News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Fake WhatsApp update from “WhatsApp Inc.” with Unicode wh... by jakub_g on Saturday November 04, 2017 @05:56PM (#15627110)
They could do a lot of things, if they cared.

For example: limit app and account renames; when creating/renaming app/account, compute levenshtein distance to all the existing ones and if distance < threshold, make it subject to manual review and make it unlisted before cleared.

Problem is, from my observation, that Google has a culture of hating any manual processes, because they do not scale, so they avoid them, unless compelled by law.

2nd problem is that they have big enough market share that they don't have to care about things that are not convenient to them. Slightly off-topic but in a similar way, Apple can increase iphone price 10% per year and get away with it, because people still buy.

Re:Fake WhatsApp update from “WhatsApp Inc.” with Unicode wh... by TazeTSchnitzel on Saturday November 04, 2017 @05:59PM (#15627125)
Manual processes scale just fine. They just don't want to pay for it.
Re:Fake WhatsApp update from “WhatsApp Inc.” with Unicode wh... by icelancer on Saturday November 04, 2017 @06:02PM (#15627136)
Exactly. Hearing "support doesn't scale" is complete bullshit. They just would prefer to skirt the costs.
Re:Fake WhatsApp update from “WhatsApp Inc.” with Unicode wh... by mycat on Saturday November 04, 2017 @06:19PM (#15627180)
True, for example, AWS is doing fine for years with manual customer services despite its scale.
Re:Fake WhatsApp update from “WhatsApp Inc.” with Unicode wh... by jcelerier on Sunday November 05, 2017 @04:06AM (#15628759)
Scaling in 2017 means "scales like f(x) = ax+b" with a=0, b=0
Re:Fake WhatsApp update from “WhatsApp Inc.” with Unicode wh... by TeMPOraL on Sunday November 05, 2017 @04:26AM (#15628787)
Maybe for Google.

Scaling well means "costs / effort scale like f(x) = ax^p +b " with p < 1. Not scaling well means having p > 1.