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China has proposed to make 15 million people with handheld fans to blow smog away .
While this may not be called 'build', it must world's biggest air purifier.
http://shanghaiist.com/2017/11...

You are right that we have a long history of people crying wolf. As part of a course on the policy and ethical implications of AI, I am teaching the history of Luddite reactions from the printing press to the more recent robotic "revolution". Even recently with ATMs, there was a prediction of fewer branches and tellers which did not happen. So we're good right? Well...

Unfortunately, there is one thing that should stand out as being potentially different this time -- in previous instances of the Chicken Little scenarios, it was those who were worried about being displaced that were sounding the alarm, not those creating the technology. This time, it's the other way around. The vast majority of AI researchers, particularly in the private sector, are bullish on the elimination of most blue-collar and service jobs (even management and hedge fund investors are not safe) in the not too distant future. And if you have doubts, we have ample room to believe that the changes are not 50 years away:

• Manufacturing jobs are finally returning to North America...for robots
• Chinese factory replaces 90% of human workers with robots. Production rises by 250%, defects drop by 80%
• BBC News: Foxconn replaces '60,000 factory workers with robots'
• Attention all humans of Shanghai! Robo chefs will now whip you up a bowl of ramen in 90 seconds flat
• Japanese white-collar workers are already being replaced by artificial intelligence
• Mining 24 Hours a Day with Robots
• China Has Launched the Robocops You Have Been Waiting For
• Robots are already replacing fast-food workers Trump’s pick for labor chief, the CEO of Hardee's and Carl’s Jr., likes the idea.
• Inside Silicon Valley’s Robot Pizzeria
• Fmr. McDonald's USA CEO: $35K Robots Cheaper Than Hiring at $15 Per Hour
• Fast-food CEO says he's investing in machines because the government is making it difficult to afford employees

And other things to think about....

• Dallas Police Used Robot With Bomb to Kill Ambush Suspect
• Microsoft Foresees AR Tracking Your Keys, Milk, Entire Life
• White House: US Needs a Stronger Social Safety Net To Help Workers Displaced by Robots
• McKinsey's 2016 Analy

Despite all of that apparently there's already been a shootout over a busload of basketball reporters, with six fatalities. Link

Ma Ying-jeou, the president of ROC government, just gave a talk on several days ago, claiming mainland China was part of ROC under the R.O.C. Constitution. link 1 link 2 link 3 link 4.

Not content with messing up our own planet we are now talking about doing the same with space.

Blow something up down here and most of the bits fall back to the ground quite quickly. Up in space they continue whizzing round in orbit for years making it dangerous for anything else up there. Most of it is bits of space craft that have fallen off (and the occasional tool box), but not all. It was bad enough when the Chinese blew up an old comms satellite a few years ago to show how macho they were but then the USA did the same thing just to show that they were as big dicks as the Chinese.

We don't need these things up there, however: I expect that the military will get the budget to boldly pollute where no one has dropped trash before.

See more on these English sites:
http://shanghaiist.com/2011/07/25/wenzhou_high-speed_rail_col.php
http://www.chinasmack.com/

Shanghaiist and especially Chinasmack tend to republish a lot of rumors without bothering to verify them.If you want to get some facts, better check Robert Soong's EastSouthWestNorth blog.

Such as this post: Rumors About The Wenzhou Train Crash: How Many Have Your Forwarded? (Permalink does not work, scroll down about half the page)

By the way, both Shanghaiist and Chinasmack can be reached from within China, while EastSouthWestNorth is blocked, guess what?

~ Stan

See more on these English sites:
http://shanghaiist.com/2011/07/25/wenzhou_high-speed_rail_col.php
http://www.chinasmack.com/

1. Rescue efforts were called off twice, first time 5 HOURS after accident, and again 3 hours later, with officials claiming both times there were no more signs of life. Survivors were pulled out after each time. When questioned about why this could happen, railway ministry spokesman calls finding survivors "a miracle" Press and public extremely disgusted at irresponsible rescue effort and crassness in public relations. Railway spokesman says they relied on on-site rescue officials in making the determination, with quote "it doesn't matter whether you believe them or not, I believe them" -- which has now become a meme used to mock gov officials.

2. Removal and dismantling of wreckage began HOURS after accident. Wreckage was broken up and BURIED on site for some reason, leaving experts and lay public shocked and dumbfounded. Public suspicion is that the railway ministry was trying to hide evidence, pointing to the way other nations handle accident scenes (not touching it until investigators have combed through everything). The dismantling and burial was caught on amateur film, which shows 2 bodies falling out of the wreckage as a team of excavator machines break the train carriages apart for on-site burial. MUCH anger over this issue.

3. Victim families were immediately offered 172000 RMB government compensation plus 50000RMB "early signing bonus" to those who agree quickly. Chinese internet explodes again in disgust at the thought of using the phrase "award money" for death compensation, and of trying to rush grieving families into legal settlements. It looked like they were selling condos rather than giving financial aid. Most families refuse, saying they want answers rather than money. Internet is filled with posts comparing the disparity between compensation amounts for foreign nationals who die in China vs Chinese citizens -- tens of millions of RMB vs hundreds of thousands. Also comparisons to Chinese nationals who die in other countries (mainland tourists who died in Taiwan: 1.8 million RMB each) Yesterday, after Premier Wen visited the site, the compensation package was raised to a minimum of 915000RMB. People still calling this insultingly low.

4. Second day of the accident, media was informed of official narrative and government directive. Press is ordered to use only the official name for the accident, devote most of their air time to stories of rescue heroism, and forbidden from investigating on their own initiative. Some journalists are rebelling, with public offering support but also voicing apprehension about safety of these journalists.

5. Official death toll is currently at 40 with the passing of a critically injured passenger yesterday. The passenger manifest is still not public. List of dead, missing, and injured is still not released, even though the railway moved to an id card based ticketing system earlier this year, which would make this information computerized and easily accessible. Public is comparing this to the release of names of deceased in the Norway shooting incident. Public suspicion is that the real death toll is far above 40. Much frustration directed at railway ministry and government over lack of information.

There's a lot more controversies here but those are the main ones. This has blown up to a HUGE national discussion about transparency and government accountability. Much disgust on the Chinese internet over the handling of this accident.

If you really want to simplify keyboard use for common patterns, get the Microsoft Keyboard

First, nobody mentioned Foxconn until you brought it up. Second, what you're failing to point out is that

• Foxconn is one of the better Chinese employers. There are a lot of employers that are a whole lot worse.
• Suicide is just one of the many causes of death directly attributable to abusive corporate practices in China. Start with the alarming cancer rate and go from there.

When the #1 cause of death in your major cities is lung cancer (and the #2 cause of death nationwide), you have a very real problem. It may not be slavery, but it is eerily reminiscent of other early industrial societies. You'd think that we, as a planet, would have learned better by now, but apparently not.

You are a Moron

heya,

Hmm, you realise that your broken English and silly insults are a dead giveaway that you're a Chinese troll? Lol.

I mean, "a shameless company eating back its own poop". Look, I understand that some things just don't translate well, and I'm sure if I tried to insult you in mandarin, I'd sound like a five-year-old, but do you realise how silly that sounds? Not because of your poor English, but because you provide absolutely nothing to back your arguments up. You just spout random insults, that make absolutely no sense. That, for a fact, is cross-cultural.

And please, if Google left China, you'd have what, Baidu? Sorry, but I have a lot more faith in the engineering prowess and R&D of Google and their search algorithms. You compare Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook with say, the home-grown clones that have sprung up on the mainland. Because that's essentially what they are - clones. They usually try and copy, pixel for pixel, the look and feel of what they're cloning, yet their functionality is usually sub-par.

Case in point, look at Doit.IM. I thought it was a pretty cool program, until I realised it was a blatant ripoff of Things, another GTD program:

https://i.doit.im/
http://culturedcode.com/things/

http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/doit-im-free-awesome-software-for-task-management/

See:

[quote]Update: Reader BrianC400 notifies us in the comment that this app seems like a ripoff of Things. Since Doit.im is developed by some Chinese developers(who have history of ripping off stuffs), surprisingly it seems 80% similar to Things. Anyways, the good thing is that Doit.im is cross-platform and free while Things cost $49.95 and is for Mac OS X only.[/quote]

Or look at fanfou.com - look familiar?

http://shanghaiist.com/2009/06/03/by_june_6_all_gfwed_web_services_wi.php

Cheers,
Victor

China did block Wikipedia before. I can see them doing it again, and maybe this time permanently. Unless Wikipedia makes a China-friendly version.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Wikipedia_by_the_People's_Republic_of_China
http://shanghaiist.com/archives/2005/10/20/you_bastards_wi.php
http://www.itworld.com/040614wikipedia
http://angrychineseblogger.blog-city.com/china_blocks_wikipedia_again.htm

I wonder how feasible it would be for the Internet crowd to "make" June 4 the unofficial day of the free speech, by means of posting some small banner or a short comment on thousands of websites on that day, to the extent that it would get media coverage, and then repeating it every year on the anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre.

Here's the thing though. Putting up a banner of Tank Man on your blog doesn't matter. No one in China reads it. Putting Tank Man as the background to Google doesn't matter. No one in China visits it. They use Baidu. My point is, that you have to put your message where your audience is, and the audience is predominately visits the .cn domain, if for no other reason than the convenience of the language and culture. Same reason why you don't visit the Chinese US-expat site mitbbs.com. It's the wrong language, and they don't talk about anything you really care about.

So let's you managed to pull this off. You've used enough sites that are outside of the reach of Jingjing and Chacha, that word has spread though the mainland Chinese community. What's the reaction? I suspect that it would be just like the Olympic torch protests. anti-cnn.com whips up some nationalist fervor about how the West is jealous China's progress and are just trying to tear it down. A billion MSN users all add "(L)CHINA" back to their statuses.

  those who came from China to study and may be oblivious of the fact that the rest of the world considers Chinese government's policies and actions morally questionable.

Have you talked to any recent Chinese expats? I have. It can be fucking twisted. I was talking with one about China and how the US perceives it. (I visited Beijing for two weeks before the Olympics.) I told him that it was obvious that today's China is not Mao's China. It's not a palatable dysfunctional police state like North Korea. Obviously China has come far economically in a very short time. However, it is still clear that the old guard still exists. (As the Olympic preparations sign said, "When meeting foreigners remember these simple rules: #1 Maintain the social harmony...") I told him about the English language "documentary" about 1950 Tibet Invasion...err..."Invitation" and how it repeatedly talked about how the PLA brought (I swear to the god your choice, this is a direct quote) "democratic reforms" to Tibet. No. Not a chance. Not Chairman Mao. Not in a million years. Yes, Tibet was a lot less Shangri-la than a lot of Westerns want to believe, but there's no way that the Chairman Mao brought democracy to anyone. The expat's response? "Well, they made it more democratic." "No. It doesn't even meet the dictionary definition of a democracy. Not even a crooked one." "But they made it MORE democratic. You sound like they just changed kings." "They did." "No. I don't believe that." Then he said why democracy hadn't come to China. "It is. Just very slowly. We don't want it end up like Russia." "Well, that was an economic collapse, and you've avoided that. Plus that doesn't explain how Germany integrated, or Poland, or the Czech Republic, or Romania, or really any of Eastern Europe with the exception of the former Yugoslavia."

That said, while I was in Beijing, I had a similar long conversation with a friend that lives there, and it was different.

Internet connections in reasonably developed cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Dalian, run around 600 RMB for 512kbps for a year, around 1100 for 1Mbps. Not too bad.

As for the Great Firewall, well if you want to read (in English) what the mainland Chinese netizens are doing on blogs and forums there is only one excellent resource: EastSouthWestNorth. Check it out. It has regular citizens burning down police stations, reporting on blogs with Chinese characters upside down, using 'corrupt American administration' for certain stories as an synonym for 'corrupt Chinese administration' (especially this post).

http://shanghaiist.com/2008/05/19/online_implicat.php

Exactly. More details here:

• http://shanghaiist.com/2008/05/19/online_implicat.php. (Has translation of actual instructions to websites).
• http://www.cio.com/article/360213/China_Mourning_Suspends_Entertainment_Web_Sites

Again, to emphasize, these instructions went out to internal Chinese sites. Though I imagine they'll begin blocking access to other sites soon too.

That's because it's not international sites that have these instructions from the China government. It's internal Chinese websites. Check this out.

It was an order. Read this.

...ask yourself if this is X or corporate pandering"?!!?!!

"public" does not mean the all government party. The current shares count is about 27% owned by the chinese government.

http://www.shanghaiist.com/archives/2006/04/09/pc_ sales_irks_c.php

In Beijing, where bootleg software is the norm, now PCs come with a surplus, legal (possibly) version of MS DOS 6 installed. It just measn that for a while the bootlegs will be under the counter instead of in the shop window.

Anyway here, if not exactly hard-hitting, is a collection of openly political English-language blogging posted from China. There's censorship in China and it totally sucks, but I think you imagine it's about 100 times more imposing than it actually is.