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A foreigner's guide to WeChat payments in China
Set up WeChat Pay and AliPay as a foreigner in China: linking a foreign card, loading and transferring RMB, and paying by QR code without cash.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 302 posts.
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The Uncharity of College: The Big Business Nobody Understands
How Colleges Make More Money Than God By Giving It Away
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Jean Bourgain
I have just learned that Jean Bourgain passed away last week in Belgium, aged 64, after a prolonged battle with cancer. He and Eli Stein were the two mathematicians who most influenced my early ca…
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Why everything you have said about the determinants of health expenditure is wrong in one million charts: a response to Noah Smith.
Household income determines health spending, mostly via higher intensity, not prices. US behaviors are consistent with well-measured income in multiple dimensions.
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Apple needs to change iPhone’s call UI because robocalls are killing us
Right now, any robocall hacker in the world can instantly take over your phone’s screen, knocking you out of your mobile gaming experience, disrupting you as you check out at the store, or breaking your concentration as you try and type out an email.
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Why don't I take military funding? (2004)
Mostly it's a testimony that it's possible to have a successful career in computer science without taking military funding. My position has its roots in the Vietnam War, when I was a conscientious objector, did alternative service instead of submitting to the draft, and joined the Society of Friends (Quakers). During…
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Using data to determine if Die Hard is a Christmas movie
Ok, enough bickering and fighting.
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The Internet of Unprofitable Things
Gather 'round children. Uncle Andrew wants to tell you a festive story. The NTPmare shortly after Christmas
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Why Most Software Engineers Lose Nothing by Unionizing
Should software engineers unionize? I can’t give a simple answer to this. There are advantages and disadvantages to enrolling in a collective bargaining arrangement. If the disadvantages didn…
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Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States
On December 21, 2018, the United States House of Representatives voted to enact H.R. 4174, the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2017, in a historic win for open government in the …
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CenturyLink is blocking customer internet, saying Utah legislators told them to
We've all experienced frustration with the internet going down. Now imagine how frustrated you'd be if you found out that your ISP intentionally blocked your internet access for the purpose of advertising their software; and better yet, your ISP claimed that state legislators required them to do it!...
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The Firefox Dilemma
Consider whether we're advocating for Firefox in the right way, on the right grounds.
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Why Not to Use Quora
Forget about Quora's security breach. Their ongoing efforts to block access to their content, including a multi-year ban on the Internet Archive, are reason enough to never use them.
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No funding for uncomfortable results
Latanya Sweeney blew the whistle on how easy supposedly de-identified data could be re-identified. Her results were not well received.
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Choose Firefox Now, or Later You Won't Get a Choice (2014)
Robert O'Callahan. Christian. Kiwi. Software guy. All content human-authored unless otherwise noted.
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De-facto closed source: the case for understandable software
For someone who has been a strong supporter of FOSS for a very long time, watching what has been happening to the various FOSS communities over the past half decade or so is kind of depressing (with some exceptions, of course).
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The Digital Maginot Line
There is a war happening. We are immersed in an evolving, ongoing conflict: an Information World War in which state actors, terrorists, and ideological…
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Hyperliterature
The vast majority of fiction on the web is nonergodic : stories presented as linear text. Yet, in an age where everyone has a supercomputer in their pocket, literature can take on any shape imaginable. In recent years, some pieces have taken advantage of these capabilities—not as a gimmick, but in a way that is…
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FOSS is free as in toilet
I am a bit dissatisfied with the use of the Tragedy of the commons to represent issues with free and open source software development. It is not an abstract resource that can be depleted when overused. It is not magically maintained if left alone.
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Antitrust, the App Store, and Apple
Apple’s case before the Supreme Court is about standing; Apple has a strong case. That, though, doesn’t mean the App Store isn’t a monopoly — and that Apple isn’t increasing…
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GDPR complaints against Google’s deceptive practices to track user location
Based on new research published today by BEUC’s Norwegian member Forbrukerrådet, seven consumer groups are filing complaints against Google with their national data protection authorities.
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One of the world’s most visited websites that nobody is aware of (2017)
The editorial department of well-known Dutch broadcaster RTL News recently asked for my assistance. Multiple tax files of Dutch citizens had been published via www.docplayer.nl and no one could explain – where did these files come from? Who would have thought that my research would lead to the discovery of one of the…