This is an old story, except for the LA Times. The guy on Money and Macro explains the situation better in this vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bOSWQttmvU

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I just started using this one today: https://docs.searxng.org/ and it did a great job for what i needed. I never heard of it before, but found the link on an old Lemmy post.

I don’t know how it would work for other people with other needs, but i needed to find graphic designers to help me with a project. DuckDuckGo kept giving me hundreds of results from a handful of big companies, but i wanted small companies and individuals. Found exactly what i needed on the first search using this engine.

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Good point. Sleepwalking into authoritarianism doesn’t seem difficult these days.

Yeah i agree. For what it’s worth, here are 2 ways i use to bypass captchas: Use this site: https://archive.fo/ Use a vpn and set the server site to a location that nixes the captchas (Denmark, Taiwan, etc.)

True. I once considered subscribing, some years ago, but customer reviews of OST convinced me not to. Looks like i made the right decision.

These “super-app” fantasies always ignore the fact that WeChat is ubiquitous in China because the Chinese government practically requires everyone to have it. How exactly is that supposed to be replicated in a non-authoritarian society?

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I thought i pasted the archived version but the link goes to the original. weird. anyway, here’s the archived version

https://archive.fo/wk3fE

And archive: https://archive.fo/

Yes and no. It’s backed by the Chinese government and pretty much mandatory for living in, working in China. For example, taxes are done with a WeChat mini-app, companies use only WeChat to communicate (email is rare now). During Covid, you could only get tested by using a WeChat mini-app to register, and no testing meant no life. You can’t cross into or out of China without using a Wechat mini-app to generate a qr code that they scan at the border. etc etc.

It doesn’t do ride-hailing. Didi does that. But WeChat does just about everything else. Oh, and all similar non-Chinese apps are blocked.

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Also with a browser extension. Wikihow has a page on how to do it 5 different ways.