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.
"People should be allowed to see whatever they want, but if they are attracted to influences controlled by the boogeyman, then the government knows better and should cut off your access, for your own good."
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.
Not only what videos are shown, but also what videos /topics are suppressed, which is also a useful tool for swaying public opinion as Meta has demonstrated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32607698
I've been using Bitwarden's clients (browser extension, mobile apps, desktop apps) with a self-hosted vaultwarden [1] server. It's marginally free if you are already self-hosting other stuff. I'm hosting it on a raspberry pi 4b at home and exposing it to public Internet through Cloudflare zero trust (also free). Had no problems so far.
I remember this from the era when building websites with FrontPage and DreamWeaver was still a thing. There were sites with catalogs of those "apply cool effects to your website by copy-paste this snippet to your HTML source file", and a clock following the mouse cursor is definitely one of them! Fun times.
> Because that's what "Sept", "Oct", "Nov", and "Dec" mean.
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.
> 3. ... if you forfeit $1 of income and the strike price of options is $1, ...
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?
Sorry for being ignorant but sincere question: where / which culture considers the V gesture offensive?
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.
> Most commercial aircraft can fly themselves except for take off and the last few hundred feet of landing (thanks to instrument landing systems).
Not a pilot, just wondering -- does this include communicating with ATC towers? Such as moving to specific altitude, requesting landing instructions, etc.
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."
Except travelers are not "on us soil" until granted entry by customs. Customs could just deny entry if foreign travelers won't voluntarily consent to search.
The establishment (somewhat aligned with "pro-Beijing" camp) has more than half seats (43/70) in HK's Legislative Council. Goverment bills require simple majority in the Council to pass. Establishment's support guaranteed that the bill would have passed.
"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...
Weird. I've been primarily using Internet in China, and I have never heard of 265.com before. I believe that's also the case for most Chinese Internet users. I doubt how valuable the data collected from that site would be.
