Was hoping to read about graph database, AI-related changes..., but didn't expect this: "I almost died in the spring semester...surprisingly hard to concentrate on important things like databases when you can't breathe." Hope Prof. Pavlo has been breathing better, stellar review.
The levels are very similar to all those hierarchy used in big corporations outside of the tech. Classic selection and grooming techniques. We all get to decide if we want to play that game or not.
The researchers made clear that they are "independent of the government." They also assured participants that "we will erase all survey data if we are faced with political pressure to share the data with government or school officials."
They used email and WeChat (similar to WhatsApp) messages to communicate with the students and even hand out free one-year account of Youku (similar to Youtube) to obscure the study's explicit focus on censorship.
Hi, reporter of the story here.
From their paper, it looks like they didn't. "We intentionally keep the language introducing the tool [VPNs] vague to avoid political pressure from the school administration."