The plan here sounds very open source oriented, which is promising & IMHO what it will take for Harmony to have staying power. But it feels like a kind of tumltous time for Harmony. Open Harmony and others feels like they're more than somewhat being left behind as Huawei advances a seemingly re-proprietarized HarmonyOS NEXT. Right when Harmony seemed to be coming into it's own, it feels torn. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS_NEXT

There's very few guides or experience out there on using Open Harmony. Huawei really seemed to have capture the Harmony market, and their recent sudden shift to proprietary is a huge barrier to this early OS keeping traction forwards. It's unclear how Open Harmony or other open source Harmony's are going to proceed. I hope they can create some good

You mean backdoors? Don't forget these are not optional in China

Data is often the real value when it comes to governments, and at that point the only protection is either using services that collect very little (few exist) or end to end encryption. On the E2E front, it seems only a matter of time until one of the many attempts to require encryption backdoors passes in the west.

Yes.

Are vendors in the US or EU required to do crap like that while also being prohibited to admit it? Of course services that collect the data "in the cloud" share that data with the government, but this is official and predictable.

Our main OSes, desktop and mobile, have quite a few backdoors though I couldn't speak to whether the government forced them to do it. Mobile phones, mobile networks, and most (if not all) of the internet trunk lines include backdoors for the government to use. Data collection isn't technically a backdoor, though functionally it is as it allows the government to do what they want to while dodging regulations for search warrants and similar.

The Twitter files point to another backdoor, even if again not technically quite a software "backdoor".

If we stick to the strict definition of a backdoor, the CCP very likely has more control over companies and does require software backdoors for the government to access. In a more general sense though, I at least wouldn't consider the US or the EU to be meaningfully better about the government having access to and control of tech in much the same way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_global_surveillance_disc...

Its certainly not like we don't try.

...the reason i do not wish them well :)

- Windows isn't the only other OS, nor would that mean that what the CCP is doing with HarmonyOS is OK.

- Backdoors are the rule, not the exception in China. This is not true of the US.

- I disagree with the Patriot Act and NSLs, but let's not forget that the US is a free democracy and that those laws can change if there is political will. That isn't the case in China.

Every time someone brings up the CCP doing something bad, I need to suffer some whataboutism re: the USA that is supposed to justify it. Backdoors are bad wherever they appear. Because China is an authoritarian regime, it can backdoor openly without consequence.

I am desperately pleading for an answer because for some reason there is a group of folks on this godforsaken website that can't help themselves from doing so and it's driving me absolutely mad.

Can we please just acknowledge a criticism or statement of fact about the CCP? Is that allowed?

Considering how far America has gotten backdooring the iPhone, it would not surprise me if China had far more control than we thought.

Pretty much nobody on this site (besides particular corporate sycophants) will deny that the US has nightmare-inducing surveillance capabilities. It's not hypocritical to call-out and identify another authoritarian overreach in another country that also threatens it's citizens.

This isn't a slight against Chinese citizens or American citizens, for that matter. We know exactly who to blame - Google, Apple and Microsoft for rolling over when governments asked them to get backdoored. This started a privacy-shattering precedent that undermined trust even further than ever before, but now we accept it and readily spread it to our family in the form of a smartphone. Look at how easily all of us were fooled.

Promote software freedom. Get people off proprietary shitware and bugged hardware. That's what matters to me, and any government that better enables me to do that earns my respect.

But XiongMai plants backdoors in their CCTV firmware so that data is shared with anyone interested, all around the world. Of course it magically turns out, that cameras they supply for the government are not vulnerable. What a coincidence...

[1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/meet-the-cuban-expatri...

Ah, you're talking about Windows' UI. I was wondering where I could see screenshots of HarmonyOS. But yeah Windows 10/11's "Settings" is a mix of mobile-esque UI and the old-school Windows 7 (or XP?) control panel screens. I'd hate to be working on it, the PM's must've said everything needs to be reworked but they didn't give the UI/UX designers and developers the time to do so before "We've got to ship! Besides, we do continous delivery now, if we don't finish it, it can wait until the next release!".

Interestingly, I'd be curious how much telemetry an OS made under the Xi regime would have, at least in China. From an article [1] (on HN yesterday: [2]), when police visited a teen and told him he uploaded "anti government" videos:

> “That’s ridiculous,” Vincent said. “I have never browsed such videos, not to mention posted them in the Internet. You must be joking.”

> “Maybe you didn’t post it by yourself,” the policeman said. “But the app may back up the video automatically.”

> Vincent admitted that once, in a WeChat group, he had come across a terrorist video. The police instructed him to get his I.D. card and accompany them to the station. After they arrived, they entered a room labelled “Cybersecurity Police,” where Vincent was impressed by the officers’ politeness. (“It’s not scary at all, no handcuffs and no cage.”) The police informed him that they had found a host of sensitive and banned material on his cloud storage:

> “But how interesting it is!” the policeman said. “They sent pornographic videos, traffic accident videos, [breaking news] videos, and funny videos.”

> “Yes,” he said helplessly, “so I am innocent.”

> “Yes, we believe you,” the policeman said. “But you have to [sign] the record because it is the fact that you posted the terrorism video in the Internet, which is illegal.”

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/08/how-chinese-st... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39923662

The rest of your comment is pretty irrelevant to this OS if I’ll be honest. It’s all about cloud storage and uploads, all activity unrelated to the local OS.

https://i.imgur.com/2Od5WIJ.png

Can't even get all the windows to the same light/dark mode let alone have a unified look of components. Variety of title bars, different checkboxes, different fonts, colours even the way window navigation works differs in jarring ways within areas like control panel (sometimes opens new window, sometimes uses current, sometimes current but with sublevel logic).

Maybe I'm just sensitive to this sort of thing, but unified is certainly not a word I'd apply.

I used to be able to have System settings and Windows Update open at the same time. (Not the best but something like this bugged me recently). Now I can’t?!?

Can’t even flip back and forth (without triggering rescan of windows updates).

Maybe Windows 12 will just be a touch enabled DOSSHELL.EXE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonious_Society

In the west you "promote hate" or "spread misinfo" or "are a Russian agent"; in China you "disturb the harmony". All ways to silence dissent if you ask me.

The idea of "Harmony" is strongly connected to collectivist ideology. In the west, mainstream political parties tend to embody particular aspects of collectivism, while parties that completely embrace or reject it are relegated to the fringe (eg. Communist or Libertarian parties). In the US, the right-wing tends to be highly collectivist when it comes to the military/law enforcement (eg. "Support our troops"), religious practice, and national identity (eg. "Patriots") while the left-wing tends to be more collectivist when it comes to government programs and policy (eg. Universal Healthcare).

Wrt my own political-economic convictions, im a socialist far more left than "typical left wing american", which are not socialist (so not actually "left" of anything) and this mere right wingers in disguise imho. Im not from the US btw.

Has China Lost Its Taste for the iPhone?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39815330

Just don’t be surprised when China’s public and private enterprises make strides to curb their dependence on Western hardware and software. Don’t be surprised when they catch up quickly like they have in so many industries.

“China will never make globally competitive cars”

“China will never be able to make its own heavy industry products like jets and trains”

“China will never be able design its own chips”

“China can’t write good software”

Don’t underestimate your rival.

But in terms of "red oceans", I don't really see China having any special advantages over the already heavy competition beyond manafacturing, after all they never did make a globally competitive ICE car, it was through leapfrogging with EVs that they succeeded. If we talk about OS here, domestically they can do whatever, but I don't see why it wouldn't just be another competitor in a long list of competitors.

By the way, Chinese companies own multiple Western ICE car manufacturers. Those manufacturers (Volvo, Lotus, Polestar) are transitioning to EVs or only make EVs anyway.

Here’s an example on the software side: what happens if the Chinese smartphone players drop Android? Let’s say Xiaomi and Huawei now only come with a Chinese OS which can run Android apps as a stopgap, replacing Google Play with their own App Store. Those two brands represent 20% of European cell phone marketshare.

Now imagine this Chinese OS gives Samsung a better arrangement than Google. Overnight, Google is basically out of the picture.

That’s right, they only have to convince one phone manufacturer who already depends on a third party company for their OS to switch, and the instant they do so they win over more than half of the European smartphone market.

https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/europe

There's some good reasons behind that and I have a feeling they are discovering some of those paradox at the moment.

But that in itself a dubious claim…for example, Dubai’s population is over 80% expatriates.

If we are going for “places where people want to live” the elephant in the room is the view of gun violence in the United States by foreigners. It comes up as a top fear about visiting or living in the US.

Just today I watched a story about an elementary school child choosing a class pet based on whether it could be kept safe during an active shooter event, because they didn’t want the pet to die.

Also developed seems for you a very low bar then? Russia is a very poor country,not very developed.

Russia has an HDI of >.800 which is classified as “very high.” This number is higher than China, India, and Brazil.

People in Russia generally aren’t lacking access to improved sanitation.

Russia has compulsory education and a full literacy rate.

Don’t forget that this is a country that has been industrialized for a long time. This is a country among a very short list that can do things like get rockets into space and build jet aircraft engines. Even manufacturing powerhouse China has to import engines and avionics for its C919 aircraft. The Tu-214 uses Russian avionics and engines.

Russia or Turkey wouldn’t be my choice of place to live but they are developed.

The UAE is probably the closest one from your list but you'd have to basically ignore the large Indian diaspora which isn't treated very well to make it fit.