Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Chrome browser for businesses

enterprise.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 282 posts

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#261

Post by therealmarv »

NotHereNotThere wrote: post #233
therealmarv wrote: post #83

Oh cool, a version for corporate rule fetishism admins who love controlling their MSI files. Happy I don't work in such an environment.

If you can't see how even a single one of these 200 policies could be useful for a corporate environment, then you are just plain ignorant and/or trolling, or you've only been exposed to tiny startup environments. And I'm not talking about controlling employees here, but simply enforcing settings for compatibility with legacy systems, legal compliance, etc, the list is endless.

No I'm not trolling. And I also don't agree with you when having software developers in mind. It's more a cultural thing (does the company wants to control everything or not?). Just one famous example: Google. You can be big and enforce and live a start up culture. I never heard from Google web developers that their Chrome is controlled by corporate policies. There is also a term called BYOD (Bring your own Device) or BYOT (Bring your own Technology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bring_your_own_device with all its advantages and disadvantages and many even not so hip / old companies live and work that way.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#262

Post by Silhouette »

illumin8 wrote: post #260
Silhouette wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but we seem to be talking completely at cross-purposes here. My previous comment was not really about the realities of civil engineering. It was about how absurd civil engineering would be, if the routine maintenance done in that context failed as often and as spectacularly as software updates do. To be more blunt about it: Organisations don't want software that updates itself frequently and fallibly, because…

I agree that we're probably talking past each other, re: civil/software engineering. The entire reason to do frequent, small updates, instead of large, spectacular updates is to avoid all the problems you mention in the last paragraph. In that case, it actually does become quite a bit like civil engineering, in that if they keep relatively minor repaving a lane every year, without disrupting traffic completely, they…

The entire reason to do frequent, small updates, instead of large, spectacular updates is to avoid all the problems you mention in the last paragraph.

So the theory goes, but I'm not sure there's really any such thing as a small update if you're talking about software used by hundreds or thousands of staff that provides the platform on which tens or even hundreds or important business applications are built.

If you're talking strictly about security updates, which are intended to address an identified vulnerability without making any other change, then I would agree there's an argument for making those more frequently.

Unfortunately, many of the key players, including those producing the evergreen browsers, make little or no distinction between essential security fixes and other changes, and at that point the risk/reward ratio of accepting frequent updates can change rather sharply.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#263

Post by heartbreak »

DougN7 wrote: post #134
tomelders wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a weak argument. The problem here is that companies think that software can exist in some sort of "done" state, where no further updates or development is required. That has never been true. The hardware and software changes. The infrastructure it connects to changes. But most importantly, your workflows must evolve if you are to remain efficient. If you roll your own software, you either commit to co…

I question if you've worked with large enterprises. They freeze everything for a decade or more. Think about a bank with 500 offices, a dozen tellers at each office. Having their internal web app that everyone uses go down because of an auto upgrade could cost them hundreds of millions. They have a very different risk appetite.

I'd say that this enterprise version of Chrome will finally fit in a financial institutions's baseline target for their patch management system.

Take a look at page 45 (page 27 of the PDF itself): https://www.ffiec.gov/pdf/cybersecurity/FFIEC_CAT_CS_Maturit...

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#264

Post by rsync »

beagle3 wrote: post #254
rsync wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I really want is the ability (recipe ?) to chroot a browser. I would like to run 3-4 browsers at all times, each with totally sandboxed identity and IP address. However I do not necessarily want to run a full blown VM for each of them. This is very simple and efficient for sandboxing server daemons - I do it all the time and there is almost zero overhead involved in chroot/jail. However I have never chrooted a G…

Are you aware of https://firejail.wordpress.com/ ? Sounds like it's what you are looking for (or is there a reason it does not satisfy your requirements?)

Thank you - I was not aware of firejail.

It appears that this does the things I am looking for - however, I am suspicious - why do we need a new project like this rather than a simple recipe for the existing jail or chroot system calls ?

What is it that makes something like firejail necessary ?

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#265

Post by fbender »

wcummings wrote: post #150
fbender wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There quite a few ways around that with async APIs and WebWorkers, even ServiceWorkers now. A lot of devs just don't use them properly. Edit: Did you mean the browser itself could freeze? That's a thing of the past with Firefox being the last browser to separate the content and chrome process. So the web page may freeze, the browser window itself shouldn't.

Those are relatively new features, and aren't used a whole lot.

WebWorkers are not a new "feature". The last browser to support it was (on desktop) IE in v10 (4 years ago) and on mobile Android 4.4 (3 years ago). Though that doesn't really matter since you can polyfill it, which obviously does not give you multithreading in those older browsers but it still forces you to think async.

Regarding other APIs, a great number has been available since many years, and any newly introduced API since at least 5 years is either non-blocking or async.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#266

Post by fbender »

fbender wrote: post #119
lhaussknecht wrote: post #75

We already deployed chrome in the enterise to run our Chrome packaged app. Too bad Google EOLed packaged apps....

ServiceWorker/Progressive Web Apps is the way to go. Works in any* browser. * Any modern and recent browser, so no Safari support, at least until summer '17.

Please explain the downvotes. Parent talked about "Chrome Packaged Apps" which are vendor-specific. Instead, I pointed to the cross-browser solution that is recommended by Google and works today.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#267

Post by dx034 »

sathackr wrote: post #141
therealmarv wrote: post #83

Oh cool, a version for corporate rule fetishism admins who love controlling their MSI files. Happy I don't work in such an environment.

when the MSI file defaults to sending crash dumps that may contain confidential financial information, to a server located in the developers broom closet, yes, we have to control the MSI files. Because admins have to answer to the auditors(and our conscience) when they ask the question "How do you ensure that personal and confidential information is not leaked from your environment" Which is why Windows 10 is my wors…

I thought it can be switched off in the enterprise version of Windows 10? AFAIK that's the only way how Microsoft was able to start convincing companies to switch from Windows 7.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#268

Post by sathackr »

dx034 wrote: post #267
sathackr wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when the MSI file defaults to sending crash dumps that may contain confidential financial information, to a server located in the developers broom closet, yes, we have to control the MSI files. Because admins have to answer to the auditors(and our conscience) when they ask the question "How do you ensure that personal and confidential information is not leaked from your environment" Which is why Windows 10 is my wors…

I thought it can be switched off in the enterprise version of Windows 10? AFAIK that's the only way how Microsoft was able to start convincing companies to switch from Windows 7.

They do provide a GPO object to turn off the "Telemetry" for Enterprise versions.

But it still installs the entire Windows store with Candy Crush Saga, Facebook, Minecraft, XBOX, etc. and they make it nearly impossible to remove. Why on earth they would force that crap down the throat of their ENTERPRISE customers is beyond me.

I fought with it for months and finally gave up and cancelled the deployment project until MS offers a better way for enterprises to control the Window Store.

Update: Added more below

----

IE: When trying to build a secure environment, you must eliminate all unnecessary attack surfaces. The customer did not need "XboxIdentityProvider" installed their Windows 10 Enterprise environment. But this is something MS feels must be installed on all Windows 10 PCs thus they made it nearly impossible to remove.

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#269

Post by fanf2 »

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #206
tomelders wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a weak argument. The problem here is that companies think that software can exist in some sort of "done" state, where no further updates or development is required. That has never been true. The hardware and software changes. The infrastructure it connects to changes. But most importantly, your workflows must evolve if you are to remain efficient. If you roll your own software, you either commit to co…

>That has never been true. Some software does actually reach a "done" state, where there is nothing left to do, assuming no major platform changes. wc will probably work as intended until UNIX itself shambles off the coil at this point.

Let's have a look at maintenance activity on wc, shall we?

https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/usr.bin/wc/wc.c?view=lo...

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/log/src/wc.c

Re: Chrome browser for businesses

#270

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

fanf2 wrote: post #269
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That has never been true. Some software does actually reach a "done" state, where there is nothing left to do, assuming no major platform changes. wc will probably work as intended until UNIX itself shambles off the coil at this point.

Let's have a look at maintenance activity on wc, shall we? https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/usr.bin/wc/wc.c?view=lo... http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/log/src/wc.c

BSD wc hasn't been touched in a year. GNU wc's recent patches were either the addition of features, or bugfixes for what seem to be relatively new features. Or optimization.

But you could pull in wc from V7 on modern computers, and it would still work. (assuming GCC can still compile K&R C).

Post reply on HN