You might have never been in a VP+ position in a company then. A lot of tasks in these positions are about avoiding consequences or shifting blame for actions that are either necessary but look bad or that had to be made with way too little input information. And not necessarily just one's own actions.
Why would anybody have the "smart idea" to put anti-government source code on a centralized source code management website? This was probably on purpose to gain some media attention...
They also have, or used to have, their own domains and servers, but those can be blocked at the (national) ISP level rather quickly.
On the other hand by mixing their content in centralized websites, they need to send takedown requests to every single one of them, since they would block legitimate traffic otherwise[1]. It's basically a workaround for IP and TLS SNI blocking.
Of course this is all to make it simple for non-techies to access their website / application. If they required using a VPN/Tor their adoption would probably plummet.
[1] Actually they blocked an IPFS gateway before so it's more like "well-known centralized websites".
If I host a web server, and the only access is the ssh port, how should anybody guess that I use it to host a git repo that you and I work on together? More is not needed. Might even work on public clouds since you shouldn't really raise any attention this way.
I think here American and German sentiment differ. From the American perspective the informed general public comes as a result of every ambitious group of people trying to pull you in their direction and you using as much of that input as possible to create a model that you can use for your personal gain. In sum of all the selfish actions a more objective result is achieved than with previous political models. So nobody is responsible to educate you but yourself. And it is assumed that everybody tries hardest to improve their own life independent of the General Good.
I've heard similar regarding how they do things in the US, though your expression is more extreme. If true that has to be the most inefficient and corrosive way of improving anything.
> but we know they cannot because of the LAWS that are protecting IP owners
I don't think that's a fair assessment. I played a bunch of less well defined tactical competitive games when I was younger and even though the rules were not perfect we were able to yield outcomes that sufficiently would be satisfactory to everybody and in many cases also representing of the skills of the competitors, i.e. good games.
The problem with "real world games", e.g. like this question of "who gains the most from a creation?" is not that the rules are not perfect, but that there are many players who don't have the slightest intention to play good games. There is good argument for why the creator should gain the most, or his family, or the company that produced the company in a market worthy format. There is even an argument for that the person should take it who through his cunning or strength is simply more able to take the gain. But there is a big difference between competitors trying to win while enjoying the game and those who want to win no matter the cost to everyone, including themselves.
On the gaming table you simply exclude these people, but in the real world you can't.
On Youtube they will probably not take down a video if nobody claims its protection rights. So someone came and claimed these videos.
And that's the problem in my eyes. If everybody is trying to create an enjoyable environment for everybody else nobody would attempt to "generate every possible sequence of notes [for personal gain]" because it wouldn't even be fun even for that player for long.
The deliberate part is so often overlooked since most people only know training with a teacher, where they give the responsibility for the deliberate part to the teacher without even knowing.
If you start learning by yourself from every 10 hours of practice maybe only 1-2 might count as deliberate. If that efficiency is tracked as well, one could argue that even a motivated learner might take up to 20k hours to get to his 10k hours of deliberate practice.
If you do it right. I think there is no book or study that says you can just improve from random activities. You need to study, focus on a topic, experiment, repeat the good stuff until you got it, find a new detailed area where you can improve.
Does this strategy still work in a world with highest possibility of migration we ever had? If I live in a consumption repressed country and can see through the internet that the consumption rate is much better in other countries, I will also use my talent and resources to move to that country.
Since I can build a network online, since I can investigate laws online, even of other countries, since I can book and prepay for different steps to take in migration I have a much easier time than ever before to simply go somewhere else.
At the same time the psychological bonding between people and nations is lower than ever since the creation of nation states. If someone tells you they live at 20% the value they would want to live, just because they want to support their country, you would laugh about them.
And last but not least, more and more succeeding in the competition of production talent and creativity is more important than anything else. E.g. a soldier with low IQ and lots of muscles might have been great 500 years ago. But nowadays he simply gets shredded by a drone that was constructed by a nerd with technical talents and zero muscles.
Altogether it doesn't seem very logical to me that such a move can really improve China's situation, if it makes them lose talent quicker.
I don't understand why people don't learn the rules of the game called "business" at least a little bit. If you have the right to cancel something within 14 days there are rules to how to do this. Don't expect cooperation from the other side of the table. Just follow the rules.
I'm quite sure the rules say something like this, but I'm not a lawyer and have not looked it up again:
1. Find out the business address of that company, preferably one in your country if there are multiple options.
2. Write a letter in Word where you say you want to revert the orders <list of date, object, price>.
3. Print, sign, then photograph that letter with your phone (which adds a date to the photo).
4. Go to your town's post office and tell them you want to send this letter in a way that the receiver needs to sign for that and you want to get back that signature.
5. Wait for the signature.
6. If nothing happens besides the signature, write them an email adding all the details and the photos of the signature and the letter.
7. If still nothing happens on your bank account, and the sum is over 500€ or similar go with all the documents to a court and request they help you get the money back. Not sure if other countries but in my country for 45€ they will send a specially colored letter to the company claiming the payment and threatening a lawsuit.
8. Check the times here, but when they are up and nothing happened go with all these things to a lawyer and he will probably sue for you. In most countries losing such a lawsuit is path that might end up bringing the CEO into jail (not directly, but it certainly is on the table as possibility at this point), so the chances are super high that at this point they will send the money or declare bankruptcy. In case of bankruptcy your lawyer knows how to continue.
There's no need for reminders, warnings, etc. All that might end up you being behind your deadlines. Print a paper letter, sign it, and send it in a way that can prove reception.
A professional company with good intent will also not feel threatened by you doing the right thing according to law. So don't be afraid to be perceived as unfriendly. The only people who will claim unfriendliness here either have no idea what they are doing or are using your shame against you in the hopes that you do mistakes.
It's the same with Github, sure you can host on your own domain, but "search for voctoweb on Github" is so much easier than "oh just go to my homepage at sdkljfsdl.sdf".
If you use google instead of github search you can find it even if it's on a self-hosted gitlab, though. And since both use git as API nobody is stopped from forking from gitlab to github either.
