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At this point, the only think keeping me on Chrome/Chromium is their dev tools. After the 'Ok Google' binary blob and now this shit, I've just about had it. At

by joesmo 11y ago

At this point, the only think keeping me on Chrome/Chromium is their dev tools. After the 'Ok Google' binary blob and now this shit, I've just about had it. At the very least, there should be an option to unblock sites permanently to fix this. There is absolutely no reason why I should have to turn off all Phishing & malware alerts just because Google suddenly got a paycheck from the MPAA/RIAA. Whatever their reason is, it doesn't matter, as it leads to unsafe browsing regardless. Way to go Google!

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
mgraczyk 11y ago
Could you elaborate on what upset you about the OK Google blob? Assuming you're using Chrome rather than Chromium, the whole thing was a literal non-event (nothing new had happened, nothing changed).
- joesmo 11y ago
  It bothered me because I can't use Chromium to get away from such a stupid feature and the huge security hole / risk that is its implementation despite the fact that that is the whole point of Chromium's existence and OSS status. It also bothered me because while the stated purpose of the blob was atrocious, there's no way to know that it didn't do any other malicious tasks.
  - mgraczyk 11y ago
    Opt-in hotword detection is "atrocious"? I'm confused by your use of that word. Also it has been removed from Chromium now, so in fact you can use Chromium to get away from the feature...
belgianguy 11y ago
Do a Google search on "Jim Hood vs Google", see who he colluded with, and then come read your own post here again. In short: The MPAA/RIAA hates Google. To top it off, you name Chrome/Chromium as if it's the same product, and then go off on a tangent about a binary blob (voice recognition) that was included. Other comments would have gotten away with that, was it not that the whole issue here _is_ the distinction between Chrome and Chromium, the latter being an FOSS project, which has no place for closed source binary blobs. (And that was the underlying issue, not its functionality.) Some people need to be protected against themselves, for some this protection is a site block, for others it's reading more before writing drivel in the HN comment section. Link for the lazy: http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2015/04/11/jim-hood-attorney-general-google/25638823/ http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2015/04/11/jim-hood-... The block was put in place because of malware being served by those domains, blocking them is by far the easiest response and _also_ the most motivating for its hosts to undertake action. Occam's Razor seems to agree that this was a bad advertising being blocked rather than "ebil guggle conspirucy".
- joesmo 11y ago
  No, it's just a shitty Google product. It's not a conspiracy. That's my gripe with them not the stupid bullshit you're spewing. And honestly, as I wrote before, I don't care why they're doing it because regardless of the reason, it's unethical. The binary blob in OSS is unethical as is censoring sites, which is clearly what's happening here. If those domains had malware, why block them now and not in the many years previously. The sites' use of adware hasn't changed in years. Why block some domains going to a site but not others? It's clear that it was not done for security reasons and the fact that the list can't be modified one by one, is clear evidence google doesn't care about security. A company that requires me to turn off security to access legitimate sites does not care about security. Both of these issues are security issues, and they're both legitimate reasons by themselves to seek out a browser from a vendor that actually cares about security.
  - dang 11y ago
    > the stupid bullshit you're spewing This and other comments you've posted break HN's civility rule. Please read the guidelines and follow them when posting here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
bitmapbrother 11y ago
You sound like one of those people that latch on to those shoot from the hip blog posts without doing any analysis of the issue yourself or visiting a site that does it for you. That binary blob was inactive and had to be proactively turned on in the settings screen. So was it really an issue? No, but the vocal minority of anti-Google people made sure to spoon feed the run of the mill and non tech savvy media outlets about it. As for turning off all phishing and malware alerts - why would you? Google gave you a warning about a site. If you would like to ignore it then click the link below and continue onto the site. If you would like to use a browser that doesn't care then go ahead and switch.
- McGlockenshire 11y ago
  > That binary blob was inactive and had to be proactively turned on in the settings screen. So was it really an issue? No, but ... Just to be clear about a thing, there was an issue. The automatic download of the extension occurred in Chromium, the FLOSS software around which Chrome is built. Chromium is shipped in a multitude of linux distributions, including Debian. Debian takes their FLOSS standards very seriously. The automatic downloading of a binary blob by Chromium was a FLOSS ethics issue. Google went on to address the issue by not just removing the automatic download, but ensuring that the remaining hooks to enable the audio search feature were removed. That's the entirety of the actual, real controversy. The rest is made up assumptions by people that fail to understand Hanlon's Razor: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
  - bitmapbrother 11y ago
    The "actual, real controversy" wasn't the story, though. It was the forced fed made up controversy that was the real story.
- joesmo 11y ago
  Thanks for attacking my character. Right, of course having a mysterious unidentified binary blob in what's supposed to be free software isn't really an issue. What a load of shit. Enough said. As for malware alerts, I expect them to be accurate, otherwise they're not useful at all. I do not expect them to be used for censorship purposes, as clearly is the case here. Now it's up to me to figure out which sites might be potentially negative. That makes Chrome a shitty browser and I think switching seems to be the only option at this time. There are other browsers that don't do this, so comparatively, they are superior, because they do not ask me to turn off all the malware alerts just to get to the sites I want without being censored.
paulirish 11y ago
I work on the devtools so happy to hear you like those, at least. :) A few items I can offer, none of it inside knowledge, though. As a few others have mentioned, MPAA/RIAA's enemy #1 is Google based on the news/leaks, so it doesn't appear that Google is trying to appease them. The updates at the bottom of the TF post indicate two of the torrent sites have already addressed whatever the malware warning was for, and the blocking has been lifted. AFAIK, Firefox, Chrome and IE (in some capacities) use Google's Safe Browsing data to inform blacklists like this: https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/developers_guide_v3 https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/developers_guide... It sometimes fucks up, but usually gets resolved quickly. I clarified a few details on the binary blob issue last week, as the details were somewhat ambiguous: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500922#c44 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500922#c... Extra details on how hotwording works were provided here: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=504002 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=504002

by joesmo 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

mgraczyk 11y ago

Could you elaborate on what upset you about the OK Google blob? Assuming you're using Chrome rather than Chromium, the whole thing was a literal non-event (nothing new had happened, nothing changed).

joesmo 11y ago
It bothered me because I can't use Chromium to get away from such a stupid feature and the huge security hole / risk that is its implementation despite the fact that that is the whole point of Chromium's existence and OSS status. It also bothered me because while the stated purpose of the blob was atrocious, there's no way to know that it didn't do any other malicious tasks.
- mgraczyk 11y ago
  Opt-in hotword detection is "atrocious"? I'm confused by your use of that word. Also it has been removed from Chromium now, so in fact you can use Chromium to get away from the feature...

belgianguy 11y ago

Do a Google search on "Jim Hood vs Google", see who he colluded with, and then come read your own post here again. In short: The MPAA/RIAA hates Google. To top it off, you name Chrome/Chromium as if it's the same product, and then go off on a tangent about a binary blob (voice recognition) that was included. Other comments would have gotten away with that, was it not that the whole issue here _is_ the distinction between Chrome and Chromium, the latter being an FOSS project, which has no place for closed source binary blobs. (And that was the underlying issue, not its functionality.) Some people need to be protected against themselves, for some this protection is a site block, for others it's reading more before writing drivel in the HN comment section. Link for the lazy: http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2015/04/11/jim-hood-attorney-general-google/25638823/ http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2015/04/11/jim-hood-... The block was put in place because of malware being served by those domains, blocking them is by far the easiest response and _also_ the most motivating for its hosts to undertake action. Occam's Razor seems to agree that this was a bad advertising being blocked rather than "ebil guggle conspirucy".

joesmo 11y ago
No, it's just a shitty Google product. It's not a conspiracy. That's my gripe with them not the stupid bullshit you're spewing. And honestly, as I wrote before, I don't care why they're doing it because regardless of the reason, it's unethical. The binary blob in OSS is unethical as is censoring sites, which is clearly what's happening here. If those domains had malware, why block them now and not in the many years previously. The sites' use of adware hasn't changed in years. Why block some domains going to a site but not others? It's clear that it was not done for security reasons and the fact that the list can't be modified one by one, is clear evidence google doesn't care about security. A company that requires me to turn off security to access legitimate sites does not care about security. Both of these issues are security issues, and they're both legitimate reasons by themselves to seek out a browser from a vendor that actually cares about security.
- dang 11y ago
  > the stupid bullshit you're spewing This and other comments you've posted break HN's civility rule. Please read the guidelines and follow them when posting here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

bitmapbrother 11y ago

You sound like one of those people that latch on to those shoot from the hip blog posts without doing any analysis of the issue yourself or visiting a site that does it for you. That binary blob was inactive and had to be proactively turned on in the settings screen. So was it really an issue? No, but the vocal minority of anti-Google people made sure to spoon feed the run of the mill and non tech savvy media outlets about it. As for turning off all phishing and malware alerts - why would you? Google gave you a warning about a site. If you would like to ignore it then click the link below and continue onto the site. If you would like to use a browser that doesn't care then go ahead and switch.

McGlockenshire 11y ago
> That binary blob was inactive and had to be proactively turned on in the settings screen. So was it really an issue? No, but ... Just to be clear about a thing, there was an issue. The automatic download of the extension occurred in Chromium, the FLOSS software around which Chrome is built. Chromium is shipped in a multitude of linux distributions, including Debian. Debian takes their FLOSS standards very seriously. The automatic downloading of a binary blob by Chromium was a FLOSS ethics issue. Google went on to address the issue by not just removing the automatic download, but ensuring that the remaining hooks to enable the audio search feature were removed. That's the entirety of the actual, real controversy. The rest is made up assumptions by people that fail to understand Hanlon's Razor: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
- bitmapbrother 11y ago
  The "actual, real controversy" wasn't the story, though. It was the forced fed made up controversy that was the real story.
joesmo 11y ago
Thanks for attacking my character. Right, of course having a mysterious unidentified binary blob in what's supposed to be free software isn't really an issue. What a load of shit. Enough said. As for malware alerts, I expect them to be accurate, otherwise they're not useful at all. I do not expect them to be used for censorship purposes, as clearly is the case here. Now it's up to me to figure out which sites might be potentially negative. That makes Chrome a shitty browser and I think switching seems to be the only option at this time. There are other browsers that don't do this, so comparatively, they are superior, because they do not ask me to turn off all the malware alerts just to get to the sites I want without being censored.

paulirish 11y ago

I work on the devtools so happy to hear you like those, at least. :) A few items I can offer, none of it inside knowledge, though. As a few others have mentioned, MPAA/RIAA's enemy #1 is Google based on the news/leaks, so it doesn't appear that Google is trying to appease them. The updates at the bottom of the TF post indicate two of the torrent sites have already addressed whatever the malware warning was for, and the blocking has been lifted. AFAIK, Firefox, Chrome and IE (in some capacities) use Google's Safe Browsing data to inform blacklists like this: https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/developers_guide_v3 https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/developers_guide... It sometimes fucks up, but usually gets resolved quickly. I clarified a few details on the binary blob issue last week, as the details were somewhat ambiguous: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500922#c44 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500922#c... Extra details on how hotwording works were provided here: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=504002 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=504002