What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space? • Hacker News Board

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#131

Post by dmitrybrant » Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 1:16 PM UTC

gigaflop wrote: post #123

koprulusector wrote: post #93

>Over the last year or so Mac users have run into problems that appear related to a background service named triald. Some report it stealing huge amounts of CPU, others associate it with various glitches, and a few have noticed gigabytes of disk space apparently being taken up by its folder at ~/Library/Trial, and in their Time Machine backups. This article explains as much as I know about this mysterious new service…

This reminds me of Windows Search Indexer on my PC. Microsoft's spying aside, it apparently needs 13.5% or more of my CPU at all times. It started after I updated multiple time sin a row, and for the past few weeks, has never stopped. I've killed it via task manager, only to have it come back shortly after.

One of my first tasks after a clean install of Windows is to disable any unnecessary services, including the Search Indexer. Not only do I disable the service itself, but I also explicitly remove all folders from the "indexed locations" control panel, and explicitly disable the "Allow files to be indexed" bit on the disk itself.

I've literally never needed to search my disk for a file (using the Windows search interface), and if I ever do, I'd rather wait a few more seconds that one time for my search to complete, rather than have the indexer consume my CPU at all times.

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#132

Post by dmitriid » Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 1:20 PM UTC

BeefWellington wrote: post #126

dmitriid wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the community as a whole will always have accurate information of what is what OpenSSL audit would like to have a word with this mythical community. log4j vulnerability, too.

There are a few big problems with these examples. For starters, the obvious implied suggestion is that these types of vulnerabilities don't exist in commonly used closed-source systems. That's been proven hilariously false time and again. Secondly, commercial vendors have seen fit to adopt opensource where it suits them in order to take advantage of (and offload responsibility for) what these components do. You're ef…

> the obvious implied suggestion is that these types of vulnerabilities don't exist in commonly used closed-source systems

I never implied that, obviously or not.

> Secondly, commercial vendors have seen fit to adopt opensource where it suits them in order to take advantage of

Commercial vendors adopted opensource due to lower cost of ownership, not due to perceived lack of problems or because "community knows exactly what is what"

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#133

Post by rglullis » Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 1:22 PM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #113

koprulusector wrote: post #93

>Over the last year or so Mac users have run into problems that appear related to a background service named triald. Some report it stealing huge amounts of CPU, others associate it with various glitches, and a few have noticed gigabytes of disk space apparently being taken up by its folder at ~/Library/Trial, and in their Time Machine backups. This article explains as much as I know about this mysterious new service…

How's the battery life on linux laptops these days?

Does it really matter?!

Are you really that careless with your privacy and your basic freedoms to the point that you make your choices based on the ~battery life~ of your computing device?

Sorry to pick on you, but whenever I hear these sorts of questions I realize how shallow people can be, even those who are (supposedly) informed and smart enough to know better.

To be worried about the inconvenience of ~shorter battery life~ over fundamental freedoms is like failing the marshmallow test for tech people.

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#134

Post by asciimov » Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 1:23 PM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #113

koprulusector wrote: post #93

>Over the last year or so Mac users have run into problems that appear related to a background service named triald. Some report it stealing huge amounts of CPU, others associate it with various glitches, and a few have noticed gigabytes of disk space apparently being taken up by its folder at ~/Library/Trial, and in their Time Machine backups. This article explains as much as I know about this mysterious new service…

How's the battery life on linux laptops these days?

It's not the battery life that's the issue on Laptops these days, as it is typically better than windows.

The biggest issue is getting all the hardware supported out of the box. For example, there is a certain amount of mucking about you have to do to get any off the shelf laptop running Linux. On rare occasion system updates change something that the laptop doesn't like, hunting down that change can become tedious.

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#135

Post by LooseMarmoset » Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 1:25 PM UTC

Brian_K_White wrote: post #45

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just manually install the official Firefox linux release. I've always done this since the Debian Iceweasel days and it works without issue.

If you have to fight against your distro, you have a bigger problem than one package, and working around that one package doesn't fix the larger proble which is that they tried, and will try again, and will always be trying. You need your tools goals to be aligned with your own, and reject any that aren't, not cater to them. Working around the FF package by installing from elsewhere is no answer.

The distros don't update Firefox as often as Firefox does. If you want leading-edge on Linux, it's best to install to a directory you have write access to with the official Linux Firefox installer, and let the browser update itself. Just my experience.

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#136

Post by _Algernon_ » Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 1:29 PM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #133

sjg007 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's the battery life on linux laptops these days?

Does it really matter?! Are you really that careless with your privacy and your basic freedoms to the point that you make your choices based on the ~battery life~ of your computing device? Sorry to pick on you, but whenever I hear these sorts of questions I realize how shallow people can be, even those who are (supposedly) informed and smart enough to know better. To be worried about the inconvenience of ~shorter bat…

>Are you really that careless with your privacy and your basic freedoms to the point that you make your choices based on the ~battery life~ of your computing device?

Not OP, but yes. In a laptop, battery life is the number one thing I'm looking for. That being said, Linux does fine when it comes to battery life in my experience.

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#137

Post by rglullis » Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 1:30 PM UTC

asciimov wrote: post #134

sjg007 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's the battery life on linux laptops these days?

It's not the battery life that's the issue on Laptops these days, as it is typically better than windows. The biggest issue is getting all the hardware supported out of the box. For example, there is a certain amount of mucking about you have to do to get any off the shelf laptop running Linux. On rare occasion system updates change something that the laptop doesn't like, hunting down that change can become tedious.

The solution for that is easy: don't buy the absolute-latest-generation of any hardware.

I've owned Samsung laptops, HP laptops, Thinkpads. I've built my own work desktops. I've never had any issues, as long as the hardware is ~6 months out on the market.

That's about the time it takes for linux devs to catch up with companies that focus on windows drivers.

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#138

Post by pbhjpbhj » Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 1:30 PM UTC

jeroenhd wrote: post #27

KarlKemp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have some well-founded respect for the procedures that medical trials have to go through, including informed consent. That’s spilling over/being misdirected to the use of the trial mechanism in other fields, even though it makes absolutely no sense. The alternative to A/B testing in UX design is not some more rigorous trial with fully-informed consent. Instead, it‘s the older and still predominant mechanism of…

The alternative to A/B testing is paying people to test your software and learning from their direct feedback. Alternatively, you can provide people with a choice to test the changes you're considering. If I pay for a product, I expect to be treated with respect. Being turned into a guinea pig to save on feedback cost isn't being respectful. Doing so without notice or consent is even worse. There's no law against it,…

Surely if it's not informed consent then it's not authorised access to your computer. Unauthorised computer access is illegal in USA (CFAA) and UK (CMA), at least.

If it in anyway restricts bandwidth or causes other harms, eg uses up the last of your HDD space causing an issue, then that's an additional crime according to UK law.

These laws shouldn't just be applied to individuals.

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#139

Post by pstoll » Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 1:34 PM UTC

fer wrote: post #107

smcn wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the phrase? "Trust but verify"?

Yes, the Russian proverb. It's even better in Russian: доверяй, но проверяй, doveryay no proveryay It's better because it displays both words are semantically related. In fact, "verify" is cognate with their root, vera/veryat', probably a common Indoeuropean root but I'm too lazy to verify (pun intended).

Interesting - so more like “verity but verify”. Very cool.

Re: What is triald and why is it taking so much disk space?

#140

Post by rrdharan » Thu, Mar 31, 2022, 1:36 PM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #133

sjg007 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's the battery life on linux laptops these days?

Does it really matter?! Are you really that careless with your privacy and your basic freedoms to the point that you make your choices based on the ~battery life~ of your computing device? Sorry to pick on you, but whenever I hear these sorts of questions I realize how shallow people can be, even those who are (supposedly) informed and smart enough to know better. To be worried about the inconvenience of ~shorter bat…

1. The marshmallow test has been debunked (just like so many other flashy claims in the social sciences field, the science is questionable and the replication crisis is very real). So using it in a rant about how uninformed people are is itself a laughable irony.

2. Many of us simply do not agree that the use of an Apple computing device impinges on either our privacy or basic freedoms, or (more nuanced) that the marginal risk is so small that it’s not worth the moderately large inconvenience of shorter battery life.