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

Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

blog.pushbullet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 811 posts

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#441

Post by catalogia »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #407
lostcolony wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for those of us who are finding out about it only via a Hacker News comment. As happened with this user, who seems, you know, sufficiently a power user to need that info. Even a "if you know this site to be safe, please read this knowledge base article (link)" and buried in that, amidst all the reasons you shouldn't use untrusted certs, are the instructions.

> Even a "if you know this site to be safe, please read this knowledge base article (link)" and buried in that, amidst all the reasons you shouldn't use untrusted certs, are the instructions. I don't think that's a bad way to go about it either, if it's sufficiently buried. I'm primarily just thankful there's a workaround, hidden or not, given how many tech companies seem to respond to these things by disallowing the…

> I don't think that's a bad way to go about it either, if it's sufficiently buried.

Just put it in the manual. If experience has taught me anything, it's that "normal users" never read the manual.

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#442

Post by m4rtink »

dleslie wrote: post #260
wlesieutre wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome is a trivially easy product to switch off of compared to other Google properties like Gmail and YouTube. Have you tried Firefox recently?

The only Google product I still use is Android. I won't switch to iOS, that's like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Sadly, the FOSS alternatives do not support Blackberry phones, and for physical reasons I _greatly_ prefer a real keyboard.

Maybe check the Fxtec Pro1:

https://www.fxtec.com/pro1

It has a full QWERTY keyboard and reasonably well working Sailfish OS port.

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#443

Post by hckr_news »

karlicoss wrote: post #380
andrewmutz wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I think this practice could be seen as anti-developer, but it is pro-consumer.

I often wish for a separate browser for consumers that are also devs. I'd happily lift the permissions for some open source extensions I'm using if that means better functionality.

I've noticed more recently of software products having an opt-in option for data collection

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#444

Post by smnthermes »

strken wrote: post #31
syshum wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Firefox is better than Chrome... Mozilla is becoming more and more Google Like as time progresses, where a few years ago I would have believed it would be unthinkable for Mozilla do so something like this to an extension, today I am not so sure I would trust them either

I agree to some extent, e.g. the pocket integration and Mozilla burning cash on things that aren't related to Firefox, but Chrome's decision to limit/break key adblocking APIs across their whole ecosystem is much worse. I'd be willing to ignore almost any number of removed extensions to continue using a browser that's not owned by a glorified adtech company.

Browser extensions are going to be turned into a web standard, and W3C is controlled by Google, so Firefox will probably lose its adblocking API: http://browserext.github.io/

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#445

Post by eloff »

gowld wrote: post #386
eloff wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched when Google killed of ublock origin in Chrome. Firefox is quite nice these days. I just use chrome for development because I'm more familiar with their dev tools. I will very occasionally find a site that's broken in Firefox and works in Chrome though.

uBlock Origin isn't killed. Some changes are proposed, however.

It's nerfed into uselessness. Last I checked it's restricted to just url blacklists.

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#446

Post by gwerbret »

danpalmer wrote: post #292
fgonzag wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what you got out of it? Google doing a good job? They sent an email with no guidance whatsoever. These guys went above and beyond what most developers would've done, which would have been to contact support until they get a clear answer. This only alienates the extension ecosystem. And this was the primary reason I switched to Firefox. Google is the new Microsoft. If I remember correctly, they started Chrome e…

As mentioned, I think Google have handled it poorly, but their fundamental position – that this extension is incorrectly using permissions – was significantly correct and may prove to be fully correct. Google deserve criticism for the lack of clarity in the communication, they deserve criticism for the lack of human touch, customer support and many other aspects. They do not deserve criticism for calling out incorrec…

The problems with your argument are these:

a) the extension had been operating for years, unmolested by the Googlebot, with the expanded permission set

b) tightening up the permissions did _not_ solve the problem, indicating clearly that whatever the Googlebot was selecting for, it wasn't an incorrect use of permissions.

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#447

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

deckard1 wrote: post #184
jaywalk wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, this change is meant to give developers a way to create safer and more performant ad blockers. Imagine anyone actually believing Google is trying to help ad blockers. What a dumb thing for them to even say.

These days Google's core value appears to be a Kafkaesque hypocrisy. They promote efficient websites to increase ranking with their search algorithm, while operating ad services that bog websites down. Not to mention the whole AMP business where they looked at Facebook and developed a severe case of walled garden envy after previously being a champion of open web standards.

> They promote efficient websites to increase ranking with their search algorithm, while operating ad services that bog websites down

The online-advertising economy that Google operates in does slow-down websites.

Google's own ads, don't. AdSense ads are loaded asynchronously and I've been happy to run them on my websites. Google Analytics is also fast and light.

It's other scripts that bog things down - right now on my most AdSense-laden webpage the real killer is ZenDesk's chat widget - even when loaded asynchronously it still blocks the page render and pulls in over 600KB of resources, which is ridiculous: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/3600042...

> Not to mention the whole AMP business where they looked at Facebook and developed a severe case of walled garden envy after previously being a champion of open web standards.

I'm not a fan of AMP either, but you don't have to use Google's AMP cache CDN to use AMP - it may surprise you (as it surprised me!) to learn [that Google endorses Bing's AMP cache](https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and-tutorials/learn/amp...), for example (Google owns and runs amp.dev) - but I won't be happy with AMP until it's possible for people to run their own AMP CDN/caches.

That said, I fully understand why original-content providers aren't keen to adopt AMP: because it restricts the kinds of advertising displayed in a page and restricts monetization, and means you have to trust your CDN to accurately report pageviews.

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#448

Post by winter_blue »

jtxx wrote: post #64
wlesieutre wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome is a trivially easy product to switch off of compared to other Google properties like Gmail and YouTube. Have you tried Firefox recently?

ProtonMail has come a long way as a replacement for Gmail as well. Suuuper happy with them, they're really responsive to feature requests and support inquiries. I requested for an iOS feature to choose browsers so I could open all links from PM in Firefox. They had it implemented in a month or something... it a quick fix but that impressed me. hence me shilling here They recently added ProtonCalendar too.

I'm a paying customer (paid for 2 years upfront), and I only found out after paying that ProtonMail has an incredibly poor implementation of 2FA. All it supports is app-based authentication[1].

No support for U2F (FIDO) keys[2].

No support for sending SMS to phones.

In comparison, my Google account is protected with: (a) three distinct U2F FIDO keys that are stored safely in different countries, (b) three separate phones for SMS authentication (my phone, dad's pone, mom's phone), (c) lastly there's the authenticator app which I rarely use. This is so much more versatile and reassuring that ProtonMail's extremely-mininal 2FA implementation.

Also, ProtonMail has no excuse for not supporting SMS-based 2FA. They can send a SMS to your phone, when you setup a new account -- but for some reason can't do this for 2FA. Despite being a paid service, they trying to save on the SMS charges that SMS-based 2FA would incur?

[1] https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/two-factor-aut...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_2nd_Factor

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#449

Post by brigandish »

heavyset_go wrote: post #200
freehunter wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found the exact opposite to be true in my very specific experience. Five years ago I used every Google product under the sun, today the only Google product I use at all (even search) is Chrome because it's the only one I haven't been able to replace. I try Firefox with a fresh install on nearly every major release and I keep it installed as a secondary browser, but I can never manage to use it as my daily browse…

Try sending your company's internal sites a Chrome User-Agent from Firefox. There are extensions that let you do this.

I was doing that but it does break things so you need to remember you're doing it. For weeks I wondered why Slack wouldn't work via my browser until I found it was loading some Javascript only when UA was set to Chrome, and that was breaking something.

Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

#450

Post by fdavison »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #279
the_gipsy wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These rules impact this developer's livelihood. Let this be the millionth lesson of "the perils of building on a platform instead of on a protocol".

You misspelled "sharecropper".

I don't know why you are being downvoted, sharecropper is exactly the right metaphor.
Post reply on HN