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Google Pixelbook – A High Performance Chromebook

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Re: Google Pixelbook – A High Performance Chromebook

#201

Post by Diederich »

bogomipz wrote: post #168
notheguyouthink wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Previously everything of mine went through Google. Email, phone, phone number, search, etc. I've migrated everything away (except Google Voice) for this very reason. My life would have came to a grinding halt if they banned me, and I couldn't even email them about it.

Could you share your email transition strategy? Any tips? Do you still end up checking the account?

fastmail.fm is what I went to, years ago, for e-mail redundancy.

Fortunately I have two major, long-standing e-mail addresses, so I put one of them on fastmail.

Re: Google Pixelbook – A High Performance Chromebook

#202

Post by nickysielicki »

jellicle wrote: post #144
nickysielicki wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a concern for 99.999% of people, developer or not.

Do you mean that people aren't concerned, or shouldn't be concerned?

Both.

I don't think anyone (reasonable) should be concerned and I think most people, developer or not, are not concerned.

This is just yet another example of this vocal minority on HN that regularly talks shit about every Google hardware product, where the argument against this specific product actually comes down to a larger argument against Google and how much access and gatekeeping they have with regards to your computer use.

What irritates me is that this is Google's core business and if you're not interested in Google products because of that, then who the hell cares what you have to say about this product? It's like if Google launched a volleyball net and the top comment was something like, "Well, I don't have a house or a backyard and so I won't buy this because I won't have space for it!"

Well then clearly you weren't going to buy this product in the first place, so what use is your opinion here? Why would Google make a laptop that has nothing to do with the rest of their business? Is the parent comment suggesting that Google should make a general purpose laptop that doesn't integrate with Google accounts?

On top of all of this, it's not like the laptop becomes a brick in the event that your account would get locked. You can still use it in incognito mode, albeit without Android apps and such.

Furthermore, doesn't this exact same argument apply to Windows 10 with a live.com account login, and Apple with iCloud account logins? Seems to me like the privacy zealots seem to come out stronger against Google.

Re: Google Pixelbook – A High Performance Chromebook

#203

Post by victorhooi »

raesene9 wrote: post #159
victorhooi wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually dissected the authors example above - and they actually don't really help prove his/her point. The first example - was basically fraud, that probably got picked up in hijacking/bot-net detection (based on public statements). The second - I can't comment, as there are no public statements. The third - the author made a public statement, and seems to harbour no ill-will to Google after it was explained to hi…

As responded on the third, a process that relies on the subject being well enough known or connected enough to bypass common process isn't a scalable solution. If someone has to know to e-mail you personally to help fix an issue, that concept doesn't scale to x million accounts. I'm not trying to get at Google specifically here, I'm suggesting that as all the tech. companies move more of people's digital lives to the…

The third - the author had already kickstarted a normal recovery process by https://accounts.google.com/signin/recovery.

However, these things take a while to process.

As I commented elsewhere - if your account got hijacked - the last thing you want is for the hijacked to get back in, via some automated form.

I had to deal with exactly this nightmare scenario for a friend a few months back. Two email accounts, one from Gmail, one from another (unnamed) provider. The hijacker tried to get back in, several times (and did on the other one).

Knowing that the bar is reasonably high that only you yourself can get back in (even if it may take a few days) is very reassuring.

Trust me - if it's between waiting 2-3 days, versus having somebody get back in, pilfer all your email and commit identity fraud, I would pick the former more secure any day of the year.

Re: Google Pixelbook – A High Performance Chromebook

#204

Post by methodin »

My crappy Chromebook is honestly the most pleasant out of all the laptops I have ever used. I would like to be able to load software on it but that's it's only shortcoming. ChromeOS is actually the best overall experience for me - especially since I do most of my work via SSH and vim. Not sure this solves much for me unless dev-mode linux is first-class, then it might be worth looking at.

Re: Google Pixelbook – A High Performance Chromebook

#205

Post by victorhooi »

tehwebguy wrote: post #139
victorhooi wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for bringing that up. However, te truth is often a bit more nuanced (although it doesn't make for as good headlines). Dissecting your three examples. In the first case, (and based on their own statements) those people were buying up phones by the hundreds, shipping them to a single physical address and then scalping over the internet. It's basically fraud. So yes, they probably got picked up by an automated al…

Perhaps there was something specific about that specific instance that made it fraud, but reselling a phone isn't fraud by default. Not interested in needing to beg a horrible algorithm or become internet famous just to get ahold of a human that might turn my digital life back on.

I'm only speaking in general terms here, not specifics.

However, reselling phones is usually against the ToS of pretty much every retailer. This isn't unique to Google. Here are our ToS - https://store.google.com/intl/en-US_us/about/device-terms.ht....

> You may only purchase Devices for your personal use. You may not commercially resell any Device, but you may give the Device as a gift. Recipients of gifts may need to open and maintain a Google Payments account in order to receive any support offered by Google. These Terms apply to any gift recipient.

I'd like to see you walk into an Apple store, and buy 10 iPhones. Or say, 100?

In fact - Apple even introduced controls to stop scalping of Genius Bar appointments:

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2013/09/12/apple-store-genius-b....

Or say you create 100 email accounts - john001@gmail.com, john002@gmail.com, john003@gmail.com etc. - and have them each buy a phone, and ship them to a single physical address.

It's certainly possible to see how this would come across as hijacking or botnet fraud.

Re: Google Pixelbook – A High Performance Chromebook

#206

Post by bubblethink »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #183
bubblethink wrote: post #56

I hate this trend of dumbing down product specifications. I don't know who started it (probably Apple?), but everyone does it now. Like what fucking i5 or i7 processor ? Is the storage soldered even for the nvme option ? It doesn't help that Intel keeps playing tricks with their naming either. i7 used to be quad core, then it became dual core for thin laptops. Now they are back to low freq quad core in some SKUs. For…

Get used to it. No one cares about which i5 or i7 beyond a small niche (which is likely concentrated on HN). There are probably technical specs someone, or you can wait for a teardown, to get the hard core specifications but the target market for those is so tiny no one is catering to them anymore.

There is some confusion over what the target market for chromebooks is. There is a big rumored push towards enterprise with support for virtualization etc. So the cores, RAM, storage etc. all matter for that use case, which is within their ecosystem. Outside that ecosystem, as an end user, I care about specs to know if it's a good linux laptop.

Re: Google Pixelbook – A High Performance Chromebook

#207

Post by victorhooi »

dabockster wrote: post #109
victorhooi wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment seems like a troll...lol. I'm not sure how a Chromebook could "wipe out the network". In fact, if anything, I'd argue it's less likely to than a Window laptop since Chromebooks are so secure out of the box. I bought one for my mother a few years ago, and honestly, not having to go over and clean up malware periodically, or ever do Windows Updates, or ever worry about her clicking on dodgy links on the in…

I'm not talking about a literal Chromebook. It is a figure of speech. And it's spelled "troll".

Sure, let me fix the typo.

However, I'm still unclear about your main point.

If you're not talking about a "literal" Chromebook...what are you talking about?

Re: Google Pixelbook – A High Performance Chromebook

#208

Post by seanmcdirmid »

gressquel wrote: post #174
busterarm wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was your gmail alternative? I tried to switch everything to Lavabit, but then a month later the Snowden thing happened...that didn't last (and I'm still out all that money)

outlook.com is excellent. I used the free version for years, now I have bought premium.

Their spam filter has been horrible lately. I've been on outlook.com ever since it was rebranded away from hotmail, and it was OK until recently. But the spam has gotten so horrible in the last few months, I'm trying to decide what to use next (given that I don't live in china anymore, I have choices).

It is also missing a lot of features compared to gmail, while the web UI is a bit clunky. These aren't real breakers for me (spam is); but it is hard to recommend. Is premium much better?

Re: Google Pixelbook – A High Performance Chromebook

#209

Post by eweise »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #163
joshuacc wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I uploaded full seasons of a very old 90s cartoon and my account is disabled. I cannot even purchase YouTube TV to try it out. You violated the law and their (rather reasonable in this case) terms of service and are shocked to find they'd rather not do business with you?

> You violated the law and their (rather reasonable in this case) terms of service and are shocked to find they'd rather not do business with you? When I worked in the Intelligence Community I had to go through multiple FBI investigations and polygraphs. Every single one of them asked me about laws I may have violated in the past. One of the agents even said (paraphrased, of course) "Maybe you downloaded some movies?…

Is downloading movies illegal?

Re: Google Pixelbook – A High Performance Chromebook

#210

Post by Ao7bei3s »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #163
joshuacc wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I uploaded full seasons of a very old 90s cartoon and my account is disabled. I cannot even purchase YouTube TV to try it out. You violated the law and their (rather reasonable in this case) terms of service and are shocked to find they'd rather not do business with you?

> You violated the law and their (rather reasonable in this case) terms of service and are shocked to find they'd rather not do business with you? When I worked in the Intelligence Community I had to go through multiple FBI investigations and polygraphs. Every single one of them asked me about laws I may have violated in the past. One of the agents even said (paraphrased, of course) "Maybe you downloaded some movies?…

> One of the agents even said (paraphrased, of course) "Maybe you downloaded some movies?

What's the correct answer?

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