The use of The word "Chinese" in this article is amusing.
Is it really important or necessary? Would it be preferable if the data was sent to a US server ?
I agree, the inclusion does hint at Sinophobia. But it's also a valid detail for security conscious customers to consider.
If the article reported that the data were being sent unencrypted to a Russian server, would that be considered Russophobia?
The current phrasing is clumsy and reads like a dogwhistle, although I doubt that was the author's intent.
> But if you’re not home, your phone sends the command to a server in China, which then passes the command along to the socket.
> The result is that the unique network ID of your socket is transported in an unencrypted form to the Chinese server — and anyone who gets their hands on the ID can then control the socket.
The problem with tying this to the other security breaches caused by Chinese hackers would actually make this article _more_ sensationalist because that would allege that this company is somehow affiliated with the hacking activity.
If the company and server were located in other countries other than the US, it is highly likely that the author would specify the country as well.
I do not think that is a valid comparison. The author did not go out of her way to point out that the server was located in China. There is no mention of China in the title, and the only place where the author mentions China is several paragraphs in explaining how and where the data is transmitted. There are more mentions of China in this comment than in the entire article.
Finally, for the record, I do not have a verified email associated with this account and thus do not have the ability to downvote.
I think HN applies a rate limiter to comment threads, to help reduce flame wars.
> Finally, for the record, I do not have a verified email associated with this account and thus do not have the ability to downvote.
Accounts get the downvote when they reach a karma threshold. I think that's currently 500, or maybe 750.
If the author had instead attempted to tie this to, say, past security breaches caused by hackers operating out of China, then that would be framing the situation in a coerced way.
Man kills man.
Man kills black man.
White man kills black man.
Assuming the facts are all the same, do you understand how the selective informing of facts frames the readers understanding or impression of the issue?
Thanks for the downvote though.
Human kills human.
Life form kills life form.
At what point does it end? You are splitting hairs and I think you know it.
You are splitting hairs and I think you know it.
These devices are developed in China and hence have Chinese IPs for some call-home feature. As much as I want to be skeptical, I wonder what the HN community would say if it'd be a US or French IP.
I don't live in the US or China and I find it naive to single out Chinese ip address as bad addresses while not thinking twice about IPs in the US. There is no basis to trust a random ip address in the US more than one in Russia or China. And again, these devices are developed in China so it's natural for them to have a call-home ip that's in China. Instead of reading too much into it, let's first consider the most likely explanation.