eddieplan9

Steve Jobs famously said Dropbox is a feature not a product. This feels very much like it.

Why the false dichotomy? Does political freedom automatically contradict with economic prosperity for some reason now? Born and raised in China, I fail to see how the last 10 years of erosion in freedom has yielded any better results economically.

Please don’t buy the government propaganda that legitimizes everything from stupid to evil as a price that has to be paid to raise people out of poverty.

Maybe insurance companies should drop them (or raise their premium, just like what they do with smokers).

At what cost? If there were crazy people jaywalking onto the freeway, do you want to reduce speed limit nationally to accommodate that, or would you rather let it play out and people can realize certain things are just fatally stupid?

In the US, they created this backdoor "Opt" work visa (which they're desperately trying to expand) that allows hundreds of thousands of foreign students to stay in the US once studies are finished and compete for jobs. Oh, and they don't pay various retirement taxes, so companies get an immediate 15% incentive to hire them over American students.

First, OPT is not a visa. Optional Practical Training participants are mostly F-1 visa holders. Per IRS rules[1], the social security tax exemption "does not apply to F-1,J-1,M-1, or Q-1/Q-2 nonimmigrants who become resident aliens." And per IRS rules [2], you are considered a resident aliens if you pass the Substantial Presence Test [3], which states, "31 days during the current year, and 183 days during the 3-year period that includes the current year and the 2 years immediately before that." Now how many students can get an OPT job and still fail this test?

The US immigration policy is not perfect and has holes. But attracting foreign talents to stay and work in the US is the baby, not the bath water.

[1] https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore... [2] https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/dete... [3] https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/subs...

Dominion the company uses SolarWinds or Orion does not mean the voting system it develops uses SolarWinds or Orion. I am pretty sure Dominion also uses MS Office, but that does not mean the voting system is vulnerable to MS Office hacks.

My visa was rejected twice before I gave up. One of my friend was rejected 3 or 4 times before he was granted a visa, in a span of less than 1 year. I don’t think it’s out of the ordinary to see someone’s visa rejected 8 times before one was granted. The F1 student visa requirements are quite ambiguous and leave a lot of room for “interpretation”. Most are rejected because they cannot demonstrate “strong ties” to the home country to prove they will return after graduation. Now tell me how do a senior in college with no asset and no job prove they will return to the home country after 5 years of graduate school.

Parent’s keyword is “allow to succeed”, not “succeed”. I always warn people about false equivalence when it comes to China. The laws and rules in China are not the same concept as laws and rules in the West. There are implicit rules or 潜规则. The rules and laws are only there to make things look legit. There are very few places on earth where you can be forced into citizenship so you can be deprived of consular access and be dealt with using the convenience of Chinese rules and tools[1].

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-sentences-bookseller-gui-...

If the new regulation targets the root of the problem - which is lack of economic opportunities - then yes. Regulation targeting patchwork solution, then it's the definition of virtual signaling.

That is what they want you to believe, as everything in China must look reasonable. Google left because it decided censoring according to law was too much for them. Really? They suddenly got tired of censoring after doing it for years? Or is it [1]?

The timing of Uber leaving China - Aug 2016 - coincided suspiciously with the Chinese government legalizing ridesharing - announced in July 2016 to kick in November 2016. Isn’t that interesting? Per HBR:

Under the new regulations, the data collected by Uber would come under the purview of the government. There would be no more subsidies. Market prices would prevail, the regulations state, “except when municipal government officials believe it is necessary to implement government-guided pricing.” According to Xinhua, ride-hailing companies would be urged to merge with taxi companies. (Many of those also happen to be owned by the local governments.) Uber would have to get both provincial and national regulatory approval for its activities anywhere in China. Online and offline services would be regulated separately.

Moreover, foreign companies like Uber would be subject to even more regulation than their competitors.

This has always been the MO of Chinese government: blackmail though selective enforcement of broad-stroke laws. They tell you to leave without having to mouth it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora [2] https://hbr.org/2016/08/the-real-reason-uber-is-giving-up-in...

I think the article did a really good job highlighting the power of combining a worship-level deference towards algorithm and an incredibly deep pocket. In the West, if you are an upstart, you don't have the latter - who can spend $1B on paid install in a year while seeing uninspiring retention? - and if you are big, then you cannot afford the former given the immense scrutiny from the public and the press.

Another interesting factor is that ByteDance has unfettered access to both the Chinese and the Western markets. This makes it attractive to investors who wants to bet on an upstart who can fallback to its mature Chinese business.

I personally think TikTok is still unproven outside of China if you look beyond the hype. But I also agree the big US companies are sleeping at the wheel. But if you are printing money like FB, why not?

Quite the contrary: it’s illegal to not share data with government if requested:

Two pieces of legislation are of particular concern to governments — the 2017 National Intelligence Law and the 2014 Counter-Espionage Law. Article 7 of the first law states that "any organization or citizen shall support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work in accordance with the law," adding that the the state "protects" any individual and organization that aids it.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/05/huawei-would-have-to-give-da...

Maybe this is history repeating itself: the story of the father of Chinese space program [1] was quite pertinent:

During WWII, he was involved in the Manhattan Project, which ultimately led to the successful development of the first atomic bomb in America.

During the Second Red Scare, in the 1950s, the US federal government accused him of communist sympathies. In 1950, despite protests by his colleagues, he was stripped of his security clearance. He decided to return to China...

Upon his return, he helped lead the Chinese nuclear weapons program. This effort ultimately led to China's first successful atomic bomb test and hydrogen bomb test, making China the fifth nuclear weapons state, and achieving the fastest fission-to-fusion development in history.

Qian was invited to visit the US ..., but he refused the invitation, having wanted a formal apology for his detention. In a reminiscence published in 2002, Marble stated that he believed Qian had "lost faith in the American government" but that he had "always had very warm feelings for the American people."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Xuesen

It’s not about conservatives. It’s not just “words taken down”. It’s regular good people who lose their job and career. For example, read the story of Professor Steve Hsu: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/16/open-thread-156-25/

Of course it’s OK the authentication system can read the password! What is so wrong on both technical and ethical levels is that the password entered into some data pipeline for machine learning. God knows what else they do with the cleartext passwords.

You know back in the days you can also go to farmer Joe and buy a chicken and pay no middle man. Jumping from that fact to the conclusion that food supply chain has not much value is, naive, to say the least.

That's a very cynical view. Doctors are by no means lower class. Most if not all of them can quit, and are not subject to "economic coercion". Yet almost of them choose to work and overwork.

I am not an "essential" and am working from home, but I donate and try to help my local community, and if I am called to help in other ways, I will.

And no, I don't actively invest in tobacco.

Healthcare is notoriously difficult to “disrupt” due to regulations and how the medical system is set up. I once worked for a healthcare startup and we joked that 1) your customer does not pay you and does not respond to price 2) your customer does not even choose the product and does not respond to product quality 3) you cannot even refine your product freely without getting someone’s approval on every change, for a fee. I understand everyone is happy about the downfall and disgrace of Theranos and rightly so, but I am a bit sad when the general consensus is to take all these regulations as self-evident because “you cannot play with people’s life”. There are definitely areas in healthcare that can have less stringent and rigid requirements, and today we can see that certain diagnostics is a good candidate. Expanding right-to-try [1] would be a step forward too.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-try_law

If you cannot get everyone to review for all purchases, then the next best thing is to do random sampling by randomly choose buyers and purchases to get reviewed, and possibly pay them so that selected reviews are collected. I have fond memory of winning the moderation lottery at Slashdot [1]. The current system of free for all will only amplify the voice of the abusers.

[1] https://slashdot.org/moderation.shtml

Are you even looking? I did one Google search, and found this [1]:

The results of the analysis show that Huawei devices quantitatively pose a high risk to their users. In virtually all categories we studied, we found Huawei devices to be less secure than comparable devices from other vendors

https://www.scmagazine.com/home/security-news/vulnerabilitie...

I expect private companies will be the ones providing the infrastructure for self driving cars, and your car will have to subscribe to a "awareness service provider", much the same way that your phone needs to subscribe to a carrier.

I honestly don't care when Apple complies with local law a la iCloud China. I think that is disappointing but completely reasonable, whether we agree with the law or not.

However, Hong Kong is a special administration region, and has historically enjoyed high level of judicial independence. When Apple takes the clue from a Chinese government newspaper - not even a legal request - and do the CCP's bidding proactively, it crosses a line. This is not compliance. This is self-censor.

You can argue that Hong Kong is part of China, and therefore Apple's operation in Hong Kong should comply with Chinese law. But what is next? China also claims sovereignty over Taiwan, will Apple self-censor Taiwanese App Store soon? Will Apple removes the Taiwanese flag from Taiwanese iOS users if China government demands so [1]?

It's also sad to see Apple pushes back on US government requests because they can, and kowtows to the Chinese governments without their having to even sending a take-down request! If one day Apple fires some employee because the Chinese government thinks he/she "hurt Chinese people's feeling" in a personal tweet [2], I will not be surprised!

[1] https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/09/apple-removes-taiwan-fla...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nba/nba-statement-diff...

First, it’s called “baby bullet express service”. Second, even the high-speed trains in China do not travel at high speed in city core (IIRC <80kph).

Because zoom’s patch will only help users still using and updating zoom while those who have uninstalled zoom are still vulnerable (because the uninstalled leaves the web server behind)

The question is not if they will, but if they can.

https://m.uber.com

The moment that I truly got the idea of "you are the product" is when my 8-year-old complained to me, "I had to watch 10 ads in order to get a gold coin to feed my fish."

I felt literally repulsive when my sweet kid is part of an army to bump up someone's ad views. I also felt truly ashamed as a parent and as a tech worker.

Unfortunately, the most common rule in my kid's circle is that kid can download any app as long as it's free.

Not a fan of the company, but they are much more than musical.ly.

- Toutiao, the content farm (think Buzzfeed++), a pivot from the original news aggregator model. It has 120M DAU as of last October, per YC's report [1].

- Douyin, or Tik Tok, the short video platform, a pivot from originally a copycat of Musical.ly (ironically). It has 150M DAU [2].

- Dailyhunt, Toutiao for the India market.

- Musical.ly, an acquisition.

I have a strong disdain for the company, because the content is almost completely garbage, rumors, and click-baits, and it is dangerously addictive.

[1] https://blog.ycombinator.com/the-hidden-forces-behind-toutia...

[2] https://walkthechat.com/douyin-became-chinas-top-short-video...

An intelligence animal being able to do something != "with enough processing we should be able to do the same with a control system".

You cannot be further away from truth if you think the Chinese higher education nowadays follows the communist bloc model. I did my undergraduate at one of the best universities in China, and to comment on your point:

1. Doctoral level studies are SUPER TOUGH

It's common knowledge that in China, graduate school admission follows government policy mandates. Government says we need more top-tier talent, and this is translated to having more PhDs, and then to admitting more people into doctoral programs. It's not uncommon to have one professor advising 20+ PhD students at the same time. The students often are just cheap labor at university labs, and sometimes even work as free childcare for the professors. I am not kidding.

The schools then set an explicit bar for graduation: publish N papers in SCI-indexed journals. Imagine if your company has a rule that says you need to close N tickets with M upvotes to claim your paycheck. Guess what will happen.

3. Lion share of people are totally fine with 2 year technical school programs.

Only those who score below the national cutoff score in the National College Entrance Exam go to technical programs. It's not by choice! There is a reason there are a lot of for-profit "private universities" in China these days: because you can pay to get into a private university and avoid technical school programs.

People want to avoid technical school programs so much that the most lucrative part of running a high school is actually prepping high school graduates who "failed" the NCEE for retaking the exam next year.

4. Plentiful supply of tech school talents feed the industry, and keep educated labour cheap.

The strength of manufacturing has nothing to do with tech school talent. It's simply because there a lot of people in China (4x the US population), and generally the Chinese workers have great work ethics thanks to whatever is leftover of traditional Chinese culture. The society is fairly ordered, and kids all follow the sanctioned path. No backpacking-in-Europe-for-a-year. No opioid crisis. Everybody is laser focused on career advancement and making money, and everybody has a sense of urgency.

5. This allows university level studies to be what they were supposed to be originally: academic research, and not doing degree milling.

Talk to anyone who graduated from a Chinese university. Seriously, anyone.

6. The industry and academia are don't go very far apart despite there being an iron wall in between academic and practical tertiary education.

This is quite true, because it's rare for academic folks to work on fundamental research. In the current incentive setup, doing hard fundamental research is just stupid. You need to get to that N publications quick!