I'm all for banning apps that carry spywares (either by app store policies, or privacy laws), but I see no reason why such ban applies only to apps published by Chinese companies, rather than all apps.
144 karma · joined March 17, 2017
This has been a common justification for CCP's censorship on Internet and other media. Considering how magnificent CCP's censorship machine has grown into today, the slope is not that slippery.
> a seemingly recent campaign to counter transnational telecom and online fraud (according to the official provincial statements)
The increase in telecom scamming activity is a real thing in China, with scammers operating from southeastern Asia countries. And operators are often Chinese citizens hired for what they originally thought would be "oversea job with good pay". The "persuaded to return" strategy might be targeted primarily at them.
Those scams are particularly bad -- maybe even worse than the telecom scams happening in the US and other wealthy English-speaking countries -- because taking personal loans is way too easy in China. A few clicks on a lender's app and you get cash transferred to your account instantly. And there are hundreds of such apps. Scammers can talk victims into maxing out their credit lines and wire the loaned cash away.
And the fact that there isn't "personal bankruptcy" laws in China also makes it worse. Such loans are rarely forgiven and victims often had to pay them off with their future income for years out of the fear that loan defaults can affect their credit score for life.
So I guess this is Chinese police's way of "do something about it". Of course they don't have jurisdiction overseas and should have gone with Interpol and/or local police first, except that hasn't been very effective. My 2 cents on the reasons behind this is:
1. Local police might be paid off;
2. No incentive for local police to prioritize their resource for cases like this -- there were no victims in their own countries;
3. There are just too many scammers;
Surely once this set up is in place it's possible to extend its coverage to harass/"persuade" political dissidents but CCP has already be doing it for years without it. If this oversea police "persuasion" program is getting local law enforcement's attention to the point that they can arrest both them and the scammers, I would see it as an absolute win.
[1] https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden, note that it's different from Bitwarden's official server (https://bitwarden.com/help/install-on-premise-linux/), uses less CPU/memory, and enables premium features like TOTP for free.
Please keep that idea to whatever languages that assign those names to months. East Asian languages have been calling them literally "month 1/2/3/etc." without problems, just like how most languages don't have 31 different words for each day in a month.
Alternatively, if we have to give months aliases, why not fix those languages by e.g. reassigning "September" to the 7th month?
The pandemic changed everything for the airline industry, which went into recession for two years. Pilots' incomes went down 10% to 40%, so did flight attendants' incomes, and losses were widen.
Last year, one of the "big three" airlines[1] recovered 100MMs RMB of revenue through selling pilots. Yep, selling pilots in stock, literally asking them to find jobs elsewhere. The airline industry is in a mess now, but the public doesn't know.
Young pilots complaining that they won't be able to make their mortgage payments; Low morale in the industry. Much higher attrition rates. What do they all mean for an industry that relies on safety?
1. A Qingdao Airlines aircraft ran over a ground crew staff [2]
2. Runway excursion for a China Eastern aircraft in ZLYL [3]
3. Landing gear pins were left not removed on a Lucky Air aircraft (subsidiary of Hainan Airlines) [4]
4. Cracked windshield on a Juneyao Air aircraft [5]
Those all happened within a year. Chinese civil aviation has never had a safety track record as bad as this. People in the industry feel very bad for such shameful moment.
But what would happen next? No idea. Everyone is waiting for that flight with the unlucky ones.
Translator notes:
* Original post was posted on Feb 20, 2022.
[1] Air China, China Southern, China Eastern
[2] Jan 24, 2022 https://www.sohu.com/a/519204416_123753
[3] Feb 11, 2022 https://news.sina.com.cn/o/2022-02-11/doc-ikyakumy5439933.sh...
[4] Feb 16, 2022 https://www.sohu.com/a/523129276_260616
[5] Feb 20, 2022 https://www.sohu.com/a/524074118_120388781
Does this example need another prerequisite "and the current price of NFLX is $1"? Because if the example runs with NFLX at, say $10, then each option already have an intrinsic value of $9.
And combined with #5, those options look like at-the-money call options that expire in 10 years. But in this case it won't make any sense to set the option price (the amount of income to forfeit for each option) according to either strike price or stock price -- shouldn't it be set according to the difference between the two?
I'm assuming the V gesture you are referring to is the one that consists of holding up both index finger and middle finger, rather than the one with thumb and index finger.
Not a pilot, just wondering -- does this include communicating with ATC towers? Such as moving to specific altitude, requesting landing instructions, etc.
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/pnw/microsoftjoke.htm
For all of us who feel only the deepest love and affection for the way computers have enhanced our lives, read on. At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon." In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue.
For some reason you would simply accept this.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would run on only five percent of the roads.
6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation" warning light.
7. The airbag system would ask "Are you sure?" before deploying.
8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
10. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off."
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-inf...
And the clip you referred to, I think was the "tank man" video being aired by CCTV on 1989/6/5, with voice-over as:
"稍有常识的人都会看出，如果我们的铁骑继续前进，这个螳臂当车的歹徒，难道能够阻挡得了吗？摄像机拍下的这个画面，同西方某些国家的宣传恰恰相反，正好说明了我们的军队，保持了最大限度的克制。"
which roughly translates to:
"Any sane person can see that, if our 'iron horse' keeps marching, this 'gangster' wouldn't stand any chance, just like 'a mantis trying to stop a chariot'. In contrary to some western media had claimed, this clip showed that our troops remained utmost desciplinary."
So I would say the clip was used to reinforce CCP's official tone on the tragedy, which is something like "some gangsters colluded with foreign influences tried to overthrow Chinese government".
I know sometimes CCP's propaganda sounds dumb, but definitely not that dumb as "tank man was trying to rob the tank".
The idea is basically that you pay the publisher out of your own pocket for their ad space, to buy your own impression. This might be a great product if it covers the majority of ad inventories...
Not true. Being a Chinese student who studied in the US in the past, I never joined, or was asked to join the Communist Party. In fact, the majority of Chinese students in the US that I know are not Communist Party members. A passport (and a valid visa) is all you need to go abroad.
And those "4-piece sets" are not faked ones. People purchase those from slumdogs who woud like some extra cash and don't know or don't care what happens if their identities are used in criminal activities.
But with 2-5... It's possible that those dumb crooks were too dumb to consider that much and just used an WeChat account registered under their own name.
Hangouts chat is supposed to be the replacement: https://gsuite.google.com/products/chat/
It might be made available to (non-gsuite) consumers at some point.
You might want to talk to some Hong Kong people, or even people from Taiwan, if they are still considered "Chinese" for this matter.
A real concern for HK/Taiwan people is, what if CCP demands Google to turn over HK/Taiwan user's data? Do you think Google can push back by saying "nah we don't think HK/Taiwan is part of China"?
Also as a Chinese myself, I'm in the "meh" camp on Dragonfly. Baidu does have its own problems, but for Chinese people Bing has always been there. How much difference does it make? For Google, if launching Dragonfly would damage the "Google" brand's image and reputation, is Dragonfly going to bring enough benefit to offset such damage?
And to answer your question -- yes it's a real word, and is used on Internet a lot. Literally it means white ("bai") liberals ("zuo" -- left).
Some sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/in-chinas-...
His latest mine is still under construction, between a hydroelectric power plant and the concrete shell of a disused power transmission station, between Kongyu and the city of Kangding.
As China’s economy boomed, private companies set up hydroelectric plants in western Sichuan; then, as the economy slowed, they found themselves unable to sell to the national grid, elbowed out of the market by more politically powerful state-owned firms.
“It took a lot of money to build the plants, but it doesn’t cost that much to maintain them,” said HaoBTC’s Mu. “So it makes sense for them to sell the power to anyone willing to buy, even at a low rate.”
Also:
https://news.bitcoin.com/brief-glimpse-lives-chinese-bitcoin...
To maximize profit, they utilize hydroelectric power plants built on Yangtze river. Not the ones like Three Gorges Dam, but those small/micro plants (<10MW installed capacity). Most of those plants are owned by local governments or private companies. Usually, State Grid -- which is obviously owned by the state -- would purchase their power output but during rainy seasons, there is just too much electricity that State Grid wouldn't buy it all.
That's when miners came and built datacenters close to the power plants, made deals with the power plant owners to buy the power that State Grid didn't want. It's a win-win for everyone: power plants get extra cash, miners get cheap electricity.
And when it comes to dry season (starting October), miners ship their mining rig to Xinjiang or Gansu, where wind turbines are having a similar situation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Student_Protection_Act...
Chung Kai-Shek is the romanization of 蔣介石 in Cantonese. If those post-docs weren't native in Cantonese, there's almost no way they can connect the pronunciation of Chung Kai-Shek back to 蔣介石.
In another romanization system used by ROC, 蔣介石/蔣中正 is Chiang Chieh-shih/Chiang Chung-cheng. Mainland Chinese can probably recognize them, but no guarantees.
Also, VPNs are mostly used by academic institutions and corporations. Common netizens often use "Shadowsocks", a protocol that focuses on obfuscation rather than encryption, to make it more difficult for the Wall to recognize its pattern, hence more unlikely to be filtered. It has been working perfectly for 5+ years until recently some people were saying that their Shadowsocks traffic got recognized by the police, then ISP suspended their Internet, they had to visit the police station to sign a commitment of "never use unauthorized means to access Internet" to resume their Internet connection.
This could be "fake news" but still worrisome because if GFW will whitelist only registered VPN servers, and now that Shadowsocks is down, there will be no alternatives.
That said, this is only a concern of probably less than 1% of people. The others either don't know the existence of the Wall, or don't care about the world outside the Wall. In that sense, GFW is already a success.