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Modifications to Google Chromium for removing Google integration

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Re: Modifications to Google Chromium for removing Google integration

#71

Post by ehsankia »

chii wrote: post #47
floatingatoll wrote: post #37

“It also features some changes” says to me that this isn’t a safe fork to recommend to others. Rather than simply releasing a de-badged instance of the public Chrome product, it additionally includes “editorial” comments in the form of turning various switches on or off. Use at your own risk.

if they transparently list out the changes (rather than force someone to diff the source), then it's OK.

Is it though? Security is a fickle thing. Unless there's a a big enough community behind it with security experts examining the changes, I'm not sure I'd trust some random person's changes to not introduce any exploits.

Re: Modifications to Google Chromium for removing Google integration

#72

Post by sandov »

tdb7893 wrote: post #64
chii wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but it only needs to work on _your_ computer (or whoever you're making the recommendation to).

The problem for me is that no one I know has a mac (I think their market share is like 10 percent). It's too expensive for many of the people I know and the rest play video games so they can't use a mac.

And in this forum, I would guess the OS being proprietary is a deal braker for many, including me.

Re: Modifications to Google Chromium for removing Google integration

#73

Post by shawn »

sctb wrote: post #50
shawn wrote: post #17

C'mon. People are trying to stand up to Google. It's important to encourage this behavior, or at least not spread FUD with unsubstantiated claims of insecurity. EDIT: Lol, Google employees swarming HN on a Sunday. I guess people are getting a little nervous that a mass exodus from Chrome might be beginning. Hey look ma, an unsubstantive complaint about downvotes! Can't wait for my account to be penalized further.

It would be really great if you could follow the guidelines instead of posting like this. Would you please? We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18053831 .

It would be great, wouldn't it? That sounds delightful, and I would be happy to. Just one quick question:

Why was my account rate limited solely for commenting – substantively, on-topic, and in an intellectually gratifying way – about incels? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18012416

Why was this thread collapsed solely for saying "I only see depressed men on /r/braincels, not really much hatred?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18012771

I am becoming increasingly concerned that it's impossible to comment on HN in a way that goes against the commonly-accepted viewpoint, even if it's true. And I have decided that if this is something that is truly worth sticking up for, then I should be willing to sacrifice my account to do it.

HN used to be a place that I could go to express views that may or may not match reality, and if it didn't, it would simply be pointed out why it was false and that would be that. But now that YC has become Big Business, that is suddenly not good enough. These are not rose-tinted glasses. I remember.

I have made repeated emails to hn@ycombinator.com asking about the situation and have been ignored. I understand that the mod team is busy. However, it is difficult to constructively contribute to a community lead by someone who enforces rules in an arbitrary way with no explanation.

And to be clear, I'm not above the guidelines and I don't think that I am. But when I put a lot of effort into my writing, and it feels like I have been doing everything I can to stay within the guidelines on the site which I love, then being slapped down and silenced with zero recourse and zero explanation is not quite positive reinforcement.

The same thing happened when I tried to ask why it was OK to label Terry and exclude his work from being remembered as good work when he clearly suffered from a debilitating illness.

Now, I would be more than happy to throw myself back into my writing and engage as a good citizen. But it's reasonable to ask "Why aren't you allowing people to voice that their hatred for certain groups or certain people might be misplaced?"

HN isn't for ideological battle. But it's for comments. And we do occasionally talk about social issues on HN – always with an undertone of mutual respect. I don't feel like I was doing ideological battle in that comment thread. So I am left wondering how seriously to take the guidelines, if the choice between carrot and stick has been narrowed to stick and stick.

Re: Modifications to Google Chromium for removing Google integration

#74

Post by vemv »

comex wrote: post #65
eganist wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think that's the best use of everyone's time or energy. Seems like there's a simple solution to this dilemma. Assuming build time is the single determining factor: If the value of two hours' build time overnight is less than the value of a privacy-enabled build of Chrome, then build Ungoogled Chromium overnight. Else, get Firefox.

Sure, that's a solution if you think that running their binary is unacceptable. But that's begging the question. Most people running macOS (as vemv at least is) run a lot of random binaries from various types of strangers – mostly proprietary applications, although there's also things like Homebrew cached binaries, 'curl | sh' installers, etc. Now, in this case downloading a binary isn't necessary, since there's the…

Aren't you forgetting the fact that binaries aren't provided by the project itself? They come from contributors (in the project's words: 'anyone').

That's wildly different from the typical CI-built binary.

Re: Modifications to Google Chromium for removing Google integration

#75

Post by sneak »

plg wrote: post #33
bootlooped wrote: post #19

This seems like one of the most difficult solutions to the problem of switching to a browser that's not Chrome. Not only are there other browsers like Firefox and Safari, but there are other Chromium-based browsers like Vivaldi and Opera. I would have liked to read about some expected use-cases in the readme.

why not Safari? Or is the issue non-MacOS OSs

Safari is worlds less hardened than Chrome from a security standpoint.

Re: Modifications to Google Chromium for removing Google integration

#76

Post by ValentineC »

EastSmith wrote: post #67

If you want Chromium based browser - Opera or Brave seems the way to go.

Note that Opera is now owned by a Chinese consortium [1].

Vivaldi is the new browser by ex-Opera people.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otello_Corporation

Re: Modifications to Google Chromium for removing Google integration

#77

Post by vemv »

User23 wrote: post #36
vemv wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally as a software developer I can assess which projects' source to trust, else I wouldn't be running thousands of transitive dependencies in my machine. Binaries which are unofficial to even ungoogled-chromium itself surpass my threshold of trust. But yes, one could take a further step and extract the interesting bits from this project and apply them to the official Chromium trunk.

How do you assess the trustworthiness of thousands of transitive dependencies with a far greater number of code contributors in a way that scales? This is a serious question, and it would be great if you shared the solution you found. Thanks.

I should admit that my procedures are only marginally better than an average developer's.

Sadly I have no arbitrarily deep audit in place. I just try to pick solid projects, and assume / quickly check that their dependencies don't suck.

Also I'm particularly cautious with npm (as opposed to rubygems or clojars).

I should be looking into either (or both of):

- setting up a multi-user macOS ('me' + 'admin' + 'dev'. I normally operate under 'me'. sudo is only ever executed under 'admin'. Developer tooling is installed for 'dev', an account which cannot access the rest of the filesystem)

- using Docker and/or a VM for all dev activity, as a sandbox.

Re: Modifications to Google Chromium for removing Google integration

#78

Post by EastSmith »

ValentineC wrote: post #76
EastSmith wrote: post #67

If you want Chromium based browser - Opera or Brave seems the way to go.

Note that Opera is now owned by a Chinese consortium [1]. Vivaldi is the new browser by ex-Opera people. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otello_Corporation

Is Vivaldi Chromium based?

Re: Modifications to Google Chromium for removing Google integration

#79

Post by swasheck »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #28
bootlooped wrote: post #19

This seems like one of the most difficult solutions to the problem of switching to a browser that's not Chrome. Not only are there other browsers like Firefox and Safari, but there are other Chromium-based browsers like Vivaldi and Opera. I would have liked to read about some expected use-cases in the readme.

Yeah, Chrome isn't so good that I find a need for the open source community to maintain a fork of it. ⌘Space Safari and I get on with my life. It's been interesting to experience Internet Explorer, then Firefox, Chrome, and finally coming back to operating system default browsers with Edge and Safari and being perfectly content. The leverage Microsoft and Apple are utilizing with their operating system ecosystems is…

Why is this downvoted so heavily? It's a legitimate opinion. I don't agree with it and you may not either, but it highlights the fact that for at least a portion of the user base the default browser may be an acceptable option.

Re: Modifications to Google Chromium for removing Google integration

#80

Post by orionblastar »

What about SWARE Iron? https://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php

It is supposed to be the version of Chromium without the Google crap, right? I use it at times to test it out as I test out different websites on different browsers.

They have it for different platforms: https://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_download.php

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