larrysalibra

Google Maps are intentionally offset in China to comply with regulations because the global version doesn't have a license to operate in China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps#Google_Maps_in_Chi...

Apple Maps in China uses Autonavi maps which are licensed by the Chinese government. Note that these maps are different than the maps seen in Apple Maps outside of Mainland China.

Google and Facebook weren't blocked using your Hong Kong sim because roaming sims tunnel data out of the country and connect to the internet there (like a vpn!).

Huge fan of HTML 5 form validation. For whatever reason, I still see a lot of client-side javascript apps that spend a lot of time trying to validate form input in javascript and render and display feedback when they could just outsource it to the user's browser.

Browser support is pretty much ubiquitous: https://caniuse.com/#feat=form-validation

Wow! I always wondered why properties in Vietnam were so thin! Makes sense - give people incentives to build "thin" buildings and they'll build thin buildings!

Holding officers of the company criminally & civilly liable seems like it would go further to solving the problem. If the CEO was worried about going to jail or being fined, he would have made sure the organization was a lot more focused on protecting individual data.

Interesting to note that this newspaper is owned by Alibaba which provides AliPay one of the 2 apps making Mainland China cashless.

As an American living in Hong Kong:

Cash can be faster because you do know the total before hand since the price on the menu/price tag is what you pay. This is because there is no sales tax or tipping. Buying 3 items at HK$12 each? Your total is HK$36. If there's a queue I usually have my exact change ready before I'm to the front.

In the US, you can rarely tell how much you'll pay since sales tax varies by county or sometimes by city.

A side effect of this is weird totals like $23.76 that result in lots of hard to spend small change which also disincentivizes cash use.

NYC Subway & DC metro are state run...

If aren't sure who Liu Xiaobo is or want to learn more, this essay by China expert Perry Link is excellent: http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/07/13/the-passion-of-liu-x...

The same state-owned Chinese carriers will sell you products in Hong Kong that when used in mainland China let you circumvent the great firewall. https://www.larrysalibra.com/hop-over-the-great-firewall-wit...

The regular crackdowns on VPNs mean that many who live in the region long since stopped using them and switched to a mobile plan or prepaid sim from China Mobile Hong Kong or Hong Kong Unicom that provides a Hong Kong IP address and unfiltered internet while roaming in the mainland.

Right on about Hong Kong taxi drivers. They also tend to be racist opting to skip non-Chinese looking passengers.

> A lot of the taxis have weird fare manipulation lookup tables instead of correct metering.

The fare table is because the Transport Department raised taxi fares on April 9th and taxis that haven't had their meters adjusted are required to use the fare table. http://www.td.gov.hk/en/publications_and_press_releases/pres...

> You literally can't top it up with anything smaller than HKD50 (USD$9) even if your fare costs less and you only have small denomination local money.

This is the same as Shenzhentong card in Shenzhen which can't be loaded with less than CNY50 at a reload machine. If your fare costs less than HK$50 and you don't have more cash, buy a single trip ticket. If you really want to pay with Octopus, top up your Octopus card with HK$50 and get a refund of the value after your trip.

Those of us that live here in Hong Kong never have to deal with adding value to our Octopus card because we can link it to our Hong Kong-issued credit cards.

> If you ask 20 odd Hong Kong banks about cross-border RMB payment APIs (HK is supposed to be a financial center, after all) not a single bank can offer you one.

Mainland China has capital controls - that is why transacting in RMB cross border is difficult. Banks aren't allowed to offer that service.

> just to open a regular bank account is now so difficult standard waits can exceed 2-3 months (and success is far from guaranteed)

You are right...the difficulty in opening a bank account is a huge problem for business in Hong Kong.

> So what does HK still have to offer?

* civil society * amazing mountains & beaches * great food * excellent sports infrastructure * public transit that is a pleasure to use * no capital gains, interest, dividends, import, VAT, or sales taxes. * territorial taxation (Hong Kong residents are only taxed on income sourced from Hong Kong) * great people both local and from abroad * ubiquitous gigabit fiber to home for < US$30/month. 10 gigabit fiber to home available in many locations.

Larry from Blockstack here.

Yes! Users should be in control of their data and Blockstack enables this. There are also practical advantages for developers.

User control of data means you don't have to have the responsibility and cost that comes along with storing other people's information. With lots of user data, you're a valuable target for hackers and governments. It also frees you from maintaining expensive backend infrastructure and devops. This lets your app scale without a huge bill from your favorite cloud infrastructure provider.

Larry from Blockstack here. It works on whichever browser is your default browser and soon all of your browsers. Nothing is Chrome (or Safari!) specific! If you have a problem using Blockstack with your favorite browser, we'd love to know about it so that we can fix it! Sorry about the confusion!

Bastiat for the win! https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Essays_on_Political_Economy...

Monopolistic practices == industry protected from competition by government violence.

If the health industry wasn't, you'd have people making a killing importing 2 dollar generic antibiotics from overseas to compete with the 70 dollar generic antibiotics sold at CVS.

Time and other resources are scarce. The more resources that are tied up in the healthcare the less available for other things.

Other countries are getting better health results for way less money which all other things equal makes Americans comparatively less well off.

When I pay $1500 and dozens of hours of time for something that costs $2 and 15 minutes in another country, I am less well off.

I like being healthy, but I'd rather be more healthy for less money than less healthy for more money.

You are right, the money isn't transferred off into a void, it is a wealth transfer from consumers to the healthcare industry.

The Amex Platinum Card for Schwab [1] returns 6.25% cash[2] for airfare from airlines & amextravel purchases. If you can get the 400 of value from the travel & Uber credits, you break even with $2400 of spending in the 5x point categories and quickly do better than a no fee 2% cash back card.

---

CSR is great if you can redeem through their portal. I mostly travel in Asia and Europe where discount airlines don't seem to be in either chase or Amex's travel portals. The traditional carrier flights they offer are usually 2-3x more expensive than the AirAsias of the world.

1: http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/investing/accounts_produ...

2: 1 MR = 1.25 cents deposited in Schwab account

If you're considering personal cards, USAA has 2.5% cash back on everything if you have a bank account + $1000/month direct deposit with them. http://usaa.com/limitless (limited to certain states)

I read this headline and living in China & Hong Kong for the past decade+ expected to see requests for better tools to avoid government surveillance.

Refreshing to see that these tool requests are about getting better visibility for activists instead of tools for "how to be an activist without ending up in jail"

This is really great to see. Kudos to the Wire messenger team for taking this step.

In Hong Kong, Horlicks is usually on the menu at traditional Hong Kong restaurants along with milk tea, iced tea, coffee/milk tea, Coke & Coke with lemon. It's served through out the day and boy is it tasty.

Larry from Blockstack.

We used use Namecoin and migrated to Bitcoin when we discovered that one miner controls more than 51% of mining power which is a security problem in a proof of work blockchain.

If you're interested in learning more, there's a peer-reviewed paper on it here: https://blockstack.org/blockstack.pdf

Section 3: "Lessons from Namecoin Deployment" may be of interest to you.

There's also an (old) thread discussing the problems encountered with Namecoin here: https://forum.blockstack.org/t/why-is-namecoin-being-ignored...

It is with the hope that the penalties from getting caught will encourage people to comply with the limit of stay terms of their visa.

I've lived outside of the USA for most of my adult life and from the people I've interacted with, anecdotally, the threat that if they overstay their visa they'll be fined <insert large number here> per day and be denied a visa & entry in the future seems to motivate people to comply with the terms of their visa.

I sponsored my own visa & moved to Hong Kong where all residents (even temporary) are covered by almost free public health care.

NYC-based NS1: https://ns1.com

This problem has been solved other places. For example, in Hong Kong, all operators have a statutory right of access to common areas of buildings to provision services to customers in the building.

http://www.ofca.gov.hk/filemanager/ofca/common/Industry/tele...

Incorporated Owners/Building Management: "(a) should not impose any fees, deposit, access charge, administrative charge, escort charge or rental charge on the Operators for the access of the building, the use of the common parts of the building or the use of the in-building telecommunications system of the building for the provision of services to residents or occupiers of the building (b) should not enter into any commercial contract which will unreasonably restrict the right of a resident or occupier or deprives a resident or occupier of the right, to have access to the public telecommunications services of his choice. Any such agreement is void to the extent that it imposes such restriction;"

Would be nice to see similar legislation adopted in the USA.

Network effect.

Having same key verification problems too. Will try again tomorrow!

Love arq too. Rumor has it arq 5 will also stop eating up free space with its cache.noindex folder. Excited about that!

It will be interesting to see how password/touch id lock for Notes works. Will they be end-to-end encrypted? Will they be searchable? Or is this simply a UI feature to protect against someone looking over your shoulder?

CEO reached out to me via email as well a few hours ago to acknowledge the security problems and promise to implement encryption.

Our email thread and my comments can be found here: https://www.larrysalibra.com/tantan-responds-promises-encryp...