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Chrome Is Bad

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Re: Chrome Is Bad

#281

Post by taharvey »

awinter-py wrote: post #11

the linked 2009 wired article quotes adobe saying 'yeah we don't see the need to have an always-on updater process' fast forward to 2020 when (1) adobe has this and (2) they still email me every so often to remind me to install their software which (3) I have installed and been using I think life would be better if there were a 3rd-party update service that wasn't trying to also own marketing + distribution (i.e. tak…

Exactly.

It's not just Google. Adobe or any other company installing always running updaters... is just wrong.

Re: Chrome Is Bad

#282

Post by coldtea »

wnevets wrote: post #276
coldtea wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In HN, where every third post is "Why I'm leaving Apple" or such? Yes.

I dont see any apple related post on the front page, let alone negative ones. Do you see a different front page than I do?

Yes, it's called "bias blind spot" :-)

Here's one in the front page, just a few days ago:

Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship (hardware.substack.com) 321 points by zherbert 7 days ago | flag | hide | 292 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2020-12-07

Re: Chrome Is Bad

#283

Post by tripzilch »

ehsankia wrote: post #202
Aeolun wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> most people here aren't happy about this being at the top of HN

well the ones that comment, at least.

there might very well be a silent majority that is reading these threads with great joy.

like for instance the bit where someone lost it when they got reminded of the site guidelines and felt the need to list their "accomplishments" on HN

you don't get entertainment like that in normal threads.

Re: Chrome Is Bad

#284

Post by tripzilch »

silexia wrote: post #235
dang wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indignation attracts upvotes, then flags. When an indignant post is relatively empty or misleading, flags will eventually win, but it's like the immune system—it takes some time to marshall enoguh white blood cells. This is a nice case because moderators only saw it after the process was done.

Hundreds of people commented and how many tens of thousands read it first though? Reminds me of the moderation problem big tech companies face. Humans are prone to confirmation bias which means that when they read inaccurate information that confirms a bias it even further twist people's brains. For example, this article likely twisted thousands of people just a little further against Google even with though there wa…

> The only solution I can think of is something like a libel law

Let's bring things a little bit back into perspective, because on the whole nobody's getting hurt here.

It's just Google Chrome. It's not a person. A thread like this isn't going to hurt its dominance of the browser ecosystem. And if it did, it would even be good for the diversity.

I don't think it would make a really big dent in people's bias against Google, because slowing your computer down is way way WAY less bad than the things that people biased against Google are worried about (being a gigantic faceless corporation with power equal to nation states that is controlled by something that is not, does not care for democracy).

It's like badmouthing Thanos because he has bad breath.

If true then Chrome has some bad code, and what else is new. If false then ... then what. At worst somebody deinstalls Chrome, and then?

Let's not bring libel law into this, or in fact even compare it to biased and false political news stories.

Re: Chrome Is Bad

#286

Post by Elijen »

rot25 wrote: post #135
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…

For those of you who are unaware, Comex is one of the most respected security researchers of all time and has done extensive research into Chrome and won Pwn2Own multiple times. He is completely correct, keystone is just Chrome's auto updater. The technical content of this article is super thin. This shouldn't be on the top of hacker news.

Oh the good old argument by authority.

Re: Chrome Is Bad

#287

Post by wokwokwok »

Elijen wrote: post #286
rot25 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those of you who are unaware, Comex is one of the most respected security researchers of all time and has done extensive research into Chrome and won Pwn2Own multiple times. He is completely correct, keystone is just Chrome's auto updater. The technical content of this article is super thin. This shouldn't be on the top of hacker news.

Oh the good old argument by authority.

The parent did not rely on authority; they posted actual substantive content. Read their comment history.

You can choose to flip off people's qualifications if you want.... but it doesn't make what they say wrong, no matter hooooooowwwww much you don't like it. :)

Re: Chrome Is Bad

#288

Post by marcus_holmes »

sbarre wrote: post #234
marcus_holmes wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Microsoft Edge is not "Google's browser". It uses the Chromium rendering engine but it's still developed and distributed by Microsoft, which means they own the telemetry, the features, the defaults, and the user experience (which are the parts that matter, no one cares about the renderer from a business POV). Google has Chrome, we've covered that already. Apple has Safari. Firefox exists, and is only funded by Google…

I agree completely that Firefox is only maintained as an anti-trust foil by Google.

When Google worked out that Microsoft owning the browser might cost them in the long run, they started working on Chrome.

I don't see anyone doing anything similar at the moment. Microsoft's adoption of Chrome is a tacit admission that they lost the browser wars and are not interested in continuing that fight. Apple isn't trying to get Safari adopted en masse on any other OS, it just seems to want to have a browser that it controls on its platform, which I guess makes sense. But it's not a play for "controlling the browser" - they don't even stop you from installing other browsers on their platform.

This just isn't an area anyone is fighting for any more. Building a standards-complient fully-featured browser is a huge project, but not so huge that a large corporate couldn't afford it. Persuading people to use it is a larger problem, but again, nothing that hasn't been done before and can't be done again. But no-one at this scale is even trying.

There are a few attempts from the other direction, dedicated companies like Brave trying to make this happen, and I hope they succeed.

Re: Chrome Is Bad

#289

Post by _qulr »

tripzilch wrote: post #283
ehsankia wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> most people here aren't happy about this being at the top of HN well the ones that comment, at least. there might very well be a silent majority that is reading these threads with great joy. like for instance the bit where someone lost it when they got reminded of the site guidelines and felt the need to list their "accomplishments" on HN you don't get entertainment like that in normal threads.

You're welcome!

Of course your comment also violates the guidelines: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." Reinforcing my claim that violation of the guidelines is the norm here rather than the exception.

My point was that authors of HN submissions are almost always treated with disrespect by HN commenters, and I was citing my repeated personal experience of having been such an author. (I believe the HN moderators are in denial and view the site through rose-colored/orange-colored glasses). I don't view having been #1 on HN to be an "accomplishment". I don't find it useful at all, because I run an independent business, yet being #1 on HN never increases my software sales at all, so it's pretty useless as far as I'm concerned. It just increases my server usage. I've sometimes considered (as I'm sure many people have) simply blocking Hacker News referers on my server. Could still happen...

In fact I finally created an account on HN simply to try to have some "control over the narrative" in HN comments about my own authored articles, because there are often some really dumb misunderstandings in the comments. Not sure it has been worth it though.

Technically, I "lost it" on HN about 3 weeks ago, when I got sick and tired of accurate information being downvoted. The only reason I'm still here now is that I have way too much free time on my hands due to the pandemic/social distancing.

Re: Chrome Is Bad

#290

Post by mihaela »

wnevets wrote: post #198
coldtea wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hating Google is very fashionable on HN these days Well, why shouldn't it be?

Why shouldn't apple? For some reason apple gets a pass on HN for things like fighting to keep forced labor camps open [1]. Lets hate Google AND Apple. 1. https://9to5mac.com/2020/11/23/anti-forced-labour-bill-apple...

With Apple you get what you've paid for. With Google you pay for what you've got for "free".
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