131–140 of 259 posts
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the Apple App Store has always required a DUNS number.
No, it hasn't, and doesn't. https://developer.apple.com/help/account/membership/D-U-N-S/ > If you’re enrolling as an individual, you don’t need a D‑U‑N‑S Number.
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My new startup idea: “upload the same release with a different version and build number about once a month till the end of times" as a service .
My new startup idea: malicious compliance as a service You forward us complaint emails and we create some AI slopscript that fulfils the least compliant interpretation of the rule it can think of. The goal would be to use automated nonsense to try to frustrate MBAs who have managed to burrow all the way to the brain of a tech giant and are now burdening humanity with their folly.
They're already using AI slop to come up with these rules in the first place, to verify compliance, and to respond to your complaints.
It's AI slop all the way down.
And the shittier things are, the more raise they get for successfully moving the needle of utilization of AI in the business model.
A question for Googlers who may be responsible/adjacent - what is the intended function of this warning? It seems to be attempting to filter out low quality apps, but instead seems to be killing any attempt to change the status quo. If the app has fewer users than competing apps, the message Google is sending is "we don't need any new apps that do similar things to existing apps" and "if you're a small app, don't eve…
Our company just got a warning that we have sixty days to release something on Play or have our developer console account closed. The email made it pretty clear that Google wants developers to continuously push new versions to customers. We have no new features nor bug fixes in backlog. There is nothing to update. The only purpose of our software is to control hardware that our company makes. Nobody uses it for fun,…
You can update the version number and re-release. I think this may grant also adding the update note "Updated version number. Nothing else. Thank you Google".
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[flagged]
If that's the thing Google is trying to address, they can easily incentivize it - Java apps are usually quite easy to decompile and check. Search for library versions in use, force upgrades on security vulnerabilities. But they're not doing that. So clearly their goal is something else.
You don't even need to do that – for a while already, Google's toolchain has been adding dependency metadata to all apps by default (encrypted, though, so only Google can read it) and they've indeed been using that to warn about outdated or vulnerable dependencies. According to https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ..., at most they'll only block you from releasing further updates including dependencies with critical vulnerabilities, though…
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Imagine if we talked about other computers like we talked about phones. It's just so weird - you can only install programs from our approved package manager - if you make any transactions through your program, we'll take a 30% cut - you can't be access those files, you're not root - you got root?! We're going to fucking sue you (yeah, I know about the PS3...) - you can't change these settings - you can't access that…
> Why did we think this was a good idea? Who is "we"? I think this had always been the wet dream of corporate types, not the users. In the PC space there are too many existing ecosystems to implement that kind of control (through Microsoft certainly tried with the whole "trusted computing" stuff) but as soon as there was an opportunity for a popular new "blue ocean" platform, they jumped. You could see this most blat…
> Who is "we"?
But my point is that the strategy is illogical even when one is simply profit maximizing. You get short term gains but they prevent future games. It need not even be that far in the future. See the iterative prisoners dilemma for a simple example. Defecting will get you higher reward in one round but if there are any further iterations then your rewards are lower.
That's myopia. And I'm not satisfied with any "it's just it is" style arguments because we (inclusive) are ultimately the ones who decide how things are. It's a collective decision, a society. And that's why I press, because we can all do better. A rising tide lifts all ships, kings and peasants alike.
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My new startup idea: malicious compliance as a service You forward us complaint emails and we create some AI slopscript that fulfils the least compliant interpretation of the rule it can think of. The goal would be to use automated nonsense to try to frustrate MBAs who have managed to burrow all the way to the brain of a tech giant and are now burdening humanity with their folly.
They're ahead of you. They're already using AI slop to come up with these rules in the first place, to verify compliance, and to respond to your complaints. It's AI slop all the way down. And the shittier things are, the more raise they get for successfully moving the needle of utilization of AI in the business model.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine if we talked about other computers like we talked about phones. It's just so weird - you can only install programs from our approved package manager - if you make any transactions through your program, we'll take a 30% cut - you can't be access those files, you're not root - you got root?! We're going to fucking sue you (yeah, I know about the PS3...) - you can't change these settings - you can't access that…
It sounds like game consoles :-(
> It sounds like game consoles :-(
>> - you got root?! We're going to fucking sue you (yeah, I know about the PS3...)
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Imagine if we talked about other computers like we talked about phones. It's just so weird - you can only install programs from our approved package manager - if you make any transactions through your program, we'll take a 30% cut - you can't be access those files, you're not root - you got root?! We're going to fucking sue you (yeah, I know about the PS3...) - you can't change these settings - you can't access that…
It sounds like game consoles :-(
Consoles feel different because they're one-purpose machines. Sure, it's irritating if they hardcore a maximum fps or what have you, but it feels less offensive for them to be locked down.
It's kind of like the difference of Disneyland having weird, restrictive, draconian rules versus just a public park. Which is also one of two brands of public parks in your city. That you also have to use to deposit checks.
I noticed this banner on one of my own apps while installing it for my mom on a new phone. The banner said "This app has fewer users than others...", almost as if they are discouraging users from installing it without even informing me. I looked it up online and it seems like many people have begun seeing this. I am linking a thread. If anyone from Google is reading this, such opaque policies are not appreciated!
There's a weird nuance to this just because algorithmically PageRank itself was even somewhat anti-competitive. "This page has fewer links to it than others, therefore it will be buried in search results" I think most people appreciated Google's early search algos that prioritized "well-traffic'd" sites and sources over others. Obviously that was a long time ago before SEO (and Google themselves) destroyed everything…
The difference here is that the play store is the one and only way to get apps for a regular user. By putting that banner up, they're discouraging anyone from trying it even if they found out about it through other channels.
The analog in 2000 or so would be if Microsoft added a warning banner to any website you visited in Internet Explorer with a low link count.