iQiyi and Tencent’s WeTV, two of China’s most popular streaming services, may be barred from operating in Taiwan next month as the government prepares to close regulatory loopholes that enabled them to offer local versions of their services through partnerships. But iQiyi and WeTV will still be accessible if subscribers are willing to, for example, use cross-border payment services to pay for subscriptions in China and deal with slower connections.

In an announcement posted this week, Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs said Taiwanese companies and individuals will be prohibited from providing services for OTT firms based in mainland China. The proposed regulation will be open to public comment for two weeks before it takes effect on Sept. 3.

Though Taiwan, which has a population of about 24 million people, is self-governed, the Chinese government claims it as a territory. The proposed regulations means Taiwan is joining other countries, including India and the United States, in taking a harsher stance against Chinese tech companies.

iQiyi  and Tencent’s WeTV set up operations in Taiwan through “illegal” partnerships, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in its announcement, working through their Hong Kong subsidiaries to strike agreements with Taiwanese companies.

In April, the NCC declared that mainland Chinese OTT firms are not allowed to operate in Taiwan under the Act Governing Relations between People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area. Cabinet spokesperson Kolas Yotaka said at the time that Chinese firms and their Taiwanese partners were operating at “the edges of the law.”

But NCC spokesperson Wong Po-Tsung said the proposed regulation isn’t targeted solely at Chinese OTT operators. According to the Taipei Times, he stated “the act was necessary because the cable television service operators have asked that the commission apply across-the-board standards to regulate all audiovisual service platforms, which should include OTT services. It was not stipulated just to address the problems caused by iQiyi and other Chinese OTT operators.”

Wong added that Taiwan is a democratic country and its government would not block people from watching content from iQiyi and other Chinese streaming services.

Once the act is passed, Taiwanese companies that break it will face fines of NTD $50,000 to NTD $5 million [about USD $1,700 to USD $170,000].

In a statement to TechCrunch, a spokeperson from iQiyi International, an iQiyi subsidiary based in Singapore, said it is playing close attention to the draft bill.

“China’s mainland entities have always been allowed to carry out commercial activities in the Taiwan region since the enactment of the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area,” she added. “As streaming services are not classified as ‘special industries’ under the Act, such services should not become the specific target of legislation.”

WeTV Hong Kong declined to comment.

Ten years ago, the vast majority of designers were working in Adobe Photoshop, a powerful tool with fine-tuned controls for almost every kind of image manipulation one could imagine. But it was a tool built for an analog world focused on photos, flyers and print magazines; there were no collaborative features, and much more importantly for designers, there were no other options.

Since then, a handful of major players have stepped up to dominate the market alongside the behemoth, including InVision, Sketch, Figma and Canva.

And with the shift in the way designers fit into organizations and the way design fits into business overall, the design ecosystem is following the same path blazed by enterprise SaaS companies in recent years. Undoubtedly, investors are ready to place their bets in design.

It seems like every software funding and product announcement these days includes some sort of reference to “no code” platforms or functionality. The frequent callbacks to this buzzy term reflect a realization that we’re entering a new software era.

Similar to cloud, no code is not a category itself, but rather a shift in how users interface with software tools. In the same way that PCs democratized software usage, APIs democratized software connectivity and the cloud democratized the purchase and deployment of software, no code will usher in the next wave of enterprise innovation by democratizing technical skill sets. No code is empowering business users to take over functionality previously owned by technical users by abstracting complexity and centering around a visual workflow. This profound generational shift has the power to touch every software market and every user across the enterprise.

The broader market melt up has helped buoy shares of Apple to new highs this morning. In early trading today, the market capitalization of the tech industry giant and FAAMG member crossed the $2 trillion mark before slipping just beneath the threshold.

Shares of Apple  have advanced just over 59% in 2020, despite the company’s most recent earnings report bearing news of a more modest 11% year-over-year revenue gain. Earnings per-share advanced 18% in the same quarter, a more impressive metric but still a far smaller result than the value increase that Apple’s equity has managed.

Many technology companies are enjoying a strong market rebound after seeing sharp lows in the immediate wake of COVID-19-related restrictions at home and abroad. The market sentiment appears to argue that when the global economy is back to full power, the market position of tech companies within it will be one of greater strength than before. This argument is doubled among companies that offer digital services, such as Apple.

Tech shares have set new all-time highs this year, with the Nasdaq Composite worth more than 11,000 points in recent days, a record tally after a eye-popping rally.

Around three years ago the “Big Five” American tech companies — Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook — were worth $3 trillion in aggregate, big news at the time. Today Apple and Microsoft alone are worth around $3.6 trillion.

The rise of the tech giants has been the story of a decade, their recent gains the story of the year. If the market cohort is now overvalued is, of course, up to the investing public even if warning signs abound that things are getting a bit too hot.

For startups, this is nearly all good news. Excited public markets for tech shares make private shares appear more valuable, and desirable. Public rallies can help advance IPOs, and acquisitions. So today’s news that Apple is now sufficiently rich enough to shame Croesus means that your friendly, local startup might be able to close that next round at a price that it likes.