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Comment by chronogram | Hacker News Reader

> Another major nit I have to pick with HarmonyOS is its lack of access and transparency. Just accessing the SDK and emulator required me to go through an insane process that involved uploading a photo of my US passport and credit card to Huawei’s servers so that I could be approved to access the SDK after a two-day waiting period. Most companies just have a download link. You don’t get to run the emulator locally on your computer, where it could be inspected more thoroughly—instead, it runs remotely on a server in China somewhere, and video of it is streamed to your computer. After we wrote our article, Huawei took down the emulator and blocked “overseas” users from downloading the SDK.

Essentially useless for me then.

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> Just accessing the SDK and emulator required me to go through an insane process that involved uploading a photo of my US passport and credit card to Huawei’s servers so that I could be approved to access the SDK after a two-day waiting period.

My sample size is tiny, ymmv etc. but a few big-Chinese-company-designed products I've bought (DJI drone, wireless security camera) have been like that. Not "thanks for buying the product, please enjoy, there's an app if you want and we value your privacy." Instead it's "you WILL install the app and you WILL give it access to contacts, camera, microphone and everything else, then you WILL create an account on our web site where all of your personal information WILL be stored, and only THEN may you use the thing."

I don't know if it's just my bad luck with these products or if the Chinese market is much more accepting of this kind of invasive authoritarian treatment.

The US market is much more accepting of this data collection by the Chinese.

I don't know about "accepting," but China has some very strict "real identity" rules and laws when it comes to accessing just about anything connected to the internet. It is authoritarian.

I tried doing iOS dev years ago. Apple had me fax them my driver's license. You can whine about the FSF all you want but I've never had to do that to use gcc.

This has meme potential! Talking about some major corp and hoops one has to jump through to do X, react with "say about the FSF what you will, but..." ; Made my day. What are you even talking about? How is this a meaningful comparison?

It is meaningful, inasmuch as it shows the stark difference between developing for an extremely free ecosystem (in this case, free software using GNU tools) and an extremely closed one, like Apple's, where (apparently, as I didn't know about this, but it is realistic) you have to mail them your driving license. Free software protects you forever exactly from something like this and the FSF has been speaking about this possibility for decades.

This comment is very insightful and the comparison is sound.

This is just one anecdotal experience out of hundreds of thousands. Because of your one bad experience you just dismiss Apple? I can also provide 1 anecdotal piece of evidence: I've done iOS dev and published apps in the App Store. Never had to fax my drivers license to Apple.

I'm not alone. Also requiring state-ID in order to share software should be disturbing enough to abandon platforms.

NVM theres a big sign on process.

https://developer.harmonyos.com/en/docs/documentation/doc-gu...

It seems there are two emulation environments, one that is remote you need to sign in and verify yourself. The other is your local simulator no need to sign in or verify.

The local simulator is only for wearables and cameras, if you want HarmonyOS 2.0 devices you need to use the remote simulator.

Edit: Locally you can only run project templates that have [Lite] in their name, maybe in the future they will make other simulators available. Signing up for remote emulation is too much of a effort for me.

Edit: Parent comment used to say "you can just download the SDK" or something like that.

Original response below:

--------------------------------------------------------------

From that page:

NOTE

If you need to use the DevEco Studio emulator, your HUAWEI ID must pass the identity verification by Huawei. It is recommended that you submit your HUAWEI ID for identity verification review immediately after the registration. For details, refer to Identity Verification.

The identity verification requirements for individual (not enterprise) developers are here: https://developer.huawei.com/consumer/en/doc/start/ibca-0000...

HUAWEI Developers supports multiple identity document combinations for verification, including:

1. ID card + bank document

2. Passport + bank document

3. Other supporting documents (such as driver's license) + bank document

> uploading a photo of my US passport and credit card to Huawei’s servers

What?! The Chinese government has found the cheapest way of building records on foreign citizens: just ask them to give you their credentials and anything that can be used to impersonate you. They'll do it.

How are people even doing that on purpose? Man, fuck that.

Ever traveled outside of your own countries a lot of airports have facial recognition entry/exiting ports that will scan your face and your passport.

this is a textbook false equivalence. Travelling hinges on the ability to verify your identity. Using a piece of software does not and must not require sensitive documents like a passport.

What about travelling has identity verification built in? It’s just an arbitrary rule in both examples.

  Travelling hinges on the ability to verify your identity

What a strange world we live in since the 80's

> it compiled Android apps with a different file extension

It seems that you don't even need the SDK — just build an apk with the regular Android SDK and rename it.

Happens plenty of times with US companies wanting my ID before I can access developer portals

Look when you have a hostile foreign power destroy your entire business and and force you to retool most of your software stack, you get kinda restrictive with people inspecting your new stack coming from that country.

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