Notes on AI, tools, and tech.
The $800 rule everyone quotes about shipping from China is gone. CBP suspended duty-free de minimis treatment for China on May 2, 2025. Every guide built around that number is answering a question that no longer exists. That isn’t why parcels get stopped, though. Most boxes that never arrive are stopped for what’s inside them, … Read more
Travel eSIMs are the default way to get mobile data abroad now. Most phones bought in mainland China refuse them. The failure shows up at the worst possible moment, when you are scanning a QR code in an airport. Run the ten-second check before you fly. What an eSIM Actually Is An eSIM is a … Read more
Chinese AI apps post user numbers that would embarrass most Silicon Valley launches. Whether you can install one, sign up and pay from the United States is a separate question. It breaks into three doors: the download, the account and the money. Most coverage skips the doors and talks about benchmarks. That is backwards for … Read more
A few months ago, tap-to-pay quietly stopped working on imported Xiaomi, vivo and OPPO phones. Google Wallet opened fine and the cards were still listed. The failure only showed up at the register. Every affected phone was built for the Chinese market. So what actually happened? The story starts with an update. In August, Google … Read more
A Chinese charger plugged into a US outlet does one of two things, and the label on the brick tells you which. If it reads 100-240V and 50/60Hz, you need a small plug adapter and nothing else. If it reads 220V only, that adapter will do nothing useful. The distinction matters because adapters get sold … Read more
You can import a Chinese car into the United States. You just have to wait until the 2040s. That is the honest arithmetic behind the 25 year rule, and it covers every electric sedan built in Shenzhen or Shanghai. Two-wheelers are a different story. An e-bike can clear customs next month, provided the paperwork is … Read more
Shipping from China to the US got more expensive for one reason, and it is not freight rates. The $800 exemption that let small parcels in duty-free is gone. Every package is now a customs event. That single change moved the cost of an ordinary order more than any shipping line ever did. A threshold … Read more
Chinese phones work in the US, but not all of them, and not on every carrier. The band list, the IMEI database, and one voice standard called VoLTE decide whether your phone is a phone or a paperweight. Here is the short version first. Bands are the easy part now. Most Chinese flagships sold since … Read more
In February, Brazil’s telecom regulator authorized a Chinese constellation to sell satellite internet to Brazilians. Up to 324 satellites, licensed through July 2031. It was the first time a Chinese low-orbit system was cleared to operate in Latin America. The company is SpaceSail, known at home as Qianfan. It had roughly 200 satellites in orbit … Read more
One in six American households is behind on its electric bill. That is a Consumer Reports figure from late 2025, and it predates the current round of rate cases. In the first half of 2026 alone, utilities asked regulators for $18.6 billion in increases. The whole of 2025 was $29 billion. Almost all the attention … Read more