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Hot take: Even if China did “steal” technology from the US, who cares? Why are we defending US corporations all of a sudden? You don’t think they haven’t done their fair share of stealing? In fact, I don’t care if US companies stole tech from China or any country stealing tech from any other country. All competition benefits us peasants in the end, and you, fellow nobody who’s probably not a Fortune 500 CEO, are not the one being stolen from. China making something with alleged US technology will not deprive US citizens of said technology. And get this, if China “steals” your tech to build something better than you have now, you can then “steal” their improvements right back, because “stealing” or more formally, copying of technology is an ancient phenomenon that only started being vilified with the copyright and patent era. People have openly copied each other’s innovations for the vast majority of human history, and the most important inventions of the human race have arisen from people copying other people’s ideas and building on them. Imagine how ridiculous it would be if China was able to patent their invention of paper, or the compass, or gunpowder, and prevented Europe from “stealing” those technologies. Imagine if Ancient Greece patented bronze and successfully prevented the technology from proliferating into a brand new era of humanity. The second person to figure out fire probably watched the first person behind their back.
Indeed, the whole narrative of China stealing is rooted in a racist narrative that aims to dismiss the technological progress that China is making.
We’re all sick of the dozens of apps on our phones
That day when I realised I’m not part of “we all”.
Do I really need my calculator to have maps function?
Do I really need my calculator to have maps function?
Might wanna check where you got that app, then
Yeah, also, how does that make any sense? How is it better to have dozens of apps but inside a super app instead of directly in your app drawer?
Yeah, that’s like app drawer inside an app drawer lol.
Because the owner of the overarching app will make more money and have more control. Don’t you want that for them? /s
The “struggle” is because Apple and Google refuse to do so as they built the platform to give themselves priority.
One can trivially do so on a Linux phone, e.g. PinePhone with PostMarketOS.
Source: I did it. Plenty of others do through the usual ways, e.g. pipe in the console but also with things like https://sxmo.org/docs/user/sxmo.7.html#HOOKS
In my opinion the whole notion of coupling the UI to the API was a step in the wrong direction. It makes it effectively impossible to compose apps the way you can compose command line utils with piping. Apps should be designed as client/server by default, and then you could always leverage the service API for the app any way you want, slap a custom UI, use it in automation scripts, etc. It’s just way more flexible that way.
I have been working in tech since 1995. The one constant in the industry is that everyone is stealing everything all the time.
Well, that’s the magic of open source 🤷
@yogthos “Super App” never made sense to me either. It’s just an operating system and a dozen apps in a trenchcoat.
It’s about integration, the amount of actions it takes to do something in a single app is vastly reduced compared to having to juggle multiple apps. For example, you want to go out for food with your friends. With WeChat, you can message your friends, find a restaurant on the map, book it, etc. all completely seamlessly. This is a really good video explaining the benefits https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSMFnJnY7EA
So, similar to Emacs?
lol sure
Have you ever tried to use one of those superapps? It’s still a clunky experience overburdened with dozens of useless UI elements eating up screen estate of what I actually care about, and then whenever I wanted to do something for which there’s no sub-app in the super-app it would be difficult due to lack of integrations with “the outside”. That’s even before we question the idea of putting all the
eggsfunctionality in onebasketcentralized app with one developer entity, allowing them to ultimately control all aspects of one’s online life.And more philosophically, I’m surprised that as a functional dev you prefer one big tightly coupled combine to a collection of small but useful on their own utilities lightly coupled to produce more than the sum of their parts.
There are trade offs to each approach. However, it’s clear that super app approach has won in China, and the video I linked explains why.
And more philosophically, I’m surprised that as a functional dev you prefer one big tightly coupled combine to a collection of small but useful on their own utilities lightly coupled to produce more than the sum of their parts.
Because it’s the opposite of that in practice. This approach decouples the UI functionality from the functionality of each individual app which becomes a plugable service. This way you can trivially build workflows that involve multiple apps and chain their functionality any way you like. Coupling the UI to the business logic of an application is a fundamentally wrong design decision in my opinion.
Also, this doesn’t have to be done as an app. It can be done at OS level. This way apps can work following Unix philosophy where you can create pipelines involving different apps and do scripting using them the same way you can do with command line utils. I’m surprised that a dev would have trouble understanding the benefits of doing this.
You’re literally just describing apps that have open APIs and can integrate with each other.
That used to be the norm here too. The problem is entirely one of capitalism encouraging anti-competitive walled gardens.
No, I’m describing user experience here. Apps with APIs don’t solve this problem unless there’s a UI on top of these APIs that makes the experience seamless to the users.
Yeah man, that’s called an application.
MSN Messenger had an application, ICQ had an application, both had APIs though, so you then had third party apps that integrated and unified them.
Yes, and then somebody has to build an app that uses these APIs to provide a unified UI to the user. That is precisely the missing piece. Hope that clears things up for you man.
Yeah, and that’s not the model of a super app. A super app provides APIs that it forces it’s sub apps to use, as opposed to building an app that unifies a given app’s published APIs.
It’s literally just a “platform” under a different name, meaning that it’s a tech company trying to build a closed layer that they control that everything is forced through so that they can eventuallg put up a tollbooth and commit highway robbery.
It’s what Apple tried to turn iOS into before the EU slapped the fuck out of them.
Yes, it is a platform that provides a common set of APIs that allow different apps to be unified within a single UI. This has nothing to do with closed layers, it’s not different from the APIs app devs have to use on Android or iOS.
I think that’s called an operating system
This functionality certainly can be provided by an operating system, but that’s not how it works on Android or iOS currently.
Same thing you can do in the Google app ecosystem, but in that case we say ‘hey maybe I don’t want this company to know everything about me, my plans, and what I like’.
Except you can’t. The scenario I outlined requires juggling a bunch of apps and it’s way more effort in practice. Try doing that sometime and you’ll see how clunky it feels.
I can literally go on the calendar, add a location which will interface with the maps app, which can give me reviews, menus, directions, etc. Add people from my contacts, who use any type of email and cal they like (not limited to WhatsApp users) and have an email sent off with an ICS file to add to their calendar of choice. Provide a drive attachment in the same calendar invite if there was something to discuss with this meetup…
Feeding all my info to a Chinese app isn’t going to somehow improve that. My larger interest is in breaking up the aggregation of data by a single entity.
And that’s precisely what makes it so much more clunky than just being able to do all of that right within the chat you’re having with your friends. I’m glad you’re so much happier feeding all your info into Google though, because it’s totally not facilitating aggregation of data by a single entity. 🤣
Said I can, not that I do. Not that I should expect the .ml CCP shills to understand anything outside of the tankie sphere.
Dronies try not to act like clowns challenge impossible.
@yogthos I’ll give it a watch. Regardless, a good operating system should be capable of such seamless integration. That’s why “Super apps” are an operating system in a trenchcoat.
An operating system doesn’t solve the problem because it’s fundamentally a UX problem. You can look at a super app as an OS that also handles the UI layer and apps are just APIs below that layer. This is not how the OS works on Android or iOS however where each app couples its API with its own UI.
@yogthos You misunderstand. If you make a “Super App”, you ARE making an operating system. Yes most OS’s have UX problems that prevent this level of integration, but the critical difference is that you’re giving complete control to a single entity.
The client-server pattern perpetuates power imbalances, and “Super apps” make that problem much much worse.
No, I don’t misunderstand. I’m explaining to you that the nature of this operating system is different because there’s a single unified UI backed by a bunch of APIs. The critical difference is that you have a unified UX that results in better user experience. It has fuck all to do with giving up control to anything. You don’t seem to understand the subject you’re attempting to debate here.
@yogthos No need to use strong language, I understand what you’re trying to say.
As a UX dev of over 10 years, UX is important but secondary to safeguards against being toyed with by power-tripping tech bros. That’s why I use fedi, that’s why I build with ipfs instead of http.
There’s nothing I need so bad that I would give up my digital freedoms.
The is a non nonsequitor, because having a single UI framework has little to do with power tripping tech bros.
Designing an app a certain way is not technology in any kind of protectable IP way and is NOT what people are talking about when they talk about China stealing tech.
No one cares that China released an app that looks like Facebook, Facebook regularly apes the design of all its rivals.
What people care about China stealing is stuff like a company’s internal research documents describing how to engineer high strength low, weight steel that took a team of PhD researchers in multiple high tech labs ten years and millions of dollars to research and develop. That is the kind of IP and technology that China steals that people care about, not a software UX that an intern can whip up in a week.
What people care about China stealing is stuff like a company’s internal research documents describing how to engineer high strength low, weight steel that took a team of PhD researchers in multiple high tech labs ten years and millions of dollars to research and develop.
Much better for those researchers to barely receive a cent of the money from the company’s profits while the result of their hard work can only be used by the corporation that hired them. \s
I have massive issues with IP law, but it is literally the only mechanism that actually gets those researchers paid and to have jobs so I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
What is this? Nuance? Not allowed bro
