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A Walk in Hong Kong

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Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#81

Post by roca »

spectramax wrote: post #61
TASMebWdhWc9NeA wrote: post #51

I am in Verona (Italy) at this time, and I'm in a hotel where some tourists from Shanghai happen to be as well. I'm alone, so I hang out in the lobby a lot. I just engaged in some small talk with some of those tourists, and the discussion somehow shifted to the Hong Kong protests. Basically what they sad is that western culture in Hong Kong clashes with the chinese culture. They don't seem to say that the chinese way…

Let’s replace China with X so there is no xenophobic rebuttals. X is an authoritarian regime that has no rule of law, president has self declared perpetual status in the office, piracy is rampant, no respect for privacy of others, there is an app called ourchat that is effectively owned by the government and is increasing becoming a necessity, no media let alone any kind of investigative journalism especially against…

Norway is a petro-economy. That doesn't really work as a role model for countries that don't have vast easily-exploited natural resources.

Lucky for Norway that they've transitioned out of petroleum before the climate disaster comes due.

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#82

Post by hrktb »

stringyham wrote: post #74
hrktb wrote: post #32

> The MTR is the one technology the Hong Kong protests could not do without, an autonomous fiefdom that the police mostly stay out of. It is neutral territory This is a godsend. During Paris protest earlier this year the gov would just shut down public transports for about 5~10 km around and block main accesses so people couldn’t massively join the protests. At least the mainland gov. didn’t get to touch that I guess…

> During Paris protest earlier this year the gov would just shut down public transports for about 5~10 km around 10km is nearly Paris' width so I'd say that's a bit much. If I remember correctly, they closed the main stations around the protests but not much more.

You are right, and checked back, La Defense -> Chatelet is 9.4km (that's the two RER stations left open after shutting down CDG Etoile and Auber. And they basically shut down anything between these stations)

They shut down 36 stations in total at the peak of the demos: https://www.lavoixdunord.fr/502926/article/2018-12-07/la-rat...

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#83

Post by iguy »

spectramax wrote: post #61
TASMebWdhWc9NeA wrote: post #51

I am in Verona (Italy) at this time, and I'm in a hotel where some tourists from Shanghai happen to be as well. I'm alone, so I hang out in the lobby a lot. I just engaged in some small talk with some of those tourists, and the discussion somehow shifted to the Hong Kong protests. Basically what they sad is that western culture in Hong Kong clashes with the chinese culture. They don't seem to say that the chinese way…

Let’s replace China with X so there is no xenophobic rebuttals. X is an authoritarian regime that has no rule of law, president has self declared perpetual status in the office, piracy is rampant, no respect for privacy of others, there is an app called ourchat that is effectively owned by the government and is increasing becoming a necessity, no media let alone any kind of investigative journalism especially against…

I think you can take one more step backwards and still have an argument.

X is a huge country. Y is a small island/peninsula nearby, with shared cultural roots, but very different recent history (decades to centuries) and different government & economic structure. People living in Y are free to leave Y and move to X. Then I think it's better if Y continues to exist.

Even if Y is worse on some measures, e.g. if it were Y that had an "authoritarian regime that has no rule of law, president has self declared perpetual status ", then I'd like it to continue. It's good to have a diversity of approaches to problems. Even if Y gets 90% wrong, maybe it discovers something in the 10% right, or maybe it's just an interesting study in what not to do. Its people are (by assumption!) free to leave, and have a culturally similar neighbor that will take them.

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#84

Post by dragonsh »

tanilama wrote: post #73
Joakal wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Face is important because it came from a family oriented culture. If you were made to look bad, you'd feel even worse when the rest of your family finds out (Grandparents, relatives would talk negatively about this aka gossip). This morphed into businesses that build on relationships, the Chinese term for that is 'guanxi'. For China, they would 'lose face' if Hong Kong became independent (or Xinjiang or Tibet for tha…

Actually I don't think so. It is much more than losing face. Losing sovereignity in East Asian countries, where nationalism is hyper active, is an attack directly on national identity. The Chinese government now will cease to exist if it yields to independence demands from any of the separationist region. The nationalistic education has been ingrained into society at large, something nobody dares to question.

Yes I agree with you nationalism is ingrained from childhood and this makes it harder for minority who are against blind nationalism. This has been true for all the 70+ countries I lived and traveled. But I still believe in this quote:

"Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live."

By a Noble Laureate.

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#85

Post by CogitoCogito »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #44
germanier wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A street is not a private place and, as said, there is no expectation of privacy there: Anyone and everyone can see you and what you are doing. Only people physically there can see me and what I am doing. Modern technology enables them to record that and share it globally and across time. It's important to recognize that this ability is not inherent in it being a public place. "Expectation of privacy" and that you…

Expectation of privacy in public places has never been a concept anywhere. Privacy and public space are simply contradicting terms.

You're referencing old ideas of public and private life that made sense at a time. Those ideas did not form in a time with ubiquitous surveillance. The ideas may have made sense before in their historical context, but that doesn't mean they make sense today.

How about instead you ask yourself why those ideas grew out of that older historical context and whether the same reasoning would apply today? Why not re-read this and think about what germanier means:

> Only people physically there can see me and what I am doing. Modern technology enables them to record that and share it globally and across time. It's important to recognize that this ability is not inherent in it being a public place.

[ Quote from here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20713153 ]

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#86

Post by eeZah7Ux »

thinkingemote wrote: post #77
lawrenceyan wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growing up in the suburbs of California, I never really understood just how central the concept of face was in Asian society until visiting China and seeing it for myself. Over time I’ve come to realize that many of these social concepts exists in some form or another across all cultures, likely implicit in some part to the human condition, but it still surprises me to this day just how entrenched it still is in cert…

"Face" is also tied into shame and handling feelings of shame. Shame is a major emotion (or idea) and one which is often internalised. Shame is the negative feeling about yourself. "The definition of shame is a discrete, basic emotion, described as a moral or social emotion that drives people to hide or deny their wrongdoings" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shame Much of western street violence is about shame at it's…

The main negative driver in asian societies is shame, while the main one in "western" societies is guilt.

And yes, both emotions are often at the root of street violence.

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#87

Post by lkjhdcba »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #39
smcl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes we should be able to have a discussion, but I'd ask you to read the article and then read the comment. Does the comment look like it is responding to the article, or attempting to open a dialogue with the other side ... or does it look like a generic attempt at point scoring for the "pro-mainland" side? If "abcdefghijklmn3" is really keen to engage with the HN community then I take back what I said. But we both k…

In my view it is responding to the article because that article is extremely pro-protesters and that comment expresses the opinion that this isn't so black and white. Engage with the point made instead of discarding the comment as "invalid", or just ignore the comment if you don't want to engage.

Sometimes things are black and white though. The Chinese government is bad, and undermining it in any way, including through violence, is good. Nuance for its own sake is not a virtue [1].

[1] https://kieranhealy.org/publications/fuck-nuance/

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#88

Post by eeZah7Ux »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #44
germanier wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A street is not a private place and, as said, there is no expectation of privacy there: Anyone and everyone can see you and what you are doing. Only people physically there can see me and what I am doing. Modern technology enables them to record that and share it globally and across time. It's important to recognize that this ability is not inherent in it being a public place. "Expectation of privacy" and that you…

Expectation of privacy in public places has never been a concept anywhere. Privacy and public space are simply contradicting terms.

Not at all: it's as specific legal concept in US.

In other places people cannot take close pictures of you, or follow you around or publish your location and movements.

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#89

Post by eeZah7Ux »

roca wrote: post #28
kzzzznot wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this is the point of security research, to find vulnerabilities so they can be fixed.

In practice the point of most security research is: get the paper published and give the talk, or sell the zero-days, or use them yourself, and then move on to the next thing. The actual non-sexy defensive work of cleaning up bugs and implementing countermeasures, i.e. the real work on improving security instead of making it worse, is mostly done by rank-and-file software and hardware developers whose names are never…

> the real work on improving security ... is mostly done by ... developers whose names are never known

And it's a very thankless job.

Re: A Walk in Hong Kong

#90

Post by mytailorisrich »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #88
mytailorisrich wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expectation of privacy in public places has never been a concept anywhere. Privacy and public space are simply contradicting terms.

Not at all: it's as specific legal concept in US. In other places people cannot take close pictures of you, or follow you around or publish your location and movements.

The fact that it is a legal concept in the US does not imply that this is an American concept.

Quite obviously following someone is something else altogether (harassment).

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