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Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

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Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In principle code signing is a good idea, this way Apple can ensure an improved security standard over their competition. But the downside is of course that Apple is in control, and like any corporation it will do things with that power that are unethical, immoral, anti-competitive, anti-consumer, etc. to the fullest possible imaginable degree. Its like when you buy a DRM protected piece of content and that company r…

> In principle code signing is a good idea, this way Apple can ensure an improved security standard over their competition. There is nothing wrong with code signing. There is everything wrong with making Apple the sole arbiter of mandatory code signing. It's the difference between being against locks, and being against someone else owning the keys to your house. --- > I won't blame Apple, they aren't people [...] I b…

> Corporations are not robots. Apple is run by people, and specifically people who are much more knowledgable on this subject than the average consumer. They should feel some level of social responsibility.

Sometimes I wonder how many instances to the contrary people need to get this falsehood out of their heads. Corporations are only beholden to their shareholders, if any one person at Apple (including the CEO) is not at all times acting solely to maximize the profit to their shareholders they will be replaced by someone who will. The government has to force corporations to their will through tight regulations, consumer protection and anti-trust legislation. Why are all corporations spending this incredible amount on political corruption/"lobbying", its because all these things work.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#443
post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or if all the app does is report police presence using your location, they could create a website and not need an app at all....

hkmap.live The map is online as well, I guess they also wanted the app

What does the app do that the website doesn’t?

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#444
post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spoke with a former Apple dev on this topic once. He says that you can opt out of code signing and the App Store on Mac because that's a professional OS, but for iOS the security rationale for not allowing that is that it's geared for less tech-savvy users. Paraphrasing: "If there is a way to opt out, malicious apps and sites will con users into doing it to get malware on the phone." I can't totally disagree. To ha…

I am sympathetic to the Dancing Bunnies Problem [1]. However, when I weigh the societal harm of (A) preventing people who are very dedicated to shooting themselves in the foot from shooting themselves in the foot, versus (B) protesters being unable to share and access important safety information, the choice is clear. [1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-dancing-bunnies-problem/

Personally I think the real problem is that the OS is fundamentally broken. All current OSes are fundamentally broken from a security point of view because they all pre-date the era when security was such a concern and are designed to run only de-facto trusted code. All the security we have including all iOS's security is a bolt-on afterthought.

A modern security and privacy conscious OS would be "principle of least privilege" from the ground up. It would be written into the DNA of the kernel and OS from the first line of code, not bolted on later via permission managers and leaky APIs and then mandatory notarization by a central authority to work around the fact that the whole mess is still insecure.

We do have something like that. It's called a web browser. A browser is a small VM that runs utterly untrusted code relatively safely. In many cases it's code from the sketchiest ad networks and other hellholes imaginable.

Imagine if your real OS were like that. Install anything even known malware with fairly strong confidence that you're safe and that it can't do anything you don't explicitly grant to it.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#445
post #324

And in one fell swoop, Apple has made it effectively impossible to install this app on your phone. There's no realistic workaround. † Apple should never have been capable of making such a drastic decision for all of their customers. It's one thing to make determinations about what products are allowed in your store, but quite another to unilaterally ban software from what is many people's primary computer. We live in…

>And in one fell swoop, Apple has made it effectively impossible to install this app on your phone. There's no realistic workaround. Make the app a Web App and visit it in Safari. Apple has banned it being notarized and distributed from their App Store but iPhones still have access to the conventional web which Apple has no control over.

Or just switch to Android and you can install the APK, and likely unlock your bootloader and install a custom ROM.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#446
post #315

Here we go again... Let me explain how Chinese people think about HK, since none of them ever seem to explain it on a site like this. Imagine you are a middle class American. Maybe you are but if not, just imagine, tech city on the east or west coast. You're pretty invested in being an American, skin in the game, manifest destiny etc. Very good. They call this tianxia by the way, basically Chinese manifest destiny. L…

You think:

"Well, what's the point of having individual states if they can't control their own destiny. But marrying cousins? A federal issue? Let me chew on that."

Some alabamans post an app on the app store so they can avoid the national guard.

"An app? Cool, plods have mass surveillance, the protestors have it now, too. Oh, you thought the 2nd Amendment was just about guns?" you say.

I see what you're saying, but I will still disagree with the "90%+ of Chinese", and with the CCP's handling of the issue. Your hypothetical had me cheering for the Alabaman's, because frankly, I don't think we protest enough around here.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#447
post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hkmap.live The map is online as well, I guess they also wanted the app

What does the app do that the website doesn’t?

Nothing much, which some people argue is additional justification for Apple removing it - one of their rules is that apps have to use native iOS features, and can't just be glorified webapps.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#448

It helps to know a little bit about what's been going on in Hong Kong, before you all decide to line up and take your daily dump on China. It all started a few months ago when someone committed a crime in Taiwan and fled to Hong Kong. To prevent HK from becoming a safe haven for criminals, the Chief Executive of HK proposed a new law to facilitate extradition of these crime suspects from HK to various jurisdictions i…

I recognised the author's username before even reading the body of the comment.

HN is inundated with recently created or recently reactivated accounts posting CCP propaganda. These accounts don't necessarily belong to bots or shills, but they are nonetheless part of a state orchestrated social media influence campaign. Reddit has addressed this with mass purges and browser extensions that allow shared tagging of users to disclose their affiliations.

What is HN going to do? A purely neutral platform is easy pickings for state propaganda.

I'm not calling for any particular action, but highlighting the increasing need for a call to be made by HN moderators. This forum is exhibiting the same symptoms that Reddit did during the first wave of Russian media influence campaigns. This was initially met with dismissal and accusations of racism/etc if anyone called out the accounts in question. It took another 8 months for the Reddit team to admit what was going on and take action.

The only defence currently available is downvotes and a higher snr ratio, but those only work as long as the influence effort on any particular topic is smaller than the userbase that tends to discuss said topic.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#449

Ben Thompson of Stratechery talks about this a lot. Apple always says they want to own the most important pieces of their products but then Tim Cook when he was COO made the decision to be completely beholden to China for their manufacturing. I hope that Apple is seriously trying to diversify their supply chain out of China. It can be done at scale - Samsung moved all of their manufacturing out of Chins.

Of course, Cook is a corporate shill, not an ideologue.
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