Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google have declared Droidscript is malware

groups.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 665 posts

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#461

Post by fsflover »

wyattpeak wrote: post #129
pydry wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most users don't really understand what they're giving up when they give up the option to run arbitrary code As with privacy (Facebook privacy settings, cookie boxes), it's easy to bamboozle the general public with complexity and then interpret their confusion and (violated) trust as consent.

This is one case though where that lack of understanding leads to the right conclusion. The average user is giving up nothing by losing the right to run arbitrary code, because they never were running arbitrary code.

> The average user is giving up nothing by losing the right to run arbitrary code, because they never were running arbitrary code.

"The average person is giving up nothing by losing the free speech, because they never were saying anything."

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#462

Post by breakingcups »

danudey wrote: post #427
coffeecat wrote: post #368

> In your case, we have detected invalid traffic or activity on your account (Publisher Code: pub-********) and as a result it has been disabled. Because of this, the ability to serve and monetise through all products which depend on AdSense will also be disabled (for example, AdMob and YouTube). > We understand that you may want to know more about the issues that we’ve detected. Because this information could be use…

"We've noticed that you're violating our policies." "Which policies?" "That's none of your business." "How are we violating them?" "I'm not going to tell you." "What can we do?" "Fix the issues, and then appeal." "Which issues?" "I've said too much already."

Seeing it spelled out like this really puts things even more in perspective.

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#463

Post by Aperocky »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #192
RHSeeger wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But for many people, maybe even most people, they're not just "a phone". They're a multi-purpose tool that comes in the form factor of a mobile phone. Camera, chat, web browser, games, social media, music player, access to nearly the sum total of human knowledge... Treating such as tool as merely "a phone" doesn't make any sense.

It’s still a phone actually and colloquially even if I use the Phone App infrequently. The point isn’t what you call it. OP’s point was and I agree that you don’t need to have full control over every device that can possibly run code. Just let it be a device that does its thing. It’s the difference in people that want calm technology vs “power users”. I want the device to exist waiting on my input and even though I h…

I can't phrase myself better than you do!

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#464

Post by Jfuvjrnfjxje »

ben509 wrote: post #19

The writing style of the piece looks like a political mailer. > The Google Play system has declared DroidScript is Malware and accused us of committing Ad Fraud! Needless to say, we are extremely upset and totally flabbergasted at this shocking allegation! That kind of hyperbole sets off all my BS detectors. As I go through the back and forth, DroidScript speculates this: > Our main guess was that one of our users wa…

> The Google Play system has declared DroidScript is Malware and accused us of committing Ad Fraud! Needless to say, we are extremely upset and totally flabbergasted at this shocking allegation!

How is this a hyperbole? The first sentence is literally and completely true. And the developer seems legitimately upset and shocked.

It's not hard to imagine truely being extremely upset that something you probably spent hundreds of hours on got shut down for inscrutable reasons outside your control.

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#465

Post by tannhaeuser »

fuyu wrote: post #361
sequoia wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. If you buy a product from me with 30 day warranty and it breaks on day 31 and you contact me, I will not give you a refund because: a) I haven't agreed to do so b) I'm not bound to do so c) I don't think it's warranted in this case. But I'm not "unable" to issue a refund. In another case I may say "hm it's out of warranty but you know what, it really shouldn't have broken like that and you're a good custo…

If I were to ask you if I could get a refund for an item out of warranty, what language would you use to refuse me? I'm struggling to come up with a response that doesn't use the terms "unable" or "can't" that wouldn't come across as fairly rude.

How about "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave"?

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#466

Post by unexaminedlife »

thih9 wrote: post #460
unexaminedlife wrote: post #392

Here's a thought. One of the most frustrating things to me about this kind of thing is that Google (or any other major tech company) could just ignore me and just tell me "you're malware". I get it. Technology people cost a lot of money, so I would propose that companies who the public depend on MUST offer consulting out-of-band at an hourly (or daily?) rate. This way the real issues are squashed. Now I know that I c…

Wouldn't that encourage the big company to find more issues in apps, and then tell devs to buy consulting hours to figure out how to solve them?

Well, if that started happening I'm sure people would start posting stories of how disingenuous the company's practices had become. If they flagged some software as malware they should already know exactly what the reasons are. So we'll call that maybe a 1-2 hr session to get up to speed on exactly what the issues are. How someone goes about fixing it is another story.

I'd say by default those sessions should be posted online for public viewing just so everyone can learn from the mistakes of the original team, or to make a judgment of how disingenuous Google is being about the issues. At the request of the project requesting those services they could make those sessions private.

Also this could lead to real innovation in the tooling for example Google consultants could write unit tests that would need to pass in order to be allowed on the Google App store. Those unit tests would then, potentially become public so everyone could just download the unit tests from Github in order to confirm their software meets requirements.

The other thing is Google would almost certainly see this as a cost center. Billing people at-cost (or slightly above that) for consulting services is way more labor intensive and tbh annoying for companies with a trillion dollar + market cap.

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#467

Post by teknopaul »

yaur wrote: post #232
kbelder wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my primary hacking tool for throwing little scripts together on Android. You can bring up an IDE in chrome on your PC and interactively execute it on your phone. I hope this gets fixed. I wouldn't really be surprised if EVERY scripting/programming app in the play store technically violates some play store rules, though.

Do these scripts run as the IDE? If so it seems like they could be held responsible for any bad behavior engaged in by their users.

Let's be clear: for Google's definition of bad.

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#468

Post by obviouslynotme »

danudey wrote: post #427
coffeecat wrote: post #368

> In your case, we have detected invalid traffic or activity on your account (Publisher Code: pub-********) and as a result it has been disabled. Because of this, the ability to serve and monetise through all products which depend on AdSense will also be disabled (for example, AdMob and YouTube). > We understand that you may want to know more about the issues that we’ve detected. Because this information could be use…

"We've noticed that you're violating our policies." "Which policies?" "That's none of your business." "How are we violating them?" "I'm not going to tell you." "What can we do?" "Fix the issues, and then appeal." "Which issues?" "I've said too much already."

I am going to save this and print it out with the title "This is why we don't do business with Google."

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#469

Post by pseudalopex »

bipson wrote: post #355
sequoia wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. If you buy a product from me with 30 day warranty and it breaks on day 31 and you contact me, I will not give you a refund because: a) I haven't agreed to do so b) I'm not bound to do so c) I don't think it's warranted in this case. But I'm not "unable" to issue a refund. In another case I may say "hm it's out of warranty but you know what, it really shouldn't have broken like that and you're a good custo…

"I can't agree with you" "I cannot continue this relationship" "I can't kill this guy" "I just can't eat meat anymore" "I cannot continue like this" These are all examples where someone clearly could for physical reasons, but they can't for other reasons they are bound to, whatever these reasons are.

Those express moral convictions or imminent psychological crises. A corporation experiences neither.

Re: Google have declared Droidscript is malware

#470

Post by Spakman »

johnbrodie wrote: post #230
phh wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe don't scratch Android too fast. Android is opensource, and is technically really great. There is a great opensource community of people that are very capable in this area, and supports already the vast majority of devices in the world. You only need to get rid of Google. Which many custom Android provide. Personally my smartphone is a Pixel 5 (IMO best smartphone currently available that fit in a hand), running…

More and more functionality is being shoved into Google Play Services. I have a deGoogled phone running Lineage, but even with that, no Google Play Services, and some custom settings (like changing the captive portal URLs), there's still network traffic to Google. Add in relative unknowns like AGPS and the situation gets even worse. I also have no push notifications for most apps, have to keep a static notification s…

> I have a deGoogled phone running Lineage, but even with that, no Google Play Services, and some custom settings (like changing the captive portal URLs), there's still network traffic to Google.

I'm running LineageOS without Play Services too and didn't about know this!

Do you have any reference materials (I guess getting busy with Wireshark and the source is my next step)? I found this Reddit thread[1] talking about a connectivity check but am keen to start tracking down any others.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LineageOS/comments/5qnfxf/why_linea...

Post reply on HN