I saw the movie, but I missed the reference. My comment applies to the guy in the movie. He needs engineers too, not farmers. You don't raise agricultural output with more hands, you raise it with better tech.
I'm wondering how they actually reverse engineered WhatsApp in the first place. Is there a specific type of software that does this or was it just built from scratch using already available information?
Hi, I'm sigalor, the original creator of the project. The reverse engineering was almost entirely done using the Chrome debugging tools. That is, pretty-printing the JS source files, setting breakpoints and stepping through the code for hours. When I started, all of this was incredibly difficult, but the longer you do it, the more you get used to it.
Additionally, the debugging tools also provide you with looking at what is sent through websockets, which makes it rather easy to see which JSON data is sent (e.g. for login).
It certainly did, but after all it was just a fun spare time project.
I guess there would be a lot of interesting software to reverse engineer; I am always open to suggestions that are able to extend my knowledge. And well, if you mean it in context of a job... I don't have any experience regarding the job market yet, but that also sounds quite striking :)
I don't know much about the job market, I was talking about the internet in general. Too many applications are locked black boxes and reverse engineering them basically keeps them alive after their demise. However, not a lot of people actually put in the effort to reverse engineer this stuff, so keep up the good work for this stuff!
Most people who are that poor are not educated enough about reproduction to prevent childbirth due to lack of sexual contraceptives or information about safe-sex. They are born to absolute poverty and know little outside of their little town or country. Sex to them might just be seen as something you do with little to no consequence or something that just comes easily.
What you see as suffering might be seen as normal daily life to them which is terrible. The way most children in richer countries live might seem foreign to them. That being said, infant mortality is also very high in those countries so a chunk of those children born will not make it past 20 years old.
I do believe that as countries get richer the people of the country start having more responsibilities and jobs and those overwhelm the time available to take care of kids.
It might also be that having kids increases your economic prosperity in the case of many poor individuals - extra manual labour on a farm, additional household income, and a retirement strategy for when you are older and incapable of supporting yourself independently.
poor are not educated enough about reproduction to prevent childbirth
Many people say this. But it's worth knowing that, historically, lots of societies firmly limited reproduction when they were as poor as (say) most of Africa is now. The methods varied.
Right, 20th century China is the example of government limiting reproduction which springs to mind.
What I had in mind was people limiting their own. In the west the main mechanism was delayed marriage (i.e. saving up a socially approved amount of money first) which kept us well away from starvation 500 years ago. In china/japan I believe the pattern was more infanticide (in the same period) but know less about this.
Most of the times when I watch the "news" it isn't to get more informed, it's more as something to watch, get entertained, and have open in the background. For this reason I like watching local news better as the stories they have are much more focused than CNN or FOX's 100th story about Trump tweets. Most people attack local news but I seem that they have more integrity than the big named channels if you manage to slog through the crappy syndicated ones. Thankfully Sinclair doesn't own any stations in my area.
It's nice to at least have news that is more compact and relates more to your life. Traffic, weather, daily minor politics that won't matter outside of your 50 mile radius. All of these are things that remind me that the area I live in is living and breathing and not just a set-piece for the larger and grander story that most national news medias cover.
Google Play Music has Jay-Z, as far as my research shows. (unfortunately I can't check as I have Spotify due to their network affect roping me in through a family plan) Is it really fair to say Spotify has a bigger library outright?
Spotify claims to have 35m songs and GPM 40m. Not that that means much, either. The killer feature GPM has over Spotify is that you can upload your own tracks to fill the gaps wherever their library is lacking.
Spotify has Jay-Z as well.[0] I would say it's hard to really quantify which library has the larger selection as most of the differences would be completely obscure music that no one listens to. However, I haven't seen any artist on GPM that isn't on Spotify while the opposite can't be said.
Spotify has the ability to upload music as well, however that is contingent on you having premium.[1]
Yep, playlists are one of the reasons I use Spotify. The fact that you can search other playlists that other users made on Spotify and easily get curated lists relating to every genre makes the entire experience very nice. It's nice to just type in a genre or mood and get hundreds of playlists that fit the bill.
For example, I like some noir movies and the jazz within that genre. There isn't a specific genre that most music playing devices would realize but Spotify has lots of user made playlists that has the type of music I want. Compared to Google's lackluster results
China Uncensored is a horribly biased news site which is funded by the Falun Gong. Not saying that China's treatment of Falun Gong isn't terrible but China Uncensored is a pretty bad news source. I'd put it akin to some fake news sites.
Saying that China Uncensored is "journalism" or a news site is terribly misleading. They're a propaganda channel first and foremost and their only goal is to further the Falun Gong's personal platform.
This is their parent company and due to their onesidedness I wouldn't trust anything that comes from their mouth. As well as I wouldn't trust anything coming from the mouth of Breitbart, InfoWars, or any news site from China itself.
At least, they're one of very few sources that report on China negatively from a strategic, big picture perspective. To listen to you, one might think everything they say is a lie, speaking of fake news. I guess that's why you dodged my question.
You're right, I probably don't know what their only goal is. However, you can easily extrapolate from their parent company's goals and backgrounds and take your answer from there.
"The station was founded in 2001 by Falun Gong practitioners as a Chinese-language broadcaster"[1]
They produce Shen Yun, which has a strong Falun Gong backing and definitely has an agenda, what with the final act being a giant tsunami that comes in and kills all those in the mainland[2]
They are partnered with the Epoch Times which is considered one of the biggest mouthpieces of the Falun Gong[3]
The Epoch Times, New Tang Media, and China Uncensored are all
clearly biased in one direction. I really don't know how you can say they aren't, but they don't even try to hide the fact sometimes. You have to realize that when you listen to them as you have to see their biases.
>At least, they're one of very few sources that report on China negatively from a strategic, big picture perspective.
Are you really sure about that? China uncensored doesn't go into high journalism and most of the time just dips their foot into news articles with clickbaity headlines and overly sarcastic monologues. I would much prefer something done by the FT, Economist, or NYT.
As to why I consider them fake news. I really don't trust news at face value from China Uncensored the same way I don't trust articles from places like Breitbart. They have a way of over-exaggerating the news and twisting it into an anti-China stance. I always go find extra sources and never dwell on their one single source.
> However, you can easily extrapolate from their parent company's goals and backgrounds and take your answer from there.
Yes, you can, but if your goal is reaching correct conclusions, that's not a great strategy (although it's an extremely popular one nowadays, even on HN).
> The Epoch Times, New Tang Media, and China Uncensored are all clearly biased in one direction. I really don't know how you can say they aren't
Neither can I, but I'm not sure why we're discussing this because I have said no such thing. What I did say is that I disagree with your broad classification of them as "fake news", and I offered you the opportunity to cite some specific examples of things they've said that aren't true, which you've now passed on twice. To me that is interesting, because I am increasingly curious about how the human mind works. Is it interesting to you?
> Are you really sure about that? China uncensored doesn't go into high journalism and most of the time just dips their foot into news articles with clickbaity headlines and overly sarcastic monologues. I would much prefer something done by the FT, Economist, or NYT.
No, not overly sure. I've never encountered anything very negative on China elsewhere, but then I haven't really been looking for it. If you could point me to any particular China-critical articles from any of those publications I'd certainly read them.
> As to why I consider them fake news. I really don't trust news at face value from China Uncensored the same way I don't trust articles from places like Breitbart. They have a way of over-exaggerating the news and twisting it into an anti-China stance. I always go find extra sources and never dwell on their one single source.
In that sense I would agree that they're "fake news" (with quotes); I reserve the term fake news without quotes for actual lies rather than bias, or bias while claiming impartiality, like mainstream news in most Western nations.
China Uncensored's video barely scratches the surface except for some things that China does in Africa. The other is an actual journalism piece which goes indepth on what people in Africa think of the situation while also going forlaying into China's involvement with Africa.
From the economist and another "China-critical" piece. I'm going to be honest though, most articles regarding China from the economist or Financial Times are going to be "China-critical", just varying degrees on what you consider critical to be. Most aren't going to be overly pessimistic about any small thing China does (as China Uncensored does for everything) and most are going to err on the side of mild concern.
China Uncensored likes to over-exaggerate a lot of things. Problems come from their clickbaity headlines and lack of acting like an actual news provider.
Would you be open to a background coin miner? I think many companies were spitballing ideas and a bitcoin miner running in the background of the website would be not too bothersome unless you care about your CPU and GPU usage that much.
What a CPU/GPU is up to at any given point is pretty abstract for most people, but they do notice battery life, which a miner would definitely affect. Even fairly non-technical mobile users can be extremely vigilant about battery consumption, so I think this approach is likely D.O.A. on that platform.
Currently my website does not activate miners if mobile browser is being used, still trying to reliably identify the laptop crowd though.
I am inclined to display a popup upon entry, telling user to disable script if they are on battery or unwilling to participate in mining. There really aren't a best practice for browser mining for now, but this is my approach for the time being.
I think that it would be ok option but for various reason I think it's only acceptable again if you can opt-out by direct payment.
I think that currently this is issue where both sides are partially quilty. Content creators are creating "dirty tricks" to get profit from their work. On the other hand users expect to everything to be free. Users have this huge gap in their head between "free" and "so-cheap-that's-almost-free".
Just as side note: if we wouldn't need this all high-tech for converting "free users" to $. Maybe some of great minds could think how to solve real problems... instead of "How to sell next fucking Nissan".
Spotify method is fine for their service. However I have understood that total ad revenue per user is roughly somewhere around 5-20$/month(?). This is for all the ad services total you use. So problem here is that currently many paid plans cost 5-10$/month/service (at very least). I think Spotify is worth what they ask and their ad plan is very under priced. However if every service ask 20-100x for paid plans VS ad plans idea about paying everything is not very attractive anymore and this won't work.
Also just like movies and games: if it's easier to pirate content than use it legally you are already lost. I may not to want to pay for every single services by credit card but I should be able to handle this ad-network scale easily.
Edit: Removed "I think" prefix from the comment since I THINK I repeat myself.
That's a tough one because electricity is the main cost, and most people are not aware enough with their electricity costs and CPU efficiency to consent to that intelligently.
Also in the winter, you get back some of that in heat, and in the summer, the AC has to work harder, so that is part of the equation.
