China is a smog-filled hellscape
Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape
Huh. The more I look into Tencent as a company, the more weird sinister it gets. Apparently they bought out Riot Games a while back, thereby owning League of Legends.
- Mongrel
- Posts: 21372
- Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
- Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line
Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape
A guy I know is arguing with a straight face that this is just China trying to implement a credit rating system.
Which may technically be true! But... UHHHHHHHHHHH...
Which may technically be true! But... UHHHHHHHHHHH...
Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape
Been chatting with Frocto about it, and he was lollin' with his friend:
[0:23]Frocto: https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/c ... -americans welp
[0:24]*Liru memes softly.
[0:25]Bell: well thats a touch horrifying
[0:25]Jiche: It's IRL Elo
[0:26]Jiche: "i'm stuck in elo hell gg"
[0:26]Jarsh: wot
[0:26]Frocto: tencent own riot games too
[0:26]Liru: >tfw all your friends are capitalist pigs
[0:26]Frocto: and they made a personal rating system where your friend's poor performances can drag you down
[0:27]Frocto: THE JOKES MAKE THEMSELVES
[0:27]Liru: >tfw forever stuck in <500 ELO
[0:27]Liru: >tfw buy angry birds on smartphone and went from 750 to 600
[0:27]Liru: ;_;
Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape
Beijing Issues Red Alert Over Air Pollution for the First Time
If carried out properly, the temporary restrictions will affect many of Beijing’s more than 20 million residents. From 7 a.m. on Tuesday to noon on Thursday, schools will be required to close; cars will be allowed to drive only on alternate days, depending on their license plate numbers; and fireworks and outdoor barbecuing will be banned (grilled kebabs are a hugely popular street food in the city). In addition, government agencies will have to keep 30 percent of their automobiles off the streets.
- Mongrel
- Posts: 21372
- Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
- Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line
Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape
Terrifying images here.
Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape
Mothra wrote:Beijing Issues Red Alert Over Air Pollution for the First TimeIf carried out properly, the temporary restrictions will affect many of Beijing’s more than 20 million residents. From 7 a.m. on Tuesday to noon on Thursday, schools will be required to close; cars will be allowed to drive only on alternate days, depending on their license plate numbers; and fireworks and outdoor barbecuing will be banned (grilled kebabs are a hugely popular street food in the city). In addition, government agencies will have to keep 30 percent of their automobiles off the streets.
It was twice as bad (300-range currently vs 600-range then) last week, it's just that this time they're like "hey so we need to acknowledge this because that was REALLY bad". Apparently if the wind's blowing east, days like this will fuck with people in Seoul, with yellow powder getting deposited everywhere and people having trouble breathing.
- Mongrel
- Posts: 21372
- Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
- Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line
Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape
We're now in Science-Fiction Land people.
Telegraph: Chinese people are now buying bottles of fresh air.
It turns out actual reality is a lot less funny than the Mel Brooks version.
Telegraph: Chinese people are now buying bottles of fresh air.
It turns out actual reality is a lot less funny than the Mel Brooks version.
- beatbandito
- Posts: 4311
- Joined: Tue Jan 21, 2014 8:04 am
Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape
I tend to outright not believe anything that sounds too crazy to be real except if they say it's in Asia.
However, I am willing to believe that an idiot with a weird idea did decide to bottle air. And from there I'm willing to believe that 500 bottles of it could conceivably be sold across the entire population of China. I just don't get why it's news.
However, I am willing to believe that an idiot with a weird idea did decide to bottle air. And from there I'm willing to believe that 500 bottles of it could conceivably be sold across the entire population of China. I just don't get why it's news.
- Mongrel
- Posts: 21372
- Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
- Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line
Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape
Yeah, they've been threatening VPN crackdowns for a number of months... which of course gave everyone plenty of time to prepare workarounds.
- Mongrel
- Posts: 21372
- Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
- Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line
Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape
Globe & Mail: When a recent astronomical announcement came out, many Chinese were very disappointed to learn it was not the end of the world
Jesus.
"I want to die immediately. Living in Beijing, the survival philosophy of this city chokes me," said Geng Chuandi, 26, a magazine editor who was disappointed to discover there would be no actual doomsday announcement.
People in China today are, on average, no happier than they were near the beginning of the country's period of breakneck growth, according to the World Happiness Report 2017. In fact, "well-being today is probably less than in 1990,"
One study showed that 40 per cent of first-year students at Peking University, the country's most prestigious, consider life meaningless – a startling number of brilliant minds with brilliant prospects who, one academic said, suffer "Empty Heart Disease."
Jesus.
Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape
I'm really glad that millennials in China are on the same page as the rest of us.
- Mongrel
- Posts: 21372
- Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
- Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line
Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape
[EDIT: Moved to here from the Facts thread, because, hey I remembered we have an actual China thread]
Today I learned...
The majority of pre-peeled garlic (something we do not buy, 'cause we go out of our way to avoid any food grown or manufactured in China where possible) is Chinese in origin and is peeled by Chinese prison camp inmates whose fingernails generally fall off as a result. Once they lose their fingernails, they typically then use their teeth.
sauce (The Atlantic's review of a documentary on global food production)
Today I learned...
The majority of pre-peeled garlic (something we do not buy, 'cause we go out of our way to avoid any food grown or manufactured in China where possible) is Chinese in origin and is peeled by Chinese prison camp inmates whose fingernails generally fall off as a result. Once they lose their fingernails, they typically then use their teeth.
sauce (The Atlantic's review of a documentary on global food production)
- Mongrel
- Posts: 21372
- Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
- Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line
Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape
Surprising no-one, China has stepped up its anti-Muslim measures in western China to levels of "reeducation" ("Eat this pork and drink this booze or we'll shoot you") and in-person state-surveillance not seen since probably the Cultural Revolution
The Chinese authorities are openly calling it "Cultural Cleansing".
The Chinese authorities are openly calling it "Cultural Cleansing".
- Mongrel
- Posts: 21372
- Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
- Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line
Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape
G&M: China now implementing classroom cameras in schools to scan student faces for their emotional states
THEY'RE HERE GEORGE, THEY'RE HERE.
THEY'RE HERE GEORGE, THEY'RE HERE.
- Mongrel
- Posts: 21372
- Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
- Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line
Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape
I spent this afternoon watching perfectly reasonable people argue that China's Social credit dystopia, was potentially great and that it somehow represented Asian values that we overly individualistic Westerners were ignorant about.
As opposed to being an Orwellian nightmare with little precedent in human history - Western OR Asian.
All I could think of was how for the first several decades of its existence, there were no shortage of Western intellectuals saying the EXACT SAME THINGS about the USSR. How a dictatorship was a more traditionally Russian form of government, how Bolshevism would bring greater prosperity and social happiness, etcetera etcetera.
I'm trying to get all the hairs on my body to lay back down again.
Meanwhile, China's most famous actress has been missing since June
As opposed to being an Orwellian nightmare with little precedent in human history - Western OR Asian.
All I could think of was how for the first several decades of its existence, there were no shortage of Western intellectuals saying the EXACT SAME THINGS about the USSR. How a dictatorship was a more traditionally Russian form of government, how Bolshevism would bring greater prosperity and social happiness, etcetera etcetera.
I'm trying to get all the hairs on my body to lay back down again.
Meanwhile, China's most famous actress has been missing since June
- Mongrel
- Posts: 21372
- Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
- Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line
Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape
HUIZHOU, China — They were exactly what China’s best universities were supposed to produce: young men and women steeped in the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party.
They read Marx, Lenin and Mao and formed student groups to discuss the progress of socialism. They investigated the treatment of the campus proletariat, including janitors, cooks and construction workers. They volunteered to help struggling rural families and dutifully recited the slogans of President Xi Jinping.
Then, after graduation, they attempted to put the party’s stated ideals into action, converging from across China last month on Huizhou, a city in the south, to organize labor unions at nearby factories and stage protests demanding greater protections for workers.
That’s when the party realized it had a problem.
The authorities moved quickly to crush the efforts of the young activists, detaining several dozen of them and scrubbing the internet of their calls for justice — but not before their example became a rallying cry for young people across the country unhappy with growing inequality, corruption and materialism in Chinese society.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/worl ... tests.html
- Mongrel
- Posts: 21372
- Joined: Mon Jan 20, 2014 6:28 pm
- Location: There's winners and there's losers // And I'm south of that line
Re: China is a smog-filled hellscape
Longread
Bloomberg: Thanks to a shell company, China pulled off one of the greatest physical hacks in history.
Bloomberg: Thanks to a shell company, China pulled off one of the greatest physical hacks in history.
In 2015, Amazon.com Inc. began quietly evaluating a startup called Elemental Technologies, a potential acquisition to help with a major expansion of its streaming video service, known today as Amazon Prime Video. Based in Portland, Ore., Elemental made software for compressing massive video files and formatting them for different devices. Its technology had helped stream the Olympic Games online, communicate with the International Space Station, and funnel drone footage to the Central Intelligence Agency. Elemental’s national security contracts weren’t the main reason for the proposed acquisition, but they fit nicely with Amazon’s government businesses, such as the highly secure cloud that Amazon Web Services (AWS) was building for the CIA.
To help with due diligence, AWS, which was overseeing the prospective acquisition, hired a third-party company to scrutinize Elemental’s security, according to one person familiar with the process. The first pass uncovered troubling issues, prompting AWS to take a closer look at Elemental’s main product: the expensive servers that customers installed in their networks to handle the video compression. These servers were assembled for Elemental by Super Micro Computer Inc., a San Jose-based company (commonly known as Supermicro) that’s also one of the world’s biggest suppliers of server motherboards, the fiberglass-mounted clusters of chips and capacitors that act as the neurons of data centers large and small. In late spring of 2015, Elemental’s staff boxed up several servers and sent them to Ontario, Canada, for the third-party security company to test, the person says.
Nested on the servers’ motherboards, the testers found a tiny microchip, not much bigger than a grain of rice, that wasn’t part of the boards’ original design. Amazon reported the discovery to U.S. authorities, sending a shudder through the intelligence community. Elemental’s servers could be found in Department of Defense data centers, the CIA’s drone operations, and the onboard networks of Navy warships. And Elemental was just one of hundreds of Supermicro customers.
During the ensuing top-secret probe, which remains open more than three years later, investigators determined that the chips allowed the attackers to create a stealth doorway into any network that included the altered machines. Multiple people familiar with the matter say investigators found that the chips had been inserted at factories run by manufacturing subcontractors in China.
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 22 guests