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Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

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Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#191

Post by komali2 »

hectormalot wrote: post #173
gonehome wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a pass entry and what do you use it for? Another thing I should mention is I wanted to try hey.com since it looks like they’re doing some interesting things (alerting users to tracking pixels to push back on clients like superhuman, whitelisting incoming mail, etc.) but they make it hard to get an invite so I gave up trying and paid for fastmail instead.

Not GP, but I’m assuming https://www.passwordstore.org/ . Pass is a CLI password manager using Git and GPG to store and manage your passwords. I use it and sync passwords across devices through a git repo on self-hosted Gitea. Works really well if you’re comfortable with the CLI. Also switched away from Google to Fastmail with my own domain about a year ago. Happy with the move, although Gmail still sees some activit…

Thank you, this is what I meant.

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#192

Post by komali2 »

gonehome wrote: post #129
komali2 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went through a similar process during quarantine, but for bluehost. I found the process of changing emails over meant I also was able to make Pass entries for them (another way I'm taking control of my data), and at the same time delete my account for websites I don't need anymore. It's been very cleansing.

What is a pass entry and what do you use it for? Another thing I should mention is I wanted to try hey.com since it looks like they’re doing some interesting things (alerting users to tracking pixels to push back on clients like superhuman, whitelisting incoming mail, etc.) but they make it hard to get an invite so I gave up trying and paid for fastmail instead.

Re: Tracking pixels - disable images by default in your email client. I get emails now from people like "we've noticed you haven't been opening our emails..."

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#193

Post by Aeolun »

microcolonel wrote: post #47
omnifischer wrote: post #5

It is disgusting that no one from media asks Sundar Pichai touch questions like: 1. Non human (AI) usage for termination google accounts. 2. No repeal process At least some employee from Google here in hn must do things and understand mentality of other people. It increasingly looks like - well... we employees live in bubble but if you are unlucky then you are screwed. Do not ask us? What kind of programmers wrote su…

The odd thing is that they can't even make a cost argument for this. If they charged a cost recovery fee for human redress of these sorts of issues, it would not cost them anything, and that's assuming they don't lose money from improper automated enforcement, which they almost certainly do. It's pure incompetence.

Why would I want to keep paying google for their shitty AI’s mistakes?

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#194

Post by 29083011397778 »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #57
m-p-3 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is a proverbial a jack of all trades, master of none. If you need to depend of them for a specific service, don't. Go with an actual business that cares and have the focus on what's important, and more importantly a customer service that listens. I went with a dedicated VoIP provider, and the service has been excellent

Can you suggest an alternative to Voice? I need SMS and voice, and prefer data being optional (Voice can forward to a dumbphone, or even a landline). Happy to pay, just haven't found an obvious direct competitor.

Perhaps I'm missing your actual requirements (based on what's been suggested below), but I've been using voip.ms for years now. They support voice and SMS, and even my bank's SMS "2FA" works with them now. They don't support MMS, however (though you may have meant that when you said SMS).

SMS is available as a FLOSS app (I use the F-Droid voip.ms app), or through another portal - able to be sent/received through email, another number, or a web interface.

I honestly have only good things to say about them (despite being a consumer of their seemingly B2B product). As a disclaimer, I don't work for them, have no affiliation with them, and made a point of not using any kind of referral link.

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#195

Post by dictationer »

vezycash wrote: post #36
nyreed wrote: post #24

Do you remember when browser extensions could be installed from a developer's own website and didn't require any kind of dysfunctional 'gatekeeping'? I know there are benefits to having someone vet browser extensions, but it seems a shame that they remove the self-distribution option completely when their moderation is so ineffectual.

There's this quote about how the dictator are benevolent in the beginning in their appeals to people's safety needs. Slowly but surely, the people handover their rights and are shocked by the power the dictator "suddenly has." When the chrome team was tightening their grips on chrome, people here hailed the move because some windows programs like anti-viruses, download managers and adware sideloaded extensions.

I like this.

We do keep giving power to some system because they "protect us" (Google and Apple in 2010) but there's always a chance that they'll stop caring once they don't need your support anymore.

Microsoft is also trying to buy our support by being benevolent, I wonder how long and if that will last.

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#196

Post by TheRealPomax »

vzaliva wrote: post #190

Is Firefox any better in this respect? I am seriously considering switching.

If it bothers you enough "to switch", that implies you've not been writing extensions using universal web extension code, in which case.... what? Why not? The only massive difference is the namespace ("broswer" vs. "chrome"), which is trivially shimmed, and promises vs. callbacks, which is also easily made universal.

But having said that, if you're considering switching you probably also want to consider telling your paid customers how to install your extension themselves, rather than sending them over to Google's extension "store".

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#197

Post by hanklazard »

geza wrote: post #157

I definitely feel for the author - the Chrome Extension team has been growing increasingly developer-hostile recently. My own open-source extension HabitLab ( https://habitlab.stanford.edu/ ) that I've been maintaining for the past 3 years is going to be removed in 2 days (got a 14-day removal notice for permissions even though all permissions it requests are used and needed, and every update I try to submit is rejec…

I'm really sorry to hear that--it looks like a useful extension and I'm sure you've put a lot of hard work into it.

Naive question to you and to other extension developers here ... how does Firefox do when it comes to this issue? Is it just that the market share is so much lower that it's not worth developing for FF? I ask this as a happy FF user on mac, linux, ios.

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#198

Post by yunyu »

sb8244 wrote: post #177
Guzba wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome can load unpacked extensions by enabling Developer mode in about://extensions. Google will definitely get up in your business if you try to distribute an extension on your website this way though.

Can you go more into what they do if you try to bypass their distribution mechanism? Is there any existing posts sharing experience? I'm curious as this has always been my backup plan if Google takes this action against my extensions.

It's fine on MacOS (albeit a bit clunky), and sideloaded upgrades end up creating two copies of the extension so you'll have to ship your own autoupdater. On Windows, it's a no-go as Chrome will display a scary warning every time you start the browser: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23055651/disable-develop...

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#199

Post by oAlbe »

gonehome wrote: post #78
aboringusername wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, the value proposition proposed by "the cloud", whomever that may be (MS/Google/Apple et al), is quite the temptation. Seriously, I am slowly and surely de-googling, such as storing all data locally (if I need offsite, I use encrypted backups). My calendar now uses caldav on a raspberry pi, my home network uses ethernet for fast data flow to a portable drive and I am using a web browser for many applications…

The only main Google service I still used was Gmail (and occasionally search when DDG doesn't return something immediately useful). I'd seen comments about Fastmail over the years, but moving seemed like it would be a hassle. With more at home pandemic time I decided to just do it and have been super impressed. The Fastmail docs are really good, setting up DNS to use my custom domain had explicit steps and pictures f…

What is a truly private European based alternative to Fastmail? Other than Proton ail.

Re: Unable to deal with Chrome Extension Team, Kozmos is shutting down

#200

Post by georgeecollins »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #63

I get it, Google loves to automate stuff to save money. Makes sense, I agree. But I'm seriously wondering if all the people in charge of automating such processes are those delusional ego-programmers who think they can solve anything with machine learning, aka "AI". Really, I cannot understand that there aren't basic safeguards in place like "hey this extension got repeatedly flagged and when a human finally reviewed…

The other explanation is that they don't really want users to have most browser extensions. The browser extensions either become features that google wants to embed in the browser, or things they don't want, for business reasons. In either case it is better if the extension dies after a year or so.

BTW, this doesn't have to be a conscious choice of anyone at Google, it could just be the way the incentives turn out.

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