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Chinese cities use “mist cannon” to shoot pollution from the sky

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Re: Chinese cities use “mist cannon” to shoot pollution from the sky

#91

Post by namelezz »

metaphorical wrote: post #59
brenschluss wrote: post #40

Say what you will about China and its pollution, it's an interesting attempt at a solution.[1] Could you imagine something like that implemented easily in the US before caught within lawyer-string nets of liability? China has many problems, but many HN readers bashing China have probably never set foot there and are formulating their understanding based off of western media and the socioeconomic + cultural dynamics o…

Not sure how exposed you were to clever soft propaganda in those 3 weeks in China :) As a Chinese, I can tell you I don't feel any social optimism at all. 1) Much political infighting at the top 2) The richer people are moving family to Canada / US / Australia 3) Credit bubble, bad debt in banks 4) Migrant workers and women from villages are constantly getting exploited without any protection 5) Pollution 6) Food is…

+1 for #4

Re: Chinese cities use “mist cannon” to shoot pollution from the sky

#92

Post by dinkumthinkum »

tokenadult wrote: post #64
brenschluss wrote: post #40

Say what you will about China and its pollution, it's an interesting attempt at a solution.[1] Could you imagine something like that implemented easily in the US before caught within lawyer-string nets of liability? China has many problems, but many HN readers bashing China have probably never set foot there and are formulating their understanding based off of western media and the socioeconomic + cultural dynamics o…

many HN readers bashing China have probably never set foot there Readers of Hacker News who have been reading the Chinese press in the original Chinese since the 1970s and who have been to the Chinese-speaking world since the 1980s and thereafter (as I have) get really sick and tired of credulous Westerners believing propaganda from China, that's all. I can remember a time from the 1980s when China (by contrast with…

I swear there are sooo many propaganda believers that I see whenever China-related articles posted. It's always like "The Bay Area has stupid safety regulations wahhh I want to be dominated by a brutal regime, it's not so bad anyway."

Re: Chinese cities use “mist cannon” to shoot pollution from the sky

#93

Post by sdm »

eva1984 wrote: post #57
Htsthbjig wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm not Chinese nor do I have a particular stake, but I was there for three weeks this summer and was overwhelmed by a kind of social optimism" It is normal to fall in love when you meet a different culture. It takes 6 months or so living on a country to start seeing caveats and "not so good things" in any country. "the shared assumption that services are getting better, progress will happen, and a relentless cycle…

Literally 6 VPNs? OMG, I haven't come back to my motherchina for 2 years...Cant believe it get so bad...

He is exaggerating. You just use Astrill or ExpressVPN or one of the other VPN providers that specialize in getting around the GFW. Other than the one week of the year, around a certain anniversary, when the GFW decides to shit on everything you don't really notice it.

Re: Chinese cities use “mist cannon” to shoot pollution from the sky

#94

Post by dangrover »

jewbacca wrote: post #62
Htsthbjig wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm not Chinese nor do I have a particular stake, but I was there for three weeks this summer and was overwhelmed by a kind of social optimism" It is normal to fall in love when you meet a different culture. It takes 6 months or so living on a country to start seeing caveats and "not so good things" in any country. "the shared assumption that services are getting better, progress will happen, and a relentless cycle…

> But now you have to use like 6 layers of VPN, change patterns of navigation Please explain further.

For me, most commercial VPN services have worked fine.

PPTP VPNs are blocked/flaky on mobile data plan connections (maybe by the phone company), but no real issues on wifi.

On 3/4G, Shadowsocks works perfectly and corporate VPN (Cisco/IPSec) have no issues.

Re: Chinese cities use “mist cannon” to shoot pollution from the sky

#95

Post by TeMPOraL »

erics32 wrote: post #71
eva1984 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally 6 VPNs? OMG, I haven't come back to my motherchina for 2 years...Cant believe it get so bad...

As a counterpoint I visited in October this year and used ExpressVPN, which worked fine and was fast. No 6 layers of VPN required.

9 weeks (October and November); ExpressVPN and VyprVPN worked pretty well.

Re: Chinese cities use “mist cannon” to shoot pollution from the sky

#96

Post by TeMPOraL »

Htsthbjig wrote: post #54
brenschluss wrote: post #40

Say what you will about China and its pollution, it's an interesting attempt at a solution.[1] Could you imagine something like that implemented easily in the US before caught within lawyer-string nets of liability? China has many problems, but many HN readers bashing China have probably never set foot there and are formulating their understanding based off of western media and the socioeconomic + cultural dynamics o…

"I'm not Chinese nor do I have a particular stake, but I was there for three weeks this summer and was overwhelmed by a kind of social optimism" It is normal to fall in love when you meet a different culture. It takes 6 months or so living on a country to start seeing caveats and "not so good things" in any country. "the shared assumption that services are getting better, progress will happen, and a relentless cycle…

There's a difference between a bubble and social optimism, and even if they're having a bubble, maybe it's better? Because compare to the West, always feeling like they're one day from Armageddon, creating economic crises out of thin air (i.e. 2008 in Europe, people hearing there's an Economic Crisis and concluding they need not invest until it's gone, therefore creating a crisis where it wasn't before).

Hell, maybe it's sort of a rose-colored view of the history, but I look at the communist propaganda in Poland from the times of my mother, and I think I liked it more than what we have now - in the past, the government would show you movies how everything is going forward, how industry is performing over expectations, how hard work of people created prosperity, etc. Yes, they lied to you. But so is every single "free" media station every single day, but now the narration is that everything is going to shit and will probably explode before the commercial break.

Re: Chinese cities use “mist cannon” to shoot pollution from the sky

#97

Post by TeMPOraL »

Laforet wrote: post #90
analyst74 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since Xi Jinping took power, the government has stepped up their internet censorship efforts, banning many well known VPN. According to some accounts, they also utilize some sort of dynamic filter to determine if you are accessing censored content or using non-blocked VPN. How exactly they do that is unknown, but the fact is, it's much harder to visit censored websites now than before.

The otherbl commentor was probably using OpenVPN which is easy to target. Most other protocols continue to work well as long as your provider is not being targeted.

You may also have problems if you're connecting through corporate firewall. I won't name a certain Chinese well-known corporation using certain McAfee shitware that managed to block ExpressVPN and VyprVPN within a week for me, making it significantly more difficult to do my job there.

Re: Chinese cities use “mist cannon” to shoot pollution from the sky

#98

Post by TeMPOraL »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #21

Looking out my window right now at 2am in the morning, all I see is misty fog where I would usually see a city here in Beijing. I really don't see how more mist would help. They need a big giant freaking fan to create wind...powered by coal, of course, just for purposes of irony.

Aren't they building nuclear plants now?

Re: Chinese cities use “mist cannon” to shoot pollution from the sky

#99

Post by gozo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #97
Laforet wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The otherbl commentor was probably using OpenVPN which is easy to target. Most other protocols continue to work well as long as your provider is not being targeted.

You may also have problems if you're connecting through corporate firewall. I won't name a certain Chinese well-known corporation using certain McAfee shitware that managed to block ExpressVPN and VyprVPN within a week for me, making it significantly more difficult to do my job there.

If you are flying in through HK get a china unicom hk cross border SIM. Somewhat expensive data but a life saver in those situations since there is no firewall.

Re: Chinese cities use “mist cannon” to shoot pollution from the sky

#100

Post by seanmcdirmid »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #98
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #21

Looking out my window right now at 2am in the morning, all I see is misty fog where I would usually see a city here in Beijing. I really don't see how more mist would help. They need a big giant freaking fan to create wind...powered by coal, of course, just for purposes of irony.

Aren't they building nuclear plants now?

A few, not enough to make a dent in coal usage. And I'm not sure how many self-heated homes in the villages can be converted from coal to nuclear (electric heating is too inefficient...but maybe they can use a waste core like they did in the Martian?).
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