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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.
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 597 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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Spain will soon overtake Japan in life expectancy rankings
Spain is forecast to topple Japan from the top spot in the longest life expectancy league table by 2040, while the US continues to slip down the rankings.
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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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Mom Lets Her Kids Walk to the Bakery Down the Block. CPS Chastises Her
Katharina Nuss, a mom of three in Winnipeg, Canada, had a recent run-in with the authorities which radicalized her -- if it's radical to work toward a day when parents are allowed to send their kids down the block unsupervised for a minute or two. We spoke by phone. Here's her story: I have three
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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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What We Learned About the Hemisphere Program After Suing the DEA
As the year draws to a close, so has EFF’s long-running Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Drug Enforcement Agency about the mass phone surveillance program infamously known as “Hemisphere.” We won our case and freed up tons of records. (So did the Electronic Privacy Information Center...
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Clearing Up a Few Things About Facebook’s Partners
We're facing questions about whether Facebook gave large tech companies access to people's information and, if so, why we did this.
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Improvisational theater can reduce anxiety in teens who struggle socially
ANN ARBOR—Improvisational theater training can reduce fearfulness and anxiety among teens struggling with social interactions, a new University of Michigan study suggests. School-based improv theater—performing without a script or preparation—may be effective for social phobias and anxiety disord
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The End of the Ad-Supported Web
What if we got the business model of the web wrong?
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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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Setback in the outback
Like many others, we have been following the latest developments in Australia related to the “Assistance and Access” bill with a growing sense of frustration. The widespread adoption of strong cryptography and end-to-end encryption has given people around the world the ability to protect their pe...
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Amazon’s Disturbing Plan to Add Face Surveillance to Your Front Door
Recently, a patent application from Amazon became public that would pair face surveillance — like Rekognition, the product that the company is aggressively marketing to police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — with Ring, a doorbell camera company that Amazon bought earlier this year.
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Does Australia's access and assistance law impact 1Password?
Australia recently passed a law that correctly has people asking about the security and privacy of tools like 1Password.
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Norwegian frigate sinking has far-reaching implications
In an incident that has attracted relatively little media attention in Australia, the modern 5,300-ton Norwegian frigate KNM Helge Ingstad sank in a Norwegian fjord after a collision with the large Maltese-registered oil tanker Sola ...
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The Firefox Dilemma
Consider whether we're advocating for Firefox in the right way, on the right grounds.