3 ms·

I see the idealism in your post and I agree with you 100%. 100%! But every time I got to my grandmother's she has a thousand "default search ad engine this" an

I see the idealism in your post and I agree with you 100%. 100%! But every time I got to my grandmother's she has a thousand "default search ad engine this" and "ad injection improvement that" extensions that I need to remove. Those search engines have exactly the same homepage as google, to the colours, except the logo is square, not round. There is no way she can know. It might just be they ran the numbers and my grandmother's not the only one. I think maybe, just this once, reality should trump idealism. Let's keep a very close eye on them. But for now, "I'll allow it." Ps: I know that "if there are unsigned extensions on your computer, you have bigger problems", but it's my grandmother. Security is a moving target, this is the step we take in Jan 2017. If it keeps her safe for a month, that's fine with me. We'll see how the malware adapts in Feb, and react accordingly.

ramingssss 10y ago
Fuck your grandmother Why should I suffer because of her incompetence?
- nothrabannosir 10y ago
  My grandmother is emblematic of "the typical user." It's easy to forget about them, the silent majority. But make no mistake about it: if you work in tech, you owe your life to them. They pay our salaries. We must not forsake them, for they have made us who we are. For every opsec genius such as yourself, there are a thousand opsec impaired such as my grandmother. It is up to us to provide them with a system they can use without having a MSc in computer science. To drive this point home: the real problem in my grandmother's case is not all her grandchildren are adults. They don't understand what "don't download games" means. What is she to do? Not let them use the computer? That would defeat the entire purpose of having one. When the best we can do to make our users use our products safely is to have them not use it at all, you know something is fundamentally wrong. And it's our job to fix that.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
diehiwhie 10y ago
Oh yeah, we here in computer land are soooo sophiscated, even our scare arguments aren't 'think of the children but are 'think of grandma' instead. Hey guess what, whenever a monolithic entity thinks they know best than millions of individuals it stinks of moral exceptionalism, you may consider recalibrating.
- walterbell 10y ago
  Grandmothers need a CAA [1] contract to collect royalties for personality rights deployed in the service of large technology companies. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Artists_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Artists_Agency
  - EpicBlackCrayon 10y ago
    Can you break this one down for me? I'm really trying.
pducks32 10y ago
Totally with you. With my grandparents and even my smart, successful sister they simply live in a different world then we do. They are being tricked (or are too lazy to care or notice) and these moves do help them. We see more and more technology companies doing things to help these users. (Like Apple with the new MBP by girlfriend says it's her favorite computer she has ever owned all of 15 seconds after turning it on). But here if you have developer mode on they should never be allowed to do this. It's one thing to do it to a normal user (though if they really cared they would check to see if the extension was a normal non-spam extensions like this) but when a user as clicked that they are capable of understanding what extensions they have on then Google is in the wrong. Sadly we are on HN are not the majority user of the products we love to discuss.
- derefr 10y ago
  The argument I've read before regarding this is that configuration switch the user can set to permanently suppress this behaviour, malware can also set.

ramingssss 10y ago

Fuck your grandmother Why should I suffer because of her incompetence?

nothrabannosir 10y ago
My grandmother is emblematic of "the typical user." It's easy to forget about them, the silent majority. But make no mistake about it: if you work in tech, you owe your life to them. They pay our salaries. We must not forsake them, for they have made us who we are. For every opsec genius such as yourself, there are a thousand opsec impaired such as my grandmother. It is up to us to provide them with a system they can use without having a MSc in computer science. To drive this point home: the real problem in my grandmother's case is not all her grandchildren are adults. They don't understand what "don't download games" means. What is she to do? Not let them use the computer? That would defeat the entire purpose of having one. When the best we can do to make our users use our products safely is to have them not use it at all, you know something is fundamentally wrong. And it's our job to fix that.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

diehiwhie 10y ago

Oh yeah, we here in computer land are soooo sophiscated, even our scare arguments aren't 'think of the children but are 'think of grandma' instead. Hey guess what, whenever a monolithic entity thinks they know best than millions of individuals it stinks of moral exceptionalism, you may consider recalibrating.

walterbell 10y ago
Grandmothers need a CAA [1] contract to collect royalties for personality rights deployed in the service of large technology companies. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Artists_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Artists_Agency
- EpicBlackCrayon 10y ago
  Can you break this one down for me? I'm really trying.

pducks32 10y ago

Totally with you. With my grandparents and even my smart, successful sister they simply live in a different world then we do. They are being tricked (or are too lazy to care or notice) and these moves do help them. We see more and more technology companies doing things to help these users. (Like Apple with the new MBP by girlfriend says it's her favorite computer she has ever owned all of 15 seconds after turning it on). But here if you have developer mode on they should never be allowed to do this. It's one thing to do it to a normal user (though if they really cared they would check to see if the extension was a normal non-spam extensions like this) but when a user as clicked that they are capable of understanding what extensions they have on then Google is in the wrong. Sadly we are on HN are not the majority user of the products we love to discuss.

derefr 10y ago
The argument I've read before regarding this is that configuration switch the user can set to permanently suppress this behaviour, malware can also set.