[jackcampanella]

Curious what led to the decision to use "burner" devices, was it fear of confiscation? I spent 2 weeks in China in 2024 (Tianjin, Tangshan, Chengdu, and Beijing), used Astrill as my VPN on my iphone and macbook pro and didn't experience any connectivity issues or app crashes. I even had a 45min signal voice call with someone state side. I was using Astrill's VIP add-on however.

> It's a good reminder that what's lacking in life is not time. It's focus. If you're working on what matters, you can advance leaps and bounds in 8 hours. And if you're just clearing the slog, you can spend a lifetime staying in the same place.

This. Incredibly obvious yet incredibly difficult to put into practice day-to-day. Another underrated perk of traveling internationally. All of a sudden, trivial nonsense starts to reveal itself through absence, allowing you to sort accordingly - carries over when you're at your home-base as well.

[oldasfuk]

> > It's a good reminder that what's lacking in life is not time. It's focus. If you're working on what matters, you can advance leaps and bounds in 8 hours. And if you're just clearing the slog, you can spend a lifetime staying in the same place.

bahahaha literally spoken by a 24 year-old. Let's see if he thinks time is not a limiter at 48.

With any self-awareness the profound truth he should be saying: Life can be abnormally easy when you're handsome and charistmatic.

[MisterTea]

> Curious what led to the decision to use "burner" devices,

When visiting you are required to install a tracking app. At that point your phone is considered compromised. So you bring a burner that gets infected instead and you toss afterwards.

[1659447091]

> When visiting you are required to install a tracking app

Do you have details on this? I visited a little before Covid went down and that was not the case at the time. Been wanting to go back before my visa expires

[olalonde]

Not sure where you got that information from but that's wrong. You're not required to install any app.

[MisterTea]

I spoke to someone who traveled there post COVID in 2022. They started they had to install a tracker app, perhaps COVID tracking? Perhaps I am misremembering something.

[olalonde]

At one point, there was a WeChat mini-app with a health-related form that needed to be filled out. However, a paper version was also available, and it's no longer required.

[p_j_w]

I got back from China earlier this month. I was never required to install any sort of app.