Gmail adds video chat for Linux | Hacker News Reader

Gmail adds video chat for Linux

gmailblog.blogspot.com

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This package installs a cron job that affects how apt functions on your system. You're basically giving google root on your machine.

Yeah, a closed source application installed as root, with the express purpose of accessing your webcam and microphone. What could go wrong?

Here's the header of the /etc/crontab.daily/google-talkplugin file. I'm not that ninja with my cron-tabbing, but doesn't this do exactly what it says?

http://pastebin.com/4etPxNWC

Yes, and it's pretty much harmless in itself, but since when does installing one package (esp. from a third party with no verification beforehand) install a new apt key into your keyring (thus allowing all packages signed by that key, no matter what they are) and reconfigure the package manager itself? It's ludicrous.

It's probably a mistake, and they'll put some prompts and options in once they realize Linux users don't like giving root so freely.

They're probably accustomed to trusting their own software with root, so didn't even think about it.

It's not a mistake: the development deb for Chrome did exactly this - installed the repository key and a cron job to "protect" the apt-sources entry. Of course it's not really doing this secretly, in that you can read about it in the post-install script before you run dpkg, but I agree it doesn't feel right.

Also, can't this be said of any package you install through the package manager? If you install it as root, then in principle you're giving root access to whatever is in the package. If you don't like it, there's always a way to run it with ordinary permissions (but the extra fiddling to get that working may be hairy) or under mandatory access control (definitely hairy).

It's probably a mistake

Nah, it was probably just developed for internal Google consumption.

If you run their code in any way you're already giving them control of your system. Even if you're one of the vanishingly small number of people who use a separate admin account they're getting full control of your account if they want it.

Installing a repo & apt key is a good sign that they're playing by the rules rather than trying something sneaky.

Video chat via Google credentials has already been working for some time using the Empathy messaging client, without the need for a dedicated one.

Unless I'm mistaken it's not a dedicated client. It's a dedicated web plugin that enables video chat within your browser at gmail.com.

Does anyone know why this took so long?

Tried it out and works very well on first run. Installed the .deb package and restarted Chrome.

I cant quite tell from the posts, but with gears they got to experiment with creating new web standards through a plugin, have they tried to do that with this and html5 devices? that would be awesome news.

How would you go about accessing the mic and cam with html5?

Its very barebones, but http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-device/ is in the works, google could / hopefully have made progress towards making that more solid.

They are working on it but it's still a long way to go. html5-device depends on other standards that don't even exists yet (as you can read on your own link).

yeh thats pretty much what I said, thats why I was asking if anyone knew if this work made its way into contributing to the standard?

Cool. What codecs and streaming protocol do they use?

I think everything runs over XMPP just like Google talk.

Doesn't work for me - crashes every time I try to start a video call.

Problem reported to google, will see what happens.

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