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

Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 242 posts

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#201

Post by ajsnigrutin »

Phrenzy wrote: post #69
dahdum wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I need to add "reddit" or "stackoverflow" to half my searches these days It feels truly absurd how many queries I need to append "reddit" to get something useful. The web has changed but Google isn't keeping up.

YouTube search is even worse. They could do so much to filter the results. But they don't. They don't even give you a full page of results. The give you half a dozen and go "Meh. Search is hard. Here is some completely unrelated videos you might like."

And not just that... if you search for anything that sounds a tiny bit political, all your favorite creators, even the ones you're subscribed to, get hidden from search results, and you're presented with mainstream media results (cnn, msnbc, guardian, huffpost...).

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#202

Post by 2devnull »

dahdum wrote: post #26
GavinAnderegg wrote: post #2

Google's search product has become a shadow of its former self. Every year it seems harder to find what I'm looking for. The top half of the first search result page is now (potentially malicious) ads, and what follows is likely SEO spam. I need to add "reddit" or "stackoverflow" to half my searches these days so I'm not served nearly useless results. It's a sad decline from 10+ years ago when I'd type a half-formed…

> I need to add "reddit" or "stackoverflow" to half my searches these days It feels truly absurd how many queries I need to append "reddit" to get something useful. The web has changed but Google isn't keeping up.

I’m not sure I understand the assumption that Reddit can serve up better/safer info than google. It’s pretty trivial to post misinformation, malicious advice and so forth on Reddit. And how many times do I pull up stackoverflow with a question with one answer and few if any votes. Often the single answer is unreliable, and if trusted blindly I could see that being a serious risk. You know, the answer is “just run: sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda” or the classic “rm -rf c:”

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#203

Post by red-iron-pine »

OmarAssadi wrote: post #200
mgdlbp wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and site:news.ycombinator.com surprisingly few topics haven't been discussed here. Often there's interesting technically-minded thinking, and for most (most!) topics it's less likely than a dedicated forum for any interested parties to be present. The latter really applies to any generalist forum or off-topic section of a forum where a sincere community has gathered. Until the dead-internet is achieved, at least.

Yeah, despite how little I comment on here, I use HN all the time for basically the same thing. I think the good moderation, smaller, tighter-knit community, and relatively high-quality of posts compared to Reddit has made it my first go-to when I am curious about something. I'll usually `query bla Talos II bla bla site:ycombinator.com`, and if that doesn't give me what I want, I'll try the Algolia search [1]. And on…

More is better than less, generally speaking.

As you mentioned a smaller, tighter community that delivers. This is what deliver looks like.

Maybe add a "tl;dr" section

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#204

Post by kmoser »

rom-antics wrote: post #9
tedivm wrote: post #7

The malvertisement thing has become real bad. The other day I had a problem so I used chrome, where I unfortunately hadn't installed an add blocker yet. I searched for my bank (I know, I should have put the URL in directly, but I was being lazy since it was a new chrome install and I didn't have the url in my history yet). I hit the first link, logged in (my password manager would have saved me here, but again it was…

This is why the appeal-to-ethics argument against adblocking holds no weight with me. Yes, maybe I stole $0.0001 from the publisher by not looking at an advert. But I also didn't have my bank password stolen and my files cryptolockered. It's a small price to pay for security.

There is no reasonable appeal-to-ethics argument. When it comes to accepting code and/or data onto my computer, or more precisely my screen, I can and should have 100% control over what I accept. My computer, my choice.

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#205

Post by [deleted] »

GavinAnderegg wrote: post #2

Google's search product has become a shadow of its former self. Every year it seems harder to find what I'm looking for. The top half of the first search result page is now (potentially malicious) ads, and what follows is likely SEO spam. I need to add "reddit" or "stackoverflow" to half my searches these days so I'm not served nearly useless results. It's a sad decline from 10+ years ago when I'd type a half-formed…

[deleted]

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#208

Post by pvg »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #86

Back in the early 2000s I helped create policy and procedures at Google to stop this kind of thing. Google's early anti-malware policies, extended to ads, and internal procedures to make sure we effectively stopped malware ads. That was a long time ago though and it's sad and frustrating to read it's not working so well now. In particular the article points out several big red flags about how malware scanners are aut…

the inline result is actively harmful.

I don't understand how Google have got themselves to this spot even though it seems an 'obviously' very serious problem. Both the 'card' and 'inline' results suggest some sort of curation, a greater googly authoritativeness. They introduce a sort of hierarchy of trust - this result is more trustworthy than the potentially less trustworthy generic search result. Then it's all thrown away by these 'curated' results being bad or worse. It's hard to square this with the knowledge there are piles of smart people at Google whose expertise and responsibilities involve exactly that kind of stuff.

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#209

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

bcrl wrote: post #190
Tepix wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could it be that the device is already infected with malware-injecting things?

No, I checked for that multiple times as I was around when that happened. It was an ad served up directly by Google that lead to a phishing website and phone numbers on it. His filter bubble is very different from mine, and it's clear that the peddlers of malware and scams use ad targeting to hit the elderly with ads that try to take advantage of them. This is a major downside of ad targeting: they're more effective…

You gave me a fantastic insight

Ive been wondering why a loved one is constantly getting phishing emails.

Ive been fighting a losing battle using email filters to contain the phishing fraud emails.

Your post gave me the idea to clean up his browsing caches. Thank you

Re: Until further notice, think twice before using Google to download software

#210

Post by doodlesdev »

charcircuit wrote: post #46
arthurofcharn wrote: post #34

Google was once considered trustworthy. It never was, but we thought it trustworthy. Where can you find a trustworthy source for software? Depends on your platform. Linux: Your package manager. In my case, apt. Mac: Apple has an app store of its own. Use that, or one of the BSD package management systems ported over. Ios: Apple app store is decently curated. Android: Google's app store is terribly curated. Give up no…

Linux package managers are not trustworthy. That is another case where everyone pretends that it is. Usually packages are created and updated by random people and can be pseudonymous.

That really depends on the repos you are using, that's why distros are so important. If using repos from Debian, Ubuntu or Fedora (including RPM Fusion) you are 1000x safer than anyone using winget or google to try and download software from random sources.
Post reply on HN