Slightly OT but still Google related - you did hear horrible stories of Google having close to zero customer support when it comes to their free products, but you kind of hoped it will be somewhat different with Google Suite, since well.. you are a paid customer? Well, today I'm here to tell you that after 3 months of back-and-forth thru their customer support ticketing system, I finally called my bank and asked them to file a chargeback dispute and give me back my $18 for 3 months worth of Gsuite email account. Yes, we are talking about $6 per month. But the amount of crap I witnessed thru their "customer support" is astonishing and someone should write a book about it! I was literally asked for the same questions over and over again with different reps. I was asked questions, I answered then 3 days of silence so that next rep will ask same questions. Forwarded previous questions - 3 days later another rep asks exactly the same. My favorite was argument that you cannot answer question under the question we ask - you have to add a colon ":" and then answer question next. "We cannot accept answers if you use your Enter key answering question". Unbelievable. One of the most valuable company on the planet. Fuck Google! And today, I finally have switched to Duck Duck. Even If I have to force myself to like the differences, I will not go back to using Google. /rant
Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance
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Re: Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm arguing that it hasn't prevented attacks to a degree that was worth the cost Ok, but that’s not what you said before, > (completely forfeiting ownership of personal computers by anyone that wants to participate in group chats with iphone users.) This is false. There are many group chat programs, that people use cross platform and they are more popular than iMessage. Nobody if ‘forfeiting ownership’ of anything…
>> I'm arguing that it hasn't prevented attacks to a degree that was worth the cost >Ok, but that’s not what you said before, It's not worth the cost IE a scam, literally what I wrote in my first post. >If you you want a platform that can do both iMessage, and install apps without review, then you can use a Mac. Ah yes let me just go ahead and fold up the macbook so I can put it in my pocket. If you want to be includ…
> If you want to be included in a group of iPhone users that use iMessage you must own an iPhone.
This is true but also meaningless. If you want to be included in a group of Android users who use Facebook messenger, you must own an Android device. If you want to be part of a group of Windows users who use signal, you must own a Windows machine.
All three are true, but presumably you can see they have absolutely nothing to do with app review.
There is no extreme cost.
You say the protection does very little - but that ignores the numbers: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/05/app-store-stopped-ove...
Re: Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you suggesting that the Italian judiciary is incapable of acting independently and impartially?
The majority of italians rate the independence of courts to be poor, which is among the lowest ratings in the EU [1] [1] https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/justice_scoreboar...
Probably due to Berlusconi and Salvini trying to escape their legal troubles by calling the judges communists.
Re: Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> I'm arguing that it hasn't prevented attacks to a degree that was worth the cost >Ok, but that’s not what you said before, It's not worth the cost IE a scam, literally what I wrote in my first post. >If you you want a platform that can do both iMessage, and install apps without review, then you can use a Mac. Ah yes let me just go ahead and fold up the macbook so I can put it in my pocket. If you want to be includ…
> If you want to be included in a group of iPhone users that use iMessage you must own an iPhone. This is true but also meaningless. If you want to be included in a group of Android users who use Facebook messenger, you must own an Android device. If you want to be part of a group of Windows users who use signal, you must own a Windows machine. All three are true, but presumably you can see they have absolutely nothi…
>This is true but also meaningless. If you want to be included in a group of Android users who use Facebook messenger, you must own an Android device.
Nope, you can use Facebook messenger from an iPhone or even a Pinephone. Apple is running the only popular chat app which demands you use only their hardware.
> If you want to be part of a group of Windows users who use signal, you must own a Windows machine.
No you don't need a windows machine for this, just something that can run signal.
>All three are true, but presumably you can see they have absolutely nothing to do with app review.
They do because anyone participating in a real time iMessage group is forced to put up with whatever software policy Apple dictates on their phone.
>There is no extreme cost.
The cost is that you have to hand your ssh keys over to closed source apps to use ssh, you can't use decent chat applications because the app author has to have a full-time ops team (distinct from the team managing the chat server even though they already have the resources) managing the F**ing notification server because those are Apple's policies. You can't run most desktop apps because of licensing restrictions. There's almost no community maintained software so almost everything on the phone either costs a ton or harvests every last bit of data it can find (which is typically beyond what Apple supposedly allows) and anything remotely useful is unprofitable to maintain.
Quite simply: the cost is that almost all the software is absolute shit.
Re: Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> I'm arguing that it hasn't prevented attacks to a degree that was worth the cost >Ok, but that’s not what you said before, It's not worth the cost IE a scam, literally what I wrote in my first post. >If you you want a platform that can do both iMessage, and install apps without review, then you can use a Mac. Ah yes let me just go ahead and fold up the macbook so I can put it in my pocket. If you want to be includ…
> If you want to be included in a group of iPhone users that use iMessage you must own an iPhone. This is true but also meaningless. If you want to be included in a group of Android users who use Facebook messenger, you must own an Android device. If you want to be part of a group of Windows users who use signal, you must own a Windows machine. All three are true, but presumably you can see they have absolutely nothi…
Those numbers came from Apple, lets pull them apart:
>App Store stopped more than $1.5 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions in 2020
They never justify or source this, they literally just pulled it out of their ass.
>Apps rejected for containing hidden or undocumented features
A lot of those are probably development tools that users legitimately wanted.
>Other rejected apps
Good job they blocked some stupid obvious scams. The web is full of these so the users careless enough to fall for them will still get scammed. I don't see how that justifies the ridiculous situation they've created.
>credit card numbers are never shared with merchant.
The whole point behind credit cards is that you don't care if someone steals the number. Otherwise everyone would be using PKI instead of shouting an ID number at eachother. So yeah, thanks I guess for saving some banks money but that does little to help the end user.
Re: Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are some extremely talented French people but why would they work for the French government instead of remotely for... whoever they want? Unless they don’t speak English.
Working for the government can be more meaningful than selling to companies available human brain time for example. Also, working remotely is not for everyone or possible in every company.
I can understand government work being meaningful if you’re doing something that can’t be done in the private sector like setting policy, regulatory compliance, working on health or climate change etc, but why would it be meaningful to help the French government build a shitty Google clone, to the tune of a 2/3 pay cut?
Re: Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you want to be included in a group of iPhone users that use iMessage you must own an iPhone. This is true but also meaningless. If you want to be included in a group of Android users who use Facebook messenger, you must own an Android device. If you want to be part of a group of Windows users who use signal, you must own a Windows machine. All three are true, but presumably you can see they have absolutely nothi…
>This is true but also meaningless. If you want to be included in a group of Android users who use Facebook messenger, you must own an Android device. Nope, you can use Facebook messenger from an iPhone or even a Pinephone. Apple is running the only popular chat app which demands you use only their hardware. > If you want to be part of a group of Windows users who use signal, you must own a Windows machine. No you do…
>>App Store stopped more than $1.5 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions in 2020
> They never justify or source this, they literally just pulled it out of their ass.
They pulled it out of their data.
> Nope, you can use Facebook messenger from an iPhone or even a Pinephone.
Exactly - as I said, there is no shortage of cross platform apps you can use to do group chat.
> Apple is running the only popular chat app which demands you use only their hardware.
So what? There are many options. Nobody has to use it.
> Quite simply: the cost is that almost all the software is absolute shit.
Not for most consumers.
If you are someone who insists on inspecting the source code of SSH apps, I applaud you.
You are one of a tiny minority of specialists who can do this. End users in general quite obviously cannot.
That’s why they buy a consumer product which doesn’t require them to.
Re: Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
>This is true but also meaningless. If you want to be included in a group of Android users who use Facebook messenger, you must own an Android device. Nope, you can use Facebook messenger from an iPhone or even a Pinephone. Apple is running the only popular chat app which demands you use only their hardware. > If you want to be part of a group of Windows users who use signal, you must own a Windows machine. No you do…
>>App Store stopped more than $1.5 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions in 2020 > They never justify or source this, they literally just pulled it out of their ass. They pulled it out of their data. > Nope, you can use Facebook messenger from an iPhone or even a Pinephone. Exactly - as I said, there is no shortage of cross platform apps you can use to do group chat. > Apple is running the only popular chat…
If you hand auth secrets to random apps on the App Store they will get stolen, this happens all the time. Having some contractor spend a few hours poking at the GUI doesn't mean consumers aren't required to be responsible.
Re: Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of why searching is as painful as it is is because it has been deemed acceptable to pollute the search space. SEO should be neither encouraged or allowed. It is nothing less than adversarial corruption of a shared index. Boolean searching works. Go back to a library catalog sometime and be amazed at how quickly you can get relevant results when every Tom, Dick, and Methuseleh aren't shoveling extra irrelevant fe…
How is searching painful? It's gotten better with almost every year. I only see this sentiment here on HN, along with many other shitty takes about how pure the internet used to be. Are you talking about that era when opening the wrong search result would bombard your screen with millions of popups and install 20 toolbars on your machine? Please tell me when this magical time of no spam in search results existed? 199…
You do a search, it says millions of results, the first pages all have results without the quoted terms in the page at all. They don't show "we don't have any good results" if they can display a bunch of ads on a bunch of pages with useless results.
Re: Google fined €100M by Italian antitrust over Google Play abuse of dominance
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
>This is true but also meaningless. If you want to be included in a group of Android users who use Facebook messenger, you must own an Android device. Nope, you can use Facebook messenger from an iPhone or even a Pinephone. Apple is running the only popular chat app which demands you use only their hardware. > If you want to be part of a group of Windows users who use signal, you must own a Windows machine. No you do…
>>App Store stopped more than $1.5 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions in 2020 > They never justify or source this, they literally just pulled it out of their ass. They pulled it out of their data. > Nope, you can use Facebook messenger from an iPhone or even a Pinephone. Exactly - as I said, there is no shortage of cross platform apps you can use to do group chat. > Apple is running the only popular chat…
I meant to mention this in my other reply but can't now because of noprocrast.
>You are one of a tiny minority of specialists who can do this. End users in general quite obviously cannot.
"Experts" inspecting the source code for apps allowed for some bare minimum security checks. Companies buy out smaller software projects and add spyware to them fairly often (on the iPhone this usually happens via dylibs rather than the App publisher purposefully doing it.) and Apple has removed one of the only ways to catch this without an adequate replacement. The effect is much worse overall security.