qwezxcrty's comments

On the converse, human nature languages do not necessarily follow Zipf's Law. Many asian languages including Chinese and Japanese are exceptions.

Lower noise for lower source impedances, to be slightly more precise.

If you look at the point of a Chinese, the block of Google/Facebook certainly can be justified by "geopolitical adversary has control". The exactly same reasoning of data security and propaganda manipulation can be applied.

You can't say without hypocrisy that China blocking US social media is censorship but US banning Chinese app is national security.

In this specific case it makes a bit more sense, as when you need to install a RJ45 dongle is likely when you don't have a network connection.

As a Chinese grown up within the Great Firewall, now I began to really feel all the hypocrisy around the matter of "freedom of Internet". It seems the block of Facebook and Twitter in China is surely justified at the very begining, for the same "national security" grounds. China have exactly the same amount of reason to believe the US is stealing data or propelling propaganda by social network.

It seems there are indeed things that can override citizen's free choice even in the "lighthouse of democracy and freedom", and CCP didn't make a mistake for building the firewall. My need to use Shadowsocks to use Google instead of Baidu or some other crap was simply a collateral damage.

Of course, the Chinese censorship is way more intensive, but this act makes a dangerous precedent.

Side-loading APKs are still needed for new Android users, not too much difference right? Exactly like the workarounds you need to find when you want to install "Risky applications" on a Chinese Xiaomi phone.

As a Chinese hated CCP for the internet censorship and decided to be an expat, what's going on these days is changing my world view.

Geneve to Munich is probably an example I experienced several times.

If you presume innocence, this requirement can also be interpreted in a harmless way as the funder asking the student to report his/her achievement for an evaluation of the progress.

The level of detail and the scope would matter a lot. It's very different whether the student is required to show that he coauthored 2x Science, 1x Nature Photonics and have a patent about something pending, or he need to furnish detailed information about an on-going/unpublished work.

I would also expect these dodgy reporting to be done in a more delicate way if they do exist then what's shown on this PDF. Citing the report in my first reply suggests that PDF is simply not a good source.

As an Chinese expat, I have indeed heard rumors about undercovers from Chinese three letters agencies in events organized by dissentients (like falungong) and I would try my best to avoid being involved.

However I hope the collateral damage to the innocent Chinese expats can be minimized. The reason of many of those to stay outside of China are concerns about the the ruling party and the desire to keep a distance from it. (Admittly also a higher quality of life, but no longer true in many cases.)

You can find the template of this report online by just Googling "出国留学人员学习/研修情况报告", it has English translation and appears to have a "Professor's Evaluation" section to be filled and signed by the foreign advisor.

There might be something else but this looks like a progress evaluation form and is hardly concerning.

I'm not sure about CSC (China Scholarship Concil) funded students, but being an intern funded by a Chinese university myself some years ago, I didn't need to report anything back beyonds a final scientific report signed by my US advisor.

Tangential: in my personal experience, the need for CSC funding for UK PhD programs is due to the very little available funding opportunities for foreign students. Doing a PhD without financial support in an expensive country is ridiculous for most families in China.

Most students would actually try to avoid that if it's possible to secure funding in alternative ways (like the paid PhD programs elsewhere in the world), as CSC funding comes with a requirement of returning to China after finishing the study and this limits opportunities of the students to work abroad afterwards.

Many high energy physics/accelerator institutes have public accessable status dashboards online, if one want to see this concept in action. For example the one for CERN: https://op-webtools.web.cern.ch/vistar/

As a Chinese speaker I agree that the historic problems are indeed heavily weaponized in the patriotic propaganda, and I don't care about these at all personally.

However, there are people that do care much more about these, in particular in the older generation from my personal experience. Probably the propaganda was more effective before China's opening up. In addition, Japan also have some conflicts from historical reasons with South Korean, which is an ally to Japan (and to the US).

I don't think there is any railway link to the site, at least in the short term. Both of the two rail lines nearby are passanger only high speed (250 km/h to 350 km/h) lines (references: https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/%E9%83%91%E9%98%9C%E9%AB%98%E... , https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/%E9%83%91%E6%B8%9D%E9%AB%98%E... ). The train yard ~5 km north of the factory is 郑州南动车所, also a high speed rail depot.

That area is called 郑州港区 (literal translation Zhengzhou "port area", full name: 郑州航空港经济综合实验区) is actually for it's closeness to the airport (ZHCC). English reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhengzhou_Airport_Economy_Zone .

I admittedly misread the title and thought that some people are creatively repurposing this audio streaming program for transferring IQ datastreams for Software defined radio (SDR) receivers... It may be actually doable with some hacking.

maybe the actual electrodes? They may need to be microfabricated?

mil is an unfortunate shorthand for one-thousandth of an inch widely used in the electronics industry.

100 um is 4mil, which is the resolution one can get from the cheapest PCB offerings. (e.g. for single digit $ from JLCPCB).

Calculator is for quick and dirty math in the field or in a lab, saving me from taking out the laptop from backpack or abandoning my optics alignment exercise and getting to the workstation on the other end of the table.

In other cases when I have convenient access to a computer, I'll use a proper math software like Matlab/Mathematica or whatever open source alternative. It's just a different use case.

I don't think US is genuinely interested in uncoupling with totalitarian regimes. There are many countries like Saudi Arab, UAE, Morocco that have way worse human rights record than China, and the US have no problem with selling even tanks and fighter jets to them. What's in US's real interest is staying more competitive over China and the support for democracy is only a cover story.

It's even worse when looking back in history, Taiwan was totalitarianly ruled before the 90s but US has been backing it ever since world war II.