• Joe Bidet@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Can anyone point to the source code please? They claim it is “privacy friendly”, so it cannot be proprietary, right? right? right?

    • memphis@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      Your comment got me curious so I had a look.

      From their FAQ:

      Will Magic Earth be Open Source?

      No; since it is also used commercially (we have a paid Magic Earth SDK for business partners), we cannot make the code public.

      • Marxism-Fennekinism@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Oh ok so there is no way to independently verify its privacy or security. Doesn’t belong in this community then IMO.

        • calm.like.a.bomb@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          I think you have a wrong understanding of software auditing. Software can be closed source and 3rd party auditors can assess if it has good privacy and security implementations.

          Being closed source doesn’t necesarily mean it’s bad (for privacy/security).

          • Marxism-Fennekinism@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            But then you have to trust, 1, the auditors (I assume by your comment you mean the people given closed door access to the code, reviews it, then publishes a statement saying their claims are valid, that kind of third party auditing?); 2, the code they disclosed to the auditors is the actual complete codebase; 3, that between the current version and the next they did not add anything fishy; and last but not least, 4, the binaries they give you is actually built from that codebase and nothing else, since you can’t build it yourself if you’re really that worried.

            I don’t fully disagree that you can have a private and secure proprietary app, sure you can, but I argue that there are some really big hurdles and you can never have 100% trust in it. Whether these things is a dealbreaker depends on your own values, opinions, and threat model, of course. If you’re choosing between this and Google Maps, then this is almost certainly better in terms of privacy and security.

            I suppose you can also decompile it and analyze it that way, but that’s very difficult and compared to reviewing an open source app, pretty much no one is going to do it. You also don’t have the same level of community attention and contribution on the code itself as an open source project would where people are forking it, implementing features they want and sending pull requests, and going through the codebase to learn how it’s implemented in order to develop their own projects. All of which gives many opportunities for other developers, usually ones very concerned about privacy and security themselves, to notice and sound the alarm on unethical or insecure code in the app, basically getting tons of community driven audits all the time.

            • OminousOrange@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              How many people are actually auditing an open source app themselves though? And if they don’t, they again need to trust others’ opinion.

    • Carlos Solís@communities.azkware.net
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      1 year ago

      Not even joking, the fact that Magic Earth is still proprietary and comes bundled with /e/ is the main reason why I’m still not confident enough to use it as my ROM

  • unknowing8343@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 year ago

    So, I have an issue with OrganicMaps and Magic Earth: maps are too old.

    Is that true or am I crazy? I make a modification in OpenStreetMap and it shows up in Osmand in a few hours, but it takes months to show up elsewhere.

    Am I doing something wrong or is this expected?

  • Gazumi@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    As soon as Organic Maps can route better, I’ll switch back to it for driving. Magic Earth is my current tool. For routing and traffic shaping, it’s as good as Waze. The driving / routing map (for me) is better than Waze or Google maps. I desperately want Organic Maps or OSM to work better.

    • cat@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      What problems have you faced with organic maps? I have used it have a dozen times and had no problems. Does it not find the best path?

    • Sem@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Organic Maps is nice, but working with GPX files is still very terrible. It has no direct way to import GPX files created on desktop, you can only open them from the disk, and they will look very strange, not like routes but like a bookmark. But as I see, Magic Earth has even worse capabilities for GPX.

    • infeeeee@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      There are websites which scrape the play store, and let you download apks without login. The problem is you cannot be sure that you get the same apk as you would get from play store. (But actually you cannot be sure about anything on play store as well: the developers build the apks and upload it, e.g. an attacker impersonating the developer can publish a fake apk to play store.)

      With these things in mind, you can download apks from apkpure without login to anything: https://apkpure.com/magic-earth-navigation-maps/com.generalmagic.magicearth Afaik they never had an incident where their apk was different from the one on play, but you cannot be sure when they change their mind.

  • codenul@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Currently using Magic Earth as its the default map application for /e/OS (mobile OS). Been liking it for the most part, but sometimes searches for a place comes up with results that are way far away.

  • wia@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Does it work with Android auto?

    Project seems dubious based on other comments but I’ve yet to find anything that’s good and respects privacy while also being on Android auto.

  • HumanPerson@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    It (ios app store) says not available in my region. does anyone know where I could find what region to spoof to get it? (also I know I should get android im working on it)

  • teclo@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    I replaced my Garmin sat nav with an old android phone using Magic Earth and it’s great for the most part. However, even after updating the maps last week, on our recent holiday around Scotland it wanted to send us up through a ‘new’ housing estate to get to the other side. Unfortunately, the main road was now closed off and then it was trying to get me to drive through someones living room to get back to the main road. The map kind of showed new housing estate roads but not to the scale of this development.

    • teclo@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      Also, the export favourites function is pretty useless. It exports a sqlite db but there’s no visible way to import this into another copy of Magic Earth.