Stripe in Canada - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/stripe-in-canada

<comment><USER2> _In many ways, launching in Canada is a big step for us—going from 1 to 2 is often harder than going from 2 to n—but it's only a small piece of what we have in mind. We grew up in countries from Honduras to Kenya, and a large part of why we're so eager to build Stripe is to help those outside the US to participate as first-class citizens in the internet economy._

I'm glad they address this before people complain about Stripe _only_ moving to Canada.

<comment><USER3> I'm very curious to how much time they have budgeted for this - has this been consuming 50% of their time? 75%?

It's really hard for me to tell if this was a real problem for them, or if they were just working on other stuff because the competition is still non- existent.

<comment><USER4> Moving to other countries is crazy difficult. They have to deal with a whole host of legal BS every time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We at Shopify just enabled automatic account provisioning for Canadians. End of an era of endless pain. We are thrilled!

<comment><USER6> Speaking as a non-merchant, I'm curious. What's the most painful thing that Stripe took care of?

<comment><USER7> I have yet to implement Stripe but PayPal's options without a monthly fee are downright goofy (and PayPal is the only other processor to have a no-monthly- fee option in Canada). "Buy now" buttons and IPN... eww.

<comment><USER7> Okay, now that I've officially implemented Stripe the official answer is dev time. PayPal took days to get a full solution implented (start to finish). Stripe took on the order of three to five hours. I can already tell maintenance will be almost non-existent in comparison and user experience is way, way better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is great news. While working with Stripe today, I noticed something a bit unnerving. The Stripe charge method will create a charge even if the CVC and the AVS fraud checks fail. It's then up to you to monitor this and reverse the charge if you feel it's too high risk (there's no fee reversal though). There are ways to get around this with custom development, but that doesn't help for people who are using software that's already integrated with Stripe. It would be great to see a fraud setting that would allow you to prohibit charges from going through depending on what checks fail.

<comment><USER9> As a brief bit of background: these charges are accepted because card brands do not always decline if the CVC fails (and AVS has no effect); instead, they're taking several signals into account. We expose as much data as possible to give you full control ([https://answers.stripe.com/questions/what- controls-for-fraud...](https://answers.stripe.com/questions/what-controls-for- fraud-prevention-does-stripe-offer)).

That said, I really appreciate the feedback. We're actively working on better fraud controls that should be ready soon!

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the response. I use Stripe for 3 companies and absolutely love it! While giving us full control is nice, it doesn't help when we're using a pre- built integration, like an ecommerce platform that supports Stripe. In this case, we either need to re-write the Stripe integration or accept that we have no automatic fraud controls.

<comment><USER10> Agreed. I have a client reeling from fraudulent orders right now and looking to change payment systems. In order to suggest Stripe I'd need to show how he can set up his own rules within Stripe, e.g.:

\- billing country/shipping country mis-match? DENY \- AVS mismatch or missing? REVIEW \- CVC mismatch or missing? DENY \- order over $X? REVIEW \- order from country in list X? DENY

Those are just the settings this client would prefer, but each user should be able to roll their own, regardless of whether they're using a custom integration or off-the-shelf third-party integration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is great. Although I was a bit surprised by the lengthy prohibited businesses section - <https://stripe.com/ca/terms#Prohibited+Businesses>

There are some legitimate business apps that not allowed. e.g. anything twilio based: (36) prepaid phone cards, phone services or cell phones

<comment><USER12> The ban on e-cigarette sales is also confusing. They are completely legal to distribute and own in Canada.

<comment><USER13> Just as "adult" content is, right?

I wonder why a blanket ban of pornography - is it because of the upstream providers or a policy of Stripe?

<comment><USER14> That's a risk category issue. Porn is categorized as 'high risk' and you need a different merchant account class and associated review procedure for that. You will also pay (sometimes much) higher fees, potentially you'll have to accept a hold-back period and there will be a periodical high-risk fee that you need to pay.

<comment><USER13> Is processing payments for porn sites so much different that companies that specialize in it exclusively are needed? Why can't a company like Paypal or Stripe support those merchant account classes and procedures?

<comment><USER15> It's all about the rate of chargebacks and fraud. I would hardly be surprised if your average porn site was subject to both frequent chargebacks and heavy use of stolen credit card numbers, if not both at the same time.

That and association. PayPal just doesn't want their name associated with stuff like that. It's hardly limited to just porn. Anything remotely sexual is rarely sold via PayPal or a major non-Adult-oriented payment processor.

<comment><USER13> _and association. PayPal just doesn't want their name associated with stuff like that._

Yeah, I suspect this is the real reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Good job guys - what's your ETA for the UK ?

We're crying out for you !

<comment><USER17> Yes we are. Shut up and take my money.

<comment><USER18> And mine!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Thank you stripe for:

1\. Listening to us :-) 2\. Adding a viable resource to the Canadian marketplace.

</comment><comment><USER20> GREAT STUFF STRIPE!

 _Crossing Stripe off the list of innovative services I can't use in Canada_

Will definitely use you for my next product!

</comment><comment><USER21> This is a great step. I'm _really_ looking forward to being able to split transactions with the Platform so I can easily create an Apple-like App Store experience (where my customers get 90% of whatever and I get 10% of the transaction).

<comment><USER22> You can do this with Apps already (although it's still in beta)! (:

<https://stripe.com/docs/apps>

<comment><USER22> Whoops, here's the relevant fee-splitting docs:

<https://stripe.com/docs/apps/fee-splitting>

<comment><USER21> Thank you much. I didn't know they implemented that yet! AWESOME.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Great work! Naturally I figure Sweden will be next ;)

<comment><USER24> Please, take it to Sweden!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Yes! I received my Beta invite last night and integrating with Stripe moved to the top of my to-do list.

</comment><comment><USER26> That Country selection drop-down is pretty slick, love it. Is there any plan in open sourcing it?

<comment><USER27> What is there to open source? It's HTML, CSS and JS.

<comment><USER28> It's also copyrighted, meaning that while you may be able to study the source and prepare your own implementation, you would be unable to use any of the assets. Open sourcing it would give you the legal right to use it verbatim according to the terms of whatever license they choose.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> They forgot Interac for Canadians.

<comment><USER7> I don't think that's a feature anybody is pining over (with the possible exception of a very small percentage of end-customers who don't have credit cards).

Although a few web sites accept it (I think), I don't think I've ever heard of anyone actually buying stuff on-line with Interac. Anybody have any data to rebut that?

<comment><USER30> I did once use Interac for an online purchase. It was because the merchant required a "Verified by Mastercard" or some such which was impossible for me to get on my Canadian credit card without a Canadian address (I live overseas). It is a bit of an edge case, I admit, and I would still choose the credit card over the debit card most of the time, but it is once example where accepting Interac was a good thing for the consumer. Of course, I would have been happier if they just accepted my credit card without the "Verified by Mastercard" BS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> So much less pain in Canada now. Thank you Stripe!

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm currently on Beanstream with terms that were acceptable at the time (hard to get a Merchant Account) but are now completely unacceptable and am interested in a switch.

\- 5% 6 month rolling reserve //

\- 2 week + 5 day lag settlements //

\- 2.8% blended + monthly fees.

Am I crazy to not switch, or should I present this to Beanstream and get better terms? Other than my terms, I have nothing but ecstatically positive things to say about BS.

Note: my terms are like so because of the nature of my business model. It is high risk, like a TPPA (third party payment aggregator). Think: Eventbrite. Appreciate the feedback.

<comment><USER32> I say "High Risk" because that is how it was evaluated at the time. We have had our Beanstream account for over 6 months with zero chargebacks, a 100% clean record. If a Stripe rep appears here and makes an offer - email@example.com - you have my business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> If Stripe and Square made a baby it would be the most glorious merchant baby ever.

</comment><comment><USER34> Great News! Have couple of questions though, 1\. What are the PCI implications if I were to use stripe.js in my site? Will I have to get my application and deployment stack PCI verified?

2\. I will have customers from both US and Europe, so what is the ideal approach to support multi currency so that customers end up paying the same (or close to same) price that they saw on my website?

</comment><comment><USER35> It still does not let you charge in US Dollars (Yes I know the customer can pay in what ever currency they want). But from a Canadian business point of view where your large section of customers are from US. Stripe is still not a very attractive option.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, you can choose to charge in either USD or CAD, but you can only choose one with your account. If you need to charge in both currencies, for the moment we recommend creating two separate Stripe accounts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I often speak about Stripe here in France and nobody knows it. I hope it will come sooner than later because the market of credit card (well, debit card) charging only offer horrible tools (and the usual PayPal).

</comment><comment><USER37> PayPal is really great. Buts it has oldish APIs and horrible documentation. Great to see promising services like stripe moving out of the US. Looking forward to see you guys all over the globe.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is great news. We got into the beta for Canadian service and what a breath of fresh air. Goodbye, forever, Paypal, I look forward to watching your slow, sad demise.

</comment><comment><USER39> Yay! I think it's easier to open an account in Canada from outside than opening one in the US. Do you know if that's true for Mexico?

</comment><comment><USER40> Yes!!! Great job, Stripe Team.

</comment><comment><USER41> So excited! Thank you Stripe!

</comment><comment><USER42> This is great news.

</comment><comment><USER43> :D</comment>


Zoom closes account of U.S.-based Chinese activist after Tiananmen event - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/zoom-closes-chinese-user-account-tiananmen-square-f218fed1-69af-4bdd-aac4-7eaf67f34084.html <comment><USER2> I feel like the good faith presumption for this company has to have shifted by now. Is there any reason not to assume that the Chinese government is surveilling Zoom calls en masse? Documenting participants (face, voice, language, location, etc.), recording content, etc. We're talking about the data of 200M+ users.

I see people on HN defending Zoom all the time.

>The company has acknowledged that much of its product development has been based in China, and that some Zoom calls were accidentally routed through Chinese servers.

>The University of Toronto's Citizen Lab said it found serious concerns over Zoom's security protocols, and said the company's large workforce in China left it "responsive to pressure from Chinese authorities."

>The government of Taiwan banned official use of Zoom due to security concerns, as have New York State schools, the U.S. Senate, and the German ministry of foreign affairs.

>Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said in early June that the company has chosen not to encrypt free calls in order to cooperate with law enforcement.

<comment><USER3> > Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said in early June that the company has chosen not to > encrypt free calls in order to cooperate with law enforcement.

This is incorrect. They don't offer end-to-end encryption, but it is encrypted between each client and the Zoom servers, and they have promised there's no way for a Zoom employee to spy on a conversation without visibly joining the meeting. [https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1268061790954385408](https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1268061790954385408)

<comment><USER4> Either it is E2E encrypted, or it is unencrypted on zoom servers and the only claim that they can reasonably make is that they haven't _provided_ their employees with the tools to observe a call invisibly.

<comment><USER5> This is addressed in the Alex Stamos twitter thread.

It _is_ E2E encrypted. And from what I understand the "promise" is a technological promise, not a process promise; you can check the exact terms of the promise in the paper.

<comment><USER6> The paper's ideas are not yet implemented. Right now, it's encrypted to whatever keys Zoom likes, including the PRC's. Same system as Apple's or Google's

<comment><USER5> OK, but if we were to take this stance it than literally the whole thread is pointless debate, right? It started with this:

> Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said in early June that the company has chosen not to > encrypt free calls in order to cooperate with law enforcement.

The entire debate is about the not-yet-implemented E2E encryption (that's where Zoom "does not encrypt free calls"). And the Alex Stamos thread explains very well both why that is a sensible choice, and how they will implement E2E encryption& what are the limitations.

If we're discussing about current implementation, it doesn't make sense to be outraged that "Zoom doesn't offer encryption for free calls" \- if we talk about E2E encryption, it doesn't offer it for anyone; and if we talk just about HTTPS, it offers it to everyone. So in fact we must've been discussing the future implementation not the current one - right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This kind of thing is the exact reason why I was disturbed by the Keybase.io sale to Zoom and abandoned my account. ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23105253](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23105253))

I've been currently using Zoom during the pandemic because as a product it's still the best (and I signed up for a discounted year of pro), but I won't give them any money again.

<comment><USER8> As much as I don't like consolidation of tech, I've had really good experiences with Google Meet. No scummy practices like forcing users to pretend that the app installer doesn't download just to connect from the browser either. What are Zoom's advantages?

<comment><USER7> I haven't personally used Google Meet, but part of what drew me to Zoom:

\- General preference for non-ad supported business model.

\- Google Meet wasn't an option until very recently.

\- I _really_ dislike hangouts and how it leaks chat all over Gmail (among other things), and this has biased me against their other products.

\- Similarly, I was a huge fan of Google Voice which was way ahead of its time and which they abandoned for years until many other multi-billion dollar companies rose up and took the space.

\- I've anecdotally heard Meet had worse video/audio quality from friends.

\- I tend to try and avoid Google chat products since they're usually a mess and often killed.

Of all of these, the first and last are really the only valid reasons.

Google Meet does have its own scummy practices though (adding itself to meetings without asking which confuses participants and is extremely annoying, Benedict Evans tweeted/wrote about this).

Maybe Jitsi works well enough to actually use? I already have a Matrix server, I could try getting friends to use that instead (realistically probably will be difficult).

<comment><USER9> > I've anecdotally heard Meet had worse video/audio quality from friends.

The best part of Zoom taking off is suddenly Meet appears to be getting new features almost daily. It's like a product Google suddenly cares about again. Audio and video quality have also greatly improved. It's really like a completely different product from 6 months ago.

<comment><USER10> I think the pandemic has brought into harsh relief how critical some of those quality of life features were, and advanced their urgency within Google. They're adding so many millions of users per day, and already had a strong initial base product, that building these additional zoom-competitive features is a no-brainer.

And Google Meet is able to bring to bear some of their absolutely amazing advances with ML for things like predictive sound for dropped packets and the new denoiser function they've launched, along with live captioning and some other just incredible features.

There are a few little things that bug me with Google Meet: their newly introduced grid view doesn't display yourself as one of the tiles, for some reason. I don't want to pay $25/mo/user for an enterprise account _just_ for the video recording feature, which I will have to do come September, if they don't extend the current offer to make that available to all GSuite tiers. And I wish it recorded the transcription. But overall, it's a pretty great product, and its tight integration with Google Calendar and Slack, along with its frankly fantastic meeting room hardware has made it our software of choice for some time now for conferencing.

Plus, it's a sunk cost for GSuite users. Aside from a licensing fee for the meeting rooms, I'm not paying an _additional_ per-user monthly fee, which for a small consultancy like mine, matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if we'll hear the "they're a private company, they can do what they want, it is only censorship if the government does it" routine.

I remember about a decade ago when certain parties were so concerned with voices being silenced and "erasure." The same people are now cheering when Facebook, Twitter, and the like shut down certain kinds of speech, with great discretion as to how the "rules" are implemented. These parties have been quiet, so much so, over China.

Down we slide along the slippery slope!

<comment><USER12> They can do whatever they want as a private company. I can do whatever I want as well. Including leaving zoom. They should have the right to enforce whatever standards they want, and we have the right to disagree and leave.

<comment><USER13> I really don't understand this. I am not American so may have a different perspective, but if by being private, you are ok with censoring, then you are ok with anyone banning blacks from their businesses, or not hiring gays, or only allowing women to go up the corporate ladder if they sleep around. After all, it is their private company, so why should I care about sexual harassment, blocking people, etc as long I am not the target? Heck, lets have white-men only private schools again, let's leave those blacks/gypsies/whatever out, after all, it is a private school so it should be able to discriminate against anyone.

<comment><USER14> I can anticipate the counter-argument to this: "well, discrimination based on race and gender is illegal, so they can't do that".

Which is true, but kinda misses the point: it amounts to a position that discrimination and censorship is ok as long as it doesn't run afoul of local laws. If local laws reflect the totality of ethical and moral positions, that would be fine, but I think we all know that laws tend to fall far short on that metric.

But I'm also sympathetic to the overall thrust of this. Let's say for a minute that hosting/distributing child porn wasn't illegal. Would you then call Zoom out as somehow evil for shutting down accounts that broadcast child porn live? I'll assume that people would be happy with Zoom shutting down something like that, and are also generally fine that there _are_ laws banning child porn.

So then it's impossible to hold a "no censorship at all" position, at least not without being a hypocrite. It's really "I don't like censorship, but it's appropriate in some narrowly-defined cases". Once we agree on that -- which we kinda have to, because that's the reality of the situation -- then it just becomes a matter of agreeing on what those "narrowly-defined cases" are, and of course I'd expect there to be disagreement.

For example, I'm fine with a private company deciding they don't want to be used as a platform to distribute racist hate speech. But I'm not ok with a private company shutting down the account of someone organizing events around the Tiananmen massacre. But as long as people (including myself) are willing to say "well, none of the other videoconferencing solutions are good enough for my needs, so I'll look the other way", they can get away with whatever they want.

<comment><USER13> The thing is, imo, we need to stand up for our values. Segregation ended because people raised up. Sexual Harassment laws the same.

But seems now, if it is a Tech company, people judge them differently. Wether Facebook or Twitter or Zoom, 'oh I can vote with my feet'. But if that was the case 30-40-60 years ago, we wouldn't have the 'progress' we see now.

And while I am opposed to child porn, if it is legal, I am not in favour of having private companies doing the censorship, but I would ask for people to be active on changing that law. Since that is opening a door I am not comfortable opening. We had YouTube/Twitter banning/blocking content that went against WHO guidelines, but we also had WHO guidelines being retracted one day after they were published. We had for days/weeks recommendations from the WHO that were just flat wrong, and we shouldn't let private companies censor information based on 3rd parties that are not 'innocent'.

And as your point stands, you are ok with shutting and account based on child porn (Assuming in this context it was legal), but would you be also for someone being banned documenting Police brutality in the BLM protests? Both are(in hypothetical) sense legal, so the only thing we have here is your own morality doing that judgement. And different cultures/religions will have different views on all that, thus I believe as long as it is legal, private companies should never have the right to censor 3rd party speech if they provide a platform for that speech.

<comment><USER14> > _And as your point stands, you are ok with shutting and account based on > child porn (Assuming in this context it was legal), but would you be also > for someone being banned documenting Police brutality in the BLM protests?_

No, and that's exactly the point I'm trying to make. Perhaps I'm doing a bad job of it.

> _Both are(in hypothetical) sense legal, so the only thing we have here is > your own morality doing that judgement. And different cultures /religions > will have different views on all that, thus I believe as long as it is > legal, private companies should never have the right to censor 3rd party > speech if they provide a platform for that speech._

And that's where I think you and I fundamentally differ in our beliefs. I think, absent a law either way, companies may -- and perhaps should -- feel free to exercise their own judgment about what they're comfortable broadcasting from their platform.

And again, why is "the law" so revered here? The law (at least in the US) is filled with racist and racist-enabling garbage. Why do we hold it as some final word on morality? I don't think we should. Changing the law takes time, effort, and money. Companies refusing to broadcast certain types of speech can be a part of activism and lobbying in order to change laws. And if ultimately the will of society is that this refusal is wrong, there are remedies (legal and economic) for that, too.

I believe I do understand your point of view; I just don't agree with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Article has been updated with a statement from Zoom:

> Update: A Zoom spokesperson confirmed to Axios that the account had been > closed "to comply with local law" and said it had now been re-activated.

> "Just like any global company, we must comply with applicable laws in the > jurisdictions where we operate. When a meeting is held across different > countries, the participants within those countries are required to comply > with their respective local laws. We aim to limit the actions we take to > those necessary to comply with local law and continuously review and improve > our process on these matters. We have reactivated the US-based account."

> — Zoom statement

> Between the lines: This suggests Zoom closed the account due to concerns in > China, which forbids free discussion of the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy > movement.

<comment><USER16> Yes, it seems like this was ultimately a bit of a nothingburger.

As much as we may not like it (and I certainly personally don't), China has the authority to censor the internet within its borders. Zoom literally has no choice but to follow China's law within China's borders, if it is to provide its product there at all.

Zoom accidentally deactivated a US-based account, and fixed it when they found out.

At worst, in this instance, they seem to simply be guilty of an administrative mistake and slow customer support.

<comment><USER17> I assume you're getting downvoted because you don't seem to take issue with censorship of free speech ultimately being a problem, and why people take stand against tyrants?

<comment><USER16> I've got no idea. I literally said I don't personally like it, so obviously I _do_ take issue.

But there's no scandal with Zoom in this particular case. And this certainly isn't anything new about China.

Why people are downvoting something so factual is beyond me. You'll have to ask them.

<comment><USER18> > Zoom accidentally deactivated a US-based account, and fixed it when they > found out.

This is why I downvoted your comment.

<comment><USER16> Do you care to explain why? Because what I said is factual.

They stated they aim to "limit the actions we take to those necessary to comply with local law", in this case their action went beyond that limit, and now that they're aware, they fixed it.

And I see no evidence otherwise -- this is not something they've shown any pattern of behavior in. It appears to be a one-off.

Any conspiracy-mongering that Zoom is nefariously in cahoots with the Chinese government to _intentionally_ try to sneak in an extra blocked account just begs credulity.

<comment><USER18> >Because what I said is factual.

The company has been caught lying at least 3 times.

1\. Lying about their daily active users. [https://thenextweb.com/apps/2020/04/30/zoom-daily-active- use...](https://thenextweb.com/apps/2020/04/30/zoom-daily-active-users- lie-300m/)

2\. Lying that they used 256 bit encryption (it was 128 bit)

3\. Lying about using end to end encryption

4\. Lying about separating Chinese users from the rest of the network [https://www.channelpartnersonline.com/2020/04/07/zoom- lied-f...](https://www.channelpartnersonline.com/2020/04/07/zoom-lied-faces- criticism-for-newly-discovered-lax-security-practices/)

I'm not the only one who was waiting for the cover up lie for this incidence.

"if they make an excuse AFTER THIS STORY BLOWS UP, I think it's reasonable to consider their justification "retconned" and not actually the real reason they closed the account (which can be reasonably inferred to be CCP-aligned censorship)." [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23481177](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23481177)

It's also not the first time an American company would lockup a non-chinese user's account for saying/doing something china doesn't like.

A famous example is Blizzard's banning of a Hong Kong protester's account, seizing his earnings and backtracked after the story went viral.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This requires oversight.

The U.S. government has no business telling Zoom what it must or must not host. But it _can_ prohibit federal procurement of Zoom, prohibit contractors from using Zoom in connection with government work, keep a close eye on Zoom and its employees as potential intelligence threats, and prohibit Zoom from accessing federal benefits.

It should require pre-emptive disclosure by of foreign ownership, control and influence; as well as public disclosure of government censorship requests and fulfillments by publicly-traded companies.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd just like to see more evidence and information before making judgment here.

There's no response from Zoom whatsoever, which is odd. Could this have been other users maliciously reporting the account as abuse, and it was closed automatically? Or something else similar?

Or if China is putting pressure on Zoom, then how exactly?

If Zoom, an _American_ company, really did intentionally close the account of someone living in the US, because the Chinese government asked them to for political reasons, that _does_ sound outrageous.

But it's _so_ outrageous that I actually have a hard time believing it's true. It feels like business suicide. I want to hear Zoom's side here first -- which I expect we will soon, since this story broke only 2 hours ago.

<comment><USER20> How is that outrageous? US companies cow tow to CCP all the time, e.g. the NBA. If you're trying not to get blacklisted by the world's second largest market then it makes plenty of sense.

<comment><USER21> I don't think this compares directly to the now-commonplace kowtowing that you are referring to. That would be more akin to Zoom, for example, retracting and apologizing for some public statement that it made in recognition of the Tiananmen Square protests.

Instead, this is a US-based communications platform, barring its US-based users from discussing something that is offensive to a foreign regime, and doing so outside of any official rules that they have made public.

Now, of course, you are correct, this has nothing to do with any kind of deeply held values. It is merely about money. I don't think that makes it better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is anyone here boycotting use of Zoom? I have a few clients that ask me to use it and I'm trying to think up a good response as to why I don't have it installed. For those of you that have rejected it on principle, what are you all saying?

<comment><USER23> I generally share a smattering of links like these:

Zoom banned from New York City schools due to privacy and security flaws [https://www.fastcompany.com/90486586/zoom-banned-from-new- yo...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90486586/zoom-banned-from-new-york-city- schools-due-to-privacy-and-security-flaws)

Google Told Its Workers That They Can't Use Zoom On Their Laptops Anymore [https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/google- bans...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/google-bans-zoom)

Elon Musk's SpaceX bans Zoom over privacy concerns [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spacex-zoom-video- commn/e...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spacex-zoom-video-commn/elon- musks-spacex-bans-zoom-over-privacy-concerns-memo-idUSKBN21J71H)

Beware of 'ZoomBombing:' screensharing filth to video calls [https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/17/zoombombing/](https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/17/zoombombing/)

Zoom needs to clean up its privacy act [https://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2020/03/27/zoom/](https://blogs.harvard.edu/doc/2020/03/27/zoom/)

Zoom security issues: Here's everything that's gone wrong (so far [https://www.tomsguide.com/news/zoom-security-privacy- woes](https://www.tomsguide.com/news/zoom-security-privacy-woes)

Mass move to work from home in coronavirus crisis creates opening for hackers: cyber experts [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus- cyber/...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-cyber/mass- move-to-work-from-home-in-coronavirus-crisis-creates-opening-for-hackers- cyber-experts-idUSKBN2153YC)

Security and Privacy Implications of Zoom [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/04/security_and_...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/04/security_and_pr_1.html)

'Zoom is malware': why experts worry about the video conferencing platform [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/02/zoom- tech...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/02/zoom-technology- security-coronavirus-video-conferencing)

Ex-NSA hacker drops new zero-day doom for Zoom [https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ex-nsa-hacker-drops- zero-1400...](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ex-nsa-hacker-drops- zero-140020837.html)

Maybe we shouldn't use Zoom after all [https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/31/zoom- at-your-own-risk/](https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/31/zoom-at-your-own-risk/)

Attackers can use Zoom to steal users' Windows credentials with no warning [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2020/04/unpat...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2020/04/unpatched-zoom-bug-lets-attackers-steal-windows- credentials-with-no-warning/)

The Zoom Privacy Backlash Is Only Getting Started [https://www.wired.com/story/zoom-backlash-zero- days/](https://www.wired.com/story/zoom-backlash-zero-days/)

Hackers Are Selling a Critical Zoom Zero-Day Exploit for $500,000 [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qjdqgv/hackers-selling- cr...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qjdqgv/hackers-selling-critical- zoom-zero-day-exploit-for-500000)

Researchers found and bought more than 500,000 Zoom passwords on the dark web for less than a cent each [https://www.businessinsider.com/500000-zoom- accounts-sale-da...](https://www.businessinsider.com/500000-zoom-accounts- sale-dark-web-2020-4)

<comment><USER24> I relied on Mozilla's guide and they seem to be perfectly OK with recommending Zoom as a video conferencing app

[https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/categor...](https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/categories/video- call-apps/)

<comment><USER22> This is very interesting. I do trust mozilla. However many of the security concerns stem from the dubious thing the Zoom installer does, which Mozilla's scorecard does not cover. I feel a little more at east with a Mozilla recommendation, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Not just Zoom; China has effective means to pressure.

> In 2019, LinkedIn blocked Zhou's account from being visible in China, > telling him in a message it was because of "specific content on your > profile." LinkedIn restored his account after media attention.

<comment><USER26> But what this means is that someone from Chinese government gives a call to to MS or LinkedIn management and ask for these things, suggesting that any other option would result in less purchases of their office licenses and etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It is ironic how the western public generally frowns upon the silencing of dissident throught in China, and at the same time welcomes precisely the same behavior for "sensitive topics" back home.

<comment><USER28> There is a vast difference between letting the government suppress speech, which is what China does, and letting private companies suppress speech, which is what happens in America.

When the government does it, you can't express that idea anywhere. When private companies do it, you can still express those ideas somewhere else.

<comment><USER27> I would agree if there were multiple competing private companies with comparable market shares, representing the opinions of different social groups. This way, if certain companies started applying censorship that wouldn't reflect the interests of the users, they would lose the market share and would have to listen more to what people want.

Instead, we have an effective monopoly on online search, monopoly on content monetization and a monopoly on social media. These monopolies are sustained through network effects and lack the feedback loop.

Edit: I would even say, they have a wrong type of feedback loop, since they are directly incentivized to censor the opinions that go against the vocal social groups, since that could result in decreasing profits.

China could technically spin off their censorship functions to a privately owned company that would wholly depend on the state-issued license to operate and would keep doing exactly the same thing. Would it make them more democratic or change anything for the end users?

I think, the distinction between private and government is a technicality. What is more important, is how many independent parties are making the censorship decisions, and whether they report to a single vs. distributed source of power. From that angle, the government-dominated Chinese web is very similar to Silicon Valley-dominated western web.

<comment><USER28> > China could technically spin off their censorship functions to a privately > owned company that would wholly depend on the state-issued license to > operate and would keep doing exactly the same thing.

If the private company requires a state-issued license, and that license is dependent on the content on the site, then it's still government censorship.

In America, you can still start a competing private company and allow any opinion you want. In China you can't do that.

<comment><USER27> In theory, yes. In practice, since Google and Facebook are free to end users, outcompeting them would require raising enormous amounts of capital. So you would depend on the approval of a rather small (and mind you, non-elected) group of individuals.

I really don't think it's about the wording you put on the decision maker's badge. It's about who's interests they represent and the structure of their incentives.

Government-drivern censorship is bad, because their incentive would become to stay in power no matter what. Monopolies act the same way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Only last week, it was announced by Zoom's CEO that free accounts are unencrypted, to enable law enforcement agencies.

Now we read that PAID accounts are suspended for their contents.

Hence, the encryption is obviously a farce.

<comment><USER30> > Only last week, it was announced by Zoom's CEO that free accounts are > unencrypted, to enable law enforcement agencies.

I missed that one, do you have a source?

<comment><USER31> The Verge: [https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/3/21279355/zoom-end- encrypti...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/3/21279355/zoom-end-encryption- calls-fbi-police-free-users)

<comment><USER32> That source doesn't support the GP comment. End-to-end encryption 1. doesn't exist yet for any user, and 2. does not mean free user calls will be less encrypted than they are today with server-client encryption. Zoom is not claiming that paid calls today are E2E encrypted.

<comment><USER31> Yes but Zoom was saying that E2E is something they _want_ to offer for their paid users, but that they will not offer it for free users. I think it's relevant to the parent comment in that they were asking for more information about what Zoom said concerning encryption on free vs paid users.

I think most people mean E2E when they say encryption, because server-client encryption is almost a given now, and does nothing to stop companies from helping law enforcement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> > Zoom did not respond to a request for comment.

When you can't say anything that won't get you into deeper trouble, say nothing at all.

<comment><USER34> A similar silence occurred when Marriott fired the guy over the tweet about Tibet. In fact, they were forced to apologize [0]. I kinda hope Zoom is forced to apologize by China as well to at least clarify the type of company they are.

0 - [https://twitter.com/MarriottBonvoy/status/951344031405084673](https://twitter.com/MarriottBonvoy/status/951344031405084673)

<comment><USER35> > Zoom is forced to apologize by China

Why would China want them to apologize? (Or there's a typo?)

Didn't zoom do what C wanted already

<comment><USER36> Cf. the Marriott apology in GP's link - it would be further to the action already taken, rather than retracting or apologising for it.

<comment><USER35> Ok thanks for explaining

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I remember the good old days when we all thought that tech would help export democracy and free speech...

<comment><USER38> That's why I keep calling for a NEW Internet to be created based on HORNET technology. HORNET is basically the same as the Tor network, but with speeds similar to the current internet.

Sites can't be traced or blocked and neither can its users. There will be free speech, along with all its excesses (terrorism, child porn, illegal content sharing etc.).

If everyone migrates towards the HORNET internet authoritarian regimes will either have the choice to block the entire internet (causing massive economic damage) or allowing free speech.

<comment><USER39> Well, authoritarian regimes wouldn't be first to shut this down. Western corporations will, because of illegal content sharing, no enforceable DMCA, and all this

<comment><USER38> It will be technically infeasible to do so. Or do you mean telecoms? That might be possible, but they'll risk losing customers.

IIRC when the internet was young, there were many closed computer networks such as The Source and America Online. These tried to sandbox the internet, but people just fled to providers which would give them unfettered internet access. The same scenario will play out with HORNET.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Zoom seems to be botching this unique opportunity that the pandemic has presented to them. They are getting dragged way too deep into a geopolitical crisis. I know several companies in N. America that are already transitioning from them. That's all what their competitors wanted to see.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is REAL! Here are more details shared by Humanitarian China with links to the video recordings and the photos of Zoom blockage.

[https://docs.google.com/document/d/12DM3ccTe70yzqCDPu9uXlCD7...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/12DM3ccTe70yzqCDPu9uXlCD7WmfJq- yzvKdKBH0oppc/edit)

If Zoom cannot comment on this incident. a) Either issue an apology and revert the stance. OR b) Or Explain why it was done

Its usage needs to be met with serious skepticism.

</comment><comment><USER41> Aiding in the Chinese media's censorship is not good for China nor the world. When a government destroys the ability for it to be criticized it becomes untethered from consensus reality; megalomaniacs can take the reins and a kind of national hubris forms that can lead to devastating conflict and oppression.

All governments need open dissent and criticism to keep from going down this path. Zoom should not be aiding and abetting the regime in this way.

<comment><USER42> You're not considering the real and terrifying strengths that dictatorship has over democracy. In true democracies the politicians never undertake a plan that lasts longer than one election term because they have no incentive to do so. In China they feel free to undertake 20 year plans with large upfront investments because the party does not care about winning an election every 2-4 years. Why do you automatically assume that elections provide a reality check? Would you say that the Democrats and Republicans in the USA are tightly coupled to reality given their frequent elections? On the contrary I believe that elections merely tie legislative actions towards what voters perceive as electable. It doesn't matter what the PATRIOT act does as long as a political ad can sell the idea of "safety" to you. Politics in democracies have devolved to little more than entertainment.

On the other hand, China has achieved something very close to a technocracy where rules are based on expert opinion. The economy is controlled by economists, health policy is controlled by epidemiologists, and media censorship is controlled by political and social scientists. You are more likely to advance based on competence in Chinese politics than you are in the USA, where elections are just a high school popularity contest. The Chinese government has plenty of terrifyingly competent bureaucrats.

<comment><USER43> This is why a successful democracy is one where only well educated and thoughtful people vote. Making it easier and easier to vote is a losing formula.

<comment><USER44> I know you are trolling. But, what country are you using as an example? And what is the "this" in the comment you are replying to (I think you are attempting to make a point rather than actually responding to the content)? And finally, investing in education is a better solution than suppressing the vote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Yet another service affiliated with China. It's just shame for tons of Zoom users.

[https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/31/zoom-at-your-own- risk/](https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/31/zoom-at-your-own-risk/) \- this article contains facts and easily explain why using Zoom isn't secure, send it to your friends/coworkers/non-tech people/etc.

</comment><comment><USER46> I set up a Jitsi Meet server at home. It's main resource use is bandwidth. CPU/RAM use for the server is minimal.

I used: \- VMWare Workstation:1CPU/2Core, 6GB RAM(I have RAM to burn) \- Ubuntu 20.04 Desktop default install (so I could use the base snapshot for other things) \- Hardware: i7 2600(yea it is old!), 32Gb RAM, generic gaming desktop with updated GPU. \- To Install Jitsi itself:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KR0AhDZF2A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KR0AhDZF2A)

No end-to-end encryption? Don't care, it is coming to MY home and it DOES have SSL for client to server encryption. I boot from known good snapshot when I want to use it. Turn it off otherwise. I guess I should figure out accounts etc but it hasn't been an issue to just let it run free for anyone to use while I am using it.

For those HN people who have all the tech-know, just build a Jitsi VPS somewhere with super decent bandwidth.

Hell, I would expect some HN people to be able to automate that shit and give me a website with a nominal price to have my own personal Jitsi Meet server, complete with Domain Name and Jitsi account management.

</comment><comment><USER47> We have seen high profile cases with gamers and athletes being influenced to limit what they say about China. This case seems to be with a much less notable person, but I wonder how often this happens and is never seen. Many tech companies publish metadata about requests they receive from governments (such as DMCA, search warrants, etc.) It would be nice to see some transparency on requests to censor.

</comment><comment> zenit-mf-1 Recent update: U.S. lawmakers ask Zoom to clarify China ties after it suspends accounts [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-zoom-video-commn- privacy/...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-zoom-video-commn-privacy/u-s- lawmakers-ask-zoom-to-clarify-china-ties-after-it-suspends-accounts- idUSKBN23I3GP)

</comment><comment><USER48> How can anything good come from a move like this? I do my best to avoid Zoom anyway.

</comment><comment><USER49> I want to stop using zoom. But the experience is far higher quality than anything else I've used. Maybe part of that is the strong suggestion and herding towards using the desktop app and not the browser.

<comment><USER50> Try Google Meet. Different can of privacy worms, but at least they aren't connected so directly to China.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Let's see where "but it's a private company and they have the right to ban any user the want", "it's not censorship if it's not the government doing it"

Well I hope this illustrates why that argument isn't a good argument to make.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm trying to understand the justifications for this is the activist is US- based. If CCP has an issue with someone within their own country, that is one thing but this is something totally different.

</comment><comment><USER53> The law in China mandated this and hence any firm based in China cannot be trusted for content. To be honest, it seems like fair if one respect that when traffic going in. But for that we start to have 2 commerical worlds. One China+world and one China. Hence, China can profit from the world but no one can touch China. With that, due to the weight of that market, gradually you will have self-sanction. Good luck humanity, if you think basic human rights have a world and a China standard. China standard will rule you ultimately.

</comment><comment><USER54> I'm no longer using Zoom due to the numerous security issues and infractions in addition to Zoom appearing to be a Chinese state controlled organization. I've also started to inform my less technical friends/family that Zoom should be avoided at all cost.

On a related note: Has anyone else noticed that non-technical people have started calling any and all video conferencing "zoom"? I keep hearing the phrases: "...have to get on a zoom" or "they're doing a zoom".

</comment><comment><USER55> I've certainly stuck my own neck out to defend Zoom against some of the FUD around it from a more technical, E2EE performance trade off angle: [https://interconnected.blog/zoom-china-fud-performance- trade...](https://interconnected.blog/zoom-china-fud-performance-tradeoff- open-source/)

This development just made the company much less defensible...

</comment><comment><USER56> Is there a comprehensive list of all CCP-favoring [self-]censorship incidents involving major entities outside of China?

Leica, Mariott cases come to mind.

<comment><USER57> Blizzard

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Why doesn't the US just pass a countervailing law against censorship? When China tells a company to censor its employees or users, the company could just point to the US law saying it can't. Then China has no leverage over it because the company's hands are tied.

<comment><USER59> I don't understand this reasoning; the leverage is that China will ban the entire company from doing business in China, how would this law help anything?

I also don't think US laws applies in China, so if a company wants to do business in China, it has to follow Chinese regulations. Just like a company doing business in the US having the follow US regulations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Oh gosh :/ I was really happy for keybase, and I really like keybase product, and I've been defending zoom to colleagues and infosec people and... I'm super disappointed to hear this. Really really disappointed...

Zoom's management has no spine.

</comment><comment><USER61> Just curious if anyone has tried creating rooms or logins (or passwords) that reference Tiananmen and had their accounts closed?

I'm imagining that doing this on a company account could be a painful revenue destroying form of protest.

<comment><USER62> Perth Tolle who runs the FRDM ETF also had her account knocked offline. She is a human rights advocate who has been outspoken about the HK situation. It's looking pretty bad for Zoom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Curiosity cat: Has anyone had success motioning their org away from Zoom? I've pondered it, considering the enterprise is heavily O365 anyway, as are multiple partners who host weekly touchpoints via Teams.

</comment><comment><USER64> At this point, is _any_ company not bowing down to the Chinese government? Is there ANY platform where I can talk about the aforementioned event without getting my account deleted?

</comment><comment><USER65> This just prompted me to cancel my Zoom subscription... I could live with all the security flaws (which were patched quite rapidly) but not with this kind of unethical behaviour.

</comment><comment><USER66> Why the hell would any company that cares about security have anything to do with the Chinese? There are fo many other countries they could be working with instead.

</comment><comment><USER67> Is there any alternative where my invitees don't have to "download" any software? It should work out-of-the-box in most browsers, including on mobile.

<comment><USER68> No solution is able to perform very well on mobile browsers. Meet is great for desktop browsers, on mobile apps are available for Google Meet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Does anyone know that Zoom took over Keybase?

It's crazy, no encryption for non-paid Videoconferencing, but buying Keybase?

Leaves a really bad taste in my mouth, and now that...

</comment><comment><USER70> I tried IPVideoTalk the other day and was pleasantly surprised how good it was. They just upgraded their free plan too with more features.

</comment><comment><USER71> It's 2020 - why is it so hard for someone to do basic video conferencing? How is this not a commodity?

</comment><comment><USER72> I just sent email to my company's e-staff (which I am on) saying I will not join another Zoom call. As an American free speech above all is my default. I do understand the Chinese governments worry on having social harmony given the fact that their revolution was driven by the disharmony and they worry about another revolution.

Every Communist must grasp the truth, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." — From Problems of War and Strategy - Mao Zedong

</comment><comment><USER73> It's the perennial thorn in the side of big tech companies. If you want to do business in China, you have to abide by the rules (as you would in any country). However, in China this means that you have to engage in political censorship in order to do business there. Hopefully this is will be a lesson learned.

</comment><comment><USER74> In typical internet activist fashion, always assume malice.

Zoom has 300 million participants a day. Even if they accidentally bans a Chinese activist with the same probability as any other person, the media will only report those instances because Zoom happens to have a Chinese American CEO.

<comment><USER75> > _Zoom happens to have a Chinese CEO._

You are understating the nature of Zoom's relationship to China.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> All the more reason to use alternatives like jitsi meet.

</comment><comment><USER77> SMH I am done with Zoom. If you value your privacy and freedoms I suggest you drop them too. There are very good alternatives by great teams that actually respect & protect your privacy.

</comment><comment><USER78> weird that zoom has the same orbit of regular ugliness with a handful of well meaning apologists as facebook

</comment><comment><USER79> Guys, guys, it's fine. According to everybody on HN who's so eagerly embraced Zoom and continued to use it even after the security issues, the only thing that matters is that Zoom is the best UX experience for video conferencing. Forget about the human rights, suppression of free speech or the fact that the company is wholly subservient to the CCP (not like anybody could've ever foreseen _anything_ like this ever happening). Just focus on what's important: Zoom is a great product, far better than all the US NSA-ridden ones. So everybody should keep using it, no matter what Zoom or the CCP does.

<comment><USER80> I mostly agree with what you are trying to say, but being snarky is against the hn guidelines. Edit: "against" is too strong a word - it isn't a hard rule but I often see the hn community react negatively to sarcasm and snarkiness even though the content may be worthwhile.

<comment><USER81> It is a hard rule! [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER80> I thought the the word "guidelines" usually implied something more flexible. Thank you for the clarification (I certainly appreciate the limited snarkyness and toxic sarcasm within the hn community).

<comment><USER82> "I got your hard rule right here" would have been a perfectly fine reply, I think, so your initial impression is probably not that far off the mark in practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> why not create a device like a mask which can encrypt voice before put it to the internet?

</comment><comment><USER84> Here's a secure open-source Zoom alternative:

[https://meet.jit.si/](https://meet.jit.si/)

</comment><comment><USER85> EDIT: Deleted. Not relevant.

<comment><USER86> I feel I should be careful believing this until I see a source reference of some kind.

<comment><USER85> I'll pry and see what I can get. If it's true, I imagine it will be out shortly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> Also, Zoom sucked. I hope I never have to hear someone say lets zoom again. Die with the pandemic please.

</comment><comment><USER88> It is funny that Alex Stamos works there.

After all his morale handwringing about working for Facebook, he is now working for Zoom, a Chinese Communist Party spy operation. Not only does he work for them, his job is to shill them so that people trust them.

He should feel ashamed of himself and really makes his whole situation with Facebook seem quite silly. He is now actually working for the 'bad guys'

</comment><comment><USER89> governments monitor all major companies... including the US government (PRISM is pretty old now, so we can assume that they monitor others by now: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_\(surveillance_program\)) ). So if the traffic is not end-to-end encrypted, assume that they can view your traffic. Sometime they play on words and say that end-to-end means from customer to cloud... but the cloud should not have the key.

<comment><USER90> Not all governments are equal. Cut out this whaddaboutism.

Edit: When I replied, OP was simply "governments monitor all major companies... including the US government"

<comment><USER91> Whataboutism is usually done to defend something by making it look better in comparison but what the OP was arguing is that we should be pursuing end to end encrypted solutions exclusively because it's not just the Chinese government who are doing the snooping. ie he's not defending Zoom nor the Chinese government but suggesting the complaint against Zoom/China doesn't go far enough

<comment><USER92> Exactly. Assume that governments and large companies can and will spy on you and act accordingly. Do not get suckered into some simplistic nationalistic narrative in which "our" side is good.

<comment><USER93> There's two problems with that line of thought. First, "our side" is not good but it is better. Notwithstanding the current unpleasantness, the US government isn't locking up and "reeducating" hundreds of thousands of its own citizens. Second, good or bad, it is our side and the CCP is the other side: only an ethically and intellectually challenged person offers tacit support for the "other side" because their own side fails some specious purity test.

<comment><USER92> _the US government isn 't locking up and "reeducating" hundreds of thousands of its own citizens._

Discuss.

<comment><USER93> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re- education_camps](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps)

> As of 2018, it was estimated that the Chinese authorities may have detained > hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million, Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other > ethnic Turkic Muslims, Christians as well as some foreign citizens such as > Kazakhstanis, who are being held in these secretive internment camps which > are located throughout the region. In May 2018, Randall Schriver of the > United States Department of Defense repeated claims that "at least a million > but likely closer to three million citizens" were imprisoned in detention > centers in a strong condemnation of the "concentration camps"

<comment><USER92> [https://www.newstatesman.com/2019/06/we-know-lot-less-we- thi...](https://www.newstatesman.com/2019/06/we-know-lot-less-we-think-about- world-which-explains-allure-simplism)

<comment><USER93> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> This is what everyone was afraid of with zoom. That like many other companies out of communist countries they aren't independent and will actively subvert democracy.

<comment><USER95> Plenty of companies elsewhere seem perfectly happy to do likewise. Offered as neither a defense of Zoom nor the CCP, but as calling out a tired strawman argument.

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> Bitcoin fixes this.

</comment><comment><USER97> I am confused.. are we supposed to be surprised by this?

</comment><comment><USER39> So everybody is cool with youtube removing videos and banning channels of RT, Sputnik and pro-Russia accounts; but Zoom doing just the same for the very same reason somehow makes everyone feel bad for Zoom .

<comment><USER98> Don't you see the difference between state-sponsored outlets like RT and the individual activists Zoom banned?

<comment><USER75> If it happened to be the case that the ROC was sponsoring this activist, that would not change how I feel about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> It is enough for the title to say just: "Zoom closes account".

That is already a horrendous misfeature of a communications application. It should not have a central authority which controls accounts (or even knows about all valid accounts).

<comment><USER12> Might be required for enforcement against illegal activity, either by law or by desire to avoid ending up as one of those platforms that endorses pure freedom of speech and ends up being labeled by society as a haven of crime and extremism. Would be hard to keep control of that without centralized control.

<comment><USER99> > those platforms that endorses pure freedom of speech and ends up being > labeled by society as a haven of crime and extremism

Oh, You mean like physical conversations between people?

> Might be required for enforcement against illegal activity

"required"? You mean, it would _help_ governments enforce laws. If enforcing the law is a supreme consideration, then it's required. For me - it is not.

<comment><USER12> Physical Conversations isn't a brand of a company that would be negatively affected by bad publicity (although physical locations/neighborhoods with bad reputations that have trouble attracting investment etc are certainly good examples of this effect). You're not gonna say "avoid physical conversations, that's where criminals hang out." But people can say "avoid that neighborhood/avoid Zoom, that's where all the criminals hang out." So the neighborhood and zoom have incentives to police conduct occurring within their borders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> I hope I'm not drawing too tenuous of a connection to current events, but I can't help but notice the irony of so many Silicon Valley companies coming out in vocal (and financial!) support of the BLM movement [1], while turning right around and supporting a totalitarian regime in China.

It strikes me as deeply inauthentic that people can be so passionate about some social issues and utterly indifferent or complicit to others. I understand that people can prioritize different issues at different times, and some people say that it's even possible to care about one issue without the expense of another.

Nonetheless, that statement is not substantiated by the level of concern U.S. citizens and woke-minded folks around the world devote to issues like the soft economic power China wields over SouthEast asian countries, the oppression of Uyghur minorities in China, or the political status of pro-democracy countries like Taiwan (to name a few).

Do people only care about a political issue if people threaten to cancel them on Twitter?

[1] [https://twitter.com/zoom_us/status/1266877451646283776?s=20](https://twitter.com/zoom_us/status/1266877451646283776?s=20)

</comment><comment><USER101> War is coming. Any company doing business with China - and complying with the demands of the CCP's security apparatus - needs to examine it's choices no less rigorously than what we've seen in other human rights vs technology conflicts this week amd this year.

</comment><comment><USER102> Let's face it: if they have assets in China and are a Chinese company, assume the worst. They almost certainly don't have a choice

(And no there is no moral equivalence with Twitter or FB removing an, say, Al Qaeda account.)

</comment><comment><USER103> > "We are outraged by this act from Zoom, a U.S company," Zhou and other > organizers told Axios in a statement. "As the most commercially popular > meeting software worldwide, Zoom is essential as an unbanned outreach to > Chinese audiences remembering and commemorating Tiananmen Massacre during > the coronavirus pandemic."

I understand the sentiment, but I don't agree that Zoom is essential. Jitsi is a fine alternative. It's perhaps not as polished Zoom, but that's a fair tradeoff here, I think!

</comment><comment><USER104> Has anyone noticed, if you mention chinese, you actively get your point decreased by one point.

<comment><USER81> Please stop breaking the site guidelines. Nationalistic flamewar is not welcome here. Insinuations of brigading and other abuses are not ok (because the vast majority of the time, people are simply making them up to explain something they noticed and disliked). Going on about downvotes is also against the rules.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER104> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23553325#23553594](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23553325#23553594)</comment></comment></comment>


Real Programmers Don't Use PASCAL [1982] - <AUTHOR> http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/realmen.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Reference fished out of the excellent essay The Mathematical Hacker (<http://www.evanmiller.org/mathematical-hacker.html> ), discussed here a few days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4915328></comment>


Defacto: Factorio-like game in the browser for the PICO-8 - <AUTHOR> https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=30631 <comment><USER2> Vox Mine is another super impressive PICO-8 game - [https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=32894](https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=32894)

<comment><USER3> Maybe not to that level, but also an impressive clone - of Katamari Damacy: [https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=katamari_christmassy](https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=katamari_christmassy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm frequently amazed by what can be built within the limits of PICO-8 and Lua.

<comment> loup-vaillant I'm not sure how drastic these limits really are. The display is tiny, the graphical memory small (32K), and code is limited to 8192 Lua tokens.

On the other hand, I haven't seen any computational model. It seems the "machine language" actually is Lua, and processing power is not limited by the specs, but by the _host computer_. Thus, there are quite a few ways we could trade speed for size.

My dream of a fantasy console is one that we could actually instantiate in actual hardware, should we want to. Ideally a cheap FPGA for which we have a Free toolchain, like the iCE40.

<comment><USER5> This isn't true at all. There are (undocumented) artificial costs to all instructions, making something like writing a performant software 3D engine non-trivial. For example there is a benchmark cart that compares runtime performance of multiple triangle rasterizers ([https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=31478](https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=31478)). If the limit was the host computers ability to execute Lua you'd be able to trivially draw 10s of thousands of triangles in software without issue.

<comment> loup-vaillant Ah, that would explain why I haven't seen it. Good, then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me also partially of [https://factoryidle.com/](https://factoryidle.com/) Lost some hours there in the past

<comment><USER7> That developer makes abusive design decisions. He does not maximize player entertainment, he tries to maximize how much money he can squeeze out of players with addictive loops. There are better options in this genre.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is amazing. Especially the fact that a PICO-8 game can own my brain this much.

</comment><comment><USER9> Please, please don't mention Factorio, it's too addictive. I bought it on Steam during Christmas 2 years ago and almost forgot there's a world outside. I spent 80 hours playing it in a couple of days and it was just one game. Later I found out that most people beat it much faster ([https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=17455](https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=17455)) and it made the guilt of wasting time even stronger.

It is an awesome game though. Just don't start.

<comment><USER10> Oh, you liked Factorio? Let me tell you about this game called Oxygen Not Included, it's similar, but with more thermodynamics, and cute little dupes running around...

I only have 560 hours played so far.

<comment><USER11> I absolutely love _Factorio_ (it's one of my all-time favorite games), and heard a lot of good things about _Oxygen Not Included_ , and the let's plays I saw of it looked great. But I found it really boring when I actually tried it. YMMV

<comment><USER12> I'm also extremely addicted to Factorio, and terribly afraid of getting hooked on Defacto. And not only because it uses a similar 3x5 font as Mike Koss's "The Terminal" terminal emulator for the Apple ][:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20051217102712/http://mckoss.com...](https://web.archive.org/web/20051217102712/http://mckoss.com/jscript/tinyalice.htm)

When I got bored with Oxygen Not Included, I switched it into sandbox mode, and played around with the paint brush tools, creating and cooking and freezing different materials, like a KidPix-like radioactive chemistry set, mixing together and juxtapositioning and melting and freezing all the different kinds of solids, liquids, gasses, lava, oil, water, ice, the hard vacuum of space, etc, to see how they all react with each other.

Here's a video Pawsome Gaming made of Sandbox mode, but I went a bit crazier with dangerous combinations of water and lava and other weird materials:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NniVJd89Gqk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NniVJd89Gqk)

After a while, that got boring too, but don't miss out on that part of the experience!

Also: I'm only going to say this once, because even saying it once might ruin somebody else's life like it's ruined mine, but: RimWorld!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been playing a great factorio-like called Mindustry. It is less resources+logistics and a little more starcraft. It is relaxing and satisfying to rebalance resource lines and optimize production.

[https://anuke.itch.io/mindustry](https://anuke.itch.io/mindustry)

<comment><USER14> Where Mindustry falls short for me is where once the waves are over, you're forced to leave your base and start all over.

I'm not motivated to invest in optimization if the production line is going to be abandoned soon; the game becomes more of a tower defense, and less of a production one.

<comment><USER15> Play custom game, survival mode and see how many waves you can survive. I think the campaign is more of a tutorial thing and to have a mode with a sense of progression.

<comment><USER16> I felt this same way. Survival is the real challenge. Campaign is just for fun / learning the mechanics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> how do i pick the direction that the insert is put in? using my directional arrow keys doesn't seem to work

edit: ah you're suppose to drop the piece then choose the direction with your mouse/keyboard

<comment><USER18> The pixel perfect placement requirements made me feel like I was trying to play using those pick-em-up games at the fair. I will just admire this game for its technical achievement, because the UX is entirely too bad for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Playing in mobile with the Gameboy-like interface is a joy :)

</comment><comment><USER20> The gameplay was surprisingly smooth in a mobile device. Congrats on the game!

</comment><comment><USER21> are bridges supposed to function as much more efficient inserters?

<comment><USER22> Yes. They also act as splitters.</comment></comment>


Don't Be Fooled by Covid-19 Carpetbaggers - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-dont-be-fooled-by-covid-19-carpetbaggers <comment><USER2> It's weird, halfway through the article the author suddenly had a change of heart about preventing interested parties from openly discussing their perspectives on the matter.

Better than the alternative, which is maintaining a strict gatekeeping mentality, but probably warrants comment?</comment>


A Designed Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.woothemes.com/2010/03/a-designed-startup/

<comment><USER2> If you're going to brag about your design skills you shouldn't blatantly rip off other artists. <http://www.woothemes.com/2009/11/digitalfarm/> [http://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_C...](http://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TO&Product_Code=QW- STOMPIN&Category_Code=QW)

<comment><USER3> Reading your comment I was under the impression they stole someone's design. Looking at your links, there is no resemblance between the two save the dinosaur.

Can you please clarify?

<comment><USER4> It's the dinosaur; here's where I first saw it [the dinosaur]:

<http://www.qwantz.com/index.php>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hmm. I get the impression that this was written by a someone who's main activity is designing.

I look at it this way. Form and function go hand in hand. The reason Tumblr is successful is because it's well designed AND it works. Where as Posterous, well, the design just isn't as pretty. It still works though...

If I had to choose though, I'd rather make something that works than something that just looks pretty.</comment>