Hacker News Reader

echevilon Will China’s Economy Hit a Great Wall?

> However, once you have (mostly) caught up, it becomes less obvious what the next thing to do is.

Chinese economy is not about catching up with the west anymore. If you ever lived in China in recent years, you'd see that the Chinese economy is advancing in lots of aspects, and many of those in ways vastly different from western societies. The government plays an important part in it, but private companies are just as important. For example, the tech industry in China (which comprised of mostly private companies) evolved into its own ecosystem, and is iterating faster than that of silicon valley.

echevilon China's Moon mission sees first seeds sprout

http://news.cqu.edu.cn/newsv2/show-14-16860-1.html

This is from the university that lead the experiment. A control experiment was done as well

echevilon China sentences Canadian man to death in drug case linked to Huawei row

There are precedents that drug trafficker got death sentences, so there’s nothing surprising at all. I guess he got 15 years sentence originally probably because the government didn’t want to hurt their relationship with Canada at their time. Many Chinese find that sentence improper. Chinese laws and the laws in many Asian country regarding drugs are much stricter than those in US

echevilon The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

I found western science fictions tends to promote heroism in some way, and whatever obstacle the main character faces, they fight off their enemies in the end. Chinese novels indeed feel different in many ways.

echevilon The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

Sci-Fi novels are generally less impacted by censorship as they are undoubted considered as fictions. References to religion, social topics etc. are not a focus of censorship

echevilon The Rise and Rise of Chinese Science Fiction

The closest to of Harry Potter in China are probably either Wuxia or Xianxia, in which the equivalent of "god", "magic" and "violence" are actually very common.

Harry Potter is somewhat popular in China as well, though way less than it is in western countries. "Harry Potter" style stories (and Lord of Rings, etc.) are simply too "foreign" to a lot of Chinese, and that has very little to do with the government.

echevilon How to Choose a Startup to Work for by Thinking Like an Investor

I think the right way to think about this problem is treating picking the winner at an early stage as a probability. Even though the value of the probability is small, you'd still want to maximize it when you're picking a startup to join, and you can do much better than picking randomly. You can continue to evaluate the probability after joining a startup.

echevilon Boom Supersonic raises $100M, aims for 2019 test flights

I'd really love to see this advancement as most of the flights I take are 10+ hour direct flights.

> On a side note, why aren't there more startups trying to reduce passenger time at the airport instead of focusing on faster airplanes?

Just thought about it, it could actually be harder for startups to work on reducing passenger time at the airport. A main blocker would be convincing airports (and/or governments) to adopt your solution.

echevilon U.S. issues China travel advisory amid increased tensions

China is issuing the same warning to Chinese citizens traveling to US

echevilon Facebook Alternatives

Exactly! It makes no sense to switch to something else if all your friends are still on Facebook.

Also, who knows if the app you switch to will have less problems in future than Facebook does now.

echevilon Facebook Alternatives

Sorry I was talking about the french solution https://movim.eu/ when I say decentralized.

Thanks for the recommendation and explanations though!

echevilon Facebook Alternatives

It’s hard to see if any of these self-hosted or decentralized solution would ever take off. For a social app, you need to get your friends and also public figures to use the same thing for it to be worth using at all. If it is more complicated to use than Facebook or similar, it will probably never be adopted by general public. And if the general public actually got into the same app, it would then become a new target for attacks.

echevilon Facebook Alternatives

Agree.. Are there any major social app that you can absotely trust your private data with?

echevilon Facebook Alternatives

Where you go largely depends on where most of your friends are. I spend more time on WeChat as most of my friends are there. After I installed SnapChat, I don’t think I ever come back because nobody I know is on it.

echevilon At Blind, a security lapse revealed private complaints from tech employees

> Isn’t this showing up in intervires?

That depends on the interview, isn’t it? In my on-site with one of the companies, I was asked hard algorithm questions in four out of five rounds, and then one system design round. I doubt anything related to personality would show up

echevilon China hacked HPE, IBM and then attacked clients

> International Business Machines Corp said it had no evidence that sensitive corporate data had been compromised. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) said it could not comment on the Cloudhopper campaign.

> Both IBM and HPE declined to comment on the specific claims made by the sources.

> DXC Technology declined to comment, saying in a statement that it does not comment on reports about specific cyber events and hacking groups.

> Reuters was unable to confirm the names of other breached technology firms or identify any affected clients.

I wonder why the title of the article sounds so certain while it seems none of the claims are confirmed

echevilon Survey: 1 In 4 Adults Checks Phone Less Than A Minute After Waking Up

Another condition in the study is "within 1 minute". I guess the other 3 are just slower in their waking up process :)

echevilon Indian technology talent is flocking to Canada

Well, one of the main reasons that they don't work at startups is that they need stability because of the broken immigration process. Similar to Indians, most Chinese tech workers here choose to join big companies, but Chinese tech workers in China are creating tons of startups.

echevilon Clearing Up a Few Things About Facebook’s Partners

Is it just me that couldn't find the feature in Spotify desk app to actually send a message to a friend from the app?

echevilon Clearing Up a Few Things About Facebook’s Partners

That is one of their selling point, isn't it? You got a feed of "Friend activities" on Spotify

echevilon Clearing Up a Few Things About Facebook’s Partners

I think a very common problem with OAuth (way beyond Facebook) is that people often underestimate the permission they are giving to a 3rd party. For example, if you use some email client to manage your Gmail, the email client would request permission to "manage your Gmail", exactly what you want, but that actually gives the 3rd party permission not only to read all your mails, but to send out emails on behalf of you.

echevilon A Chinese electric car is coming to the US

So many Chinese car makers popped up in recent years. There're already NIO, Byton, Xiaopeng. Never heard of this one before. I wonder how many there are. :)

echevilon Blue Apron becomes a penny stock, trading under $1 for the first time

You can buy stuff in much smaller portions in most Japanese grocery stores, which I think is much better. There are also some grocery stores that have the option to buy unpacked produce, like Wholefoods.

echevilon China’s Economy Slows Sharply

No sane people would believe indefinite high growth is maintainable, and slowdown is of course welcome if that helps avoid bigger problems down the road.

echevilon China’s Economy Slows Sharply

I think Chinese government has to welcome slowing down because it's just impossible to maintain a growth rate like that indefinitely. The GPD of China already come close to that of US. At this scale, the same growth rate is naturally becoming harder and harder to achieve and simply pursuing that number might lead to catastrophic outcome. A slow down in economy growth gives China more time to fix the structural problems caused by rapid growth, and reduces the chances of a sudden crush. Overall I'd say it leads to a much more healthier economy.

It has side effects of course, but Chinese government have much better control of the macro-economy compared to free markets in most other countries, and that would help a lot in avoiding economical crisis. The debt issue is concerning, but I think Chinese government is much faster in acting on and fixing problems.

Some of the slow down mentioned in the article, such as the fall in housing market, seems to be exactly what the government want, as they've tighten the rules for real estate by a lot earlier this year. There're strict criteria people have to meet to be eligible for purchasing a house. This is a good thing because the current real estate market in China is almost insane.

echevilon China says rejecting physical cash is illegal amid e-payments popularity

Very reasonable decision

echevilon Taiwan Can Win a War with China

Yes and China is closely watching domestic events in Taiwan as well, which does have major impacts on the relation between them, and also on the sentiment of people on both sides.

echevilon Taiwan Can Win a War with China

Taiwan’s biggest worry right now is probably domestic. People basically lost confidence in both parties (KMT and DPP) ever in power, and Taiwan’s future is really unclear

echevilon Inside China's audacious global propaganda campaign

Anything that may not be considered politically correct?

echevilon They Rejected Us

There could still be legit culture fit sessions, like Stripe has a high bar for friendliness, and Airbnb want people to love traveling and be adventurous.