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Google Pixelbook – A High Performance Chromebook

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Re: Google Pixelbook – A High Performance Chromebook

#241

Post by jlarocco »

victorhooi wrote: post #126
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #66

I think a major issue is what happens if Google locks your account for some reason. There have been instances in the past where Google has locked the account of a user for some TOS violations. http://m.gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/google-pixel-reseller... http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/1/jordan-b-peters... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-21/one-statistics-prof... Given that Google has a propensity…

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…

Exactly the type of Google apologist FUD I would expect from a Google employee.

Google is not at all transparent about how or why accounts get closed, and their support when it happens is utterly terrible. The fact that the links in the parent posts had to resort to PR shaming is proof of that. Most people don't have the online following to pull that off.

In reality, an average person who loses access to their Google account is screwed, and that should be an important consideration when looking at Google products.

Re: Google Pixelbook – A High Performance Chromebook

#242

Post by e12e »

sushisource wrote: post #226
milesokeefe wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one option: https://guacamole.incubator.apache.org/

Wow, that's really neat. Surprised I've never heard of it.

Recent discussion here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15389727

Re: Google Pixelbook – A High Performance Chromebook

#244

Post by raesene9 »

victorhooi wrote: post #193
raesene9 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

erm from https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DHz1WNEXcAEVEHr.jpg "I spoke to the leadership there and they restored accounts" doesn't sound a lot like the standard support process to me.

AFAIK, the two things are orthogonal. My understanding was he'd already kickstarted a normal recovery process https://accounts.google.com/signin/recovery And he wanted more details, so I assume he spoke to somebody up the escalation chain in our support org, who gave him more details.

that's not what https://www.inc.com/sonya-mann/salil-mehta-free-speech.html says about it.

"Mehta was lucky. The public outcry and press attention prompted Google to manually review his case."

"It could have turned out differently. Without his impressive credentials and far-reaching network, Mehta never would have found out why his Google account was shut down. He wouldn't have been able to access his correspondence or restore his blog, which he says has been read by the likes of Elon Musk and Warren Buffett."

Re: Google Pixelbook – A High Performance Chromebook

#245

Post by morganvachon »

victorhooi wrote: post #233
morganvachon wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 algorithm that looks for hijacking/CC fraud or bot-nets." No, it's not "basically fraud". Yes, it violates Google's terms, and banning the customers from usin…

Thanks for bringing that up. I suspect you and I are talking about two different things however. I'm using fraud as an ordinary layman would use it - that is - deliberate deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain. In this case, I think most people would agree that spawning up multiple dummy accounts (e.g. john001@gmail.com, john002@gmail.com, john003@gmail.com) and then using them to get around ordering restriction…

"I'm using fraud as an ordinary layman would use it"

Fair enough, my point was more that I was so surprised you were willing to stick your neck out by officially speaking for Google here, especially regarding legal matters.

No, I'm not a lawyer, but I do have nearly 20 years in law enforcement and LE-related work, enough to have a bit of an informed take on things like this.

I do feel that Google was wrong to permanently and irrevocably delete their entire Google account rather than simply banning their account from using Fi. It's Google's prerogative, but it told me everything I needed to know about them as a company. Suddenly I was acutely aware that if I were to violate, say, YouTube's TOS by uploading something that I thought was fair use when it wasn't, I could permanently lose my entire online life. That's quite simply unacceptable.

Re: Google Pixelbook – A High Performance Chromebook

#246

Post by narrowrail »

sp332 wrote: post #228
eweise wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is downloading movies illegal?

They can sue for copyright infringement, but since the damages are tiny, they generally don't bother. What's different since the DMCA is that "commercial scale" infringement is now a criminal offense even if you're not making any money. And if you're uploading, say by using a bittorrent client which uploads while you're "downloading", then they could make a criminal case.

Well, given the question asked, we need to be clear that the legality of downloading copyrighted content varies by country. Also, the DMCA[0] has been around for 21 years, so it's not exactly a recent change. The last time the industry went after a torrenter, it was Hunger Games (2010), IIRC; I always attributed to the Streisand affect[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

Re: Google Pixelbook – A High Performance Chromebook

#247

Post by ac29 »

frahs wrote: post #47
wazanator wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm willing to bet crouton runs on it out of the box so you can get a dev environment up fast.

But the developer mode notification on bootup kills the laptop :( It warns you that you're in developer mode, makes a beep, and prompts you to push spacebar if you want to turn off dev mode, deleting everything on your computer. Maybe you know to never make this mistake. Maybe you almost never turn off your computer. All that needs to happen is for you to reboot the computer once (say, it ran out of batteries while y…

>But the developer mode notification on bootup kills the laptop :(

Yeah, you can turn this off via boot flags, and even replace the bitmaps for the warning so its a little less garish. Requires removing the write protect screw, though. See: https://mrchromebox.tech/#fwscript

Re: Google Pixelbook – A High Performance Chromebook

#248

Post by pa7ch »

colemickens wrote: post #90

I'm disappointed that the 16GB models aren't ready and that they didn't announce (or open up any additional documentation) about crosvm or Project Termina. They didn't even highlight that this is the first Chromebook to have a non-Chromebook keyboard... The keyboard looks aimed directly at developers. I really hope the Chromium wiki releases some new documentation soon. (If anyone has gleaned more details about Termi…

I've been trying to track the termina project (along with the KVM and vm_launcher bits). From what I can glean: termina is a minimal flavor chromeOS designed to be run with the vm_launcher that will support OCI based containers. I have no idea how the UI will look around it or be exposed. The virtio wayland stuff requires support from the guest VM and termina has it. Tatl and tael are just the x64 and arm flavors of termina.

So as a developer you could easily spin up your own VM (I guess without a GUI) to mess around with, but use a single instance of termina to launch a bunch of container based linux apps for yourself so you don't run out of ram launching tons of vms.

This is a bit of speculation on my part mostly from picking through docs and commits messages. I'm not sure how it will all come together. I'd be completely sold on a NVMe pixelbook once I see some announcements or commitment to something like this for developers.

Re: Google Pixelbook – A High Performance Chromebook

#249

Post by JCzynski »

alkonaut wrote: post #30
duxup wrote: post #22

As a fan of my Chromebook Plus ... I'm kinda lost on what more you do at that price / performance other than being able to multitask a few more apps and tabs. It's not like there is much in the way of high performance demanding applications on ChromeOS.

Either these apps are already predicted to arrive or google will make sure they do. I can't see why Google would want people to do computing on their own machines though. This looks a lot like an attempt to grab some would be MacBook buyers that are unhappy with the latest models.

>I can't see why Google would want people to do computing on their own machines though.

https://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/unable-to-set-defaul...

Re: Google Pixelbook – A High Performance Chromebook

#250

Post by narrowrail »

notheguyouthink wrote: post #182
Zetaphor wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going through the same process, and am currently enjoying ProtonMail.

Ah yes, this is the encrypted email provider I saw on HN a while back (I mentioned in another comment of mine, but at the time forgot the name of ProtonMail) . When it's time for email renewal, 1 or 2 yrs down the line, I'll be looking at ProtonMail :)

If most people you email with use Gmail, what's the point of an "encrypted email" provider? Why not just use PGP and stay with your current provider? Thunderbird+enigmail is the way to do meaningful encryption and it is provider agnostic.
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