bluerobotcat

Though I when last changed countries I did find that I lost some purchases. I would guess it can happen when an item is not available in the new country.

There’s a rate limit on how often you change countries and you’ll need a payment method from the country you want to change to (e.g. a credit card issued in that country, the address on the card doesn’t matter).

You’ll also need to cancel e.g. your Apple TV+ subscription before you can switch.

My working theory is that I was banned due to using a VPN (Mullvad) with a location set to Europe, at a time when Europe users were not allowed to use the app.

I wasn’t actually in Europe, to be clear, but I live in a country where even WhatsApp voice calls are blocked and so I routinely have my VPN turned on.

The country I live in is officially supported by Anthropic, and so is Europe these days, so it’s quite frustrating that they won’t unban me.

I can’t use ChatGPT and Perplexity either when I have my VPN turned on, but at least they don’t ban my account.

Fortunately, Poe is VPN friendly.

I also want to point out that the reason I mentioned Gui Minhai was to counter the claim that escaping the grip of China was a simple matter of moving abroad.

With respect to this original topic, there are also various examples where Chinese who moved abroad are threatened either by phone calls from China (with reference to their family) or by Chinese agents (presumably) in the new country. (I could list some if you want, but I assume you're familiar with them.)

These are things that the US does not really do.

But, yeah, US's track history in foreign policy is terrible. But China has its own take on terror and it's not pretty by any means. If you care about things like democracy or freedom of speech I will assert that China is emerging as the bigger threat by far.

(I take terror to refer to the systematically frightening people with the threat of violence, to make them behave in a certain way.)

The group that was being attacked was something like 'Westerners who criticize China' (I can't find the exact quote since the OP is no longer visible to me). I'm part of that group and that is why I replied.

Your point that "they're just making a bit of noise in the hope that the protest goes away" is true regarding the establishment. I don't see how anyone would disagree with that.

But we have a right to vote and a right to loudly voice our disagreement. And that's different from China. Right now in HK the government is now basically saying that voting against legislation proposed by the establishment 'might be' a violation of the national security law. That's insane.

However:

- Snowden was an American citizen. Gui Minhai is Swedish.

- Snowden didn't get kidnapped abroad. The possibility seemed real but, for whatever reason, that line did not actually get crossed.

I certainly wouldn't defend the US in this (let's not pretend that the US has a good reputation regarding world politics). But the things the US does pale in comparison what China does.

Can you though?

Gui Minhai was a Hong Kong bookseller who had become a Swedish citizen. He was kidnapped while in Thailand and was moved to China. There he was denied consular access.

The set of 'Westerners' does not exclude the protesters.

Is change lacking? Yes. Is there outrage? Also yes.

Of course, had you were to make the point that Western politicians are complete hypocrites then I would wholeheartedly agree. Although, I also don't think that's a uniquely Western phenomenon.

That being said, it is thee case that if you open sufficient apps (especially memory hungry ones) the app will be killed regardless.

I've resigned to manually bringing the app to the foreground every now and then in an attempt to reduce the number of phone calls I get from the government to a minimum (currently 1-2 per day).

I'm currently in quarantine in a Singapore hotel and the government forced me to install a location tracking app on my phone.

For several reasons that I won't go into, I've come to think that they have issues where the app is being killed by iOS for a lot of people.

It sounds like this would solve that 'problem'.

Perhaps the Kashmir situation got less media attention than Hong Kong, but I think that's more of a result of more developed regions getting more global news attention in general. It's the same reason that the Uyghur situation doesn't get as much media attention as Hong Kong either.

Comparing HK to California seems intellectual dishonest. The history is not comparable at all. The very existence of the notion 'One Country Two Systems' should tell you that the Hong Kong situation is quite special.

As for 'desecrating the Chinese flag'. You can also see that as a hint that people are really angry. I don't understand at all how oppression is a sensible answer to that.

For example, you might have prior experience that your gut is more reliable than your conscious thinking.

Or in the example of Main Street and Spruce Street, the subject might have taken the new experience that the Spruce Street route was faster than expected to wonder whether they _really_ know that Main Street is usually the better route.

Anyway. If you liked this article, you may be interested in looking up experimental philosophy or epistemology.

I also disagree that healthcare is uniformly cheap here. GP visits are not particularly cheap. You get to spend very little time with the GP and typically are sold a bunch of drugs you don't need (in Europe there's separation of clinics and pharmacies, which introduces some checks & balances).

To give another example, in Europe I used to go for a glaucoma test every year (due to family history) and pay about 20-30 euros. However, in Singapore, doctors look at you funny when you request to be tested for this as preventative health care is not really thing here. I did get tested twice for Glaucoma in Singapore (at the National Eye Center) and ended up with a bill of 250 SGD (~ 175 EUR) each time. The second time around, the doctor afterwards admitted that the bulk of the tests I had been given hadn't really been warranted. (Oh, and I couldn't exactly go in the same day by the way. There was a waiting list, though I don't recall how many days/weeks I had to book in advance.)

Finally, getting cancer has been known to bankrupt people in Singapore.

Had lessons in Pascal when I was 14, VBA at age 15, and moved on to a specialized (not very popular at the time) computer studies program at age 16 with about 15 hours of week of IT (VB, Pascal, C++, ...) per week.

Some MacBooks famously also have a TouchBar that makes emoji easy to type.

I can't remember the last time I had issues rendering emoji, and I have no idea why they'd be difficult to search for or how they would pose any accessibility issues.

I'd need to be able to open multiple terminals and install semi-random programs though. It's not clear to me if that's fits in with your vision.

- https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ne94dg/jingwang-app-no-en...

- https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7xgame/at-chinese-border-...

Such apps wouldn't work on iOS, due to its tighter security. But apparently if you're China that's not much of a deterrent, because you can just buy a rootkit to get around such limitations.

You're spot on with respect to diet. I believe Singapore has the highest rate of diabetes in the developed world.

With respect to supposed excellent medical care, some problems in Singapore that I noticed:

- There is little access to preventative medical care. If you do get preventative medical care it tends to be very expensive (scan all the things!). In my home country, I would get a yearly test for glaucoma as my grandmother was affected and it's genetic, but in Singapore this is quite unheard of (I tried once and was subjected to a battery of tests that cost hundreds of dollars). In my home country most people get yearly dental care, but there's no such thing in Singapore.

- People change doctors a lot, which I think is problematic. However, you're kind of forced to change doctors every time you change companies or if your company switches to a different health insurance provider.

- Strong drugs are available over the counter, no questions asked. GPs also happily give out way too many drugs for minor issues.

- People in Singapore can end up losing all their money if they get a serious illness.

- Strong promotion of pseudo-medicine, such as TCM. It is legitimized even by otherwise respect universities, which may have TCM research centers. After a GP visit, it's also common that you get some pseudo-scientific medicine from the secretary handling your payment (e.g. 'don't eat chicken').

I'm not so much arguing against your hypothesis. However, I worry that optimizing for life span might not mean that people are healthier.

In fact, in some countries, death is sometimes chosen over necessarily prolonging life:

- Euthanasia

- Getting very expensive, painful/dulling medical procedures that end up prolonging your life is discouraged by doctors in some countries

It's frustrating because many Dutch speakers can understand English better than French.

It would even happen for websites that support English, French, and Dutch, such as Skype.com (can't test if it's still happening though).