Huawei Announces HarmonyOS | Hacker News Reader

Huawei Announces HarmonyOS

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30 points07d04616 comments

I don't get the hate against Huawei. Not that I've seen much of it. Google are not the good guys overall, neither is Huawei. The two companies do good things and bad.

I've recently watched a talk by Jonathan Corbet on Linux Kernel Report [0]. At one point he asked the audience "Who's running Linux on their phone?". Lots of people raised their hand. He then said "Well, are you? Because a lot of companies have as much as 2+ millions of lines of custom kernel code on their devices. Huawei in particular has 2.7+ millions. If the kernel currently is at about 24 million lines of code, and you only need a small subset of that for a phone, then what you end up with is something different than Linux." It happens at approximately 30:40 in the video. I have a suspicion that HarmonyOS is just what they have now plus another 200k+ lines of code or so to change the look.

[0]: https://youtu.be/yt29BKVfI0I

One key differentiator in my opinion between Google and Huawei is how they treat their own employees and partners.

I've worked closely with Huawei on a number of projects and they really work their employees to the bone, with terrible code, non-existent procedures, and a stressfull existence for everyone involved as a result.

Now that I think about it more, I think you're right. Huawei is not good. I remember about two months ago there was a github repository https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU made by Chinese programmers in protest of 996 work week. I bet Huawei enforces these long hours on their employees.

And Google phones are pooped out by unicorns?

What I mean of course is, are the workers making the components for Google products treated measurably better? My instinct suggests not, but they charge a lot more so they could probably afford to pay double what other manufacturers are paying their workers.

Yeah, I always forget about that. Of course somebody works on the factory and has to pee in the bottle. I'm wondering how is it really like for those who actually make stuff for giant corporations? I heard it's pretty bad, that these people are being exploited, but I also heard that it's not that simple and the conditions are not that bad actually, and the alternative is even worse.

Huawei has a reputation of writing shitcode https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/03/28/hcsec_huawei_oversi...

I have a suspicion that HarmonyOS is just what they have now plus another 200k+ lines of code or so to change the look.

It's microkernel based, so it's not just a look change.

Here is a difference:

Huawei must obey all orders of their government.

Google must obey only legal orders. Legality can be challenged in the courts.

You seem to be implying that respective governments are the only potential bad actors, and that both Huawei and Google would be entirely benign without such owness.

It's also highly questionable whether the legality of many US equivalents can reasonably be legally challenged. Most of the cases brought against PRISM have been dismissed (and none have been successful). If PRISM is not in fact unconstitutional, then any distinction drawn betweeen the situation in the US and China in terms of government orders is lip service.

> both Huawei and Google would be entirely benign without such owness.

No. Everything is relative.

Google is relatively more restricted and benign than Huawei. Restricted because it's located in society based in laws and rules. More benign because their workers and even main owners Larry Page and Sergey Brin have values more supportive towards individual privacy even if they work in industry that exploits it. In Chinese society surveillance and government oversight is not just repression. People have value system that is not questioning it as much.

I'm not just implying, I'm strongly asserting that in a world where everything is just shades of grays and relative you can have orders of magnitude differences between actors.

Google is not 'a good guy' but they are orders of magnitude better than Huawei in a good guy axis (if the value system is the western liberal democracy kind).

I don't think "hate" is the best word, but I would say the concern is that Huawei can be wielded as a weapon by the Chinese Communist Party in any way they see fit. Even if you look at it from a country-neutral perspective, it's more threatening than Google because everything ultimately serves The Party in the Chinese system in a way that is unknown to liberal democracies.

Google has more potential to harm. Imagine if they come up with a technology to replace HTTP and HTML, so that you can't modify web pages you visit. You open up a website and it's like you're looking at a video stream of it, except you can interact with UI elements but can't remove ads. Then they make your browsing history immutable and available to companies that can affect your career and finances. Of course they will leave the option to make it "private" if buy a premium account. Then they become an internet provider and ban VPNs and proxies. Then they make it required for you to consume ads for one hour per week, otherwise you loose access to the internet and your data. Then they implant an electronic device in your brain so that this happy hour of ad consumption happens against your will. Of course you will have the freedom to choose when to engage in it: 15 minutes before going to bed for a few days, or the whole hour right away. It interacts deeply with your brain, ruthlessly rewriting neural connections unlike visiual stumulation by eye. Then the government acquires this technology and they choose to inflict pain on those who disobey or has something to say. Then they learn to read the minds in a crude way. If you plan to do something about it then your brain is forced to experience the maximum pain it is capable of experiencing. It all happpens automatically. Those in control do not wear such devices.

Does anybody have any science fiction recommendations along these lines?

Not that exact set of events, but I liked Anon on Netflix, which is about an implant that records everything you see and say, which of course the government has access to. It reminds me a bit of Google Glass and GPS in Android.

More threatening to you perhaps, I'm assuming you're from USA.

USA government seem willing to use its tech sector to achieve political ends too, case in point being the interference President Trump has made in European companies in trying to win contacts for 5G by smearing Chinese companies.

In USA everything appears to serve a capitalist elite.

As, IIRC, Jerome K Jerome said "under capitalism man exploits man, under communism it's the other way around".

Under these specific instances of Western Capitalism and State Controlled Economy they seem rather close to being the same thing: a system in which an elite cadre immorally exploit the rest of society.

Huawei is a security threat to America in the same way Canadian steel and aluminum is a security threat.

It’s a political thing, the US dominates the tech industry, here’s a prominent rival from China.

Lol they want contribution from open source community developers? Well their own crap Android phones are coming with locked bootloaders. They try to become American style community based company keeping their shit closed source and want contribution on other side. Huawei should be doomed. Crap Chinese companies!

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