WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me • Hacker News Board

Re: WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me

#161

Post by stcredzero » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 4:32 PM UTC

ilikehurdles wrote: post #153

bamboozled wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious, do people even enjoying drinking nice / real coffee anymore when drinking from Starbucks or have it delivered and sipping it at your desk or in the elevator, or is this just some kind of habit like smoking? Why not just wash down a caffeine pill with warm glass of water for the kick and move when time pressed?

I do. Every morning I get the scale out, grind beans, and get the kettle going to prepare a couple of cups of pour-over coffee. I'm still dialing in the perfect pot of coffee, so I'll change a variable in my process each morning. If I time it right, I make my pour over in time to sit down by some natural light and remotely attend my morning meetings as I sip down my beverage. It gives me a nice break from the screen…

I'm still dialing in the perfect pot of coffee, so I'll change a variable in my process each morning.

Aeropress is highly conducive to repeatability and experimentation, due to its tight control of the immersion time interval. I was trying to be careful with pour-over, and still found that I couldn't quite get it down. Now, I can even adjust for the age of the beans I have on hand. (You can go hotter and briefer, to get the caffeine and good stuff, but absorb extracting unpleasant stuff.) Do read and follow the instructions to start.

One big disadvantage is that the filters absorb the oils, but all brewing methods that use filters have this. Also, it uses a lot of grounds to produce a little bit of extract. (Which I dilute and drink as Americano.)

Re: WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me

#162

Post by bigzyg33k » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 4:32 PM UTC

yread wrote: post #72

n1000 wrote: post #40

Going to China soon and everybody tells me WeChat will help me a lot over there. However, I cannot create my account without a "voiceprint". It wants me to read some numbers to fingerprint my voice. Apparently I cannot skip this step and I am not very comfortable with that.

try some text2speech programs?

Probably not a good idea for his purposes, as the app with use that to authenticate you in the future, and you may not have the same text2speech program readily available when it does.

Re: WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me

#163

Post by zachguo » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 4:38 PM UTC

rconti wrote: post #139

adinobro wrote: post #17

A few things worth being aware of Alibaba does not own WeChat but rather's it's competition Alipay. It does not have any access to WeChat data. So far the "social credit" on seems to be mostly based on how much you buy and it only seems to give you discounts to massively overpriced products (similar to a credit card reward system). You don't really download apps in Wechat but rather add a link more like a Facebook Ap…

It's crazy to me that they decided to ALSO use a 950 max score. Like, you couldn't have been SLIGHTLY creative and made it out of 1000, or 100?

I can imagine it would be easier to be compatible with existing systems that businesses are using.

Re: WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me

#164

Post by darkpuma » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 4:40 PM UTC

jcbrand wrote: post #19

> At 9:27, once I’ve brushed my teeth, answered a few messages, and wiped the sleep from my eyes, I order a coffee through WeChat. There’s a payments window on the app, and when you click on it you see various options, some proprietary to WeChat and some which are independent apps that run on WeChat’s platform. I open the Meituan delivery app and scroll through all the coffee options around me. I order an Americano.…

Yeah, 26 minute turnaround for coffee is pretty damn shit, even by starbucks standards, but I expect the novelty of getting coffee delivered is sufficient to keep something this ridiculous on the market.

Re: WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me

#165

Post by driverdan » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

n1000 wrote: post #40

Going to China soon and everybody tells me WeChat will help me a lot over there. However, I cannot create my account without a "voiceprint". It wants me to read some numbers to fingerprint my voice. Apparently I cannot skip this step and I am not very comfortable with that.

How does it handle people who are unable to speak?

Re: WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me

#166

Post by scilro » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 4:56 PM UTC

I find WeChat and its aggressively centralized model fascinating, and something to keep eyes on, but this article falls into the familiar trap of playing a bit loose with the facts when it comes to how the Chinese government surveils its citizens.

For example, this is from article:

>People are regularly arrested for messages they send in supposedly “private” group chats. In 2017, two people were arrested in Nanjing for separate instances of making satirical comments referring the massacre in the city by the Japanese in 1937.5

But if you read the original source: http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1001901/more-nanjing-massacre-...

>“Nanjing is a pit,” Wang wrote. “We should let the Japanese come slaughter again.” Local police were alerted to the incident after screenshots of Wang’s messages were circulated on social media, and they arrested him two days later.

Clearly, a bit of a different story than what's implied in this article. I can easily see someone being questioned by police in almost any country if screenshots leaked where they joked about repeating a violent historical atrocity, like 9/11 for example.

It's not clear to me why folks tend to advance the notion that Chinese citizens are under constant 1984-style 24/7 surveillance by their government. That's not quite how it works over there, at least, if people who live and work there are to be trusted.

Re: WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me

#167

Post by css » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 5:02 PM UTC

Tepix wrote: post #120

mstaoru wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, in this case the camera is run by Wechat and they have their own biometric database.

Can you use a password instead?

Yes, but if you get deemed "malicious" it will be required: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-48552907

Re: WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me

#168

Post by noja » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 5:12 PM UTC

scilro wrote: post #166

I find WeChat and its aggressively centralized model fascinating, and something to keep eyes on, but this article falls into the familiar trap of playing a bit loose with the facts when it comes to how the Chinese government surveils its citizens. For example, this is from article: >People are regularly arrested for messages they send in supposedly “private” group chats. In 2017, two people were arrested in Nanjing f…

It depends who distributed the screenshots.

Re: WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me

#169

Post by mywittyname » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 5:14 PM UTC

meddlepal wrote: post #135

bamboozled wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious, do people even enjoying drinking nice / real coffee anymore when drinking from Starbucks or have it delivered and sipping it at your desk or in the elevator, or is this just some kind of habit like smoking? Why not just wash down a caffeine pill with warm glass of water for the kick and move when time pressed?

I drink Dunkin' Donuts coffee because I don't give a damn about the taste and it's cheap. I like the process of drinking coffee... it's a habit of sorts. Not so much an addiction as I have no problems going without coffee.

Funny, I'm a huge coffee drinker and prefer Dunkin' because it's really good.

Re: WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything about me

#170

Post by markplindsay » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 5:19 PM UTC

adinobro wrote: post #56

markplindsay wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in China (Beijing and Wenzhou) in April. I had NO success finding a taxi in Beijing—the only way to get a ride was to use an app like Didi Chuxing. I was able to install and use it just fine. The problem was that it is impossible to link a non-PRC payment method to it. The same is true for WeChat Pay or Alipay—you've got to use a Chinese bank account or card as a source. I was not able to find a way around this…

If you want to get a real taxi use Baidu maps. It is in Chinese but you can just drop a pin where you want to go and ask for a real taxi instead of a Didi. A Chinese person can show you the buttons to press then you can pay with cash.

I'm pretty sure I tried this—I think the prompts were even in English, if I'm remembering correctly. However, I gave up after several tries of it looking for a taxi and not finding one while I was standing in the rain on a dark street corner. It would sit and look for minutes and appeared to be a broken feature.

I ended up taking a BRT line to get back to my hotel and it was great. All of my experiences with transit in Beijing were excellent. I just wish taxis or car services were an option for tourists.