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Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

techcrunch.com

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Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#781

Post by viktorcode »

krrrh wrote: post #744
tibbydudeza wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use WhatsApp - it works on both platforms.

The hacker spirit uses Signal. Promoting WhatsApp over the more open community-supported alternative is worse than gloating over Beeper.

I use many messengers, Signal too. It lacks in polish and features compared to all the others. Its security premise is undermined by insistence of using a phone number – which can be spoofed or taken over – to sign up.

I see it as the result of hacking spirit running the development, not the product team. Currently it can’t compete.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#782

Post by kelnos »

toastercat wrote: post #478
runnerup wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember another post that was very well-received where an individual hacker wrote his own homebrew iMessage client for his own personal purposes. HN really liked that! I think HN exists at an intersection of individual hackerism and business. If a project is clearly by-hackers-for-hackers it gets a lot more leeway for unsustainable concepts / implementations. But this is building a business on adversarial interope…

youtube-dl, NewPipe, and uBlock Origin exist solely for the purpose of empowering the individual, yet they are constantly attacked on HN as being tools used unfairly to harm Google's profitability. Open-source projects like Matrix, PeerTube, Mastodon, are built to be free and open-source for the benefit of end-users and lack of vendor lockin. Yet each is derided on HackerNews for not being enough like their corporate…

My experience here is exactly the opposite: I see the projects you talk about get a lot of positive attention and praise. Sure, there are detractors as you say, but they seem to me to be a very small minority.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#783

Post by kelnos »

_8j50 wrote: post #520
runnerup wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember another post that was very well-received where an individual hacker wrote his own homebrew iMessage client for his own personal purposes. HN really liked that! I think HN exists at an intersection of individual hackerism and business. If a project is clearly by-hackers-for-hackers it gets a lot more leeway for unsustainable concepts / implementations. But this is building a business on adversarial interope…

Hacking? Hacking means whining when what you are hacking fights back? I mean go for it, hack away! I hope apple keeps android far far away from me though lol

> I hope apple keeps android far far away from me though

What a bizarre thing to say.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#784

Post by Grustaf »

jlarocco wrote: post #569
Grustaf wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would third-party clients _increase_ security (other than indirectly, by people using SMS less)? On the contrary, third-party clients is a gigantic security hole, since Apple can't even know if a client app is spying on users.

> On the contrary, third-party clients is a gigantic security hole, since Apple can't even know if a client app is spying on users. Security isn't about Apple knowing if an app is spying on users, but about THE USERS knowing that nobody is spying on them. At best a third party iMessage client can only be as secure as iMessage itself because the back end is still closed and has no transparency, so it's the weakest lin…

> Security isn't about Apple knowing if an app is spying on users

Clearly, what matters to Apple is what _they_ believe is secure, and they of course trust themselves more than they trust Beeper.

> At best a third party iMessage client can only be as secure as iMessage itself

Exactly, they can never be safer, and given that Apple, or we as users, know very little about the company behind the client, third-party clients are much less secure.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#785

Post by [deleted] »

russelg wrote: post #336

Where is the hacker spirit here? The number of Apple apologists that have crawled out to say "see? I told you so!!" is saddening. It is a bit dicey when you're charging for it, but since Mini was entirely client-side it would be feasible for a free version to exist. Apple claims iMessage is E2EE, do we have proof they aren't siphoning the messages from the client once it's been decrypted? The level of trust we have t…

[deleted]

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#786

Post by Grustaf »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #707
crazygringo wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where is the hacker spirit here? The hacker spirit is the fun of reverse engineering. The hacker spirit is about personal use. It's not expecting to be able to turn it into a business , or a popular app, that wouldn't quickly be shut down. That's just common sense. > Myself for example owns a Macbook, but an Android phone. Am I not allowed to use iMessage? I paid the toll. Of course you can. It's sitting there on y…

> Of course you can. It's sitting there on your Mac where you can use it as much as you like. For what? I own a Mac an iPhone and an iPad but iMessage and FaceTime are entirely useless to me because no one I communicate with on a regular basis uses Apple devices. Same thing with various iCloud sharing features. Not using the family sharing offers is entirely uneconomical as well. So what happens is that I gravitate t…

If you don't want to communicate with other Apple owners over iMessage, then there is no issue.

What Beeper set out to do was to solve the opposite problem, people who don't have Apple devices, but want to use iMessage.

And the poster above did have an Apple device, and wanted to use iMessage, but didn't seem to realise that iMessage works on Macs too.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#787

Post by unyttigfjelltol »

nicce wrote: post #775
crazygringo wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where is the hacker spirit here? The hacker spirit is the fun of reverse engineering. The hacker spirit is about personal use. It's not expecting to be able to turn it into a business , or a popular app, that wouldn't quickly be shut down. That's just common sense. > Myself for example owns a Macbook, but an Android phone. Am I not allowed to use iMessage? I paid the toll. Of course you can. It's sitting there on y…

> It's not expecting to be able to turn it into a business, or a popular app, that wouldn't quickly be shut down. That's just common sense. When I noticed that there is 2 dollar subscription required to use this app, then all my blame from Apple went to these developers. You can't really expect to do business with other company's service's without asking permission or cooperating. Especially, if the required interfac…

It's called a "phone". It works with the "phone network", AT&T communicates with Verizon. They each fund themselves and are interoperable.

Re: Apple cuts off Beeper Mini's access

#790

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

Pulcinella wrote: post #415
Brian_K_White wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes in fact they are. I have the amazing ability to recognize a problem even if I don't have it myself*. If you really can't do that, perhaps you should try. * Android user in the US where this dynamic primarily exists, but I just don't care because I'm not 20 any more. I only very occasionally need to send a video or picture to anyone, and in those cases, I know enough to use email or a google photos link or somethi…

[flagged]

Go on /r/tinder and the like and you see posts like this all the time: https://www.reddit.com/r/Tinder/comments/v7a7s3/your_phone_s...
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