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I was actually expecting this kind of comment.

People in HongKong only have this few years left to able conduct protest at that scale while keeping themselves relatively safe.

In China mainland, you do that, you're in prison for life or worst.

You know what, "worst" is not good enough to describe what could happen. There was a case that might show you what could happen if the police got you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Jia

Yang Jia was a man who killed 6 police mans in 2008. Why? Because the police interrogated him for riding an unregistered bicycle. The method of interrogation which the English version of Wikipedia does not fully mention (But mentioned in the Chinese version) including electrically shock this man's genital cause it to dysfunction.

Let me ask you this: Will you risk your life to protest for your right knowing there will be no good end for you after?

So that's why currently, the safest thing for mainlanders to do is focus on earning money, and use the money to trade for freedom (For example: to have a better social status and/or to be able to move to another country etc), and hope for things could change for the better in the future.

I hope now you can understand why I'm so "hypocritical" on this.

Oh, well, as a "mainlander", I tell you: Hong Kong citizens WILL lose all their rights, and it will come sooner than you think.

If you watched this protest and all their other protests, it is very easy to see one thing: Their action is isolated， they don't have the power to unite people other than themselves. Nobody besides themselves will stand for them. Nobody in mainland support them, nobody in mainland understand them. Many mainlanders even developed Schadenfreude when looking at those protests.

(OK, "Nobody" is a bit of over exaggeration, but fairly right if you want to feel the situation)

Why? Because they are protest only for their own rights, on their own little land that nobody cares anymore. It's not about greater good, not "making the entire China democratic". Just "We're Hongkongers, we are special, so we must have those rights", while don't give a damn when the rest of China is been stripped clean.

How many HongKonger protested when Xi changed the Constitution? Not this much.

Nobody cares about your right if you don't defend the right of the others. 50 years, if they don't change China for the better, China will change them, as simple as that.

Universal healthcare? What does that mean?

In China, we only have one type of healthcare, the one that needs to be paid. There is no healthcare for free here.

(Unless of course, you're a high ranking CCP party member, that way you can enjoy all the goodies from all over the country for free, including free blood plasma from young people* to keep you feel good when you're old. *Caution: HIV maybe included due to technical difficulties).

> if they were wise and not trying to be authoritarian or controlling

Well, that IF is how you end your own argument.

In China, most of us don't give a deep thought on privacy and personal .* (personal freedom, personal rights etc). Because of this, I don't believe people here would build an OS to protect people's privacy and many other rights. You just don't have the base and market to do that here.

I think even if HongmengOS is not just a smoke, the best they could do is probably just a "better" Android "knock off". So I personally don't give that OS any high hope.

But I do have a little hope of course. As a Chinese myself, my hope is that their OS can be fully open sourced, so tech communities can learn how to build a OS from them, and maybe later fork it to fit people's own needs (for example: add privacy focused features).

My another hope is, maybe in the future, more and more (small) phone manufacturers will start to build phones that could run multiple OSs, like what Purism is trying to do. That way user will have more freedom in terms of choice.

Don't know which of my hope is likely to come true, we'll see. (I guess Purism is a better bet because they are making progress as we speak)

This gives me some weird feelings. I mean, if you ask a website to turn some content "unpreferred" without user consensus, isn't that also some type of censorship? In fact, many Chinese websites are doing it right now, and it's very effective in terms of censoring contents.

However, I support the idea of content flagging, but instead of making them "unpreferred", maybe add a mark saying "Propaganda from XXX" so people can be more cautious about those information themselves?

Which control?

What been tightened up is censorship. However, censorship is not completely equals to control.

I know what you meant. You want all the rights in the constitution, so did I. But get things cooked require time. The current situation is, if you trying to get that a rush, then you will be cracked down and set everything back. Somebody tried that 30 years ago already and failed.

During the few decades of my life, what I've experienced is that the government move themselves more and more into a service role. The goal has been changed from gaining political dominance to generating profit. And they are more willing to act according to laws rather than just make some random new rules.

And all that is because we're now relying on an economy that depends on openness. Which, is hard to change as long as economical development is still the top one goal. And it will be, otherwise everything will fell apart.

So, unlike you, I'm pretty optimistic about the future. Few shady things and setbacks won't change that.

BTW: Here is something what you can do now:

1. Don't join them.

2. If you do join them, don't forget, one of the original goal of CCP is to bring democracy to China. So try do that from time to time as an inside job will you?

Of course, I personally like to keep things simple, I don't join them.

> And later a lot of the original leaders revealed they are clueless in how to demand proper political reform at the original movement

So as many other political movements around the world. A spark comes first, then maybe fire.

However, spark is just spark. Protesters of 6.4 was demanding something big, too big to be realistic. So they failed, paid high price for it.

To eat an elephant, you have to chop it into pieces first, then eat it piece by piece. Trying to eat an elephant in one sitting will probably kill the eater.

BTW: China is still opening up politically, it's slow but still opening. 20 years ago you wouldn't even imagine to be able sue the government for whatever they did, today however it's fairly common in some cases.

Economy I think is the main factor that force China to be more open. It's open up or die situation, I don't think even CCP had too many choice.

> In this vein, are there any company's currently selling viable compostable/biodegradable plastics?

That will increase the cost by an unignorable margin and even that, some biodegradable plastics still take a long time (a year or even years) to be gradated.

This is the reason of why things like reusable plates etc is currently the best way to go. That is, when those reusable items actually gets returned.

I won't agreed with this a few months ago, but more and more Chinese companies is receiving this kind of treatment. The reason maybe not the same, but the results are, Hikvision is a clear example, even DJI got their name mentioned (I mean, DJI, a toy maker, really?).

So yeah, I guess everything is eventually boil down to that.

> GitHub Support does not take any fees and even matches donations... wow!

Maybe I didn't fully understand what "cut" means, but ....

> In the first year, GitHub will not charge any fees, so 100% of sponsorships will go to the sponsored developer. In the future, we may charge a nominal processing fee.

https://help.github.com/en/articles/about-github-sponsors

As far as I know, it's a Linux fork[0], and capable to run Android app.

More information can be found using keyword "Hongmeng OS".

[0] https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%B8%BF%E8%92%99 (No English version)

No, they don't provide such user support, it's a free service after all.

But the keyword is not hard to find, really ;P

Only when you run a content distribution platform (like a website, chat room etc).

Other than that, you're mostly fine without an ICP (Internet Content Provider) license.

Well, actually it's a Remote Desktop as Service.

The real "GFWaaS" is when you intentionally put blocked keywords on a HTTP page, triggering GFW to reset user connection. That way you can block Chinese users from accessing your website. And it's free.

My suggestion is, may be add more web browsers to your service, make it a browser compatibility test platform, and (innocently) put few servers in China. People will figure out what's going on themselves :P

> What exactly does the US want Huawei to actually do to get rid of these bans? Do they think it will really hurt Huawei so much that they will give in to US pressure?

Don't just look at Huawei, ZTE also faced similar treatment last year. As result:

> ZTE will employ a compliance team at its expense for 10 years and hold two compliance forums in China as part of US settlement for violating export controls[0]

The U.S. maybe just trying to do the same to Huawei. But, if U.S. do this too much (maybe already), "Get rid of U.S. dependencies as much as possible" will be China's next goal.

There was a lots of people in China believes "The 'China CPU' is waste of money, Intel/ARM is good enough". Today, I don't see anybody can still say that out loud comfortably.

The potential good thing is, if China's investment on RISC-V[1] can eventually pays off, then maybe we will have some free and open ISA CPUs.

[0] https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/2150310/zte-replace-board-...

[1] https://riscv.org/2019/03/technews-article-china-actively-de...

How long your since co-workers been out of China? I'm in China right now but I don't think that system has changed people's behavior that much. Plus, I think it's stupid to put a score on everybody's head ("Oh, you're below 10, we can't be friend" stupid).

Based on my observation, people acting better usually because now they can and willing to, rather than been forced to.

In our city for example, we used to have many jaywalkers. But that number dropped since the administration constructed better pedestrian crossings (underground tunnels, foot bridge etc). People still jaywalking when those infrastructure is unavailable.

I could go one step further: Build another open source OS that can run Android app but not Android. Many Chinese companies already tried it (non-open source though) before but been persuaded not to, I guess they're feeling a little bit different now.

The good part is, by building that OS, the domestic tech communities could receive a huge boost.

So far for Huawei, Google's blockage is partly useless. As long as Huawei can sell device globally, they can just build their devices in such way that allowing their users to load custom ROM into it without effect warranty, then their users can just use LineageOS (Huawei's Android UI is a crap anyway) or a Linux distro etc. (Maybe the first hackable phone from a major manufacturer)

BTW: In China, not a single one domestic phone manufacturer I know of ships Google service with their phone. So Google service is largely an non-existence.

> However, if I were Apple, I'd be really worried about retaliation.

I think this view is too narrow. For the Chinese government, there is something more important than revenge. Why kick that cash machine out of your country if it still paying your people paid and make then happy?

I guess the retaliation will come in a different form, even something out of the trade section maybe, depends on what's on Xi's table.

To block a non-profit website? I don't think so.

BTW: It been blocked days ago. The with no obvious reason, but the time is a (loose) match, weird.

I mean, even disputes and war could only explain part of the story (U.S. is also in war with Vietnam, so as Japan and many others). I suspect their(Vietnam government's) altitude towards the Internet maybe also played a role in there.

As far as I know, Vietnam's Internet giants is far smaller compare those in China and U.S. So even if Vietnam going to full-boom in 5G (That currently require equipments from Huawei to keep up to the speed), that will still be more beneficial to international companies than domestic ones.

Maybe that's another reason why they're willing to claim down and making decision with such leverage.

You mean, everybody who fought with Vietnam will be an external security threat? Then that's a lots of people on this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Vietnam...

Not I supporting Huawei (I think they better off died), but I don't think that War argument is the full picture.

> I have a sinking feeling this kind of synthetic food production is just a bait for health-wary consumers

I'm a futuristic person, I like to imagine what I can do far into the future, something like: "Hey space ship, I like to have some roasted Salmon Sushi sprinkled with tomato paste to be delivered to the observation deck please. Thanks!"

And I believe synthetic food is the first step to archive that.

Will you laugh if I tell you the game Half-life in China is called literally "Half of Life" (半条命)[0]?

Don't take that name too seriously, I don't think there is anything to it other than to make it sound better.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Life_(video_game) (Notice the language selection)

和平 = Peace; 精英 = Elite. So yes, that's the literal translation. They're probably trying to give the game a up beating vibe by using that name, so it's easier for it to be approved by the government.

"反恐精英" on the other hand, should be translated to "Counter-terrorism elite". But "反恐(Counter-terrorism) 精英(elite)" itself is a non-literal translation of Counter-Strike.

> I think, the best way to solve this phone scam issue would be by modifying the phone protocol (I am not sure of the details) to allow users to be able to see the "Real" underlying phone number.

In China, we call this type of scam "响一声". It was very common until phone screen softwares started marking this kind of calls[0] so people stopped calling them back.

Maybe use one of those call screen app (offline one is better) until phone companies figured out how to resolve this?

[0] https://i.imgur.com/vkzbqhc

Was talking about Star Citizen on https://the-starport.net/ like almost 10 years ago.

People made many predictions back then, some said it'll never achieve that level of detailed game play while supporting multiplayer. And yet, look how far that game has went today.

Pretty impressive already if I do say so myself.

I'm looking forward to see it's completion. And even if somehow it failed, I think it's already a nice game.

Can I complain a bit about GitHub? Why I can only authorize my entire GitHub account for third-party access? Could things be slightly better if the authorization is done at repository level?

Should be translated to: "I have no idea what are these (or what is this) ... If you have too many moralities to spend, go spend them on 996icu!"

> This statement can stand alone without any implication

Here is the part of statement from Jack Ma for better context, you can judge it by yourself (full: https://finance.sina.com.cn/china/gncj/2019-04-12/doc-ihvhie...):

(Notice I have difficulties when translating Chinese word by word to English, because expression of the two language is different. But I'll make marks to help you understand)

> 今天我们拥有这么多资源，我们带着巨大的使命，希望在未来能够让天下没有难做的生意，你不付出可以吗？不可以。所以我们说，加入阿里，你要做好准备一天12个小时，否则你来阿里干什么？我们不缺8小时上班很舒服的人。今天我们要招一些8小时上班，每天坐在一个好的办公室，条件很好，食堂也不错，出去荣誉感也不错，这样的人满大街能找到。

> Today we have this huge amount of resource, and a heavily mission, a mission to build a world where people can do trade with ease. Can we do that without effort? No. Because of that, if you plan to join Alibaba, you have to get ready to work 12 hours a day, otherwise, what do you come here for? We have many people who work 8 hours a day comfortably (in the society. maybe? translator's guess). If today we going to hire some people for 8 hours/day job, and provide such good office, good condition ('condition' means "our company is better than others", translator's mark), good cafeteria and honourable title, a street full of people would wanted the job. (Translator's note: What he meant was: The job is honourable/decent, the office is good, the cafeteria is good, and all of those is not here for somebody who could only work 8 hours a day.)

> 但是我们需要的是什么？我们问你来这个公司到底想做什么？是改变自己、帮助别人、实现使命。

> But what we need? We ask you what you wanted when you join this company? The answer is to change yourself, help others, and make our mission a reality.

> 阿里早年也加班，但是我们加什么班？加学习的班，我们8小时工作以后，最主要晚上是复盘、学习。我们今天做错了什么、什么事情应该修复，我们应该互相怎么学习。我们8小时以外的两个小时、三个小时是学习、提升，而不是去加班。

> During the early years, we at Alibaba also work long hours, why? We have to learn after a day's work is done. We learn what we did wrong, what need to be fixed, and how we learn from each other (Translator's note: Should be "Learn from our mistakes, learn how to fix the mistakes and learn from each others"). The extra 2 to 3 hours after work is for learning and advancing our knowledge, not overwork.

> 我希望阿里人热爱你做的工作，如果你不热爱，哪怕8个小时你都嫌很长，如果你热爱，其实12个小时不算太长。

> I hope Alibabaers (Translator's note: employees) love the work you do, if you don't, even 8 hours is too long for you, but if you do (love your job), 12 hours is not very long.

Maybe that's because I got my English mode fully warmed up during the editing process. Don't blame drunkenemo :)