Amazon has no idea how to run an app store • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#121

Post by galactoise » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 12:54 AM UTC

mbdev wrote: post #97

galactoise wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect - you can absolutely host in EC2. Our two skills are running off of a single EC2 micro instance. There is one really weird thing where you can't use US West to do an Amazon Lambda passthrough to your server, but as far as I know EC2 instances in any region should work for Alexa to call out to.

I'm sure that the issue can be fixed so it might have been. But I have the mail conversation here (10 people at least and dozen of back and forth). This was 2 months ago and I gave up on it for this specific reason.

Man, that's weird, I wonder what was different between our implementations. Our original POCs were about 4 months ago, and they were on EC2 at the time. We had plenty of other technical issues (don't get me started on SSL), but running on EC2 was never one of them.

That said, I'm curious how you managed to get an email conversation going with the team - the whole crux of the original article by Lawrence (and the forum thread which it cites) is that there's no way to have a direct conversation with anyone representing Alexa, so certification is a crapshoot.

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#122

Post by jrcii » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 1:12 AM UTC

colinmegill wrote: post #96

lol title change

Yeah that sure got editorialized, didn't it? For the newcomers, pretty much all day this post was titled "Amazon has no idea how to run an app store"

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#123

Post by lkrubner » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 1:50 AM UTC

wglb wrote: post #112

lkrubner wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sorry to say this contributes to the feeling that the HN rule about titles is entirely arbitrary. Most of the time the rule seems stupidly rigid and inflexible. After all, why can't developers highlight the aspect of the article that would be of most interest to the readership of HN? But then, suddenly, an exception is made, based on wholly subjective criteria. How do you define "over the top"? Have you tried to…

I am sorry to say this contributes to the feeling that the HN rule about titles is entirely arbitrary. It isn't, really. Editorialized titles tilt the balance in an opinionated way. Most of the time the rule seems stupidly rigid and inflexible. For more detail, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10877460 . Or, you can write a blog post commenting on that story, and post the blog entry to HN.

You don't understand what you are talking about. HN doesn't have a rule against blog posts with editorialized titles, instead, HN has a rule saying that the people who submit articles to HN can not editorialize the titles. Basically, the rule is that the title on HN should be exactly the same as the title of the blog post. Except here, Dang is breaking that rule. The initial title of this submission on HN was exactly the same as the blog post. But Dang is objecting to the title of the blog post. That is why Dang's actions seem arbitrary: Dang has decided to break HN's normal rules. And why? Because of a feeling that the blog post had a title that was "over the top".

Have you read the comment that Dang makes at the URL that you just posted? Dang says "Please don't editorialize the titles of stories you submit here." And yet, here Dang is editorializing the title of the story submitted here.

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#124

Post by meesterdude » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 2:02 AM UTC

Actual title: Amazon has absolutely no idea how to run an app store

Why did the title change? It used to be the same as the original article, but now it's been needlessly editorialized to be kinder to amazon. Seriously? What the fuck. That's not HN's job, and is a disservice to the article, and the community.

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#125

Post by meesterdude » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 2:05 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #74

That title is over the top, so we replaced it with the much more neutral first sentence of the article.

this isn't OK. It's not HN's place to change the title because they disagree with it, or because it's harsh. If the original article changed the title, then there would be justification. But they didn't, so HN has no business injecting their editorialization into it.

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#126

Post by sunnyps » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 2:21 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #80

rdtsc wrote: post #40

Or Amazon video on Android device I have -- in order to have play prime videos it told me to disable app source checking and side-load some .apk file, which will then help me get the Amazon video apk file... or something. Yeah forget that. At first I thought it was a joke of some sort. But I guess that's how you are supposed to do it. I'll just stick to Netflix and watch videos there. Somehow that manages to work wit…

What's the threat model there? It's not like Amazon are going to start stealing customer credit card numbers - if anything they're one of the few companies I'd trust to get security right. Tick the checkbox in settings, install the APK, untick the checkbox again. It's really not a lot of effort or risk. (The most sensible-sounding negative claim I've heard is that Amazon do that so that they can do more invasive loca…

I'm pretty sure you have to keep the checkbox unticked so that the Amazon app can install apks and even update itself. In fact Amazon's official documentation[1] for installing their app doesn't tell users to uncheck the checkbox. The way I see it, keeping the untrusted apks checkbox ticked is a massive security risk.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/underground

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#127

Post by kordless » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 2:28 AM UTC

meesterdude wrote: post #124

Actual title: Amazon has absolutely no idea how to run an app store Why did the title change? It used to be the same as the original article, but now it's been needlessly editorialized to be kinder to amazon. Seriously? What the fuck. That's not HN's job, and is a disservice to the article, and the community.

Welcome to Silicon Valley.

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#128

Post by ceejayoz » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 2:42 AM UTC

scottu wrote: post #35

Other than the operational issues, like not have a good way to contact amazon, this reminds me of a 900-number system we ran at MCI. When you registered for a 900-number, you had to submit a script along with it. MCI would try to limit the possibility that you'd use it for some nefarious purpose, all CYA. They had a team (probably one person) that audited the numbers periodically. That didn't stop people re-using the…

We went through the same thing a couple years ago with an SMS short code. Had to submit a script (despite it being dynamically driven), set a max number of messages per month (despite it being user-initiated), etc.

The real kicker is we once got a massive nastygram from Verizon threatening us with shutdown - they claimed we were sending porn spam messages via the number. After quite some time auditing our entire stack we got a "our bad, one of our techs had malware on their Android phone" email.

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#129

Post by timrpeterson » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 2:50 AM UTC

meesterdude wrote: post #124

Actual title: Amazon has absolutely no idea how to run an app store Why did the title change? It used to be the same as the original article, but now it's been needlessly editorialized to be kinder to amazon. Seriously? What the fuck. That's not HN's job, and is a disservice to the article, and the community.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#130

Post by galactoise » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 2:51 AM UTC

meesterdude wrote: post #124

Actual title: Amazon has absolutely no idea how to run an app store Why did the title change? It used to be the same as the original article, but now it's been needlessly editorialized to be kinder to amazon. Seriously? What the fuck. That's not HN's job, and is a disservice to the article, and the community.

The weird thing about the title change is that the new one isn't even true - they've been running the Kindle app store for quite a while...

The user "dang" posted further down in the comments saying that he changed it because the title was "over the top", which didn't seem like a good reason to me (but then again, I'm not a moderator). I can understand the desire to avoid sensationalism, especially if the belief is that this anger over third party Alexa skills is only about the problem in the article. In reality, though, this is just one of many issues that currently has the community up in arms, so I don't think the original title was as hyperbolic as they believed...