victorhooi

So my reading here is that the main issue is Firebase was undercharging customers, due to a bug.

They didn't go back retroactively and ask for back payments, but just started charging them accurately going forward.

Of course, that bill caused shock for some people, as they suddenly realised, "Oh s*it, I'm being charged accurately now, my bills are huge!!!"

In this customer's case, apparently they were also doing something bad with TLS tickets and not setting keep-alives - basically causing them to spam Firebase with connections:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357270

Of course, there's the other issue of a communication breakdown which they said they're working on.

They're not logging any wifi traffic.

They're storing a hash of your MAC address and timestamp - the idea is to log foot traffic over time.

I think this issue has been blown up somewhat by people who don't understand the technical issues.

You do realise this is a government body that runs public transport, right?

Public transport which is notoriously bad at making profits, all around the world.

Sorry, but this comes across as a bit of a silly conspiracy theory, by people who can't be bothered doing basic research.

Hi,

I actually work in the GSuite support organisation you refer to .

Firstly, I'm sorry if you feel that you weren't provided with an appropriate level of support. Or that troubleshooting took inordinate effort/time on your part.

Secondly, you probably know this, but there are multiple tiers of support - and there are meant to fairly well defined paths for escalation. Obviously the front line is very much basic initial troubleshooting for the average user - the products cater to a fairly wide range of technical skills/background.

Feel free to reach out to me anytime if you want - my HN username at <company that makes Chrome> dot com.

It's not about "knowing" better - it's about the fact that I like my job, and have not had clearance to comment publicly on the specifics.

However, the general principals I stated do apply in many cases.

Also - the author of that post has posted a reply:

https://twitter.com/salilstatistics/status/89986397181723852...

Yes, I happen to like my job, so won't comment on specifics =).

However, as a general principal, I've found that Google has very robust protections to protect users from both themselves, and from malicious outside forces.

(Disclaimer: I work for Google).

The author of that post offered an official statement:

https://twitter.com/salilstatistics/status/89986397181723852...

I'm know some of the specifics around this - and whilst I will not comment in any official capacity or on the specifics here, I can offer the following general principles which may be applicable here:

1. More often than not, it's not something nefarious or convoluted, but something very simple. 2. A lot of the things Google does are for the protection of the users themselves (whether from themselves or from outside forces).

(Disclaimer: I work for Google).

Apart from what Ironlink said below, there's also the fact that Google and Apple support mean different things.

For Apple, updates often mean some subset of the full operating system updates, or a crippled version.

Whereas Google updates tend to be all of nothing - meaning if your phone does get the update, it gets all of the features of that particular version.

This seems to have changed somewhat with moving a lot of the stuff to Play Service (and now obviously with Project Treble), so you get the best of both world (in theory)...

Do you have any evidence do suggest this is actually a leading cause of divorce, as opposed to other things like personality clashes, financial stress, etc.

Everything I've read seems to suggest that incompatible personalities and finances are the main reasons people in our society split up - which would seem to debunk your theory.

Are you sure the two are actually related?

AFAIK, Google doesn't mine phone calls, and I'm not aware of any companies that do. Even thinking about it from a technical point of view, it seems quite unlikely.

Right =).

I am a guy, btw, but I'm trying to get my wife (and hopefully daughter) into cycling. So anything I can do to break that stereotype is awesome. But I saw your smiley face, and I get the joke =).

My wife's first bike was some monstrosity from Kmart (a discount big-box store in Australia). It was heavy (> 12kg), and a burden to ride. It seriously discouraged my wife from riding.

However, the next one I got her was much lighter, and I hope make it easier for her to get started.

To be honest, I never considered electric bikes much, but I might bring it up with her next time.

Personally - I cycle to commute - so lightness is good - but I also do it for exercise, so I do want to pedal. And if you want added weight - it's not hard - just pack some extra water in your backpack =). But you can't go the other way (i.e. shed weight, if you bought a heavy bike).

Fair point =).

Fortunately, I don't race in UCI events, haha.

My understanding was that the rule is around safety - i.e. they didn't want people pushing the limits at the risk of failure. There's calls for it to be scrapped, now that we know more about the limits of carbon fibre.

There's a pretty large difference between shaving 250 grams off your bike weight, versus replacing all your pedalling with an electric motor =).

One will get you banned from the Tour de France - the other will not...

I confess I'm one of the lycra brigade people (they're not all guys!), and have spent money on trying to save those couple of extra grams.

However, for me, I like cycling also for the exercise benefits - and using an electric monitor would remove all those benefits.

Although for somebody who doesn't want to pedal - I think they're great! You get many of the benefits, without arriving as sweaty.

Lol, I'm not even sure how that even works. How exactly does one changes gears or brake, whilst typing on a laptop?

I'm a pretty good cyclist, I commute every day, but even I would probably struggle to use a laptop whilst riding...

I mean, a bike has two wheels, if you stop holding the handlebars, you kinda...topple over?

On the flipside - cars make it pretty easy to use your phone (or heck, laptop, as you say).

I see drivers using their phones several times every single day in Sydney. I'm pretty sure most people would be lying if they told me they didn't see it either.

The CDC and NHTSA's has webpages devoted to this trend:

https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving

https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/distracted_driving/in...

We're talking several thousand deaths and several hundred thousand injuries every year in the US.

I think you've just supported my point.

You cited a single example of somebody using their phone on a bike, several years ago - and yes, I agree, that was a pretty silly risk (and I hope that person is OK, and didn't do it again).

How often do you see a driver of a car using their phone?

I see it several times every single day in Sydney. I'm pretty sure most people would be lying if they told me they didn't see it either.

Heck, if you want stats - sure, here's the CDC and NHTSA's info on distracted driving:

https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/distracted_driving/in...

Car drivers often don't like to be confronted with how bad a driver they are - but the statistics don't lie. We as humans are shockingly bad at driving (and I drive as well, and I'm well aware of my limitations).

And regarding your SUV vs bike example, may not happen often? I think that's stretching the rules of incredulity. I'm not going to make any assumptions about your background (e.g. you may not have a technical background). - and I don't have a physics background either - but I believe the basic equation is:

F = m * a

So you take a 2,000 kg SUV.

And a 8 kg bicycle, combined with a 65 kg person = 73 kg.

Even if they were travelling with the same acceleration (doubtful) - the SUV would impart around 30 times the force on the cyclist versus the other way.

Speaking as a cyclist - I've seen drivers do far stupider things every single day =).

Everything from not checking for pedestrians (or cyclists) when turning, not indicating when turning, using a mobile phone whilst driving, trying to squeeze their giant SUV into tiny gaps, changing lanes every 20 metres because they think it will get them "ahead".

There aren't rare occurrences - but things that are illegal - yet the majority of drivers do them (in Sydney), because being an aggressive driver is seen as "normal".

I've even asked friends - one of which has had two accidents related to mobile phone use - why do you talk on the phone? Apparently they consider it a badge of bridge that they're "good enough drivers that they can text and drive"...

And let's be realistic - unless you have a deathwish, most cyclist aren't going to take needless risks. When was the last time you saw a cyclist try and text and ride? Unlike a car, you don't have airbags, or slabs of metal, or crumple zones.

Yet drivers have all of those, and so yes, they do act with more impunity.

Also - when was the last time you saw the headline "Cyclist maims SUV driver in brutal collision"?

However, I absolutely agree with you that unpredicatbility is very bad.

In fact, that's exactly why cyclists ride on the road, and don't weave in/out on footpaths. You pick a straight line, and a constant speed, and stick to it, ignoring all the loutish drivers who beep at you for not riding on the footpath.

And what evidence do you have for it ever having happened?

I'm sorry to be so blunt, but I see a lot of conjecture and wild paranoia - but not much factual reporting.

So to clarify - this is basically a Node.JS wrapper around Chrome headless, right? =_)

Seems pretty awesome.

My use case is to take screenshots of various pages - the docs don't mention the default viewport dimensions, btw.

I have no idea what you mean by "left-coast/euro-sensitive".

However, I will put what lorenzhs said a bit more bluntly.

Please don't go out of your way to be a dick - there is no need for it, and it benefits nobody.

I'm sorry - but this just comes across as wild paranoia - you're basically saying they could read your data - so they must?

That's like saying your school could install cameras in the toilets - so they must have?

Or that your landlord is secretly going through your stuff, because he has keys?

Actually - the Chromium browser project is open source:

https://www.chromium.org/

It's what Google Chrome is built on - you could just compile that if you wanted. (You lose out on a bunch of integrations - but it sounds like that might be what you want, anyhow).

Our of curiosity - how many tabs do you have open?

I have many tabs open, and did notice high memory usage.

I'll reference my comment elsewhere here - tl;dr - they/we aggressively throttle background tasks now:

> Chrome recently introduced some changes to background tabs (to a bit of grumbling from sites that wanted to use background resources/service workers): > https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/03/background.... > And also - they're aggressively throttling background tabs: > http://blog.strml.net/2017/01/chrome-56-now-aggressively-thr.... > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13471543 > I'm on Chrome Canary - and there's been noticeable improvements in memory/responsive wise for a few months now. > I have around 320+ tabs open, spread over 2 Chrome profiles (around 160 per profile).

I want to try Alacritty on OSX - but the big turnoff for me is the lack of binaries.

However, I don't know if that's intentional, because they don't think it's ready yet for people who won't install/compile the whole Rust stack from scratch?

I don't buy it.

Chrome for years and years was sold as lightning fast and secure from malware - and it delivered.

That was why I switched back in the day.

Even today, it has a reputation for being lightning fast, and having a fast pace of development.

In my (admittedly mostly/predominantly) technical circle - I don't know many who switched to ads. In fact, those people are the least likely to click on ads.

Most of them switched because Chrome is fast, and lightweight - or for the non-technical people, because their technical friends told them to.

Could you substantiate this claim?

Because it sounds like FUD at this stage, until somebody provides a shred of evidence.

I think the parent is saying that's it preferable to IE being that one single browser.

And honestly, your reply was childish and and a bit douche-bag-ish.

There's no need for this here - (I assume) we're all adults, and don't need to resort to playground tactics.

(If you actually are under 16, then I take the above and I'm sorry - welcome to HN!)

Chrome recently introduced some changes to background tabs (to a bit of grumbling from sites that wanted to use background resources/service workers):

https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/03/background...

And also - they're aggressively throttling background tabs:

http://blog.strml.net/2017/01/chrome-56-now-aggressively-thr... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13471543

I'm on Chrome Canary - and there's been noticeable improvements in memory/responsive wise for a few months now.

I have around 320+ tabs open, spread over 2 Chrome profiles (around 160 per profile).

Weird - OK, that should be fixed now =). Let me know if not.

Are you able to provide more details here?

Or you can reach out to me (details in profile).

(Disclaimer: I work for Google, but comments here are my own).

Correct =), there are many improvements in the new client (landing soon), and there are further ones coming in the pipeline shortly after.