News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Alibaba is leading a $27M investment in MariaDB by yeukhon on Friday September 29, 2017 @02:21PM (#15367722)
If you look at Alibaba's investment portfolio [1], you will see Alibaba has invested in a number of popular US-based startups like Snapchat and Lyft, so are they owning part of Snapchat as much as other VCs (depending on the % of course).

One can say about Google / Facebook / Amazon investing in startups and non-profits inevitably influence these organizations' directions; that's just the nature of any investments. When you donate money to a cause you support, you indirectly influence how the cause is headed, because you can pull the pledge, and when enough people pull the pledge, then the people running the cause/non-profits will have to do something to the demand of the donators.

China is the biggest creditor of the US national debt, and even before that US was careful with its relationship with China anyway. So we can't say there is a cause and effect, the best is a weak correlation, and even that is a stretch.

[1]: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/alibaba/investments

Re:Alibaba is leading a $27M investment in MariaDB by mmanfrin on Friday September 29, 2017 @02:27PM (#15367781)

  China is the biggest creditor to the US national debt
Uh, no it ain't. Not even close. Domestic funds are the lions share, with Social Security Trust holding 2.5x what China does (2.8t vs 1.1t).
Re:Alibaba is leading a $27M investment in MariaDB by yeukhon on Friday September 29, 2017 @02:30PM (#15367813)
Uh, excuse me, can you check this?

http://money.cnn.com/2017/08/16/investing/china-us-debt-trea...

Do you want me to be more precise? Foreign creditor?

"The Treasury Department has ranked China as the biggest foreign creditor to the U.S. for the overwhelming majority of the past nine years. "

Re:Alibaba is leading a $27M investment in MariaDB by tkfu on Friday September 29, 2017 @02:42PM (#15367944)
"Biggest foreign creditor" and "biggest creditor" are worlds apart; it's not just about being more precise. More than two thirds of US debt is held domestically.
Re:Alibaba is leading a $27M investment in MariaDB by throwayit on Friday September 29, 2017 @03:24PM (#15368328)
I think the OP wanted to make clear that domestic creditors far outweigh any foreign one so saying "biggest creditor" was a deceptive statement.
Re:Alibaba is leading a $27M investment in MariaDB by icelancer on Friday September 29, 2017 @09:04PM (#15370551)
>>Do you want me to be more precise? Foreign creditor?

That's not being more precise. That's something entirely different.

Re:Alibaba is leading a $27M investment in MariaDB by jacquesm on Friday September 29, 2017 @02:42PM (#15367947)
foreign. That sense said just creditor without the 'foreign' bit.