Product Updates Based on Your Feedback • Hacker News Board

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#421

Post by mercutio2 » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

ericabiz wrote: post #35

eslaught wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know exactly what conditions are required to reproduce the bug, but it clearly does not apply to all rMBPs. I'm on a 15-inch 2016 rMBP and have been using Firefox on it successfully since I got it. Before that I spent a couple months on a 2013 rMBP, also no problems. Edit: For people who want to compare notes: High Sierra 10.13.6, Firefox 62.0.2, resolution is set to "Default for display" (which I think does…

It happens when you set your rMBP display to "Scaled" in display preferences, which is what most developers do. (Edit to your edit: Try the "More Space" option in your display preferences! It's amazing.)

I very much doubt that “most” developers use “More space”.

Most developers in their early 20s seems plausible, but even there, I surveyed my team’s younger cohort, and it was less than 50%.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#422

Post by foxhop » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 3:30 PM UTC

fermienrico wrote: post #94

I’ve realized something over the years: Remember how “cool” Google was in 2007!? I vividly remember. I have learned an important fact that Ad business is rotten at the core - meaning it has direct conflicts with users. Therefore, I can never come to trust any Ads businesses: Facebook, Google, Snapchat, etc and recently Adobe and Microsoft. I’m disgusted at the state of advertisement in modern society. It ruined cable…

Yup, this is why I created Remarkbox (https://www.remarkbox.com) as an alternative to Disqus who just got officially bought by an advertisement firm.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#423

Post by rincebrain » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 3:33 PM UTC

Lio wrote: post #387

nadahalli wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible that I want my passwords (of other sites) synced on all instances of Chrome across my devices, but I don't want Google to know these passwords (obviously). They have an "encrypt-passwords" feature for that. https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/165139 Perhaps you have never visited passwords.google.com :-)

My question is why is that not on by default? Why would it ever be acceptable for Google to have unencrypted copies of your bank password for example?

I would assume it's the standard tradeoff - if you lose the key to the password DB (be it an actual cryptographic key or a password you synthesize it from), you lose access to the data, and some people are more interested in guaranteeing access to their data over avoiding storing it with an external entity.

(I work for Google but on nothing remotely related to this.)

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#424

Post by cm2187 » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 3:35 PM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #413

cm2187 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just that the user doesn’t care. I don’t want to have to monitor constantly hackernews to find out what new invasion of privacy google will sneak in discretely, even if there is a switch somewhere to opt out. I want to be able to rely on the tools I use.

The issue with this line of thinking is that this change isn't really a privacy invasion. Account consistency didn't at all affect privacy. You still had to opt in to syncing, which did affect privacy.

I would be surprised if it didn't affect google's capacity to track you nominally.

When I flush all cookies from my browser session, and open a new session, I am a new user to google's various tracking mechanism. If I am an authenticated google user, then I am not.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#425

Post by wnevets » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 3:46 PM UTC

Of all of the things to be upset at google about this just isn't one of them for me. I'm not quite sure why this is the thing everyone is rallying against google about.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#426

Post by joshuamorton » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 3:52 PM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #424

joshuamorton wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with this line of thinking is that this change isn't really a privacy invasion. Account consistency didn't at all affect privacy. You still had to opt in to syncing, which did affect privacy.

I would be surprised if it didn't affect google's capacity to track you nominally. When I flush all cookies from my browser session, and open a new session, I am a new user to google's various tracking mechanism. If I am an authenticated google user, then I am not.

I would agree that there was at least potentially an issue due to it re-logging you in. But I'll note that no one wrote a blog post about that. Someone just mentioned that on twitter after this was already a big "controversy".

In other words, you had half of HN claiming to be leaving Chrome over something they had no reason to believe had any privacy implications, and in reality, has either 0, or really close to 0, actual privacy implications.

I made a claim about HN being a small group in the grand scheme, and someone countered by claiming that most users didn't understand what was changing. But I think the funny thing is that the average user, who had the understanding that "literally nothing" was changing, would have been closer to the truth of the situation than the average HN commenter.

Not to say that the result of the hullabaloo was bad, I actually think this set of updates only improves things over where they are now, but its still a really strange sequence of events.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#427

Post by reificator » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 3:53 PM UTC

daveFNbuck wrote: post #228

reificator wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There'd probably be a blog post about how Chrome 70 will automatically create fresh Google cookies to keep you logged in to the browser after you delete them. Maybe I'm just being pedantic and there's no real-world difference, but I'm a little more okay with the browser creating new cookies whenever they're cleared vs not clearing cookies when asked. Not entirely okay with it, mind you. Especially since browser log…

I thought that's what was happening. Maybe that was just when you delete individual Google cookies.

Could be. Like I said there's not much functional difference, but one is more palatable somehow. IMO.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#428

Post by SquareWheel » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 3:53 PM UTC

hajderr wrote: post #393

SquareWheel wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might consider Google then.

Tell me another joke?

You wanted a company that doesn't sell your information. It would take five minutes to read their privacy policy to confirm this for yourself. Much easier than switching providers.

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#429

Post by newscracker » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 4:08 PM UTC

Nice try, but a bit too late.

Emphasis mine:

> "While we think sign-in consistency will help many of our users, we’re adding a control that allows users to turn off linking web-based sign-in with browser-based sign-in—that way users have more control over their experience. For users that disable this feature, signing into a Google website will not sign them into Chrome."

Frankly, is this just more subterfuge because this is opt-out and not opt-in? Most people wouldn't really understand whatever help text you put out there. If you word it in a way that makes saying yes look like the better option, people will do so (people generally say "yes" or "ok" to any dialog because they want to get rid of them and get to work). These are dark patterns that nobody should use, least of all a company that claimed long ago "do no evil".

Re: Product Updates Based on Your Feedback

#430

Post by andy_ppp » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 4:10 PM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #365

andy_ppp wrote: post #310

He doesn't say Google doesn't track you with this stuff does he? My guess is they know exactly which sites you visited so the fact you can't see the History sync feature means he's being disingenuous about it not being turned on. And even if this isn't being used right now someone will eventually abuse that unwritten agreement between you and Google.

The privacy policy does say that it doesn't track you. So that agreement is written down.

Okay that’s something, I’m sure you can understand I always assume that if the algorithms can track me at some point that information will be too tempting to integrate.