Google's New VPN, Outline, Uses Chinese Technology That Intended To Circumvent GFW

Here is the news today:
Outline is a new app that developed by Google's sibling company, Jigsaw, to deliver a painless homebrew VPN service to anyone, with or without any tech background. It provides a simple one click deploy, easy to share way of DIY your own VPN service, for those who are privacy sensitive, yet without in depth knowledge of how to build one him or herself. And if you are curious, Jigsaw claims Outline has been audited by some independent security entity.
After reading various reports on the internet, and digging around this Outline by Jigsaw I was somewhat surprised. In fact, Outline In fact is not a conventional one click VPN installer and manager. It uses a so called SOCK5 technology. It may appear as a VPN on your phone or laptop, yet in its core, it uses another open source project, called Shadowsocks. And what is this Shadowsocks, it is the most popular tool for Chinese people to fight Chinese government's Great Firewall of China, GFW.
Here is some background story, in a Chinese point of view, for those lucky enough not living in China right now. GFW was built using a mixture of imported hardware and homebrew software, in order to censor the internet. GFW's system is believed to be built into the core internet infrastructure. At its beginning, GFW is just some IP blocking tool, to block some foreign websites' IP addresses. Soon it can do what people call "DNS poisoning", a more advanced way to block websites essentially. Then this GFW can use AI to detect and block certain connections on its own. It just keeps growing in its capabilities. Now it can block most kinds of VPN using packet inspection.
For any Chinese who wants to use "normal" internet to do stuff, like reading "real" news, watching youtube or just doing some research, GFW is a huge pain in the ass. I tried to use GFWed internet just to understand how it felt. It felt awful. Most of the services I am used to are blocked, and most of the foreign websites are slow as hell. Generally speaking, that's exactly what GFW is for. Censor the internet, and discourage Chinese from using foreign internet services that are not blocked already.
So, some years ago some programmer developed a tool to deal with this whole GFW mess. It ran on his own server outside of China. It worked really well so he decided to share it on github, and named it Shadowsocks. Its service side was originally written in python, with little cross platform compatibility. Soon Shadowsocks got very popular, many talented Chinese programmer got into the project. Now Shadowsocks is the only tool I know of, that is stable, cross platform, free and open source tool to use in China. Shadowsocks has been rewritten in several other programming languages including go, c, and java. It can be run on most of the VPS, routers, phones and computers. It is stealthy enough even state run GFW can't detect it. It is efficient enough to run on some cheapish barebone VPS. It is the first tool that comes to mind for any Chinese, to get connected to the "real internet".
It got so popular, its original author got a visit from Chinese police, then deleted his code on github. But no matter. There are now enough others working on it, and it gets update all the time.
For me personally, I got to know Shadowsocks back in my ingress days. Yeah, because ingress uses google's cloud services it got blocked at its start. But we play it all the same. At that time, with the help of Shadowsocks, me and my friends had loads of fun exploring the city. Now I have several Shadowsocks servers running, I have Shadowsocks clients running on all my devices. In fact without it I can't even use this Chromebook I am typing on. All thanks to this open source project, and its contributors, I can enjoy everything I love without the need of a passport and a flight ticket. And it's all free and open source.
Talking about "free", let's talk about what Shadowsocks, and, google's Outline, is and is not.
Outline (Shadowsocks) is:

1. open source
   
2. a free service, that is all its service and client services are free of charge. (except some on iOS, of course)
   
3. a great tool to deal with internet censorship.
   

is not:

1. completely free. You need to pay for your own VPS server.
   
2. run by any company. You do everything for yourself, and you have the control.
   
3. a tor alternative.
   
4. a VPN in traditional sense.
   

I don't want to and in fact can't go any further into Shadowsocks, Outline's underlining core technology. Just go to its github and read the code.
What is curious to me is that apparently someone outside China notices Shadowsocks and built a semi automated app around it. I haven't used Outline app myself. It probably won't work inside China, and I already have enough such severs myself. What I fear is, with google now using Shadowsocks, Chinese government would take some actions. And btw Outline uses Digital Ocean's VPS, does this mean DO will be soon blocked in China as well? I hope not.
At the same time, I really hope that with more and more people interested in Shadowsocks, it would grow more stronger and hardened enough to deal with GFW with some certainty. And with my brief introduction, more people, especially hackers would be motivated to do some work on this GFW blackbox. Hacking something else is fun, yeah, but hacking Chinese government's censor black box GFW? It should be challenging enough, and rewarding enough:

you can change million's people's lives.

State of Things

It has been weeks, since something big happened inside China. President Xi has finally gotten hold of what he always wants, indisputable, unstoppable power upon China. This move has essentially wiped clean 100 years of struggle of my people. Yet all I can hear is silence. It is as if all Chinese has become blind and deaf. Life, goes on.
This silence in fact happens much earlier.
Right after Xi took power, he effectively destroyed objective media, newspapers, TV stations, internet outlets, even independent writers and intellectuals. Then he built a stronger internet censorship machine, upon human censors, AIs, willingly cooperative domestic internet ISPs and companies. After that, he used corruption as an excuse to punish those within the party who might be trouble to whatever he was planning. People love to see lawless display of state power against those who profit from political connections. It was all planned out and executed like a precise battle plan. And most of us has waken up into a nightmare and realized this has been his plan all along.
Now it is quite hopeless to be honest. There is no one politically strong enough to challenge Xi, both within and outside the party. Critics have been warned, jailed or lost his or her voice or platform. Advances in AI and data mining have silenced the rest of my people, there is nothing the state does not know. Your private chat massages, your location histories, your online presents, even your shopping history. Xi must love reading 1984. It is worse than soviet union. Under both psychological and realistic pressures, my people just shut up. Let's be honest most people just don't care anymore. As long as things go as usual. Do things go as usual?
Mostly yes.
As long as economy goes well, as long as housing market keeps going, as long as people can still live and breath under reasonable conditions, yes, things will go as usual. But will it last?
Not necessarily.
Concentrated power does not always yield reasonable decisions. In fact, it mostly yields bad decisions. Because no one can criticize, no bad news, no bad data. The system can not fix itself without right data. It may be alright at the moment, but what about under stress, what about another recession?
It has never been so easy to inter change information in the history of human race. Yet it has never been so hard and dangerous to criticize in China in like 50 years. Without some healthy amount of negative feedback, the system would inevitably fail. After all from what we can see, Xi has never been as smart as Putin. Putin knows his people, Xi just silence them.
So what does it mean for us, people who still live in China and have a life here. I have little hope. Under current toxic environment, I can see little hope. It is after all against party's agenda to politically educate people. People has no desire to learn how to govern themselves. I can see generations of suffering before people can have a voice, before a healthy political system can rise from ashes.
After all, what other communist countries ends up like? Do we, the Chinese are so different from North Korea, or soviet union? Not likely.
But hey, it's golden times, to get rich on politically connections, on corruptions and other disgusting means. There is no doubt about that. As long as you can bear the look of yourself in the mirror, or think long and hard in history perspective. But I guess they are of no problems, we are always nihilistic anyways.

Entertaining and Disappointing: The Last Jedi

0. Introduction

Just watched the newest iteration of Star Wars series, the Last Jedi yesterday, at a local theater. The theater itself was hardly filed, and most of the viewers were young couples from nearby collage. If I had a chance to choose I would not see this movie in 3D. I don't like those 3D glasses and the screen tends to be too dim to notice small details in the background, when the movie itself becomes boring.
I thought the Last Jedi would miss China market. After it was out in the North America, it was still missing in the movie schedule here in China. It was right around Christmas that we knew the date, Jan 5th. But before that, I have to deal with all kinds of spoilers online that Youtube was an impossibility.

1. My personal history with Star Wars

Most of the early Star Wars were watched on VHS tapes when I was really young. Back then VHS tapes were something new and growing up in China, it was basically the only way to watch foreign films. But I was too young to understand any plots and stuff. It was around Spring Festival, that the family decided to watch some movies together. After figuring out the VHS machine and the TV we all sit around before the screen and here came the Star Wars. After all those years I can hardly remember anything, including those fancy light sabers, except one thing, that is those giant Walkers. They were amazing.

2. Star Wars reboot, The Force Awakens

Fast forwards about 20 years, I have watched all the Star Wars series for a number of times, and of course lots of Star Trek and other stuff, the Force Awakens comes. It was exciting and all to find some old characters in the film but for someone new to the series, like my girlfriend sitting besides me, it was not so interesting at all. She fell asleep. She could not be blamed though. After all the excitement, there is little chance that I would watch that movie again. It was alright, but not classic. Filled with filler contents intended to introduce a new gen of Star Wars. Fine by me.

3. AAA entertainment, The Last Jedi

So it would be wise to watch this movie by my own this time. There is no need to drag my girlfriend again through a sleepy 2 plus hours with something not at all interesting at all. Well I was wrong. She would somehow enjoy the Last Jedi, like any other mass produced American superhero movies nowadays. Unlike the Force Awakens, I had a feeling of something not in the right place, while watching it for the first time.

3.1 Upgraded graphics

I guess any Star Wars fun would love to watch this newest movie, just for the new graphics. All those new ships, space battles, big canoes! Nowadays burning money would always gives fantastic computer generated graphics. Although it was exciting to watch some space battles, I could not help but notice there is hardly any scenes that are grand and, beautiful. At least the Force Awakens has some breathtaking sceneries. For this one? The only scene I can remember is the battle on the salt lake.

3.2 Finally we have some jedis

After all the plots in the Force Awakens, we have some jedis to fight the dark force. Knowing force and able to use force do not mean someone a jedi. In this movie after some VERY brief and somewhat incomplete trainings at least we have a jedi. That's nice. A new generation of jedi. A generation that knows how to use force yet do not share jedi traditions and do not get trained by the last jedi master properly. Some grass root jedi, I suppose.

3.3 Confusing background stories

The last 2 movies spend some serious time talking about the unknown background stories of this heroin. And somehow nobody knows how to fill that big plot hole in with some proper stories. In the Last Jedi we know somehow there is nothing to it. She was born out of nowhere. Oh god.

3.4 More confusing plots and meaningless twists

Typical AAA movie style we have a lot more confusing plots and twists. And there are enough analysis online out there that I can't agree more. The problem is, those plot shortcomings, they just don't hide themselves. I can tell there is something wrong while sitting in the theater watching, frowning.

3.5 Nihilistic wars

The worst problem of all, from my point of view, is that the Last Jedi tells us nothing. It has no grand meaning, above space battles, chasing on strange horses, and fancy swingings of lightsabers. All we can see is 2 factions fighting each other and that's all. There is no right or wrong, just different ways of doing things. There is hardly any depiction of the empire suppressing the people. And after all it's just one army trying to fight out the other. No wonder no one responds to the distress signals the rebels were sending. There is nothing worth fight for in this movie, except for survival of some, personal reasons for a couple of people, anger and other primitive emotions for others. The wars in Star Wars should have some meanings, but here they are just some nihilistic wars. And this disappoints, and to be honest bothers me the most.

4. So... What's the point?

It should be hardly surprising that Star Wars turns into just another triple A francais. After all, those AAAs are everywhere. And they are some good business as well. If I could have a chance to invest in a movie like this I would. There is hardly a business like this that would never lose money. Don't expect too highly of a movie like this in 2017, or 2018, it's just a business.
Would I want to watch the Last Jedi again sometime? Yes. I like to watch in 2D just to enjoy some details that I missed. Would I want to watch the next one when it's out in 19? Of course. Don't be so serious. It's just a business, a nihilistic business.

From 2017 to 2018

It has been a full year, fuller than anything I can remember.

The situation, from my point of view, is not good. Everything around me has been going downwards, with few exceptions. Factories have had a very bad year. More and more people just waste their money and life on, pointless jobs and most of the time, a 2-room temp housing. Damn they are not even real houses. Talked with my dad the other day, asking about industries in my hometown. Nothing. What's still left kicking are those with government or military ties. Even those, have been struggling day to day. And my father would quit his job next spring. I don't really have many friends working in IT sectors so I really can't say what they are doing there. But, IT has lost its charm, on me at least.

Another thing that bothers me a lot in 2017 is the actions and attitudes of the government. All I can see now is the gradual tightening of control over people's lives. What people see, read, watch, play, listen, everything. Not to mention other social events happening in the past year. It is frankly increasingly suffocating. With the mounting tensions both from the inside and outside, I could see a path for war. It's not like, wars are not the way out, they normally are. But the madness of people, and suffering, are not what I want for life.

The internet will be broken sooner or later. I should start pulling all my data from cloud services and start to prepare for the worst. The worst will come.

My job has not gone very well in 2017 neither. There could be many reasons I could find to justify this but, hey, maybe it's just I have not given my best. Maybe another year. Maybe.

Personally it has been fine this 2017. Could not ask for more.

As for the coming 2018, what I want is really simple. Continue my research, and continue to learn new things.

And hope for the best.

WhatsApp Back Online in China (for the moment)

Last night it was around 5 pm local time that I and my girlfriend found out that WhatsApp was not working. At the time I was not sure, checking on Twitter and various sites, thinking there might be troubles at WhatsApp's side. But no. It was a total block by government firewall, GFW.

Although there was little coverage until today, but after about 10 hours around 10 am the day after, WhatsApp was back online again. And it has been working since then.

But again, news about WhatsApp blockage finally hits news sites all over. In fact it is working OK now.

I don't know what's going on here. Only few thoeries are all I've got. Maybe later I will write about them.

WhatsApp finally down in mainland China

As far as I know, WhatsApp has been down in mainland China, for both cable and mobile data.

Nothing works so far.

WhatsApp main server works fine, tested via circumvention methods.

It looks like the GFW finally takes down WhatsApp, just before "main event" October.

Reports from other outlets would come very soon. And, lol, nothing will change for users inside China.

WhatsApp has been a great app. So long.

China's Current Censorship Is Ridiculous

O.K. I have been thinking about writing on this for a while. Facing shit load of work this has to wait. But as the time goes by, things are getting serious, and in the end, down right ridiculous, to a degree that I can not believe I am living in a country that most earth people think as a modern country.

Everything now is political, yet really no one cares about politics.

Everyday people I know of, cares less about politics, than a volcano burst on a remote planet. Most of the people I know goes to work everyday, and rest, repeat. Unlike America right now where politics sometimes considered as a dirty word, in China, politics is a distant and rather boring word. Years of Chinese education, politics as a subject is being taught, less importantly than, say math, but being taught from a very young age all the same. In Chinese so called politics classes, little about democracy process or legal systems are in there. Instead, it's almost all about one logic, over and over again, from 1st grade to even doctoral degree. That logic is, only Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could save China, and only CCP can help China grow. In other words, the legitimacy of CCP monopoly rule. Now imagine being taught this for so many times, that the word politics in the end becomes a boring subject. And politics as a whole, becomes disconnect with everyday life.

Of course there are people cares about the going ons in the high ranks of CCP, or local branches, The in fightings, and all, can be an interesting topics for some. And occasionally some groups of people would express openly on some political issues, just to be seen as a grass root political movement but few are fooled.

But for some reason, or honestly, for the same reason politics as a subject in China being so boring, legitimacy of rule, now everything is political.

First goes bunch of social media accounts which only focus on entertainments. That's weird. Why shutting down those whose media presents have nothing to do with politics, by force of a nation machine? Then a flood of even weirder and similar stuff happened. The latest one being forcing TV stations showing only propaganda shows at prime time. And yes, VPNs are being cracked down like never before.

Yet little is being discussed inside the Great Firewall of China (GFW). Everyday people still don't care. Censorship as a tool being used without moderation of any kind, things are bond to become weirder, and downright ridiculous.

To be honest I don't care. Personally I really don't want to spend my time on stuff that are being censored anyways. But this ridiculousness, just got me.

Surprise Update for LG V20 H990DS

As I have mentioned before, time and time again, that LG doesn't seem to pay enough attention to updates of V20 H990DS version. There had been a year for the last update. And who knows, today I got a notification on my V20 saying there is another update, June update.

On update summary it says:

Phone usability and functionality has been further improved.

Well, I guess it comes with June's security update as well. It's 190mb in size, so, I am not hoping much.

Let's see what happens after a few days on this new update.

Privacy As A Marketing Tool

For those who are in the known, privacy nowadays is just a dream. Especially in China these days, for example it's very hard to find a Chinese email provider, that doesn't require your phone number to set up a new email account. And, at the same time, every phone number in China is registered using ID numbers, as required by law. Now is the question of how to minimize exposure, not complete privacy, or illusions of.

Yet we could see, time and time again, some hardware manufacturers would use privacy as a marketing tool, combining the two to boost sales. You can't sell privacy, not in this day and age anyways. It's both dangerous to average consumers and laughable to experts.

The reasoning behind this market scheme is, understandable. Profit model of hardware sales is so 90s that companies are all trying to get out of. Services both in the client side and cloud are better, but not much. One thing about services, especially free services though, is that they can run on any capable hardware, on any platform worth running on, and users love them.

Hardware manufacturers should be worried, and has been for some time. Some of them can make money by building a closed ecosystem, in it every transaction would require a fee, up to 30%. The logic is clear, although I have a huge profit margin on hardware, I can still count on people using my hardware to make me some extra money. Makes sense. Until the free services.

There are no transactions. Your hardware and your platforms are being used heavily and yet there is nothing to gain from it. How these free services making money you say? By controlling data.

Defencive move?

Sell people privacy. Easy and simple.

But in the long run? One losing battle.

Trust Me, In China No One Cares If You Are A Spy

It really confuses me when I read something on Economics, that "even children are watching for spies". That's just beyond laughable, that's sad. I really don't want to bash media, especially western media. I respect them, but stuff like this coming out in print really makes me laugh, then makes me sad.

The fact is, in China there is almost no one cares if you are a spy. I would venture out and say it's best time for spies.

But there are several catches.

First is the anti-spy operations must be very effective. No matter how China gets its info from, hacking, showing money, whatever, it must be effective. But that doesn't mean everyone here in China is watching every foreigner. Come on, it's no North Korea. Of course Chinese are curious, they would sometimes looks at foreigners for a bit too long. But no one gives a damn about what you do.

Second, there are known spy operations for a long time. From where I live, it's a known place for spies from some countries to carry out their business.  It is widely known and hey guess what, nobody cares. Normal everyday people can hardly get by, they really don't want to and care to mind more than what they already have at hand.

Third, the education. Of course, the party gives a lot of propaganda material in Children's education. Well it's certainly not good, but Chinese people generally give it any thought. Everyone knows the fact, no matter what the government says.

Just saying.

A V20 Update

Well, after about half a year, my Taiwan region, dual SIM version V20 finally has an software update.

It has been on last year's security patch for better part of 2017, and it's ridiculous. Maybe it's me, spoiled by Nexus lines of phones for years. What's strange is, with different versions of V20, some has regular updates, pretty much in sync with Google's patches. But some, like mine, updates are really really rare.

Anyways, it's a good thing to finally have some patch going on (now it's May patch). As a costumer, I really don't expect to have 7.1 or 8 any time soon. But I think for an unlocked phone, having regular security updates should not be a hard thing to ask for, right?

The Gone Emoji

In fact it never occurred to me the big change ahead with the emoji in android O. There are a lot changes under the hood but visually not much with the latest version of the most popular OS on earth. I can't say much is because, hey, there is little chance for me to have android O now that I am on LG V20 instead of a nexus of a pixel.

But, after reading the verge coverage (https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/25/15688528/google-blob-emoji-android-o-rip), with all the comparison of emoji from different versions, I find myself missing the days of android 4.4.

It's just my personal opinion but emoji back to version 4.4 is really the best of all. With everyone else doing a round face, what android had back then is a "blob". Not any blobs but blobs with a neck (sort of). Blobs can look up and down and sideways because of the neck they have. To me that's way more expressive than what we will have.

I guess it has something to do with time as well. Back then, most apps with built in emojis were doing apple line of them. Sending a blob most always meant I am the only person who can see what it really was. It is strange. But people are strange anyways. And, I guess people just don't like changes.

Nationalism Is the Best Tool to Make People Enslave Themselves

Yep, I said it.

There is some news floating around the internet, that a young Chinese giving a speech at some American university. In her speech, she said almost nothing wrong, no lies whatsoever. She praised the air quality. She said she enjoyed the open and democratic atmosphere there in America. And, that's about it. It was pretty much it until some media inside China began to say things like she was betraying her own country. How dare she compare America and her own motherland. Soon a huge number of internet trolls inside China began harassing her, including digging up her personal info.

It was like a dream. And I really can not say it was not a dream. Because, for me, I believe the basic human right of free speech. And besides she made no lies. She just gave some observations of her own.

Days after the news broke, under pressure, she apologized. To whom I don't understand. I guess trolls won, again.

when you look at this whole thing from certain prospective, it's pretty scary. Because you will see what nationalism would do to people. Blind nationalism will distort people's visions, making them do things that are so illogical that almost laughable.

For one thing, what are these trolls defending? They are certainly not defending truth, or freedom of expression that's for sure. Nobody in China would deny that in America, air is indeed much more cleaner, and people enjoy much more personal freedom. It is a fact. Saying fact is no crime. If stopping people saying truth about a country is what the trolls do, then they are no trolls, they are slaves.

Years of education finally we have so many people that are defending a government against truth.

And who else is using blind nationalism to do the biding? Well from what I can see, most of the countries.

Depressing.

Haier 11 inch Chromebook: first impressions

So, let's talk about Chromebooks.

I have always been curious about one of those Chromebooks floating around, and recent news about Chromebooks taking control of US schools is certainly interesting. And.... I bought myself one of those on Taobao the other day, and hopefully embedding it into my daily work/entertainment routines.

The result: better than I thought.

And for the fact that the Chromebook I got is on the crappier side of Chromebooks, the result is amazing. For the money's worth, I bought a (probably second hand) dirt cheap one made by Haier. Yep, the same company that is famous (at least famous here in China) for its washing machines and other home appliances. It is a 11 inch laptop from 2015, with 2 gigs of RAM and 16 gigs of internal storage, costing around 500 RMB (below 100 US dollars).

For sure this laptop, with its conditions and its dubious origins, is likely shipped to China to stripped for parts, aka trash. Well, as for the fact that Chromebooks are never meant to be sold here in China (unusable unless the user has a way to get over the GFW), this is the best I can get for the price. Because of the design simplicity and its security measures I can use this device without worrying about risks of using a second hand device.

This one comes with really cheap specs, an Intel N series CPU, low on RAM, to be honest I was not expecting much. I intended to buy this to easy the need for a cheap tablet. After days of tweaks and real life experience I am positively surprised.

First of all, it comes with a stable Chrome OS version 44, which was released back in, I don't know, 2015? Apparently never got updated afterwards. After "network issues" were dealt with, (wink wink), it updated itself to version 58 without any problems and running great. Google says they will continue support it until 2020.

Second the hardware itself. This is the second generation 11 inch Chromebook Haier has made, and the selling point of it was, CHEAP. Keyboard feels shallow, screen, is a TN panel with a very limited optimal viewing angle, plastic shell, and even the Chrome label on the back is just a plastic sticker. One of the cheapest feeling device I have ever used. It has enough ports, and no fans. It is so light compared with my gaming laptop that it is really a "lap" top. Working with it on my lap does not make me feel a thing.

Then performance. Don't laugh but I will have to talk about it. The fact that Chrome OS is just a Chrome running on a lightweight Linux kernel makes it VERY efficient, although nowadays Chrome browser is far from "efficient" compared with what it was years back. But on a Chromebook, especially on a cheap one like this, it really shows how optimized this OS is. It can do everything I do on a gaming laptop running Chrome without any hiccups, and some great Chrome apps are really all I need on a daily basis. People (including me before having tried this) always say Chromebooks can't do a thing, that with such a limited set of functions, it's better just to get a general PC. NO. I would say it is just because the limited functions this thing can do, people would REALLY do things on it. Yes indeed I can do almost anything on a PC but I won't do them most of the time. 80 percent of the time I spent on a PC is, in Chrome or with Google products (search, docs, gmail). So it never feels the need to boot up my PC while using this laptop. It is limited, but it is efficient and a simplified focusing experience to have.

Oh, this sub 100 dollar Chromebook has a battery life of over 8 hours, beating my V20 phone without even trying.

About Apps and extensions I have, well, I am still experimenting. And unlike android there is little info on those. I have to dig out gems by myself most of the time. All the Google services works out of the box, and I have some great 3rd party ones installed as well. Google states that Android apps support is planned on this model and it looks promising (in fact I have already installed the ARC required for Android apps, it's just I don't have the time to tweak around to hack some Android app on this one). Chinese input method looks primitive but good enough. Shortcuts are more than enough for usage without my huge gaming mouse, and I am typing in a minimalist offline markdown editor that just weights about 300kb and boy it is some pleasant experience to just type on and no distractions.

Anyways. I am happy that I bought this one instead of some cheap Windows 10 tablets and having to type on glass. And this about sums up my impressions so far. I will certainly post other tips and findings on this Chromebooks as I continue to use it. And I am wondering when those stickers will arrive, that Haier logo on the back sure looks terrible, lol.

BBC Earth App

It's probably stupid to write about an app. I never would think I would do that but I do feel the need to write about this new BBC Earth app.

Well it's really simple indeed. It plays curated lists of clips of years of BBC Earth documentaries with different themes, ranging from deep of the sea to begin of time. Quality is great, even will adjust video quality according to the bandwidth.

It's fantastic as expected. But I always want more. For years I have been loving the contents BBC produces. For me BBC RADIO 4 is always my favorite. But for its documentaries and most other contents it's really hard for people outside of UK, especially in China, to be able to see. I get it. BBC gets its funding from UK government there is no way to give all of the BBC to the world for free. But, it's sort of a waste just to let those go. Maybe, at this time of history, BBC would learn a bit from other media companies and have a more robust global strategy.

posted from Bloggeroid

Telegram WhatsApp and China

There is an article floating on the internet, pushing for telegram voice calls ( http://telegra.ph/Why-Telegram-Voice-Calls-Are-Blocked-in-Countries-Like-China-or-Iran-04-19 ). While I have no problem for marketing a product on its own media platform ( aka telegra.ph ) but using availability in China proving telegram is better than WhatsApp in privacy prospective , is ridiculous, and for billions of Chinese, unfair.

Over the years living in China, I have tried both telegram and WhatsApp. When telegram first came out a lot of friends of mine were talking about it and using it daily, and it was soon blocked by Chinese government. No surprise there. Till today, some of my friends are still using it, as a secure alternative to native IMs, that are clearly monitoring everything. But in order to use telegram, people inside of China has to use circumvention tools. These tools are difficult to setup and mostly a pain to use. Then came WhatsApp. Until now WhatsApp as an app is usable on both Android and iOS, yet its web version and its entire website is blocked. Although, if installed the pc client still works. And I have been using WhatsApp with my gf and friends ever after. Oh btw WhatsApp's encrypted voice calls work inside of China.

I don't want to go into details here, on encryption itself comparing telegram and WhatsApp, for I am no security expert. But for public knowledge we know: WhatsApp is using a open source encryption method, and its way of utilization is checked by various security experts. While telegram is using a in house close source encryption method, and I am not aware of any third party source checking so far.

That's pretty much the situation so far for security minded users inside of China. What drives me nuts in that article is that conspiracy attitude. Because WhatsApp works means it's less secure? Because telegram is blocked by China, a "regime", it means it's better in protection against government intrusion? Sorry this logic just doesn't stand for me. AND by the way as a don't give a fuck and user comes first company telegram let me ask you something, what have you done to your users inside of China? Being blocked makes you happy that you want to wear it like a badge of honor? Shame on you.

What China build on its internet, is called GFW, great firewall of China. It is getting more and more attention everyday. Recently Pinterest has been blocked. US made it a trade barrier. And China is willing to export the technology to Russia. But I have not seen ANY meaningful moves from the devs across the globe engaging it, although eventually it will help free up billions of people on earth. No. You guys have the skills and are happy in your first world bubbles. Fine. Just don't use us, internet users inside of China, as your marketing schemes. Thank you.

posted from Bloggeroid

Negativity At Work

I have a co worker that is, and has been, very negative. I know there always is one or another reason people turns negative towards the work they do everyday. Be it the working environment, the boss, the pay, other co workers, hell lot of them. And sometimes, a bit of negativity is not a bad thing. Nobody is a sheep and we are human after all. But recently this one's negativity has been growing out of control. I guess I am the only person there to listen to him complaining all the time? When I finally gave up give one or two comments on his endless daily, even hourly complain, this co worker finally decided to quite.

I don't know if this one really would quite or not. It's beyond hard to find a job these days. But his negativity is really becoming toxic. For some reason subtly is not his thing, he would always like to comment pointedly and often openly on things that should be kept below the table. And most of time he would look at my direction for support. Sure most of the topics he dislikes really need improvement, but negativity won't solve a damn thing. On the contrary, negativity is really the easy way. For me, current work environment is not perfect, but because of my previous experience in other companies, it is not unique or even worst at all. If you can't cop with this one, well, I don't think any other company would be any better at all. Unless, you are lying to yourself.

Changing a job sometimes I don't think requires so much negativity.

posted from Bloggeroid

LG V20's Sad Update Status

I have been on this LG V20 for quite some time. It's almost all I have wanted for a phone: nice yet not flashy design, tons of useful features and swappable batteries. But the sad thing is, system update is just unreasonable.

According to my own experience and this unofficial page for V20's update (https://lg-firmwares.com/lg-h990ds-firmwares/#more-3756) some models have not seen an system update since November 2016. Think about that. And then think about all the security holes found and patched by Google in between.

Yeah I guess I kind of getting it that LG has probably been busy with its new shinny G6 and what new skin that comes with it. Fine. And considering the fact that, LG must have a small dev team because, they just use most of Google's service, unlike Samsung. But lagging for sooooo long is, ridiculous. My phone tells me it's running the latest OS while the last update was the end of 2016, making the transition from a Nexus 6p extra hard for me.

Come on LG! As a customer from your Nexus 4 days at least release some security updates or something. I want nothing new on that G6 because I have no interest in that phone. Just do your job and have some security update!

posted from Bloggeroid

Age of Empires Castle Siege Lags Like Shit on Android

Well Microsoft's copycat mobile game is now on Android. Generally speaking the gaming experience has much similarities with other mobile games, which exploit the worst of human beings in order to make some in app micro payment. It's the thing these days but the problem is, during battle the frame rate would drop, so severe that it looks like a colorful PowerPoint. In a word, this game lags like shit. Devs are doing nothing. Testing is a joke. Aside from the icon looks like… literal pile of shit:



Mind you I have been running this game on a powerful enough 2016 flagship.

Releasing a game at a stage like this, is a fucking shame, Microsoft.

posted from Bloggeroid

OK… I Guess?

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