An honest query by a non-medical professional as I'm sincerely curious...
Paul advocates daily saliva-based testing, but as an intermediary imperfect, but "better than nothing" measure, what are the benefits and drawbacks of requiring people entering public shared spaces to have their body temperatures taken via handheld temperature guns or infrared monitors, a measure that's already taking place in much East Asia (Greater China, Japan, Korea, etc.) in public shared spaces like malls, restaurants, office buildings? My understanding is that these methods are not as accurate as direct thermometers or Paul's saliva-based test; nonetheless, they would detect a good portion of mildly symptomatic people and also have the benefit of externally signaling to the populace to continue "sheltering-in-place" if they have a fever.
Is there any issue with supply chains? Or is there scientific evidence disproving the effectiveness of this precautionary measure that's already in place in so many regions that have already seemed to have crested the first wave of the pandemic?
Thermometers are better than nothing, but unlikely to stop the spread because of asymptomatic transmission (easy to catch the virus from someone who doesn't have a fever). This is why I think directly detecting the virus is essential.
In a best-case scenario, what is the timeline for testing, widescale manufacture, and rollout including “last mile” education to end users for the saliva tests? Is it achievable within a quarter? 2020? Beyond?
What’s the costs/benefits versus the temperature gun method already being used in Asia?
I fear that “perfect” or “near-perfect” solutions such as daily saliva testing would be potentially unrealistic for widespread rollout in an effective amount of time. Could we perhaps consider prioritize the superior daily testing solutions for high-priority environments like first responders and hospitals and nurses while reserving the “less-than-perfect” solutions such as what’s being done in Asia for environments with other essential workers, at least until scale-up hurdles can be surmounted?
The fast gun like IR thermometers are not very accurate. And can be fooled. In one case an infected person took fever reducing medicine specifically so that they would be allowed on a plane where the temperature was checked on boarding.
My assumption would be that high accuracy solutions such as PCR testing or even the saliva testing that Paul is suggesting would be ideal, but potentially difficult to effectively rollout in a widespread manner. While IR thermometers are not very accurate, are they on a whole accurate enough to effectively screen out a sufficient number of people to reduce the R-factor viral spread below 1.0? Again, I’m not a medical professional, but shouldn’t we be biasing towards processes already being used by the multiple regions that have seemed to have successfully managed to reduce the viral spread below 1.0 first before seeking new solutions?
For an official guide on how to activate WeChat Pay without a China mobile number, what payment sources (primarily debit or credit cards issued by a mainland Chinese bank) are accepted, and what identity documents are accepted (including non-Chinese passports), you can go to WeChat's official Help Center site in English here:
Perhaps, but the official docs (following your link) explicitly says: "At the current time, "Wallet" is only available to users registered in mainland China, Hong Kong, South Africa and Malaysia."
In other words, the official line is that I shouldn't be able to use WeChat payments.
The whole point of my blog post is that this official line is wrong.
It's still kind of true since you basically need to either find a friend you trust to launder money for you, or use some sketchy online service with high fees to launder the money for you.
Many portions of this reply are categorically and maliciously false including:
2) "Wechant literally stole telecom's SMS cake. Tencent put lots of effort striking deals with telecoms, ordinary IM startups might simply be blocked or QoS'd to death."
Amongst WeChat's many local competitors were equivalent messaging apps including China Mobile's "Feixin" messaging app and China Telecom/Netease's "Yixin". Both competitors, as officially published apps from the telcos themselves, had the ability to leverage free SMS messaging, an ability that WeChat did not have access to. WeChat is considered a tangential competitor to the telcos.
WeChat doesn't block or QoS other IM products. That would be illegal and, frankly, a PR fiasco in addition to a great way to lose user trust.
3) It's against WeChat values to push mobile phone makers, distributors, or ROM publishers to preinstall WeChat for pay. In addition to being against WeChat values, it's also a big hassle as preinstalls require careful version management. Due to the popularity of the app and the relatively high cost of data for many low-end users, many of these distributors have voluntarily preinstalled certain popular apps including WeChat as a convenience to their consumers. WeChat did not "negotiate" to keep WeChat app in memory -- I'm not sure where you're information comes from. For users within China where Google Cloud Messaging is not an option, a background process for Android continues running to receive push notifications from a notifications server. WeChat works with various partners including "phone security" apps to make sure that this background process isn't being unnecessarily killed by an overly aggressive memory manager process which would result in not receiving notifications. Outside of China, WeChat uses GCM for push notifications for Android devices. This is a common requirement for apps within China since GCM is not available, but because some apps have lower engagement they are more likely to have their notifications background process killed by aggressive memory managers.
4) WeChat for Android uses the X5 kernel, a branch of Webkit (not Chromium) and largely initially used because certain security vulnerabilities on older versions of Android system browsers (including things like SSL-vulnerabilities) made it impossible to safely deploy properly encrypted communications and transactions in webviews without making sure there a secure web rendering kernel.
iOS versions of WeChat, of course, use the default in-app Safari for webviews because it's considered secure.
5) WeChat blocks certain URLs from appearing in webviews because a) they contain malicious code and are unsafe to users or b) too many fraudsters were using certain domains to host spammy marketing content and would leverage WeChat to spam out links to these pages to make money or c) local legal requirements require blocking of certain content.
I understand that it's sometimes difficult to get good information on a product that's very popular in China, but not in Western markets. That's why it's so valuable that the YC team has spent their time to help other founders understand some of the underlying dynamics for WeChat's successful product strategy. Misinformation, therefore, is not valuable in helping the YC team achieve this goal.
What I mean, telecoms might block IM service because SMS market were rapidly replaced by IM apps. It was highly disputed around 2012. Wechat generates so much traffic that their poor 2.5G cell network can not handle signal storms.
Not only that, Wechat had VoIP capability, which requires a high level license to operate in China. The whole OTT controversy can be found here https://www.zhihu.com/question/20847225
> WeChat works with various partners including "phone security" apps to make sure that this background process isn't being unnecessarily killed
Exactly what I meant, Tencent was large enough to negotiate, while other smaller IM brands were not so lucky. Wechat's success was standing on a giant's shoulder.
> because certain security vulnerabilities on older versions of Android system browsers
But newer versions of android Wechat still refuse to include system default browser as webview even if it's more up-to-date and safer, no?
We are seeing this same replicated in India (in a different sector). India's richest businessman has started a new telco because he has 23billion$ put in his new co which provides cheap data and started the trend of lower cost per sms/data for consumers.
Being rich and influential takes you to places for sure and since Tencent was actually powerful and had their own IM like GTalk, they had the skills and the presence for this. But we have to appreciate that they were not restrictive to their cash cow, they disrupted themselves and moved forward to create/acquire wechat
I encourage those wishing to learn more from a product design perspective of how WeChat has successfully tied together so many disparate elements to make such a powerful product take a listen to the official WeChat product podcast by WeChat product managers:
https://soundcloud.com/wechatpodcast
The WeChat team posted a public bulletin 24 hours ago saying that their was no leaked user info and that the issue only affects WeChat 6.2.5 users on iOS and that newer versions are not affected. An English version was published several hours afterwards and can be found here:
http://blog.wechat.com/2015/09/19/fixed-security-flaw-in-wec...
Fixed Security Flaw in WeChat 6.2.5 for iOS
A security flaw, caused by an external malware, was recently discovered affecting iOS users only on WeChat version 6.2.5. This flaw has been repaired and will not affect users who install or upgrade WeChat version 6.2.6 or greater, currently available on the iOS App Store. Here are some important points about the situation.
1. The flaw, described in recent media reports, only affects WeChat v6.2.5 for iOS. Newer versions of WeChat (versions 6.2.6 or greater) are not affected.
2. A preliminary investigation into the flaw has revealed that there has been no theft and leakage of users’ information or money, but the WeChat team will continue to closely monitor the situation.
3. The WeChat tech team has extensive experience combating attempts to hack our systems. Once the security flaw was discovered, the team immediately took steps to secure against any theft of user information.
4. Users who encounter any issues can contact the team by leaving feedback in the “WeChat Team” WeChat account.
It said WeChat 6.2.5 has been affected.
But it also said no leaked user info.
If it was affected, how do you know there is no leaking? if the flaw doesn't theft anything? what does it do? a joke?
