161–170 of 236 posts
Daily reminder that your business/project/hobby should not depend on anything controlled by Google. Edit: Despite all their shortcomings, I wouldn't mind seeing android phone makers join force and create an independent app store.
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That's unrealistic if your target is android phones. You can wax poetic about the idea of an independent app store all you want, it doesn't change the facts on the ground in the current moment.
Or you can just make a web app. Unless you are doing games or anything requiring lower-level hardware access, like a bluetooth scanner or something.
> We don't allow apps whose primary purpose is featuring or hosting objectionable [User Generated Content]. [...] your app currently only includes feature to flag inappropriate users. [...] the app must provide a user-friendly, in-app system for reporting objectionable UCG. It's user generated content. How is reporting a user functionally different from reporting content? This makes me even more driven to switch to F…
The difference is the same between malice and ignorance. A user may just be wrong about something or not quite understand something. They're not trying to deliberately cause disruption, there's no need to fault the user. Remove the content, inform the user, move on. It's only a problem is a user continues to submit reported material.
Which isn't to say that Google's actions are at all justified here. This kind of thing makes me extremely wary of continuing to do business with them.
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f-droid doesn't have payments, Amazon is yet another faceless mega-corp that has had its fair share of sellers accusing them of various shady things. Creating a Play Store alternative is hard for many reasons: 1) finance: the more countries you operate in, the messier it becomes. International taxes are one hard mess, KYC/AML regulations differ between countries, and to top it off there is the whole "international sa…
> f-droid doesn't have payments I'm just a normal F-Droid user, but couldn't you build In-App purchases or link accounts to your website? So, register for a paid account on mygreatapp.com and use the login details in your app? I think that's what Google and Apple specifically DON'T WANT for financial reasons, but how about F-Droid?
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Maybe HN users, but an increasingly overwhelming percentage of the general population prefers to download an app to do something instead of using a mobile website.
Various industry surveys, like the one from comscore in 2019 suggest otherwise. IIRC it found that most American phone owners install only 1-2 new apps per year. I think they would've gone to more new websites than that.
For anyone unaware, the name of the app is a play on a swear word. "EskomSePush" is an intentional play on the phrase "Eskom Se Poes". Eskom being the power utility that provides electricity to South Africa, and has been woefully inadequate at doing so. See here for a meaning of the word Poes in Afrikaans. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/poes#Afrikaans Wonder if Google is aware of that and has been getting lots of "re…
[1] https://twitter.com/hermaritz/status/1371017176593928194
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>I also hate it when software won't work without a 'security' handshake. You are in for a bad time unless you go full FLOSS. The days of shareware and freedom from stupid centralized license enforcement is long dead, sadly. Don't bother bringing that up on HN though. The Upton Sinclairism "It is difficult to get someone to understand that which their paycheck fepends on them not understanding" applies. Unless of cour…
FLOSS is great but not enough. There are more and more places where you need a smartphone and an application (or else you can't use a service or it will be 100 times more time consuming) IMO all smartphones should have an unlock code. it will be printed in the box you b ought the phone, if you use that you unlock your phone and can install FLOSS apps in it. (now the Apple fanboys will try to change my mind, I will no…
They should not be locked in the first place. GNU/Linux smartphones come to mind. (Anbox can be used for Android apps)
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Actually, users, for the most part, don't want to install apps.
Maybe HN users, but an increasingly overwhelming percentage of the general population prefers to download an app to do something instead of using a mobile website.
Do you have pointers to data on this subject? I am very interested in this subject!
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Load shedding is the correct technical term for it. It's not just a South African thing either, industrial consumers in Europe have the same stipulation in their power contracts: in case of emergency, the power company (network operator) may choose to suspend power delivery to protect the grid. However, in the EU this 1) isn't a regular occurrence, and 2) the grid has a tiered system for load shedding. I can't find a…
Texas had tier 3 level of load shedding recently.