Guzba

We should probably let researchers know to check their results against your observed experience to ensure they line up.

There are people inside Google that must have thought this review and communication process was a Good Idea. It wouldn't have gotten built otherwise.

Will these individuals continue to be putting Good Ideas into production indefinitely or is there some sort of immune response inside Google?

I have no interest in a scape goat or anything like that, I'm just curious if there's a way to incorporate the real-world consequences of choices like this into who is empowered to make choices going forward.

Chrome can load unpacked extensions by enabling Developer mode in about://extensions. Google will definitely get up in your business if you try to distribute an extension on your website this way though.

This comment is trite. No Android app, no iPhone app, no Google search listing, no Amazon product page, no Stream/Epic store listing, no browser extensions, no cloud servers. Can you rely on an internet provider or should you lay your own fiber? What technology product are you going to make that relies on nothing? HN deserves better comments imo.

It does seem somewhat disingenuous to not mention the VPN usage in your first comment. Makes reasonable people wonder what other details you're leaving out, even if there are none.

This was low-key shocking to learn. What if this all happened while he was on vacation?

Thanks for the feedback here. It strikes me as a little crazy I may be infuriating you with a change and never even know if that was something I had to do?

An optional permission seems 100% reasonable.

We use localhost to communicate with our desktop application which is commonly installed alongside our extension by users.

An example of how we use this communication channel is preventing both our extension and desktop apps from showing notifications on the same computer. Our apps are all about notifications so this would get unacceptable very fast. We ping our local desktop app via localhost to see if it can manage the notification, and show it with our extension if it isn't running.

Maybe if we limit it to just the local port we use? Seems like it can't hurt to try that too.

We never use plaintext http so that is a reasonable thing to remove for our first-part domain (pushbullet.com).

We use localhost to communicate with our desktop application. An example is preventing both our extension and desktop apps from showing notifications on the same computer (our apps are all about notifications so this would get unacceptable very fast). Maybe if we limit it to just the local port we use? Seems like it can't hurt to try that too.

I really did try to call out the benefits that happened when I was told to "give permissions another look". Like all software, needs change and I was able to make a great improvement.

The issue I have is that it's not clear if I'm even addressing the correct issue(s). If I don't make the Correct change, all other changes are irrelevant since they'll never get published.

Agreed. I really did see benefit to the changes I made that reduced our permissions requested based on the initial email we received from Google. When even that was rejected though, I kind of got slammed with a "well.... what do I do now?".

Parent comment seemed to connect the topic of loneliness to wall flowers and shy people, implying they are lonely. Parent then explained that trying to engage with them is difficult, which may explain why they are lonely.

You have offered explanations for why they are difficult to engage with. This seems to miss the point. If they are lonely because they are difficult to engage with, excuses are not relevant or compassionate. What might be a solution?

"global sunlight conditions will change drastically" is an interesting way of saying near extinction level event.

People getting letters / emails about verifying their identity with a company would be a perfect outcome depending on your goal.

If someone took a leaked dataset, like for example the Dixons Carphone leak with 1.2 million records with personal info, then generated 1.2 million letters using the template from this repo, that would make for an interesting DoS attack.

With that in mind, a big blast is also easy to filter out.

Perhaps, instead of sending them all at once, you sent a random number from 1 to 100 per day, every day, indefinitely. No way to filter out the bogus requests, forced work for the company, and unknown consequences of having these people emailed about their private information usage. Chaotic good or chaotic evil? I have my opinion.

Nice equivocating at the end:

“No matter what nation you’re teaching in, there are going to be things that we need to be thoughtful about,” he said. “Even in American classrooms, there are things you cannot discuss.”

There is so much wrong with this.

Do you think HN knows the future (or anyone does for that matter)? Flattering if so, but nonsense.

You say you sold all of your BCH, but hearing one person say it will go up makes you want it back? You are gambling with stuff you don't understand and doing it based on rumors.

I think people tend to memorize how they use software so randomizing / frequently changing your UI is superbly bad, in that I agreeing with your point and that part of the article.

The trouble I still see is that most software is barely held together built on top of stuff that is even worse. From my experience, if it is running on Android or Windows, it is 100% guaranteed you will have an issue you didn't predict because some set of users have done something crazy to their device. I guess you could always leave these things broken for a while, but it would reflect poorly and is hard to convince others that "oh this crash is ok".

I guess tl;dr I think most software is broken and always broken and updating more or less frequently wouldn't really change the brokenness for users, but the frequent updates at least give them hope fixes are coming and their feedback matters. Knowing you'll have this bug forever makes any alternative attractive.

Whether or not software can be finished with 0 bugs is sort of irrelevant. Windows and other software users use most will basically never be "finished".

The updates that are causing the fever are not just "bugfixes", they are the current state of living software--always expanding and improving (at least in intent). The fact users see software that hasn't been updated as dead is a reflection of their learned expectations. And they are correct, it likely is dead in the "no longer improving as my other software is" sense.

The real issue I have is how shitty most update processes are. Thanks for rebooting my PC Win 10, yes Sublime Text, please tell me again in a dialog that there is an update, etc. Some apps have done much better here like Chrome and Discord, but it is not an easy thing to build.

I kind of agree, but at the same time, it hasn't stopped me from having a great time. Maybe it really just doesn't matter? Sort of like worrying about the 0-60 time for a Prius or something like that. Just the wrong metric. 30fps 900p seems to be enough.

I don't think antifragile works in the parent comment, robust would be better.

As for a definition, antifragile things get stronger from abuse--like harming muslces during a workout so they grow back stronger. If they were just robust, it would be like machinery (no healing / strengthening).

I hope so.

The Google Assistant integration is arguably the killer feature of the app. End-to-end encryption would delete it, thus it is not the default.

Aw, it isn't? I respect your opinion a lot so I would like to know more about this.

For those that agree with this, I have a simple question.

If not Electron, how should one build a desktop app for Windows today? It seems the correct way is to use .NET and WPF if you want to take Microsoft's word for it. I've done this and it's installed on on 100k+ machines. In my experience, WPF is horrifically slow for users and uses just as much or more memory than Electron.

With that in mind, I don't really see how Electron has any downsides at least on Windows, and has plenty of upsides: build apps that respond to input much faster using a more familiar set of tools (JS, HTML, CSS). No .NET dependency that makes the install process a nightmare. No need for a custom update component (always very complicated, even for a super simple one) since Electron can just load remote resources. No need to worry about Admin privileges. Better support for monitor densities. Much better text rendering. So many things. I think Electron is saving Windows desktop app development, not killing it.

Well, that's sort of missing the point. If you have a fully static front end, you put in S3 and never ever worry about it again. Literally ever. Then, you have a json api that both your website and any mobile apps talk to. Makes websites and apps into the same api consumer model. Takes the number of moving pieces down quite a bit actually.

A person gains weight because they intake more calories than they expend. Certainly.

A room gets more crowded when more people enter than exit. Obviously true.

Neither of these statements tell you why that is happening though, and that is important thing. So, why are people eating more calories? Or, since the articles says they aren't, could the sources of calories matter? (They do.)

This almost certainly isn't true, it's far more likely you've only noticed it when it worked. Every other time, when it didn't, the comments were buried at the bottom of the article.

I work on an extension for Chrome, Opera, Safari, and Firefox that's pretty widely used. Firefox (Jetpack) is so different from the rest that I basically hate working on it.

I get that some people may love XUL and whatever, but having never used it, I can't really comment. All I do know is that Jetpack (which Firefox has been pushing) is a sorry excuse for a way to build extensions after you've worked with Chrome. I really hope WebExtensions makes my life easier soon.

Nope, we just let you add friends in the app from your contact list. (If you add them, then we do get their name and email so we can put them on your friend list.)