Earlier quoted context omitted.
Greenland, Caribbean, most of Central America...
Most of Central America is part of North America?
...what else would it be a part of?
Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store
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Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store
#742It's time that North Americans take a stand and use economic power for something other than furthering that goal. There are so many places where a simple refusal to kowtow/censor or technical attack on censorship infrastructure could help so many that don't have the luxury of living in our world. If we're not going to use all this economic power for good, what's the point?
You're not going to be able to. America and other classical democracies are in a phase of aging where a decline in prosperity combined with a die-hard (unthinking) application of absolute freedom of speech are paralyzing action. Everyone is disagreeing with each other over a shrinking pie, pitting demographic against demographic, and not only that, any genuine disagreement and decision making is muddied by agents try…
If inaction due to inability to decipher signal from noise is the consequence of a more absolute definition of free speech, it's an acceptable trade off. Too often not accepting the good with the bad results in attempts to correct the bad but instead "corrects" the good. Not every problem requires a proactive, legislative solution.
In these cases I fear, in the long term, we just have to count on the human nature to want to be able to make noise.
Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store
#743Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it is disingenuous to say that China has some inherent claim on places like Tibet because they may have occupied it at some point in the past. China's borders, like most countries, have changed over time and doesn't validate any present day claim.
I've commented about valid American analogies to what Hongkong is to China and you're accusing me of claiming that China has an "inherent claim over Tibet"? Right... I've nothing more to add.
No, but you are using the same phraseology, "core part of China" that China uses to claim Tibet, Taiwan, the South China Sea, Xinjiang, etc.
Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store
#744As someone who has appreciated the privacy stance Apple has had and the privacy assisting steps it has taken for a long time (long before iPhone), I believe Apple is coming out to be completely hypocritical and anti-privacy/anti-freedom on this app. I cannot believe that Tim Cook and other senior executives haven't examined this deeper and taken a bold stance to let the app stay! Shame on you, Apple! Even John Gruber…
They are fine to piss off US government, because they know US government will play by the rules and let them do it. China won't, so as soon as China gives them a dirty look, they wet their pants and bend over.
Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store
#745Would AltStore be able to help them out?
Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store
#746Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you can of course side load apps more easily on Android, but it isn’t super easy. I guess that matters less when people are motivated. But... if this statement were true in spirit as well then why don’t we see google seizing this PR opportunity and making statements about the superiority of their App Store’s more liberal model? Why do we instead see Google quietly removing HK-protest related apps too? I guess the…
> So you can of course side load apps more easily on Android, but it isn’t super easy. I guess that matters less when people are motivated. Well, there's a balance here. If it's too easy, some users will be tricked into installing malware. I think Android is a good compromise. If you're even a tiny bit technically inclined, you can enable sideloading in a couple of minutes at most, and it's a one-time process.
>you can enable sideloading in a couple of minutes at most
How does that not fit your definition of "too easy"? If it can be disabled in minutes and any attempt to install an unauthorized APK takes you right to the screen, it seems completely pointless.
Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store
#747Blizzard and now Apple. I think this is very serious and it should be a wake-up call. As simple citizens we don't have much choices but vote with our wallets and use social networks to attack the most valuable asset of those companies, their reputation.
That’s not how this works. Apple is one of the wealthiest companies in the world, and saying “just don’t spend money there” is a bit reductionist and trivializes the problem of corporations with more power than nation-states. You need to fight fire with fire: governments of the world (especially the US government) need to create laws that restrict and punish this kind of behavior. Otherwise, I sincerely doubt Apple’s…
Apple is one of the wealthiest because people buy their products. No other reason. Before people started buying iphones, Apple had near to zero power. If they stop doing that, they'd not have power to restrict people's choices again. Hong Kong people are risking lives for freedom. Are US people ready to risk not having the latest greatest iphone, or maybe they don't need that damn freedom that much?
And we already see what government with laws created to restrict and punish behavior can do. Of course, our government will never do that, we know they'd always use their immense powers responsibly and for the good of the people, right? Right?!
Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store
#748Earlier quoted context omitted.
> right now giving up some of their freedom looks like a good deal to them. Getting that freedom back once the deal sours will be very hard, and get much harder each year as surveillance and repression grow.
As much as this seems like a foreign concept to westerners, most Chinese citizens (outside of the European provinces) simply do not care about it the way westerners do. To GP's point, their lives have and continue to improve, with the fastest growing middle class this decade. And before you project western ideals on China and start doomsaying about their impending economic collapse, understand that people have been s…
I was not aware the desire for freedom (of speech, and otherwise) was such a uniquely Western ideal.
And it's easy not to care about it - until its absence is used against you. At that point, it changes from an ideal, to a very pragmatic matter (ask the Uyghurs or Tibetans). But by then it's too late.
Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store
#749Earlier quoted context omitted.
The possibility that someone in the company is secretly (how!?) providing the Chinese government access to the encryption keys is a wildly different claim. There is no evidence that Apple has done it, and an important executive has testified that they have not, and they've publicly stated they haven't, even if you want to speculate that it has happened.
It's not a secret. Apple even made a statement to reuters at the start of the migration process where they tried to get iCloud as an exception but failed - "“While we advocated against iCloud being subject to these laws, we were ultimately unsuccessful,” In early 2018, Apple forced their users to opt-in to migrating iCloud encryption keys and data to Chinese data centers: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-appl…
No, they still don't have access to the encryption keys, as reported after those articles you post:
"Encryption for us is the same in every country in the world...We worked with a Chinese company to provide iCloud, but the keys [...] are ours...I wouldn't get caught up in 'where's the location of it,' I mean we have servers located in many different countries in the world. They're not easier to get data from being in one country versus the next...The key question is how does the encryption process work, and who owns the keys — if anyone. In most cases for us, you and the receiver [of a message] own the keys." - Tim Cook
(https://www.businessinsider.com/tim-cook-apple-encrypts-data...)
Apple is specifically stating that they have retained control over the encryption keys.
Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store
#750Why is an app needed to display things on a map? Isn't that something a website can do just fine? Which brings up an interesting, more general topic: Why do we need apps at all? What is the fundamental difference to websites?
Websites, at least on iOS (not sure on Android) can't receive notifications in the background or GPS pings the background and therefore can't notify you 'warning: police 100 meters ahead' while you use the phone for other things like an app can.