Comment by xlii | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xlii | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Well I’m usually browsing for development tools & such and some of them are advertised as an out of store downloads (which would be preferable as I prefer Chromium). You did prompt be to check how hard it is though, so allow me to get back to you in a few ;)

Edit:

I didn’t go through manual process but based on this (rather recent) Adblock guide [1] it’s not very hard.

Of course one could argue that “developer mode” is deterrent enough but - as for contrast - in order to get state mandated esignature to work I had to install some sketchy 3rd party system extensions on MacOS. On Windows it almost felt like malware (as some of the security settings had to be disabled in order for Java installers to run).

My point is - sure Chrome might have secure golden path but people are lured into skipping a lot for freebies/weird requirements and thus permission dialogue should be more informative.

[1]: https://helpcenter.getadblock.com/hc/en-us/articles/97385388...

I guess it depends on what you mean by "difficult".

Chrome is unfortunately limited here by the security of the OS. No popular desktop OSes have application isolation: all apps have the same permissions. Any app can write to any other apps' storage.

This means that if Chrome makes sideloading too difficult, developers will just tell users to run their native code which will hack into Chrome, making even understanding what extensions users have or uninstalling them impossible. Sideloading on desktop OSes has to be hard enough to discourage most users but easy enough that developers like adblock don't start looking for an even bigger hammer.

This is what I meant by delicate balance of incentives.

More info here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4954915

I absolutely understand and I agree with you. I suppose you have much more data and probably research. But on the other hand I believe Google also has literally infinite amount of developers.

Thus, it should be easy to classify and make that specific dialog more visible - especially when side-loading.

I think it definitely is hard job to reach consensus on all the fronts.

macOS clearly has file system isolation though. Sandboxes apps can’t write/read anything outside without an explicit permission.

Sure but it's still possible to install non-sandboxed software. What Chrome would need is protection from _other_ software, not limits on itself.

It's true that as MacOS continues to discourage non-sandboxed software, Chrome can make sideloading more cumbersome to match.

For some programs sandboxing can work perfectly fine, but for others it can result in anything between noticable UX degradation and a major PITA, because there are enough workflows out there that can't really be sensibly made to work with an "every file access must go through an official 'File open'/'File save' dialogue (or something comparable, like drag-and-drop, or launching a certain program with a certain file)" model.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com