In case of Kakao Taxi vs Uber, it was Uber's unwillingness to work with existing taxi operators that killed any chance Uber had in the Korean market. Kakao (at least until they became dominant) acted more like an agent that sends additional customers to existing independent taxi drivers while Uber kept trying to find legal loopholes to bypass the taxi licensing system. S Korea is a civil law country, and its courts have no patience for actors whose entire legal strategy is to subvert the intent of the laws, and that was the end for Uber there.
To be accurate, Uber didn't abide by laws in most countries it went up against. It was a little slimy but also the taxi systems of most places were very entrenched. I remember never enjoying riding taxis in San Francisco for years, the cars were gross and the drivers were grumpy and generally shady about having their "credit card readers being broken" so they didn't have to pay the fees. Uber and a bunch of companies did and end run around those very politically entrenched systems and I certainly am happy to have clean, friendly, safe, modern rides with good tech where reviews keep things in line and payment is easy and I can share my location easily and know I'm going to end up at the right place way better.
Exactly. Uber was shady, but that kind of shadiness and willingness to ignore laws is necessary to bring positive change in a highly corrupt society. It's a lot like Batman: when the police are completely ineffectual or corrupt and working for organized crime, you need a vigilante who ignores the laws that just protect the criminals.
However, in better-run and not-so-corrupt societies like Korea, it's not necessary and probably downright harmful.
> However, in better-run and not-so-corrupt societies like Korea, it's not necessary and probably downright harmful.
South Korea was under varying levels of dictatorship from the Korean War until the Sixth Republic in 1987. Roh Tae-woo, the first president after authoritarian rule, was imprisoned for corruption. Roh Moo-hyun, the President from 2003-2008 was investigated for corruption and died by suicide rather than face charges. Lee Myung-bak, his successor, was imprisoned for corruption. Park Geun-hye, his successor, was imprisoned for corruption.
I don't know that South Korea is the poster child for a "better-run and not not-so-corrupt" society.
>I don't know that South Korea is the poster child for a "better-run and not not-so-corrupt" society.
It's not a poster child, but the US sets such a low bar that SK looks great by comparison.
Note also that the US isn't so visibly corrupt at the federal level; it's at the local levels where it's really no better than the typical poster children for corrupt countries. Taxis are a completely local (municipal) issue.
Yeah, I wouldn't go quite that far. Here's Samsung's heir, convicted in court of bribery, getting a special presidential pardon because, and I quote, he's "needed back at the helm to spearhead economic recovery post-pandemic".
Not sure I'd call Korea and its countless cases of political corruption with Chaebol more and more appearing to be basically running the show "not-so-corrupt".
I find it strange these types of articles never mention UAE's Barakah nuclear power plant (which did not source reactors from a nation unfriendly to the U.S.) and experienced only 4 year delay from the originally projected commercial operation start date and relatively limited cost overruns.
Regulatory red tape often comes with very good reasons, particularly regarding safety.
Authoritarian regimes don't need to concern themselves with such pesky things as nature protection or people dying in accidents, especially if the workers are basically modern slaves.
If you want an example for what happens when you cut corners in nuclear, just look at Sellafield (UK) or La Hague (France). This shit is why regulations are so tight, and yet even that didn't prevent people from cutting corners which is why a lot of France's nuclear power plants were down for safety maintenance (corroded pipes) last summer, made worse by the drought that forced a lot of the remaining NPPs out of operation.
I can't read the study (published in India?), but I would dispute the data.
> This hasn’t worked for lithium batteries, partly because so many formats exist. “These batteries are all over the place in different sizes,” he said. A related challenge is that the technology for lithium batteries changes rapidly — every one to two years, he said.
It's possible that Samsung got a briefing on what's happening with ARM and Qualcomm and negotiated an extended reprieve from the new licensing scheme about a month ago when Masayoshi Son had a high profile meeting with the head of Samsung to discuss "a strategic alliance between Samsung and Arm."
>But in recent years, nearly every modern phone shipped today has an eSIM
How many phones other than iPhone, Pixel, and (very recent) Galaxy S/Z have eSIM? There aren't that many cellular IoT boards that support swappable eSIM either (some boards say eSIM, but what they mean is that the IoT vendor's SIM is soldered onto the board - thus "embedded SIM"- not that you're allowed to load eSIM of your choice).
Though the table could use an update, I've tried to add new devices I got my hands on because (conversely) I'd like to know the accuracy of a device before buying it with mapping in mind.
What I found interesting is that
> As of 2021, some recent smartphones claim to support Galileo but in fact do not work with it. This includes the Fairphone 3 and 3+; Motorola Moto G Power and Moto G30. On the other hand, the Xiaomi Mi A2 Lite does not claim Galileo support (including on the manufacturer's own page), yet it works. The Samsung S10e is also confirmed to work.
The spec sheet doesn't always match reality unfortunately (or, for Xiaomi, fortunately!).
Most phones since 2013 or so for GLONASS, and most after 2017 or so for GALILEO, at least in the US. These constellations needed US approval to be allowed as supplemental data, and it still requires an initial lock to GPS before feeding them in. GLONASS is only one of the constellations not broadcasting a civilian second band.
Additionally, Beidou is still banned and blocked in firmware while in US even though the satellites are broadcasting, since this constellation lacks US approval (partially because the other constellations are 1-way systems broadcasting to receiver and Beidou is a two-way system, that can be used for tracking and likely emergency response). Here's some slides about BeiDou's technical details, specifically note the 2-way messaging since all anyone's been talking about is Spacex/Globalstar: https://www.gps.gov/cgsic/meetings/2020/geng.pdf
Does GNSS chipsets in phones really support two way communication? Sounds like something that would need specialized antennas and high output power, not exactly something that can be hidden at least.
Galileo also supports or maybe will support emergency beacons from the ground.
> it still requires an initial lock to GPS before feeding them in
Is there any technical reason, or is it just protectionism? (as in, no GPS lock? No lock at all, even if Galileo and Glonass are 100% fine!)
> Beidou is still banned and blocked in firmware while in US even though the satellites are broadcasting, since this constellation lacks US approval
Is it legal to use a Xiaomi phone in Wifi only mode with Beidou GNSS?
> Here's some slides about BeiDou's technical details, specifically note the 2-way messaging
Super interesting, ty! I see interesting details like "Horizontally positioning accuracy is about 1.5m" so it should be better than GPS! Also, it supports 300k SMS/h with a coverage over Japan, India and Thailand!
> Is there any technical reason, or is it just protectionism? (as in, no GPS lock? No lock at all, even if Galileo and Glonass are 100% fine!)
No technical reason. It's a mixture of both legitimate concern for public safety (they are newer constellations with a shorter reliability track record) and the uh, more political concerns over privacy and national security.
I wouldn't be surprised if China does the inverse considering their motivations for developing BeiDou were first and foremost to stop the US jamming the GPS receivers on their missiles. My immediate thought with the decay of US/Russia relations was that it might be a good idea to throw a switch to disable GLONASS in case they start transmitting bogus signals. My assumption is with the 'GPS first' policy, the receiver shouldn't mix in less accurate data, but without documentation I'm not sure.
Personally I'm all for having options and I have come to respect Galileo for being civilian system, rather than a military system. More than anything I want the choice to be able to enable and disable whatever constellations I want and not deal with the bullshit that is Qualcomm's undocumented GNSS receiver firmware.
> Is it legal to use a Xiaomi phone in Wifi only mode with Beidou GNSS?
It's legal to use if it doesn't transmit on someone else's licensed spectrum. It's illegal to sell in the US as a navigation receiver (EDIT: without it being disabled in firmware). But you are free to do whatever you want with captured signals with only a very few restrictions (like sniffing cordless phone bands). I've even sniffed pager networks so I could track COVID cases coming in, afaik it's only illegal if I share what I see.
> I would love to play with Beidou!
Same. I told a GPS launch commander I'd like to play with their system and he got incredibly butthurt. I told him to stop being a bitch and either make the US system better or stop excluding civvies from using it to its fullest potential. There's no commercial alternatives in the US as all commercial satellite projects get heavily subsidized by the US military and they don't want competitors.
> It's legal to use if it doesn't transmit on someone else's licensed spectrum
Great then! I only want to listen, to study the performance of the different networks when non-technical limitations are removed.
> No technical reason
Then it's exactly what I thought: protectionism.
I'll try to get my hands on some devices and play with them - or mod existing ones if possible!
> More than anything I want the choice to be able to enable and disable whatever constellations I want and not deal with the bullshit that is Qualcomm's undocumented GNSS receiver firmware
Let's get in touch by email, I want to explore the GNSS firmware to allow "everything and the kitchensync"!
They do more than just average the systems - they can use information from one to get a lock on satellites from another, they can in some cases use just one or two satellites from a system even when a lock requires 4 or more satellites.
Considered that I follow hardware development fairly closely, I didn't even know this was not a thing on iPhone. And now Apple is making a big deal about it.
Could anyone shares any thoughts as to why Apple only include it now? And not earlier?
The government that was in power from 2017 to 2022 put a moratorium on new reactor construction there and promised a full phase-out, and although the newly-elected government promised to reverse this, it likely has done some damage to S. Korea's civilian nuclear capabilities.
It is difficult to separate the culture from the consequences of the culture. In the US there is minimal social stigma for trying something ambitious and failing, the culture respects the ambition and courage to try even if it doesn't work out or the idea was slightly idiotic. In many parts of the world, trying something and failing is held against you and becomes a social black mark; Americans just shrug and move on to the next thing. Investors in the US reflect that culture.
A lot of American cultural difference relative to the rest of the world can be explained almost entirely by the unusual absence of Tall Poppy Syndrome[0] that is a hallmark of most other industrialized societies. American culture respects those taking large risks for concomitant rewards, and doesn't begrudge the rewards that might accrue to someone taking those risks. It is easy to have a high risk appetite when it increases one's social status.
> In the US there is minimal social stigma for trying something ambitious and failing
I think fear of bankruptcy can be a higher deterrent for foolish risks than social stigma.
> In many parts of the world, trying something and failing is held against you
In Europe you don't lose people's sympathy if you try something and fail.
Availability of capital for investors is one thing.
A lot of the VC pipeline also reaps rewards from how USA was the one country with untouched industry at the end of WW2 and then funneled huge amounts of moneys into expanding, not reconstruction.
I have to imagine there are simply more people with so much money that they can throw it around easily. Isn't the whole thing that (for example) when a big startup gets bought you suddenly have loads of millionaires with money to burn in their pocket?
That's true, but Canada has suburban sprawl just like the U.S. where, in most cities, home internet is just as expensive if not more so. Think how much less wire, amplification/splitter/switching/etc. equipment, and drilling would be required to install new home internet infrastructure to serve the same number of people if the Greater Toronto Area was as dense as the (4x denser) Stockholm metro area. The one of the obstacles (in addition to monopolies and regulatory capture) may be that the built-up area near the U.S. border still aren't dense enough to have infrastructure efficiency comparable to European countries with cheaper and faster home internet like Sweden, Finland, France, etc.
