Chrome is just ridiculous. It pretends you are mentally handicapped Ooooh, this is an executable, THAT'S VERY DANGEROUS! Are you sure you want to download it? Hmmmph?
Flagged for this particular description. Could have said stupid.
Tell HN: Chrome says "suspicious download" when trying to download yt-dlp
101–108 of 108 posts
Re: Tell HN: Chrome says "suspicious download" when trying to download yt-dlp
#102[dead]
Re: Tell HN: Chrome says "suspicious download" when trying to download yt-dlp
#103I find the "unverified download" thing in Chrome so annoying, too. Remember when computers used to treat us like adults? I miss those days.
Re: Tell HN: Chrome says "suspicious download" when trying to download yt-dlp
#104[dead]
Re: Tell HN: Chrome says "suspicious download" when trying to download yt-dlp
#105Re: Tell HN: Chrome says "suspicious download" when trying to download yt-dlp
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
>My understanding is that a specific binary needs to become popular for it to stop being flagged. This creates a chicken and egg problem. Given the recent npm axios compromise this sounds like a pretty smart move?
How is it a smart move? Here, Microsoft is training users to ignore a security warning. If the same mechanism were added to NPM (that is, a warning that the package is suspicious and for the user to be extra sure they want it), users would have been trained to ignore any security warning issued for the compromised axios version (just like they had ignored it for all previous "clean" versions) and installed it anyway.
It has certainly had that effect on me. When I heard that notepad++ was being flagged for something somewhere by someone, all I thought was "so they forgot to pay a protection fee?" Genuinely I thought it was being brought it up just as an indication that the developer may be absent or asleep at the wheel. There is literally no association in my brain between one of these warnings and the concept of software being compromised or not.
And I've seen other less tech inclined people click right through these without a moment's thought. They think it's just one of those things computers have to complain about.
Re: Tell HN: Chrome says "suspicious download" when trying to download yt-dlp
#107Suspicion is in the eye of the beholder.
Re: Tell HN: Chrome says "suspicious download" when trying to download yt-dlp
#108for what it is worth, when downloading the latest .exe from github, firefox says "this file is not commonly downloaded" and i have to select "allow download". scans of it are fine. probably just a heuristic-based false-positive, and not a news-worthy story of chrome abusing their monopoly or whatever.
Do these little speed bumps even work? I have to admit I'm so numb to all these popups and to apps warning me this and begging me that, that I just don't read anything anymore. Each app that hits me up with yet another dialog is just another brick in the wall. The only speed bump that I find super annoying is when your browser tries to prevent you from going to a site with an incorrectly configured certificate (or a…
These are speed bumps for you but they make it nearly impossible for something to go mainstream, so rest assured they work extremely well on others.