and DVD player

In 2015 there were only 43.5 million blu-ray players total in households in the US. And that's after 9 years of availability.

Or automotive media players

Global car sales for 2016. 77 million cars were sold.

Global smart phone sales for 2016. 1.5 billion smartphones were sold.

Global PC shipments per quarter in 2016. 70 million PCs are sold every quarter.

The numbers don't lie. Your argument is unimpressive.

You're falling for a misunderstanding of statistics parroted by the many ignorant iPhone fans writing in the media. Most of the Android phones sold are low-end handsets, which drags down the mean price of an Android phone.

However, that does not mean Android only sells cheap handsets as these writers in the media who flunked statistics think. It simply means a greater share of Android phones are cheaper units. But because Android phones outsell iPhones by more than 6:1, the number of high-end Android phones sold is still about the same as or exceeds the number of iPhones sold, even though the mean price of an Android phone is lower.

"I am always faster when using a tool I designed myself"

Faster at what? Running a company into the ground? Firing male workers? Complaining of sexism?

I think China is a hundred times more of a threat than Russia.

You may be right.

https://www.independent.co.uk/...

http://fortune.com/2017/04/12/...

It may be legally protected, but that doesn't mean you still have a job. http://fortune.com/2015/04/20/...

For number #2, at least in regards to disposal, Musk is putting quite a bit of thought into that. To quote, "At Tesla we have been refining our recycling program for year". There is a battery recycling center right next door to the Gigafactory in Nevada. Musk has plans in the works to "close the loop" on his batteries. Even now, "The EPA estimates that over 90 percent of lead-acid batteries are recycled, and a typical battery contains 60-80 percent recycled materials."

I would assume that if the EU mandates feeding excess back into the grid, Musk will probably just add more batteries so there is actually no "excess".

And while everyone is running around with their hair on fire over "covfefe" and his other tweets, he's been quietly getting his agenda done. For an example, Jeff Sessions rolled back the Obama-era drug sentencing guidelines, resulting in the harshest possible sentences for drug offenders... which went almost unnoticed by the MSM.

Trump withdrew from the Paris accord, and Covfefe was the more searched term than Paris Climate Agreement.

Your side thinks he sabotages his schemes by these tweets.

The rest of us know (and Trump himself knows) that the tweets are meaningless and valueless in and of themselves, but they distract the MSM from what is really going on, and in a way that makes the left look like gibbering imbeciles.

He's been doing this since about *a year* prior to the election, and your side hasn't caught on even yet!

I don’t know what MSM you consume, if any, but the Sessions memorandum was covered extensively on NPR, and NPR spent days discussing the ramifications of the Paris pullout. I don’t know what Fox showed you, but the whole World was talking about it.

You think the tweets are “meaningless", and that his habit of blowing his own cover stories isn’t having an effect? This notion of Trump as master manipulator is just ridiculous. Trust me, I entertained the thought myself, way back during the campaign. It really is difficult to imagine that a presidential candidate could be so stupid. If anything about this administration has become obvious, it’s that Trump is a dolt, not all that much brighter than his voters, and less so than his apologists, who must spend their days putting out his fires, only to see Donald carelessly toss another match on them. What most of us can plainly see is that Trump is in way over his head. You won’t be able to kid yourself forever.

He does great at sabotaging his own schemes. It's really great that he lacks a filter.

I would love to be a fly on the wall on his lawyers' office. It's got to have a thick covering of hair of all over the floor.

And while everyone is running around with their hair on fire over "covfefe" and his other tweets, he's been quietly getting his agenda done.

For an example, Jeff Sessions rolled back the Obama-era drug sentencing guidelines, resulting in the harshest possible sentences for drug offenders... which went almost unnoticed by the MSM.

Trump withdrew from the Paris accord, and Covfefe was the more searched term than Paris Climate Agreement.

Your side thinks he sabotages his schemes by these tweets.

The rest of us know (and Trump himself knows) that the tweets are meaningless and valueless in and of themselves, but they distract the MSM from what is really going on, and in a way that makes the left look like gibbering imbeciles.

He's been doing this since about *a year* prior to the election, and your side hasn't caught on even yet!

What do you think "Drain the Swamp," as a campaign pledge, referred to? I mean specifically?

Absolutely nothing, he went with it because it was popular:

"Funny how that term caught on, isn't it?" Trump mused during a rally this month in Des Moines, Iowa. "I tell everyone, I hated it. Somebody said 'drain the swamp' and I said, 'Oh, that is so hokey. That is so terrible.'"

"I said, all right, I'll try it," Trump continued. "So like a month ago I said 'drain the swamp' and the place went crazy. And I said 'Whoa, what's this?' Then I said it again. And then I start saying it like I meant it, right? And then I started to love it, and the place loved it. Drain the swamp. It's true. It's true. Drain the swamp."

Gingrich Says Trump Must Address Business Conflicts Soon, Urges Monitoring

On Trump's often-stated promise to "drain the swamp" in Washington
I'm told he now just disclaims that. He now says it was cute, but he doesn't want to use it anymore. ... I'd written what I thought was a very cute tweet about "the alligators are complaining," and somebody wrote back and said they were tired of hearing this stuff.

At least Intel seems to be breaking away from the hype a bit, by delaying the self-driving future to 2035 instead of next year.

Yeah, I'll give them that. I've heard some pretty ridiculous hyperbole lately on the self-driving trend. Just look at ridiculous articles like this one (claiming that self-driving trucks will dominate the trucking industry within the next ten years):

It would get put into either the pockets of bigwigs at outfits like Solyndra http://fortune.com/2015/08/27/... [fortune.com]

Interestingly enough, while Solyndra did fail, the government department that made the loan to Solyndra is actually expected to generate about $5 billion in revenue (even when including the costs of Solyndra and their other failed loans). As I understand it, the entire program has not only encouraged the develop of new high technology companies, they directly earned a profit while doing so (which is doubly good for Americans, because the government also collects taxes from the companies they sponsored and the people who work for those companies, but that isn't counted as revenue for this department).

Don't be fooled by the gibbering monkeys, Solyndra represents part of a lower than expected failure rate by a very successful policy initiative.

> Actually, tax money gets spent and goes back into the economy
> to pay somebody else's salary, who then spends money. -- quite
> the opposite of sucking money out of the economy.

It would get put into either the pockets of bigwigs at outfits like Solyndra http://fortune.com/2015/08/27/... or into the pockets of rich people who can afford to buy an $85,000 Tesla https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/su...

I have bad news for ya, while an 85K Tesla is a fairly expensive car, you don't have to be rich to afford one. And if you think the people who are buying Teslas are rich, (And undoubtedly some of them are), you have no clue as to what rich/upper class really means. They're generally at the upper end of what used to be known as the middle-class. Welcome to working class, it may not be blue collar, but the shoe still fits.

• Top 5% $214,462 --22.1% share of total household income
• Top 1% $465,626 --35.6% share of total household income

And when it median wealth, guess where the US is, # 26.

> Actually, tax money gets spent and goes back into the economy
> to pay somebody else's salary, who then spends money. -- quite
> the opposite of sucking money out of the economy.

It would get put into either the pockets of bigwigs at outfits like Solyndra http://fortune.com/2015/08/27/... or into the pockets of rich people who can afford to buy an $85,000 Tesla https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/su...

China is already outdoing the US in a whole bunch of things, but international press do not cover this so lots of people don't really know what's going on there.

This is an understandable, often overlooked problem that not many people stop to think about.

The way press works for international coverage, for several countries, is to only publish a limited range of stories that overcomes the cultural/language barrier, when not ultimately going only for eye grabbing content.

And that's fine, because really, who's got the time and attention to know everything that's happening all around the world?
It's just naive and kinda dangerous to build an image of a country and it's industry based on the very limited information you get from main channels.

It's why even nowadays we still have so many people with this image that products coming from China are all shoddily made or clones of american/european products, when in fact not only China controls the vast majority of production for most electronics we use in a daily basis, several design decisions and technology advances also happen there.

It's nothing magical really... when you have a single country taking care of a huge percentage of worldwide production and manufacturing of tech related products for over a decade, of course they'll start developing their own products from start to finish. Think about what your own country would do in a similar situation.

People who have been paying attention for one reason or another to chinese branded smartphones, tablets, laptops and several other lines of products will know that they are fast becoming indistinguishable from high end lines of american and european brands. And particularly for their own market, there is no culural barrier to overcome. Technologies that are highly related to culture like AI (because recent advancements have been going around speech recognition and such) are bound to evolve in a different way.

Who's the leader in end-consumer quadcopters right now? DJI, indisputably, right? You know what DJI stands for? Dà-Jing Innovations Science and Technology Co. It's a Shenzhen based and born company. There's a whole bunch of tech crammed in those drones that were developed by the company... tech for obstacle avoidance, 3d tech for hand gesture recognition, radars and sensors.
Some people might not know, but Lenovo is also a chinese company. Yes, the one that now owns the staple of business laptops, the Thinkpad line. The same company that owns Motorola.
There's a whole bunch of cases like those in the tech industry.

Not to mention how chinese companies have been buying left and right a whole bunch of hotel businesses, movie studios and other companies people have no idea about:
http://fortune.com/2016/03/18/...

Sure, a whole bunch of tech that several chinese companies made in the past were straight rip offs of designs from US, europeran and japanese based companies, but this has changed in later years. And the further you go into several tech devices, the more you understand how much of the technology behind them are really not coming from a single US brand.

High end technology for all sorts of displays nowadays have a majority made in South Korea (LG and Samsung). Central parts of cameras of all shapes and sizes, including smartphone cameras, mostly comes from Sony, a japanese company. Samsung also dominates when it comes to technology related to storage (memory chips and whatnot), but that market is a bit more balanced. CPUs, GPUs and SOCs are still mostly developed by american and british companies (Qualcomm, Intel nVidia), but that doesn't mean they don't have chinese or asian competition (Samsung, Mediatek, Allwinner). More importantly though is that in several areas of technology, if a chinese company isn't already there among the top businesses involved, there's likely to be one encroaching.

So yeah, I don't know if chinese companie

And then we would seize their assets and forbid them from doing business in our country - it would be strictly "pay to play". When they tried to game the system by using intermediaries, we'd apply the same mechanisms we already use to limit asset transfers to money launderers, drug dealers and terrorists.

Very few people would care to give up the USA as a market just to save on taxes.

By the time you know they will have no US based assets. And when you are brining in millions to the local economy, it is not hard to get citizenship in other countries. Then when the US tries to lay sanctions against a UK citizen, the UK will be a bit upset. And this is not a guess. It has happened. http://fortune.com/2016/08/11/...

http://fortune.com/2016/03/16/...

> Netflix ... maybe, later after they buy Comcast in 10 years.

Wishful thinking doesn't change reality no matter how much we wish it was true. As much as I hate to "defend" Comcast, let's take a look at the facts shall we:

* Comcast is a Fortune 37 company with a Market cap of 190 Billion, Revenue is $8,163 Million, Assets $166,574 Million.

* Netflix is a Fortune 379 company with a Market cap of 70 Billion, Revenue is $123 Million, Assets $10,203 Million.

Netflix buying a company that has 66x their revenue and 16x their assets within 10 years LOL, yeah right. Not going to happen. But I have a bridge to sell you ...

Netflix can't afford the License renewal fees -- so they started making their own original shows. Netflix is not interested in streaming live sporting events. They also don't own any of the physical infrastructure that the cable guys do. All Netflix does is leech off of the existing internet infrastructure of everyone else. Netflix buying an ISP is ridiculous at best. They are in a completely different market space.

The bigger question is "Why hasn't Comcast already bought Netflix?" The answer, I suspect, is that because they already own a 30% stake in Hulu

> Netflix ... maybe, later after they buy Comcast in 10 years.

Wishful thinking doesn't change reality no matter how much we wish it was true. As much as I hate to "defend" Comcast, let's take a look at the facts shall we:

* Comcast is a Fortune 37 company with a Market cap of 190 Billion, Revenue is $8,163 Million, Assets $166,574 Million.

* Netflix is a Fortune 379 company with a Market cap of 70 Billion, Revenue is $123 Million, Assets $10,203 Million.

Netflix buying a company that has 66x their revenue and 16x their assets within 10 years LOL, yeah right. Not going to happen. But I have a bridge to sell you ...

Netflix can't afford the License renewal fees -- so they started making their own original shows. Netflix is not interested in streaming live sporting events. They also don't own any of the physical infrastructure that the cable guys do. All Netflix does is leech off of the existing internet infrastructure of everyone else. Netflix buying an ISP is ridiculous at best. They are in a completely different market space.

The bigger question is "Why hasn't Comcast already bought Netflix?" The answer, I suspect, is that because they already own a 30% stake in Hulu

I think the Chinese know how to play game better than anyone else. Gather all the trade secrets and intel that you can, while "systematically dismantling" anyone leaking the same to the world.

Sometimes I wonder what the going market rates are for this sort of thing. Did this guy try to sell to Russians, because they pay more than the Chinese?

No, probably not. The Chinese espionage model is to send over 'graduate students' as spies, who then report everything they see back home. That is, China doesn't need to hire locals, since they have thousands of moles in our University system already. I don't know about the pay, but at a guess, I'd wager that no US citizen would find the $$ amount appealing. Just a guess.

I think the Chinese know how to play game better than anyone else. Gather all the trade secrets and intel that you can, while "systematically dismantling" anyone leaking the same to the world.

Sometimes I wonder what the going market rates are for this sort of thing. Did this guy try to sell to Russians, because they pay more than the Chinese?

If you think you know how the free market would work in drug manufacturing, then you need to read this:
http://fortune.com/2013/05/15/...