221–225 of 225 posts
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I've used NW and electron based applications and don't have chrome installed. Why is Chrome needed at all for those to work?
To add to what rtkwe said, I assume the Signal client is a Chrome plugin because as far as I know you can't use GCM push messages with Chromium/NW/Electron, but only in Android and Google Chrome.
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Because some of us don't want to use Chrome? How is vendor lock-in at the browser level any better than at the OS or device level?
The script above basically acts like a wrapper script, launching in a small square chromeless window. So you don't even need to use Chrome, just launch that at startup so it runs in the background. Small software companies have to make platform decisions. They chose the most popular browser (and notably most secure browser), allowing the app to work on all OSes.
I think both aspects of this statement are definitely not clear - certainly not notably (reference?), and comparisons based on some searching seem to go one of numerous ways.
I would be happy to see a security expert's view on this though.
See also this link on Chrome devs essentially telling users that upgrading their kernel from 3.16 (not even > 7 months old at the time): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9164251. Thankfully better sense prevailed and it was resolved fast. So even in terms of OS support it is not unambiguously better than others.
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To stay competitive (or perceived so).
So you're suggesting Google crippled the feature so it doesn't get used? This seems unlikely.
Of course they won't be open about this, because they're making the world a better place
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Incognito is a useful feature. E2E encryption is a useful feature. There's no reason to only allow those two features to be used together. You could have them both turned off by default, and have three modes, one which turns on E2E and one which turns on incognito. Also, the incognito decision should be made by each side independently. Just because I want to delete my traces doesn't mean my partner does.
I don't mind the two being used together. I've been using OTR in Gtalk/Hangouts for a long time, too (yes, I know Google actually keeps those messages anyway). However, I would like an option to make the Incognito mode the default (always-on), just like Firefox can make Private Mode the default. If Google wants people to believe it cares about their privacy (which is probably the reason they're even doing this in the…
They don't, it's just more easibly marketable this way since it's a checkmark on someones Powerpoint slide.
> but it should make it easy for them to use it if that's what they want.
Google doesn't cater to users, since they aren't customers (services are free), but advertisers are.
I'm not sure I got it right. Is Google going to be scanning all my conversations to give me suggestions on what to say next? Really? I understand the price of things like Gmail, where I get a robust email system in exchange of scanning my emails and mining my data. I got something very good from Google, they got my data. Not the best of the deals I ever made, but it has (had?) a strong appeal. On the other hand I don…
Saving time and hand movement typing "LOL=)" could be quite an appeal, depending on how many times a day you're doing it.
~Aral Balkan