Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#841

Post by throwawy4trueth » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 10:42 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #806

throwawy4trueth wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The popular perception is Apple surrender to CPP because of money and sacrifice an app that gives HK "citizen" rights. The alternative of the perception is the App is the tool of HK "mobs" to sabotage the HK infrastructure. To avoid further esculation of the violent situation which evetually could lead to the intervention of Chinese army, Apple agree to remove the App. So Apple has the courage to face the popular opi…

You’re being downvoted because you’re using Hacker News for your political battle, which is frowned upon: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html . Oh, and commenting on downvotes is also usually not rewarded either.

OK. That's a good point. Let me think about it.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#842

Post by celdon25 » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 10:48 PM UTC

blablabla123 wrote: post #762

parliament32 wrote: post #597

This is why Apple will always be a second-class citizen to Android. If I have a good reason, I can toggle a setting and install APKs built by anyone. If I have a good reason, I can wipe my phone and unlock the bootloader to literally replace and de-Google the entire OS. When I buy a phone, it's a hardware product I'm buying. Just like when you buy a PC/laptop, what you run on it is your business, not the manufacturer…

That's probably also the reason why GNU and FSF should get new momentum. In the 90s/00s there was good reason to get away from Windows because it was really unstable - and Apple being expensive and niche. Now both are kind of viable options for most things but the freedom to use whatever application one wants to use is definitely becoming more important.

Just wanted to add that the FSF lists "Free phone operating system" at the top of their "priority projects" list as of January 2017: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#843

Post by Forbo » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 10:49 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #810

mda wrote: post #808

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but, that is bollocks. How is it useless?

Most of the stuff that ships on the average Android device is closed-source and written by Google.

Cool. The question still stands, how does that make AOSP useless? For the vast majority of applications, I can find reasonable FOSS equivalents in F-Droid.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#844

Post by Jyaif » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 10:52 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #810

mda wrote: post #808

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but, that is bollocks. How is it useless?

Most of the stuff that ships on the average Android device is closed-source and written by Google.

Pretty sure that just Chromium+ASOP represents more LOC than the closed source apps (gmail, yT, google maps, etc...).

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#845

Post by judge2020 » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 10:57 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #770

braythwayt wrote: post #760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument reminds me of the gun control argument. People in favour of "more guns" are fully aware that more guns means a more dangerous society. But they consider the freedom to choose whether to own guns more important than living in a statistically safer society. Whereas, people in favour of "gun control" consider the safety of society overall to be much more important than the freedom to own devices designed t…

Apart from the fact that an Android that has side-loaded malware probably(1) won't shoot five innocent bystanders, I think this is a good analogy. (1) Probably. It's an open source OS, so no telling categorically what hardware it's driving ;)

Wait for a kickstarter for a phone-gun hybrid with a "shoot" button available to the phone.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#846

Post by lern_too_spel » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 10:58 PM UTC

jethro_tell wrote: post #835

lern_too_spel wrote: post #811

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fengcai is the app your original article talked about, which the police install when you enter Xinjiang. It does not try to get root access. MFsocket is a separate app that has both an iPhone and Android version that police in Beijing use that does attempt to gain root on both platforms. It is unlikely to actually get root on an Android phone that a technologist would use.

What steps are we talking about here that a technologist would have taken here?

Using a device that gets regular security updates.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#847

Post by dwaite » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 11:01 PM UTC

computerex wrote: post #825

squarefoot wrote: post #798

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Android is its mostly closed nature, so there are multiple places where malicious software could be placed by design, system apps and to a greater degree device drivers being the first obvious choice. By malicious I mean software that limits or acts against the user choices, not necessarily behaving like a virus.

Not sure what point you are making. Android isn't closed, the entire os is open source. If anything is closed it is iOS.

AOSP, which is hardly ever run on its own, is open source.

Things like the Play store are entirely closed source. A majority of the API shipped by the Play store are closed source. Many hardware drivers are closed source. The majority of the operating system is Apache licensed, allowing a handset maker to ship modified components without publishing their changes.

Many vendors also prevent the user from installing their own custom ROMs, so even a sophisticated user may not be able to run AOSP on an arbitrary device.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#848

Post by yourbandsucks » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 11:12 PM UTC

rpmisms wrote: post #639

supernova87a wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So, you're pro-china, or at least, you like their attitude. Good to know.

Their only mention of China used the word 'repugnant', so I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#849

Post by birdyrooster » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 11:20 PM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #506

mmastrac wrote: post #250

It'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…

Monocultures are a weakness and not a strength when it comes to technological innovation, physical/information security and foreign policy. From my perspective, the pie is continuing to grow and the disagreement is who takes the bigger slices from the ever growing pie.

Corporations never had a chance of filling the role because they are very undemocratic, even in the United States. Things need to get bad enough for the only democratic system we have to take action. We aren't there yet.

Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store

#850

Post by birdyrooster » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 11:21 PM UTC

yourbandsucks wrote: post #848

rpmisms wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you're pro-china, or at least, you like their attitude. Good to know.

Their only mention of China used the word 'repugnant', so I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion.

Because they were touting the strength of staying on message as if it actually was a beneficial thing (which it isn't). It leads to very dangerous failures in society when people cannot talk about unpopular problems. It leads to them fumbling and missing obvious truths.