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Chrome Is Bad

chromeisbad.com

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Re: Chrome Is Bad

#201

Post by comex »

rndgermandude wrote: post #196
comex wrote: post #14

This is total nonsense. Even for malware, hiding from Activity Monitor would be quite a feat. Short of an exploit, you couldn't hide your process without a kernel rootkit, but macOS has required user approval to load kernel extensions for several versions now. I suppose you could go the low-tech way and just name your process "WindowServer" to confuse the user, but you'd still end up with two WindowServers. The idea…

While it's indeed unlikely that there is deliberately hiding, there is a chance that the google updater triggers something in some (OS-level) components via some (implicit) IPC mechanism that causes load spikes in those components. You'd hardly see any load for the real culprit itself but those other connected components may run hot. This user says their WindowServer runs hot. Some Chrome-related software may have en…

True, that much is possible. But fairly unlikely, especially since Chrome's updater normally does not even pop up a GUI. We'd need stronger evidence than "I deleted some Google stuff and rebooted and now feels faster". I suppose the author did claim to have reproduced it on two computers, but only once each, and with no objective performance measurements. Sadly, there are a lot of things that can make macOS 'randomly' seem slower or faster, especially after rebooting, and with subjective measurements, confirmation bias is a huge factor.

Re: Chrome Is Bad

#202

Post by ehsankia »

Aeolun wrote: post #185
ehsankia wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So users are expected to run debugger tools in order to figure out what some hidden program is doing? That's like saying "So we're expected to investigate and have a full trial before sending someone to jail?". If you just want to delete it, go ahead. If you want to go as far as creating a whole domain to blame Chrome, yes, you do need more than just "I deleted it and coincidentally my computer got fast".

> If you want to go as far as creating a whole domain to blame Chrome, yes, you do need more than just "I deleted it and coincidentally my computer got fast". I think the fact that the site exists and is a pretty highly ranked story on HN probably proves that incorrect.

s/you do need more/you should need more/

Clearly if you read the thread, most people here aren't happy about this being at the top of HN, and it honestly reminds me of reddit where people just upvote things purely based on the headline, without even looking at the content. If anything this is just a sad day for HN.

Re: Chrome Is Bad

#203

Post by lucsky »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #32
Exuma wrote: post #2

It sucks because Chrome is so much better usability wise than all those others. I wish they would just fix whatever this keystone trash is, and leave that to stonehenge

What does Chrome do better than Safari?

1. dev tools 2. extensions

Re: Chrome Is Bad

#205

Post by tomaskafka »

saagarjha wrote: post #167
varenc wrote: post #153

On mac OS, Activity Monitor itself causes WindowServer CPU usage to spike. This is the "observer effect". To test, just open a terminal and compare a few samples of `ps aux | grep WindowServer` with Activity Monitor open and with it closed. Mine averages 7-11% with Activity Monitor closed and 20-40% with Activity Monitor open. It's even more noticeable if your refresh rate is set to "Very Often". Closing Activity Mon…

This is because since macOS Catalina Activity Monitor did something to itself to make itself spend half a core just updating its table view and literally nobody who works on it (which I suspect is <1 person) understands that a monitoring tool that uses more CPU than the thing it is meant to monitor is absurd. I have seriously considered rewriting it multiple times and if the app stays like it is one day I probably wi…

Please do! I like Mac, but I yearn a quality of 1st and 3rd party Windows tools. Task manager is nicely readable and lightweight, and process explorer is a godsend.

Meanwhile Activity Monitor updates once per 30 seconds when the system is under load.

Re: Chrome Is Bad

#206

Post by aflag »

HelloThur wrote: post #117
chongli wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The higher amount would generally indicate its harder to get an RCE in Chrome That does not follow at all. Chrome has the highest market share and so an exploit would have the greatest impact potential. More users affected => more economic value for an exploit.

Market share has a factor, but its not always the commanding factor. Take a look at https://zerodium.com/program.html Apache and Nginx have a very similar market share. Nginx has higher share in top 10k websites, Apache has slightly higher share overall. Yet Apache has over double the price as nginx exploits: * Apache RCE 500k * Nginx RCE 200k

If they both have similar market share, then that variable has been isolated and the conclusion that the cheaper exploit is the less secure is sound. When that variable has not been isolated, it's not possible to conclude that the difference in price is due to security and not due to the exploit affecting more people.

"The amounts paid by ZERODIUM to researchers to acquire their original zero-day exploits depend on the popularity and security level of the affected software/system, as well as the quality of the submitted exploit (full or partial chain, supported versions/systems/architectures, reliability, bypassed exploit mitigations, default vs. non-default components, process continuation, etc)."

So, if chrome, with ~65% of the market share had the same payout as firefox at ~4% of the market share, it would be fair to conclude it's less secure. However, we see 5x the payout and 16x the market share. Doesn't seem conclusive.

Re: Chrome Is Bad

#207

Post by comex »

boatsie wrote: post #140
comex wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is running in the background/on startup, Chrome itself or its updater? And is this on macOS or another platform?

Chrome can/does definitely run in the background if you have chrome Remote Desktop enabled. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had a daemon always running in case you want to enable Remote Desktop.

I just tested it. Setting up Chrome Remote Desktop requires installing a separate package which Chrome downloads for you. When it's enabled, there are indeed two always-running processes located under /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/ChromeRemoteDesktopHost.app, which are apparently launched thanks to /Library/LaunchAgents/org.chromium.chromoting.plist. But those weren't running before I set up Remote Desktop; I imagine they were installed as part of the package and didn't exist before.

If I disable Remote Desktop again… well, it doesn't actually delete the LaunchAgents plist or ChromeRemoteDesktopHost.app. That's rude. But it does make the processes stop running.

(To be totally clear, Chrome's updater does run in the background, though not all the time.)

Re: Chrome Is Bad

#208

Post by alfon »

libria wrote: post #143
Blikkentrekker wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm quite impressed by that “chromeisbad” as a domain was not already taken.

With the amount of rebuttals in this thread, I'm impressed `chromeisgood.com` isn't taken.

Here you have another one: ilovechrome.com :)

Re: Chrome Is Bad

#210

Post by marcus_holmes »

collinvandyck76 wrote: post #159
marcus_holmes wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> big companies are fighting so hard to own and gatekeep web browsers could you expand on this? Which big companies are you referring to?

Apple, Microsoft, Mozilla, Google

Well, Microsoft gave up and are using Google's browser. And Mozilla just downsized the Firefox team (and they're paid by Google to keep Firefox going, basically). And Safari is only ever a presence on Apple computers, which Apple already control completely. It's not really a huge competition...
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