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

The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week

gultsch.social

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 357 posts

Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week

#281

Post by leetrout »

IshKebab wrote: post #271
davidmurdoch wrote: post #84

I'm partly to blame. I accidentally ran an illegal unregulated money transference service over Google Play. It let users cash out their Google Play Credits for real cash, which I automatically wired them. Someone then hacked in to a major bookstore chain, stole piles of Google Play Gift cards, activated them using their access, and used my app to get cash for them. Luckily, the whole thing blew up on me before I got…

How did you "accidentally" do something that was so obviously not allowed?

He accidentally got caught.

Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week

#282

Post by owebmaster »

CharlesW wrote: post #218
nchmy wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that your "argument" rests upon baseless ad hominem, I'm mostly inclined to not even respond. I'll simply say that if you bothered reading anything (let alone objectively), you'd clearly see that no one is arguing for a blink monoculture. They're arguing for allowing everyone to choose whichever browser and browser engine that you want. Safari included. The math isnt mathing on that site... And, no, safari i…

It's not ad hominem since I'm critiquing their position, not their character. Their positions are public and well-documented, which is why it's important to point out the bias of what you linked to. > And, no, safari is NOT capable of PWAs… Incorrect, see my link. PWA installation on iOS is simple and idiomatic, and the same as it is for all websites: Share > Add to Home Screen.

> Incorrect, see my link. PWA installation on iOS is simple and idiomatic

> Share > Add to Home Screen.

Are you sure "share" is idiomatic here?

Also calling a 6 steps process simple is laughable. One-click prompt to install is simple and part of PWA API that safari doesn't implement.

Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week

#283

Post by davidmurdoch »

skeptic_ai wrote: post #275
davidmurdoch wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you "spend" Google Play Credits in an app, Google Play treats those credits the same as if you paid with real money: they took 30% (their take isn't so steep today), I took 10%, and then I sent the user/buyer the remaining 60% directly from my bank account (I used Dwolla back then). It was risky because I didn't actually receive any money from Google until about a month later.

What you did was money laundering. And big chance for getting in trouble if let’s say ton of credits come from fraud/stolen and then google pays out to you and then crawl back once they realize is fraud. I’m curious how you didn’t get into money laundering problems.

Technically it was an unregulated money transference service without KYC. The user that stole the cards from the bookstore was the one doing the money laundering part. I just enabled it (which is probably worse, legally).

I was investigated and cooperated fully.

Edit: I just remembered, the bank I used for the transference did do KYC for all users who were sent funds. This makes it more like "money dirtying", since the account is tied directly to a real identity.

Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week

#284

Post by pjmlp »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #273
pjmlp wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bake sales and lemonade stands are perfectly fine as long as people don't land on hospital urgency, due to careless work on preparing them with spoiled ingredients or lack of hygiene. Lets strive for quality in software.

Now do that again without careless work or spoiled ingredients. Do you still want them punished or facing so much regulation they can't exist? Because you'll definitely get that with software; even really good development will have flaws, and single flaws can lead to a thousand or million hacks.

All humans face scrutiny in their interactions with others.

Software only got this bad, because we educated users broken tools are acceptable and fixable with computer reboots and anti-virus.

Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week

#285

Post by crtasm »

davidmurdoch wrote: post #136
DrammBA wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how casually you're dropping this incredible piece of internet lore as if somebody asked you how's the weather.

Haha. I used to have some blog posts detailing things a bit more, but I let it die when Heroku cancelled their original free tier years ago.

what was the url? asking for a wayback friend

Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week

#286

Post by nchmy »

CharlesW wrote: post #264
nchmy wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol, not after you behaved so disgracefully here. at the very least, fix the math as i said more than once

The math is correct, see /about for methodology and this summary from the "How Scores Work" panel. About PWA Scores: • The main score shown is weighted for feature importance • Only stable (non-experimental) features are counted • Tap or hover any score to see: – Raw scores (simple % of supported features) – Experimental feature scores

background capabilities is 0 for all browsers. there were other weird inconsistencies as well. We can completely leave to the side that your weighting scheme is surely arbitrary or perhaps even biased.

Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week

#287

Post by basilikum »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #187
basilikum wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People accidentally hurt themselves with kitchen knives every day. They are also very often used for violent crimes. Clearly we need to regulate the kitchen knife industry more. There should be a central authority that sells authorized kitchen knives with at max 6cm length and all other knives should only be available to certified chefs. Once we have outlawed the longer knives and strong restrictions on ordinary kitc…

> People accidentally hurt themselves with kitchen knives every day. They are also very often used for violent crimes People are rightfully nervous when they see someone walking down the street swinging a knife i.e openly misusing it or treating it casually People don't realize how much software is being misused or treated too casually. They might be similarly bothered by lax security on databases and data leaks if t…

Yes, hold people accountable for their actions. Don't take away their freedom. We may prohibit individual actions that involve a general tool when they harm others. That is compatible with a free society. We may not prohibit fundamental tools¹ That is fundamentally incompatible with a free society. Especially when that tool forms the infrastructure for the flow of information and free speech.

[1] General purpose computing

Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week

#288

Post by dwaite »

Gareth321 wrote: post #18

MAYBE operating systems shouldn't have gatekeepers which can deny access to billions of customers for any and no reason at all. Apple and Google are WELL past due for regulation in this space. The fact that we cannot download and install software from the internet onto our phones JUST like we can do with our computers is a symbol of our inept and ineffective politicians. And before someone says "well akshully you can…

A weather app could be asking for your location to give you more convenient local forecasts.

It could also be asking for it to help advertisers build a robust behavioral profile about you.

This is not a systems permission, nor is it something that billions of users can judge the ramifications of each potential privacy impacting decision. Privacy is a systems property, not a technical property enforced with ACLs. ACLs can only keep the door from being wide open, they can't prevent access which has been granted from being abused or help the user understand ramifications of granting access.

We need privacy to be a regulatory concern with actual enforcement via an international framework. Until then, it is a business concern of Apple/Google - because they are in the business of having consumers feel confident that a weather app isn't reporting their behavior to anyone willing to pay for it.

Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week

#289

Post by davidmurdoch »

IshKebab wrote: post #271
davidmurdoch wrote: post #84

I'm partly to blame. I accidentally ran an illegal unregulated money transference service over Google Play. It let users cash out their Google Play Credits for real cash, which I automatically wired them. Someone then hacked in to a major bookstore chain, stole piles of Google Play Gift cards, activated them using their access, and used my app to get cash for them. Luckily, the whole thing blew up on me before I got…

How did you "accidentally" do something that was so obviously not allowed?

I didn't know what a "money transference service" was, and certainly didn't know this service that I didn't know about was highly regulated.

I only created it because I had Google Play Credits that were gifted to me. I built an app to "convert" them to cash for myself. I had never built an app before. I was proud of it and tried to make it pretty and professional and useful for others, and used it as a learning experience. The listing on the Play Store was clear about what it was.

I had to answer questions about what the API was being used for when I signed up for Dwolla (an actual regulated money transference service). I answered honestly. They approved it.

The app sat unused with no downloads for years before someone on Reddit's `r/churning/` posted about it.

Re: The Google Play app review process now regularly takes longer than a week

#290

Post by CharlesW »

nchmy wrote: post #286
CharlesW wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The math is correct, see /about for methodology and this summary from the "How Scores Work" panel. About PWA Scores: • The main score shown is weighted for feature importance • Only stable (non-experimental) features are counted • Tap or hover any score to see: – Raw scores (simple % of supported features) – Experimental feature scores

background capabilities is 0 for all browsers. there were other weird inconsistencies as well. We can completely leave to the side that your weighting scheme is surely arbitrary or perhaps even biased.

Because they're experimental. Since that's confusing even with a key, it may be better to hide experimental features/categories by default.

> We can completely leave to the side that your weighting scheme is surely arbitrary or perhaps even biased.

Hover on any number to see both "raw" and "with experimental/non-standard features" scores. If you do this to the overall score, you'll see that Firefox benefits the most from this.

Post reply on HN