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Why I’m done with Chrome

blog.cryptographyengineering.com

191–200 of 876 posts

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#191
post #140

Firefox is a truly fantastic browser now. I've been using it again for about 2 years and haven't regretted it at all. There have been a couple of weird feature hiccups but generally Mozilla seems to get things right.

I try to change this week but I'm unable to make zoom to work well (Chrome is perfect to me. Safari not work neither). Exist a way to make it work? (ie: Maker a goblal zoom and a per-domain/page)

Stylish addon can do this. Install it then use userstyles website to find the custom script you need.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you should ditch Gmail instead?

Maybe you should ditch Gmail instead? I'm thinking about doing that. The single reason I started with GMail was because at the time, it had the best spam filter in the industry. But that was years ago. Has everyone else caught up? Is there another option with equally good spam filtering?

I use both ProtonMail and FastMail for different purposes, and am considering switching my FastMail account to the main one. It may not be as well integrated, but that's kindof a boon. GMail's new user interface is _really_ clunky. (I know I can switch to classic mode, but I'd rather just switch to something else entirely.)

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#193
post #120

For those who've switched over to Firefox recently and find Youtube inexplicably slow, it's "because YouTube's Polymer redesign relies on the deprecated Shadow DOM v0 API only implemented in Chrome." [0] The YouTube Classic extension will speed things up: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-class... [0] https://twitter.com/cpeterso/status/1021626510296285185

Seems that the days of "Best viewed in browser X" have come back sadly.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#194
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're looking for escape hatches, you know the software is working against you. At that point, it's better to move to an alternative browser, it's not worth it to fight it with hacks. If too many people use the escape hatch, they'll remove it.

> When you're looking for escape hatches, you know the software is working against you. I would say that when you're looking for escape hatches, you know the defaults don't match your personal preferences. I understand why some people don't like combined login. However, I personally prefer it, and I guess that the decision to add it was made on the basis of believing that most people would feel like I do, or at worst…

Based on all the discussions I've had or seen with Google developers, they added it based on the basis of believing that most people should feel that you do, or at worst won't notice. It's unlikely that they considered privacy concerns, above and beyond "we can be trusted so it's fine".

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#195
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The main thrust though, is that this doesn't actually solve anything for end users that the Google Chrome team says it does. Yes it does, it solves the exact problem described right in the article. Before this change, there would be a seperate log-in process for Chrome versus every other google service (which normally all share your current login status). Now, your login status is shared between every google servic…

> there would be a seperate log-in process for Chrome versus every other google service (which normally all share your current login status). Sorry, not much of a Chrome user here. Why would I want to “sign in” to a web browser? I’ve been browsing the web successfully for decades without doing so. I don’t sign in to my text editor either.

I understand the privacy concerns, but I find it very useful as I go between desktop and laptop often. It syncs bookmarks, history, tabs, settings, autofill, extensions, etc.. There have been plugins for this stuff for decades as well, so it is something that people find useful.

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#196
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange. I almost exclusively use OSX (El Cap) and haven't had performance issues asides from needing to restart the browser once a month or so. Hopefully they get those problems resolved soon, the browser is super quick when it's working right.

GP claims that FF performance is terrible, which I cannot endorse (I guess GP might be having an actual issue), but I'll make a different claim: performance is not as good as Chrome (or maybe even Safari), despite all the accolades of FF Quantum, and my myriad attempts to switch to FF. The (at least perceived) inferiority of performance in addition to general UI ugliness makes it a no switch for me. P.S. macOS 10.13.…

funny, I personally find the new Chrome look to be much uglier

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#197

I agree with Matthew that the supposed problem this is solving doesn't seem to be an issue for the case where no one is logged in to Chrome. In addition it seems to me as if it has a non-invasive solution: If A is signed in to Chrome, and the user then signs into gmail as B, sign A out of Chrome, perhaps with a notification telling them what to do.

Exactly! I'm really surprised they didn't think of this…

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feature doesn’t enable sync. That’s something that members of the Chrome team have been patiently trying to explain to Matthew Green on Twitter for several days now. [0] https://twitter.com/__apf__/status/1043505744144826369?s=21

Did you even read the article? He stated several times that the problem isn’t that sync is or isn’t enabled after the change; it’s the silent push of an update that directly violates user consent, and it widens the mouth of the user funnel-trap by quite a lot.

Also, the fact that they've gone from "The user decides when to log in, and when to sync" to "We decide when to log in but the user decides when to sync" doesn't inspire trust that they won't soon move to "We decide when to log in or sync".

Re: Why I’m done with Chrome

#200
post #157
post #90

Yesterday, news broke that Google has been stealth downloading audio listeners onto every computer that runs Chrome, and transmits audio data back to Google. Effectively, this means that Google had taken itself the right to listen to every conversation in every room that runs Chrome somewhere, without any kind of consent from the people eavesdropped on. In official statements, Google shrugged off the practice with wh…

"Listening in" is inaccurate. "Ok Google" was opt-in only, and did not record users without consent. Chromium downloaded but didn't run the binary blob. Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9724409 including Google's perspective: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9735795

Why download it in the first place?
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