OR “Is Mike Daisey Actually a Guerilla Marketer in the Employ of Apple?” ————————- Late last week activists delivered 250,000 signatures demanding that Apple improve working conditions for workers employed by its Chinese manufacturers. One of those petitions, organized by change.org, specifically cited the American radio program, This American Life, and a segment that it…
All posts in Computing
How the Shanghainese Spend Their Traditional Holidays: Downloading
Here’s a phenomenon that I’ve yet to see generate much comment: during Chinese holiday weekends (like this weekend, in which they are supposed to be celebrating the mid-Autumn Festival), the internet grinds to a near standstill in Shanghai. I suppose there are several explanations for this occasionally observed (by me and this other guy I…
Old Monitors of Revolution.
Back in Shanghai for the first time in 28 days and my only observation is that this cold weather – the cold weather everyone is complaining about – doesn’t feel any different to me than the air-conditioning that I kept shutting off in Singapore. In any event, below, a photo that I posted to Twitter…
Recycle Rare Earths at Home, with a Screwdriver.
Let’s call this a lesson in avoiding absolutes. Below, two versions of a component in every hard disk drive. The circled components – the valuable, important components – are magnets of the (capital R, capital E) Rare Earth variety. That is to say, they are magnets manufactured, in part, by adding a dash of the…
How to commit fraud, save money, and benefit the environment – all at once (in Shanghai).
[With a special end note for my friends and colleagues in the foreign media and environmental activist community.] China is the world’s second largest market for PCs and other electronic devices. This is a good thing if you’re a manufacturer, but – potentially – a very, very bad thing if you’re an environmentalist concerned about…
The Shanghai Scrap e-waste Challenge
As regular readers may know, over the years I’ve spent a significant number of non-blogging hours investigating and reporting on the Chinese e-waste trade for trade and mainstream publications. For those who are not regular readers, e-waste can be broadly defined as waste computers, monitors, cell phones and other broken, obsolete, and unwanted artifacts from…
Why are the fanboys rushing to defend Apple’s child labor record?
[UPDATE: Outside of the Chinese media and the Daily Telegraph, it seems like nobody is particularly interested in covering Apple’s child labor record. TechNewsWorld takes a hard look at why, and comes down hard on a compliant, Apple-infatuated media.] Spend any time reading online technology reviews and you’ve inevitably come across the Apple Fanboys –…
Google’s Cowardice [UPDATED, with response to reader comments]
[UPDATED – I’ve added a response to reader comments to the end of the this post. Scroll down to find it.] Eighteen months ago I received an email from an acquaintance who happens to work with a large NGO in China. It included an attachment, and since I was familiar with the person who sent…
One from the vault: China’s Patriotic Hackers
I’m seriously under the weather these last few days and so blogging has come to a bit of a standstill. However, I can’t help but notice that Chinese computer hackers are suddenly back in the news. Yesterday they hacked Iranian sites in retaliation for an Iranian hack on the baidu search engine; and then, today,…
Tweeting Urumqi
Despite the fact that Twitter is blocked in China, and the internet is completely shutdown in Xinjiang, a handful of foreign correspondents have managed to tweet real-time updates on events outs there – either directly, or via colleagues back in their bureaus. No doubt, newspapers and magazines will soon have stories about what has and…