Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by Drian

Best budget tablet

Drian — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 21:19:29 +0800

Looking to get a budget big screen tablet for parents.

Eyesight not so good so looking for a tablet which has a big screen.
Using at home so only wifi needed.

Camera not important , only using for browsing, whatsapp, looking at you tube videos.

Any suggestion ?

Stats on party voter share

Drian — Mon, 21 Nov 2022 09:59:40 +0800

Anyone has data total voters for harapan vs bn and pn?

Anyone done something like this before.

Drian — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 13:40:39 +0800

I've been trying to find this information but I haven't seen anyone doing this or example on anyone doing this.

Traditionally it has always been component speakers, 6.5 inch with tweeter at around 2.5-3khz crossover.

What if we mix and match full range speakers with 6.5inch speakers? the 6.5 inch maybe can crossover at 800hz while the full range will play from 800Hz to 20,000Hz.
With this you bring more of the frequency up to the dashboard and let the 6.5 inch only handle the lower frequency.

Assuming both are using DSP active , has anyone compared the sound quality for both setup ? Component set vs full range speakers + 6.5 inch.

With this the 6.5 inch can focus more on bass performance while the full range on vocals.

Roof Heat Insulation

Drian — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 00:52:19 +0800

Hi all,

Some questions for people who have done their roof insulation /radiant barrier after their renovation.

Radiant Barrier
1.) How would the workers install the radiant barrier below the roof tiles. I've checked my attic , doesn't seem to have a place to step on. (See pictures attached)

Insulation
Plan to use rockwool or Cellulose.
1.)How to handle places like downlight openings? rockwool you can cut to avoid, how about cellulose?
2.)Is rockwool meant to be used exposed such as in the attic? Wouldn't dust accumulate ono top of the rockwool? (My attic is already quite dusty)
3.)Anyone here did another layer of plaster ceiling so that the rockwool would be sandwiched instead of exposed?
4.) I notice that the plaster ceiling in my place is supported by those aluminium strips (see picture). Would that be able to support rockwool?

[attachmentid=10824231]
[attachmentid=10824232]

Extend Third floor

Drian — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 14:59:45 +0800

Some background:-
My current house is 2.5 storey, but structurally compatible with 3 storey.

I plan to extend up to the end which is an additional 11ft X 20ft of space.
No additional plumbing required, just extend and put a roof on top of it. Some hacking to make an accessway to go to the new room.

How much does it cost to extend the 3rd floor?

CCP trying to rewrite history

Drian — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 14:33:55 +0800

QUOTE

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/14/china-insists-genghis-khan-exhibit-not-use-words-genghis-khan

China insists Genghis Khan exhibit not use words 'Genghis Khan'
Museum in Nantes pulls show after intervention by Beijing, which comes as Communist party hardens discrimination against ethnic Mongols

A French museum has postponed an exhibit about the Mongol emperor Genghis Khan citing interference by the Chinese government, which it accuses of trying to rewrite history.

The Château des ducs de Bretagne history museum in the western city of Nantes said it was putting the show about the fearsome 13th century leader on hold for over three years.

The museum’s director, Bertrand Guillet, said: “We made the decision to stop this production in the name of the human, scientific and ethical values that we defend.”

Inner Mongolia protests at China's plans to bring in Mandarin-only lessons
Read more
It said the Chinese authorities demanded that certain words, including “Genghis Khan,” “Empire” and “Mongol” be taken out of the show. Subsequently they asked for power over exhibition brochures, legends and maps.

The spat comes as the Chinese government has hardened its discrimination against ethnic Mongols, many of whom live in the northern province of Inner Mongolia.

The exhibit was planned in collaboration with the Inner Mongolia Museum in Hohhot, China. But tensions arose, the Nantes museum said, when the Chinese Bureau of Cultural Heritage pressured the museum for changes to the original plan, “including notably elements of biased rewriting of Mongol culture in favour of a new national narrative”.

The museum branded it “censorship” and said it underlined a “hardening … of the position of the Chinese government against the Mongolian minority”.

The Chinese consulate in Paris did not immediately return calls for comment.

Do they think by censoring Genghis Khan suddenly the world would forget that Genghis Khan conquered China?

CCP attempting to erase history

Drian — Tue, 28 Apr 2020 15:35:21 +0800

https://qz.com/1846277/china-arrests-users-...-memories-page/

QUOTE

A group of volunteers in China who worked to prevent digital records of the coronavirus outbreak from being scrubbed by censors are now targets of a crackdown.

Cai Wei, a Beijing-based man who participated in one such project on GitHub, the software development website, was arrested together with his girlfriend by Beijing police on April 19. The couple were accused of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a commonly used charge against dissidents in China, according to Chen Kun, the brother of Chen Mei, another volunteer involved with the project. Chen Mei has been missing since that same day. On April 24, the couple’s families received a police notice that informed them of the charge, and said the two have been put under “residential surveillance at a designated place.” There is still no information about Chen Mei, said his brother.
It is unclear whether the arrest of the couple and the disappearance of Chen are directly linked to their GitHub project, named “Terminus2049.” The Beijing police could not be reached for comment.

The project, named after a planet in Isaac Asimov’s series Foundation, has been preserving censored news stories, videos, and articles from individuals shared on messaging apps like WeChat since January 2018. The purpose of the project was to “encourage the public to resist ‘404,’” referring to the error message displayed when a webpage has been deleted or banned by authorities, according to a 2018 post (link in Chinese) on Terminus2049.

During the outbreak, the project shifted its focus to storing articles including a Chinese magazine’s interview (link in Chinese) with Wuhan doctor Ai Fen, who said she was the first to reveal the existence of the epidemic but who was later reprimanded. The article, first published in March, was taken down within hours of publication, spurring a race among internet users who used various creative ways, including coded language and emojis, to keep the article alive. Terminus2049 also preserved a strongly worded critique (link in Chinese) aimed at Chinese leader Xi Jinping penned by outspoken professor Xu Zhangrun. In the essay, Xu attacked Beijing’s social controls and censorship. He was later reportedly placed under house arrest and his account has been suspended on WeChat.

Chinese citizens had been turning to Microsoft-owned GitHub after the outbreak began, as it remains one of the few major foreign websites that can still be accessed in China. Now, volunteers linked to these GitHub pages are facing the growing risk of reprisals from authorities. Another GitHub page, #2020 nCov memory, which was initiated by seven volunteers around the world to chronicle personal accounts and news stories of the outbreak, is no longer publicly available. The team behind #2020 nCov memory said in an email to Quartz that they will suspend operation of the page and collection of submissions due to the “situation” in China, and that they hope to see “sunshine tomorrow.”

In addition to the GitHub volunteers, three journalists have also disappeared since February while reporting from Wuhan, the city where the outbreak was first discovered. Among them, only Li Zehua, a former employee of the state broadcaster, recently resurfaced, and said in a video that he had been detained and placed under quarantine by police for “disrupting public order,” but also praised the actions of the police. The whereabouts of citizen journalists Chen Qiushi and Fan Bin remain unknown.

WuMao also working in US to spread disinformation

Drian — Thu, 23 Apr 2020 10:20:47 +0800

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/us/polit...nformation.html

QUOTE

Chinese Agents Helped Spread Messages That Sowed Virus Panic in U.S., Officials Say
American officials were alarmed by fake text messages and social media posts that said President Trump was locking down the country. Experts see a convergence with Russian tactics.

WASHINGTON — The alarming messages came fast and furious in mid-March, popping up on the cellphone screens and social media feeds of millions of Americans grappling with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

Spread the word, the messages said: The Trump administration was about to lock down the entire country.

“They will announce this as soon as they have troops in place to help prevent looters and rioters,” warned one of the messages, which cited a source in the Department of Homeland Security. “He said he got the call last night and was told to pack and be prepared for the call today with his dispatch orders.”

The messages became so widespread over 48 hours that the White House’s National Security Council issued an announcement via Twitter that they were “FAKE.”

Since that wave of panic, United States intelligence agencies have assessed that Chinese operatives helped push the messages across platforms, according to six American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to publicly discuss intelligence matters. The amplification techniques are alarming to officials because the disinformation showed up as texts on many Americans’ cellphones, a tactic that several of the officials said they had not seen before.

That has spurred agencies to look at new ways in which China, Russia and other nations are using a range of platforms to spread disinformation during the pandemic, they said.

The origin of the messages remains murky. American officials declined to reveal details of the intelligence linking Chinese agents to the dissemination of the disinformation, citing the need to protect their sources and methods for monitoring Beijing’s activities.

The officials interviewed for this article work in six different agencies. They included both career civil servants and political appointees, and some have spent many years analyzing China. Their broader warnings about China’s spread of disinformation are supported by recent findings from outside bipartisan research groups, including the Alliance for Securing Democracy and the Center for a New American Security, which is expected to release a report on the topic next month.

Two American officials stressed they did not believe Chinese operatives created the lockdown messages, but rather amplified existing ones. Those efforts enabled the messages to catch the attention of enough people that they then spread on their own, with little need for further work by foreign agents. The messages appeared to gain significant traction on Facebook as they were also proliferating through texts, according to an analysis by The New York Times.

American officials said the operatives had adopted some of the techniques mastered by Russia-backed trolls, such as creating fake social media accounts to push messages to sympathetic Americans, who in turn unwittingly help spread them.

The officials say the Chinese agents also appear to be using texts and encrypted messaging apps as part of their campaigns. It is much harder for researchers and law enforcement officers to track disinformation spread through text messages and encrypted apps than on social media platforms.

American intelligence officers are also examining whether spies in China’s diplomatic missions in the United States helped spread the fake lockdown messages, a senior American official said. American agencies have recently increased their scrutiny of Chinese diplomats and employees of state-run media organizations. In September, the State Department secretly expelled two employees of the Chinese Embassy in Washington suspected of spying.

Other rival powers might have been involved in the dissemination, too. And Americans with prominent online or news media platforms unknowingly helped amplify the messages. Misinformation has proliferated during the pandemic — in recent weeks, some pro-Trump news outlets have promoted anti-American conspiracy theories, including one that suggests the virus was created in a laboratory in the United States.

American officials said China, borrowing from Russia’s strategies, has been trying to widen political divisions in the United States. As public dissent simmers over lockdown policies in several states, officials worry it will be easy for China and Russia to amplify the partisan disagreements.

“It is part of the playbook of spreading division,” said Senator Angus King, independent of Maine, adding that private individuals have identified some social media bots that helped promote the recent lockdown protests that some fringe conservative groups have nurtured.

The propaganda efforts go beyond text messages and social media posts directed at Americans. In China, top officials have issued directives to agencies to engage in a global disinformation campaign around the virus, the American officials said.

Some American intelligence officers are especially concerned about disinformation aimed at Europeans that pro-China actors appear to have helped spread. The messages stress the idea of disunity among European nations during the crisis and praise China’s “donation diplomacy,” American officials said. Left unmentioned are reports of Chinese companies delivering shoddy equipment and European leaders expressing skepticism over China’s handling of its outbreak.

Mr. Trump himself has shown little concern about China’s actions. He has consistently praised the handling of the pandemic by Chinese leaders — “Much respect!” he wrote on Twitter on March 27. Three days later, he dismissed worries over China’s use of disinformation when asked about it on Fox News.

“They do it and we do it and we call them different things,” he said. “Every country does it.”

Asked about the new accusations, the Chinese Foreign Ministry released a statement on Tuesday that said, “The relevant statements are complete nonsense and not worth refuting.” Zhao Lijian, a ministry spokesman, has separately rebutted persistent accusations by American officials that China has supplied bad information and exhibited a broader lack of transparency during the pandemic. “We urge the U.S. to stop political manipulation, get its own house in order and focus more on fighting the epidemic and boosting the economy,” Mr. Zhao said at a news conference on Friday.

An Information War
The United States and China are engaged in a titanic information war over the pandemic, one that has added a new dimension to their global rivalry.

President Trump and his aides are trying to put the spotlight on China as they face intense criticism over the federal government’s widespread failures in responding to the pandemic, which has killed more than 40,000 Americans. President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party are trying to shore up domestic and international support after earlier cover-ups that allowed the virus to spread.

As diplomatic tensions rose and Beijing scrambled to control the narrative, the Chinese government last month expelled American journalists for three U.S. news organizations, including The Times.

The extent to which the United States might be engaging in its own covert information warfare in China is not clear. While the C.I.A. in recent decades has tried to support pro-democracy opposition figures in some countries, Chinese counterintelligence officers eviscerated the agency’s network of informants in China about a decade ago, hurting its ability to conduct operations there.

Chinese officials accuse Mr. Trump and his allies of overtly peddling malicious or bad information, pointing to the president’s repeatedly calling the coronavirus a “Chinese virus” or the suggestion by some Republicans that the virus may have originated as a Chinese bioweapon, a theory that U.S. intelligence agencies have since ruled out. (Many Americans have also criticized Mr. Trump’s language as racist.)

Republican strategists have decided that bashing China over the virus will shore up support for Mr. Trump and other conservative politicians before the November elections.

Given the toxic information environment, foreign policy analysts are worried that the Trump administration may politicize intelligence work or make selective leaks to promote an anti-China narrative. Those concerns hover around the speculation over the origin of the virus. American officials in the past have selectively passed intelligence to reporters to shape the domestic political landscape; the most notable instance was under President George W. Bush in the run-up to the Iraq War.

But it has been clear for more than a month that the Chinese government is pushing disinformation and anti-American conspiracy theories related to the pandemic. Mr. Zhao, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, wrote on Twitter in March that the U.S. Army might have taken the virus to the Chinese city of Wuhan. That message was then amplified by the official Twitter accounts of Chinese embassies and consulates.

The state-run China Global Television Network produced a video targeting viewers in the Middle East in which a presenter speaking Arabic asserted that “some new facts” indicated that the pandemic might have originated from American participants in a military sports competition in October in Wuhan. The network has an audience of millions, and the video has had more than 365,000 views on YouTube.

“What we’ve seen is the C.C.P. mobilizing its global messaging apparatus, which includes state media as well as Chinese diplomats, to push out selected and localized versions of the same overarching false narratives,” Lea Gabrielle, coordinator of the Global Engagement Center in the State Department, said in late March, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.

Some analysts say it is core to China’s new, aggressive “‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomacy,” a term that refers to a patriotic Chinese military action film series.

But Chinese diplomats and operators of official media accounts recently began moving away from overt disinformation, Ms. Gabrielle said. That dovetailed with a tentative truce Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi reached over publicly sniping about the virus.

American officials said Chinese agencies are most likely embracing covert propagation of disinformation in its place. Current and former American officials have said they are seeing Chinese operatives adopt online strategies long used by Russian agents — a phenomenon that also occurred during the Hong Kong protests last year. Some Chinese operatives have promoted disinformation that originated on Russia-aligned websites, they said.

And the apparent aim of spreading the fake lockdown messages last month is consistent with a type of disinformation favored by Russian actors — namely sowing chaos and undermining confidence among Americans in the U.S. government, the officials said.

“As Beijing and Moscow move to shape the global information environment both independently and jointly through a wide range of digital tools, they have established several diplomatic channels and forums through which they can exchange best practices,” said Kristine Lee, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security who researches disinformation from China and Russia.

“I’d anticipate, as we have seen in recent months, that their mutual learning around these tools will migrate to increasingly cutting-edge capabilities that are difficult to detect but yield maximal payoff in eroding American influence and democratic institutions globally,” she added.

‘There Is No National Lockdown’
The amplification of the fake lockdown messages was a notable instance of China’s use of covert disinformation messaging, American officials said.

A couple of versions of the message circulated widely, according to The Times analysis. The first instance tracked by The Times appeared on March 13, as many state officials were enacting social distancing policies. This version said Mr. Trump was about to invoke the Stafford Act to shut down the country.

The messages generally attributed their contents to a friend in a federal agency — the Pentagon, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and so on. Over days, hundreds of identical posts appeared on Facebook and the online message board 4chan, among other places, and spread through texts.

Another version appeared on March 15, The Times found. This one said Mr. Trump was about to deploy the National Guard, military units and emergency responders across the United States while imposing a one-week nationwide quarantine.

That same day, the National Security Council announced on Twitter that the messages were fake.

“There is no national lockdown,” it said, adding that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “has and will continue to post the latest guidance.”

Samantha Vinograd, who was a staff employee at the National Security Council during the Obama administration, replied to the council’s tweet, recounting her experience with the disinformation.

“I received several texts from loved ones about content they received containing various rumors — they were explicitly asked to share it with their networks,” she wrote. “I advised them to do the opposite. Misinfo is not what we need right now — from any source foreign or domestic.”

Since January, Americans have shared many other messages that included disinformation: that the virus originated in a U.S. Army laboratory at Fort Detrick in Maryland, that it can be killed with garlic water, vitamin C or colloidal silver, that it thrives on ibuprofen. Often the posts are attributed to an unnamed source in the U.S. government or an institution such as Johns Hopkins University or Stanford University.

Netflix with Minix U9-h

Drian — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 16:19:19 +0800

Anyone know how to use netflix app with MINIX U9-h?

This was the recommended higher priced android box a few years back but I'm so surprised that it cannot support such as simple app like netflix.

Anyway to use netflix?

CCP attempting to spread disinformation

Drian — Sun, 12 Apr 2020 02:16:42 +0800

[YOUTUBE]WZCnLveJ-Ko[/YOUTUBE]

CCP 50 cent troopers got caught creating fake accounts pretending to be Taiwanese.

Tsk tsk tsk .

Now come to think about it the articles by JBcoder and kygt99 came at the same time.

Instead of talking about politicians

Drian — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 11:18:56 +0800

Just curious.

What do you think will happen to general voters sentiment in the next election after all this.

Will it still be gung ho or will nobody bother to care anymore.
DO you expect voters turnout to be at the lowest next election?

Refinance your own fully paid car

Drian — Wed, 12 Feb 2020 14:26:03 +0800

Just curious, are you able to refinance your own car assuming it is fully paid?

How do you cut hole on window for exhaust fan

Drian — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 14:25:09 +0800

I'm just wondering, how do the electrician/contractor cut the glass hole to install the window exhaust fan.
Do they have to dismantle the whole window and bring it to a glass shop to cut the hole or are they able to cut the hole on the spot?

Do Telcos implement Qos between packages.

Drian — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 14:33:48 +0800

For those of you who are familiar with Telco networking could you help to explain this.

I used to use celcom with 5gb of data a long time ago . It was fast and I didn't complain much about it.

Then 2 years ago i took the iphone package which gave me 20gb worth of data including 10gb during weekend or something like that. After that I notice my speedtest and connection got slower and slower and there are times that i only get 1-2mbit through speedtest.

So right now looking at my history , because it is so slow , I generally don't use all my data in the month.
I rather wait to get back home on my wifi network than to use when I'm outside because it is so slow.
My past 3 months I was only using 8gb, so I underutilize my quota by 12GB ++ every month which is a waste of money.

Now the question is, is the bad network performance due to the fact that I have changed the package and since they have gave me more data , they decided to control my speed through Qos?
I remember being much faster when I had limited data and now that I have more data, the speed is really slow.

Transfer current washing machine to rental unit

Drian — Mon, 08 Jul 2019 12:48:02 +0800

My current rental unit washing machine is broken. So I was thinking
to transfer my 8 year old 8kg panasonic front loader from where
I am currently staying to my rental unit and then buy a newer FL washing machine myself.
Should I do this or just buy a cheap rm900 TL for my rental unit?

Mirror Location in dining room

Drian — Fri, 21 Jun 2019 12:51:50 +0800

Which is a better place to put mirror from a practical and feng shui perspective?

Wall A or Wall B.

Brain Fog

Drian — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 11:52:11 +0800

Do you guys have experience of what they call brain fog?
https://www.healthline.com/health/brain-fog

It's a situation where your mental clarity is not what it is used to be and you're not as sharp as before.

I'm noticing this for myself where I find it hard to remember certain names, words, phrases that I know is just at the back of my head. I just know that my mental clarity is not working at 100%.

For example, was talking with some friends on some gory movies, and I remember very vividly the scene where this person was sawing his own hand to escape. Unfortunately I couldn't remember the title of the movie.(It's SAW after goggling it)
Another example, wanting to send an email to one of my colleague, but I couldn't remember her name despite just talking to her just last week.

Anyone of you experiencing this ? What did you do to overcome this?

Subsale Property- Stamp duty waiver

Drian — Tue, 11 Jun 2019 15:24:53 +0800

Assuming if I purchase a property less than 500k subsale, first owner commercial title- service apartment do I get any waiver of any sorts? Assuming Snp sign after July 2019

I've been reading and reading a few articles , and all the articles are not very clear on this.

Plaster Ceiling Modification

Drian — Mon, 10 Jun 2019 12:58:29 +0800

Lets assume the apartment unit comes standard with the Flat Plaster ceiling.

Is it possible to cut a rectangle hole on the plaster ceiling near the window/sliding door and do a recessed plaster ceiling for curtain railings?

Something like the picture below.

Wallpaper VS Painting

Drian — Thu, 23 May 2019 18:42:08 +0800

Hi guys,

For both of you who have used wallpaper and painting, can anyone tell me the pros and cons of both methods?